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".
Warcraft: Orcs &amp; Humans
In April 1998, Blizzard released "StarCraft", an RTS with the concepts and mechanisms of "Warcraft" but an interplanetary setting and three totally different races. "Starcraft" and its expansion "" were well received by critics and became very successful. "World of Warcraft", released in North America in November 2004 and in Europe in February 2005, was Blizzard's first attempt at a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and used the universe of the "Warcraft" RTS games, including characters that first appeared in "Warcraft: Orcs & Humans". "WoW" was praised highly by critics, was the most popular MMORPG in 2008,