World of Warcraft Passes the 6M Subscribers Mark

[Borys]

Straight from Blizzard's (http://www.blizzard.com) website:

PARIS, France - 28 February, 2006 (http://www.blizzard.com/press/060228.shtml)

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced plans to release a fully localised Spanish version of World of Warcraft®, its popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The Spanish version will represent the fourth language available to players in Europe, making the game accessible to an even wider audience here. World of Warcraft's European customer base is currently at more than 1 million players, with the worldwide total now at more than 6 million players.

(...)

World of Warcraft has steadily grown in popularity around the world since its initial launch in North America, Australia and New Zealand in November 2004. The game's content and player population continued to expand in 2005, with subsequent launches in Korea, Europe, China, Singapore and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. In Europe, World of Warcraft is operated by a dedicated local team of more than 450 Blizzard employees representing 22 different nationalities.

For more information on World of Warcraft, please visit the game's official website at www.wow-europe.com.
God damn!
That's $90M monthly and $1.08B yearly in revenue.
Congratulations Blizzard!

[Scaryboy]

Can't stand it myself but credit where credit's due, that's a damn impressive number.

[EvilBob46]

Did you account for the fact that the subscription fee varies greatly (especially from the US to China) when you got those numbers?

[Steele Johnson]

ok, so instead of 90 million a month, it's 80 million. Yeah, what a let-down. ;)

Congrats to a team that did it right. You've got people that don't like the game, but you've got 6 million people who simply love it. That's what's amazing. 6 million people play it. That is unbelievable!

[Kelegacy]

6 million zombies and growing.

[bone_matrix]

Well, I just joined about 2 weeks ago. My first MMO actually, and I'm only playing because some guys I work with play. Once I hit 60 on a couple characters, I'll probably stop. Its fun, but there are so many other games out there to play too.

[thiby]

Do you think its 6 million including the people who subscribed and quit, or just active players?

[Heretic Machine]

ok, so instead of 90 million a month, it's 80 million. Yeah, what a let-down. ;)

Congrats to a team that did it right. You've got people that don't like the game, but you've got 6 million people who simply love it. That's what's amazing. 6 million people play it. That is unbelievable!

I love the game. But the customer service is crap, especially when you -need- to have something resolved immediatly (a bugged instance boss). They seriously need to expand their customer service department, and soon. Tha'ts pretty unlikely though, they've had this problem since launch...

[Borys]

Just recently Blizzard bought (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=576) 1500 AMD Opteron servers for WoW:

Occasional DailyTech writer and President of VoodooPC, Rahul Sood, has some fairly exciting news from Geneva this week. Sood claims Blizzard just purchased 1500 Opteron servers specifically for World of Warcraft world and instance servers.

[Savok]

Awesome, now fix the fucking game and get me a GM that doesn't just spout automated nonsense.

[boratika]

That's more people in WOW than there are in Norway.

"Forget Norway!"

[The Continental]

Their server situation is still an absolute nightmare, with many of the launch or near launch servers still heavily queued and a recent string of unplayable lag and server resets across the board. I finally called it quits on WoW early last month after a year of playing only to get sucked into EVE Online after the barrage of hype. I can't get over how different EVE is from every other MMO I've played but I'm digging the hell out of it. It's definitely a breath of fresh air having come from World of Evercraft.

[BleedTheFreak]

Are they counting everyone who ever subscribe, including folks like me who hasn't paid them in almost 6 months, or just paying customers? I suspect it's the former, since that number keeps going up and up.

[Atorak]

Do you think its 6 million including the people who subscribed and quit, or just active players?

If this was the case, Blizzard would have announced their 20 million total subscribers mark months ago.

[Borys]

Dudes, RTFA @ the link provided.

Blizzard has its very own and very clear CUSTOMER DEFINITION.

Quitters, promo players etc. ARE NOT COUNTED here.

It's 6M of real, paying players, Jeezus, read it for yourself it's not that hard.

[Ernst_Jager]

And this is just the Night Elf Hunters

[IIArchonII]

Hakiu time?

I loved WoW so much!
But I had to quit the game,
for I loved too much.

[UnderHero5]

Dudes, RTFA @ the link provided.

Blizzard has its very own and very clear CUSTOMER DEFINITION.

Quitters, promo players etc. ARE NOT COUNTED here.

It's 6M of real, paying players, Jeezus, read it for yourself it's not that hard.
Whoah there, baby tits.
You need a hug?

[bean19]

Blizzard's next title: "Money Fight!"

In this MMO players will fight competitively against one another by purchasing money ammunition with real world money. Then they can use this money to pelt one another.

Blizzard spokesman, Goldie McCash, said, "We discovered how much fun it was to throw money at each other after the success of World of Warcraft, so we wanted to make a game that simulated this experience for our customer base."

[dotbomb]

That's awesome success. Going from a relatively small developer to running this huge beast has definately strained them though.

[Heretic Machine]

That's awesome success. Going from a relatively small developer to running this huge beast has definately strained them though.

...Huh? Since when has Blizzard been "small." They stopped being small after Warcraft II, the success of their games since then is ridiculous.

[Atorak]

Blizzard's next title: "Money Fight!"

In this MMO players will fight competitively against one another by purchasing money ammunition with real world money. Then they can use this money to pelt one another.

Blizzard spokesman, Goldie McCash, said, "We discovered how much fun it was to throw money at each other after the success of World of Warcraft, so we wanted to make a game that simulated this experience for our customer base."

Heh, nice bean.

[Voodoo]

I believe Blizzard is entirely in a new realm of MMORPG computing. Am I right in saying that a support structure for a MMORPG of this scope has never been done. This means that everything that Blizzard goes through is learned about for the first time. Sure, they may have picked Intel Xeon HT processors to begin with... But they learned that AMD Opterons is the way to go... LOL! What I'm saying is that Blizzard doesn't have an industry benchmark to judge against when they make decisions. Nothing of this magnitude has ever been accomplished as far as I am aware of.

As far as the money and their income, couldn't go to a better development house as far as I'm concerned. I had always worried that Blizzard would go the way of Bullfrog and am quite happy they are very successful.

[Borys]

Great post, Voodoo.

Blizzard deserves every little penny it earns.

[Selar]

I believe Blizzard is entirely in a new realm of MMORPG computing. Am I right in saying that a support structure for a MMORPG of this scope has never been done. This means that everything that Blizzard goes through is learned about for the first time. Sure, they may have picked Intel Xeon HT processors to begin with... But they learned that AMD Opterons is the way to go... LOL! What I'm saying is that Blizzard doesn't have an industry benchmark to judge against when they make decisions. Nothing of this magnitude has ever been accomplished as far as I am aware of.

As far as the money and their income, couldn't go to a better development house as far as I'm concerned. I had always worried that Blizzard would go the way of Bullfrog and am quite happy they are very successful.

They're not in uncharted waters. Their per server populations aren't a lot higher than those of EQ. They just have a couple hundred world servers instead of a few dozen. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure their server clusters are the size of warehouses. But it's stuff that's been done before.

500 person queues and the overall lack of good customer communication are not technical hurdles. Free server moves for a week/month and hiring more people would take care of a lot of the problems people have. In fact, they may not even have to hire more people, just let the people they have working for them now give out some real answers instead of the canned spam they give out now.

[goc_sin]

This game is one of the reasons for the drop in PC game sales.. they are all playing wow. With numbers like these were going to see a lot of copy cats 2 years down the road, trying to be exactly the same. There is already shitload of MMO coming out, but most will probably suck. I wonder if this game is moving up to all time money maker.

[Javi]

I'm wondering how long they can sustain it. A lot of people I know are dropping the game because it's a detriment to real life.

[Grimmjow]

sucking peoples souls 1 day @ a time

[bean19]

This game is one of the reasons for the drop in PC game sales.. they are all playing wow. With numbers like these were going to see a lot of copy cats 2 years down the road, trying to be exactly the same. There is already shitload of MMO coming out, but most will probably suck. I wonder if this game is moving up to all time money maker.

I totally expected this too.

But it really isn't the case. . . on the contrary, the MMOs that are being made seem to be really interested in doing their own thing.

Rather than making games that are derivative of WoW, they seem to be more focused on expanding the genre.

DDO - This is not an traditional MMO. It is a D&D simulator.

Auto Assault -post-apocolyptic driving RPG

DC MMO - comic book MMO (derivative of CoH).

Pirates of the Burning Sea - pirate MMO (not really derivative of Puzzle Pirates that is it's own amazing little thing).

Huxley - MMO First-person shooter with a sci-fi setting.

The only ones that are even close to the fantasy MMO are based on really different fantasy genres, or at least licensed ones: Age of Conan, LOTR Online, and Gods of War (Greek mythology). I guess you could call these WoW clones, but really WoW is a clone of the established MMO model. . . just a very polished and superior clone. . . It's more of a super-soldier clone. :)

I do think that WoW's success will lead to more and more MMOs being created as the business model is so lucrative. Even failures like SWG make the phat cash. . . which makes SWG a failure in potential only, actually.

[Phanto]

Well what can we said Blizzard is one of the best developers of games around.

[Voodoo]

They're not in uncharted waters. Their per server populations aren't a lot higher than those of EQ. They just have a couple hundred world servers instead of a few dozen. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure their server clusters are the size of warehouses. But it's stuff that's been done before.

500 person queues and the overall lack of good customer communication are not technical hurdles. Free server moves for a week/month and hiring more people would take care of a lot of the problems people have. In fact, they may not even have to hire more people, just let the people they have working for them now give out some real answers instead of the canned spam they give out now.

There has never been a MMORPG which has required the amount of technical support & customer support than World of Warcraft. This means that are in territory that is familiar in the industry BUT has not been accomplished successfully at such a scale. They are entirely alone when it comes to the scale that they are working at. Comparing a Juggernaught to a Destroyer is sort of the same type of comparison. Sure, a Destroyer crew may know all about running one of those but when they are sent to run a Juggernaught, that is a simular beast yet is a very different beast due to the scale.'

I'm positive they are trying everything possible to resolve every issue they have with World of Warcraft. The problem they are facing, though, is that when they make a decision there isn't another MMORPG they can compare and contrast with on those decisions since none of them have been to this scale.

[skarironfist]

Well its obvious why new servers are being bought. Its not so much the now, they are worried about, Its the future.

If you think they have 6 million possible players now and some of the servers are very busy, how many will come back when they release the add on pack at the end of the year.

They will be looking I think to raise the cap on the number of people on one game server (server cluster).

So if you have 3500, then you will have larger population per server when the add on arrives, yet who may have been gone before they had opportunity to transfer to a quieter server.

Credit where credits due, Blizzard have done a good job. I am sure their infrastructure has grown quite considerably beyond what they thought they would need, as has their support structure.

Another reason I think they may have gone with the AMD opteron is simple ... cost.

If you would out that each game server is in simple terms multiple pc's. Maybe each game server being say 10 servers in a cluster (Europe has 100+ game servers alone). Then consider the power draw for Europe and the U servers, then its alot of money. Then take into account the cooling required for that many servers. Remembering that cooling costs money, then its even more money.

Now obviously I don't know if Blizzard are renting space insomeones server farm, or have their own. I also don't know how server rental is Priced, but I am sure power and cooling are taken into account. If anyone knows, then please share your knowledge.

[Suicidal ShiZuru]

Now if only they could fix the game and give us something new for end game play that doesnt come out in ten years and cost more money...

[Steele Johnson]

I totally expected this too.
But it really isn't the case. . . on the contrary, the MMOs that are being made seem to be really interested in doing their own thing.

I agree. I doubt we'll see too many WoW clones at this point. Why compete? The only advantage would be a better graphics engine, and people who love WoW really don't give two shits about graphics. They're more concerned with low-end system requirements... in which Blizzard did a great job in that department.

I think we'll see more and more PvP oriented mmorpg's as well as completely new concepts. Take a look at games like Heroe's Journey, Huxley, and Age of Conan for example.

[XenonCJ]

Anyone know what the status is on the "Move a character to a different Realm" service is? Are they still working on it? Will it be ready soon?

I have friends on a diff server and I'd LOVE to move over there... I'd even pay to do so...

[Nite_Moogle]

Anyone know what the status is on the "Move a character to a different Realm" service is? Are they still working on it? Will it be ready soon?

I have friends on a diff server and I'd LOVE to move over there... I'd even pay to do so...
"Coming Soon"

Your guess is as good as anyone's.

[Stormwatcher]

I agree. I doubt we'll see too many WoW clones at this point. Why compete? The only advantage would be a better graphics engine, and people who love WoW really don't give two shits about graphics. They're more concerned with low-end system requirements... in which Blizzard did a great job in that department.

I think we'll see more and more PvP oriented mmorpg's as well as completely new concepts. Take a look at games like Heroe's Journey, Huxley, and Age of Conan for example.

I never cease to be amazed at how BEAUTIFUL WoW looks. I run it at full graphical quality, and I like its graphics better than Guild Wars (which is gorgeous too). They managed to make very beautiful stuff that is surprisingly low in polys... And I love to explore, each area is markedly different from the next one. Fucking A.

[XenonCJ]

I never cease to be amazed at how BEAUTIFUL WoW looks. I run it at full graphical quality, and I like its graphics better than Guild Wars (which is gorgeous too). They managed to make very beautiful stuff that is surprisingly low in polys... And I love to explore, each area is markedly different from the next one. Fucking A.Also, it's only a matter of time until they upgrade the graphics like they did with EQ back in "the day". I would guess in less than 3 years we'll see a major graphics update.

[bean19]

There has never been a MMORPG which has required the amount of technical support & customer support than World of Warcraft. This means that are in territory that is familiar in the industry BUT has not been accomplished successfully at such a scale. They are entirely alone when it comes to the scale that they are working at. Comparing a Juggernaught to a Destroyer is sort of the same type of comparison. Sure, a Destroyer crew may know all about running one of those but when they are sent to run a Juggernaught, that is a simular beast yet is a very different beast due to the scale.
Thank you for the real-world analogy. . . something with which we are all familiar. ;)

[Achilles]

It’s amazing how successful WoW has been. Those guys at Blizzard really know how to make a game.

It presents an interesting angle for the content team. Everything they make will be seen and played by millions of people, that’s a really unique position to be in. Many, probably over 1 million of the players are level 60, so keeping them playing even though they can’t level up anymore is another interesting challenge, as well as rebalancing the wealth so that new players can catch up to the higher level content. It’s a joy watching them handle these problems, because they do it so well.

[gzsfrk]

That's $90M monthly and $1.08B yearly in revenue.

And yet they still seem to be able to afford the technology that will resolve the queues that plague high population servers.

Oh... and they still are planning on charging $40 per ad hoc character transfer last I heard. What a bunch of greedy wads. I hope DDO burns them to hell and back.

[dotbomb]

...Huh? Since when has Blizzard been "small." They stopped being small after Warcraft II, the success of their games since then is ridiculous.

Small in terms of manpower. They were "small" in that they had "small" teams working for years on awesome games that were "big" hits.

Their "smallness" in terms of manpower has bit them on the ass in terms of supporting 6 million subscribers.

6 million people require a lot of support and engineering personell... which Blizzard just doesn't have. Their staff is small compared to what is required to run their game/system properly.

[Mephistopheles]

I had resisted the temptation to play a MMO until WoW came along. Being a big fan of the Warcraft setting provided the battering ram that beat down my will to resist signing up. I'd guess I'm not the only one in that situation judging by how WoW has become such a phenomenon.

Having played it for about six months I cancelled my subscription this week. I don't think I totally got it out of my system and wouldn't mind playing some more. However, when I combine the factors of it being a huge time sink, the log in queues, and the persistent lag it got me thinking that maybe I'm better off without it. Probably the biggest factor was the lag. The kind that seems to be tied to inventory interaction where you get stuck picking up an object for 2 minutes but you can still chat just fine. And it seems like when you get stuck picking up an object for 2 minutes everyone else is affected by the same issue and can't initiate inventory interaction or talk to NPCs. You get nights where this occurs every 15-20 minutes and it all becomes a bit too aggravating for a game that you're paying to play.

Even though I don't plan to play any more I'm still going to be following what happens with WoW on the subscriber front. Each time Blizzard posts a new X million number of subscribers milestone press release I just wonder how much higher they can go and how long they'll be able to sustain it.

[Savok]

Loot lag is a bug, been there since launch day.