Online Game Insight - World of Warcraft

[sirjkl...@yahoo.com]

Statistics have shown that in August of 2005 there were over 4 million
players online, playing WOW. There is no doubt that this is the-most
popular Online-RPG in the world. More than 1 million of these players
are based in the United States of America and more than 1.5 million
are based in China. The amount of estimated players includes those
players that are under free-promotional subscriptions, including
canceled or expired subscriptions. Blizzard has also stated that the
minimum amount of players online at a time is around 500,000. Due to
the high sales that WOW has received, it was described as been-a
"runaway success". The popularity is just overwhelming, and compared
to another online game "The Matrix" doesn't come anywhere close and
they are blamed for their flat sales.
When WOW was released, it was done so simultaneously on both Macintosh
and Windows systems in the United States, New Zealand and Austria in
late November of 2004. World of Warcraft sold over 240,000 copies
within the first 24 hours. Compared to other games, WOW has made
history. On January 18, 2005 World of Warcraft hit the shelves in
South Korea, but in some stores the game had already been seen on the
shelves since November the previous year. Europe saw the game on its
shelves on 11 February 2005, and it was available in the French,
English and German language. 2 March 2005, around 100,000 game testers
enrolled for China's WOW beta-test within an hour. The game was
officially released on 6 June of that same year. World of Warcraft
received nothing but high praise in 2003 at E3, including the Best-of-
Show award from Gamer's Pulse. In the gaming industry, WOW was
declared by GameSpy and Gamespot, and many others - as the game of
2004.
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