Wrath of the Lich King Out Today

Wrath of the Lich King comes out today and I expect sales to be brisk. World of Warcraft continues to fend off all comers as Warhammer Online and Age of Conan both failed to dethrone the king. Actually, I don’t think either one even came close. Still, I hear rumblings that Blizzard’s projected subscriber estimate of 11 million is a paper tiger. I’d love for some industry transparency regarding monthly subscriber totals to definitively shine light on MMOs customer base. WoW is rumored to be supreme, but without actual numbers, nobody really knows for certain.

It’s interesting how much market share WoW holds. Empirically, it does the best job balancing PvE, PvP, and raiding. No other game on the market polishes each of those MMO aspects as well. And I say this as someone that hasn’t played WoW in months and doesn’t plan on picking up the expansion today or anytime soon. Despite the fact that I don’t play it, I recognize Blizzard’s quality control and the failings of the other MMOs.

I have friends who took a break from WoW, but will likely fire their subscriptions back up for WotLK. I know Requiem, my former raiding guild, has been recruiting these last weeks in anticipation of the new raiding opportunities. I’ll be interested to hear what they think of the new 10 man versus 25 man raiding instances. Requiem is a hardcore raiding guild, so I expect that they’ll entirely avoid the 10 man stuff in favor of the 25 man’s more intensive loot tables.

As for me, I’m content with Lord of the Rings Online. I haven’t played it much these last few weeks; Fallout 3 has completely dominated my gaming time. But LotRO also has an expansion coming out, Mines of Moria. It’s out next Tuesday, November 18 and offers a slew of new and interesting content, including legendary weapons. Lukenbach is still well short of the game’s current level cap of 50. I plan on taking my time, however, focusing on leveling Lukenbach to the new cap of 60 and master artisan all his trade skills. I have no short or long terms plans to raid in LotRO. For now, the journey to the cap provides plenty of gaming goodness.