i'm sorry...but i think terrorism is more important; yet another sign of government playing Big Brother... -_-

Where is the article? I want to read the entire article and not just a portion of it. I have searched for it but have not been successful in finding it.

lol, Age of Conan. don't make me laugh

Curse webmaster: Modify your news page so that there is a direct link to the article!

This is bad...what happened with the right to pursue happiness?(even if it's online...)

Fixed. :)

ehh neither one of those are competition for wow...by the time they do get a following WotLK will pop and bring them runnin back. well the rogue pop will stay with wow when they find out they can't stealth and actually have to fight lol..wows biggest competitor will be Starcraft 2 so no worries here

17 hours a week? Please, I can knock that out out in a day. Any hardcore raider should be getting about 4-5 a day. And since the game is about progressing, wouldn't the average player be a raider? Just a thought.

um. yea WoW wont be put out of business ever. nor will it stop. blizzard first of all wouldnt allow such a thing seeing as how they have sooo much $, they'll hire the best lawyer in the world and take it to court. which will make the judge laugh. the arguement will most likely be free will. which all of the WoW players have, and if they are paying for it and decide to keep paying for it, then so be it. its no ones problem except the people that are salty because they didnt create such a perfet game. and they arent getting rich off it. so they can keep hatin and keep tryin but they will always lose. no worries. plus think about it, all the riots and terrible things people will do...its really just not worth it.

Age of Conan as a contender is funny, as it's more likely to be on the same tier as City of Heros/Villains as far as fanbase goes... and Warhammer, maybe, but it could easily flop like LotRO kind of did, even though the fanbase is huge.

As for the rest of the article.. eh, those wacky brits.

Honestly, nothing is going to dethrone WoW for a long time.

The reason WoW has such a mass appeal is because of three factors:

1. Very low system requirements. Pretty much anyone with a computer made in the last 5+ years can run WoW just fine.

2. It's easy. Theres no death penalty (except a bit of armor dammage), players cant loot you, and you get to choose PvP or PvE servers. Death is pretty much a minor inconvenience. Back in the days of EQ and other games, if you died it would often take hours to make up for the experience loss, or items stolen by other players. Made the game more interesting because you put a lot more thought into your actions.

3. A well built time-sink that is "End-Game". Once you hit max level, Blizzard designed it specifically to take about as long to get your T6 as it did to get to 70 in the first place.

If anyone is ever going to dethrone WoW, theyre going to have to make a game that anyone can run fine, and has nothing to discourage the player (such as death penalties). It's not about appealing to the MMORPG fans, its about appealing to everyone who can afford $15 a month.

AoC may completely flop - it's awfully premature to declare that it will even contend with WoW, much less really challenge it. WAR is another matter, but it's going to have to be truly phenomenal to grab anything near the sort of playerbase WoW has.

What articles like this don't seem to grasp is that WoW didn't come on the scene and just grab market share from existing MMOs. It did that, and then proceeded to create millions upon millions of brand new MMO players, completely redefining the playing field. WoW isn't just part of the MMO marketplace, it is the MMO marketplace.

WAR, especially, is at risk from looking too much like WoW. Yes, yes, we all know Warhammer is a storied and ancient setting, but just like with Starcraft, Blizzard has been particularly adept at borrowing heavily from Games Workshop properties and making them into their own household names, while GW scrambles to catch up.

The designers and developers of these and other new games should humbly thank Blizzard for creating such a wonderful new source of customers for them, since for the foreseeable future, all MMOs will be judged in relation to WoW, and most likely found lacking.

I personally am going to attempt to give up WoW for WAR, I'm just bored with wow now, my played time has gone down from what as 60-100 hours a week to 10-30 for the past few months.
TBC Really ruined it. I'm hoping WAR will be a good new game to get addicted to. :P

Do you really think all 9.3 million subscribers are raiders?

There are alot of casuals, and while I'm not one of them in the amount of time playing, I do recognize their existance and numbers.

your #3 aint working out right now.

I'll agree on the 2 first, but with arena seasons you would be silly to still claim #3.

Right now, though, arena is messing up alot of aspects of their game. Internal clas balances, enticement for people to raid at all (get better loot from not raiding) and so on.

Things ARE going dowhill for WoW, and while things were more stale before TBC, I don't really see TBC as a sucessful expansion overall. It had too negative an impact on alot amount of raiding guilds in the lower end spectrum to the middle end. If Blizz doesn't start catering better to this area, those guilds will find more interesting pastures to go to. Pastures where they too can eat rather than just stare at all the grass...

Wow, an intelligent post for once on this matter.

I def. have to say that people need to stop trying to define themselves as better then wow, and just accept the fact the only way to gather people from their game is to polish a better-tuned game.

WoW gained its fanbase not only because of the beautiful world it created, but also that beautiful world that does not require a behemoth of a computer to run (which AoC will) and the fact that leveling is a breeze compared to most mmo's, which will allow more casual and average players to join in and just have fun; ultimately maybe turning them into harcore MMO players.

WoW is something developers need to look at and say "wow, thats true, maybe we need to use that as well" because too many companies try to be "independent" and try their new ideas and leave the real good ones behind. But soon i believe, just like Blizzard realized, using the "tried and true" tactics makes a game amazing, especially for those people that know the gameplay their adapting to.

Oh and one more thing, if WAR has epic 40-man and etc raid dungeons, which will adhere to the hardcore players of WAR, then i may pick it up as that is the kind of player i am; and is also one of the things i fell in love with Wow for, seeing as not many MMO's (i never played EQ) have ever done from what ive played.

All i know is WoW will be known in the gaming universe for a long time, either as in the history books as the game "that once trampled the top for years" or still #1 for time to come, who knows; i dont care because WoW was a great game, but cant be it forever. (Although i wish it could :( )

There you go, if you ever noticed, Blizzard is very tactical on how they release their expansions, when they are going down they release, not when its conveinient for them. If you look at games like EQ, and others they release expansions periodically, which can create a bad pace of content due to the fact that they release them so close.

Never gonna happen thats all ima say. Bye.

at bottom of article is link to BBC, takes U direct to actual page.
not sure what fuss is about, simple journalistic trick to use inflamitory headline to get U to read, article itself clearly shows Blizz's dominance , as for legislation, so what, I don't need lil kids practicing cuss words in chat to have a good gaming experience !