World of Warcraft – Page 4

March 23, 2014

Second Life Grid Size – Steady As She Goes

Tyche “Statto” Shepherd’s weekly grid report breaks the news this week that the Second Life grid size has remained static for a second week in a row, although the net number of private regions grew by one sim, this was cancelled out by one Linden owned region disappearing.

The current scores on the doors are a total number of 26,178 regions on the Second Life grid, with 19,195 being private estates and 6,983 being Linden owned.

Now to get this shift in fortunes into some sort of perspective, let’s compare the scores on the doors during the first few months of 2012, 2013 and 2014.

2012

Type	01/01/2012	25/03/2012	Change	Percentage
Estate	23,857	23,046	-811	-3.4%
Linden Owned	7,221	7,105	-116	-1.60%
Overall	31,078	30,151	-927	-2.98%

In the above table we can see that overall losses were over 900 regions in the first few months of 2012, coming in at just under 3%. This table is a little bit odd because there were a higher number of Linden owned regions disappearing than we’ll see for 2013 and 2014, but this table is also the one with the largest losses for private regions too, both in numbers and percentage wise.

2013

Type	30/12/2012	24/03/2013	Change	Percentage
Estate	20,992	20,469	-523	-2.49%
Linden Owned	7,102	7,088	-14	-0.2%
Overall	28,094	27,557	-537	-1.91%

Here we can see that losses were still rather high with a net loss of over 500 private regions, but that in itself was an improvement on the early part of 2012, although the figures look disappointing there is indication of a slow down with a net loss that is almost 300 less than a similar period in 2013.

2014

Type	30/12/2013	23/03/2014	Change	Percentage
Estate	19,273	19,195	-78	-0.40%
Linden Owned	6,986	6,983	-3	-0.04%
Overall	26,259	26,178	-81	-0.31%

Here we can see that the slowdown in net region losses is getting quite significant. A net loss of just 78 private regions as opposed to the 523 in 2013 and the 811 in 2012 is extremely impressive. That’s just 9.61% of the net losses we saw during a similar period in 2012 and just 14.91% of the net losses we saw during a similar period in 2013.

Continue reading “Second Life Grid Size – Steady As She Goes”

March 20, 2014

Judge Rules Against Worlds Inc. In Virtual World Patent Claims

Cristiano Midnight over at SLUniverse has posted news of a court ruling in favour of Activision in a patent case brought by Worlds Inc. This is an important case because Worlds Inc. have been challenging a lot of MMO’s and Virtual Worlds over alleged use of their patents.

Cristiano’s post links to a Gigaom article from last week : World of Warcraft beats trolls in fight over 1996 “virtual worlds” patent . One of Worlds Inc.’s patents is US Patent 7,181,690 which makes a claim of :

A method for enabling a first user to interact with other users in a virtual space, wherein the first user and the other users each have an avatar and a client process associated therewith, and wherein each client process is in communication with a server process.

There’s more in the link, but that would cover a lot of MMO’s and virtual worlds were Worlds Inc. to win a case. However in the Activision case Gigaom are quoted as saying :

U.S. District Judge Denise Casper wrote that patents belonging to Worlds Inc. appear invalid because the inventions they describe already appeared in public before the patents were filed.

Worlds Inc. have in the past said that they may also look to see if Second Life is violating their patents, although a Massively article on the same issue claims:

This isn’t Worlds’ first attempt to sue an MMO studio over these allegations, as it went after (and lost to) NCsoft and Linden Lab several years ago.

Continue reading “Judge Rules Against Worlds Inc. In Virtual World Patent Claims”

March 8, 2014

Report Compares Second Life, World Of Warcraft And Eve-Online To Real Life

GamesBeat have published a very intersting article : Comparing the virtual worlds of Warcraft, Second Life, and Eve Online to our own yields some surprising stats. The article itself links to a funky report by digital marketing agency Epiphany with a blurb of :

The online world is very different to our own, with new rules, new races, and new ways of living. There are, however, some similarities – take a look at our breakdown of the internet’s biggest virtual worlds to find out how they measure up against real life.

This isn’t the most detailed report in the world but the site does provide some interesting stats. Introducing Second Life they say:

Second Life is seen as an online marketplace as well as a game, and many players have been able to earn serious cash thanks to the easy way in-game currency can be sold for real-world money. More casual players use the game to build, customise and create, developing a literal second life in which their character can live out the player’s desires and fantasies – whether that’s a mansion and a helipad or the romance of a lifetime!

The website has a series of icons which lead to other little gems of information when clicked, I’m not going to cover them all but I’ll mention a few. In terms of Second Life they point out that English is the most popular language with 54% of users speaking that language, which compares to 18% in the real world.

In terms of user growth we’re told :

Between 2006 and 2011, global internet usage doubled in growth – in the same timeframe, Second Life saw a 4000% increase in users.

That’s rather impressive. Another interesting point is made with regards to financial institutions and economies, although I’m not sure things happened exactly as they seem to suggest :

In 2007, Second Life saw a huge financial incident which mirrored the bank crises we’ve seen in the real world since the start of the recession. When the developers announced that gambling in-game would be officially banned, thousands of users rushed to Ginko Financial, an in-game bank offering astronomical interest rates, to retrieve and sell the currency from their accounts. This caused a run on the bank which eventually resulted in a complete shut-down – wiping out around $750,000 (£457,736) in real world money. The incident has since been used by financial experts across the web as an example of what happens when banks fail to self-regulate.

The part where I disagree with them is regarding the rush of people to Ginko. I don’t remember that happening, I do remember the Ginko scandal but I don’t recall a rush due to the gambling ban. I can recall arguing with people that if real life banks faced a close down in the manner that Second Life banks did that there would be a rush on the banks that they wouldn’t be able to handle.

Continue reading “Report Compares Second Life, World Of Warcraft And Eve-Online To Real Life”

February 13, 2014

The Importance Of Being Social

In my last post I discussed how The Elder Scrolls Online pricing model isn’t too expensive, but it faces a challenge in terms of longevity. However some experiences thrive with similar or more expensive pricing models, namely World Of Warcraft and Second Life. Both of these platforms thrive because they are both examples of where the people are and you should not underestimate the power of people power.

When people get bored of their latest MMO, or when World Of Warcraft releases an expansion pack, people go back to WoW. People go back there because there are people there, real people, although they may be dressed in funny gear on your monitor. One of the complaints you hear about MMO’s is that there aren’t enough people there, however that’s generally not the case in WoW. There are less people at different times of day, but there are people.

Second Life has the same claim, people visit Inworldz or Kitely or other virtual worlds and report back that there was hardly anybody there. However there are people in Second Life, plenty of them, although every sim is not packed to the rafters, there are people around. This of course isn’t to suggest that there is nobody in Inworldz or Kitely, there clearly are and many people have fun on those platforms, I’m a fan of both of them, but there simply aren’t as many people as you find in Second Life.

This social aspect is extremely important for the longevity of a product because people who are engaged, invest more time, energy and money in their avatars, be they in games or virtual worlds and this investment leads to people feeling at home in those places. People may roam, they may visit other worlds, but there’s no place like home. So this socially driven investment in many ways binds people’s avatars to their favourite virtual world and of course, the more the merrier.

This sort of social investment is not something that companies can buy. However it does prove that cost is not the only factor when it comes to deciding where to venture online. If price were the only factor Second Life would be as dead as a dodo and the other similar style virtual worlds would be where it’s at. Getting people to move on is a challenge, the human factor seems to be underestimated at times, possibly because people outside the virtual just see pixels. They don’t appreciate the social investment.

Continue reading “The Importance Of Being Social”

February 13, 2014February 13, 2014

The Elder Scrolls Online Isn’t Too Expensive, But The Subscription Only Model Is Creaking

I’m going to break this down into a couple of posts, this post is more about The Elder Scrolls Online and their pricing model, I’ll follow up with a related post that is more about Second Life later. There has been a bit of a hoo ha about the pricing model of The Elder Scrolls Online. The standard digital edition is £49.99 and the Digital Imperial edition is £69.99, the prices vary depending upon your local currency. These prices include 30 days of game play, but if you want to play after that it’s £8.99 a month. If people shop around they can get the game cheaper.

The pricing model has led to Paul Tassi of Forbes Predicting The Biggest Video Game Disaster Of 2014: The Elder Scrolls Online and also suggesting that The Elder Scrolls Online Should Choose Between $60 Up Front Or $15 A Month. Those prices are in US Dollars of course, my prices earlier are in GBP, but you should get the gist. I have to say that I disagree with Paul, 2014 is likely to be a very good year for Elder Scrolls Online, especially as it isn’t released until April. Their problems are far more likely to come in 2015.

Let’s get one thing straight, this pricing model is not outrageously expensive. The upfront price for the game is a little on the high side but the monthly subscription is not that bad. As many people point out, it works out to about 30 pence a day in the UK or 50 cents a day if you’re in the USA. People argue that a night out at the cinema can be more expensive, a visit to a bar more expensive, buying pizza far more expensive. The problem is, the people making these points are actually exemplifying why the pay when you want model is better than the subscription model.

If it really was 30 pence a day and you only played for 10 days that month, that would be a cost of £3.00, not £8.99. In the US it would USD$5.00 not USD$14.99. If you didn’t play at all that month, for whatever reason, you’d pay nothing. This model may actually work, it’s along the lines of something I’ve suggested Second Life do with tier in so much as a sim that’s only open weekends only pays for that weekend usage, rather than the flat monthly tier.

However they are using a flat subscription fee model, although as I said, the model itself isn’t expensive in general. The problem for this sort of pricing model is that there are loads of competitors offering a less expensive experience these days and that’s one of the deciding factors people use in whether to engage, although it’s far from the only factor.

Continue reading “The Elder Scrolls Online Isn’t Too Expensive, But The Subscription Only Model Is Creaking”