March 25, 2005

World of Warcraft News

World of Warcraft has been bringing out new features and a content reliability patch. First Blizzard is allowing some players on busy servers the ability to transfer their character to low population realms. You can read about it here.

On the patch front, a new one was rolled out earlier this week with brand new content and bug fixes. However I hear it isn't going so well. The major changes are outlined here.

And last but not least, Blizzard issued a press release that proclaimed there are 1.5 million subscriber to World of Warcraft. Concurrent users have surpassed 500,000 users at the same time.

Europe: Over 290,000 account creations and 180,000 peak concurrency in its first weekend. Over 500,000 active subscribers, and 230,000 peak concurrency to date.

Korea: The most successful 100-day launch of any MMORPG in Korean history since its commercial release on January 18, 2005. World of Warcraft is currently played in 75% of Korean Internet Game Rooms (IGRs), the primary venue for playing games in Korea. IGRs subscribe directly to MMORPGs and then players buy blocks of time from the IGRs for game time.

North America: Over 200,000 subscribers and 100,000 peak concurrency achieved in the game's first 24 hours. Current subscriber base of over 800,000 players.
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