David Whyld

I've had a subscription for WoW ever since I started playing it back in late 2006. I've tried most of the other MMOs out there at one time or another, but LoTRO is the only one other than WoW that I've kept an active subscription to for more than a few months, though I've let my subscription lapse a time or two over the years.

I was subscribed to Rift at one point but it's too much like playing a poor man's WoW for my liking, and as I can play the real thing, why would I want to settle for its pale shadow?

I also had a subscription for AoC for a while but didn't like the class I'd picked and couldn't bear the agony of running through the deathly dull starting area again. Seriously, a single starting area?

@Deadalon How do you figure that out? The game is going into open beta very, very soon which implies a release date in 4-5 months tops, maybe even sooner. Do you really see it staying in open beta for the best part of a year? Or, more likely, do you just like posting negative things about WoW and jump at every opportunity you can to badmouth the game?

I don't see it being a raid boss because

a) They're on a 1 week timer which significantly cuts down the amount of times they can be killed.

b) Not everyone raids.

I also doubt it's a 5 man boss, and certainly not Rivendare because the other bosses before him need to be killed first.

I'd go with the enemy boss in Alterac Valley who has been in place since Alterac Valley launched many moons ago, has to be killed in pretty much Alterac Valley and can be killed multiple times a day. Even allowing for the fact that only the Alliance can kill the Horde boss and only the Horde can kill the Alliance boss, the sheer amount of times they've been killed must outweigh all the raid bosses in the game.

@Seare 1.7 million subscribers at the last count. Though I suspect that once the figures for after the first free month are counted, that 1.7 will have dropped somewhat.

I don't have any proper comment to make to all that, just... there's really a place in America called Bald Knob?

Re account-wide achievements: how does this work for reputation achievements? My main has the Exalted title and has 50 reps at exalted. Does this mean all my alts will get the same title? What happens to their rep with all the various factions - do they automatically hit exalted or do they only get the title?

I think Blizzard once stated that only 3% of the playerbase ever cleared Naxx, so that less than 1% managing to kill a single boss is likely a figure just made up on the spot to try and get a point across.

So it's sold 2 million copies but has 1.7 million subscribers? I can't decide if that's good or bad. Have 300,000 people quit already or do the figures mean somethine else?

@Warsyde You're saying SWTOR does that based on, what, the 3 and a bit weeks since it was released? Let's see how fast new content patches are coming in 7 years, shall we?

@Verus You're assuming everyone has cleared all the current content and is sitting around with nothing to do. I haven't. Neither has the majority of the playerbase. I still have plenty of content I need to get finished before MoP comes out.

Assuming it's out in 5-6 months, with another patch prior to that ushering in the new changes, that doesn't seem so long to wait.