Warcraft
In 2004, Blizzard Entertainment moved the series away from the real-time strategy genre and released "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Requiring a subscription fee to be paid to play, it also introduced regular additional content to the series in the form of patches. "World of Warcraft" gained popularity worldwide, becoming the world's largest subscription-based MMORPG in 2008. The game reached a peak 12 million subscribers worldwide in October 2010. "World of Warcraft" has had seven expansions as of 2018. During the production of "", Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce stated that "If there's a team that's passionate about doing another "Warcraft" [real-time strategy], then that's definitely something we would consider. It's nothing that we're working on right now, we have development teams working on "", "", "Diablo III", and when those teams are all off the projects they're working on, they'll be intimately involved in the discussions about what's next".
World of Warcraft
The "World of Warcraft" launcher (referred to in press releases and the menu bar as the "Blizzard Launcher") is a program designed to act as a starting point for "World of Warcraft" players. It provides a way to launch "World of Warcraft" and starts the Blizzard updater. It was first included with the version 1.8.3 patch. The 2.1.0 patch allowed for an option to bypass the use of the launcher. Features of the launcher include news and updates for "World of Warcraft" players, access to "World of Warcraft"s support website, access to the test version of "World of Warcraft" when it is available to test upcoming patches, updates to Warden, and updates to the updater itself. The 3.0.8 patch redesigned the launcher and added the ability to change the game settings from the launcher itself. The launcher update from patch 4.0.1 also allows people to play the game while non-crucial pieces of the game are downloaded. This requires a high-speed broadband internet connection.