Blog Archives
Blizzard’s Booty Call with Facebook
World of Warcraft is capital H huge, with an eleven million account subscriber base. According to their 2008 numbers, WoW made a 72 million dollar profit. These days, with all the pets and such for sale, that number is probably more. Impressive for an online video game. I’m sure Bobby Kotick thinks so.
Bobby loves him some World of Warcraft, spelled $$$
However, there’s a game on the horizon that may have already begun to change the face of online gaming. That game is Farmville.
If you have a Facebook account, you are most likely familiar with this game. It’s free to play, no subscription necessary. In it, you’re given a plot of land that you farm. That’s more or less the whole thing. I don’t play it, and that’s all I’ve been able to glean from people who play it. They spam their friends list, looking for fellow players to help them out with raising a barn, sending them seeds for crops, and other most fascinating things that people would never do in real life.
Sounds barely like a game at all. And yet, Zynga (the company responsible for this time-killer) boasts a claim of 70 million unique monthly visitors.
Look into the face of true evil.
Farmville also has RMTs. You can earn money by selling crops, then using your Farmville bucks to buy things like tractors. Or you can use real cash to buy the tractors yourself. According to Zynga, five hundred thousand tractors are sold per day at twenty bucks a pop. And you thought twenty-five dollars for a sparkling horse was crazy!
Now you see why Blizzard wants to simplify the game and draw more players. Same reason that Nigerian Prince emails tens of millions of people – a one percent success with these money-making schemes rakes in more cash if you’re trolling an ocean of fish rather than a puddle, or even a lake.
So to increase their exposure even more, Blizzard has reported that they will be integrating Battle.net with Facebook. Their first step will be to allow Starcraft 2 players to add their Facebook friends to their Battle.net friends list and share in-game achievements with them. This will mean that you can expect even more spam on your Facebook account. However, given the size and popularity of Facebook, saturating users with their product is a great way to increase their advertising exposure.
Everyone loves spam!
They may not pull in Farmville subscription numbers, but Blizzard is gunning to challenge them in the annoying Facebook announcements.
Cataclysmic Events? Only For The Overdramatic.
I’d throw twenty bucks at this just to keep it from haunting my dreams.
It’s been a busy week, but to be honest I just haven’t been bothered. All week I’ve been listening to podcasts discussing the various class changes coming in Cataclysm. Some players rejoiced at the changes, others complained that everyone got something good expect their class.
Well that’s all well and good, but people tend to forget that these are not etched in stone. That’s what the Beta is for. The Dev’s will run these changes in-game and see what’s going to stay the same, what needs to be tweaked, and what’s going to be removed outright.
So before you fall in love with your upcoming talents, just remember this: Blizzard also promised you a Dance Studio. Nuff said.
You can find a list of the Cataclysm changes over at MMO Champion.
Space Ghost approves of this mount.
Yep, Blizzard added two more pets to their Store – Lil’ KT and the Celestial Steed. Once again, the player base lost their minds. The Steed, a full-blown mount that scales with your Riding Skill (both on land and in air), was the more expensive pet this time around at $20.
You know, I’m not even going to bother discussing this thing. I’ve covered this same, idiotic garbage when Blizzard did this the first time. The arguments haven’t changed at all, so I see no reason to rehash the same old trollop.
After looking at everything, there’s not a whole lot that needs going over. The big stories of the week were either things that may or may not happen in full, or have little impact on the game.
Rokk Talk 