Despite the two expansion sets that came out so far - The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft is aging. Nevertheless, it remains the world's largest MMORPG when it comes to its user base, with almost 11 million subscribers. As it usually happens with such epic games, players start dropping it at a certain time, looking for something new. The interesting part is that most of those who migrated from WoW to Warhammer Online returned to Blizzard's masterpiece.

In an interview with GamesIndustry, Paul Sams said there's nothing out of ordinary with these people leaving WoW and then getting back to it, since everything follows the pattern of any major MMO - "We've certainly had some of that happen, which is the same thing we experienced with Age of Conan and each time an MMO has come out we've seen some amount of reduction of use."<-125x125 Button - right->

Now, here's the good part - "The good news is that we've seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving - they've already returned."

Until Warhammer Online reaches the user base WoW has - if this ever happens - a lot of time must pass, I guess. For now, they are plagued with registration troubles and server troubles, and the number of registered users is getting closer to the 800,000 mark.

This is it, boys and girls, so if you left World of Warcraft for Warhammer Online, and would like to share your thoughts with us, don't be shy and step forward. We're waiting for your confessions!

You know what's probably one of my greatest regrets related to computer gaming? It's not the fact that - as most of my friends - I can't find enough time for gaming lately. It seems those theories saying that days are getting shorter as time goes by are true, but even if a day in 2010 would last 10 "1995 minutes," my problem remains - I missed playing the first game fantasy real-time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment when it arrived on the market!

The game I am talking about is Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and my regrets are related to the fact that I only got to see it after playing Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness like a madman. Obviously, the encounter was ruined, especially because there's a huge difference when it comes to graphics between the two games.

Now, let's leave my regrets aside and talk about Blizzard's Mike Morhaime opinion regarding new MMOs that try to conquer this huge online gaming market. <-250x250 Square - right->Basically, it's the fact that everyone underestimates the huge logistics effort that comes with such a game, and even Blizzard Entertainment did it - "I think everyone who hasn't done it will probably underestimate the logistics behind it - we certainly did," said Morhaime.

"You focus on the things you are used to but you don't necessarily realize how difficult it is to scale up quickly and with an MMO you have to factor in providing 24/7 customer service, multiple languages... and that's not just hiring all those people to do customer service because internally within the organization you still have to support your employees and that's a whole lot of management infrastructure that doesn't exist before the launch." Oh, yeah, I fully agree with that. In the end, we're talking about an industry here, and not a game you make for your friends, gets uploaded to some freebies site, and an additional 100-1000 people start to play it.

Regarding their own World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment claims that, after  Wrath of the Lich King, gamers will have to wait more than a year until the next update. According to the same Mike Morhaime, "The next one I think it is still unlikely that we're going to get it down to a calendar year. We're going to continue to try and decrease that but really the content of the expansion is more important and I think you guys are going to find with Wrath of the Lich King that it's going to be worth the wait."

Well, if the big ones have to spend so much time for updating an existing product...what about the little ones? I think we should respect at least the effort of some new companies trying to enter this MMO world, because it seems the path to success is longer and harder to finish than most of us would imagine...

As you probably know already, if you subscribed to our news by email, or you're simply checking back from time to time, I managed to stay away from World of Warcraft until now, at least as a gamer. Anyway, with each new update, I get drawn more and more to this game, especially since I got to know a lot about it, only from my beer chats with friends, not to mention online sources, and the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, looks really interesting, despite the fact it's going to be released on a 13th...

Yes, you heard that right - the Wrath of the Lich King release date is no longer something to guess, because it has been officially announced that the game "will be in stores on November 13 in North America, Europe, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Russia, and on November 14 in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. The expansion will be available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 18, and the launch timing for China will be announced at a later date."

The best part of it all is that, apart from the standard package, a special one will also be available, as the official site says - "Wrath of the Lich King will be available in both a standard edition and a special Collector's Edition (in select areas). <-250x250 Square - right->The Collector's Edition will contain an art book, behind-the-scenes DVD, exclusive in-game pet, and more."

I hope you weren't hoping to get out of this only with the Wrath of the Lich King release date, so here you have the features:

* Master the necromantic powers of the Death Knight - World of Warcraft's first Hero class.
* Quest to level 80, gaining potent new abilities and talents along the way.
* Learn the craft of spell augmentation with the new Inscription profession.
* Brave the harsh new continent of Northrend, the icy domain of the Lich King.
* Engage in epic siege warfare, deploying mighty siege engines to lay waste to destructible buildings in your path.
* Transform your hero's look with new character-customization options, including new hairstyles and dances.
* Explore perilous new dungeons filled with some of the deadliest creatures -- and greatest treasures -- on Azeroth.
* And much, much more...

Dances? I love dances! If you're not into WoW yet, just check the Archlord Emotes article, that could be a good game for you to start with into the MMORPG world, especially since it's free to download and play. Now, one more thing - if you want to check the details about the Collector's Edition, but especially if you want to pre-order it, go ahead and click the link above to visit the official page, it's going to worth your time, believe me!

If you're looking for video game statistics, you have a lot of chances to grow old going through all the interesting stuff you're going to find, believe me! A few days ago, we were talking about a very important question - "Are Video Games Harmful?," and after laughing a little when seeing the results of those studies we talked about back then, now we're getting really serious, because it's all about money. To be more accurate, we're going to talk about US games sales data released by NPD for the month of July, 2008. Ready or not, here we go...


Since it's all about the numbers, then let's see the video game statistics for July, shall we? Here they are...

1. NCAA Football 2009 (360): 398,000
2. Wii Fit (Wii): 370,000
3. Guitar Hero: On Tour (DS): 310,000
4. Wii Play (Wii): 284,000<-125x125 Button - right->
5. NCAA Football 2009 (PS3): 243,000
6. Soul Calibur IV (360): 219,000
7. Mario Kart Wii (Wii): 175,000
8. Rock Band (Wii): 166,000
9. Soul Calibur IV (PS3): 156,000
10. Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (360): 148,000

Even more, when talking about the video game statistics for July, we should also remember that sales topped the $591 million mark, a 41 percent increase over last year's same period. The sales for 2008 so far got really near to the $5 billion mark, but didn't manage to reach it before July's end.

Other than the above, I think the numbers speak for themselves. After all, it's sales that push game series forward or into oblivion. I am sure most of us remember at least one or two great game series that were discontinued simply because they didn't arrive at the right time, in the right place, and the public wasn't ready for them yet...

Less than a day ago, Codemasters' free-to-play MMORPG, Archlord, just got a new free expansion! This takes us into the "third season," since the expansion is called "Episode 3: Spirits Awakening." Since there's not much else to add now, but if you're new to Archlord, maybe it would be a good idea for you to check those Archlord Emotes before anything else. After all, you gotta know how to express your feelings in the game, right?

Now, let's see what's new in this third expansion for this MMORPG, shall we?

"Episode 3: Spirits Awakening adds 30% new game content to the existing game including three extensive new zones and over 80 new skills and abilities. <-180x150 Small Rectangle - right->

ArchLord Episode 3: Spirits Awakening adds a number of new features and free game content including:

Expanded world – 30% all-new game content
All-new zones – 3 new zones for players to explore
New class skills – Over 80 new skills
ArchLord abilities – New ruling ArchLord skills and abilities
New armour & items – New collectible armour sets with unique stats
New monsters & enemies – New monsters and zone bosses

Available now, Episode 3 is available either through an automatic patch for existing players when logging into the game or included within the full free game download on the game's official website for new players at: www.archlordgame.com"

Regarding the automatic update, you should know it takes a while, so if you have the game installed already, and didn't update it yet, you'd better start the update and go out have a pizza and a few beers. That's not what I did, but I think the beer and pizza sound better than firing up the program and going to sleep while it downloads the patch and updates the game files...

According to Ed Relf, Director of Marketing at Codemasters Online, "This is an exciting time in the ongoing development of ArchLord. ArchLord has never been more popular with almost 750,000 players now playing with this number increasing almost 20,000 new players each week! ArchLord is going from strength to strength and we are assessing the need right now to open new servers just to cope with the increased levels of demand for this great, free MMORPG."

I know Archlord didn't get high scores in the reviews published so far, but I also think there are a lot of extremely bad and boring MMORPGs, and this one doesn't go that low. After all, Archlord is my perfect MMORPG - you log in, play 10-20 minutes, finish one quest or two, then get out, since it becomes boring. ;)