World of Warcraft Gamespot GOTY 2004

Gamespot's annual awards have drawn to a close, with the Reader's choice awards finishing up tomorrow. Announced on Wednesday, Gamespot's Game of the Year for 2004 is World of Warcraft. Relatedly, there is an interview with the WoW composer at World of Warcraft Guru, and a piece on Wired.com about Virtual Trade and Blizzard's efforts to combat the trend. Finally, Blizzard's annual holiday festivities have resulted in a hilarious holiday mp3 being made available on the official World of Warcraft site.

Comments

Off by an order of magnitude

[Anonymous Pundit]

From the second paragraph of the Wired article on virtual trade:

...the secondary market for virtual goods is estimated at $880 million annually.

Don't you love how the reporter slips that in without offering any source or supportive information?

Let's see, a look at mmogchart.com shows that there are barely 8.8 million total MMOG subscribers. Are we to believe that MMOG subscribers spend an average of $100 annually on virtual trade after the cost of the subscriptions themselves? No way.

Perhaps 10 percent of subscribers play intensely enough in games with viable virtual markets to spend $100 annually on virtual trade, which works out to $88 million annually.

The quoted estimate is junk, off by an order of magnitude. When such obvious garbage is highlighted at the top of an article it's a good sign that there's little point in reading the rest of the piece.

blah blah blah easy solution

[null-sRc]

allow players to deposit extra $$ in their user acount...

LET THEM trade for real $$$ IN GAME, and take a 15% commision.

voila, game company wins, and buyers win (since it's more safe than buying over ebay etc.) :D Happy Days!