World of Warcraft hits 2,000,000 subscribers

[Jeff Kelly]

See Topic.

Some german gaming news sites have posted a blizzard press release stating that they have reached the 2,000,000 subscriber mark. I will supply a link as soon as the press release is posted on blizzards site

[AlteredOne]

Yep, school is definitely out.  Not only are WoW's numbers up, but I have to be a lot more careful walking the dog.  I have noticed that teenage girl drivers are easily as bad as the boys.

[Trippy]

http://www.blizzard.co.uk/press/050614.shtml

That doesn't even count the massive number of subscribers they are going to get from the China release that just went live (over 500K concurrent Beta users).

[Merusk]

Yep, school is definitely out.  Not only are WoW's numbers up, but I have to be a lot more careful walking the dog.  I have noticed that teenage girl drivers are easily as bad as the boys.

Last I'd heard, female drivers age 16-25 had finally overtaken male drivers of the same age group for most accidents/ problem drivers.  More aggressive, less careful and more easily distracted.  I can't remember where I heard it, though.  Anecdotal evidence has proven it true to me.  Every time I get someone 6" off my bumper when I'm doing 75-80 it's more often some young girl in a Neon than it is a guy. 

Edit: Oh yeah, on-topic, this hasn't expanded the market any. :p

I still chuckle when I see the Blizz #'s as I recall when it was thought SWG would be the first million+ US game, and speculation was that Bliz would be big, but not huge.  Time makes fools of us all.

[Amp]

Yep, school is definitely out.  Not only are WoW's numbers up, but I have to be a lot more careful walking the dog.  I have noticed that teenage girl drivers are easily as bad as the boys.

Last I'd heard, female drivers age 16-25 had finally overtaken male drivers of the same age group for most accidents/ problem drivers.  More aggressive, less careful and more easily distracted.  I can't remember where I heard it, though.  Anecdotal evidence has proven it true to me.  Every time I get someone 6" off my bumper when I'm doing 75-80 it's more often some young girl in a Neon than it is a guy. 
.

So when are the insurance companies going to fix the rates to match the number and stop giving it to the male drivers up the ass.  Young male driver = very expensive insurance.   Young female drivers get away with much cheaper.
Of course instead of evening it out the pricks will just raise the females insurance.  Fucking insurance companies.



I guess with WOW hitting so many subscribers, we will see an even lower standard being set for customer service and even less bug fixes.

[Jeff Kelly]

Yep, school is definitely out.  Not only are WoW's numbers up, but I have to be a lot more careful walking the dog.  I have noticed that teenage girl drivers are easily as bad as the boys.

Thread derail at the first reply. This must be some kind of record even for f13 ;)

[AlteredOne]

Haha thanks, I try.  I would be interested to see whether the summer push brings a noticeable change in player behavior.  We need graphs of bad behavior appeals, provided by secret insider contacts.  Sirbruce??

[Amp]

  We need graphs of bad behavior appeals, provided by secret insider contacts.  Sirbruce??

I think your definition of bad behaviour and SB's definition of bad behavior would differ greatly...

[HaemishM]

Yeah, bitches, it's that popular.

[Nija]

Apparently they still can't afford battlegrounds servers. Some things never change.

[Merusk]

Yep, school is definitely out.  Not only are WoW's numbers up, but I have to be a lot more careful walking the dog.  I have noticed that teenage girl drivers are easily as bad as the boys.

Last I'd heard, female drivers age 16-25 had finally overtaken male drivers of the same age group for most accidents/ problem drivers.  More aggressive, less careful and more easily distracted.  I can't remember where I heard it, though.  Anecdotal evidence has proven it true to me.  Every time I get someone 6" off my bumper when I'm doing 75-80 it's more often some young girl in a Neon than it is a guy. 
.

So when are the insurance companies going to fix the rates to match the number and stop giving it to the male drivers up the ass.  Young male driver = very expensive insurance.   Young female drivers get away with much cheaper.
Of course instead of evening it out the pricks will just raise the females insurance.  Fucking insurance companies.

I'd say sometime around never.  I've got a co-worker whose fiancee works for one of the big insurance companies around here.  He goes apeshit over gay marriage, not on morality issues, but because it would throw-off all their precious charts and data that goes back to the early 1900's.  Teenage girls will have to be bad drivers for a long time before it affects the 'trending data' that they use in any significant way.  Thank your dad.  :-D

[tazelbain]

Today, the groundhog came out of his hole, saw huge piles money, and declared "5 more years of EQ clones!"

[HaemishM]

Figured I'd merge the topic and put it in PC/Console Gaming Hardware, as there may be more people reading that than the WoW boards.

[WayAbvPar]

2 million. Holy fucking moneyhats. I may have to cancel my subscription just to help curb Blizzard's march to take over the world.

[Alluvian]

Bums me out man.  I mean Wow is an okay game if you really like diablo, but as an mmog I found it substandard to average at best.  Maybe it is the PVP that is the draw?  I never really tried much of the PVP, but the PVE kinda sucked balls.

Hell, I like EQ2 a lot more than WoW.  For full disclosure I beta tested both games, am FAR from a power leveler (still playing EQ2 and have only gotten my main to 34 or something, but I have several 20+).  In wow I got 3 characters over 20, but didn't play at all past that point if the game changes.

I went for the station pass myself as I like planetside as well and find JTL fun in small quantities, too bad I hear the PVP is just a bunch of one shot kills.

Maybe I should be happy that the players I am least likely to like are all off playing some other game that I am not.  But the insane success of WoW guaruntees we will be seeing wow clones like CRAZY in a few years.

There is something fundamental I miss about blizzard games.  I have not really liked ANY of them.  Warcraft, starcraft, diablo, wow, all of them just left me pretty flat.  I still list my worst video game purchase ever as being the day I bought two copies of diablo 2 so my wife and I could play together.  I just HATED that game, and it was ugly as sin for the time it came out.

Meh, I should be just happy that 2 million people are happy... aw, fuck.  who am I kidding, playing an mmog does anything BUT make someone happy.  Especially with a SLOW liveteam like blizzard.  2 million grumpy pissed off people.  Now THAT kind of makes me a little happy.   

[Rasix]

Bums me out man.  I mean Wow is an okay game if you really like diablo, but as an mmog I found it substandard to average at best.

Emphasis mine. It's best to stay on your meds.

[Yegolev]

Bleh.  It will be 1,999,999 by Friday.  I'm done.

[Yegolev]

Bums me out man.  I mean Wow is an okay game if you really like diablo, but as an mmog I found it substandard to average at best.

Emphasis mine. It's best to stay on your meds.

I love Diablo and right now ignore health and family to play Fate.  I can't see the comparison; WoW is much less fun.

[Alluvian]

I wish I understood why people like diablo.  I found the first one fun for a month or so, but the second one just did NOTHING for me.  And I tried HARD to like that game.

My wife and I played the first act, she said it was boring as all hell and ugly so she quit and gave her copy away.  I tried to push on, but just could NOT play anymore after about halfway through act 2.  Later on I picked it up again and got to act 3 but it was no fun whatsoever.  At that point I just deleted it and threw it away as nobody I knew wanted it even for free.   The pure brainless repitition just kills me.  I find mmos less boring than diablo 2.

Although I would probably go dig it up from the junkyard before playing lineage 2 or dungeon seige again.

My annoyance isn't so much that I hated the game (strong dislike is closer) but that so many people thought it was robot jesus.  The game was average AT BEST.

WoW is similar, but I don't hate or even strongly dislike WoW.  I was just mildly bored by it.  Must be just the blizzard fanbois or something...

[schild]

Daiblo 1 and 2 were loot robot jesus. If there's ever an MMOG that perfects that exact same loot system, I'll be there so fast heads will spin.

If you didn't enjoy it, you simply don't care much about loot. I, for one, cared when my character got his Dirk Diggler - and now I'm done with the game. Until I want to play it again in a few months.

[Yegolev]

If you are obsessive-compulsive like me, you enjoy anything where you collect stuff.  For me, Diablo II LOD is a "fun" collection game since it forces me to not keep everything like a pack-rat, so I can just enjoy watching shinies pop out of monsters and sell it all for fat stacks of cash.  Random dungeons, random loot, can play for five minutes and feel like something was accomplished... it's fun to me.  Never enjoyed the battle.net, though.  I liked Dungeon Siege for the exact same reasons.  I take something like Animal Crossing much more seriously.  Also, what schild said.

[Alluvian]

must be the same thing that addicts my wife to the collection quests in EQ2 then I guess.  Those ground shinies are like digital crack to her.

I just don't have that kind of desire to keep hitting the bar for the pellet.

But it does not really explain the WoW phenom.  Wow does not have that kind of collection, neither does warcraft.

[schild]

No it doesn't, and the game is less polished than City of Heroes. Which further supports my "It has the Blizzard Branding on it so everyone thinks it's good" theory. I'll admit, it's juvenile, but then most gamers have the mind of an ape.

[Rasix]

But it does not really explain the WoW phenom.  Wow does not have that kind of collection, neither does warcraft.

Which is why I didn't see much stock in your preliminary assertion.  I don't think the same kind of player that likes Diablo necessarily translates into a gungho WoW player.

Right now, it's IMO the best EQ clone available.  I'd wager to say best MMORPG on the market.   Well, at least it's the most inclusive. It caters to soloers, it caters to raiders. It appeals to PVE people,  it appeals to PVPers.  It has a distinctive, well executed graphical  style that doesn't rape your computer.  It's a game designed to get as many people as possible playing it.  Only major group it didn't go after are the "gaming as a form of punishment" but EQ2 already went for that niche and Vanguard is looking to own it completely.

I don't see its success as even remotely unexpected.  This was a game built to succeed.

[Nija]

No it doesn't, and the game is less polished than City of Heroes. Which further supports my "It has the Blizzard Branding on it so everyone thinks it's good" theory. I'll admit, it's juvenile, but then most gamers have the mind of an ape.

Less polished than CoH? I disagree. I just tried CoH about 6 weeks ago and couldn't get over how mundane everything was. Same shitty quests ( I played a few weeks at release, but my radiation defender was the first thing to get the axe, so I quit ) were still in place. Same shitty zones but now they're empty, with everyone flocking to the new one, which wasn't very interesting either.

I don't know, I just don't see the polish in CoH. The only thing they have going for them is the movement system. The combat is less involved and more systematic, etc.

Also, to enjoy Diablo2 I think you'll need more than 2 people. Each time it's reborn in #fpdoms we get 4-6 people and play tcp/ip games. It only starts to get real fun and challenging in act3/5 nightmare/hell. F those burning archers and quillrats in act5 hell.

[ahoythematey]

I still have nightmares about the fire-breathing shamans in act 3 hell.  Great game, WoW could only hope to be half the fun D2 is/was.  If Diablo2 could hold 20-30 players per game, I doubt I'd play much else.  Ever.

[Nebu]

Today, the groundhog came out of his hole, saw huge piles money, and declared "5 more years of EQ clones!"

Says it all for me... I lasted less than 2 weeks in WoW.  It appears, like many of you, that I may have to officially give up on mmog's for the rest of the decade.

I hope to hell that Auto Assault doesn't suck.   

[schild]

I'd given up hope until I noticed Tactica Online. Niche games for the win and somethingsomething.

[Nebu]

I'd given up hope until I noticed Tactica Online. Niche games for the win and somethingsomething.

You're messing with me... aren't you?

[schild]

No, sir.

[Shockeye]

I hope to hell that Auto Assault doesn't suck.   

Even if it does, it costs $10 less to find out than most of the others.

Of course, one has to wonder why they're only charging $40 or it instead of $50.

[Soln]

No it doesn't, and the game is less polished than City of Heroes. Which further supports my "It has the Blizzard Branding on it so everyone thinks it's good" theory. I'll admit, it's juvenile, but then most gamers have the mind of an ape.

Less polished than CoH? I disagree. I just tried CoH about 6 weeks ago and couldn't get over how mundane everything was. Same shitty quests ( I played a few weeks at release, but my radiation defender was the first thing to get the axe, so I quit ) were still in place. Same shitty zones but now they're empty, with everyone flocking to the new one, which wasn't very interesting either.

I don't know, I just don't see the polish in CoH. The only thing they have going for them is the movement system. The combat is less involved and more systematic, etc.

Also, to enjoy Diablo2 I think you'll need more than 2 people. Each time it's reborn in #fpdoms we get 4-6 people and play tcp/ip games. It only starts to get real fun and challenging in act3/5 nightmare/hell. F those burning archers and quillrats in act5 hell.

agreed.  Everyone at work and many here are fond of it and there's some definite improvements to the genre.  But I never got to lvl 10 -- hated the grind.  Cityscape stuff and running on foot killing muggers was too much.  Instanced missions had all the same map, more or less.  I hear past 15 there's more content and you get into some narrative.  I'm less patient these days and won't bother.  Kicks MxO's ass though -- now that was a boring game.  Instanced missions exactly the same map every time on low levels.

[El Gallo]

How is it that they are making this much money and are still so fucking slow with the content.  They haven't even announced a goddamn expansion yet.  I presume Vivendi is just soaking up all the money and not reinvesting any of it into WoW?

[Yegolev]

How is it that they are making this much money and are still so fucking slow with the content.

Come on, it's Blizzard.  I would not call that group "hard working".  The new wall-mounted swords for all employees have not been delivered yet, either.  And someone needs to work on the Diablo II 1.11 patch.

[El Gallo]

I was always one of the people saying that Blizzard's history of slow development would be WoW's Achilles heel.  Still, when you have 30 million a month pouring in, I thought even they would have an expansion in the works.

(As an aside, I think it's not so much that they don't work hard, it's that they don't work smart: I remember reading an article about the game where the writer stumbled upon some designers extensively debating about the style of columns to place in some ceiling area in some dungeon somewhere.  Then again, maybe you cannot get the great handcrafted feel without that kind of shit.  Either way, they need to hire more fucking people to design me some more creepy dungeons populated by larger bags of hit points from which I can take more even brighter glowing swords.)