WoW Hits 10 Million Subscribers
Most popular MMO in the world just keeps getting more and more popular.
And then, of course, come all the people who think they're doing their duty to make comments about how they quit while they were ahead, and how they're better than everyone else because they did, or because of things like: "oh, I quit because once I hit level 70, I didn't want to repeat the same dungeon over and over and over again," and "oh, I quit because once I hit level 70, I got tired of all the guilds exploding because of the emo, angsty children," and "oh, I quit because I have a life now," and "oh, yeah, how much of that 10 million are gold farmers?" and then you've always got the people who say: "oh, I never tried WoW because my friend plays it all the time and I don't want to do that. Instead, I play <other MMO here> all day. It's a lot better than World of Warcrack."
Let's answer them in order, shall we? Because that's what I do here.
"The End-Game Content is Repetitive"
As always, to each their own, and if you don't like a game, those of us who do play want you to leave. We don't enjoy hearing people in the game talk about how bad the game is. But anyway, yes, the end-game content can get a little repetitive. Once you hit the leveling limit, all that's left as far as questing goes is what are called "daily quests" that you simply repeat every day to get a nice sum of money that you use to fund the perpetual extravagant costs of upgrading and repairing your equipment. There are, however, many, many, many instances that you can run. Granted, running the same one over and over can get a little discouraging, but that could just be because your guild is just bad. Different guilds are at different stages of doing instances, and if you're getting sick of the ones your guild is doing, you can move on. I wouldn't ever do that, because I have a bit of a loyalty thing going on, but I think over half the time, people moving from guild to guild will save themselves and everyone else a lot of headaches and sadness.
But there are some of you people who don't like to do instances, sure. I get that. I used to be one a long time ago. (And when I changed my mind, nobody was there to help, but that's another story that I always enjoy sticking in random places to remind certain people (who don't even read this blog) of it.) That's why there's more to WoW than running dungeons
Enter Player vs Player. You know, it's that feature that lets you pit your skills directly against another player to see who's the best, and you get points for winning, with which you can now buy gear that is pretty darned close to the quality you'd get running the highest level dungeons. I'm not talking about the Battlegrounds, either. That could almost be worse than running dungeons all day, because if you don't want to be the ugly, smelly, evil Horde, you're going to pick the pretty, clean, righteous Alliance, and they just don't win the Battlegrounds (due to the amount of haughty, high-and-mighty players who think they know how to solo the thing, and completely ignore all attempts of coordinating activities). But there's a new event that Blizzard came out with when they released the Burning Crusade! Arenas. 2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, and 5 vs 5 arenas. Think of them as clan skirmishes in games like Tremulous or Counter-Strike... Only they're ranked like Halo 3 matches. 2 players against 2 equally ranked players have it out and see who's the best. If you lose, no biggie, you don't lose points. Just go on to the next match and try to beat them, too. Don't be discouraged if you don't know how to PvP, because nobody is good at that overnight. (And so, so, so many people don't want to get good, so they just complain about losing all the time and don't try to get better.)
There are plenty of things to do in the end-game. I don't understand the mentality behind all these dummies who complain about the monotonous and repetitive qualities of World of Warcraft and then go on to declare how awesome EVE Online or some other MMO is. Please, tell me, how is EVE Online better than WoW? On EVE, you have to wait real-world time to learn skills. I actually subscribed for one month to play EVE outside a trial and I actually enjoyed it... Up until the point where I was training to learn how to drive a super-miner, and learned that it would take literally 30 days to train. 30 DAYS. That's the entire month completely blown because I'm training. Why did I want to train this, you ask? Because with this super-miner, I could run back and forth between mining sites. Over and over. Yeah. That's it. That's like, repetition defined. Fly to a rock, mine it, fly back to base, sell it... Fly to a rock, mine it, fly back to base, sell it. How is this better than World of Warcraft?
"I Got Tired of All the Babies Playing the Game"
Simple response here: Don't play with them. There are plenty of guilds who advertise for mature players. (And by that, I don't mean... mature as in "Rated R", I mean mature as in "acting your age".) You can also leave the global channels shut off. If they're all babies, you're not going to miss anything. You're going to get noobs and brats and morons in every game you play. In fact, in EVE Online, you get brats and morons who happen to be really skilled, but still enjoy griefing the lesser players and causing problems, even in the areas that are supposed to be secure. I don't care if that's the spirit of the game, it's what happens and there's no denying it. My point is that there will be people like this in all walks of life, so you might as well start learning how to ignore them, or just deal with it. Let me help you along! The major channel for whining is the Trade channel, because it's global. (Bad move, Blizzard.) The answer is simple: Shut it off. This is how you do that:
- /leave Trade
There is no step 2. That's it. If your guild is getting overrun by newbies who are pining for free help, then talk to your guild master or someone in charge and tell them. If nothing changes, absolutely nothing is stopping you from leaving the guild and finding another one. If your guild is as bad as you say, there shouldn't be any second thoughts about leaving, right? Or is it a good guild, but you can't stand new players asking questions like you did when you first got the game? There's a difference.
"I Quit Because I Have a Life Now"
This has to be the number one fallacy of the planet. "World of Warcraft destroys lives." Everything in moderation, dude. As for myself, I am a 4.0 college student in his second semester and I'm in a Karazhan run in my guild on the Sentinels realm. How's that for smashing the fallacy that WoW is a drug? If you can't play WoW because you don't know how to take fun in moderation, then say that. Making yourself look like a hero for breaking out of the "chains of addiction" just makes you look stupid. If you can't handle WoW and life, fine! Really, that's fine. Making it sound like you just fought off the latest illegal drug? Not so much.
"How Much of These Subscribers are Gold Farmers?"
Does it matter? Really. Ask yourself if it really matters? Does it matter that 9 million of the 10 million members are gold farmers? The money still goes to Blizzard, and everyone compares subscription statistics, not "active people who are leveling up properly" statistics. But if you're really dead set on asking this question, I'm going to ask again, does it matter? Every MMO has gold farmers. That's a fact of life. People who actually get paid to make money in the game so that they can sell it to lazy players for real-world money. I think the exchange rate is 50 USD for 1000 Gold in Warcraft at the moment. I only know this because of spammers in Stormwind, I might add. But come on. This question is utterly pointless, because every MMO has gold farmers. EVE, Everquest, Star Wars: Galaxies... They all have gold farmers. The question is, what does the developer do about the gold farmers? I don't know about you, but I think I keep reading month after month, about how Blizzard bans hundreds of thousands of gold farmers, cheaters, exploiters, etc. I don't know about you, but I think Blizzard is one of the few (if not the only) companies who actually bans people from their service. How many companies do you know that ban paying customers? Blizzard keeps adding more and more countermeasures and options for us good players to use against them. We have a new Report Spam option that will automatically tag a spammer, submit a ticket, and ignore the spammer, all in two clicks. The Warden (you know, that nasty, evil, no-good program that SPIES ON YOU, OH MY GOSH!!!) is constantly updated with more and more algorithms to detect cheating applications, and Blizzard BANS them. How many of the 10 million subscribers are gold farmers, you ask? My answer is: Less and less every day.
"I Don't Play WoW, I Play <Other MMO Here>."
The good ol' "I won't touch WoW, but I'll play another MMO that takes up just as much time, no problem, because since it's not WoW, I'm somehow above you all". Remember that post I made? Yeah... That applies to this. Go read it, if you've never seen it. I'll say now that the reason I compared WoW to Uru is because the person who ranted about WoW being evil is an extremely addicted (er, I'm sorry, AVID) Uru player. I don't think I'll ever forget what she said... But, then again, this is the same person who took over a project I was involved in and tried making me jump through a bunch of legal hoops so I couldn't come back and say they kicked me off the project or some such crap. I refused to say anything of the sort, because she should have known that I'd never do something like that, and she got all upset at me and told me how stupid I was, and then left... Only to come back a few minutes later and gloat about how she'd gotten into the Uru Beta (which was completely against the Terms of Agreement, but who listens to that anymore?) and asked where all my friends were. Yeah. That gives you some credibility to say WoW is evil, little miss snotty. I think you're the reason I stopped playing Uru, plain and simple. You're obviously too good for me, so why should I even bother? While you're all busy fighting amongst yourselves, trying to determine who the best fan is, I'm having fun raiding Karazhan with my new guild mates, not wasting my money on some "who can suck up to Cyan the most and get the most benefits" social playhouse.
Oh, by the way, I got into the Uru Beta the very day after she did... So her gloating was short-lived.