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World of Warcraft Hits 10 Million Subscribers
technirvana writes "Blizzard Entertainment, owners of World of Warcraft, announced today that the game now has more than 10 million paying subscribers around the world. Online gameplay costs an average of $15 USD per month. Those 10 million paying subscribers include 5.5 million players in Asia, 2.5 million in the US and 2 million in Europe. The Warcraft brand was first introduced in 1994 and World of Warcraft was launched in 2001."
I've noticed a direct correlation with the amount of WoW subscribers and the amount I get laid.
Less competition for me? Let them play, boys, let them play!
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
2004.
..and making the game more interesting.
Once I hit 70, my desire to grind for 20 hours to get that shiny new +1 Int cloak gets a little tedious.
10,000,000 subcribers x $15 a month = $150,000,000 a month. $150,000,000 x 12 months = $1,800,000,000 a year. From WoW alone. I bet blizzard/vivendi are happy campers.
Ho my god. I just lost 4 years of my life. I tought I had been playing world of warcraft since 2005 !
Dance, my little piñata-smacking monkeys, dance for me!
All the way to the bank. BFD.
And you only took 7 years to figure that out. Congratulations.
World of Warcraft was launched in 2004.
Living With a Nerd
The Warcraft brand was first introduced in 1994 and World of Warcraft was launched in 2001.
World of Warcraft was announced in 2001, but was launched on November 23, 2004.
see The wikipedia entry.
And they said zombies weren't real!
There's one Asian player with 5.5 million gold farming accounts.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
"5.5 million players in Asia"
so they admit over 1/2 the WoW population are gold farmers.
If they have stats as to operating systems used for gameplay... Would be interesting to see how many of those 10mil actually use Vista, XP, MacOS and Linux etc...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Only accounts for North America and European servers pay the regular subscription price. Blizzard licenses out WoW to local companies in the Asian markets. Typical subscription plans there are for X amount of hours per month, and in the case of China the average price is $3-4 USD/month. Of which I assume Blizzard only sees a small royalty from.
Well, you could probably only expect so much out of a single game. Probably time for them to start on WoW II.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
given the most known numbers, they make about 3 billion a year. time to get starcraft out of the free market
In Soviet Halo, the game kills you (socially anyway)
Ragnarok Online has 25+ million subscriber worldwide with 24 million being in asia(Gold farming is impossible so no farmers either...)
Blizzard is constantly rolling out new content for free - new dungeons, new raid zones, new quests, new factions... All sorts of new stuff. Compare this to something like old-school EverQuest where your money just kind of vanished and every single new addition was through a paid expansion pack.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Ouch (or words to that effect)
...there are going to be dozens of posts about how WoW sucks, and (game x) is so much better.
Maybe (game x) is better by some specific subjective metric, but in terms of the overall 'package', I'd have to say that in this case Adam Smith's measurement is the best objective general measure of value.
I think WoW is particularly strong in terms of ease-of-play, progression speed, reward vs. time, variety of experience, replayability, and yes, even balance. Other games might have advantages such as a better crafting system, better pvp, and better graphics but each of these involves a tradeoff that Blizzard has perhaps deliberately accepted in favor of more mass-market acceptance (in the above examples, I'd say the tradeoffs are learning curve, playability, and system requirements, respectively).
There are LOTS of specific things to complain about WoW, but commercial success on this scale is hard to dispute. They had no particular advantage in the marketplace compared to other developers (aside from a well-earned reputation), but they have come to utterly dominate the MMOG market to the extent that their 'ownership' of that market space has leaked into popular culture.
Now that WoW is so dominant, it has become the benchmark in ways nobody could have anticipated 5 years ago. They not only pull in more subscribers, they've transformed the "computer gaming" activity almost singlehandedly from nerdville to nearly-mainstream, particularly with 20-somethings and under.
Unfortunately that means they are also able to exert an influence (large, although I'd hesitate to say disproportionate) on other games - I for one believe that WotLK (the next expansion) has been done or nearly done since before the end of the year, and that they are waiting to unleash it a month or so before the 'next big competitor' (I believe Age of Conan) is released.
-Styopa
World of Warcraft Hits 10 Million Subscribers
That must hurt...
So, the equivalent of 10,000,000 / 6,641,114,624[1] * 100 = 0.150577% of the world's population pays for WoW.
[1] ~ World population
There are 10 million people willing to pay to play a game they already payed once for? And all they get out of it is to complain about gold farmers and griding hours of their life away for another item that the company can just create (which in of itself is utterly useless to the rest of their life)?
Wow! And I thought I was odd for selling fish to a raccoon to pay off my virtual house in bells... I kind of don't feel so bad because I'm not paying for it in real money each month... And I can take my DS with me...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
I am a little curious about those numbers.
From what I have seen, the use of multiple accounts by single users is not all that uncommon. Blizzard doesn't seem to actually delete accounts after they've been deactivated. If someone cancels their subscription, their account name, their toons, everything remains (much like AOL's method of fudging their numbers). So of those 10m subscribers, I'd be curious to find out if those are individuals, or simply active subscribers, or in fact accounts created but not currently subscribed counted in that total.
Blizzard is constantly rolling out new content for free
I'm so tired of people making such statements. You get ZERO new content for FREE. You pay a monthly subscription which funds new development, among other things. You PAID for the new content. It is not free!
According to Blizzard that is anybody who has ever touched the game for the course of its history. Which includes those who already cancelled their accounts, those who are playing for free(whether it's the promotional 10 days or you just have an account you screw around with on the test server), and probably even accounts way back from open beta, since technically those to were free promotional subscriptions. "World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules."
They've shown they can cope with load. Now if only they'd make a game worth playing, a plot not revolving around a Harry Pottery-ish universe.
Clearly ten million people don't seem to mind that much.
O Rly? Then what is burning crusade and upcoming wrath of the litch king?
not really. thats 10 million accounts.
... .. your probally looking at no more than 2 Million if their lucky. of that... probally HALF are actual players.
since a lot of 'diehard' wow suckers have 3 or more accounts. and then, half of those accounts are in Asia (which are gold farmers), which means about... 100-500 accounts per company.
if you do the numbers of ACTUAL ACTIVE* subscribers,
*Active, those activly playing, and not dud accounts .
New stuff that is exactly like the old stuff, and does nothing but kill time while they work on the next expansion, which is the only part that actually advances the plot.
Unfortunately these numbers don't reflect the bastardization they've introduced into the game. I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of subscribers who actually play the game is much lower now than a year ago. I'm one of those players. The only reason I haven't canceled my account is that the market is a one trick pony. There are no decent alternatives to Warcraft. If they have so many subscribers why are most realms turning into empty wastelands?
The more they take content and put it into instances, both pve and pvp; the more it becomes a pointless game to play. Why play a Mmorpg which has turned into an Orpg? Does it matter that there can be 2k people on your server when you only ever see a dozen or so every night because the game is all instanced?
Then there's the cottage cheese-y-ness they've done with pvp. It used to take some skill, quick thinking and some organization. Now with resilience , other damage mitigation and overpowered healing that can keep anyone alive things like arena matches turn into long grind fests. The outcome of pvp encounters used to be maybe 50% skill and preparation, 20% luck and 30% gear and class make-up. With all of the changes they've introduced this past year, your typical arena match is determined by 10% skill and preparation, 5% luck, 85% gear and class make-up. Doesn't that sound exhilarating kids?
This happens with a lot of mmorpgs. They are released in a form that is slightly buggy and end up with all of these unplanned and unforeseen novelties in terms of gameplay, strategy, interaction. Then after the corporation that develops it spends a few years tightening the cogs and getting RID of the unplanned and unforseen elements as well as anything that gets complained about by the userbase, voila! You end up with a bland, boring game no one plays anymore.
I was a member of a guild with over 100 people and kept in touch with a former guild of 200. They've both dried up and shrivelled out of existence because every patch slowly turned the game more and more bland. Both 'realms' I used to frequent have died horrible deaths and the main cities are ghost towns.
Bring back the wild west. Bring back the buggy, unforseen, wild, insulting, violent mess that was Ultima Online back in the early years. There were no cookie cutter classes. There was gambling, extortion, confidence tricksters, scammers, spammers, raiders, looters, exploiters, thieves, honorable and dishonorable fighters and gangs. There was somewhat of a safety zone in towns. There were no factions, everyone and everything was fair game. There was no one way to play the game, I'm sure people have so many interesting stories about how they or friends played. I had a friend who liked to spend his time stealing useless items. He was a weird looking fellow and a clepto. He also enjoyed running around town naked. He would yell at the NPCs and get angry at the guards when they caught him and killed him. That was his take of the game.
If I wanted to play around in a world where everything gets regulated and restrained and anything that causes people to whine gets the axe I would... Not go pay $50 bucks + $15 per month to do it on a computer, there's plenty of it in a non-virtual world.
The only reason WOW hasn't collapsed like a house of soggy cards is that there is still an influx of new players and the game does have a great unique feel with LOTS of art and content to discover as you level. But once you're done leveling, the game is over.
Liberty.
Hit them with what?
However I am still not going back to the game.. I quit the game a while ago.... cold turkey... I played the game from day 1 in beta, I however quit just before the first expansion came out, I was done, as were many of my guild mates, raiding the same high end content week after week after week just became too much of a chore.
The same can be said for Everquest (I did not really get into eq2). The problem as I see it, is that they develop a game, in the lifecycle plan for the game, I am almost positive they already have a project plan for the expansion before the game is even initially released. And they release the game, with the mechanics that are designed to hopefully satisfy people till the expansion comes out. But they under estimate the users every time, within the first few months, possibly even weeks, you have groups of users that have maxed out their character level, and sure it fun getting shiny new toys for the first year, but it then becomes a chore, and is tedious, and at that point is where the game developer has failed. This is of course my opinion, but having played both everquest, and then wow, for many years (same high end raiding guild for both games), I believe I have some insight into the problems that can occur over time.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
There is this massive influx of returning players. I can tell you that from seeing it happen in my own guild. At least 10 accounts have been re-activated in the last month. I can't explain why, other than people missed the friendships that have been made.
This is quite possibly a good reason for the 10 million mark reached.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
To be honest, the current end-game isn't bad. They've got enough avenues in there to suit most degrees of committment to the game and general temperaments, even if some of these are more developed than others.
For the casual players, there are the five-man instances - first the regular versions and then, when you've got your gear from those, the heroics. Heroics are an interesting twist; they aren't, as I was expecting, just tuned-up versions of the regular instances. In many cases, despite the superficial similarities, they need very different tactics. There's also a nice progression here; a group in all blues wouldn't have too many problems with Botanica or Black Morass, while even full-epic groups can find Durnholde Keep or Arcatraz tricky.
Battlegrounds are a popular way of killing time for the casual PvPers. Even if you have awful gear and suck at them, you will still get your rewards - it'll just take a bit longer. The relative ease with which you can get your PvP rewards, combined with the low time input required, has led to them being branded "welfare epics". Of course, they don't really stand up against the high-end raiding or arena epics, but I know plenty of casuals who are content with this. Over time, the lower end arena drops get pushed down into Battleground rewards anyway.
The hardcore PvPers have Arena, which really is a cut-throat environment (and is the only form of PvP in the game where getting killed is any more than a momentary annoyance). Ironically, it doesn't actually take particularly long each week - the main challenge here is putting in the time to get the gear so you can participate effectively. The top end season 3 arena gear is almost on a par with the top-end raiding epics, although with the new personal rating requirements for some pieces, it isn't necessarily easy to get.
Finally, you have raiding, which is the favorite hardcore PvE end-game activity. This is where, to my mind, Blizzard have really made strides since the Burning Crusade hit. Rather than having a 40 man raid as the entry-level point, a la Molten Core, Karazhan was a nice, relatively easy 10 man raid, which many non-hardcore guilds were able to switch to quite quickly at level 70. With the addition of Zul'Aman in the 2.3 patch, you can more or less work your way through about 2/3rds of the end-game gear progression without ever setting foot in a 25-man raid. For the genuinely hardcore who do push into the 25 man raiding scene, there's a definite progression tree with 6 different instances to work through. The difference from most of the pre-expansion end-game is dramatic and impressive.
In short, Blizzard have delivered as reasonable an end-game experience as could reasonably be expected and continue to add new content at a decent pace. At the same time, they've refined the experience for lower level players and those levelling up alts, with the new Dustwallow Marsh quests and the dramatic reduction of the amount of xp needed to level up (you can level 1-60 in WoW now faster than you can in the fully-offline Final Fantasy XII). Of course, things are far from perfect, and I can see a few dark clouds on the horizon.
The most significant of these is that, as a former Final Fantasy XI player (where the level cap never went above 75), I must confess to being a bit worried by Blizzard's intention to slam the level cap up with 10 with every new expansion. What this essentially means is that any end-game gear you acquired before the expansion hit is immediately obsolete. Green is suddenly the new Purple. Effectively, this amounts to a complete end-game reboot every 12-18 months. While beneficial in some respects (shaking up the scene, letting newcomers get a foot on the ladder), in the long term it is just going to drive people away and kill the end-game scene for a few months before an expansion hits.
Wooooooooosh!
Too bad /. cannot keep 12-year old WoW kiddies for taking hyperbole statements seriously. Drink your own lemon-aid: "Please don't post if you don't know what your talking about."
I enjoy the Warcraft I, II, III games, but do not play World of Warcraft or other MMORPGs. (eats way to much time) What I enjoy the most are the Warcraft books. I've read them all and am getting impatient waiting for new ones. I need my Orgrim Doomhammer and Thrall fix. :)
It's not really a good idea to just up and abandon an old MMO to go create a new one thereby invalidating 10 million subscribers hard work and effort. Anywyas both WoW and Eve (The biggegst MMOs I know of) are hardly the game they were when they were first released and are constantly changing and expanding.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Blizzard is working on an untitled (so far) next gen MMO. Watch as WoW subscriber count hits 0 once World of Starcraft is released.
~Vexed and loving it!
I'm as much a fan of WoW as the next person (probably more, considering the number of "get a life" people out there), but come on. We've been getting stories about them hitting random and odd subscriber marks since the game first came out.
We get it. It's popular. It had more people than any other MMO at something like the 250k mark. I'd be more impressed if I didn't get the running commentary about the size of the player base every other month.
Well, they aren't providing it for free, you're monthly subscription funds that. I can't believe somebody would play an online game for a subscription fee and not expect tons of upgrades for no additional cost. What else would the money go towards? Servers and bandwidth only cost so much.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
So they're giving you for free what you paid for. :)
They could make you pay again for what you already paid for or just not give you anything. It's been done before. At least the players get an evolving game.
(Never played any MMRPG though since the few glimpses I got always made they seem horribly tedious to me, but to each his own)
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
They could charge additional money for the content if they wanted to, and you're still paying a monthly fee even if they don't provide content updates.
They are expansions. What is your point? It's a fact that WoW has had many, many content updates that do not need to be purchased.
All this hype makes me want to try it so bad. My feeling of hesitation comes from the fact that many of the stories I hear sound so similar to those about drug addiction. I just don't know if I want to go down this particular yellow brick road.
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by moving to where you can't find them.
Durnholde's easy as long as your party isn't a bunch of fuck-ups.
Seriously... I've run heroic Durn with a complete mish-mash of jobs (Feral and Boomkin druids, pally (me), a rogue and I forget what
the 5th dude was), and we basically demolished the place.
Quick Math:
/. and Kotaku: WoW is nearly a household name now. Congrats to Blizzard for bringing MMOGs to the mainstream.
10 million * 15.00 * 12 = 1.8 billion a year
+ 10 million * 30 = 300 million a year for the box + expansions (I'm eyeballing this one, but Blizzard did say they wanted an expansion a year)
$2.1 billion. Not bad for a single game! Maybe someone more in-tune with the WoW world can tighten up my estimate of the price of the box + expansions. How much up front? How much for expansions? How frequently?
Frankly, WoW's success shows beyond
Also,I love that Shatner commercial.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
I was wondering how someone would turn this into an anti-MS thread. Good job.
as 1 just came down yesterday, finally canceled after 3 years in the game (70 lock main) but the
last year was just a few hours a month.
reason 0) what new content. bliz has shown very little innovation (some... but very little) since launch, they just roll out more of the same over and over. when I saw the burning crusade I almost quit, until I got that sweet lvl 64 green dagger that kicked so much ass...
reason 1) not the best. for all it did better than SWG in too many ways it was not as good. Housing, objects, graphics, more interesting/social professions, sony completely, utterly fucked up star wars galaxies but it had elements that wow never came close 2. Knowing what wow could have been always left me a little sour...
reason 2) actually more important that reason 1 there just isn't enough time in the day to play n still get other things done that I want - in the end your wow character, gold, and epics are still bits on a server somewhere in the middle of nowhere and while budhists might say so are all the things of the world, I decided to prioritize the latter. It's really impossible to do both well, for me at least.
closed minded is as closed minded does
not only is your statement incorrect about getting something for FREE, it's also incorrect about Everquest. There have been 3 expansions and 4 adventure packs since it's release date, not to mention the monthly Live Updates that have either added new content or improved on the current content. And they don't even come close to the subscribership that WoW has... I believe its like half a million. hmm...sounds like WoW have been short changed...with 10 million subscribers , WoW should be like 50GB large with new content...I wonder what they've done with that extra revenue?
and worth every stinking penny. I love this game!
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
The next, and qualifying, sentence was
That seems like a better than average value proposition in this field. Perhaps your anger actually stems from your difficulties with reading comprehension. You would feel more at home on digg.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
Nice troll. Idiot.
I'm sorry but you paid for what you got. They can "promise" what they want, but saying that you'll get Black Temple in the next expansion doesn't mean you're entitled to it for free if you buy the expansion with out Black Temple.
you can level 1-60 in WoW now faster
I was planning to subscribe again to WoW when I heard that they increased the rate at witch you gain XP. Does it really make a difference? Or is it so minor that I wouldn't really notice?
Never played WoW and never plan on it. That whole monthly subscription thing is too much of take my money now since I have no other use than to flush it down the toilet sort of premise. I, and many others loved and still love D2 since there was an awesome character building experience and absolutely no frigging monthly fees. Once you buy a cd with a game on it, that should be it! At one point in time I had a level 79 character during my first year playing D2. I got married, moved, and lost internet connection for several months. That resulted in loss of character... they shut down your char after 90 days or so. That made me sick and I never got back in to D2 for about 2 years after that. In the mean time someone got me hooked on Entropia Universe. EU is addicting but in the end it ended up costing me money. Unluckily, that money is not all lost since they upgraded their darn servers, so my little All In Wonder 9000 Pro graphics card won't let me play EU anymore! :( Around the time that happened, I started up playing D2 again, and now have about 9 characters between my two acocunts... highest level sorcress is around level 41 at the moment. I'd forgotten in all this time sulking about loss of that level 79 character how fun D2 was... what's best is now that I'm playing D2 again, there's no cost to me monthly. If I get bored, I may even go back to D1, but doubt it. I tried playing Hellgate London Demo, but it, just like EU now, just gives me a huge freaking black screen and no playability. I'm glad now to not be paying Blizzard, Mindark, or the guys in charge of Hellgate anything monthly. I was hooked in to EU for a while because I could play it and the payout on it was a little better than going to the real casino about 5 blocks from my house... but now I see how foolish I was to give any money to them for virtual assets. From now on I plan to just make virtual assets and sell them instead of buying virtual assets. I have over 9k assets on Turbosquid for sale. Please go buy some. Thanks.
Content that Blizzard actually admitted was supposed to be a part of the original retail game.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Title should read:
Games: World of Warcraft Hits 10 Million Virgins
You'll notice since you end up skipping most of the quests, you just level so fast that all of the content whooshes by. The main changes are in the 30-50 range (I did that recently in maybe a day and a half total playtime).
Lower the max level down. Keep the stuff your fighting high. Then the overpowered stuff makes sense since it is no longer over powered. I have never played wow but I have played other games. Having the max player level set and never changing forces the players to use skill/tactics to beat things.
I'm not really noticing.
I understand that you need to spend some time 'learning' a new character, but I'm certain that at this point, none of us even need to read the quest dialog anymore. I've seriously cut back the time I invest into WoW, I can't handle the timesinks. I'm just lucky that I'm one of the 0.01% that is lucky enough to have a raiding guild that puts up with a casual gamer.
Leveling a character is faster, but it certainly isn't anything that you will notice. I just level faster because I'm so familiar with the game. It still feels like it is taking me forever to level my alts.
If WoW dropped the obvious time and money sinks, I'd probably want to play more. But each time I log in I feel the urge to play decrease. I probably only play 3 hours a week now. Give me a month or two and I'll probably drop the subscription if nothing changes.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
One has to wonder what was driving your desire to "grind" in the first place.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
How is it possible? Everyone I know quit that [in my personal opinion, rather primitive game] quite some time ago. Some got tired of the ancient graphic engine and switched to much better looking alternatives (such as LOTRO); other simply got fed up with the repetitive gameplay and canceled their subscriptions for good... Either I live in a progressive neighborhood or someone likes to count the accounts that no longer exist.
With respect to the end-game gear becoming immediately obsolete, you are absolutely incorrect. When TBC was released, Blizzard revalued Stamina, and the new gear was thrust upon us so that the new values would be readily available. Blue has posted that there are no plans to radically revalue item level or stat distribution in WOTLK. Even when TBC came out, however, decent purples were not automatically obsolete. Tier 3 wasn't replaced until 67 or 68, and even Tier 2 was worthwhile until the mid-60s. The only gear that was replaced in Hellfire was the trash epics from MC and some ZG loot.
...the effects this may have on human procreation remains to be seen.
Remember that slog in the original game when you hit about level 40 or so, halfway through STV, and it's all mind-numbing tedium and it seems impossible to get anywhere with the game? That's actually gone now, thank God, and the mind-numbing tedium doesn't start until you get into Outlands. The biggest problem is that on old servers, the ones where 99% of the population is level 70, it's nearly impossible to get groups together to do the 60 dungeons.
Comment of the year
WoW is dead once WoS comes out, at least here in Korea. ;)
Put identity in the browser.
You'll definitely notice. The reduced amount of XP needed to level along with all the new mid-range quests makes hitting Outlands so much easier. Whatever you do, make sure to give Duskwallow a second chance. There is an exciting new questchain in Theramore that I won't spoil, and they even added roads to Tabetha's house, so she isn't so much of a pain-in-the-ass to find.
"We have exactly as much freedom as we are willing to demand and as we can defend."
MS did have a game long ago. It was called Asheron's Call.
"I'm so tired of people making such statements. You get ZERO new content for FREE. You pay a monthly subscription which funds new development, among other things. You PAID for the new content. It is not free!"
Very true, you get little (well nothing) for "free"
But where most other MMO's charge just for the service and keep nearly all new contect for the expansion packs (which get more and more frequent) Bliz are contantly adding new content on a regular basis (and sometimes these mini contect updates contain more than expansion packs in other games) outside of the expansion packs with roughly the same monthly subcription fee as other MMO's
Or in more simple terms
In WoW $15 a month gets you access to game and decent content updates about every 3 months
In other MMO's $15 a month gets you access to the game and except once in blue moon little else
So easy to see how many people would consider the new content "free"
Exactly what I was thinking. With 10 million subscribers, the monthly revenue has to be near USD100 million. That kind of money, even counting against it server and maintenance costs, has to be able to fund REAL advances in the game, which, if WoW wants to continue to be top dog in the future, should be rolled out to all subscribers for free.
Why would you do anything else, risking pissing off or boring your players and losing that gravy train?
Put identity in the browser.
Thanks for mentioning this. Not that I'm a player anymore but when I read the GPs claim that EQ didn't roll out new content outside of paid expansion packs my jaw nearly hit the floor.
Not to mention that ex-WoW players who I talk to who are now into EQ2 always have one thing to say about EQ2: "There's so much stuff to cover here"
My impression is that EQ2 is a larger world and considering that EQ1 went over 1000 zones something like a year and a half ago I can only imagine how big the world is there having given EQ1 up a couple of years before EQ2 came along.
Although I hear they updated EQ1 graphics. I'm not real happy about that in some nostalgic way. Maybe it's just me.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
and you're still paying a monthly fee even if they don't provide content updates.
Right, but not getting new content simply makes it a poor value proposition. Getting new content means higher customer retention and better value for the customer. This is good for both you and Blizzard. It does not make it free, which was my point.
Citation needed - until you provide proof I call BS!
Help test the
You did 20 levels in a day and a half? Really?
...how long before M$ starts their own MMORPG, and then finds a small company that holds a patent on something in WoW, fronts them the money to sue the pants off Blizzard, while licensing the use of the patent-holder's IP? Or just goes the easy route and sues under anti-trust?
First of all, your post is idiotic. Blizzard *sells* PCs copies of Windows for Microsoft, and Windows is more profitable than WOW is anyway. (I would guess, if you consider all factors.) And Microsoft doesn't pay Blizzard a thin cent for the marketing either.
Secondly, in addition to your post being idiotic, you're an idiot. Microsoft ran Asheron's Call and Asheron's Call 2 for years. They sold it to Turbine after awhile, but they ran it for a very long time as part of their MSN Gaming Zone business.
Comment of the year
The real problem is that World of Warcraft took the 'massive' out of the genre. WoW's 'world' is nothing more then a staging ground for leveling and waiting around for private instances. It has taken all community dynamics out of their game.
It has a horrible raiding end-game that even Blizzard admits and are trying to make it more accessable.. but until Blizzard finds a clue and fires Jeff Kaplan the end game will always be the same. Camp around forever, be subject to the whims of your guild mates DKP system and grind the same instance over and over again ad-finum until you happen to have the DKP when the item drops.
Then the PvP is probabily the most horrid in any game to date.. its nothing more then a FPS with gear imbalancing.. and they actually reward you for losing. It's like the On-Line version of the special olympics where every one wins something for just participating (like the 9th place ribbon in meet the fawkers).
Then there is no risk at all in raiding or PvP since there is no vitea, item drops, or skill reductions.. MMO's for dummies.
They could just release expansion packs at retail if they cared to.
Which really has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Providing greater value does not mean it is free.
Who would have thought there were that many nerds and dorks out there. The Geek shall inherit the Earth! (Or at least the digital Warcraft equivalent)
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
I was curious how this compared to various national populations, and this data may be a bit old, but... Countries by Sorted by Population This means that WoW has more players than 112 countries have people. Ten million is of course much larger than the populations of Vatican City, Tuvalu, Monaco, Luxembourg, etc. But also bigger than Uruguay, Costa Rica, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Israel, Austria, Laos, and many more.
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
I understand the source of their ignorance. It still doesn't make it free. A poor value proposition from a competitor does not make the value difference free. It just makes the others poor consumers.
*coughcoughEAcoughcough*
What do you do in Final Fantasy XI once you hit level 75? You've finished the game. There's no PVP, you've finished the grind, and equipment becomes effectively worthless because there's nothing left to do with it.
By raising the level cap, WoW is giving players more to do. There's a reason for new players to go through old areas instead of just abandoning them completely. Yes, the old end-game raids will become far less important, but the old level-cap areas will still be useful. Old quests will still be useful.
http://wowwiki.com/Formulas:XP_To_Level
It's quite faster. I recently leveled a paladin (protection) to level 70, and the speed going from 30-50 was _really_ faster, while 50-60 was quite noticeable also. It helps getting you into the Outlands content faster, where most of the people are.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
They also seem to have increased the drop rates on quest items, and decreased the amount of mobs you have to kill in some quests.
See, I don't get that.. it seems like there would still be a place for the 40 mans. I'm still wearing a couple pieces of tier 1 at 70 (I quit for a while, so I got 70 less than a week ago), mainly because the green chest pieces look f'n retarded compared to my sweet looking robe from MC.. so it seems like the tier 3 stuff would be A) decent, and B) attainable.. plus, those are some of the coolest dungeons, and part of the reason I want to progress at all is just to see all the content. As it is, I'm absolutely jonesing for an instance, but my entire freaking guild quit the game, so I'm not even in a guild at all anymore. There is nothing like having 40 people in ventrilo running a 40 man. It's absolutely the pinnacle of gaming and the most fun/intense mmo experience I've had (in my admittedly limited experience).. I did 2/3 of BWL before the expansion, but I've never even set foot in Naxx :( If they would just make it way, WAY easier to level alts, that would rock.. but at 10 million paid subscribers, I doubt they are desperate enough to start sweetening the pot that much. It would also be nice to be able to copy characters onto another server rather than transfer, or else just make it $10 to transfer instead of $25, but with no limitations. Once my guild split up, I wound up with 1 friend each on a handful of servers and a level 5 on there to play with.. what's the point? It's an MMO, but I can't hang out with my friends.. kind of frustrating.
Not sure how to take the 10 million subscribers, really. When the servers in the US haven't seen a new Realm in months. And the newest realms they did create are nothing but ghost towns. In my guild, we just had like a huge app the other day with 18 players wanting to move from one of the latest batch of new realms and come to more populated servers. Their reasoning was that there are not enough skilled players on a very low population server.
I know according to Blizz, player caps have been increased on all servers and has activated free character transfer to those low pop realms.
However after 3 years of playing (still playing) I've come to the conclusion that US subscriptions are not as plentiful as they once were.
And no I don't have any real numbers, those are just my observation....
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
When TBC was released, it took me under 8 days to get to level 70. "immediately obsolete" = 8 days after the expansion hits, all my gear is obsolete. Most of it well before that.
Umm... This will probably distract from all the fun people have trashing the game, but planning ahead would shave months off of grinding. Rep is much easier to gain on earlier levels.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
What were the viewer numbers for last nights episode of "American Idol?"
Popularity is orthogonal to quality.
The expansion isn't bad, but there were some serious fuckups in the progression as laid-out.
- The requirement for players (and guilds) to go through a 10-man instance to reach 25-mans
- The level of difficulty of the early raid encounters at release was horrible. Gruul, Magtheridon, Hydross were really over-tuned for starter encounters.
- The lack of a clear progression path between 5-mans/heroics/10mans. Too many heroics drop crappy gear with very little use for the people who can actually clear them. Some indication of the level of difficulty of heroics would help, with some progression among them. Make some of them harder than others, sure, but make sure to enhance the drops in the hardest heroics.
- The itemization issues at release. Many epics and Kara items were worse than some rare items.
- The over-reliance on consumables. It was somewhat lessened with the change to elixirs, but buff potions and health/mana potions used to be a way to compensate for deficient gear or on specific, hard encounters. Make one really hard encounter in a raid instance that requires buffing, but when every boss becomes impossible if the entire raid isn't fully buffed the game changes from raiding to farming.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
They could. But who would keep paying for the same content? People get bored of doing the same thing very quickly. People do leave. Many people leave.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Battlegrounds are a popular way of killing time for the casual PvPers.
Is there another way for casual pvp-ers to kill time? Not realistically. Or you somehow mean that there are 3 types of players. Pve, pve/pvp (casual), pvp. In wow I do pvp 99% of time. What does this make me, hardcore pvp?
Even if you have awful gear and suck at them, you will still get your rewards - it'll just take a bit longer. The relative ease with which you can get your PvP rewards, combined with the low time input required, has led to them being branded "welfare epics".
A "bit" longer? Everything is easy in WoW but you need time for anything to get. And, not a small amount of time, but huge amount of time. Playing as an ally warlock on EU server, I found it is awfully time consuming to get honor->gear. 90% of non-av battlegrounds goes to horde, only in AV alliance wins like in 70% of times. And I cannot even count AV as a PvP experience, it is nothing but PvE. So can you imagine how 'fun' it is to grind honor when you know that horde is getting everything (honor, gear, marks) at least 3x faster? I have a horde char too. Without a doubt horde in average has better gear that alliance. Do you know how many hours I have to play just to get say, 15K honor for an item? For 1.5K honor I generally need at least an hour. So I need to play at least 10+hours to get one item (and lose great majority of games). If 10+hours x 15 seems "low time input" I wonder how many years do you plan to live. 200? Calling that honor gear "welfare epics" is insult to any player who doesn't have time to play 8h+/day. And let me somewhat repeat myself. Casual doesn't mean playing wow for half a day every day.
Over time, the lower end arena drops get pushed down into Battleground rewards anyway.
They only did it once and that doesn't mean that they will do it again. Maybe they will, but you made it sound like they did it couple of times before which is untrue.
Effectively, this amounts to a complete end-game reboot every 12-18 months. While beneficial in some respects (shaking up the scene, letting newcomers get a foot on the ladder)
Why is shaking up the scene beneficial? Newcomers can never get a foot in the ladder if they play casually. Hardcore will be hardcore, and casual will be casual. It doesn't matter for hardcore if you reset the game for them. They will get their gear anyway. Casuals lose everything though, because they spent much more time (not playtime) in getting gear, and probably that gear means more to them than hardcore.
One more note. Leveling is still a pita, and a total waste of time. They could give 10x exp per quest, but you still waste 80% of your time doing quests which are far apart, have bad drop-rate etc.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
WoW is a friggin' phenomenon that crosses so many demographics unlike any other game I've played over my 25 years as a consumer. My guilds have had husbands and wives playing together, parents and children, mothers playing with babies on their laps (hi Bitters!), and even grandparents. I'm a lifelong addict and I had to FORCE myself to cancel my account to focus on renovating my house.
Yet, there's still some confusingly high number of negative posts on Slashdot from people slamming the game. Yes, it has flaws, but nothing even close to other games I've played. My BF2142 installation crashes with BS memory and driver errors about 1/4 rounds. As a software engineer, I appreciate the design behind the game; efficient bandwidth usage, very few bugs which are addressed very quickly for a game, the well thought-out UI design and API, efficient code, a user-friendly interface. Blizzard has done a remarkable job on so many levels.
Maybe they're pissed that no one wants to play D&D anymore, who knows? But, please, at least concede that WoW is a GREAT game!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I like to imagine they're buying a lagoon in the Caribbean and meticulously building a life-sized Azeroth theme park. Except, with more rides and fewer monsters.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I think that eventually the gamer society will gravitate toward free or independently-owned games, instead of going to WoW which is the current Wal-mart of online games. There are plenty of free, community-driven pursuits out there (such as non-commercial MUDs) that can offer up the same sort of gameplay, and when a player belongs to one of those communities, it's got a sort of lifetime involvement aspect that they never have to pay continuously for.
Those types of games are the ones that are truly going to last forever, because people can play them forever, off and on throughout their lives, and not be obliged to pay anything... unlike a game like WoW where they have to pay so much per month/expansion, even during periods of their life when they tire of the gameplay or don't have as many hours to play.
Black Morass, on the other hand, is a fantastic PITA.
Dude, where's my packet?
On the other hand, it brings people like me back to the game. I will get the expansion, subscribe again, get to the max level, and then probably quit when end game gets too demanding.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Call BS. I don't have time to research dev statements because some random person on the net is incredulous.
You really doubt that Blizzard had to hold content back from retail releases because it wasn't finished yet? Then I guess Silithus being full of mobs that had no loot tables was a feature. When this game was released, there was plenty that was obviously not finished, or intentionally held back and released in a slew of content patches.
I don't blame them for it, but that was what happened.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
"That depends on how you look at the fees. WOW is a service. We pay for access to the game. There are costs associated with running the game day to day."
The cost of running the game is very, very small compared to the money they get out of subscriptions.
Back when I worked at Funcom (makers of Anarchy Online and Age of Conan), at the annual employees meeting the CEO showed us a presentation breaking down a few interesting numbers.
Basically the more subscribers you have, the bigger your profit margin is. And from memory, it was a rather nice margin, something like 80% profit with "only" 100,000 customers.
So yeah, they sure can provide "free" content.
Employee #1: We just hit 10 million subscribers!
Employee #2: What's that? I can't hear you over all this money we're printing.
Don't put advice in your sig.
Well we'll have Starcraft II sometime soon this year (i hope) and by the time they finish developing WoS they'll probably have pumped out SCII's expansion leading us straight into WoS.
~Vexed and loving it!
My penguin ate my sig
To be honest, the current end-game isn't bad.
I wasn't aware there was an end. Once someone beats the game, what does everyone else do?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Then we're going to have to do some vector addition to come up with its populoqualitative score.
"Little is much when little you need."
Not sure how to take the 10 million subscribers, really. When the servers in the US haven't seen a new Realm in months.
Well, it depends on where you are - here on the West Coast of the US, many of us who are night owls play on some of the Oceanic servers and have no probs finding a new realm.
And some servers are just imbalanced between Alliance and Horde - one of the servers my son and I play on is something like 44:1 Alliance:Horde - we're Horde and you have Alliance raids in all the major cities almost every day. Many of which succeed.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Oh, I have no doubt that WOW is massively profitable and I personally don't have an issue with that. They release big content patches every three to four months roughly and they've only released one retail expansion so far. For all intents and purposes, they've been releasing "free" (as in "at no additional charge") content fairly regularly since launch. The portion of my statement that you quoted is exactly what we're paying for per the terms of service the subscribers agree to: access to their game. I realize that whether or not they release "free" content is largely a matter of semantics and personal perspective. Personally, I see it a lot like my Netflix account. I pay a monthly fee for access to their library of DVDs. I keep paying monthly, they keep adding new movies. Same with WOW. I keep paying monthly, they keep adding new content periodically.
What has impressed me over the time I've been playing, since December 2006 (about a month before BC was released) is how much attention to detail Blizzard pays to every facet of the game.
To name one recent example, they changed the rules for leveling recently to make experience gain higher from completed quests, experience required for a new level lower (one of those is between levels 20 to 60 and the other 30 to 60, I forget which) and at the same time changed the vendor discount for reputation - revered and exalted now have bigger discounts and removed most of the outdoor elite monsters in the Old World. What do those changes mean to the game play?
Leveling to 20 remained unchanged. It's quite difficult to avoid learning how to do that already. The worst grinding was nerfed out of the game. It's now possible to do most of the quests solo (because finding someone to level with you has become all but impossible), the experience gain is rapid enough to not be particularly painful (in my n00b opinion) and between the added vendor discount for rep and added experience, you want to and can do most of the quests quickly by yourself. The main side effect of this change has been that "leveling services" are out of business. Good going Blizzard. They also want to get most of the more recent players into Outlands before the next expansion. That will happen.
Sadly, another side effect of BC is that there's a relatively huge grind to get the epic flying mount due to the amount of gold involved. You can either grind for it or purchase it from a gold seller. The grinding has led to the absurd situation that crafting seriously sucks due to the high price of raw mats in the auction house that are being sold at prices higher than the finished goods they can be used to make which just makes it all the more worthwhile to buy gold for the few items you need to craft along the way. I expect Blizzard to attempt to balance the economy, though I don't know how they're going to do it.
If you spend any time reading the WoW forums and don't play the game yourself, you would get the impression that people are quitting in droves. Obviously they are not as the community continues to grow. Certainly I will be one of those purchasing the next expansion on the day it's released.
... and every one of the fanboys shouted "Thank you sir! May I have another!"
Er, maybe I didn't make this clear. Day and a half playtime, which of course was spread out over the course of a week or three. If it were truly a day and a half that would mean a day and a half without eating, drinking or sleeping. I don't think I could (or would want to) manage that. Actually thinking about it it probably was more like 2 days total playtime. Must have gone through the earlier levels faster than I thought. (lvl 1 to 20 for instance would be doable in maybe 15 hours playtime?)
Blizzard have a contract with players to simply provide the existing content and access service in exchange for subscription fees. Not to correct bugs, not to provide excellent service, and certainly not to provide added value by giving you the new content you've demanded above. One could argue it's good business practice through advertising and/or good will, but that's all beside the point.
When Blizzard does these, they do provide added value, as you claim. The thing is that they do it at their expense, as they do not up the price of subscriptions to offset the cost. The consumer gets something not in their contract, thus, as far as consumers should be concerned it is free.
If you think that $15 a month is too much, then you're a fool to pay it. Blizzard doesn't owe you anything more than they agreed to.
Five man instances?
Black Morass?
Heroics?
levelling up alts?
You have no idea how glad I am that I have absolutely no fucking clue what in the hell you are talking about.
No kidding. And by the same token, the game itself ought to be free, too. I can understand paying for a copy and playing online for free (especially if the users run their own servers), or paying a subscription but getting the game for free, but not paying for both.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Quest givers show up on the minimap, reducing another source of tedium. Get a friendly mage or warlock to teleport you to Shattrath so you can set your hearthstone there. That makes it easy to get to just about anywhere you need to go fairly quickly.
It's the only way we had to pass the time during our trip to earth on the giant Space Ark.
You mean like the NOT FREE Burning Crusade expansion?
I think I just heard some monthly subscription money going poof...
Day and a half of game time is 36 hours. Which is roughly 3 weeks if you want to call yourself a casual gamer. To be honest, if you know what you are doing you can clock it at an avarage time of 2 hours per level without claiming to be "hard core".
Leveling my new toon 1-60 took 6 days with the change (as opposed to 13 days on my previous toon). That still translates to ~2 months game play.
60-70 still takes ages. ~5-10 hours per level
he did say free, but he also said "WoW is one of the first MMOGs I've paid to play where I actually felt I was really getting my money's worth." he's just pointing out that in some games you pay the monthly fee and you don't get much new content for that money, so compared to them what Blizzard does is something extra
I started WoW in 2006. I played a lot, then moved. Now, over the course of the next 12 months without WoW I spent an average of $327.00 MORE without World of warcraft. Work.. get off of work, go out, drink, go home, sleep. Now, work, go home, WoW, go to sleep. I still go out on the weekends, but my weekday routine was changed dramatically specifically because I have entertainment I enjoy that does not require me to leave the house and costs less.
Once bitten, twice shy.
Sadly, this is mostly untrue.
WoW III will be coming out in the forthcoming months. It will be called either 3.0.x or 2.5.x.
Incremental change to huge gaming infrastructures will be the wave of the future, not brand new games with the same genre. The only way I could see that playing out differently would be if someone published a game where the characters could be moved about freely between different games and still communicate with others that play the previous games. That would be hard to do right, but could resolve the problem to an extent.
No, but at $15 a head, popularity is the only thing that matters to the bottom line.
When you pay your monthly subscription for WoW, all you are promised in return for your payment is access. Nowhere does it say you'll get anything else but access to play. Therefore if they provide additional content after you paid, with no contractual obligation on their part to do so, they are providing that content for free.
A company is not obligated to provide what they may have stated in a press release about what they expect to have in a certain product/service. Press releases/announcements != advertising. Advertising obligates. You pay for what is advertised. Nothing more. And if they don't provide what they advertised you can get your money back, or sue.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
You are correct in that you pay a fixed fee for time in China. However, not being much of a TV watcher, I usually ended up easily spending more than $15 per month. I like the pay-as-you play concept, but now that I am back in the States I went with automatic monthly billing.
Being nearly illiterate in Chinese, I was unable to buy more time online. My Chinese girlfriend also did not have much luck with online billing, so it may not have even been possible. I had to go across the street to buy time at the internet cafe. For various reasons, I would be unable to purchase more time on about half of my trips the cafe. (The guy who knew how to buy time was not there, the site was down, the cafe had sold it's time for the month, and so on)
On a side note, I think I learned more Chinese from playing WoW than I did from real life. In life, I learned the basics - the food I wanted, beer, cigarettes, taxi, subway. In WoW, I was always learning new words, a surprising number of which turned out to be useful in life.
Leroooooooooooooooooooooooooyyyyyyy Jenkins!
Zul'Aman was never promised as part of the expansion, and neither was the upcoming Sunwell, or the massive amount of daily quests(which they are making more of when Sunwell comes out), or the improved Dustwallow Marsh area.
I wonder how many of the 10,000,000 accounts are people with multiple accounts. Although I could never imagine having a need for more than the 10 characters you get with one account just for myself, it would be nice if I could log into three computers under the same account at the same time and let my kids play one of their characters at the same time I play mine. As it stands, I'd have to have two or three accounts to play with my kids. This is a ripoff! Unless somebody has a workaround for me?
imagine if only 10% multi-boxed! there would be a huge spike in hardware sales
if you don't know what multi-boxing is, check the forums @ dual-boxing.com:
http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php
screenshots tell the whole story:
(2 microsoft types setting up their home rigs)
http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=1455
The standard monthly rate for US Subscribers is $15/month. I understand that the Asian average is considerably lower. The average is NOT $15/month.
Been a long time since I checked out FF XI but IIRC there was a pretty free-wheeling multiclass system with unlockable classes that gave you plenty to do on your main after (and even before) you hit max level on your primary class.
So SQRT(popularity^2 + quality^2) = (popuqual value)
The only hitch is that I'm not quite sure what the units of popularity and quality are.
Not really big content updates. WoW may chuck you a dungeon in one patch (which takes 3-4 months to come out), a BG in another, but nothing really that could be considered big by other MMO standards. Expansions take multiple years to come out, the epitomy of too little, too late. This can be compared to other MMOs which have put in remarkable amounts of "free" (as in subscribers paid for it without buying an expansion) content. For example, EQ2 put in a new starting city and a new starting race for "free", before its last expansion, and should be dropping in major epic quests for class weapons next patch.
I'm pretty sure, between now and the time Blizz gets the WotLK expansion out the door, EQ1 will have had at least 3, perhaps 4 expansions, one of them likely very significant (such as the original EQ1 Kunark), EQ2 will have had two, if not three significant expansions, and Vanguard's world size will have doubled.
I do admit that Blizzard does well with content... but so very little, compared to what one finds on other MMOs. You hit the level cap at 70, and you get two choices... either the gearing up to hit bigger instances for better gear for raids, or spending your life in the same 2-3 BG or arena maps for days/weeks on end for a pair of gloves.
I just wish there were some magical way (and I *seriously* doubt its possible in this reality due to the codebase differences) to tack the old EQ1 content onto EQ2, using EQ2's gameplay. EQ2's gameplay rocks, but has similar problems as WoW for endgame content. EQ1's gameplay is quite dated... but the game world is so vast, there are whole expansions that may have 1-2 people at most in them.
But WoW is one of the first MMOGs I've paid to play where I actually felt I was really getting my money's worth.
What do you pay for a subscription? $15 a month? Now figure out how much time you play WoW a week. 20 hours maybe if you're 'casual'. Now pretend you had a minimum wage job in those hours. You're probably paying $415 a month in opportunity cost.
-10man instance as the first makes an easy progression point where you dont have to have 25 people of a specific raid build-up to go into. It makes it easier to jump into the raiding scheme. And on top of that, smaller, more-casual guilds can go in there easier and have fun BECAUSE IT IS 10 MAN and not 25
-gruul/mag are equipment/moron checks. If you can't get passed them, you either 1.Dont have enough gear to even continue into SSC(the next raid), or 2.Need more skill and experience as a player/guild/raid or you will fail severly when you get to SSC. Hydross, that is your first Raid Coordination test, If you dont learn raid coordination, then you will fail further on, especially when it comes to vashj and kael.
-The 5man normal and heroic instances progression is perfect. If you want to succeed in karazan, you can't go in there with a raid in mostly greens or you will never pass moroes, maiden, or opera, and you will DEFINATELY not pass curator. And where do you replace greens? In instances and heroics. If you can't complete an instance or a heroic in greens and a few blues, then you really need to learn the basics, yourself and your group.
-Items at release? i'm sorry, you are wrong, plain and simple. There are a few rare world drops that are very good, but there aren't many that are better than the gear at the end of kara, and on top of that, they are rare drops, whoda thunkit?
-Over-reliance on consumables? dude, seriously, everything you have said in this post points at one thing, you need to learn the basics, your group and/or guild needs to learn the basics, and then you will see your fallacy. The guild I was in, we never had an issue where we needed flasks and elixirs until we hit lady vashj, WAAY beyond everything you have quoted here. And guess what, her and kael were made as a test to get into Hyjal/BT. Her and Kael were practically made with Flasks/elixirs in mind.
you quoted, "buff potions and health/mana potions used to be a way to compensate for deficient gear or on specific, hard encounters." Sorry to say this, but it is still that way, minus mana potions. Its just that you and/or your group/guild dont benefit enough from the flasks and elixirs to make up for your lack of skill, experience, gear, and group coordination.
In summary, in gamer-talk, you and your crew need to L2Play, stfu noob.
Seriously, it's fun to make fun of Blizzard sometimes, but Outland did bring some serious new things to the game. The fact they are able to make these major changes in play without breaking things too bad is a testament to them.
Though like the original parent had mentioned, the grinding factor, be it in a instance or quest, does get tedious. The move from 60-70, and the move from 70-80 provides some progress, but really, once you max out, it's either the same thing or it's time to roll a new toon (ie. more of the old and new same stuff.)
Then again, I preferred to play solo, so I found most of the end-game stuff an annoyance and raids/runs of large instances a pain.
I did a lvl60 before and after the 2.1 patch. MAJOR difference. Patch 2.1 was brought to you by Nerf! Many elites for quests are now just normal mobs. Makes it much easier to solo much of the non-instanced areas.
You people are totally confused. I played Everquest for 3.5 years and I had to pay extra for every single expansion. Everquest has had at least 13 expansions and none of them were free content. Secondly Everquest doesn't have anywhere near 1000 zones. It's more like 200 zones if that many. Also I doubt Everquest has anywhere near 500,000 subscribers. At its peak Everquest had around 800,000 subscribers and that number began dropping in 2004 when they released the GoD expansion and then it plummeted further when WoW came out. In 2005 they had to get rid of half their servers because they had lost so many subscribers. Did you people actually play Everquest or are you just making stuff up?
If I disagree with you it's because you are wrong.
The official wow site is worldofwarcraft.com
Big friggen deal. Assuming I understand the system correctly (which I might not) you might as well be rolling a new character. You start at level 1 again. The only difference is you already have items and ingame money.
However, most MMORPGs have ways to send items and money between characters, so it isn't really all that different from rolling a new character. Just without being able to try new races and allegiances.
Agree the amount of time you spend for upgrades is quite a lot, but seems fair. I think Blizz is doing a good job of adding contents with expansions. My issue with the game is the gear you've worked so hard to attain over the past year is essentially worthless with each expansion. Level 63 greens in Outland comparable to level 60 T3 gear that took so so so much time to get. But that's my only real problem with the WoW. I play almost everyday and hands down the best PC game I've ever played.
I went from 1-35 in about 2 days of play time. I went from 35-45 in about 18 hours. I think my previous best-to-60 was about 8 days...If I finish leveling my current character to 60, I think I'll be able to pull it off in 5 or 6.
When you complete a yellow or orange quest at level 35 and get 4.5k experience, you'll understand the level of difference. Where you used to hit all the zones in your level range, and then ground a level or two to get to the next set of zones...Yea, forget about that. You can skip all the annoying quests in every zone and grind less at the same time.
It's definitely a big difference. I was pretty burned out on WoW, but the sense of blazing fast progression is seductive, and there is none of that "almost to the next set of zones" doldrums.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I have never played WoW, never had the desire to - I just don't get the whole concept of RPGs. What I really don't get is the obsession with it... I've talked to people who play it, and as soon as they start going into their OCD-like ramblings, my eyes glaze over and I just wished that they would explode. I've never really talked to those people again, because that is all they obsess about. It's really kind of scary.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Many of my points were pointed at how things were LAST YEAR at the Burning Crusade release. At the time, very very few people could kill Gruul, and killing Hydross required your entire raid to be fully buffed with every elixir possible.
I've been through the old world raid content, from the first Onyxia kill on my server in March 05, through MC, BWL, AQ, and Naxx to be a guild that got the 8th worldwide Kel'thuzad kill. When the expansion was released, it destroyed so many guilds. It sent a lot of people adrift out of guilds that had no more place for them. Other guilds were ready to enter 25-mans, and had the people, but found themselves having to fracture the guild into 2-3 groups to do a 10-man. A parallel path through Karazhan wouldn't have hurt casuals or people not ready for 25-mans, on the contrary. I quickly grew disgusted of these problems with the game and quit for some time. I hope they learn for WotLK.
Regarding itemization at release, it was really retarded. Many blues from level 70 items were better than Karazhan epics (I remember a blue chest plate with +healing from SL for example being better than the epic chest from Kara).
Regarding heroics, the problem is that many of them are too hard for people in blues, and are more balanced toward people with some epics. The level 70 instances especially drop the same stuff in heroic mode as in regular, apart from the last boss, and it makes them really annoying (all the TK ones, SL, SH, Sethekk, BM). But many of them you don't run for gear, but for badges. The new badge gear helped rebalance the utility of heroics and make them a lot more interesting and useful from a progression point of view.
Many of the issues I raised have now been fixed, been side-stepped, or have had improvements. It doesn't change the fact it was all broken at release of TBC.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
That assumes the person would be doing anything useful in their leisure time anyway.
If I spend 20 hours playing WoW versus 20 hours watching inane TV, it's not an easy call to say if I've gained or lost anything.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Because work is the one sole measure of our value, right? Opportunity cost cannot be computed using such a moronic formula, I'm afraid.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
You can only do a dungeon or battleground so many times before the shiny wears off. And the raid progression treadmill requires more work and scheduling than I'm interested in putting into a video game.
This comment is spot on - see also EVE Online releasing Trinity late last year (yes, the boot.ini release....) - new graphics engine, swathe of tweaks and changes, but the same underlying game. Launching a new game which resets everyone to 0 might be good to attract new blood, but when you have a successful game already you will disenfranchise the existing players who have put in the hard work to get to where they are, and won't want to start again from 0.... and they are your proven bread and butter.
Initially I disagreed with your statement because I thought the Sunwell was just added on because Wrath of the Litch King isn't done. But then I though about it and it makes sense because
1. Kael Thas is on the cover of the BC box not Illidan.
2. Certainly Blizzard has these things mapped out ahead of time (although sometimes with all the ret-cons, I wonder)
My wife and I are both gamers. Before we discovered MMOGs we used to play console games and single-player computer games.
We usually play WoW for about two hours a day...which comes out to around 14 hours a week, more or less...or 56 hours a month.
Yes, I suppose I could get another job and spend those hours working. It'd probably be a "better" way to spend my time. Although I wouldn't be spending those hours with my wife... And I doubt if having another job would be terribly relaxing or enjoyable... But yes, you are correct, I am paying an opportunity cost.
For some reason video gaming seems to have some kind of stigma attached to it... Whenever I mention to friends/family that I'm a gamer I'll get odd looks - yet none of them have any problem with spending their evening reading a novel, watching TV, or at the movies. Personally, I see it as a very good deal - I'm paying $0.25/hour or less for my entertainment while they're paying $5/hour or more to go see a movie.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Not quite. I continued to use my Tier 2 gear all the way to 70, there weren't any real upgrades until Kara. I replaced a couple non-set epics, rings, cloak and the like, but I didn't don a full set of greens.
It certainly makes it free for those of us that quit playing the game over a year ago. If I were to reactivate my account, I would get access to all the new content and it didn't cost me a dime. So to me, it would be totally free content.
Myself, I am taking a break from pay to play MMOG's and am waiting for the release of Warhammer.
I have one question. If the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture is not in charge of Gundam, then who is?
I am betting 2 of those 5.5 million asian accounts are those dang gold spammers in IF/OG
Luckily healing raids has gotten me faster on clicking that report spam to get them all.
When I was your age we didn't have music file sharing utilities. We had to go out to a store and shoplift the CD.
...by then in Korea only old people will play WoW?
I played Everquest for 3.5 years and I had to pay extra for every single expansion.
Expansion pack? Yes. But they did add new zones without having to get expansion packs. http://www.gaming-age.com/news/2001/8/29-205
Secondly Everquest doesn't have anywhere near 1000 zones. It's more like 200 zones if that many.
I will agree to this. I could have swore that they announced their 1000th zone a while back. My Bad. Nonetheless EQ1 does have "Over 375 zones" according to Sony and "more than 400" according to Wiki.
Also I doubt Everquest has anywhere near 500,000 subscribers. At its peak Everquest had around 800,000 subscribers and that number began dropping in 2004 when they released the GoD expansion and then it plummeted further when WoW came out.
never made this claim. I don't know where you're going with this. Also, their numbers went down when EQ2 came out which was months before WoW.
Did you people actually play Everquest or are you just making stuff up?
Seeings as where I've proven you wrong on two of the three points that I actually made in the first posting my question is if you've ever played Everquest.
BTW: A fast look at http://www.mmogchart.com/ and you'll see that, yes, EQ1 had over 500,000 subscribers. And that yes, EQ1 subscriptions went down at the same time EQ2 came out.
Your worry is warranted. As Penny-Arcade put it, green is the new purple. Heck, green is almost the new orange. Our guild leader almost replaced Hand of Ragnaros with a green. He held off and replaced it with a blue.
And while I'm running around in epics right now I have no doubt I'll be replacing many of them greens come next expansion. Heck I wore a pair of green pants that was better than everything I came across until I purchased the Merciless Gladiator pants.
Does it kill the endgame scene? Not really. For those that are there, it has become stagnant (though next patch with the new raid will bring some new fun for them). For those that aren't, expansions bring something new that can be attained.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
they only give out $7000 worth of prizes for their latest anniversary?
Online gameplay costs an average of $15 USD per month
For americans, the highest rate is $15... longer subscriptions come at a reduced rate.
Given 5.5 million of the subscribers are in asia, and Blizzard doesn't even run that version of WoW (it's outsourced)... anyway, I'm pretty sure it's not $15US/month.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
That's not really honest truth be told. The quality of gear found in 'casual instances' is vastly inferior to anything you'll find in the 'hardcore instances'. A 'casual' player compared with a 'hardcore' player (and I mean this only in amount of time played, not actual skill level) will be far weaker in the stats department.
Why is this important? PvP. PvE in WoW is great. I have no real problems with the mechanics of WoW PvE. My problems are with the PvP and some shared mechanics. PvP is entirely gear based. Someone who has never played the game before, but bought an 'end-game' account from a 'hardcore' player off of E-Bay, will decimate any casual player. Gear is power in that game, and the only way to get 'the best' gear involves massive time dedication.
And PvP gear, while easier to get than some of the 'hardcore instance' gear, is still a time consuming second option. Even if you break the terms of service (like a vast majority of players seem to be doing, if you've ever seen how the afk bots work you know what I mean) and use a bot to farm honor and marks it still takes forever to get geared enough to stay competitive.
Part of that is the grind for marks isn't easy to do with the afk bots. With only 10 or 15 people on a team in Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin, botting is too easy to get caught doing (and your account banned) to be worth the effort. So to get the necessary marks (around 100 of both marks) takes forever as a loss rewards you with one mark, and a win with 3. Games last 30-40 minutes on average in those instances so you are looking at approximately a minimum of 30 hours of gameplay just to get the marks for the gear so you can be competitive in PvP, rather than instantly die.
Considering most singleplayer games can be beaten in about 6 hours of game play, that is a MASSIVE commitment. And that is just so you can get your character geared to be COMPETITIVE. Not dominating.
I've 'come back' to WoW twice so far. I've left the game 3 times. Each time I come back, I come back simply because of the people I know playing the game that don't play other games. Every time I leave, its because of the bad design of PvP. If you are a PvE oriented player, by all means play WoW. Otherwise the time requirements to get "decent" items are unreal, and that is assuming you can get into a guild (or the ever more rare competent pickup group) that has the CAPABILITIES to help you get the stuff, and no one else of higher standing than you needs it as well.
For me, I'm just going to wait out for WAR (an interesting appearing game that the Warcraft universe is based off of) and Conan. I play games a lot, but the PvP system in WoW is a joke, and the grinds that they are supposedly reducing (the last attempt to reduce the grind for PvP gear actually increased the time needed) are unbearably boring.
Its no wonder every fourth person I see on a WoW server has probably gotten an e-mail from blizzard warning them to stop botting. I'm amazed that the player base is still growing.
I agree there is a bit of herd mentality, but is that really an issue if the product is actually good? Blizzard has a helluva reputation, and IMHO its well deserved. WoW has lured away hardcore EQ addicts, everyone i know who played city of heroes, guild wars, SWG, etc has since switched to WoW because its so much better. I found myself with a lot of downtime last summer and although id wanted to play an MMO, i hadnt seen any that interested me, im not that into fantasy and was looking for something more sci-fi. But i was sick of waiting for Stargate Worlds and decided to give WoW a try, i knew many of my friends played, but they were all hardcore and had multiple 70s, so i didnt even bother, i let it pick a server for me and started playing. The next week, i was maybe lvl 10 and got an email that i'd been invited to the Tabula Rasa beta, a sci-fi MMO that id been interested in. I played for about 2 hours before i got sick of it and went back to WoW. Just because something is popular doesnt mean its bad or that its popular only because of the bandwagon effect. I liken it to iPods, yes they are a trend, but theres a reason theyre 90% of the MP3 player market, because theyre good players compared to the rest of the market which is 90% crap.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Correct, you can consider 3.0.7 to be stable, as that was on test server a few months ago.
They are currently working on 3.3.7 in test server.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Hell yeah. I've left 3 times. It's starting feel like smoking ..
They probably would make it free if it wouldn't kill them in the retail channel. Can't put boxes on shelves for free.
Now pretend you had a minimum wage job in those hours. You're probably paying $415 a month in opportunity cost
Minus the 60% marginal tax rate. Oh, and the cost of killing myself rather than work most minimum wage jobs.
WoW is actually fun. A lot of the time anyway.
Well, only a tiny fraction of those 10 million people have come anywhere near BT yet. Not many people finish all the content before the next expansion ...
With that much money and that many subscribers, it's astonishing that Blizzard is still using a Web forum (a broken Web forum, I might add, on which the search function ceased functioning months ago and they haven't even acknowledged it) as the primary means of collecting feedback and bug reports from their users. Even the most well-written bug reports rarely receive any kind of response from Blizzard. I'm about ready to set up an unofficial Bugzilla just people can see the incredible number of bugs in this game and how little concern Blizzard actually has for their customers.
I'm not so concerned about that, because I enjoy getting new lewts. My issue with the level cap being raised is that, as a relative latecomer to the game, I'll probably never get to see any of the level 60 raid content. I look at WoW as an interactive work of art. I don't understand how a company can put so much time and money into developing something, and then make changes that basically render all their previous work obsolete.
You can download the trial client from their website and use it as a full client. It just takes a loooooong time to get it. If they can 'fix' that, then they might be able to forego the retail market and use digital downloads.
Well they certainly haven't been adding bandwidth thats for freaking sure.
I was grinding at level 14. Seriously, I rolled a Blood Elf rogue and when I hit level 14 I had completed all my quests and all my contacts would give me were quests 3+ levels above me. Some of you will say, well you should have left the area and headed to the Undercity or elsewhere. Sure, I could but the point is that at level 14 you shouldn't have to grind or travel far out of the starting area to be able to continue levelling. It shows some pretty bad construction of the quests in the area on the part of Blizzard to have to start grinding at that low of a level.
How about they take some of that money and stop making areas for level 70s and add content for us lower level casual players?
Ohhh dude 4 strength 4 stam leather belt. Ahhhh, uhhhh, oghhhhh!
"Play" is a natural mechanism by which children learn the skills they need to become adults. If you aren't learning anything valuable from your play that you can use later in life, you're wasting your time.
I could have continued playing official WoW after the 2-week free trial, but then I heard about "Funservers". They are free WoW servers set up in more or less the same way as the official game. Lots of quest content is incomplete or buggy, but the idea is simply to muck about, starting from scratch and levelling up a lot quicker than usual. More gold, more drops, more cool weapons & armour available. Level 70 in a couple of hours, and enough people around to chat to and do raids with.
Sure, cheating "ruined the game" for me, but I THANK them for ruining the game for me. They ruined any inclination I had to pay a monthly fee for a computer game designed to keep me sucked in for months. Thanks to funservers, I had fun for many hours, checked out the hi-level parts of the game and finally got tired of it. The way you're SUPPOSED to.
If I wanted to integrate a computer game into my lifestyle, it would need to provide at least the level of endorphins I get from cycling to the shops.
Playing official WoW would have been a waste of time and money. The bad, cheating funservers turned it back into a GAME. I salute them.
My ex-wife, who used to read around 5 books a week [and decent literature at that] took up playing WoW - or WoE as I call it - when my 11 year old son wanted to play it. Since then she has forsaken early nights with a good book, playing with my son, and being a person whom I respected [esp. as she would have called WoW players saddos previously].
What is it with 'escaping' into a make-believe world where you go around bashing make-believe inhabitants on the head - whilst being rendered as a weirdo!
Where's the skill, where's any form of intellectual challenge?
IMHO, my ex has now joined the world of other 'numb nuts' who should find something better to do with their spare time!
If I were to reactivate my account, I would get access to all the new content and it didn't cost me a dime. So to me, it would be totally free content.
That still doesn't make it free and is completely illogical. That's like saying every ride at Six Flags, which was built after the park opened fifty years (or however many years) ago is free. They are not free because you PAID for the ride(s) when you entered the park.
New content does not mean free content. You paid for it. As soon as you resume your service subscription, you PAID for both the original and new content.
Your premise is faulty and reeks of entitlement.
/. in a long while, assuming you are not trolling. I am assuming you are trolling, but I'll bite.
That is frankly, one of the dumbest things I've seen posted on
Go immediately look up what entitlement means. You obviously don't know. When you pay for a service or product and expect what you paid for in exchange, by law, means you are "entitled." This does not mean you are unjustly entitled without paying for the service. Those are two completely different things. There is a huge difference. And frankly, I can't help but look at you like an alien from Mars for failing to see the obvious.
If you think that $15 a month is too much, then you're a fool to pay it. Blizzard doesn't owe you anything more than they agreed to.
And as you are the only one making this argument, you appear to be the only fool here.
At no point in time did I argue Blizzard can not create teared services. Of course they can. But since you're the only one even remotely approaching it, it's completely off topic. You're reaching from far left field. Once you pay for a service or good, you are entitled to receive it. The price is not material to the discussion at hand. The price could be $1,000,000 per account, it still has zero to do with the topic at hand.
There seems to be a 3-1 ish ratio of Asian to US Gamers. I guess that is who is supporting the websites like http://www.gamertex.com/ and http://www.mmoexchange.com/ so all the US Gamers can get their gold and mounts for cheap. That is a crazy ratio.
my bad... When I talked about Everquest I was talking about Everquest 2. I don't even consider the original Everquest as being a good comparison to WoW. The original Everquest is out of date.
And yes, if you are a subscriber you do pay for the expansions; however, if you are a new account subscriber, you get all the previous expansions and the base game of Everquest 2 and this last one included all the adventure packs as well. It pretty much got everyone access to all the content that excisted.
So yes, we existing subscribers paid for the expansion and extras if we didn't have them already... but EQ2 has half-million subscribers.
As opposed to the 10million WoW has... so my point that you should have had more expansions and more newer content as part of the subscription still stands for WoW...they would still be making more money, inspite of it...
yet, EQ2 with it's smaller subscription base, includes monthly updates that add or update existing content. how's that?
Some subscribers bitch and moan on the EQ2 boards about not having enough and about paying extra for expansions but heck compared to other mmoorpgs we get alot, plus the hot graphics! LOL
Yeah, you and the hundreds of others that respond to WoW in this manner really explored the depth and breadth that WoW has to offer.
I've been playing since beta, I have ~20 characters across five realms, three of which I play actively and another four which I play a few hours a month. I've been 70 since March of last year on my primary character who has been in most of the instances. I raid three nights a week for 2-3 hours. I craft and/or gather something on all of my characters. I make transactions on the AH every day to make gold.
I still have not seen all the different locations. I haven't been in all of the instances and definitely have not defeated all of them. My gear is a long, long way from being maxed out. I just recently had enough money to comfortably buy my epic flying mount without leaving myself copperless. There are still hundreds of quests I have yet to do but would like to do. I still have maximum levels and items to reach on some of my crafting. I play 2-4 hours every night and about twice that on weekends. There is still so much more to do, to see and experience that I know I'll never be "done" and I'll still be catching up when WotLK comes out. I don't even participate in PvP which would add another 10% of content and activity.
How is it we're talking about the same game?
Oh, yeah. Because Blizzard developers are such skilled game designers that they designed WoW to appeal to a broader base of player styles than any other MMO to date. More and more people are buying and logging on to WoW each day because it is extremely appealing, easy to get started, difficult to master and all around fun to play.
Just because a small percentage of narrow-minded achievers such as your comment suggests raced to the top and didn't bother to look around at everything they missed are now bored because there is "nothing new" does not mean the rest of the players feel this way. Blizzard is obviously satisfying millions of customers. I certainly feel I'm getting my money's worth.
I was talking of your apparent sense of entitlement. That means you feel you are entitled to more than you are legally. Since I actually explained your legal entitlement, your "go look up what it means" was out off topic.
About the cost, my point was stop complaining about legal contracts you freely enter into. Grow up.
Why are so many of you "hardcore" Slashdotters do defensive and offensive?
It may not have been promised, but I'm sure it was planned. See my post down the line regarding Kael Thas on the cover of the BC box
I played very infrequently before canceling my account, and had no problems getting my epic flying mount... was one of the first in my largish guild to do so. I guess I'm just puzzled by people who say they can't make money in WOW. I never farmed, and still had money pouring out of my ears just from doing all the quests.
Shesh. Go back and read. Your comprehension is horrible. You're the only one that complained. Period. And it is still obvious you have no idea what entitlement means.
My point, which has been hammered home many times already, seems to completely go over your head. For the last time, the entire point of this thread is that paying for something for which you receive does not constitute "free". If I pay for x and receive x, x is not free. Contracts have nothing to do with anything...and once again we have yet another unrelated oddity at the table.
Why are so many of you "hardcore" Slashdotters do defensive and offensive?
Because idiots who attack people, such as you, who can't even follow the most basic of threads, annoy people and distract for the subject matter.
At this point it is completely obvious you're either a troll or a complete idiot...so there is no point in continuing.
That'd be $500,000 a day, if all 10 million paid $15 per month. However, the vast majority are Chinese accounts that only pay a small fraction of that much.
Still, it's not shabby whatsoever for a hundred people or so.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
They do have hot bodies, but kind of stupid-looking faces, don't they?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I don't know if Eve is really all that big, population-wise. They do have all their people on one server (not counting the test one), which has been topping out around 40k per evening recently.
It was a refreshing diversion (I did start paying after their recent "free 14 day trial" a couple of months ago) but I quit in a rage after my expensive cruiser got killed due to sudden lag brought on by an attack by 10 NPC ships.
While getting wiped is part of the game, I'm not gonna stand for it when it's due to 1/5 fps (one frame every 5s) which only occurs during sudden burst combat.
I'm just glad I didn't get to the 1.5 gigadollar mini-dreadnauts for sale on the market.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Dreadnaught! Sorry, sorry, sorry!
It dreads nothing, dreads naught. Damnit. Nerd error. Must sterilize. Must sterilize!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You do start over at level one but at some point you get to use skills from both classes at once, so you are actually advancing your main character. There's a cap on the secondary class, I think it was capped at half the level of your primary or something like that. You get some of the alt experience but it's not much the same (as you noted, you're the same race, etc.) although if you wait long enough to start your second class you'll be powerful enough to travel to another starting area and level up there.
Changing classes was also instant and free, so you could, e.g., level up healer levels so that you could still have a viable group when the healer wasn't online, and your healer wouldn't be completely gimped like an alt, he would actually be your main. Somewhat subtle perhaps but the experience overall was very different from an alt, at least to me.
Excuse me, Guild Wars does that for FREE, which is included in the price of the game. So while you are continuing to pay for the same game every month, in addition to the initial game purchase, I , as a smart consumer, have been playing the game for free on line (minus my time and dsl cost etc). This is not to compare which game is better, as the taste differently from one to another, yet in the same time believing something is inherently better just because it is more expensive is a fallacy. So, as you embrace the new marketing ploy that you HAVE to pay to play on line games, I will sit here and decide if I am interested in buying other games. And if I decide to come back, i dont have to reactivate, or keep my account current by paying more money, thus I am not under pressure to utilize my "paid time" as it would be the case with WoW. And just because a lot of people do it, does not indicate any merit besides addictive quality of the product. You can keep on snorting your WoW crack, I will stick with my joint of Guild Wars.
The level 60 raid content you missed out on was what many of us spent many months going through, like Naxx. So many nights raiding and when Outland came along that gear was basically worthless in just a few levels. The same will be true for raiders now when the next expansion comes out. I do agree that the old 60 raids are lost on newer players. When bored sometimes our guild will send a handful for 70 to clear the 60 raid instances for fun, but it's not the same. I imagine three 80s will be able to solo kara.
If you do spend a lot of time raiding now for T5/6 sets before the next expansion, you'll know what I mean when the are suddenly worthless with level 73 greens.
Black Morass is actually so nasty (and it was even worse near the release of BC) that one of the mages in my guild, fully decked out in epics, refuses to even run regular Black Morass because of the sheer nightmares he remembers.
I've only recently started playing again, and that's do to the fact friends are still playing and they aren't about to give it up anytime soon. It gets a little boring not having a game you can play with friends. Plus with how fast it is to level now, I'm not surprised more people are playing now, or again.
show off that l33t gear at http://www.justuspics.com/
It's simple.
Grind when you feel like it, don't when you don't.
Play when you feel like it, don't when you don't.
If you're feeling dominated by the requirements of the game, that's more about your response to it than the game itself.
However it sucks for solo PvE, which is why I canceled my subscription.