It would have been surprising to not have the 10th anniversary for one of the best MMORPG games that has been one of the turning points for the gaming industry with rise of the internet all over the world. It is the month Blizzard has been awaiting for long. With the announcement of the new game at Blizzcon 2014 (Metallica played a gig here!) – ‘Overwatch’, Blizzard also released the new expansion pack for World of Warcraft (WoW) called the ‘Warlords of Draneor’.
The game which commenced its journey in 2004 has been very influential for a lot of gamers who initially started playing the game in their college years and are now playing with their kids. The journey for the game has been a rather happy affair. The subscriber base has seen a dip in the recent past but has been promising and gained momentum every time a new expansion pack releases. The biggest rise was seen during the release of expansion pack Cataclysm with the base touching a whopping 12 million in 2010.
The game has also been subject to a lot of change with the release of each expansion and with the last one being the ‘Cataclysm’, Blizzard changed the raiding system adding difficulty to it with a lot of complaints coming during the Wrath of Lich King days where the gamers complained about the raids being an easy affair. WoW also managed to sell more than 3 million copies of Cataclysm on the first day of the launch and is the second best selling PC game in the history of computer games with more than 14 million copies and grossing in over $10 billion in sales. The only game beating the fantasy game is sandbox survival game Minecraft which has sold 17 million copies.
The game has also managed to influence other MMOG’s in the industry and have been copied mechanics to mechanics. The leveling and the quest systems that WoW managed to create by having to move around the environment and having to tag your kill so no one can steal your credit for the kill was an innovation that was unique within an MMO game. Raids which previously were only to keep the gold coming were changed with a lot of planning and team work for the players to gain the loot.
A lot of possible WoW killers have turned up over the years with the free-to-play model being one of the choices of the developers and microtransactions being the main source of revenue. WoW being a subscriber exclusive game in the world of microstransctions and also holds the distinction of being the number one game in the MMOG segment and beating its nearest competitor by a huge margin in terms of both sales and units sold.
Activision Blizzard has been actively belting out the expansion packs and has promised to come up with the expansion packs more swiftly in the near future to keep the game up and running and make the fans experience a new world and story with each expansion.
Recently, out of honour to the late actor/comedian Robin Williams, Blizzard announced that they’ll introduce a Non Playing Character (NPC) for the new expansion pack ‘Warlords of Draneor’, which is designed in the manner of his famous character Genie in Aladdin. With the release of the new expansion pack the subscriber numbers have witnessed a spike again to reach 10 million, the number which dropped to the 6 million mark back in August. The number is growing with each day and this may even cross the 12 million mark which was previously set.
Blizzard has announced to continue with the game for the next 10 years and keep making the expansions as long as the gamers are happy playing the game. The studio is certain that the game will have its 20th birthday but does not know how the game will end. With the game sustaining the first ten years and looking strong to maintain the momentum over the next ten, only time will decide the fate of this epic MMOG as the gamer community keeps evolving over the years.
