InWorldz's Rise and Decline

By Bixyl Shuftan

Four and a half years ago, the future of the InWorldz virtual looked bright. It was growing in terms of both active users and regions, notably a number of residents of Second Life whom were taking an increasing interest in this other grid which while the largest of the OpenSim worlds had remained a distant second place compared to the larger and more established virtual world. Today, InWorldz is facing the end. A statement made by it's owner Beth Reischl stated due to financial troubles, the virtual world's servers would be going down Friday July 27.

So what happened? While the relationship between Linden Lab and it's customers, the residents of Second Life, has always been a little problematic, about four and a half years ago it was worse. This was the "Rod Linden" period in which aside from responding to problems, the Lindens didn't talk much to the residents aside from the occasional statement. They made a number of clumsy moves, such as the 2013 Third-Party Currency Exchanger Ban that was lifted only when there were entire communities talking about leaving Second Life for other places. A few months later was the Content Creator Terms of Service controversy in which a poorly-written change to the Terms of Service in regards to the rights of content creators that with a public already wary of Linden Lab's moves, the result was some seeing the Lab as preparing to sell the content of it's users as it's own, possibly as part of an "exit strategy" of either closing down Second Life or transforming it into a much more tightly controlled place. It's hard to saw how many believed this, but the way Linden Lab had been acting, even those less prone to panic were thinking it could happen.

And so many residents of Second Life began taking a more serious look at the second-largest virtual world around: InWorldz. Tuna Oddfellow closed down his one of a kind performance in the more established virtual world and reopened it in the second-largest. I soon found the free Wingless avatars on InWorldz, then Luskwood was offering to give SL residents on IW a copy of the avatar they purchased on the larger virtual world. The Podex third-party currency exchanger set up shop in InWorldz. While there was already a Relay for Life in InWorldz, it became much larger, an InWorldz-Second Life Connection Center to aid SL residents new to the smaller grid sprang up, there was a meeting to discuss questions about InWorldz in Second Life, and more.

With all the attention on InWorldz, it was time for the Newser to make a small change. Where we once stuck such articles in "Extra," we created a new section, "Other Grids, MMOs, and Games." We would interview the founder of InWorldz. And then there were my virtual neighbors in the Sunweaver/Angel community. Nydia took an interest in the Connection Center, and when it's founder suddenly up and closed it she helped create a new one. The Sunweavers/Angels would also get a couple sims as a "life boat" for our community just in case Linden Lab really did shut down Second Life, still spending most of our time in the established virtual world, but getting to know the new one a little. With all this attention, InWorldz soon reached a total of 100,000 accounts, and it's fifth anniversary party was a happy occasion, that of a small but growing virtual world on the rise.

It's a good question of how things would have turned out for InWorldz had Linden Lab persisted in it's 2013 third-party currency exchanger ban, and if it's blunders in 2015 such as the closing of the SS Galaxy and the near-shutdown of the Grendel's Children mall had happened a year earlier. But even as the smaller virtual world was celebrating the promise of a brighter future, things were already turning around at Linden Lab. In January 2014, Rod Humble stepped down as CEO, and in February Ebbe Altberg took his place. Linden Lab under Altberg became more talkative to people, and among the first things he announced was that the controversial changes in the Terms of Service in regards to content creators would be undone. And in July they were changed to the satisfaction of most.

With the reasons InWorldz was getting more attention now relaxed, residents in Second Life became less inclined to hop over. The Relay for Life would continue to hold events there. But overall attention fell. With Linden Lab announcing the development of their next-generation virtual world Sansar, perhaps attention that would have otherwise been paid to InWorldz by residents of Second Life was focusing there. The Newser itself would continue to pay a little attention to InWorldz, but not as much. The numbers of active users would go up and down some, then in Spring 2015 start a decline that would continue. The number of sims would spike in mid-2015, then start to decline. The decline in sim numbers was slower than the numbers of active users, though. Then InWorldz found itself facing competition not just from Second Life, but another OpenSim world. Kitely grew rapidly in just a few years to become about half InWorldz size in the number of registered users. By 2015, the two grids were about equal, and in 2017 Kitely had become the largest of the OpenSim grids. Another grid, Avination, which was a competitor for the largest OpenSpace world in their early days, was the target of theft by criminals, and then hit by a "catastrophic" data failure that led to it going under in 2017.

InWorldz itself began making some moves that raised more than a few questions. This had begun early on when in August 2013 their General Discussion forums were closed, citing an increased activity of trolling and hateful posts that was taking time and effort to moderate them away from their activities in keeping up the grid. In April 2017, they announced they would no longer publish their statistics of how many regions or active users they had. And to a number, this was a signal the grid was in decline, and the owner wasn't sure how to stop it other than hide it. Reischl was distancing InWorldz from other OpenSim worlds, insisting it wasn't really one, "InWorldz has moved on from Opensim a long time ago," and seemed to be saying she was no longer publicizing the statistics because of an "us vs them" attitude there.

In January, Hypergrid Business published an article saying merchants in InWorldz were becoming concerned about the grid's future. "...we have seen a drastic decline in sales and residents," one merchant told Hypergrid, requesting anonymity saying he was concerned about possibly being banned. An "InWorldz Chamber of Commerce" had been set up in fall 2016 "To help promote in-world commercial activity, and to collectively advocate on behalf of their interests." But their director expressed disapointment in her meetings with Reischl, Hypergrid reporting, "She said it was not her job to keep merchants or residents in InWorldz." The article also stated, "Residents have also complained on social media that the founders haven’t been paying attention to their concerns. Of the top managers, owner Reischl moved to Panama and founder and CTO David Daeschler has mostly moved on to other projects." Another resident commented that early on, "one of the best things about IW was the fact that it was so easy to talk to the founders on the forum and they actually listened to us and gave us feedback it made IW feel like a community." But now it was looking more and more like how she saw Second Life at the time she joined InWorldz.

As of the writing of this article, Reischl has launched a Gofundme that was initially stated as having the goal of trying to save InWorldz. But then after most of the money needed to reach the goal was reached, the objective changed from trying to save the grid to packing up to move to another grid. The result has been confusion and some anger, and eventually comments on the Gofundme disabled. And then donations were no longer being accepted. One complication of getting the facts about the situation is that one major source of news about InWorldz, Hypergrid Business, is not particularly liked by the virtual world's owner, "InWorldz has repeatedly complained about unfavorable coverage"

Either way, things look poor for the future of InWorldz. If the grid is saved with the intention of keeping it up, the near-shutdown will make it a challenge to do so. If instead the place is closed with it's staff forming a new Grid, they will essentially be starting all over again, along with anyone who goes with them. Not everyone wants to start all over again, even if they could take most of their things with them. One recalls the virtual world "There" which reopened a couple years after it closed, but has been a tiny shadow of it's former self. Also, not all of the content creators are happy with the idea of their goods being moved to another grid without their consent, so there is the possibility of legal action.

Where InWordz's residents go from here, judging from the comments I've read at least some will be sticking around, either in InWorldz or whatever grid takes its place. But others have expressed that from their point of view, the place they have known is finished. Where they go from here is speculation. It's a fair guess some will head to Second Life, especially those with friends and other ties there. Others will move on to Kitely, the virtual world that overtook InWorldz to be the largest OpenSim world. Perhaps some will move onto smaller OS worlds, or start their own for themselves and close friends. Some will have lost heart in virtual worlds alltogether, either taking a break before going back, or for good. And those with a lot of friends who go different directions may likely end up splitting their time between where they go, whether Second Life, another virtual world, an MMO, etc.

As a resident of Second Life whose main interest in virtual worlds has always been here, to me InWorldz was a smaller cousin of the virtual world I knew. It was place with a less of the hustle and bustle of the more established virtual world. There was less of a variety of things to buy, but I eventually found an avatar I was happy with. And if somehow Second Life went away, InWorldz would be there as a place me and my friends could continue to meet up. Now, it is going away, at best becoming something smaller and different from what we have known. It is an irony that a few years ago, a number of us were thinking Second Life was about to close down and were seeing InWorldz as our next home. Now, we watch as instead for all of our problems we are still afloat, while the place we were considering moving to is sinking. While perhaps someday there may be another virtual world that will take the place of Second Life, InWorldz isn't it.

Sources: InWorldz, Hypergrid Business, Gofundme

Bixyl Shuftan

Ten Years of World of Warcraft

By Bixyl Shuftan


This November, the most popular of Multiplayer Online Games celebrated it's tenth anniversary. It was November 2004 in which Blizzard Entertainment launched "World of Warcraft." Ten years and five expansions later, the game is still going strong.

Blizzard did not invent the Massive Online Roleplaying Game, or MORPG. The first one to achieve a hundred thousand players was Ultima Online in 1997. A couple years later, Everquest would come on the scene, which was the leading MORPG in the early 2000s, with 450,000 subscribers in September 2003. This was what Blizzard Entertainment wasup against when they were developing it's own based on it's "Warcraft" series of real-time strategy games from the 1990s and early 2000s, the last one Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne released only a year before. According to PC Gamer writer Leif Johnson, most of the development team thought they would get somewhere around 350,000 subscribers.

Imagine the surprise when they sold 240,000 copies of the game on their first day, and the numbers kept climbing. By October 2010, the game had a whopping twelve million subscribers. They weren't just the leaders of the MORPG market, they dominated it to the point that people always thought of them whenever these kinds of games were brought up. While other MMOs were continued to be developed, many were little more than clones of their far more successful competitor. People talked about who would develop the "WoW Killer," but it eventually was accepted they would be around for a very long time.

So why has World of Warcraft succeeded so well, beyond all other MORPGs? For one thing, there was the detail of the world. The forests of Ashenvale are richly detailed, with beautiful music in the background. Enter the Orcish city of Ogrimar, and you see a savage looking place with tough guards and the player hearing sounds of war drums beating. Each place was done with detail with music in the background. One could easily entertain oneself just exploring around (and get a few experience points for it).

There's also a plot and story behind the game as well. Although the original "Warcraft" had a fairly simple story of Orcs trying to conquer humans, by the time "World of Warcraft" came around, it had changed to become more complex and interesting. The Orcs had attacked because they'd become tainted from demon blood that eventually they were able to overcome. So are the Orcs sorry? Not really because they'd had to spend time in internment camps, plus some outright enslaved under the humans. Both races have a history that means an uneasy relationship at best (not unlike some peoples in real life), which has lead to the world being essentially divided between the Alliance and Horde (which those who remember the Cold War can relate to). While some races are of the classic Fantasy variety, others are unique to the game or have special tweaks. While trolls are sometimes enemies to clobber in games, in World of Warcraft you can play one. The Forsaken allowed players to take on the role of a tragic hero, died and brought back as undead, reviled by their former humans and distrusted by their allies.

The way gameplay was designed helped it catch on as well. From the very start, players could take on quests to help level, and get little perks such as a little coin and a piece of gear as a reward instead of just grind, grind, grind. World of Warcraft also introduced talents and talent trees, giving players a choice about what direction they'd like their character to take, then ask they progressed in level giving them a choice of perks. Then there were the instances, which allowed a set team of players to take on a dungeon in which everyone got a share of the loot. Raids allowed players to take on tougher dungeons for even better loot.

Character classes had some interesting perks. Priests had mind control spells that could temporarily possess an NPC and make it attack others. Druids could take on several different animal forms, each having different qualities such as bears for hitpoints or "tanking," and big cats for damage-dealing. Hunters could tame animals and use them to attack NPCs, distracting it while the hunter fired at it from a distance.

The world was not a small one, but quite large. Getting around on foot could take a while. Fortunately there were locations one could rent a flying mount to speedily fly to a location, or get a ship or zeppelin. When a player reached level 40, they could get a mount. What kind one could get depended on your character's race: wolves for Orcs, horses for humans, etc. at the maximum level of 60, one could get a faster mount.

Crafting was also an option. Players could choose two profession skills, crafting, resource gathering, or one of each: blacksmithing, alchemy, leatherworking, herb gathering, mining, and skinning. There were herbs and ores at various spots on the map, as well as skinners being able to get hides from certain killed animals. Players could make armor, or potions which either healed, gave magical energy, or gave a small bonus. They could use the goods themselves, hand to friends, or sell in the auction house along with loot they picked off dead enemies. Wearing an item would bind it to you, so after that it could only be sold to NPCs, usually for less money. There were skill levels, which one improved through doing them. The higher the skill, the better ores herbs, or leather one could gather, or better goods one could make. But the more often something was made, the less of a chance it had to raise your skill level until there came a point that particular good wouldn't raise it at all.

If clobbering monsters wasn't enough, there was the option of fighting other players. There were Player vs Player battlegrounds one could go to, join a team of your faction, and fight the opposition. There was the "capture the flag" of Warsong Gulch, the scramble for resource locations in Arathi Basin, and the charge to take the enemy camp and clobber the general in Alteric Valley. Players were awarded with marks that could be used to purchase special goods, armor and weapons, and mounts. On occasion there were speciial events, often coinciding with real-life holidays such as Children's Week, All Hallows, and the Winter Festival. Players could do activities appearing only at the event's time of the year. And on every anniversary of the game in November, active players got a little gift of some kind. For it's tenth for instance, they got a pet dog made of living lava, a "Molten Corgi" (a play on the "Molten Core" dungeon name).

There was also an element of humor. Characters had dance animations, a specific one for each race, male and female. They could also tell one of several jokes and flirts, a specific group for each race, male and female. Some examples are, "Do you ever feel like you're not in charge of your own destiny, like ... you're being controlled by some invisible hand?" "I don't mind the gnomes, but I'm always worried about tripping over one." "Ugh, I hate Thunder Bluff! You can't find a good burger anywhere." "I dabbled in gold farming, but I couldn't get the coins to sprout." They also sprinkled the world of their game with occasional pop culture references, such as a mechanical "Robot Chicken" in the town of Booty Bay, A girl at the Shimmering Flats racetrack named "Daisy" wearing shorts (or "Daisy Dukes"), the Stormwind Archeology trainer is named "Harrison Jones," a reference to actor Harrison Ford's famous character "Indiana Jones," the character John J. Keshan is a dead ringer for "Rambo," quest chain and all, and many, many others.

The result was a game with no shortage of things to do, exploring, questing, resource gathering, and team player versus player fights. Through design, story plot, and perhaps a little luck, Blizzard's team had made an MORPG that would take the gaming world by storm, getting numbers far beyond Everquest, Runescape, and other competing games of it's early days. The games that stood out were in different settings, such as the space combat "Eve Online," the sci-fi "Star Wars Galaxies," and the superhero "Champions Online." Or they didn't required subscriptions and adopted a free to play model such as Rifts.

The game has made it's way into popular culture as well. There were cartoons showing people playing the game (often hopelessly addicted). Comedians poked fun at it. Youtube showed numerous short films of both players playing the game, as well as short cartoons and films about it or poking fun about it. There were even movies, or machinima, made using World of Warcraft to play out the scenes. National and World news made stories about it's success, as well as looking at it's players. They showed both the dark side, stories of addiction, and the positive, such as people who met on the game and ended up falling in love and getting married.

Sometimes what the players did caught the design team, and everyone else, completely by surprise. Early in the game's history, the designers had a monster high level monster "infect" players fighting it with a "disease" that caused characters an amount of damage over time, one that could be passed on to others nearby. Blizzard never expected some players to respond by heading to populated areas, such as the banks and auction houses of capital towns. There they passed on the infection, causing low level players to die almost instantly. Soon they were littered with the skeletons of deceased characters. Instead of being a disaster for the game, people reacted with fascination instead. There was even a serious scientific study about the incident, the investigators wondering if this was how real people would react in a real plague.

Blizzard didn't just rest on it's laurels. They kept making small updates, and eventually in 2007 they released an expansion: "World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade." A new world was opened up to the highest level players at the time, Outland, and two new player races were made available: Draeani for the Alliance and Blood Elves for the Horde. There were also flying mounts available for those who reached the new maximum level of 70. There were new dungeons and new player versus player battlegrounds. There was also a plot that fit in with the game's story, both the Alliance and Horde taking on new allies and taking the fight with a mutual enemy back to their base of operations. For the Horde, there was also encountering Orcs that had remained uncorrupted from "The Curse," leading to a rather dramatic scene with the Warcheif. Players could now sail through the skies on personal mounts wherever they wanted to. Sales, and membership levels climbed, 2.4 million copies of the game being sold on the release day alone. Later on, seperate patches would allow players two additional challenges, taking on a fortified city of trolls hostile to both Horde and Alliance, and the former leader of the Blood Elves whom had returned not to help them but to subjugate them.

In 2008, Blizzard released it's second expansion for the game: "Wrath of the Lich King." Here, the characters had a chance to fight the undead minions of Arathas the most feared of Azeroth's villains. As a character, he had a developed background, both a prince and a paladin. But the decisions he made while fighting the undead Scourge eventually resulted in him becoming what he once fought, a death knight, then the Lich King, killing his father and his kingdom, and destroying many former allies. Players had a new continent, Northrend to adventure on. There was also a new class, the death knight, which gave players a chance to play a fallen hero on the path to redemption. In a patch released on December 2009 came the "Fall of the Lich King" raid, in which players could take part in putting an end to the great villain's rein. More players continued to sign up, and by October 2010, the game was at it's peak in subscription numbers with twelve million.

Unfortunately "Wrath" had given Blizzard a problem in addition to it's opportunity. After you've beaten the gaming world's greatest villain, what's left? Blizzard's response was the third expansion, "Cataclysm," which quite literally rewrote the face of their gaming world. In "Cata" as gamers sometimes called it, "Deathwing the Destroyer," a huge evil dragon, reappears after a period of hiding, resulting in numerous earthquakes, avalanches, floods, and volcanic activity across the two main continents. Blizzard took the opportunity to both change the landscape as well as update the quests. And so the first two continents were brought several years into the future.

Instead of a new continent, there were several new zones, one under the ocean, one under the earth, and some scattered across areas once inaccessible to players such as Mount Hyjai. Two new races were made available for players, the Worgen for the Alliance and the Goblins for the Horde. In the plot, both were from areas among the most affected by Deathwing's appearance, and forced to choose a side in the Azerothian conflict, which was heating up as the Horde's Shamanistic Warchief Thrall stepped down to personally help put down the evil dragon and Garosh Hellscream took his place. Hellscream, whom first appeared in "Crusade" and was the leader of one of the Horde forces in "Wrath," saw little need to negotiate for what could be taken by force, and was more eager for battle with the humans, whom he despised, and their allies.

The appearance of the bestial-looking Worgen drew cheers from some gamers who felt it was now "cool" to be an Alliance player. They had previously seen the Alliance races as a little too mundane, made of up in the words of one "Humans, tree-huggers (elves), and short guys (dwarves and gnomes)," while the nonhuman races of the Horde were much more different. So some players whom had either passed up Alliance characters or gave them no more than a short look out of curiosity began playing then as its werewolves (writer's note: this was the time when I saw most of my Second Life friends playing World of Warcraft).

Players could now level to rank 85. Some character classes that were closed to certain races were open to a few more, such as druids for trolls, hunters for undead, and Paladins for Tauren. More dungeons and PvP battlegrounds were introduced. The Archeology skill was introduced, giving players a chance to learn some tidbits about the world's history, and dig up an occasional interesting toy or powerful piece of equipment. Also introduced was the "Darkmoon Faire," which gave players a chance to boost some profession skills a little.

Despite the new content however, subscriptions soon began to drop. Although the release of the expansion in December 2010 boosted numbers that had sagged to 11.4 million back to 12 million, they soon began to drop again. By the time of the "Hour of Twilight" patch released in November 2011 in which players could take part in the final confrontation with Deathwing, numbers had fallen to just over ten million. By August 2012, numbers had dropped further to 9.4 million. Different people had different explanations as to why numbers were falling. Gamepro for instance simultaneously called "Cataclysm" "much improved in terms of its overall design," and "not quite as impressive as previous designs." PC Gamer felt as a villain Deathwing just didn't have the appeal Arthis did, lacking the tragic background and being so larger than life due to his sheer size.

In September 2012 came World of Warcraft's fourth expansion "The Mists of Pandaria." To begin with, the panda-like Pandaren were originally an April Fools joke on the game's official website. But the response from the players was cheers rather than jeers. So the Blizzard team introduced them as a playable race. But unlike others, these characters would start out as unaligned until near the end of their beginning quests in which they would choose a side. In the plotline, the continent of Pandaria had been hidden from the rest of Azeroth until mists surrounding it were suddenly lifted. And the warring factions landed on it's shores, looking for resources and allies. Further patches had the plotline show the Horde's warchief Hellscream becoming more ruthless, escalating the war with the Alliance and alienating his allies in the Horde. Eventually the other factions in the Horde rebel against him and join with the Alliance in toppling him.

In addition to the new race, there was a new class introduced: the monk. Pet Battles were also introduced, and the companion animals players collected over time were now more than just collectibles, but could be used for activities. Also introduced were scenarios in which three player teams cooperated in carrying out objectives. Often in an event in the game's history such as the destruction of Thermadore or thwarting the attempted assassination of Vo'jin by a minion of Hellscream. The talent trees were replaced with a tierd system, awarding players a talent about every 15 levels. The level cap was raised to 90. Top level players could farm food needed for cooking.

While subscriptions went up temporarily, again it didn't last. Once again, they began to fall. By June 2014, subscriptions had fallen to about 6.8 million players. While still far more than other MMOs, the game had a little more than half the numbers of it's peak. Different people had different explanations. Some thought WoW had softened the edge of the game a bit, calling the Pandaren too cartoonish and the Pet Battles too much like a kid's game of "Pokemon."  The idea of the "Sha," manefestations of negative energy, as enemies was also ridiculed. Hellscream's tyrannical ways in the plot was also dispiriting to some Horde players. Despite the showdown at the end, many players felt Pandaria was just too "Cheerful" compared to other expansions.

As the numbers plummeted, more people began to wonder if Blizzard had somehow lost it's edge. While no one was predicting the game to be shut down anytime soon, some thought the day would soon come that it would no longer dominate the MORPG field like it once did, but just had slightly higher numbers than the others, or even falling behind one or more of the competition. There were calls by some, such as Hamlet Au of New World Notes, that Blizzard needed to abandon it's "Pay to play" subscription model and adopt "Free to Play," in the words of one, "This is a dinosaur that refuses to die out."

With some predicting Blizzard's next expansion would either rejuvenate the game or witness it's slide into commonness, "Warlords of Draenor" came on the scene in November 2014. In the plotline, the former Horde tyrant Hellscream is about to be tried for war crimes, but is freed and sent back in time to Draenor to stop the demonic corruption of the Orcish clans. The result is an alternate timeline with Draenoe's orc clans united under Hellscream's "Iron Horde" and bent on conquest, not just Draenoe but Azeroth as well. Players join heroes of the Alliance and Horde in storming the portal, and setting up a base of operations to put a stop to Hellscream once and for all.

"Warlords" was in a way a return to the past for the players. They would be up against noted characters from the days of the "Warcraft" games preceding the MORPG. For this, players have a new world to fight on: Draenor, which is far different from the Outland of "Crusade." One big feature of the expansion is the player's Garrison, which serves as a center of operations. Players can recruit followers which can be sent on missions to gain experience, gold, and resources (making players quest-givers as well as takers). Player caps were raised to 100.

One feature was developed even before "Warlords" came on the scene: new character models. All races except for the Worgen, Goblins, and Pandaren have been given a graphical upgrade, looking sharper and more defined. The Darkmoon Faire was done away with. There was also a readjustment in the numbers of hitpoints and damage inflicted by higher level players and NPCs. A few player abilities were done away with to keep the game from being too complicated.

The immediate result surprised just about everyone, Blizzard included. Over three million additional people signed up for the game, and World of Warcraft was back to ten million subscribers. Clearly, there was still interest in the decade old MORPG, which also celebrated its tenth anniversary that month.

There have been other changes in the game over time. For instance in the original game, Hunters had to keep food in their inventory to feed their pets, otherwise it would become unhappy, and if unhappy for too long it would run away. Later things were changed so pets didn't run away even if unhappy. Then came more changes so players no longer had to feed their pets, unless they were badly hurt. Hunters also used to be able to wield melee weapons in addition to their ranged ones, but that feature was done away with. Rouges once had to mix their own poisons, by getting ingredients and flasks, with a poison-making level that was raised not unlike the alchemy skill. Later the poison making ability for rouges was done away with, replaced by vendors selling the completed poisons. Today, all but lower level rouges automatically carry some poisons, the variety depending on the level. And then there are the mounts. It used to take a player a long time to be able to get one, Level 40. Then the level required was lowered to 30. After while, it was lowered yet again to Level 20, with players about to get fast mounts at Level 40. the locations for items or actions needed for quests are now visible on the map instead of players having to figure them out themselves.

Some players feel these changes have left the game a shadow of it's former self, that it isn't as good as it used to be, players able to travel faster and finish quests faster. There have been bootlegged private servers which offer players the original World of Warcraft experience. But the game's performance speaks for itself.

As it turns out, I've read that the World of Warcraft design team might not that be as concerned about numbers as some might think. One writer talking to them came away with the conclusion they were concentrating not on how many would play but just trying to make a great game. "On a daily basis, nobody's spending a lot of time paying attention to subscriber numbers," one designer was quoted as saying.

From a personal point of view, I can't help but wonder if many of the current subscribers are not from the recent past. the majority of my Second Life friends, as well as my real life friends, no longer play the game. So perhaps many of current numbers are playing for the first time or played in the past and took a break for a few years. The people whom first talked me into playing are gone as well. I took a break myself for a while, I may do so again.

So what's the future of the game? Had the game dwindled down to numbers comparable to other MORPGs, it would still have a legacy as being the trendsetter of it's genere of games. But it didn't. Ten years after people first signed up for it, it still dominates the field, and with ten million gamers, it will almost certainly be a force in the gaming world for some time to come. It could very well be around in another ten years, by which time there will be people playing it whom weren't even born yet at it's beginings.

And the next expansion? So far Blizzard isn't talking. So in the meantime. we might as well go "For the Horde!" or "For the Alliance!" and go to whatever journey that guy with the yellow exclamation point over his head put us on.

Sources: WoWWiki,  PCGamer, SL Newser

Bixyl Shuftan.