BREAKING REBLOG: LOTS OF PEOPLE PLAY WORLD OF WARCRAFT

You gander that wondrous title above displayed in its all caps glory, it urges me into wanting to remove my eyeballs with one big toe and equip them onto a slingshot and shoot the evil eyes down my throat while slitting my wrists all at the same time. I should have pulled a CNN and gone with the 1000 x 1000 font size thrusting hyper bold red obscuring the whole main page with no content at all and left it that way until dinging in the new year, it would have made bigger impact on your e-lives.

Alrighty then, for those still reading I’m sure you can tell I’m fairly fond of the banter, but we must move along. I’m sure some of you have heard of a little thing called the World of Warcraft and if you have I am sure you won’t be shocked to hear that the bean counters at Blizzard HQ have discovered many persons supply them with ample shiny gold coins for this virtual fixation.

Look see.

Blizzard: World of Warcraft subs reach the 5 million mark. Rob Pardo purchases a golden submarine and blows up Norrath.

IRVINE, California - December 19, 2005 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed five million customers worldwide. The subscription-based MMORPG launched approximately one year ago in North America, Australia, and New Zealand and has since released in multiple countries throughout Europe and Asia. This latest milestone comes on the heels of Blizzard Entertainment®’s recent announcement of a World of Warcraft expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, which will push the boundaries of the game and offer even more content and features for players.

“World of Warcraft’s growth continues to exceed all our expectations,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We want to reiterate our thanks to the millions of players worldwide and to all the retailers who have enthusiastically supported the game over the past year. Our commitment to continue growing World of Warcraft is stronger than ever, with development on future content patches and on our 2006 expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, well underway. We look forward to offering even more content for current customers in the months ahead and welcoming new players into the world this holiday season.”

With a strong presence across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, World of Warcraft has quickly become the world’s most popular MMORPG. Most recently, the game was launched in the regions of Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong on November 8, 2005.

As World of Warcraft’s population grows, Blizzard continues to support the game with additional content through regular patches and a planned expansion pack, set to release in 2006. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will add new lands, quests, monsters, magic items, spells and abilities, two new player races, a new player profession, 10 new levels of power for players to achieve, and much more. Additional information on the expansion and the game’s regular content updates can be found at the official World of Warcraft website.

World of Warcraft’s Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

How nice and now time for banal comments from inside my damaged brains. mhmmm brains.

Numb3rs

On numerous mmog forums conspiracy theorists spew vitriol thinking Blizzard is somehow deceiving the masses about the total amount of subscriptions. I don’t know if these mongrels are trying to be funny in order too amuse themselves against the angry fanbois lash back or they are more dumbed-down than a lobotomized retarded donkey seeking the gay donkey butt sex. It is not hard too believe that 5 million people are playing WoW globally simply because there are at least 20 million humanoids in China farming for gold. If we were to make a logical assumption from past press releases on the specific number of proven subscriptions per region and scale the figures I believe it would amount to a somewhat fair estimation.

1.5 million - North America subscribers.
1 million - Europe
2.5 million - Asian Markets (Where places like China and Korea be)

Close enough. If we wanted to be radical North American subs may have dipped and Europe picked up the slack.

Retention

The big buzz word among analysts and other industry figures. One developing honcho who vocally shares his opinion on mmog retention is Brad McQuaid which in turn has clamored on several occasions that Blizzard is most likely focused on more units sold than the actual longevous retention of World of Warcraft’s subscription base. I disagree.

It is true that World of Warcraft most likely has a high churn over rate, but initial figures showed excellent retention. World of Warcraft is a phenomena. Comparing the initial retention to that of Everquest’s is unfair because you would have too compare player motivations and those are subjective. Most people who stuck it out with Everquest early on were looking for that particular experience. There are thousands of players who picked up World of Warcraft because of the hype, what their friends told them, what they read, etc. They weren’t necessarily looking for this experience thus when they play the game and see that it is not too their liking they will cancel their accounts and that’s not a bad thing and benefits Blizzard more so than not.

If Blizzard’s primary concern were box sales they could have crowbarred all the content their developers have already patched in for free over the last year, including battlegrounds and rushed out some crappy content whipping up an expansion pack and coined it“Warcraft: Lava Penguins and the Greedy Demon Azz Rapers,” released it three weeks before Christmas and sold millions upon millions of boxes. (This would be the classic SOE move).

Blizzard developers have stated in the past when accused of a short leveling curve compared to their predecessors they wanted their customers to have the viable option of allowing them too play several characters at higher levels and not too just focus solely on one.

Blizzard had also planned hero classes starting early in the alpha which was supposedly going to be this “mega catass grind” and hero classes are still supposedly being bandied about, but of course they will not be in the first expansion. My guess for the master planned hero classes is the third or fourth expansion. The best time to come out with the hero classes expansion is when their subscription base starts showing a swifter decline. It would be the perfect pick-me-up for those burnt or burning out because there is no viable goals for them to strive towards.

The leveling curve may be short but the end game can be very hardcore if players decide to choose that path. Players can embrace the catass and poop in their socks all day long and jack off over their rare purple drops. I have several friends with over 50 days played and watch videos of past raids and circle jerk each in ventrilo as if they were some professional sports players.

Mmogchart

This site is irrelevant for recent mmog numbers since it hasn’t been updated in six months. Sir Bruce is most likely in prison and or has been shanked for randomly groping Chewbacca’s gay lover at a Second Life furry convention. On another note, I don’t blame Sir Bruce for not updating mmogchart, every single time he posted a community quarterly update elephant shit would always rain down on him from numerous jacktards.

Ole’ Grandma Softcore

Most of you can relate with this, you probably have that one friend or acquaintance who would never touch a game like Everquest or for that matter any other mmog and this traitor is now casually playing World of Warcraft.

I”ll share one of my short stories - When I was cat assing EQ and searching for the holy grail of e-peen points in the Planes of Power a good friend of mine would frequent my abode with his better than average looking chick friend and mock at my reactions for his own amusement. My friend would do this knowingly against me saying otherwise thus giving me no advance warning and since I was on a raid schedule that was more important than anything else and there was nothing I was going to do on my part to change this schedule and I admit, I found this funny too.

Eventually said chick came over more and more since she worked nearby and come over alone often and I wished to ensue adult situations with her and she would have no such thing to do with my purveying. I have no doubts EQ hindered this option in every shape and form considering she would tear me a new one for playing this “geeky game.” Not a big deal, I entered the friends zone we are still very good friends to this day, however said chick who said those types of games are too geeky and also that she would never date a guy who plays ‘those types of games’ just so happens to be playing World of Warcraft and begging me to come play by her side. What a Slut!

Success and Final Rambles

My top three reasons on why I believe World of Warcraft is such a gargantuan success.

1. The Warcraft and Blizzard brand names. As a wise man once said, do not underestimate this power.

2. The overall game experience is refined, polished, and much more simplified and enjoyable when in comparison with the arbitrary and often sloppy executions in other EQ-esque games. Accessibility also goes in this category and is if not more important than the polish for a casual friendly game experience.

3. Incredible content implementation. The game world is filled to the brim with substance, the level design is astonishing, areas and characters which for the most part serve a purpose unlike most other mmogs.

My next prediction is 7 million subs those first few months after the expansion hits desktops. I honestly would like to see WoW reach 10 million subscriptions, but Blizzard would probably need to develop cross console platform too reach this goal.

The only real competition World of Warcraft has against it are the developers themselves.