5.5 Million WoW Players, Lunar Festival

Gamasutra reports that World of Warcraft has hit another milestone in subscribers, with One Million European players and 5.5 Million players worldwide. From the article: "The figure of 1 million customers is more than four times the previously estimated size of the entire European MMORPG market. According to data from Media Control and GFK panels, plus internal studies and account data from Blizzard itself, the company is also claiming that World of WarCraft was the best selling full price PC game in Europe last year." All those players will have a new world event to look forward to at the end of the month, as RPG Vault gives a preview on the Lunar Festival due to be released on January 27th.

Comments

Number of unsubscribers?

[bradbeattie]

I'd be interested in seeing statistics on the number of people that have unsubscribed from WoW as well. I doubt Blizzard would be willing to share that information, but it would certainly satisfy my statistical curiosities.

Omen the Chinese New Year Monster?

[biocute]

Omen sounds like the Chinese New Year Monster which comes out every year on new year's eve to terrorize villages, who would have to set off firecrackers to scare the monster away.

Chinese New Year is on 29 Jan this year by the way.

Slightly bothered by this

[falcon5768]

Despite playing the game myself I cant help but be slightly bothered by the potential dumbing down of the MMO market this could possibly cause. One of the reasons I loved UO and play FFXI now is because its NOT easy, its infact somewhat hard to play. WoW though I just jumped in and without much effort make a lot of gold and have really nice equips to the point there is really nothing seperating me from the rest of the 5 mil.

WoW did a lot to make MMO's accessable to the masses, but Im starting to wonder, do we really want L337 Sp34k asshats and just about everyone getting the best armor possible with little to no effort? A great example of this is SWG. Even SE is making its next expansion much more accessable to the masses after making what I thought was the best expansion to a MMO, one where you actually had to put a little effort into playing it to get the most out of it.

Maybe Im just too oldschool I guess, I miss the days of when you died it really ment you where dead, your body was looted and you started from scratch.

Re:Slightly bothered by this

[supabeast!]

If you don't like MMO's designed for people who aren't losers with nothing better to do that play MMO's 40+ hours a week, play games like UO and FFXI, and leave WoW to people who just want to game a little and spend the rest of their lives doing something worthwhile.

Re:Slightly bothered by this

[bradbeattie]

That's why I'd like Blizzard to make a few "hardcore" servers. If you die, you're dead. Make a new character. Instead of seeing about half of the population at level 60, we'd see fewer and fewer high level characters. Travelling alone or unprepared would be death. Just one or two servers like that. Please?

Re:Slightly bothered by this

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

That's why I'd like Blizzard to make a few "hardcore" servers. If you die, you're dead. Make a new character. Instead of seeing about half of the population at level 60, we'd see fewer and fewer high level characters. Travelling alone or unprepared would be death. Just one or two servers like that. Please?

That is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. Forget PVP on a server like that - you just know that a group of asshats would team up to prevent any progress at all. And forget the challenge of instances/zones/mobs that stand a chance of killing you - everyone would just grind on characters that are 5 levels low and don't pull.

A good player still takes at least 4-5 days of playtime (or more) to hit level 60. Try playing that long while avoiding situations that could involve death. Eliminating the huge penalty for mistakes is what allows rock climbers to push themselves to the limit. And it's what allows you to challenge yourself in WoW. In a game where death is catastrophic, no one will take risks. How challenging is that?

-- 53 Night Elf Shadow Priest, 11 days playtime

Re:Slightly bothered by this

[MMaestro]

A good player still takes at least 4-5 days of playtime (or more) to hit level 60.

On a PvE server, maybe. On PvP servers, most players generally spend weeks (or even months if you play 'casually') just getting through levels 20-40. I hit level 60 in about 20 days playtime on my first character on a PvE server, on a PvP server? I still haven't broken level 30 yet and I'm nearing the 15 day playtime cause I get randomly interrupted/ambushed/ganked/corpse camped in contested territories (why is the Horde Shaman totem quest right outside of an Alliance town?) Oh and god forbid you set your Hearthstone to a town thats being seiged by the enemy faction. A level 60er can one shot anyone under level 30, let alone run them down with their mounts.

Level 60 players in WoW need something to do besides run oversized instances, gank low level players and constantly do Battlegrounds. Death is a joke (gee wow, you have to walk back to your death and/or pay some gold to repair your gear), instances have long been complained about being boring and Battlegrounds STILL suffers from the unequal Alliance : Horde ratios on some servers. The parent post is right, WoW is a TOO easy for a MMO. Other than time, theres absolutely no risk or real penalty in the game for anything. Even 'dishonorable' kills are somewhat of a joke given how few Civilian NPCs there are.

Re:Slightly bothered by this

[hab136]

Maybe Im just too oldschool I guess, I miss the days of when you died it really ment you where dead, your body was looted and you started from scratch.

Old school hardcode people liked that, yes - and they complain constantly about WoW. They still play, though. Do you complain that everyone has the same weapons/levels in Counterstrike or Warcraft 3?

Other people, like myself, never played any of the other MMORPGs precisely because they were so hardcore. I didn't want to be uber, I just wanted to have a fun game to play. Guess where most of WoW's population comes from?

Fun > a (very slim) chance at being uber

So it is not for you

[SmallFurryCreature]

Some people actually do like a real challenge and taking real risk.

How can you challenge yourselve if there is no risk?

Of course the real problem with MMORPG games is that it is often no fun to be a low level character as you don't want to repeat the tutorial level. If I have to go the Trial Isle of EQ2 once more I am going to scream!

But imagine a game that has lots and lots of content at low level. Where if you have to start over you do not have to redo the same quest you already did a 100 times but can start in a new town with new quests and new skills.

Then dead would matter less. Yes it would be difficult to do in a game especially since most players can't get their head around the idea that it is not the levelling up that matters but having fun.

If you can have as much fun in a game at level 1 as at level 1000th then what does it matter if at level 800 you buy the farm. As long as the fight was good.

Without risk there is no challenge.

Totally Impractical.

[Shivetya]

Until a guarantee can be made that technical issues beyond the player's control are fully addressed this type of scenario isn't going to fly.

Now how it could be done and impart some of the same "thrill" and "consequence" is to have rules where characters don't start off as lower level but midway through the game progression. Limit the number of characters that the account can use during a set period, perhaps 30 days.

This would reduce the investment but not to the point of making it meaningless. The reason why "hardcore" servers don't exist in MMORPGs of this scale is that players put a considerable amount of time into their characters and will not give that up. Not in a world where internet problems can crop up anywhere at anytime.

I also find the calls for "hardcore" servers to be pretentious simply because most of those making the calls are implying they are better players when its usually just a case of jealously that drives it.

There is NOTHING preventing players who want to play this way from imposing this rule upon themselves. Yet this is the last action these same people will ever take. Lead by example or shut up