IGN pulled out their 2007 IGN Top 100 Games list and as usual Blizzard Games were mentioned. Starcraft made a # 11 position. Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness made #28. Diablo and its sequel were not mentioned, oddly. And … WORLD OF WARCRAFT on # 83? Serious Business … someone will get fired from IGN too, shortly. And it won’t be under pressure of Blizzard ads being pulled, but 9.3 million enraged fans worldwide flooding the comment page and crashing IGN servers. If you didn’t understand the dark humor behind that, find out at Penny Arcade
STARCRAFT
Well, considering it’s THE real-time strategy game of record, how could it not make this list? StarCraft continues to be enormously popular today, almost ten years after it was released, especially in South Korea where professional gamers make more-than-decent livings just by playing. If you haven’t experienced at least a bit of the three-way war between the Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg, you have probably been living under a rock.
The supremely compelling multiplayer is mostly due to the balance Blizzard has managed to achieve after the Brood Wars expansion and patches. Each race is distinct, a different style of play, but they don’t overpower each other in weird ways. The replay feature elevates the game to a study; like when researching old chess moves, players can examine their opponents’ strategies and confront their own weaknesses. Add in the campaign editor and you’re set for replayability leading to an addiction of an unhealthy level. Give it one more round!
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
World of Warcraft has a player population of well over nine million by Blizzard’s last count. That means that there are more player characters in the expansive world of Azeroth than there are people in Sweden. A large part of this growth is thanks to the expansion of the game into Asia, where localized versions are run on domestic servers, connecting thousands of internet cafes where players go to play the game for hours on end.
