Possible World of Warcraft Expansion Unveiled

[zekrahminator]

The wonderful people with a strange abundance of spare time over at 1Up have found a very interesting title in the German game rating system: a request to rate a certain "World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (GC-Demo)". The (GC-Demo) part could possibly stand for "Game Convention Demo", which would make perfect sense considering the upcoming Leipzig Games Convention and Blizzcon.

If this is a formal expansion, it will almost surely be announced at Blizzcon this weekend. Wrath of the Lich King is currently rumored to open up the Northrend section of the World of Warcraft, where Arthas and the Lich King were last seen in Warcraft 3.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Nemesis881]

ffs....when will it end?

 

[Darkrealms]

ffs....when will it end?

LoL! @ ~$15 month with ~9+million subscribers . . . .
If I was getting $1,620,000,000 a year for a game I'd have a hundred people and a whip working on future content!!

Side note: 1.62 billion seems high but the game rates go from ~13 to ~18 a month and last week they claimed over 9 million subscribers so I'm not sure where my math could have gone wrong (($15*12month)*9million)?

 

[kakazza]

Woah, finally the Lich King. This story arc is pretty good. I think I read more about the Warcraft Universe than I played WoW (which you can play for months without having a single clue about the Warcraft universe, really.)

I wish WoW had more cutscenes in the big raids which had a connection to the Warcraft universe :/



@Darkrealms: Was it 9 Million accounts or active subscribers?

 

[Dark Ride]

ffs....when will it end?

You have nothing else to worry about, eh ?

 

[FAXA]

Wonder if the level cap is gonna be raised....and if so what too....having a lvl 80 character would be pretty nice!^^

 

[Darkrealms]

Woah, finally the Lich King. This story arc is pretty good. I think I read more about the Warcraft Universe than I played WoW (which you can play for months without having a single clue about the Warcraft universe, really.)

I wish WoW had more cutscenes in the big raids which had a connection to the Warcraft universe :/



@Darkrealms: Was it 9 Million accounts or active subscribers?

It says below subscribers but with the way it works at least in the US you can only have one person online with an account (we've been trying to get blizz to have a family account program where you pay per the number of active users you want, like $10 a user a month or something)

Blizzard's award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) has reached a new milestone, with a player base now totaling more than 9 million subscribers worldwide. Since debuting in North America on November 23, 2004, World of Warcraft has become the most popular MMORPG around the world. It was the bestselling PC game of 2005 and 2006 and has remained at or near the top of the weekly PC-game sales charts for much of 2007 as well. Blizzard's Burning Crusade expansion released to critical acclaim in several regions earlier this year and shattered PC-game sales records in North America and Europe, with nearly 2.4 million copies sold in its first 24 hours of release and approximately 3.5 million in its first month. World of Warcraft is available in seven different languages and, in addition to North America and Europe, is played in mainland China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Source: Blizzard

 

[demonbrawn]

I hope this is true. This just adds to the number of games that I'm really looking forward to!

 

[Ravenas]

Wouldn't be surprised...

 

[HellasVagabond]

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=36418

 

[TUngsten]

China accounts for a large # of their subs, but Chinese players don't pay on a monthly basis. I am not quite sure I grasp the model they use, but I THINK I recall an article describing it not too long ago.

IIRC, they pay a small amount to a middleman/3rd party affiliate to play - it might be an hourly rate, but I DO remember it seemed to be a pretty small amount of revenue compared to a US subscription rate.

 

[Darkrealms]

China accounts for a large # of their subs, but Chinese players don't pay on a monthly basis. I am not quite sure I grasp the model they use, but I THINK I recall an article describing it not too long ago.

IIRC, they pay a small amount to a middleman/3rd party affiliate to play - it might be an hourly rate, but I DO remember it seemed to be a pretty small amount of revenue compared to a US subscription rate.

If you figure a 24/7 hourly rate on an anual basis of $15 a month it comes out to $0.021 So if they charged $0.25 an hour it would still be really cheap looking but it would probably cover the subscriptions and then some (figuring they don't run 24/7). I don't know what figures you saw though so I can only guess. It costs $0.495 a day to own an account at $15 a month, with a 6 month subscription it cost just under $13 a month.

 

[XooM]

and after this, it's pretty much a known fact that there will be an incursion into the emerald dream, putting yet another expansion pack out beyond this one.

New playable race speculation time?

 

[mdm-adph]

China accounts for a large # of their subs, but Chinese players don't pay on a monthly basis. I am not quite sure I grasp the model they use, but I THINK I recall an article describing it not too long ago.

IIRC, they pay a small amount to a middleman/3rd party affiliate to play - it might be an hourly rate, but I DO remember it seemed to be a pretty small amount of revenue compared to a US subscription rate.

Aye, I remember hearing it was an hourly rate, too, and that you didn't even need to pay the up-front costs to buy the game in the first place! (For most MMO's, at least.)

 

[Darkrealms]

and after this, it's pretty much a known fact that there will be an incursion into the emerald dream, putting yet another expansion pack out beyond this one.

New playable race speculation time?

LoL, I've been more interested in Arthas and the Emerald dream than any content in the original or outland. After reading the books and anything else available Illidan has been the looser, the sulking survivor.

 

[Darkrealms]

Aye, I remember hearing it was an hourly rate, too, and that you didn't even need to pay the up-front costs to buy the game in the first place! (For most MMO's, at least.)

I had heard that Asia didn't pay for the game but they did have a monthly fee. That was a long time ago though.

 

[WarEagleAU]

I liked the Lich King in the expansion of WC3...so this would be a nice addition to the game itself.

 

[Sky]

yeh wow need some sort of expansion to compete with the newer mmos out next year.i always wanted to woop arthas in the warcraft. too bad i quit wow.

 

[DrunkenMafia]

just when my mates were starting to get sick of that friggin game.. I thought I was actaully gonna be able to go out for a beer with em.....

Oh well... maybe next year...

They have already gone all white n pastey n shit....

 

[The Norwegian Drone Pilot]

Who cares about how many players that are playing WoW?, you can't play with all of the players, also they are not in the same world.

Like in EVE Online that i'm playing, you have around 220.000 - 240.000 players in EVE, and everyone is playing in the same world, or it will be in the same galaxy there .

There have been over 35.000 players logged on EVE at the same time in the same universe in EVE Online, and that's on one server, and can any other online games take that? nope .

And the PVP system in WoW sucks big time, also it's a total joke.

Not much love for WoW from me here

 

[Darkrealms]

Who cares about how many players that are playing WoW?, you can't play with all of the players, also they are not in the same world.

Like in EVE Online that i'm playing, you have around 220.000 - 240.000 players in EVE, and everyone is playing in the same world, or it will be in the same galaxy there .

There have been over 35.000 players logged on EVE at the same time in the same universe in EVE Online, and that's on one server, and can any other online games take that? nope .

And the PVP system in WoW sucks big time, also it's a total joke.

Not much love for WoW from me here

LoL, go back and read it, it was about revenue and a previous post asking when WoW was going to die/end. We were discussing what people pay monthly and how much Blizz makes annually.

 

[Sky]

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23133.html