"We're ecstatic that the World of Warcraft community has continued to grow steadily since we launched the game," said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment®. "This milestone wouldn't have been possible for us to achieve without the incredible support of our players. With the release of our expansion pack, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, coming next week, we're looking forward to welcoming more players to Azeroth and offering even more quality content for our community to enjoy."
Since debuting in North America on November 23, 2004, World of Warcraft has become the most popular MMORPG around the world. Today, World of Warcraft is available in seven different languages and is played in North America, Europe, mainland China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.
Also of note folks is this: World of Warcraft if you take it by population, would be the 94th largest country on Earth, bigger than 145 other nations. How's that for trivia.
View: Original Story @ Voodoo Extreme
Link: Bluesnews
In a way , although like I said I've been a subscriber, I hope this game fails at some point, just temporarily but a setback nonetheless. I don't want the entire MMO genre after this to just basically be WOW clones and such, people need to be encouraged to bring out innovative ideas into the space, but WOW destroys all that then people would feel the only way they can compete is to mimic it.
yeah i like eq2. they did make changes to it to make it more WOW like, but i do think those interface changes at least were needed, but other than that it is a good game in it's own right. Honestly I wish they had more scifi basted mmos. the genre is dominated by fantasy and it sucks for me that Earth and Beyond failed. while it may have sucked, at least it was something different.
Not really. They can bring out another MMO and still compete. Eve is still going very strong and thats the most open ended game ever created? If you bring out a WoW clone you'll just get shot down in flames by the real deal.
The only reason, I feel, WoW was so popular is because:
1. It's Warcraft - Quite obvious that.
2. It was playable out the box. No 1GB patches and constant crashes (/wave AO's release).
3. It's approachable without a huge learning curve. You can take the game out the box install it and learn as you play rather than reading a manual the size of a Harry Potter book before you can create your toon.
4. You aren't forced to be always in a group to progress anywhere. Solo is viable at last. Which imo is where Vangard will flop but that's a diffrent story. (Well not till level 60 but end game is a diffrent matter
So, Yes it's cleary cookie cutter. But what blizzard did right was to nail down that cookie cutter build, polish it till it shines and correct the mistakes! If people could now take the idea of using an already established idea and polishing it we'd have a new champ.
How else could I get these massive amounts of gold? Hooray for China!
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