Can I get Dual Citizenship?
VideogamesBlogger and others are comparing WoW to countries today, indicating that its population has surpassed that of Haiti, at least according to Blizzard's latest press release.
It's a slowing of growth for a number designed to only go upwards, considering they hit the 8.5 million mark in January. Were they expected to peak now that the game is nearly three years old? Honestly-- No. Everquest didn't max their population for 4 years and it had a small fraction of WoW's footprint. Personally, I thought with Blizzard blowing the rest of the MMO market out of the water it would have longer legs.
I think that they could keep on top of things with significant and timely expansions, leapfrogging as it were. TBC was significant, but not timely. No doubt the second xpack will be announced at Blizzcon. I'm certain we'll see Blizzard set a similar schedule as the last, setting a 2008 date and then realistically it will actually come in 2009.
It's hardly time to ring any death knells for WoW, it's still the King Kong of MMOs. But I do think Blizzard needs to step up their game. The initial product had a much bigger "geez whiz" factor than what they've added since.
Jul 25, 2007 9:39am
Firstly, do you sleep much? This post was from 5 am!!
More importantly, I totally agree about the expansions and their lack of ... um ... wow factor, if you'll forgive the pun. I have been reading a few articles about this issue, and what I really think needs to happen for WoW to maintain its status as King Kong is the introduction of some totally new ideas from Blizzard. More raids are always cool (you know how I like the raiding), but ultimatly that is just rehashing the same old stuff. I know that guild houses arn't coming any time soon, but they need to come up with some big, shiny new feature that will make a difference in everyone's game experiance, not just the raider population.
Jul 25, 2007 6:53pm
Yeah for me, the only "wow factor" for TBC was flying mounts. But they're also milking that for all it's worth. There was no good reason to make players downgrade their speed with the non-epic flying mounts at 60%.