Blizzard's World of Warcraft is one example of massively multiplayer online games or MMORPGs. It debuted in North America November 23, 2004. It was the best selling PC game of 2005 and 2006 and is near the top of the bestselling list for 2007. Today 9 million people are subscribed to World of Warcraft. Whoa. About 84% are male and 14% female according to a 2005 study by researcher Nick Yee.
WoW software consists of software that runs locally on the player’s PC and software that runs remotely on world servers.
The game client is installed locally. It decodes and displays the game world data and the user interface (UI). It receives input from the user and the remote server to update the game display. The client gets the visual information from a database stored on the user’s PC. It also retrieves sound in the form of .wav or .mp3 from the client PC. The client application is not static however. It’s automatically updated when Blizzard releases a new patch.
The launcher provides hyperlinks to new information on the Blizzard Web site. It lets a player know when a new patch is available and checks the user’s PC for viruses, hacks and cheat software.
The WoW servers are thought of as world servers or realms. A realm is a self-contained copy of the game world. There are about 200 realms in North America as well as realms in other parts of the world. Realms can be one of three types:
• Player versus environment (PvE)
• Player versus Player (PvP)
• Role playing (RP)
Characters can be created in different realms but they can’t communicate across realms unless they are in the same PvP battlegroup.
A world server is not just one server; it’s actually a collection of servers. As of 2006, Blizzard had about 9000 servers worldwide!
The authentication server handles logins to the WoW. It verifies a player’s name and password before transferring the player to his last location. Everything about a character is stored in a database which is tied to a WoW account.
The volatile information or information that changes during game play is communicated between the servers and the game client via the Internet. The figure illustrates some of the interaction (there's plenty more!). When there's a lot of communication (like when there are many players interacting/fighting at one location) an individual player may experience lag – a delay until their information is updated.
