Recently, a U.S. Senator called out the University of California, Irvine on their shameless waste of tax payer's money "studying" World of Warcraft.

Walt Scacchi, a research director at UCI in response stated that "They absolutely don't get what we're doing". This study can only benefit mankind right? I mean.. playing World of Warcraft SAVES LIVES man. They're heroes!

What I didn't understand, though, was that they called World of Warcraft the "World's Most Popular MMORPG". I suppose everyone interprets the definition of a "MMORPG" differently.. and even the whole definition of "subscribers" is pretty flexible.

WoW is certainly very popular in Irvine CA and the rest of the Americas.. but the entire world? I suppose it is popular in some areas of the world due to the massive amount of money Blizzard invests in promotion.. so, it's "very well known". But most popular? Does popular mean most amount of players? I'm assuming so.

So, let's see how WoW holds up against other MMORPG subscriber counts worldwide. Here are some of the largest MMORPG's by population or "popularity" that have listed their subscription figures:

Dungeons and Dragons Online - 2 Million
Knight Online - 4.25 Million
Flyff - 5 Million
Guild Wars - 6 Million
Metin2 - 7 Million
Gaia Online - 8 Million
Lineage 1 - 10 Million
Free Realms - 12 Million
World of Warcraft - 12 Million
Wizard 101 - 15 Million
Silkroad Online - 18 Million
Lineage 2 - 20 Million
Second Life - 20 Million
Dofus - 30 Million
MU Online - 40 Million
DarkOrbit - 50 Million
Perfect World - 50 Million
Scions of Fate - 50 Million
Ragnarok Online - 60 Million
Farmville - 80 Million
Westward Journey Online II - 86 Million
Maple Story - 100 Million
RuneScape - 130 Million
Dungeon Fighter Online - 200 Million

All of these numbers are certainly debatable, but these are the official subscribers counts.. apparently.

So in the end, I wouldn't necessarily call WoW the "World's Most Popular MMORPG". When I heard "World's Most Popular MMORPG" I immediately thought of Maple Story and RuneScape actually. Therefore, it would be much more appropriate and accurate to call it "The Most Well Known Non-Free Non-Browser Client-Based 3D Fantasy MMORPG In Some Parts of the World."

Maybe "World's Most Popular MMORPG" is a trademark or a registered company name that Blizzard owns. You know, like McDonald's "100% Pure Beef" marketing strategy. It's written on their packaging, but "100% Pure Beef" is really just the name of the company that manufactures the processed meat. It doesn't actually MEAN the meat is 100% pure beef though. =]

Red Dead Redemption has been doing exceptionally well and Rockstar just didn't anticipate how successful the game was going to be. But, there's still no update or confirmation from Rockstar whether there is going to be a Red Dead Redemption PC Port or not.

Recently however, I noticed something a little interesting from our favorite little team in Oakville, Ontario.

Rockstar Toronto has been seeing a lot of action these past few months and they're on a hiring spree for new talent. Now, job postings are worded in such a way not to reveal any games that they're working on.. but a recent Senior Animator posting (Dec 17) caught my attention.

Here's what they wrote:

"At Rockstar Toronto, we provide a highly creative work environment and develop some of the most respected and widely recognized titles in video games for current and next-gen consoles including: The Warriors, ManHunt 2, Bully, Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption."

The reason that this is so interesting is that Rockstar Toronto has NEVER been associated with Red Dead Redemption.

If you've read my earlier post on RDR, you'll know that Rockstar Toronto did indeed do a little outsourced work for RDR. However, they were never recognized for that work by anyone, Rockstar Toronto is NOT listed in the credits, and even the R* Toronto and the HQ websites do NOT attribute RDR with R* Toronto in any way! If you check out R* Toronto's release list - Red Dead Redemption is NOT listed. Officially, RDR is not linked to R* Toronto in any way.

This is actually the first time Rockstar Toronto has officially associated themselves with Red Dead Redemption, and Rockstar claims that it's "future" work (ie, "next-gen consoles") too. =]

Very interesting..

Not only that, check out that "At Rockstar Toronto, we provide.." line - it's actually a standard recruiting post that they have used many times. HOWEVER, all of their past job posts only stated "The Warriors, ManHunt 2, Bully and Grand Theft Auto IV." It's suddenly changed in the past week to include RDR. Hmmm...

This all might just be an accident by their recruiting department (ie, either they weren't aware that RDR shouldn't have been associated with R* Toronto OR they accidentally revealed that R* Toronto is working on it.) With RDR being such a huge success though, I'm going to remain optimistic that they'll be working on RDR PC once they get LA Noire out of the way.

In related news, Take Two just filed trademarks for LA Noire related merchandising (e.g. "ring tones, wallpapers, screensavers, graphics, digital music files, videos, films and other multimedia materials" etc.) I guess they're expecting it to be a pretty big hit. I just can't see it though, even the title alone targets a niche market of gamers.

At the same time, they have also filed two other trademarks. The big one was "ROCKSTAR FILMS", a new division of Rockstar that will be producing animated motion pictures starting with Red Dead Redemption machinima. The third new trademark was for Red Dead Redemption films (Note: animated motion picture, not live action). It looks like Take Two wants to do the same thing Bobby Kotick mentioned a few months ago.

* Update:

They've also updated their Rockstar Games and R* Trademarks to include "Animated motion picture films". They have trademarked an animated series, film and "TV programs" planned for LA Noire if it's a big hit.

There's also a trademark for a Bioshock Infinite "live action motion picture", as well as videos, films, and an animated series. (Rockstar has a webpage planned where users can watch animated and live-action series based on their games.) The Line has also been trademarked for films, an animated series, and TV programs. Bioshock was the only one with "live action" mentioned however. =]

It's a good business plan.. might as well utilize those hundreds of idling Cinematic Artists rather than the seasonal firing-and-rehiring process.

Check out this video interview between Destructoid and Blizzard.

He confirmed that they are indeed calling the game Titan (their internal codename), that people weren't supposed to know about it ("the media's not supposed to know anything about that, it's our Next-Gen MMO"), and that it has been used quietly ("limited") within the organization.

In the beginning of the video, Destructoid was obviously referring to the recent leaked release schedule, and Frank Pearce cracked a big smile. =]



So - I think that's pretty much a confirmation that the release schedule was indeed legitimate. The release dates are all estimates of course (ie, setting a general roadmap for the company) and the actual release dates will fall short of their original goals based on trends, but at least they give us a really good idea of when they want to release the games even though our own estimates were pretty close. Unfortunately, this also means that all of that other critical financial and subscriber information is out there in the wild too!

Blizzard recently stated that they intended to develop smaller expansion packs so that they could release them much sooner - giving that release schedule more legitimacy (ie, one year apart versus every two years.)