WoW hits 4 Million Subs

Blizzard Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft, has hit the 4million account mark. That's impressive. Consider that the average sub for this game is around the £9 per month mark and that's after you've shelled out the £20 or £30 for the boxed game in the first place.

Here's the money: ~£36 million per month in subs, plus, at an average of £20 per box - £80million. This figure is a very quick calc on the back of a ticket, but even if it's out by 25% or more, you'd be hard pressed not to realise how successful this game is.

WoW isn't one I've played, despite having several folks trying to convert me. I did play Face of Mankind beta last night. The best thing I can say about it is that it's truly NOT a WoW clone. In fact, in terms of MMORPGs, it's probably closer to Massively Multiplayer Capture the Flag, and I can't think of any other title that works like it at the moment. It's still beta and will never get the mass market appeal of WoW, but it is one of few MMOG titles out there daring to be different.

Are you local?

Remember the days when business plans written on the back of beer mats secured multi-million pound multi-round funding from venture capitalists. OK, so I entered the creative industries just as the bubble was ready to burst, so I didn't really see , or benefit from it. I did have a few ideas of my own. Perhaps if they had been two or three years earlier, I may have secured VC funding to take them past prototype (or plans in most cases).

VCs have not forgotten Internet development, but they are more canny than before. This time they are looking for decent business plans with page numbers and everything!

I found this on Business 2.0 and thought about it for a bit:

"A kind of souped-up Craigslist for every neighborhood, everywhere. Just
type in a zip code, and this website will present not just garage sale
listings and classified ads, but headlines and photos from dozens of
local news sites run by busybodies willing to provide free content and
keep it constantly updated. If all goes as planned, Lussier (the VC) says, paid ads could bring in as much as $100 million a year."

The idea is that within six months, a team of two or three produce a template on a budget of $0.5 million, supplied by the VC. Then after that, an investment of $2.5 million to get the thing off the ground.

I think this concept would prove to be very successfuly in Scotland, pulling together all the town, village, church, community groups, local newspapers, and all the other small website owners together under one easy to use portal. Sure, you could argue that Yahoo! and Google already provides this service through their huge engines and listings, but you can't beat good home grown products if you're looking for local support.

Here's a link to the page for this blog if you want to add it to your RSS reader. I use Sage for Firefox.

Who's to judge?

It's Friday, so a little bit of fun stuff to see in the weekend is in order.

I popped over to see the OAPs in the retirement home today. The old farts pointed out a little bit of FLASH wizardry which most blokes should appreciate: Daisy Duke

Then an email sent me off to an old FLASH movie that's still got it - the end of the world. Needs speakers or headphones.

And thanks also to Mr Cow from Underworld (ps2 clan) for pointing me to a new website which reminded me that you can find ANYTHING on the web.

Rather than become an expert in Zippo tricks, you might like to take up the art of beatboxing. It's an excellent website which is now on version 4, so if you haven't seen the site for while, check back for some new footage. Have a look at the tutorials first, to get a flavour of what beatboxing is, then check out the Films link on the site and watch Yuri's Harmonica. If I can replicate Yuri's performance before I'm 40, I'll be a happy man.

Chinese government swings world's biggest nerf bat

Wow! And a lesser, leaner, more compact WoW! Which is formed by dividing available game time (i.e. 24 hours per day) by approximately three. Gamesindustry.biz has reported that the Chinese government is introducing legislation designed to calm the swathes of Horde, err, that is all MMORPG players down to a socially acceptable addiction of 3 hours out of every 8.

The plans are that all MMORPGs operating within China will introduce in-game penalties for players logged in over the three hour mark. When (if) the addict realise that playing with diminishing returns is a crappy idea, they log out. FIVE HOURs must then pass before their in-game stats are back to normal.

Even though I suspect that many see this as a crazy, crazy idea (as I do), worried families will be making a collective prayer that the West will adopt similar legislation to rid the nasty MMORPG demon from their home.

Will this dent the creativity of MMORPG designers, keen to do well in the huge Chinese market, relying on delivering quick MMOG thrills, rather than deep RP and strategic gameplay? I am reminded that great innovation has come from the confines of situations where harsh restrictions have forced games developers to think hard about how to reach their goals. Braben and Bell performed magic with only 32k of available RAM and a tape loader, so here's hoping.

I bought Warhammer 40k Dawn of War a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't played a RTS for a while so it was good fun on single player mode, which I completed last night. The above screen is from my first multiplayer game. Three-a-side, two 'umans and one bot. For those who are familiar with the game you'll immediately know how well I was doing. First comment which sums it up accurately gets a 'prise.

Yarrrrr

Well, here it is. Kroy's blog.

Cheers go Technollama and also bec from simbiance for making me think about doing this.

No plans as yet, just lots of links and comments about stuff I see on a daily basis.