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Virtual Worlds Are Worth 1 Billion Dollars
IronWilliamCash writes with a link to a BBC article letting us know some unsurprising news: Massively Multiplayer games are a Billion dollar industry here in the west. They're worth even more in countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan, but the recognition of the MMOG genre's appeal in Western nations is quite laudable. "Games such as World of Warcraft and worlds like Habbo Hotel are fast becoming "significant platforms" in the converged media world, the report said ... Revenues from subscriptions to MMOGs will hit $1.5bn by 2011. But the growth in MMOGs remains limited compared to developing markets such as video on demand, which is expected to be worth $11.4bn from revenues in four years' time." The article goes on to cover the diversification of the genre and the rise of casual titles in the Massive space.
...before the government starts taxing MMOs.
Having been in (and having friends who were in) many of the top tier raiding guilds in EQ (PoP-GoD era), I can safely say that EQ is NOT harder, it is simply a longer grind. Most raids boiled down to a handful of good players leading a bunch of support players that spent half the raid in tell hell or AFK until the boss fight/loot distribution. Losing XP when you die does NOT make the game harder, it simply makes it take longer. Any idiot can find an easy spot to safely grind back lost XP. Corpse loss (from early EQ days) is something that was universally despised by EQ players until WoW came out and they could suddenly claim that living through that made them somehow superior. Notice that even EQ did away with it. It was a BAD idea, and if you haven't caught up with the rest of us in realizing that, then it is only your loss. As far as PayPalling your way to uberness, having participated in farming in EQ, I know that the GMs basically look the other way even when it is obvious that people are using automated tools to farm cash to sell online. Hell, in EQ2 Sony has even gotten into the picture on some realms by having a marketplace as PART OF THE GAME where players can sell to other players for REAL WORLD money. Conversely, Blizzard shuts down thousands of accounts per month for farming and other TOU violations. So explain to me again how WOW is more farmer friendly than your beloved Sony has-beens?
Oh, was that my outside voice?