World of Warcraft: Game or Lame? @ MMorpgDot

Love it or loath it. There seems to be no middle ground for World of Warcraft, but with 10 trillion players I doubt Blizzard care too much. Fans of the game, or of games in general might find this editorial interesting though.

Online swords 'n' sorcery games like Ultima Online and EverQuest once settled for cult followings. But World of Warcraft—the half-game/half-community in which thousands of players cooperate and compete in the same virtual world—turned the genre on its head by luring a massive audience. The game has attracted more than 7.5 million users worldwide—most of whom pay $15 a month to play—and its success has devastated the competition. The New York Times covers Warcraft, and South Park lampooned it. It's a shame, then, that the first massive online game to break into the mainstream is so horribly flawed.

Read the editorial in full here