True Confessions Of A Marketing Intern

The Cure To WoW Addiction

My previous post pertaining to World of Warcraft (WoW) made this appear to be the epitome of Virtual Worlds.  This is not totally the case.  While they are certainly doing a lot right, they still have room for improvement.

1. Slow Load Times: This is a common complaint for most online Virtual Worlds today.  Virtual Worlds require a lot of processing power and cutting edge graphic cards.  Slow response time can create a world of frustration for a typical WoW user (http://tiny.cc/Chtxh).  Unfortunately, this is a problem that only time and better video cards can fix.
2. Inconvenient Updates: As was stated in my previous post, one of the powers of WoW is their consistent updates.  This is a double edge sward though.  These updates are run during peak hours (on the East Coast of North America) and can cause trouble for users online at that time.  The good news is that Blizzard, the company that created WoW, is aware of this inconvenience and they are looking to reduce downtime (http://digg.com/d14X96).
3. Full Servers: When an avatar is created in WoW it is assigned a server.  If that server is full then the user can not log in.  They can move to a different server but a fee of $25 USD is attached to the move.  WoW will occasionally let users switch from a busy realm (server) to a realm which is less occupied.  In the future they may consider allowing users to switch realms for free
4. Addiction: Once again, this is both a positive and a negative.  Form a corporate perspective this is great.  WoW has become the crack of Virtual Worlds.  From a user perspective this can be devastating.  People have lost jobs, friends and relationships all due to WoW addictions.  WoW Insider has an excellent article explaining the WoW addiction and offering light counseling to anyway who may feel addicted to the game (http://tiny.cc/dVN7b)

Tags: virtual world, Virtual Worlds, World of Warcraft, WoW

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 9:33 am and is filed under Virtual Worlds, WoW - World of Warcraft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.