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Cyrus Rex
PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:01 pm 
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http://www.blizzard.com/press/031705-worldwide.shtml

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Irvine, Calif. - March 17, 2005 - Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that World of Warcraft®, its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed the 1.5 million subscriber mark*, underscoring the game's continued success around the world. Building on its record-breaking debuts in North America, Korea, and Europe, World of Warcraft has reached global peak concurrency - the number of subscribers playing at the same time in each market - of more than 500,000 players.

"All of us at Blizzard are extremely gratified and amazed at the international demand for World of Warcraft," said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. "From region to region, we've seen a phenomenal level of enthusiasm for World of Warcraft, and we're absolutely thrilled people are enjoying the game so much."

Since its debut in North America on November 23, 2004, World of Warcraft has launched to critical and commercial success in Korea and Europe, exploding in popularity across the globe. In the span of a few short months, World of Warcraft has achieved record-breaking milestones, including:


Europe:

    Over 290,000 account creations and 180,000 peak concurrency in its first weekend.

    Over 500,000 active subscribers, and 230,000 peak concurrency to date.

Korea:

    The most successful 100-day launch of any MMORPG in Korean history since its commercial release on January 18, 2005.

    World of Warcraft is currently played in 75% of Korean Internet Game Rooms (IGRs), the primary venue for playing games in Korea. IGRs subscribe directly to MMORPGs and then players buy blocks of time from the IGRs for game time.

North America:

    Over 200,000 subscribers and 100,000 peak concurrency achieved in the game's first 24 hours.

    Current subscriber base of over 800,000 players.

Blizzard Entertainment is now focused on preparing the game for launch in additional regions in Asia and firming up service support in existing data centers. World of Warcraft is scheduled to launch in China in 2005, where excitement for the game has already reached a fevered pitch, as evidenced by the 100,000 applications for the limited open beta in just the first hour of signups on February 28, 2005. Launches in Taiwan and other regions are scheduled to follow closely thereafter.
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Cyrus Rex
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:39 pm 
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Images below are from http://www.mmogchart.com/

They are not exactly up to today’s date, but you can see he was trending close. Makes me feel good to see SoE beat so badly. They were kings and got complacent on their thrown. Koester thinks he has the MMO genre figured out, but all he knows is treadmills, and treadmills don’t make a game.

WoW has more market share than EQ, EQ2, and SWG combined. I think this serves SoE right. Now Bliz needs to stay aggressive, the last thing they need to do is sit back and allow someone else to take over the market.

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Saucon21
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 5:15 pm 
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What is Lineage, i remember seeing the second version coming out before Wow and seen screenshots, is it one of the games that is out there for every country or something from the Pie chart it control over 50% of the Market.

what makes Lineage so good to have that much of the Pie :)
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Aubai
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 5:38 pm 
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Saucon21 wrote:
what makes Lineage so good to have that much of the Pie :)


mmm...pie

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Rocklar
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 6:10 pm 
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Doesn't the market share of Lineage and Lineage2 basically represent the population of Taiwan or Korea or wherever the hell the game originated? I remember reading something like 80% of that country's population plays the game.

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Cyrus Rex
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 6:38 pm 
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Yes. it is a product of the Asian market. I watched some movies of it... and I was not impressed. But I got my hands on an EQ2 movie and it looks horrible too... so maybe some of those movies don’t do the games justice.
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bigyak
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 6:50 pm 
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Gaming in Korea is more like a national past-time. It's amazing when you're there - they have two TV channels only dedicated to showing what's goin on in Lineage and random StarCraft games.

Lineage has a couple differences from most American MMORPGS... kinda like WoW, you can't customize your toon's apperance. Everyone looks the same, and very cartoony, making for quick rendering and a concentration on other things. Leveling happens in three main steps (much like many Asan education systems) - Apprentice, Journeyman, Master. You don't really have levels to get to these like in EQ2, they occur after time or major quest completion, and take about a year to get each. Also, you track your characters family and history and relationships (which is hugely important in many Asian cultures)... and so you can look at another character and see that she's your wife's mother's cousin's grand-daughter and such.

Many of the game dev boards have been long lamenting the fact that a much more simplistic approach to game designs has generated a 10x greater revenue stream... and some indicate that this might be a big reason for WoW's successes.

Many think that the goal for a "completely successful" Western MMORPG has been 1 million concurrent subscribers - and it looks like WoW might soon hit that. The recent explosion of Game Developer Conferences, game workshops, etc leads me to think that this might be the year of the MMOG.

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tobiasds
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 8:20 pm 
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Do the Publishers care about concurrency? Wouldn't simply paying customers be THE number they care about?

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bigyak
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 6:36 pm 
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Good point - the Powers That Be definately care about the bottom-line business model. Dev-types usually care more for cool metrics. I think once WoW hits 1 Million paying customers, that will be the point it can be considerred an overwhelming business success. Once they can fix the lagging concurrency problems in the form of more people online at once, it'll be an overwhelming technical success.

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Master Edward
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 6:57 pm 
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The intresing part of the numbers is that Europe is bigger for WoW than the US and Korea.
Only a few years ago no one thought that Europe was a market for MMOGs and most MMOGs did not even launch in Europe in anything like a concurrent fashion. Most MMOGs still do not have localized version or if they do, they are at least one patch behind.
WoW's success shows that Europe is the place to be for MMOG releases.

tobiasds wrote:
Do the Publishers care about concurrency? Wouldn't simply paying customers be THE number they care about?

Yeah, concurrency is about how many servers are needed. So it's the kind of number publisher care about as well, because it cuts into their margins :)

The holy grail of publishers is a subscription model with people who do not actually play. SWG is pretty close :)

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cynic? I think not!
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Cetera
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 7:27 pm 
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Master Edward wrote:
The holy grail of publishers is a subscription model with people who do not actually play. SWG is pretty close :)

Edward
cynic? I think not!


Burn on SOE out of everywhere.

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Arindel
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 8:07 pm 
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Cetera wrote:
Master Edward wrote:
The holy grail of publishers is a subscription model with people who do not actually play. SWG is pretty close :)

Edward
cynic? I think not!


Burn on SOE out of everywhere.

The truth can be the harshest critic of them all.

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Mantison Tau'rus
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 9:24 pm 
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The thing with Lineage is this...

In Korea and most of Asia, individual PEOPLE do not own accounts. The Game Parlor owns HUGE blocks of accounts, and people pay to play their character per hour from the game parlors.

That is why the numbers look SOOOO huge.

And there a crap load of folks hooked on online games, hehe..

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iJasonT
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 9:38 pm 
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Ive seen Lineage at the store but I never imagined it was that huge. Makes since from what Manti and Yak have said that is it hugley popular in Asia. Game Parlors over there are similar to Magna; everyone does it its just the type they you do that differs from age and sex.

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