Blizzard Entertainment announced Tuesday that its massively multiplayer online role playing game World of Warcraft has surpassed two million paying subscribers worldwide.
The game is available for Mac OS X and Windows and has been launched in North America, Korea, New Zealand, Australia and Europe. Based on Blizzard’s legendary Warcraft strategy game series, World of Warcraft puts players in the roles of heroes who represent the different races that populate the fantasy world of Azeroth, a war-torn land that has been savaged by the never-ending conflict between the forces of The Horde and The Alliance.
You choose the gender, profession and talents of your particular hero, then slowly increase their skills and abilities as you gain experience. Completing tasks and special quests will yield more experience and special treasures or other objects.
Blizzard has constantly improved World of Warcraft since its initial release in 2004, adding new features and capabilities. Most recently, the company introduced Battlegrounds — two areas where players of the game can participate in large-scale Player Vs. Player (PvP) battles, reaping rewards if they’re successful.
In related news, Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft has launched in China. The company has been beta-testing World of Warcraft in China already, where Blizzard saw a record peak concurrency of 500,000 simultaneous users — nearly equal to its peak concurrency in its other markets combined. Later in 2005, Blizzard plans to launch World of Warcraft in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
For more details about World of Warcraft, please read Macworld’s review.
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