I HAS PC

Often I read people critical of the MMO subscription model on blogs and forums, and inevitably someone will chime in with the counterargument “I pay for my cable every month, and I don’t complain if I don’t watch that much tv”. The similarity of course is that both are a flat monthly fee for unlimited service use. As an analogy, it just doesn’t work, and it bugs me when people use it. The fun part of it all, is that anyone who makes that argument is actually AGAINST a subscription model and is a big fan of RMT transactions.

Here’s why.

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I was reading an interesting article called “Doing good or doing well? Image motivation and monetary incentives in behaving prosocially”, which is basically a study by some prominent economists to understand what motivates people to invest time or money in charity work. The basic premise is that people do it to improve their image  – and the hypothesis is that paying someone to do charity work (ie: donating blood for dollars) can actually be a barrier if other people are aware a payment was being made for the gesture. An interesting read, especially if you like economics and how economists think (and always need to understand behavioural economics). The most interesting part of the study for me was that people gave more when they knew people would know the amount donated.

Of course, I have to go take perfectly good economic reasoning and apply it to MMO’s. Shame on me.

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Is WoW really a cultural phenomenon? Many people think so, spurting the “11.5 million subscriber mark“. Where does that number come from? I found it interesting that Blizzard stopped releasing where the subscribers came from in that press release.

When Blizzard announced they hit 10 million, they clearly stated 2M from Europe, 2.5M from North America, and 5.5 Million from Asia. When they announced 11M, they just did the total. Are they hiding the fact that numbers dropped in NA/Europe and picked up in Asia? Who knows. Now, from 10 – 11.5 million let’s extrapolate where that extra million came from, and take the guess it was even accross the board (even though I suspect the numbers are skewed more towards Asia). With the new 11M sub: 6.325M from Asia, 2.875M from NA, and 2.3M from Europe.

Let’s look at North America.

“2.875M” play WoW at top subscriber peaks during 2008.

41 Million Attended a Hockey Game.

Around 20 Million people watch Dancing with the Stars on any given week.

2 Million people eat at McDonald’s everyday in the UK only (I can just imagine what the NA stats are).

Cultural Phenomenon? Hardly. MMO Phenomenon? Absolutely!

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I had a birthday over the weekend. Actually scaled back working a bit to enjoy it, and what was planned as a nice quiet dinner out with my wife, followed by some quality couch time (with our little one spending the night at Nana’s) turned out to be a full blown surprise party. It was a ton of fun and I have no clue how my wife managed to organize the party without me finding out! Thanks to everyone who attended (both in person, and in spirit).

On my birthday my peripheral email address started pumping out some neat emails. I use an old email address for all my forums and MMO access to keep my other email addresses spam free. I am not sure how new of a thing this is, but I was pleasantly surprised to see several “happy birthday” notices from forums I am a member of. Warhammer Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and the 2K9 forums especially – as they are all people I wasn’t always the “nicest” to - both on the forums and here. Also, I don’t support WAR or POTBS through subscriptions, to be clear.

So it was nice to get the form email from them regardless. Birthday’s get a special emotional response from people. I thought about those emails, and immediately concluded how cool it would have been if they had given me a little present to boot. Hence the title of this post. More after the break.

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Sorry for the main page. Not sure how it got that way, will figure it out. If you can’t stand italics, just click on the blog post and it presents as normal. Somehow only my main page is completely italicized.

Must be from patch 3.0.8

The camera pans from a burning torch, and settles in on a group of weary adventurers. Their swords blood-stained, their armor indented with sword swings from fallen foes. Zoom in on a Dwarven Warrior wiping his blade.

“Okay. In the next room lies Grinto, the evil giant. We must be well prepared as he is a foe we have never conquered. Eat, drink, and take potions in preparations! The <SUPREME TEAM> Will taste victory on this day!” The battle tested Warrior resheathes his blade and turns to his trusted advisor.

“PopRocks – have you studied this encounter?”

“Why yes, TankMASTER, I have. We will form 5 groups, each with 2 healers, 1 tank (or offtank) and 2 DPS. This is a standard tank and spank fight. But we must hurry! The foes we have just defeated will magically reappear unscathed in less than 5 minutes, and if we are defeated we will have to kill them again!”

“Thank you PopRocks. Is everyone ready?”

“Geez, Legolass – hit the ready check button already!”

“Alright. So it begins.”

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Wow, just WOW! (About WAR though, not WoW.)

Just found this post about Warhammer Online’s faction population balance. The crux of it?

 Average of All North American Servers 

The good Cap’n John shared his experience about taking a free trial in WoW and it made me think about my own trials and tribulations in the “free” realm. I do them often. Welcome back weekends I boot up old characters, muck around for a few hours. Friends send me buddy keys to try something out and I do the massive download and play a bit. The truth of the matter is not one of these free trials have ever led me to invest. Which leads me to the bigger question – “What is the point?”

In business having someone trial your product is typically a way to introduce, and hook, the consumer. Some do it with free product, some do it with incentive, some to it with scantily clad opposite sex promotion-folk. In modern day MMO land it seems as though free trials are just yet another standard mechanic an MMO “must” have. Give a download and give ten days. Everyone else in the industry is doing it so it must work. Looking at the implementations of free trials in the current market I can’t help but feel I am being giving a lake, a fishing pole, and a hook – but no bait to fish with.

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Last post I talked about having a peek at LOTRO again, the current darling of blognation. I was drawn to give it a shot because of the handy dandy free trial after their new expansion, Mines of Moira. I had no delusions of grandeur of seeing the new content, but rather was curious of the trickle down effect to what changes this game has gone through since it’s release. I was especially excited to try out their new Warden class – reminded me very much of the 300 spartans – shield and spear. I dl’ed the trial, signed up, and off I went.

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