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

I wonder how many subscibers

[cprincipe]

Are actually farmers?

Re:How much does it cost?

[osCon]

It costs ~0.055USD an hour to play. (http://www.blizzard.com/press/chinapatch.shtml)

From blizzard:
"Only players who have purchased an authorized CD key will be able to activate their accounts and enter the game. Each CD key costs 30 Yuan/RMB and can be purchased with a World of Warcraft Points Card. Point Cards also cost 30 Yuan/RMB and can be used at a rate of 9 points per hour (0.45 Yuan/hour) to play World of Warcraft."

Re:Dupe exists... sad farmers

[_xeno_]

You don't even need Photoshop. You can do that with macros. I had to split them into four macros due to the 255 char limit, but try these out:

/script local i,n,b,c; for i=1, 7 do n = "BrowseButton"..i; getglobal(n):Show(); b = getglobal(n.."Name"); b:SetText("Krol Blade"); c = ITEM_QUALITY_COLORS[4]; b:SetVertexColor(c.r, c.g, c.b); getglobal(n.."ClosingTimeText"):SetText("Long"); end

/script local i,n; BrowseNoResultsText:Hide(); for i=1, 7 do n = "BrowseButton"..i; getglobal(n.."ItemIconTexture"):SetTexture("Interf ace\\Icons\\INV_Sword_18"); getglobal(n.."Level"):SetText("51"); getglobal(n.."ClosingTimeText"):SetText("Long"); end

/script local i,n,m; for i=1, 7 do n = "BrowseButton"..i; getglobal(n.."ItemCount"):Hide(); m=n.."MoneyFrame"; getglobal(m):SetPoint("RIGHT",n,"RIGHT",10,10); MoneyFrame_Update(m, 3009500); getglobal(n.."YourBidText"):Hide(); end

/script local i,n,m; for i=1, 7 do n = "BrowseButton"..i; m=getglobal(n.."BuyoutMoneyFrame"); m:Show(); MoneyFrame_Update(m:GetName(), 3200000); getglobal(n.."BuyoutText"):Show(); getglobal(n.."HighBidder"):SetText("CmdrTaco"); end

The end result? CmdrTaco is up to something! (Remember all real account names can't have mixed case - they're always with an initial capital and then all lowercase.)

Ironically enough, because that screenshot wasn't "faked" per se, and is really what the ingame interface would look like, comparing it with the "dupe proof" screen shot shows that the dupe screenshot was faked in Photoshop!

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.

You should play them, before flaming

[Sycraft-fu]

It's amply clear you have NO idea how World of Warcraft works, or indeed most other MMORPGs. So I'll cover WoW since it's the one relivant to this /. article and the one I'm playing right now:

No matter how much money you spend on your character, you will never be uber. Period. There are monsters, lots of them, that you will not be able to kill by yourself. Doesn't matter how much of anything you bought, you can have the best equipmetn in the game, you still will die to them in less than 5 seconds. There are monsters that require 40 people to kill, not only that, they require those 40 people to be a cross section of different classes, and to be well coordinated. If you fail to properly execute your strategy, you die.

Now speaking of buying of items, you cannot buy the best items in the game, for any amount of money. Many items in the game, including all the most powerful, bind to your charater when picked up. That means you can never give them to someone else. So you actually have to go out and do the necessary steps to get the item.

And there are no scrool of instant death, or anything like that. No matter how powerful you get, other players will always be a challenge for you. Even low level ones. I've seen a mob of level 10-20 players whack a level 60 player. He killed quite a few of them, but they won in the end. No such thing as irresitable superiority.

Speaking of death, it's no big deal. They don't kill you and you're done, they kill you and you are able to come back after a bit, and keep playing. You don't lose your character or anything.

They are fun, a lot of fun, and though cheating happens some times, generally those that do get their asses banned.