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..."

Comments

Blizzard is just maintaining its high standard

[fain0v]

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.

5 million subscribers ...

[jchenx]

... 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!

Re:It's simple, really

[HD Webdev]

realize that your clientele are NOT the diehard gamers whinging in your forums.

Exactly. And, that goes for any game.

Many companies screw up by changing a game based on the rabid whingers on forums only to find out that most of them will never be happy and will just start crying about something else. They should let that less than 1% of their forum membership rant. They usually whinge everywhere for every game they play and trying to shut them up by changing the game will not work.

If the game is well made, and extremely bug free, those changes will often piss off the more silent majority and they'll bail out to another game. For games that cost $$$ per month, this is even more crucial. When a customer has to see a charge every month, they'll reflect on whether the cost is worth it every 30 days.