World of Warcraft – Page 3

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.

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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.

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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.

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February 7, 2014

Why Subscription Models Aren’t Dead Yet

There’s a discussion on The Elder Scrolls Online forum regarding the forthcoming game’s pricing model. Before we go further, I should point out that the game is known as TESO, which is way too close to Tesco for my liking, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll call it TESO. Anyway, the discussion is largely supportive of the pricing model and on the face of it, the pricing model looks historically like other MMO’s, with an upfront price for the digital edition of USD$59.99 or GBP£49.99 and after the first 30 days a recurring monthly cost of USD$14.99 or GBP£8.99.

However here’s the thing, that pricing model is largely out of date. Games launch this way and then within a year or two, they go to free play. That’s often how it works these days. I went through this with Star Wars : The Old Republic, it was a very similar model and it didn’t end well in terms of being a subscription model, however going free to play saved the galaxy, as reported in Massively at the end of March last year : GDC 2013: James Ohlen on how F2P saved SWTOR:

According to Ohlen, SWTOR was designed to be a subscription-based game, so any F2P option needed to still effectively support the service the way a sub game would. The most successful compensation came in the form of Cartel Packs. In the style of trading card games, these packs would give players random items that they could use in game. And just as in any good TCG, the items in the Cartel Packs could be traded with other players — this time on in-game auction house, the galactic trade network.

There’s part of the key to changing your model and it’s one Linden Lab should pay heed to but I’m not going to talk much about Second Life or Linden Lab in this post, I’ll save that for another post. There will be a little bit more about SL and LL but this post is mostly about TESO.

So with all the evidence staring TESO in the face about the lack of longevity of subscription based MMO’s, why are they going ahead with it? Well if anything, SWTOR leads the way. Initially there will be a big buzz and a lot of people engaging with the game, the cash will flow in and that’s a business model that is hard to ignore.

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December 9, 2013

Nobody Does It Better, Makes Me Feel Sad For The Rest

Nobody does it half as good as you, baby you’re the best.

Second Life has long had strange issues, for example there is an issue known as “Prim drift” whereby a prim does not seem to be in the location where you last left it, or prims mysteriously seem to disappear and then reappear, it seems there may be an explanation for this!

The Guardian breaks the news: Spy agencies in covert push to infiltrate virtual world of online gaming. Allegedly, The NSA and GCHQ decided that they need to infiltrate The Horde in World Of Warcraft and human avatars in Second Life. Furries everywhere celebrate smugly at this news. This does possibly explain why The Horde seem to win more often than not in the Warsong Gulch battleground in World Of Warcraft.

Not surprisingly Linden Lab haven’t responded to The Guardians requests, The Guardian claims :

“Microsoft declined to comment on the latest revelations, as did Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and former CEO of Linden Lab, the game’s operator. The company’s executives did not respond to requests for comment.”

However in the land of Azeroth, there has been a response :

“The California-based producer of World of Warcraft said neither the NSA nor GCHQ had sought its permission to gather intelligence inside the game. “We are unaware of any surveillance taking place,” said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment. “If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission.” “

I’m sure that the NSA and GCHQ are delighted that their covert efforts went undetected by the GM’s in World Of Warcraft, I mean it would be far more embarrassing for them if Blizzard declared “Yeah, our GM’s knew all about it.”

However the article does suggest that Linden Lab were talking to the security services, indeed it seems Linden Lab tried to sell a use case of virtual worlds as being a place where you could observe the behaviours of non US citizens without leaving the USA. I’m sure those agents who quite enjoyed the idea of leaving US soil to observe the behaviours of non US citizens were a tad miffed about this, although wild speculation that they joined the PN or griefed sims with giant penises to wreak revenge over this suggestion have been strenuously denied. The article claims:

“In May 2007, the then-chief operating officer of Second Life gave a “brown-bag lunch” address at the NSA explaining how his game gave the government “the opportunity to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviours of non-Americans through observation, without leaving US soil“.

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