Posted on 01/12/2007 5:23:46 PM PST by MCH
IRVINE, Calif. – January 11, 2007 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft®, its subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is now played by more than 8 million gamers around the world. World of Warcraft has also achieved new regional subscriber milestones, with more than 2 million players in North America, more than 1.5 million players in Europe, and more than 3.5 million players in China.
"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.
World of Warcraft will soon see the launch of its first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, which will be available in North America and Europe on January 16, 2007. The expansion will be available in Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand the same week, with availability in mainland China and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau to be announced at a later date. The Burning Crusade will add a tremendous amount of new content to the game, including an entire new continent to explore; an increase in the level cap up to 70, complete with new talents and abilities; flying mounts; new quests, creatures, and items; new dungeons; two new playable races; a new profession; and more.
For further information on World of Warcraft, please visit the game's official website at www.worldofwarcraft.com. Information on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade can be found at www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade.
I'm sure all WoW devotees are already familiar with the infamous "Chinese Farmers", who run WoW bots to collect resources, make gold, and sell it in the real world to idiots willing to buy. If Americans/Europeans/Aussies didn't buy it, the practice wouldn't continue, and the various WoW economies wouldn't suffer as a result. But then, as you point out, this really IS capitalism at work, with the Chinese intimately involved in the process. Supply and demand, money to be made.
Try it again. I'm in.
Something about yesterday's mini-patch messed with the authentication mechanism on the server side.
Diablo and Diablo II Bump!
LOL! Played that for about a year, as did my wife & son. It was fun while it lasted, but once you max out it gets mind-numbingly boring & repetitive. Plus, now that my son is older, a game oriented toward the target younger gaming crowd is not as appealing. I've been at WoW for 1.5 years now, and love it as much as ever. It's far more complex, vast, and fun than ToonTown, although I did like that game.
They're amazing dogs, only after I got one (wierd story) did I realize what a special dog they were. I was told a lot of vets have them as they know their qualities. The parent of my guy was an older couple who had Standards their whole life, but they had one that was super special. They never bred a dog except this one because they thought it would be a tragedy to not pass along the gene.
I just wonder what kind of people would have the time to be "24/7" gamers. Incredible that there are people who literally dedicate their existence to an online game. Who supports them financially?
Most of the 24/7 gamers are either mid-teens who have no social life, or adults who aren't working, and have no social life. I'd say in most cases the 24/7 gamer adults are largely supported by us the tax payer lol. When I was really into gaming I would play around 5 or 6 hours a day, and allot more on weekends.
I recall one Saturday I played WoW for 19 hours haha.
Nothing wrong, I guess, with playing WoW as a hobby and occasionally getting a little carried away (I do that on Free Republic sometimes). But those 24/7 "get-a-life" players must ruin the game for everybody else.
That's a very good point. Those die hard power gamers dominate the average player because they can't compete. It's like that in every game. I don't have a big problem with it. It's like 'real life'. People who work the hardest get the most rewards, it's just a shame for those people because they are dedicating such drive on an online game.
By several orders of magnitude, I'm sure.
A lot of the diehards in games like WoW are college students, who are not exactly highly dedicated academically, and have a lot of continuous free time. Having just a few hours of classes/studying each day, and being financially supported by mom and dad, leaves plenty of time for leading an online virtual life.
I did the same thing. My main is a 60 Tauren warrior on Feathermoon and I'd never entered a Battleground in WoW until three weeks ago--I'm a carebear, I guess, and play on an RP server. But the equipment rewards were too good to pass up. So since I'm between jobs right now, I had time, and ground enough honor to pick up a High Warlord one-hand weapon, shoulders, and a ring. About 38,000 honor all told, mostly in AV.
Pickup group PvP on a warrior is PAINFUL, especially when you're a real newb at it like I am. And worse is playing Horde in Alterac Valley. I was in 23 straight losing games over four days at one point. I've gotten what I needed and now it's back to PvE and roleplaying and exploring the new content in Burning Crusade for now.
}:-)4
"I just wonder what kind of people would have the time to be "24/7" gamers. Incredible that there are people who literally dedicate their existence to an online game. Who supports them financially?"
In my case I work a normal job all day, and play for a few hours severl nights a week, more on weekends. Sometimes my guild (a group of players who play together) will schedule raids for certain nights... so we will begin a 40-person raid on "MOlten Core" (one of the higher-end dungeon areas which requires the cooperation of about 40 people to defeat) and we will run MC from 10pm or so until we get as far as we can, sometimes it does go until 1 or 2 am.
But in my guild, we've got everything from high school kids who are parent supported, we've got several married couples with kids, who are in their 40's who play together side by side and raid with us, several colledge students, a few other folks like me with regular jobs.. so the people I play with run the gammut of all walks of life.
We are a casual-friendly guild so have never seen the inside of Naxxramas or anything like that... we've taken down Zul'Gurub, except for Hakkar The Soulflayer, and we've consistendly had trouble with High Preistess Arlokk, the "Panther Boss" in ZG.
So yea, there are those "40 year old basement livers dependent on mom".. but many of my fellow players are just regular floks, several of which work here with me at my job and we get on after work and run 5-man instances and such.
It's a great game... hugely fun when you get into it... I think that's what gets me.. that fact that when you've got 20 to 40 people, coordinated to take down a hugely powerful enemy, everybody has their role and knows what to do, spells going off, healers doing their thing... mages balsting massive spells off, rogues pulling of massive Eviscerate critical strikes.. and then plundering the loot of the vanquished foe to make our characters powerful.... it's just enormously fun, and I do really enjoy it....
I'll be getting my copy of Burning Crusade today, if they still have my pre-order, and for those that don't know.. the Dark Portal can be founbd in Blasted Lands, somewhat south of Nethergarde Keep.
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