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Black Desert Mobile to Start Pre-Registrations in Korea
Seoul, South Korea - November 23, 2017 - The much-anticipated mobile MMORPG Black Desert Mobile, was finally unveiled to the public. Pearl Abyss, who ... Black Desert Mobile is a mobile MMORPG that utilizes the IP of the original PC version, Black Desert Online, also developed by Pearl Abyss.
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World of Warcraft is one of the most popular games in the world, boasting over 11,5 million paying subscribers each month. The extremely successful MMORPG has captured the imagination of players across the world and has brought its parent company, Activision Blizzard, a big amount of money.
One of the biggest user bases for the online game is in China, so the right to distribute and operate the network in the big Asian country is a very sought after thing. Now, after a long partnership with The9, Activision Blizzard announced a few days ago that it had signed a contract with NetEase and that the company would handle everything WoW related starting from June, when the previous deal with The9 would expire.
Of course, the old company can't be very happy with this, and has now released a new site, called WoFChina, similar to the official WoWChina, in which it teases about a new game that it will release soon. The similarities with WoW can be easily observed, from the font to the whole layout. What differs though is the background image, which, as some fans have noticed, seems very similar to the Chaos Gate from Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMORPG.
After a bit of digging, you can see that the publisher of Warhammer Online, Electornic Arts, also has quite a few shares in the Chinese company, making the possibility of The9 announcing the fact that it has gained control of Mythic's MMORPG very interesting. Even though the company is quite big, it certainly doesn't have the resources to create another title just like WoW, so in an effort to make fans migrate from Blizzard's game to Mythic's, a rebranding wasn't out of the question.
Sadly The9 hasn't replied to any request for comment, leaving a lot of WoW and Warhammer Online fans wondering just what the Chinese company is preparing for MMORPG enthusiasts. Stay tuned for more details about this new World of Fight.
By Andrei Dobra, Games Editor at : http://news.softpedia.com
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'WoW' will cause more free-to-play MMOs
"World of Warcraft," the game that we all play or love to hate, has dominated the massively multiplayer gaming space since its launch over five years ago. With its active player community of over eleven million people, it can affect the overall industry with its expansion packs and updates. These come in spurts with at least one major retail release, which tops the PC sales charts, once a year. To compete with this juggernaut, companies are coming up with more creative ways to grow their own community for their own games. The most popular tactic that developers are using is the free to play business model. This model has become the hottest way of building new MMOs because of the super popular (and lasting) appeal of "World of Warcraft."
That's not to say releasing free MMOs is a big gamble. The free-to-play model has seen a great amount of success in markets other than the United States. For example, Japan, China and Korea are the new hot beds for these MMOs because there are a greater number of people and even more developers concentrating on the MMO space. These hubs of MMO games have also turned to the free-to-play model because players are less apt to pay for a game before trying it, and the simple nature of them. That price barrier to entry can be eliminated in the free-to play-model, and if the player likes the game, they can purchase the "premium" content. Along with the premium content, developers can make money through other means which could include micro-transactions. Due to "WoW's" immense popularity and recognition, many players are hesitant to put money down on a non-"WoW" MMORPG, so these free-to-play games with optional paid content are enticing, as players can experience them, compared them to "WoW," and then decide if they want to drop any money.
Where does the MMO space go from here? I am not sure. I hope we see even more experimentation with business models. One of these examples would definitely be the highly anticipated free to play FPS/MMO "Battlefield Heroes" from EA and DICE. They can't charge for weapons, so they are only charging for apparel that makes your character unique (micro-transactions). Is this the answer? Charging for purely optional content that doesn't even help you in the game? I don't think so, but what I can say is that the traditional fifteen dollar a month pricing strategy is being destroyed by the popularity of "World of Warcaft."
What options are there other than micro-transactions? I believe that the newest way to help decrease the operating costs in the MMO space is in-game advertising.
I am not oblivious to the inappropriate nature of ads in some MMOs, but for games like "Anarchy Online" and other futuristic games, these ads could add to the immersion. Many companies have invested in this new source of revenue (Sony Online Entertainment, ID Software and others) because it can bring further life to growing games or help a dying game survive a new "World of Warcraft" expansion. According to MarketingVOX, in-game ads will bring almost a billion dollars to the gaming industry by 2011. Almost a billion dollars is a lot of money for these small games, but a small amount compared to the revenue generated by "World of Warcraft." Like I said before, some games should not have in-game ads, but it won't stop developers and publishers from putting them in their games somehow.
As "World of Warcraft" continues to grow, developers besides Blizzard Entertainment are going to experiment in strange and surprising ways (to them) to obtain new revenue streams. Free-to-play is the standard for those games trying to jockey for the over saturated MMO market for now, but will it stay that way in the coming years? Will the next generation of consoles try to steal away the PC MMO players? All of these answers will come soon, but no one truly knows what they will be until they arrive; we can only predict. I for one hope that we can download games that are 100% free-to-play and are supported by in-game advertising, because both sides win. This scenario is way too Utopian, but one can hope that it will become the standard for at least a few titles over the course of the next five years.
Posted by Geoff Hathaway
The original report is here from http://www.hotfrog.nl/
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This works easily if you have high experience in Herbalism, First Aid, Skinning, Leather Working, etc. Get the materials needed for what you want to make. For example, for First Aid, kill lots of humanoids for linen cloth, wool cloth, etc. Then, just sell the materials to an NPC. If you want more money (for example for Skinning and Leatherworking), make something out of the leather, then sell or auction it off at the nearest auction house.
In Ashenvalle, there are Rotting Slime that drop treasure chests with good items.
An easy way to increase the speed of leveling up is being rested. This will double the experience from killing enemies only. Discovering an area will not get you double the experience. An easy way to get rested is logging out at an inn. Whenever you know you are going to be away from the game for awhile, try to log out while inside an inn. This will get your player rested while you are away. To tell if your character is rested, look up at the circle next to his or her portrait where it shows your level. A "zzz" will be there instead of your level. This indicates that you are rested. You can also tell if you are rested by looking at your experience bar. The experience you have gained so far will be blue and all of the experience you gain will be blue until you pass the small marker on the experience bar.
When you are a Warlock, use your Fireballs and Drain Soul powers together on an enemy. You must do some quests to get some of these powers. Note: This works most, but not all of the time.
Go to Saldean's Farm in Westfall and find a chicken. Select it and type "/chicken" into the chat window. Note: Setting up a macro for this will make it go a lot quicker. Do this until "Chicken looks at you quizzically. Maybe you should inspect it?" appears in the chat window. It requires a lot of tries to do this; patience is required. If done correctly, right-clicking over the chicken should open a quest window. Accept it and purchase the Special Chicken Feed from Farmer Saldean. Return to the chicken, select it, then type "/cheer" into the chat window. Right click the chicken and complete the quest. If everything is done correctly, the chicken will now lay an egg. This egg is your new pet, a Prairie Chicken. -From: p.petrawski@comcast.net
Although the quest to obtain the Prairie Chicken is Alliance only, it is possible to get the chicken as a Horde member. Have a friend on an Alliance account do the quest and allow you to pick up the egg from the ground. Alternately, steal the egg when an Alliance member finishes the quest and the chicken lays its egg. This is an very rare pet in the Horde.
In the "Ekeyakee" quest given by Segra Darkthorn in the CrossRoads, go northeast to Grol'dom farm. Travel to the east side of the mountain, where you will find the bones of a Giant Kodo near a tree. Stand next to the head and blow the horn. Ekeyakee will appear, unless someone just killed him a moment ago. He will be standing next to the tail if done correctly, and is a level 16 White Lion. Remember that this is a quest, and if you kill him you cannot try again unless you get a friend to blow the horn and let you tame it. If this happens, he loses the horn. You can get a new one from Segra by abandoning the quest and getting it back from her.
Select Tailoring and Enchanting as your two professions, then kill a lot of Defias Thieves if you are in Elwynn Forest or Defias Looters, or Pillagers if you are in Westfall. Get a lot of linen cloth, then tailor a large number of bolt and shirts. Get your skill to about 40 or 50, then go to a Journeyman Tailor. Learn to create a red linen robe. Try Stormwind if you are human. Then, create some red linen robes. They are enchanted; use Disenchant to get a skill point in Enchant and either Lesser Magic or Strange Dust. Then, enchant people's bracers for free. Buy linen cloth from people and make more red linen robes and disenchant them. This requires some time and money, but it is much easier than any other way.
Give away free Enchants if people provide the materials or wait till you are over level 40 and have a mount and can use it. Then, buy lots of the same materials and repeatedly enchant the same item with the same enchant until it will not level you any more. Then, repeat the process. This will get you to a high Enchanting level quickly.
While playing as a Warlock, use your Fireballs and Drain Soul powers at a time on an enemy. You must do some quests to get some of these powers. Note: This works most of the time.
Go to a trainer and learn the basics. Once your done with the basic learning, open your ability book. The ability you learned should be there. Drag the ability to your action bar. Once there, click on it and it will probably say what kind of items you need or where to go. Note: You must have the correct weapons to do this. For example, for fishing you will need a Fishing Rod; and for Mining you will need a Mining Pick. From there, once you reach a certain level in your abilities you can upgrade your weapons.
For Warriors and Paladins, choose their job as a blacksmith. This will increase their experience faster than any rate. For Priests, Warlock, Mage, or Shaman, choose healing abilities, never blacksmith or fishing. This will slow your experience.
In Goldshire, there is a man named Remy Two-Times. This is a reference to the Lordz Of Brooklyn group member Paulie 2times.
In Undercity, all of the bankers last names are Montague, which is a reference to the famous family which Romeo belongs to.
First, get to the Great Lift area in Thousand Needles. Wait for one of the lifts to go down and come back up. Try to jump on the lift as it is coming up. If you are successful, you should fall through the roof and go to the wooden floor. Do not move. When the lift goes down you will be standing at the top of The Great lift. If you move, you will fall and kill yourself. Additionally, when you are in Thunder Bluff or any other area that has a lift with a roof, wait until it goes down. When it starts coming up again, jump on the roof before it gets there and do not move. After it goes back down, you should be floating in mid-air where you hit the roof.
Press [Esc] and put the pointer under the "Logout" option. As you select the "Logout" option, jump. Note: This will not work in inns, and your timing must be precise.
After you kill a goblin such as a Grell or Grellkin from Telldrassill, look closely at the body. He will still blink and his thumb will slowly move up and down.
To kill Vagash on the "Protecting The Herd" quest, it is easier just to get a group with a healer ranged and a meat.
Enter one of the following codes at the chat window to activate the corresponding effect:
| Result | Code |
| Dance | /dance |
| Sleep | /sleep |
| Fart | /fart |
| Joke | /silly |
| Click on other player to spit on them | /spit |
| Click on other player to cry on their shoulder | /cry |
| Click on other player to wave at them | /wave |
| Click on other player to flirt with them | /flirt |
| Click on other player to blow a kiss | /kiss |
| Clock on other player to mourn them | /mourn |
| Gives current bind location | /bind |
| Cast spells by name | /cast |
| List guild commands | /ghelp |
| List chat commands | /chat or /chathelp |
| Your character follows selected player | /follow or /f |
| Send message to party chat | /party or /p |
| Send message to people near you | /say or /s |
| Send reply to the last person who sent you a tell | /r |
| List players online | /who |
| Yell message to the area around you | /yell or /y |
| Create an emote | /em |
| Display amount of time game played with current character | /played |
| Send text to channel number | /[channel], /c, or /csay |
| Toggle join and leave announcements on channel | /announcements or /ann |
| Set your Away From Keyboard flag | /afk |
| Set Do Not Disturb flag | /dnd |
| Ban or unban player from channel | /ban |
| Unban player from channel | /unban |
| List channels | /chatlist |
| List channel members | /chatwho or /chatinfo [channel] |
| Invite player to channel | /cinvite or /chatinvite |
| Join channel | /join, /channel, or /chan |
| Kick player from channel | /kick |
| Leave a channel (or all channels) | /leave, /chatleave, or /chatexit [channel] |
| Set player's moderator status | /mod or /moderator |
| Remove player's moderator status | /unmod or /unmoderator |
| Toggle moderation on channel | /moderate |
| Change player's mute permission | /mute or /unmute |
| Change player's squelch permission | /squelch or /unsquelch |
| Change player's voice permission | /voice or /unvoice |
| Change password | /password or /pass |
Enter one of the following codes at the chat window to activate the corresponding effect:
| Result | Code |
| Basic information about guild | /ginfo |
| Send chat message to all guild members | /g |
| Send chat message to all guild officers | /o |
| Invites player to join guild | /ginvite |
| Remove player from guild | /gremove |
| Promote player one rank within guild | /gpromote |
| Demote player one rank within guild | /gdemote |
| Set guild's message of the day | /gmotd |
| Remove self from guild | /gquit |
| Give entire guild roster | /groster |
| Set another player as the guild master (guild master only) | /gleade |
| Disband guild (guild leader only) | /gdisband |
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World of Warcraft Review
by: Ruibo Chen
World of Warcraft is by far the best and largest MMORPG out yet. World of Warcraft follows a long history of the original strategy game warcraft. There were 3 popular titles that was released previously that was also an extremely big hit. Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III and the 2 expansions "The Frozen Throne" and "Reign of Chaos". The release date of the game was on Nov 23, 2004. A year after its release and there are about 4.5 million subscribers and still growing stronger each day world wide.
World of Warcraft takes you to a 3D environment in the World of Azeroth. The World is the largest virtual environment ever created. You can explor through deserts, forests, mountains and more. It may take months before you can finish traveling through all of Azeroth. There are of course mounts such as horses, gryphons and other animals that can help you travel through Azeroth.
Along with the great 3D environment you can able to customize your characters looks in the highest of detail ever possibly invented. There are next to an infinite combination of faces, eyes, texture, size, weight, coloring to choose from. Unlike many other MMORPGs, you're bound to find a twin here and there but the possibilities has gone unlimited with Blizzards character creation.
World of Warcraft consists of 2 fueding realms, the Alliance and the Horde. Each realm may choose from 4 different races. Alliance members may choose Human, Dwarf, Night Elf, and Gnomes while Horde members may choose Orc, Tauren, Troll and Undead. Along with the 8 races there are also 9 classes that you may choose from which are the Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock and Warrior. Each player also has the ability to choose a profession for their character. A profession is very helpful to the players as it may help them create great armors, weapons, items and other equipments. A player may choose 2 primary professions and as many secondary professions as they like.
Blizzard has been updating World of Warcraft much more than their previous games that required connection to Battle.net. Quests, items, fixes and other great enhances are being added or changed to improve gameplay. Unlike other MMORPGs, the quests of WoW are made to help leveling and is much pleasurable. It is not as repetitive as you are required to kill the same monsters and the constant travelling back and forth to speak to a dozen NPCs.
Like most and all MMORPGs, WoW has their own game economy and ingame shop/auction house. Their currency is based on copper, silver and gold. World of Warcraft gold is most commonly used to purchase weapons, armors, items, skills, spells and travelling. While selling back items to a NPC shop is easy, the returns are unfavorable. Majority of the players would sell off their unwanted items to other players at a highest rate than what the NPCs will offer.
PvP has been by far the most thrilling theme of most MMORPGs. World of Warcraft includes PvP servers and non PvP servers. As Blizzard continues to update the game, their most recent patch included the battle grounds. A zone where the Horde and Alliance comes together and competes. The winner will receive special rewards and methods of increasing their overall character status.
Blizzard has taken ideas from many different games and combined it all into 1. It has yet been by far the most successful MMORPG to this day and still growing rapidly. With a subscriber base of 4.5 million players world wide, I'm sure the game will continue to be popular for over a decade. If you are interested in playing World of Warcraft or already a player and would like more information on game play visit http://wow.tumeroks.com.
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World of Warcraft Power Leveling Guide
by: Steven Golden
This is the method the power levelers have used since closed beta and I finally got one of them to give it up. It is by no means the way to go if you want to maximize your experience in the game as this method will bypass almost all the content in the game and essentially ignore many of the fun, unique aspects of WoW. This is not recommended for new players and is meant for players who already have experienced the content and just want to level up an alt to play with their level 60 friends (ie. your level 60 instance group needs a priest and there are no priests to be had). As a benchmark to how successful you are with this, download cosmos (Cosmos) and use the clock feature to measure your xp/hour. At level 50 you should be getting about 40,000+/hour.
1-20: Newbie lands, stick to the friendly zones (not contested). Just grind. The quests are a waste of time up to level 20 if you are focusing on maxing out xp per hour. 20-26: Wetlands quests and raptors/slime/orcs for grinding. Redridge mountain Lakeshire quests.
26-30: Duskwood quests and undead for grinding. Hillsbrad critter roamers for grinding.
30-35: Did these all in a day on Daggerspines in Hillsbrad right next to Southshore along the coast. Huge spawn, very fast respawn rate, easy mobs to kill. Purgation isle (island in the very far Southwest water area of Hillsbrad) also a nice secluded place you can grind on undead.
36-40: Hillsbrad southshore quests. Desolace quests and kodo grinding for 36-38, then Undead Ravagers in the southeast for 38-40. Cresting exiles at the circle of outer binding in Arathi also for 37-41; extremely easy mobs with a fast respawn. Alterac ogres from 35-40 for grinding. Drywhisker kobolds in Arathi east of Hammerfall for 36-39 for grinding.
41-45: Hinterlands trolls, owl beasts, and wolves for grinding and quests. Badlands ogres, gnolls, and quests.
45-48: Tanaris quests and pirates on the eastern paninsula for grinding. Stranglethorn vale quests (only if you need rewards imo). Badlands greater elementals for grinding.
48-52: Felwood deadwood gnolls for grinding and quests from the sanctuary in the south. Blasted lands dreadmauls for grinding. Un'goro crater (best started at 50) for primarily quests and grinding off the plants and tar elementals. Azshara undead highbornes and thunderhead hyppogriffs for grinding.
52-55: Azshara blood elves for grinding. Burning steppes dreadmaul rock ogre caves firegut ogres (very low AC) for grinding. Felwood irontree woods and cave for grinding (great spot). Western plaguelands questing for argent dawn and grinding on undead throughout the various camps.
55-58: Eastern plaguelands quests from the sanctuary, grinding on undead at the ruined towns. Winterspring grinding at winterfall village or Lake Kel'Theril undead highbornes (my personal favorite camp). Blackrock Stronghold in Burning Steppes for grinding.
58-60: "The" yeti cave in Winterspring, due Southeast of Everlook (very nice place). Grosh Gok compound ogres in Deadwind pass (great spot, no one knows about it). Eastern plaguelands Fungal Vale undead grinding and argent dawn token farming. Moonowls in northeast winterspring for grinding.
Copyright 2006 Steven Golden
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_2364.shtml
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Build your own MMORPG Economy
by:
One of the things I find fascinating about a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game is the concept of the in-game "economy." In World of Warcraft, cash and items enter into the game economy in the following ways (most of this article should hold true for other games as well):
You loot items and money from the bodies of the monsters and opponents you kill.
You sell the items you loot to vendors for cash.
You buy items from vendors for cash.
You trade items with other characters, or buy and sell items from and to other characters.
You buy and sell items via the auction house.
You use components via your trade skills to create useful items, then use them or sell or trade them.
You buy services, such as training, from non-player characters.
You buy services, such as enchanting, from other characters.
You fulfill quests and receive rewards in the form of items and money.
There are a number of things that affect prices of items. First, if an item is easily available from a vendor, then odds are other characters won't be able to sell the same item for a lot more money. However, the prices of other items are heavily influenced by supply and demand.
On the one hand, the great thing about an MMORPG is that you can go out and "farm" almost any resource you might need. Need cash? Go kill some bad guys carrying it or complete a few quests. Need copper ore? Go raid the Fargodeep mine and mine the ore nodes there (assuming you have the mining skill). Need linen? Kill some of the bad guys that carry it. Need a new weapon? Find out about a quest that offers one as a reward and complete it.
On the other hand, there can be stiff competition for such resources, particularly at busy times of the day--if you only play during peak hours, you might not find it so easy to farm your needed resources. Not everyone wants to do this; some people would rather just pay for their materials and be done with it. Some resources are a bit on the rare side and you can't be guaranteed of getting them when you go out looking for them. And in WoW, things are set up so that no matter what trade skills you take as your two main skills, you'll almost inevitably need resources provided by the other trade skills (it encourages socialization within the game). To a certain extent you're going to have to realize that if you don't like farming up your own money and resources, you won't have as much of these things as other people--just as folks who don't want to spend their time raiding won't get as many amazing epic items.
Some folks solve their lack of resources and money in a way that I think most players dislike: by buying gold or items through places like ebay from "professional farmers" who game solely for the purpose of selling game items for real-world money. Apart from the rather sad statement on an individual's priorities that this makes, it can also unbalance an economy to a certain extent; you're only helping to drive prices up further and encourage farmers to monopolize farming areas when you do this (which means you're making your own problem worse).
However, in some ways it seems to me that the whole argument is moot. There are some fairly easy steps one can take to ensure that anyone deliberately trying to drive prices sky-high doesn't ruin your gaming experience:
Spend at least part of your game time farming your own supplies. Don't always buy them from others. If you don't like the price you'd have to pay for something, simply find out where to acquire it on your own and go get it. If you aren't willing to do this, accept that you can't have everything you want.
Don't fall into the vanity trap of having to have that one perfect item right here right now. Either wait until you're high enough level to acquire or create it on your own, or go without. If you really must buy it for some reason, then keep watch on the auction house and trade channels. Decide in advance what a reasonable price for the item would be and do not buy it until you see it for that price (or close to it).
For that matter, make auction house buying a sort of mini-hobby. Keep an eye on general pricing of items you tend to buy. Develop an idea of prices that are reasonable, and don't buy items that aren't priced reasonably. People can only sell items for outrageous prices if there are people buying them. You'll find plenty of mods out there to help you with auction housing.
When you sell items that tend to sell for ridiculous prices, sell them for a little bit less than the going rate. If you sell them at the insane rate then you're simply adding to the problems. However, if you undercut the insane rate by too much, all you're doing is enabling the folks selling at ridiculous rates to buy your low-priced items then turn around and sell them at the ridiculous rates. Whereas if enough people undercut the high rates by a little at a time, it can slowly drive the prices back down. I've seen this happen on some servers, so it can work. Another way to do it is to put a very low starting bid, a relatively high buyout (again, a little less than the current too-high rate), and a length of auction of 24 hours. Most professional auction house buyers don't want to wait 24 hours, so this gives people a chance to get something for less.
Join and encourage the kinds of guilds where people help each other out and trade items and services between members. This seriously keeps costs down. You do have to be a little discerning if you want to do this, however--group with people you've played with a little and feel you can trust at least minimally. Otherwise you can end up with one or more people mooching off of others, and that just fuels the imbalance.
Thanks to the fact that MMORPGs have resources that anyone at all can go out and harvest, there's little reason to let someone else ruin your experience of the economy. Instead of letting a lack of money get you down, farm your own resources, make some money through selling things so you can keep up with the economy, and undercut some of those high prices by just enough to make a difference.
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This guy made a guide of World of War Craft for people who are tired of grinding levels. His technics will show you how to get form 1 to 70 Level.
here what he said :
" I either play a male character named Mancow or a female character named Joana. I have been first to 60 now on 6 different servers, one of my goals with World of Warcraft is to get to 60 (or 70 now) on new servers with the least amount of /played time possible, this means each time I went to 60 in WoW I have been revising my routes in order to achieve a better /played time. So far my best time is 4 days 20 hours /played time to 60, this was done on the Jubei'Thos realm. I have this entire 4 day 20 hour run RECORDED, the whole thing is recorded and implemented into my guide! "
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by: Hunter Crowell
World of Warcraft stands as the greatest game in the popular Warcraft series
World of Warcraft has been an extraordinary success since its launch in November 2004. It has impressed game critics and has captivated millions of players, who adore the world that the game has created. It is no longer just a game but is now a genuine phenomenon, and one that shows no signs of abating. It is one of the key games of recent times, and stands as a landmark title for online gaming.
World of Warcraft’s appeal lies in that it has created a truly engaging online world. This massively multiplayer online role-playing game is set in the world of Azeroth, a fantastic land that is filled with heroes and monsters and many other creatures. The game’s strength is that it functions as an experience, as a world that exists on its own terms that you may visit and explore as you please.
World of Warcraft is the 4th title in the series of Warcraft games, which have been entertaining people for over a decade. The series began in 1994 with the game Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, a real time strategy game set in Azeroth. This was a fine title, and a good introduction to the series, but in truth the franchise was just getting started. The best was still to come.
Indeed, it wasn’t until 1995 and the release of the second game, Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness, that the series really found its voice. Warcraft 2 was a masterpiece, and it improved on the original in every sense. The game had beautiful graphics, epic storytelling and fascinating, absorbing gameplay. The high standards of the series continued in 2002, with the release of Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. This was another classic and a remarkable game in its own right. The predecessors of World of Warcraft were all superb.
Blizzard Entertainment published all of the Warcraft titles, and the games attracted a huge following. When Blizzard announced that there was going to be a 4th game in the series, it was natural that people were interested. This interest intensified when it emerged that the new Warcraft title was going to be an online multiplayer game. World of Warcraft would make Azeroth more interactive and redefine it as an experience.
The fans of the series had high expectations for World of Warcraft, as it promised to be a terrific and innovative new title. Blizzard held a beta test for the game in March 2004, and gave selected players a preview. Those who played it were very impressed and it received great reviews. The anticipation for the game’s release grew stronger as 2004 went on.
World of Warcraft was officially launched in North America on Tuesday the 23rd of November 2004. It was well received by critics. The launch was a major success, and it achieved huge sales on its first day of release. Blizzard estimated that 240,000 copies were sold in the first day alone. These were record numbers for a game of this genre and so World of Warcraft became the fastest-selling online game in history. It was a smash hit.
World of Warcraft sustained this success; in fact, the popularity of the game began to snowball. It really took off and caught the public imagination, with more and more people becoming enthralled with it. 2005 saw the game explode into a global obsession. In February it was launched in Europe and in June it was launched in China, with other countries following suit. It proved hugely popular everywhere it was released, and by 2005’s close it had more than five million subscribers worldwide.
World of Warcraft has evolved since its initial release. There have been a number of updates for the game, and the universe of Azeroth has grown. Blizzard have made improvements, fixed any problems, and have worked to make the game user-friendly. They have also expanded the game, by adding sections like Blackwing Lair, for example, the dungeon lair of Nefarion, one of the villains in the game.
In June 2005, Blizzard added major player versus player content in the form of two special battlegrounds, Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch. Alterac Valley allows players to engage in battles of 40 on 40 people, while Warsong Gulch offers new challenges, like stealing your opponent’s flag from their camp. These battlegrounds are the most substantial update to World of Warcraft since it was released.
Now, in 2006, World of Warcraft is as popular as ever. An expansion, titled The Burning Crusade, is set for release this year, and should expand the world of Azeroth even further. World of Warcraft has become the pinnacle of the Warcraft series, and is a magnificent and distinctive game.
Read more about World of Warcraft at http://www.world-of-warcraft-gold.com/
About The Author Hunter Crowell
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