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…
Month: January 2009
Image Motivation
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 –…
Numbers Can Fool Us
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,…
Missed Marketing Opportunity – Take 2
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…
Italicized!
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
Greatest Fantasy Movie Ever
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…
WAR Population Stats
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   Active Accounts Per Faction: 49% / 51% Relative Average Exp. Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50% Relative Average RP Earning Rate per Time…
Free Trials
The good Cap’n John shared his experience about taking a free trial in WoWÂ 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…
Calvinomics
Non-Epic Fail, Content, and RMT – Oh My!
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…
LOTRO – Worth a Second Look?
I had purchased the game when first released and played up to level 10ish but was immediately sucked back into WoW with the Burning Crusade expansion (I was a GM of a progression guild at the time. No time for two games!). Going through some old emails I found an old buddy key I had…
RMT – Food for Thought
Really, gaming subscriptions are just different ways to ‘eat’. 1) The Frozen Dinner: This sub option is any game that you pay for the box and pay nothing afterwards. The subscription cost is the cost of the box itself. The beauty of the Frozen Dinner is that if you can’t stand to eat another one…
I’m Sure There Is A Gaming Analogy Here Somewhere..
Regarding the current credit crunch, I did some digging and learned some lovely little nuggets about Canada. Less than 25% of house loans in Canada are securitized (by someone else, other than the banks) meaning over 75% are on the the banks balance sheets, making the banks accountable. The higher risk sub prime mortgages account…