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."

Comments

Re:How about taking some of that subscription mone

[Ephemeriis]

..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.

I understand that you're complaining more about the mechanics and gameplay rather than what they're doing with the money, so maybe my response is a bit off-topic... 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.

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.

Re:How about taking some of that subscription mone

[GooberToo]

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!

Re:Say what you want...

[Martian_Kyo]

...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.

maybe as a commercial model, but not as gaming experience. Using the same logic windows is the best operating system around Best music in late 90s and early 2000s was performed by Brittney Spears.

WoW has hit critical mass, and new players are not joining it because it's still the best game around, but because they want to know what's all the fuss about. If you never played an MMORPG, and you wanted to play one, which one would you pick? WoW, of course. But not because it IS the best game around but because it's the most played game around. You would use the 'well 10 million people can't be wrong' logic, in picking your first MMORPG.

That's classic example of herd mentality, not quality.

So many haters on Slashdot

[GodfatherofSoul]

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!