Almost Three Million Lose Life To Lich King

November 20, 2008November 20, 2008| schommerschommer| 0 Comment| 6:08 pm
Categories:

Wrath of the Lich King is the fastest selling game of all time beating the old champion: Burning Crusade. Believe it or not, Blizzard is saying 2.8-million people picked up the expansion to World of Warcraft and are currently sitting at home forgetting to eat their dinner in the first 24-hours of launch.

This probably doesn’t come as any surprise to Burning Crusade owners, but think on this… you can’t play Wrath of the Lich King without the core game and the Burning Crusade expansion. New adopters of the WoW haze will be investing a good deal of money, before monthly charges, to get into the full experience of Lich King.

The original Burning Crusade expansion sold 2.4-million copies in the first 24-hours, in some ways this is disappointing because their was only a minor influx in this new expansion. It’s hard to complain about epic sales on a game expansion, what other title can boast number so high for an expansion pack?

The real question is, how many gamers have taken days off of work to get their Death Knights to level 80 first?

0 thoughts on “Almost Three Million Lose Life To Lich King”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 320: Like This Like ThatEpisode 320: Like This Like That

The posting of Monday’s podcast has been delayed a day, sorry about that. This week is fairly long, and the Gaming History gets into the venerable Sega Dreamcast, which still has some developers making new games for it.

Otherwise, this week’s news items include:

  • Assassin’s Creed series will have end, assures Ubisoft
  • EverQuest Next gameplay revealed, accepting beta registration
  • Blizzard confirms Project Titan overhaul, “unlikely to be subscription-based”
  • EA claims freedom of speech in NCAA lawsuit appeal, court rejects it
  • Region-based factions will be in The Crew

This week’s Question of the Week: “What makes you decide to preorder a game or console?”

Read MoreRead More

Diablo 3 Doesn’t Look Right, Dev Says Yes Sir!Diablo 3 Doesn’t Look Right, Dev Says Yes Sir!

There has been many debates on the graphic level of Diablo 3 and how it should be different. Finally a developer comes out and says “um, no.” Their reasoning is fairly simple, it’s one thing to photoshop up a screenshot with some filters but it’s another to get the texture and lighting to run at that detail on a standard computer.

How do you argue with that? Personally, I think the graphics look wonderful, brilliant, vibrant and professional. Diablo 3 game designer Jay Willson said:

“The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn’t created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it’s almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can’t have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons.” (slashdot)

Non-developers seem to forget that the colors, cameras and lighting don’t come free on a video game. Everything has limitations and, although the limitations change over time, today’s graphics for a standard machine are capable of running Diablo 3. Blizzard isn’t making a game that only hardcore PC gamers can play, this game is for everyone.

Building a video game is a lot of smoke and mirrors to make a virtual object look “real” to normal gamers. Immersion and definition is important, grainy dark graphics do set a mood, but they also frustrate many players. Remember DOOM 3? Some people could barely see the “epic graphics” of the last DOOM sequel, it’s time to mature and show off true colors.

Darkness usually is used to hide imperfections, Diablo 3 has nothing to hide.

(For a high resolution photo, checkout MTV Multiplayer Blog)

Read MoreRead More

Trials of a World of Warcraft Player: Entry FiveTrials of a World of Warcraft Player: Entry Five

“The Grind”

With Wrath of the Lich King arriving last week it only made sense to jump into the new content “Lich King” style. Although we had initially reacted to the beta, playing the final content was much more fun with all of our guild and friends to play along.

It only took a few hours to get my new Death Knight to level-58 beyond the starting area and into the real world of Azeroth. Upon reaching the main city (Ogrammar as we’re horde) I picked up two new professions to make me a bit of dime: mining and skinning. This is where the beauty of the Death Knight fell apart…

A level-58 character has a few options open for exploration with the Burning Crusade content being the most desirable starting point. However, quickly it became apparent that my professions of mining and skinning were useless in Hellfire and other Burning Crusade areas. Why? Professions start with a value of 1. The last expansion requires your professions to be roughly 300 before you can utilize them.

My level-58 Death Knight has no experience in the ways of skinning and mining, what has he been doing all his life? Apparently killing innocent people in small villages throughout the Eastern Plaguelands. My anticipation with leveling my Death Knight died knowing I’d spend the next few days hunting mines and killing animals as if I where a level-10 toon.

There I was, a high level character trolling Crossroads and Thousand Needles hunting for copper and tin and skinning all the low level creatures I could find. Why didn’t Blizzard consider this when they allow you to create a level-55 character on day one? If we don’t go off and grind our way to a profession level of 300 we might as well not even pick professions at all.

I was not alone in these findings, along my path I found several Death Knights with skinning knives and mining tools looking for open opportunities to cut into the earth or the dead animals skins all around them. Sure, we can kill a cat in seconds flat but the “grind” is what we wanted to avoid, this is what characters spend their first twenty levels doing!

After three sessions of mind numbing grinding I’ve managed to reach a skill of 340 in skinning and coming upon 200 in mining. Mining is still too low for high level game content so I must whisk myself away to noobville every so often to catch a few mythril nodes and pray for a gold deposit along the way.

This may not be a bug in the Wrath of Lich King expansion but it sure is an annoying design flaw.

Read MoreRead More