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World of Warcraft Shatters Sales Records
Mightydos writes " An interesting article was posted on Blizzard.com today... They say World of Warcraft® has sold through more than 600,000* units to customers in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The fastest-growing massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) has also shattered all previous concurrency records in North America, achieving over 200,000 simultaneous players during the holiday period. "
I'll toss my hat in the ring. I decided early on, before I knew much about World of Warcraft, that it would be the MMORPG that I played, if I played any, because Blizzard was doing a hybrid Mac/PC version with release for both on the same day.
:-)
As a Mac user, I am a member of a vocal minority, and I felt like it's my duty to reward companies who take this kind of a proactive stance for my platform of choice.
I have a copy of WoW, and it's probably the first MMRPG that I've played that I've enjoyed. I tried Ultima when it came out, Anarchy later, and some others - but WoW has me.
Why?
1. Attention to detail. Ever played a game and thought "You know, this would be better if I could do X"? Well, here it is. X is 99% of the time right in WoW. Chat - easy. Macros - simple. Able to compare what you have with what you want to buy - just hover the mouse over the item.
2. Mac/PC compatible. I know, I know - Mac's only include 4% of the "new computers sold" base or some such. But I know several Unix geeks who got Macs just so they could play some games on them (as opposed to Linux, which is even less native ports than for the Mac). So after the kids are in bed, I can sit in the living room with my Powerbook and play the same game my friends are playing in my living room.
3. Performance: you don't need a brand spanking new computer to play. It helps, of course, but I know a guy with a 867 Mhz Powerbook who plays without missing anything.
4. Ease for newbies and oldies alike: Even on PvP servers, you can be a newbie and be fine. Do you lose money for dying? No. Experience? No. Just inconvience (and maybe a little equipment damage, but that's easily repaired). Once Blizzard has the true battle areas in place to stage "wars", there will be a place for those who want to kill other people to head off to.
If you're an oldie, there's lots to do as well. Elite dungeons that you share with your direct friends, not everybody and their brother (so you don't have to worry about waiting forever for some particular monster to respawn - your group and your group alone will get the chance to get him in your custom dungeon).
Most of the time the game is as hard as you want it to be. I usually challenge creatures 2-3 levels above me, where it's "hard but fair". I like that it's pretty fair. If I fail, it's because I wasn't watching what I was doing, not because some arbitrary bit got flipped that said it was my day to die.
Is it perfect? No - I do wish they'd let clerics wear leather (especially as their attacks are underpowered, which is why I switched to a Hunter), and the respawn is almost too fast (there's been a few times I'd died because I was fighting a monster, got it down to 99% dead, then a new monster spawn right on top of me and killed me before I could run off - would be nice to have a 10 second countdown before they started attacking), but otherwise, it's close enough to perfect to make it the only MMRPG that I'll play.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need go hunt some wolves so I can learn to make Lean Wolf Steaks....
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
In addition to sales and concurrency records, Blizzard is also shattering several long-held MMORPG industry myths - including a few of SOE's favorite sacred cows:
Myth #1 - an MMORPG must include numerous "time sinks"; long periods of unrewarding time spent with little or no character progression.
In the series of interviews recently posted where Raph Koster conspicuously omits any mention of WoW, you can almost hear his exasperated sighs as he laments the lack of opportunity to socialize in newer games because the action is so fast. If you want to chat, log into a chat system. Most of the rest of us would like to spend our limited gaming hours killing things and having fun, not waiting for shuttles or running around endlessly looking for things to fight.
Myth #2 - character death in an MMORPG must be a harsh, demoralizing experience.
Go read some of the discussions on this in SOE's forums. It's pretty amazing to think that a software company can entertain a serious discussion regarding intentionally "punishing" their users/players.
Myth #3 - MMOG design must be driven by a philosophy that is inherently different than conventional games [insert lots of grandiose game theory and virtual world talk here].
Bullshit. I'm sure Raph Koster is a brilliant guy and he has a lot of interesting ideas, but at some point you need to pull your head out of the clouds and remember that above all else, a game has to be fun to play.
Myth #4 - any new MMORPG must feature a complex, impossible-to-balance skill-based (non) "class" system.
Again, bullshit. WoW's simple, single-track class system is easy to understand and is well-balanced for both PVE and PVP (the usual nerf-calling notwithstanding).
Myth #5 - the fantasy MMORPG market is "saturated".
This seems to be the industry's favorite crutch - the notion that everyone who will ever play an MMOG is already playing one and that the "long, hard grind" model (EQ, DAoC, SWG, etc.) is the only kind of game those players want. Again, bullshit. WoW is cracking the market wide open and bringing a flood of new players who have never before touched an MMOG. To be fair here though, I think this one is at least partially true, the market *is* saturated when it comes to EQ-style treadmills.
Where other MMOs have seen subscription numbers flat-line after release (SWG, DAoC) or decline (AC), expect to see WoW break new records in the future. This isn't just because of the legions of D2 players migrating over or the Warcraft name - those things help, but they're not the whole story. With WoW, their first and only entry into the market, Blizzards "gets' what the others don't: a successful game is not about lofty "game theory" or grand visions, it's simply about having fun.
The writing is on the wall: fun is in, the grind is out.
Basic stuff you have to do to run Windows games under FC3: turn off prelinking (easy), turn on legacy VA memory layout (easy) and disable exec-shield (easy).
The other changes were like using version 6111 of the nvidia drivers instead of 6629 (performance issues), enabling SBA and Fast Writes, etc, all to improve card performance (which benifits all games!). Also had to use openGL instead of D3D rendering in the game (adding -opengl switch to launcher) to increase FPS again.
sheesh, is that all? god, it's a wonder desktop linux hasn't taken the gaming world by storm!
...and that's all there is to it.