WoW reaches the 10 million mark

[Mahes]

Recently I have wondered what would happen if they just removed the bind on pickup tag given to items.

Items have level requirements, so it is not like you could twink out a level 1 toon with T-6 gear. You could add faction requirements to equip certain items. At this stage of the game, why do items have a Bind on equip?

People who raid, raid because of the content(Or so many like to claim). The worst part of it though, is getting the required reagents/potions/supplies to allow for a higher chance to get the job done. Imagine if this was made easier simply by allowing items to be sold. Then turn the gold around and just purchase what is needed for the next attempt. This was "partially " done with Molten Core.

Have a problem with the random loot generator? No problem, just save up the gold needed to buy it off the auction house. No more crying about the Paladin/Shaman/Hunter loot that always drops when none are present.

This would allow anybody with the gold, but not the "Chunk" of consecutive time required for raiding, to get an item.

This would also give a new meaning to Legendary Items. Not only would they be bind on pickup, but you could make those really good, but also really hard to make. This adds continued incentive to raid/play.

Save for an accelerated rate of progression, I just do not understand Bind on pickup anymore.

[Deathwing]

Originally Posted by Mahes

Save for an accelerated rate of progression, I just do not understand Bind on pickup anymore.

You just answered your own question. Gear acquisition is meant to retard progression and force artificial replayability.

[Sunder]

Originally Posted by Deathwing

You just answered your own question. Gear acquisition is meant to retard progression and force artificial replayability.

Exactly. And given Blizzard's glacial pace at which they introduce new content, any accelerated max-level progression would not at all be advisable.

[Mahes]

So, anybody with the equipment could beat any of the encounters? I realize that gear is a requirement to some level, but isn't the ability to know your character and know how to work with others in a fashion just as important?

If that is the case, then the only accelerated progress would be the progress made whenever guilds had to recruit replacements.

In the beginning, a guild still has to climb to the top.

You can still only engage an encounter a certain amount of times a week. There are ways that progress could be slowed down as to not create a huge surge of items for a long period of time, faction/keying are two examples.

[Aethn Anvel]

and approximately 5.5 million in Asia.

Fuzzy Blizzard Math again, how many of those are gold farmers and how many of those are one-time 30 cents an hour Chinese internet cafe purchases??

But hey, it playes well to the investors.

[Gaereth]

I still don't understand why folks are so upset with the choice WOW gives you.

You can play, from day 1, just like you did in EQ. You can grind, you can group everything, you can pretend the quests don't exist and have an experience that will be very similar to EQ.

Or you can, from day 1, solo, do all the quests, ride the rails, and have an experience that is completely different from EQ.

Or....you can mix and match solo with grouping, hit all the instances, etc, etc.

My main has never soloed a level. He has always been grouped. I have a few alts that have soloed some, but I haven't gotten a single one above 14 yet. That experience is pretty much what I got out of EQ as well....I was always grouped.

The options are there but a lot of folks choose not to exercise those options.

[fuffalo]

Originally Posted by Aethn Anvel

Fuzzy Blizzard Math again, how many of those are gold farmers and how many of those are one-time 30 cents an hour Chinese internet cafe purchases??

But hey, it playes well to the investors.

They word it like that because they have just under 5.5 million, and they don't feel like saying 5,492,345 subscribers.

If it was just over, they would have said something like they did for america/europe, ie: just over 5.5 million.

I doubt it's because they "just don't know!"

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Aethn Anvel

Fuzzy Blizzard Math again, how many of those are gold farmers and how many of those are one-time 30 cents an hour Chinese internet cafe purchases??

But hey, it playes well to the investors.

Except it states plainly "in the last 30 days", so if you want to assume that millions of Asians just played WoW once and once only for the first time in their lives in the past month, go ahead. Seeing how millions of them played Lineage 1 and then 2 for years you would be stupid to do so.

[spronk]

Originally Posted by Aethn Anvel

Fuzzy Blizzard Math again, how many of those are gold farmers and how many of those are one-time 30 cents an hour Chinese internet cafe purchases??

But hey, it playes well to the investors.

The number seem pretty obvious to me, 2.5 million current active subs in North America and 2 million in Europe, those include all the chinese farmers who sell to US/EU customers. 5.5 million active player slots in Asia (each character counts as a sub in Asia, you only get 1 character per "account", no monthly fees or startup box fee). Investors mostly care about the 4.5 million in US/EU, they are the ones paying 15/month or nearly a billion in revenue per year (probably around $300-400 million in profit). Asia is more of a growth aspect for the future, WoW has grown slowly (relative to growth in the past) in the past 2 years in US/EU, going from 4 million to 4.5 million active subs in about a year.

I don't think Blizzard has ever released numbers on how many people have actually played WoW, it would be 20m+ accounts in the US I'd guess, including the $20 throwaway accounts farmers buy to spam their websites.

Most of the US-based gold farming, from my understanding, is now done via "rented" accounts that are owned by US customers and rented out to farmers anyways.

[Mist]

As far as I know, the chinese native servers aren't done to make a profit so much as to promote a brand name to a future market. Blizzard does not operate those servers, another company pays Blizzard for the right to do so. In Korea and Taiwan however they still make plenty of money off of the subscription model they have there, a similar amount per player to what they make off US/Euro subs.

[Izuldan]

Originally Posted by Mahes

Have a problem with the random loot generator? No problem, just save up the gold needed to buy it off the auction house. No more crying about the Paladin/Shaman/Hunter loot that always drops when none are present.

This would allow anybody with the gold, but not the "Chunk" of consecutive time required for raiding, to get an item.

Ok, be honest......which gold selling website do you work for?

[Jordan Jax]

Originally Posted by Sunder

So the fact you enjoy not being able to solo to 50 should be forced upon the other players in the game. Got ya. Less options is more fun to you.

So you want every game out there to cater to every kind of playstyle out there? Do you seriously not see any problems with that philosophy?

Everyone has options...those who want to solo to 50 in 2 weeks can choose to play another game. Just like i exercise my option to not play WoW because i don't like instances, fast leveling, and the art style.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Dumar...

You incessantly whine about how you have no impact on the community in games which you play and that you want a dynamic experience, yet when multiple options are presented to you, you shrugs them off and continue to bitch.

It's pretty fucking apparent by now that you have no interest in even trying. Eve is a game that is -entirely- about the community in which you play.

Violent theatrics aside (forum bashing is my multiplayer mmo, hoho!) you really need to evaluate what exactly it is you want. It sounds to me like you want to be led around, that you want to log on and have someone else give you a new, fun ride every time. That simply is not going to happen any time soon. Modern technology simply doesn't allow for that.

So developers, the asshats that they are, have opted to try to give us a more sandbox field to play in. You -can- create a dynamic experience for yourself if you like. I did it in EQ because I got ridiculously bored of the same old shit every day during PoP. Myself and a guildmate created an open-raiding organization and did the lesser PoP gods on a semi-frequent basis. Every time was a new, fun challenge because you were constantly relearning encounters with 60~100 people.

People do it in WoW all the time too. People form pickup Kara raids, there was/is a 'put a hit out on someone' bounty thread going for awhile, I've personally partaken in a non-blizzard sponsored team-based pvp matchup. We lost horribly, got knocked out in the second round, but it was great fun.

Look, I understand that there reaches a point where you're left making your own fun and some, many, would view that as failure of game design. The problem is that you're looking for dynamic content in a static environment, which at this point in history simply isn't really possible, at least not from an economic point of view which is the ultimate factor in which it will get done on the grand scale. There are tons of graphical/browser based MUDS that do what you want, but you obviously want something a little more mainstream....where the almighty dollar is the final boss.

To date, we're faced with the mulitplayer option of static content in a static environment (WoW/EQ/Etc...) or dynamic content in a dynamic environment (TF2/CoD4/Etc...)

WoW hedged a bit on the dynamic content in static environment. Eve is heavily invested in this concept. The problem is that currently the only way to achieve that is PvP because only other players can offer you a different gameplay experience everytime you log on. Developers simply can't create content fast enough to facilitate this.

Don't give me some "I want a tight knit community!" bullshit because no matter what game you play there's friends and people aplenty. The community is there for you to be a part of, quite easily. Maybe you're just suddenly more keenly aware of just how many people you don't know now. Fuck, in EQ I didn't know a single person under level 45 when I was 50. I didn't fucking care. I only knew about a dozen people outside my guild. I grouped with tons more, and I still have my EQ notebook filled with about 100 pages of "Lord/AM/Hand" lists. But I didn't really give a shit about them.

So yeah...suck it up and play Eve and instead of bitching about how no game out there caters to you, bitch about how Eve needs to be better and that more games need to follow the Eve model but do better.

Oh, and fuck fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

[brekk]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Eve has the best community. What other game is more enjoyable talking and posturing on the forums than actually playing the game?

Is that because the community is awesome, or because playing the actual game is boring as shit.

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Dumar...

Rant Rant Rant

Oh, and fuck fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Let me save Dumar some time...

Originally Posted by Dumar

But UO did it, and it was glorious