Slashdot Mirror
2 Million Azeroth Citizens
Gamasutra (and everyone else) has the news that World of Warcraft has hit 2 Million subscribers, making it the first U.S. based commercial MMOG to do so. From the article: "The most popular current MMORPGs in Asia are generally developed locally, but if World of WarCraft proves popular in China, as well as other soon to be launched territories such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, it could quickly become the most globally popular online game in history.
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In addition to World of Warcraft, WoW also stands for World of Waiting.
Waiting to log on... waiting for instances to open up... waiting for Battlegrounds... waiting for patches...
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
If anything, World of Warcraft's huge success has been understated. It is now four times the size of Everquest at its peak. That's monstrous, for a game that charges a monthly subscription.
i could live a little longer in this prison
> but if World of WarCraft proves popular in China, as well as other soon to be launched territories such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, it could quickly become the most globally popular online game in history.
Let me rephrase this as:
"but if World of WarCraft proves popular in [every country] it could be the most popular online game in history"
We can build quite a lot of story here:
"if $thing proves $property in $everywhere else, it could be the most $property $category in history"
Like in:
"If slashdot proves boring in europe and china and south america, it could be the most boring weblog in history".
Cool.
As a former Blizzard employee I can attest that I did not see very much innovation in the hallways. Passion is spewing from the halls and dedication to the utmost fun experience is what holds that ship together; maybe one day they will try it with brand new ideas...
:D)
I have no doubt that World of Warcraft will become the usurper of the throne and easily claim the #1 MMO spot globally but what I have not yet seen much of is "Who will dethrone the new king in years to come?"
You know it is an inevitable. I ACTUALLY know it is inevtiable, hell I've worked on the code and tools. You can feel it in your soul and you can know it just by the fact that technology always expands to such a point that games are antiquated and no longer "Stunning."
Gaming industry, when oh when are you braking out your next stunners?
A true 'Killer Application' mmo has not been created, and world of warcraft is not it. Killer apps force consumers to go out and buy hardware just for the expience being so damn 'killer fun.' In other words, I can't wait for the mmo that breaks out and makes people go out and buy computers or consoles (ps3, xbox360 would be nice...)
That's the game I am interested in playing.
(and making, as a game developer.
-Daniel
-Debug
In WOW they never delete a character or an account. So is that current paying subscribers? Or all subscribers ever?
I'm just curious
There might be more subscribers, but there are less people playing online now. People are getting burnt out of the same old instances, and waiting for poorly designed PvP.
Your wait in queue in 3 hours, have a nice day.
Eh... I think the graphics issue boils down like this:
The actual technical feats of the graphics engine in the game are decent, but not amazing(however, in their defense they do a damn good job of running on lower end hardware...). There are people who's opinion of the graphics in a game are derived almost solely from the technical specs of the game's engine... Badly designed levels, clashing colors all over the place doesn't matter if the poly count is high with lots of sparkly effects. These sorts will not like WoW.
Second, Blizzard has a very distinctive art style. Some people simply won't like WoW because the particular style to it isn't to their liking(there's definitely a vocal group these days who want their graphics as 'realistic' as possible, and Blizzard's style definitely won't appease that group).
Attractiveness of graphics is a very subjective matter... personally, I agree with you that WoW does a really good job overall(they definitely have slipped up a little when it comes to some of the equipment for players, but everything else is really great). Different people will have different takes, and in my experience most of the complaints about WoW tend to follow the two lines I mentioned above...
WoW upside down is MoM, and MoM upside down is Dad's favorite thing!
ducks...
Technically, the graphics aren't all that great. There's no fancy reflections, and bump mapping, and vertex shading. But I agree that it's a fantistic looking game, without all those things. It's not the poly counts and resolution of textures that do it, it's the overall cohesive art design. Every area you go to looks significantly different. There is atmosphere. And while it does not look realistic, it looks believable in the sense that there is nothing to jarringly pull you out of your immersion.