World of Warcraft Tops 2M Subscribers

By Ian Bell Published June 14, 2005

World of Warcraft is the largest MMO in North America, Australia, New Zealand and Europe and with the recent announcement that the game is now available in China, the sky seems to be the limit. During the beta program in China, Blizzard saw as much as 500K players playing at a time on the Chinese game servers; more than all of the previous markets combined.

Later in the year, World of Warcraft will also launch in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

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Blizzard has kept the game fresh with new updates including their recent “Battlegrounds” add-on which is free for subscribers.

The game is not without its problems though, as customers are constantly complaining about server issues proving that World of Warcraft may be growing beyond the company’s control.

Publisher

I work with the best people in the world and get paid to play with gadgets. What's not to like?

Gaming

The Outer Worlds 2 could dodge Starfield’s biggest flaw by staying small

A moon with a face and tophat.

With Starfield, Xbox’s grip on Western RPGs has only just begun. Games like Avowed and Clockwork Revolution are courting the markets for fantasy and steampunk RPGs, but another first-party sci-fi RPG is on the horizon: The Outer Worlds 2.

Obsidian Entertainment’s smaller-scale sci-fi RPG made quite the splash when it was released in 2019, thanks to its excellent writing and the developer’s uncompromised faith in the game’s vision. Xbox Game Studios announced this follow-up in 2021 with a reveal trailer poking fun at sci-fi and game reveal tropes. We don’t know much about this upcoming game as Microsoft and Obsidian’s more immediate focus is on Avowed, but the game’s existence has come back to my attention following the release of Starfield.

Gaming

PlayStation VR2 just got 2 fun shooters, but I’m still waiting to be wowed

Key art for Firewall Ultra.

For the past six months, PlayStation VR2 players like myself have been yearning for new reasons to boot up our headsets. And after a long wait, the VR platform is getting a much-needed infusion with two brand-new titles. It’s a cause for celebration, but a mild one; neither of PSVR2's latest titles does much to revitalize my shock and awe for the platform six months into its life span.

The two games in question are the exclusive, Sony-published Firewall Ultra from First Contact Entertainment and Crossfire Sierra Squad from Smilegate. Both are realistic-looking military shooters, although they are different in execution. Firewall Ultra is a Rainbow Six Siege-style, squad-based multiplayer game, while Crossfire Sierra Squad taps more into the genre’s arcade roots to create VR shooting galleries.

Gaming

The Outer Worlds 2: release date speculation, trailer, and more

A person in a spacesuit looks out over and alien landscape in the trailer for The Outer Worlds 2.

Not to be confused with The Outer Wilds, the indie title that launched in the same year as The Outer Worlds, The Outer Worlds 2 is an upcoming sequel to the dystopian sci-fi RPG from Obsidian Entertainment, which Xbox announced during E3 2021. The original game was often referred to as a Fallout game but in space, which makes sense because Obsidian was responsible for what many consider one of the best, Fallout: New Vegas. It was a well-received game, though not without some flaws, leading many to wonder whether or not this new universe would ever come back. Many (including us) were surprised to see news about this game, and while there isn't much to go on just yet, we can make a few informed guesses on details we will get later on. For now, here's everything we know, and suspect, about The Outer Worlds 2.
Release date

The initial reveal not only didn't have a release date, but was itself a parody of teaser trailers that have little to no information in them. All we can do for now is speculate on when we think The Outer Worlds 2 will actually be ready. The Outer Worlds came out near the end of 2019, but the last chunk of DLC for the game didn't hit until the end of 2021. The best-case scenario would be that a smaller team handled the DLC while another small team got to work on preproduction on the full-fledged sequel, but it is also possible that there was a gap of time before it was actually greenlit.