R P G A M E R . C O M   -   E D I T O R I A L S

King of the World: The Rise of the King

!

!

Michael "Macstorm" Cunningham
STAFF EDITORIALIST

In this case, the king of the world would be the World of Warcraft. With over seven million subscribers, a new expansion on the way, and ever increasing content, can anyone deny that WoW is the king? Blizzard set out to create an MMORPG that would not only appear to their fans and fans of MMORPGs, but causal gamers as well. Like it or not, they've done that. Not to say that WoW doesn't have its flaws, because it does. However, even with those flaws, it still has the largest subscription base for an MMORPG by more than double of Lineage, its closest competitor's max of 3.2 million reached in 2004. World of Warcraft is the king of MMORPGs.

How did it get there and how is it not only staying there, but growing larger by the day? The Warcraft brand name is a major key to its success. Though not as much anymore, lots of gamers jumped into WoW at launch due to Blizzard's record of quality and the love of the Warcraft series. I would be willing to bet that without the Warcraft name and world attached, WoW would never have taken off the way it did. It's not the quality of the game that sold itself to gamers from the start, but loyalty. Quality is what kept those gamers playing and brought more players into the game. World of Warcraft is easy to play; it's that simple. There are tons of things to do, such as exploring the world, raiding dungeons, improving one's character, or just socializing. The content may not be as story or mission focused as an MMORPG like Final Fantasy XI, but it doesn't need to be. Gamers are not restricted in what they can do. Of course, there is much more to the game than that, both pluses and minuses, but the sole fact that the game is easy to pick up helped lay a foundation for success.

The key to any MMORPG is people. The focus of World of Warcraft is the multiplayer aspect and all that entails. Supply and demand is the same here as in any other area. The commodity in this case is people. With the Warcraft name getting the game off the ground and the ease of use laying the foundation for success, more and more people began to play. A good majority of these people have kept playing. In a genre where people are key, it seems like the more people that play the bigger the interest for newcomers. It's difficult to predict where WoW will go from here, but with over seven million worldwide subscribers and its first expansion on the way early in 2007, it's not going down any time soon.