Well... I did it, i quit wow cold turkey

[kandrathe]

They were in one of the RTS games as well. There was a unit called the brewmaster. That, has very little in common with the cutesified version that ended up as the race in Pandaren.

You are done. I get it. Why you gotta be hatin'?

WOW fleshed out many aspects of the Warcraft III RTS experience -- they brought in artists -- story crafters to develop lore -- sewed it into the Warcraft universe. It's a friggin' game, not an Ode to Charlemagne. The RTS was also semi-comic (try poking the mobs) -- I don't think they've strayed too far from the genre of the RTS.

Actually, as a game -- I'm really amazed by it's longevity, complexity and flexibility. How many characters are there in WOW? How many players worldwide? About 10 million, down a couple million from their peak. Are they hurting? No. Since the launch of DIII they've hit 10 million players on DIII -- and that is a game with much more limited replayability. With MOP, a whole new group of players will get hooked -- who knows how big -- who knows for how long.

In comparison, Lineage peaked at 3 million in 2004, and Aion spiked up to 4 until 2010. Most of the rest of the MMO world hobbles along under a million active accounts worldwide.

How many items are stored in their database? "Blizzard utilizes 20,000 computer systems, 1.3 petabytes of storage, and more than 4,600 people to operate World of Warcraft." Here is some 2009 data. Is there another such large and complex game system on the planet?

So... you don't like cute -- I imagine for every one of you, there are 10,000 teen aged "Hello Kitty" girls in Asia who'd love to play a cuddly Pandaren. There are evil and sinister parts of this game too, where we can go and feel like men. The market is broader than yours or my tastes. If you can't tolerate the cuteness hanging around the auction house, then you did the right thing.

Can we be done with the sour grapes now?