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

Now or Have had?

[imunfair]

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.

Re:Now or Have had?

[voice_of_all_reason]

How about: 5 million unique users, or different accounts? "Soloing" is alot easier when you're manually controlling 5 maxxed warriors :)

Re:Now or Have had?

[MBraynard]

Anytime a marketing department has an opportunity to make a number sound better than it is, they do. So if it was some landmark number of 'subscribers' - or better yet - 'subscribers for a full year' - was available, they would have used that term.

Instead, they chose the loosest term possible - 'customer' - that number probably means bought retail game box.

Re:Now or Have had?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article doesn't link to Blizzards full press release http://www.blizzard.com/press/051219.shtml which states the following:

"World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules."

So those 5 million customers are based on anyone who has a current paid-for account.

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.

Soloing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Soloing

[Rhys]

Go play everquest.

Or EQ2. Or DDO.

Seriously. A game where I don't have to group up with the tools spamming "ur gay" in the barrens is a game I can appreciate. Warcraft is the first game since AC that really had any strength at soloing. CoH had a little of it, but it was only a little and has since been nerfed into the ground. (though in a way that made the solo game stronger as the high-end there degenerated into herding madness which usually means a lot of players to get the instance to spawn that many mobs)

There are group quests from NPCs. They're called instances. Go try one solo, you'll be back looking for a group nice and quick.

Or go try PvP. If you don't work with your group (pickup or not) prepare to be owned by the other side. There was a match I was in last night with a group of 10 horde. 7 were a lowbie (20-29) PvP guild and the last three were a couple friends and myself (all on TeamSpeak).

To say we owned hardcore would be an understatment. At one point I lead the charge into the alliance coming down midfield. I had support behind me but I figured I'd die for it as I had all the alliance (7-9, hard to get an exact count with pets) on me and would be solo for at least 3-4 seconds. Somehow, through well timed heals arrived when I was around 10% health (from I think the druid on our team) and I lived through it. I had absolutly no right to, not even geared out as insane as I am. (why yes those are level 38 leather legs I'm wearing at 29 thanks for asking! Yes that is 2k health I'm sporting no it's not a typo.)

It's simple, really

[argStyopa]

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 $$$.

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.

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!

Cool!

[Guppy06]

Then Star Wars Galaxies can't be far behind! According to SOE, they'll probably hit the 5 million mark themselves next week.

Congrats!

[Why's_This_Fish_So_B]

Ding! 5,000,000. :)

I'd love to see a breakdown by country.

The first billion dollar game?

[philipkd]

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.

Huh?

[Da VinMan]

WoW is definately _NOT_ the best MMORPG. (I've been playing since the Beta.)

So, which one is the best?

Re:WoW

[drsquare]

Exactly. They're catering to the majority, not the minority of hard-core geeks who play for 80 hours a week and put another 20 hours in whining on forums. It's played by people who want a GAME, not people who want something to dedicate their life to.

'Veteran fantasy gamers'...lol.