World of Warcraft - popping up everywhere

World of Warcraft is an MMORPG with 10 million subscribers worldwide. I think it’s hard for people to grasp how huge that is in the MMO world. A really successful MMO might have 1 to 2 million active subscribers. At this number, they are playing in the big leagues. And WoW blows these major games (with humongous budgets to match) out of the water.

So if you can grasp how massive the reach of this game really is, it would make sense that World of Warcraft tends to reach beyond the confines of just the game. There’s a board game and a card game (many of the cards are based on players who are either famous or infamous). There’s also a highly entertaining episode of South Park that parodies the lives of the boys as they play WoW.

These days, the rumor mill is reporting that Blizzard is going to make a World of Warcraft movie. Sadly, that’s about all fans know at this point. They did approach one director, who was already booked. And that’s literally the only tidbit I’ve been able to dig up thus far. So if this movie does indeed come out, it seems like 2014 would be the earliest we might see it (which is after the apocalypse…so who knows).

I also read a news article about a guy who stabbed his neighbor after the neighbor told him WoW was “just a game”. Evidently, the neighbor was trying to calm the overly agitated gamer who was yelling at guild mates on his headset. WoW is serious business, y’all.

Diablo III Update

I know I already expressed that I was upset Diablo III was shipping without PvP. It’s been out a while now, and it is still without PvP. And yet, I bought it anyways. I guess I was just hoping that it would end up being one of the best MMOs of 2012.

The game was plagued with all sorts of issues from release day forward. Server crashes, log in failures, auction house crashes, loopholes, item duplication, account hacking, server rollbacks, etc. You name it, it probably happened. Since release, the game has patched one time. Despite that, when I tried to log in this morning I was informed that the servers were down until 1pm CST. I understand that it’s a Tuesday and people are working…but students are on summer break and at home playing games. Additionally, tomorrow is a holiday and many people already had today off.

So before the patch came out, I beat the game. Why I felt compelled to keep playing when I was so incredibly frustrated, I do not know. But I kept playing. Once I had beaten the game, I wanted to sell all my armor and gear in the real money auction house (seeing as its now working). That was before I figured out that Blizzard takes a ridiculous 30% cut of all sales. Instead, I’m looking into trading Diablo players for a game on steam or something.

Once the patch came out, I logged back into the game again. They totally nerfed the monk class, which is my main. My character, that I poured so many hours into, has been rendered essentially worthless. They did, however, fix some of the things that needed fixing. Oh, and good luck to you if your account gets hacked as mine did. Blizzard’s (non existent) customer service will ‘roll back’ your account to fix the issue. Except all they will do is deposit a few gems in your account without regard to how much money and gear was stolen.

I’m not sure why I bought it after I knew it was buggy or why I played until I beat it. If you have a lot of patience, you might enjoy it. If you don’t, I’d steer clear.