World of Warcraft Teaser

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Phryxus

Guest
As I posted in the shoutbox, I decided when I was in town today to go and buy the retail copy and a 60-day gamecard so I could just jump right in and party on with you WoW guys. However, the folks at Blizzard seemed determined to stop me in my tracks, giving me two Disc 3s instead of the normally accepted transition from 1 to 5 (it wasn't hiding anywhere else either), so i'm not going to be able to play until I take it back and get a proper set of install discs. A shame really, but i'll be up and running again in no time to help The Haven Guild out as an Undead Rogue - hopefully without having to take back another factory sealed copy.
 
Ronin Storm

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
If you know someone with the install discs you can borrow theirs and just use your key, of course.
 
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Phryxus

Guest
That's a fair suggestion Ronin, and Thatbloke PMed me with a similar solution as well. The only thing is though, I went out and bought the box set - which I would expect to have the correct contents - and what I have in reality is a faulty/missing product, so on principle i'll want to exchange it for a real one. If I use the CD-Key, I can't very well take it back and ask for a new copy because i'm pretty much using the old one (albeit not the discs) it also means that i'll have to download the client because I don't know anyone that has WoW discs making for loads of spent time and hassle that going out and buying the thing is meant to fix. It doesn't matter too much though because I was going to go back into town on Wednesday so I won't be making a trip just for taking back WoW - should be up and running in a few days.
 
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LynxGB

Guest
who plays a game you have to play to keep playing - nutters -
 
SgtFury

SgtFury

Junior Administrator
Staff member
hmm lets see a game which gets more content in bitesize chunks that we pay for.... sounds like BF2 to me :)
 
Ronin Storm

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
The three most expensive things you might ever want to include in a game?

  1. Content
  2. Content
  3. Content

Yes, content. MMOs (indeed many games across game types) are all about content, keeping it balanced, keeping new stuff coming. Games you pay a fixed fee for have fixed content. MMOs are constantly injected with new content. Your monthly fee means you get a large majority of this new content included, remembering that the box price on an MMO is often half that of a standard game and includes the first month's play in the box. It can be 3 months down the line before you even rack up the same cost as an off-the-shelf shooter... and you're still getting new content.

Blizzard is really good at including new content on a regular basis, releasing major patches around every six weeks that often add new armour, new dungeons, new creatures, new world events and so on. It's only for the huge expansions (see: The Burning Crusade) that they charge an extra fee for, and even there it's a one-off half-price box purchase.

Content is cripplingly expensive to produce. In comparison, game engines are pocket money at maybe $250K a shot (that's the rough cost of the Unreal 2 engine, IIRC...). Game design media are currently hot on the topic of player-generated content as long as someone can decide who owns the creations...
 
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