World of Warcraft breaks records
Summary
Blizzard says that World of Warcraft is the most successful PC game launch ever, claiming to have broken 24-hour sales records in North America by selling through 240,000 copies at retail outlets in a single day. They also say they?ve broken the record for number of accounts created in a single day...somewhere around 200,000.
Gamestar Spin
We bet that wouldn't have been the case if Steam didn't exist. Anyway, they sold so many because the world knew in advance that it's an awesome game, and the "stress test" ploy (if the conspiracy theories are true) worked like a charm. Of course, the insanely successful launch has been an unexpected thorn in Blizzard's side -- some of the popular PvP (Player vs. Player) and RP (Role-Playing) servers are overly full, and players have to wait in line in "login queues" (sometimes for hours) in order to be able to play on them. Not a good way to make customers happy. Making the problem worse: a bunch of players who have found ways to stay logged in indefinitely, even when they're not playing, so that others can't jump in. Daily server maintenance occurs in every realm for a couple hours, meaning players aren't allowed to play certain characters for designated times during the day. EverQuest II, on the other hand, launched effortlessly. Of course, it's only been a week for WoW, and as far as MMORPG launches go, it could have been far, far, far worse. We'd be shocked if Blizzard didn't have these problems sorted out within the next couple weeks, and the company decided to extend the free trial period a couple weeks as sort of an apology for the problems. Still, the first few days of owning any game are usually the most exciting and cool, and it sucks to have frustrating obstacles prevent you from enjoying your new game.
-- Sean Molloy
