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World of Warcraft Tops 5M Subscribers
jkdove writes "In a press release today, Blizzard announced that it 'has surpassed five million customers worldwide.' GamerGod had an opinion article on why exactly so many people are playing, back when the four Million player mark was reached." From that article: "Thus, if you want to produce the next smash hit MMORPG, is it enough to make the game easy to solo and to level? I don't think so, although I'm pretty certain that there will be some game developers trying this strategy. World of Warcraft has a secret weapon, which isn't that easy to clone..."
It seems like people are assuming they have 5 million current subscribers - but the press release never really specifies (unless I missed it). It could be they've had that many over the life of the game. That would explain the steady increase.
World of Warcraft Tops 5,000,002 Subscribers no wait 5,000,003...4...5 oh wait who cares.
Note to self never mention Microsoft when posting on Slashdot!
w00t!
"You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!"
Diablo I and II, starcraft, 4 warcraft games. Almost every single game they have ever released has been a must have. Why does it suprise anyone that they probably have the best mmorpg ever made? Make the best game and apparently 5 million people will come.
...How many accounts are banned? "1 million cheaters banned, play WoW!"
In all seriousness, I have played WoW for about 2 days before forgetting about it. I don't see what the big deal with that paticular MMORPG is, perhaps I just didn't play long enough for the e-heroin injection to arrive.
No sig for you, two weeks!
I've been playing WoW for a few months now. I'm not very far along because I wanted to play with some real life friends, and getting together is proving to be harder than I'd hoped. I created a new character and began soloing it when my friends weren't online, and I made faster progress that way. It didn't take me long to realize that soloing is a boring waste of time in an MMORPG. Why pay a monthly fee to play a massively multiplayer game by yourself?
Obviously, I didn't solo the whole time. I joined a few groups here and there, but some of them were some real whiners who would abandon the group halfway through a dungeon or somesuch nonsense I'd say the people I met were nicer than not on average, but I don't have much fun playing with random strangers, regardless. I recently joined a guild along with a friend, but he hasn't been in the game since. I'm about ready to just start playing my main character with the guild and leave him behind just so I can actually have some fun with this game. Hopefully it'll be enjoyable. Otherwise I don't think I'll renew my subscription.
My point is, soloing is killing WoW for me. The entire game is designed around it. All the missions are about you, personally. No NPCs want to hire a group for a difficult quest. They all hire individual players who can then choose to do it together or not. I'd rather play a single-player version of the game, really.
Now that I've cut my teeth on WoW, I'm starting to look for an MMORPG that'll suit me better. I wonder how many of the subscribers are in a similar situation. I find the limited number of classes and silly armor sets result in most player characters being the same. I'd rather start with a mostly blank slate and grow into a class I enjoy as I develop skills, learning class-specific abilities as I advance, which further influence my development. I like the gameplay of WoW, but its fixed development paths and encouragement of solo play are boring me. It's a difficult spot to be in since as far as I can see no other current MMORPG has a similar quest system to WoW, or anything else I'd actually enjoy doing. I keep looking at other titles in development, but I have yet to spot something that really appeals to me.
Responding to the "4 million" article, it's simple, really:
Take a quick analysis of the people criticizing the game in blogs, in forums, and on the web....what do they all have in common? Surprise! They're on their computers and, to judge by the amount they write, they have AMPLE spare time.
No wonder these particular people (self-evidently overrepresented in forums, etc) are bored with the game. If you have 500 hours of spare time in as little as 2 months (I've heard of people levelling to 60 in less than a month, which is conceivable, I guess), then YES, THE GAME DOESN'T HAVE ENOUGH CONTENT FOR YOU.
But the secret is no secret. *Most* people don't have this sort of time. *Most* people work for a living, 50+ hours per week, and with home, family, and community commitments can spend something like 10 hours per week online. That means for most people, getting to 60 takes something under a year.
Plus WoW really excels at giving the player a huge variety of experiences - from the many different races and classes with totally different skills and tactics, to the zones. There are an AMPLE number of zones that really FEEL different - Tanaris, Winterspring, Burning Steppes all come to mind, but even very similar places 'feel' unique - Feralas, Ashenvale, Felwood...all deciduous forests but each somehow interesting in their own way. Levelling up a Tauren hunter in the Barrens is 1000% different from the experience of a Gnome Mage in Dun Morogh. So every time the player gets slightly bored, they can amuse themselves with a totally different 'alt' experience.
WoW keeps it very fresh for the bulk of the experience of the average player. Yes, the uberl33ts find it goes too fast, and I will admit that I personally am a little bored at 60 since there is absolutely no solo content for a topped out player. I came to WoW because WW2OL was fun, but required 3-4 hour blocks of time to accomplish anything. Now, at 60 in WoW, it's the same story. So I have a couple of alts I'm working on levelling, and despite having played the game almost exclusively for nearly a year, the adventures with these new alts are really quite fun.
Plus, the expansion pack will then once again open advancement for us 60s sick of bumping against the glass ceiling. I for one will certainly buy 2 of them - Blizz, just sign me up.
So if other companies want to mimic WoW's success, they should IMO take note of a few salient points:
- realize that your clientele are NOT the diehard gamers whinging in your forums.
- test, test, test. Because your most lucrative market is not those hardcore gamers, your game *MUST* *MUST* be stable as a rock. Force them to reboot a couple of times, or have a game that locks up, and the casual player will simply return it or give up. They won't struggle with complex patches and system settings. It must play smoothly and entertain right out of the box.
- test, test, test. Again, make sure that UI is dead-simple. Not simplistic, people do want to be engaged by what they are doing, but simple. Frankly, most people at this user level like clicking the mouse. Key commands are useful shortcuts, but let them do almost everything with their mouse, and they'll have fun.
- content. ironically, it's the casual gamers that will be the sharpest critics of your game and content. Hardcore players will put up with goofy graphics, etc while casual players, if it's ugly they simply will grow tired of it soon. Variety is the spice of life, even virtually. Killing rats forever is BORING. Running through the same endless forest is BORING. There are a wonderful variety of quests in WoW (admittedly, ony a fairly small % are really creative), enough to always keep you wondering what's next. THAT'S WHERE YOU MAKE YOUR $$$.
-Styopa
... and 100 whiners on their forums, claiming to represent the entire playerbase. ;)
My wife and I are both WoW addicts. Blizzard has done a great job of making MMOs approachable to "casual gamers", so much so that we're probably not considered "casual" anymore by most standards. Not only do they bring some innovation to the genre, they just know how to POLISH their games so well.
Congrats to Blizzard!
-- jchenx
Whats so exciting about finding a Flight Path?
I already know i'm going to hell, now i'm just trying to get cable down there.
Then Star Wars Galaxies can't be far behind! According to SOE, they'll probably hit the 5 million mark themselves next week.
Ding! 5,000,000. :)
I'd love to see a breakdown by country.
I enjoyed the game for awhile, but in the end it got real boring. End game is just large scale raids which after awhile I had no time for. The drop rates in the game are abysmally low, I had never seen an epic drop except on an MC raid, so getting quick money was an issue. GMs are little to no help except for warning you and lashing out the ban stick on people other than for-profit gold farmers.
I can't imagine this game has 5 million current subscribers. The game just gets too boring after awhile to hold a base that large.
Is this going to be the first billion dollar game? 5 million people paying monthly subscription fees... over the course of five years, that's gonna be a billion dollars.
Philosophistry
According to general consensus on game sites, World of Warcraft is too short, too easy, too dumbed down, and has horrible problems with the end-game.
Which is exactly correct.
Blizzard managed to woo the 14-yr olds off of their X-Box's...which is worth noting, but most veteran fantasy gamers find WoW to be hollow and short-lived. The interface is brilliant, some of the gameplay mechanisms are awesome...but they drop the ball huge on the end-game.
Just like Diablo was the fast-food version of single player RPGs, WoW is the fast-food version of MMORPGs.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
WoW is definately _NOT_ the best MMORPG. (I've been playing since the Beta.)
So, which one is the best?
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
If it was easy, other people would have done it. How come this works and yet SWG doesn't, to the same extent? I name SWG specifically here because Star Wars is such an established franchise that you would expect it to beat all comers.
MMORPG designers the world over must be scratching their heads.
How can anyone top this?
the best part is WoW is everything all those hardcore moron mmo game designers have been saying you should not do.
I remember plenty of dicussions where the game designers said you should have perma death, the game should be hard so you feel like you accomplish something, to make the game deep it should be complicated and on and on.
but on the other hand WoW really is a dummy down version of everquest, nothing innovative really, nothing evolutionary, just solid coding, solid art, and simple game play, gee and its fun go figure.
I disagreed on one part of the article though, the questing system is not that great, plenty of people cant play the game without thottbot which means its still broken. but not broken enough to keep people away, but I think thottbot really contributed to keep a lot of players. you just cant find a lot of stuff without it.
This game is *not* built around soloing; in-fact, you will find it impossible to complete most any task solo.
Using NPC henchmen to form your party, while available, is simply not enough in most case; you will be forced to select real people to form your groups as the henchmen AI is pretty weak.
Also, since this is not a true MMORPG, every task you perform will be done in an instance with your party. My only major beef with this is that party sizes are limited to 2/4/6/8 depending on the level of the area you are in; making it impossible to have a great LAN going if you have 1 or 2 too many people around. (There's no linking parties together either, so the party-limit is final)
Give it a shot: you'll be out the cost of the game if you don't really like it; but there's no subscription fee on top of it.
Regarding the end game content, yes it's lacking, and a lot of people are giving Blizzard heat for it. More is in development, there are two new dungeons slated for release in the next patch even, but it's pretty limited considering they offer no other way to improve your character. I don't mind group play, after all it is an MMO, but there has to be more content to keep interest. As far as the class development system, I actually like the way Blizzard has done things, and it's success can be seen in the way SOE's Star Wars Galaxies is emulating their concept. Players have talent points to customize, but a completely skill based enhancement system would just degenerate into more grinding than anything else. (Grinding, for the non-nerds here, is the process of gaining XP or a skill by redoing the same thing for a long time.) I have seen it's growth personally in the office, and a lot of initially bored players that strayed to EQ, SWG, DAOC, etc. are coming back. Not all of them, but more and more are joining the crack club.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.