World of Warcraft For The Win

In a press release from their website, Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft has won. Or, more specifically, that the game "has surpassed 1.5 million paying customers in China - just a month following the game's commercial launch on June 7, 2005. The critically acclaimed World of Warcraft has now achieved another significant milestone as the largest MMORPG in the world, with more than 3.5 million global customers." Relatedly, Gamespy's OnLife column this week centers around the WoW duping story that we touched on earlier. From the article: "Needless to say, many players are a bit incensed that Blizzard isn't taking this as seriously as they feel it should. Others, though, are convinced that there isn't any duping actually going on. It's an urban myth, they say, which gullible forumites are unwittingly perpetuating."

Comments

Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers

[kaellinn18]

I'm not saying you're wrong or that the dupe doesn't exist, but screenshots are hardly proof, especially with the prevalence of Photoshop these days.

One would have to try the process themselves, and, in so doing, risk getting banned by Blizzard. I don't think this bug (if it does indeed exist) is going to have as big of an effect in the end as people think it will.

Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers

[Chazmati]

That screenshot looks photoshopped. Pull it into a paint program and increase the contrast, you can clearly see the same background texture copied on every line, and at the very bottom there's a horizontal line where the background doesn't match up. I'd post a link if I had the cohones (and bandwidth) to take on a slashdotting.

But then again, that's not proof that it DOESN'T exist.

Wow...I just love the rampant racism

[badmammajamma]

I see people going on and on about Chinese farmers. I see this in game too. It's really sad. Yes, there are chinese farmers. It does not mean that every chinese person playing the game is a farmer. Recently I left my guild because of this kind of racism. Of course, it always starts with chinese farmers and then it leads to more controversial types of racism about jews and blacks.

Honestly, I'm very close to quitting the game over this kind of crap. Every guild I join is litered with racists and the leaders don't do anything about it (some even join in).

I reported a guy for racism in barrens chat and I got flamed to high heaven for it. Pathetic.

Re:Eh?

[WidescreenFreak]

Yeah, it's killing Rockstar.

And UbiSoft. Hell, just look at how many millions of copies of the Splinter Cell series were sold with their strengths as compelling, single-player games. And the most recent came out years ago - about .25 years ago!

Same with the Thief series which has no multiplayer (although joint missions on that would be very cool if done like SC:CT coop multiplayer). Of course, Valve's Half-Life 2 was incredibly strong in its single-player method which killed it. {/sarcasm}

Obviously, single-player games are still very much in demand if they're made properly (unlike classic blunders like Ultima: Ascension).

Yeah, MMORPGs are just the only way to go. I've never understood that mentality. It's just as invalid now as it was over five years ago when the death of single-player was also held in strong opinion by many.

Re:Ah, 1.5 million bored customers

[tukkayoot]

Yep, I personally stopped playing the game almost as soon as I hit level 60, though this probably had about as much with my friends not being around to play much anymore as it did with a lack of endgame content. But by browsing the forums, reading web sites, and sampling the level 60+ content for myself, I was already starting to get the feeling that there wouldn't be much for me to do that would be entertaining/tolerable for me for long at level 60.

What really bugs me is this obsession that MMO designers have with creating content that can only be appropriately experienced by legions of obsessed players. This makes particularly little sense for me in the case of World of Warcraft where there's a rather abrupt transition from being able to make decent advancement with very casual play, to a game where in order to continue perceptible advancement you have to become rather hardcore, just to enjoy a relatively small amount of game content that allows you to continue to progress.

And what I really don't know, and often wonder is, does an MMO really need to be designed in such a way that once you reach a certain point, "raid" participation becomes virtually mandatory for any kind of appreciable character progression?

People often play "fantasy" games so they can be one of a handful of heroes (or villains) along with their other friends. Not to be just another cog in an (admittedly impressive) machine with 39 other people (or 71+ other people in the case of some games/raid encounters).

I mean, that might appeal to a small percentage of people who actually enjoy the challenge of dealing with the logistics of getting that many high level players (often paired with high level egos and low levels of maturity) together and getting them to do their jobs properly and sorting out who gets to attend what raid and will be rewarded what loot according to various "DKPoint" schemes and whatnot, but for the rest of us who would prefer to just muster up a group of around 4 to 14 friends, big time raid encounters, while perhaps being a somewhat enticing challenge, seems more like work that we should be getting paid for, not something fun that we should be paying to do.

I've played a few MMOs, and I know that as soon as I reach that point where it seems like my only option to improve my character involves retreading the same content over and over and over in hopes of one of a handful of rare items, or raiding, then my excitement about the game cools down, I stop playing very much for a couple months, then I just end up quitting, like I did in World of Warcraft months ago.

I've just recently thought about playing again, to have something entertaining to do with my girlfriend when we're not together (we live about 40 minutes from one another so it's not always worth it to go see each other, depending on the amount of free time we have and what we need to get accomplished at home) but I'm pretty sure that if her and I did start playing, we'd just play to level 60, maybe a bit beyond, and then move on to something else ... because at that point, while perhaps we haven't yet "won" World of Warcraft, we'd have done all the stuff that seems fun and worthwhile.

Oh, and also, Blizzard, like every other other company that tries this MMO thing, doesn't seem to have a clue about customer relationships. They've done the "stealth nerf" thing several times, they are slow to respond to what are often very legitimate/important player concerns, and it takes a pretty long time for inexplicable changes to be reversed (if they ever are). The dupe story, I suppose, is a good example of this. At least they're not as bad as Square-Enix though. I still can't fathom the mentality of an MMO company that thinks it's a good idea to design a game to crash if you try to alt+tab, and deletes characters if a customer decides to suspend their account for three months or more.

So I'm still waiting for someone to get it right. While World of Warcraft is a fun

Re:Eh?

[Gravedigger3]

I dont see why it has to be either or. Why does it have to be "all games are going online" or "MMO games are gonna crash and burn."

One thing i notice on the internet is that there is only one answer and everything else is 100% wrong. Intel vs. AMD, Nvidia vs ATI, Xbox vs PS, MS vs Apple, Windows vs Linux, etc etc etc.

You have to pick one and everything else sucks. Why cant people just realize that you can have your cake and eat it too. I have an Xbox and a PS2 and i love them both. I play WoW all weekend and i love it but during the week while i have work i like to sit down and play GTA or Halo. My last card was an ATI and now I have an Nvidia and they both work great.

My point is that technology, just like the rest of the world, is not black and white. There are shades of grey and different opinions. Not all games are going to go online and games that are online are gonna stick around and consumers will love them both for their own reasons.