[Digital Simplicity] Why Korean Gamers Prefer the Largest World of Warcraft Server

Blizzard was making a lot of preparations for the launch of Shadowlands on November 24th. This is the eighth expansion pack of the large multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. However, we did not see a strange mini-boom in South Korea.

Before moving on to the big question of why expansion is now a hot topic in town among middle-aged gamers here, let’s explain the basic facts. Every time Blizzard announced a new episode of WoW, many players returned to the game, causing a log jam on the company’s servers.

This time, players will have to wait at least two hours during peak evening hours to access the crowded Azshara server. This server is WoW, which is equivalent to the capital city of Seoul, which is the largest city that attracts visitors from all over the country. More than 3 out of 4 WoW players are registered on the Azshara server, but other “countryside” servers are facing a rapidly declining population.

Imbalances have long been a headache for Blizzard. Blizzard failed to reach the underlying thinking of Korean gamers. This is very similar to real life.

Seoul is a big city, but it’s not big enough to accommodate everyone who wants to enter the social, economic and cultural center of the country. Soaring home prices have led to many real estate policy changes, primarily aimed at imposing high taxes on those who buy homes in popular areas of Seoul. Still, it was not possible to move Seoul citizens to other less populated cities. This is because the advantages of living in Seoul outweigh the disadvantages of taxation.

Of course, WoW does not provide permanent cyber housing or set up apartments. So why does the Azshara server have to wait two hours in line for gamers to play Shadowlands?

The answer has to do with reducing free time for RPG gamers. Most RPG gamers are in their 30s or older. WoW is a traditional MMORPG. This means players will have to spend hours teaming up with other guild members to defeat new enemies. For many gamers today, such requirements are very stringent.

The only possible way is to pursue extreme efficiency. WoW and other RPG gamers in South Korea tend to prioritize speed and perfection. Since they play for a limited amount of time, mostly hours a day, slow-paced games are widely shunned and those who make many mistakes are ignored or on the sidelines.

So it’s hard to see many WoW players here always running somewhere, performing quests without reading instructions, and buying top-notch weapons with in-game gold earned in real cash. It’s not that.

The overcrowded Azshara server is the perfect place for such a hasty player, as it’s easy to get the items you need and organize your team for heroic and mythical assaults. Its in-game economy is bigger than any other server, which means more people will spend less time recruiting team members.

Against this background, for many Korean WoW gamers, the ultimate goal is to conquer new monsters at the fastest possible pace. It’s understandable that they have already overcome many obstacles to playing MMORPGs, such as getting permission from a skeptical spouse, and you shouldn’t waste your limited time.

In an era when mobility is paramount, turning on a desktop computer to play games can be tedious and time consuming. WoW, a leading PC-based MMORPG, realizes that it doesn’t have enough time to play WoW and instead moves to fast-paced games such as League of Legends and Pay-to-Win Mobile, so the population I have been facing a decline for a long time. game.

Many Korean WoW gamers tend to pursue speed and efficiency to extreme levels, but at least in South Korea, where the value of speed is very important, this cannot be reversed. Therefore, Blizzard needs to do something against the overcrowded Azshara server. That way, you can log in and go fishing, or collect battle pets at a relaxed pace. This is a brutal competition.

Yang Sung Jin ([email protected])

Yang Sung Jin is a multimedia editor for The Korea Herald. -Ed.