Mr. Tact wrote on Oct 7, 2010, 11:42:
Here's a thought for you...

How many people are working at Blizzard who have been there since before WoW was released (Nov. 2004) and are not independently wealthy? I'll bet the answer is dozens if not 100s. That would annoy the living hell out of me, especially with an idiot like Kotick making over $100M in exercised options this year...

Well if it's like the rest of America it has made a dozen odd people extremely rich and the rest of the companies hundreds of employees are still making $30k a year working 10 hour days.

:p


On topic I just recently went back and am having a lot of fun (after 2.5 years away). I am not in beta but have tested 4.01 extensively and am super psyched for it's release. Though I'm a bit worried about a cookie cutter talent build issue becoming even worse.

As to the numbers being wrong I don't think they are. On my server at least the population has easily doubled since I've returned and there are new guilds recruiting every single day. The streets of Dalaran and Stormwind are so packed it takes a few minutes for everything to pop in when I login. My friends on play on the server moved to it about a year ago when it was new and they are now really worried that the population is so high they are afraid when Cataclysm hits it'll have a login queue, and they are probably right.

Mind the game certainly is piquing. I think a lot of people are returning after some years away like I am, certainly part of the reason the game had a million more players. Mind that's a million more players over 2 years. When previously the game was gaining at least that every year, and when the game went from vanilla to BC it jumped from 4 to 8 million players that year alone. I wouldn't doubt if they'll announce 13, perhaps 14 after Cataclysm hits but I don't see it ever getting much higher.. and clearly they aren't going to make an announcement when subscriber numbers dip.

This comment was edited on Oct 7, 2010, 18:30.