The WOW Annual Pass was quite an interesting new announcement at Blizzcon.. it's actually quite brilliant and I have to commend the marketing team.

Here is more information on the Annual Pass which I will be referencing.

From what I understand, this was a last minute change. It was probably an idea developed (or just implemented from an earlier idea) within the past 3 months or so after they decided not to make the surprise Christmas announcement.

It's being marketed just like a mobile contract. If you sign up with us, you get this fancy new phone for free.. and you only have to pay month to month! Cancel anytime you want! (Many view this contract scheme as a scam, but it's pleasantly ignored when it comes to a video game.)

Just like mobile contracts, users on jumping on board without considering the consequences. And, it's a common human trait not to fully understand long term consequences (which is being exploited by clever marketers) after all.

Here are some things to consider:

• You CANNOT cancel the monthly payments, so you better make sure you don't run out of funds and save up in advance (in case of monetary emergencies.)
• In order to be eligible, you need to pay for a recurring subscription already. Meaning that it will cost you an additional month (13 months) to get the offer: "Prior to accepting the offer you must have a recurring World of Warcraft subscription active on the associated account."
• You are stuck with the 12+1 month subscription, and it's deducted on a month to month basis.
• You are buying the standard digital copy only. You do not get a retail box.
• If you fail to make a payment: you lose the items, your account is disabled, you are charged the full amount for Diablo 3, and Blizzard is within their right to sue you: "If your World of Warcraft subscription lapses during the Twelve Month Commitment, or if you fail to make any required payments or timely payments, Blizzard reserves the right to terminate your participation in this offer in addition to any and all other remedies that may be available to Blizzard at law."
• Because of the guaranteed beta access, other WOW players are penalized access for this. It further encourages them to participate in the offer.
• You're locked into playing WOW even when D3 comes out next year. It's a limited time offer too, so you need to act fast!
• You are stuck with an entire year's subscription during a time when new games will be coming out: Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, Tera Online, SWTOR, Torchlight 2, Path of Exile, The Secret World, etc.
• When you're stuck with a subscription, you feel obligated to play the game to avoid a wasted expenditure.
• It's a great way to keep Blizzard players away from new MMOs and more importantly, their competitors.
• It gets Diablo 3 players to play WOW, and gets WOW users playing Diablo 3.
• Having so many players locked into a 1 year contract increases their subscriber counts (vanity figures for impressing shareholders) even if the accounts aren't being played. It's "Subscriber" counts, not actual players.
• Michael Morhaime stated that "their margins are higher when we sell direct." It's in Blizzards best interest to get you to use their digital downloads.. they are saving a ton of money by you not buying retail (they also lose a major cut from the retail sale too.)
• This is also why the new D3 RMAH and PayPal relationship is so important.. by building up B.NET bucks, their profit margins are going to skyrocket compared to retail loss. This is the future of all of their games. Keep your money within Blizzard, buy digital. Degrading the quality of retail boxes is a great way to encourage digital purchases too. (Remember the quality of materials that retail boxes used to carry?)

A very clever move, just like the Pokemon style combat pets.

(Blizzard will be selling even more pets in the Blizzard Pet Store now, with special pets having new abilities. Since it's not "game impacting" and only for "vanity pets", then it's perfectly acceptable to start selling weapons and armor.. but just on pets. (I don't literally mean real weapons and armor.. I'm talking special skills and pet stats.) It's also opening up WOW to a younger crowd, whereas Diablo 3 is targetting a more older/serious crowd. They'll have a couple games now to hold over the various demographic groups until Titan comes out for a more larger demographic.)

I wouldn't recommend the WOW Annual Pass for anyone.. unless either you're rich or you live in Australia. $100 for Diablo 3 is a pain in the ass, I'm so sorry for you guys. This deal is much more beneficial to you guys than everywhere else.

For everyone else though, please consider the repercussions.

The big problem I have is that you're FORCED to start paying for the WOW Subscription right away, during the time when Diablo 3 and other MMOs come out. It would be much more fair to players if you could buy the WOW Annual Pass now, but start using it at any time you want. But, their plan is to get users paying monthly fees for a year, knowing fully well that they'll never actually be playing WOW. Brilliant marketing strategy.

4. http://www.changedetection.com/ (Many alternatives available.)

Another great site for monitoring website updates. It highlights what specific entries have been added or removed, and it's great for monitoring small website adjustments or and seeing what text specifically changed. Unfortunately, it only monitors the site once per day and at a certain time, so you won't know about the many other possible changes have happen throughout the day (like if the website is undergoing maintenance or text corrections so you may miss some important tidbits.)

It is very useful though for getting advanced Press Releases before they are automatically emailed out, finding out recruiting changes (if positions are filled) or new recruiting jobs available, website changes like when Rockstar redirected all of their domains (which in turn indicated a major shakeup within the company), monitoring old comments or forum posts for changes, monitoring specific accounts (old forum accounts) for changes, watching Gaming Publisher sites for new changes (or "hidden upgrades"), etc.

5. Special Announcements

Speaking of monitoring Press Releases, you should also sign up on publisher websites to automatically receive new Press Releases or Special Announcements. This guarantees that you'll be aware of new information before anyone else (most gaming news sites and blogs already do this, but it takes them longer to get the information out). You should also sign up for news & events on the Investor Relations sites.

The Press Release pages should also be monitored, because occasionally there will be new updates, but automated emails are not sent out. :)

6. Trademarks - USPTO.GOV

Great for finding out game titles months in advance of release or announcement.

Unfortunately, this can't be automated (unless through scripting) so you have to manually search the database for new information.

Outside of Google Alerts, this would be your other bread and butter. Typically, most video game registrations are made in the US first (where the publisher is based.) The Mexican, Australian, Canadian, and European Trademark Search Databases are useless, they lag behind the American based system by weeks or months (and they're missing many US trademarks) so there's no point in using those as a source of information. And, the UK one is just terrible.

The Korean TM Database is a pretty good one, though.

When using USPTO.GOV, if you don't want to specifically search for an Owner (e.g. "Blizzard Entertainment") you could do an "ALL" Search for the keywords "Computer game" or "Computer Software" to see all new Trademark registrations.

This is actually a very fun way of finding out new game titles. You'll have to comb through all of the titles, or look for specific wording like a new Pokemon reference for example. (Make sure you confirm on Google, though, to ensure that no one else has already reported on it though. It might be old information.)

Trademark owners may also have patterns to their registrations. For example, I've found that a lot of trademark registrations happen between May and September. And then things are quiet between mid October and February of the following year. It depends on the TM owner though, and it's something you have to monitor.

If you were a blogger back in 2005-2008 and knew about trademark database searches, you would have been viewed as a GOD knowing all of the new and upcoming game titles months in advance. It wasn't actually until late 2008 and 2009 that people started cluing into TM and Patent offices being a great source of this useful information.

* UPDATE:

Here are some Keyword Searches that you can do yourself under Search Marks > Basic Word > Field: Owner Name and Address

blizzard entertainment
electronic arts
activision
take two
ubisoft
zenimax
bethesda softworks
nintendo
sony
sega
thq
microsoft
square enix
valve corporation (careful with this one, you'll get other companies)
konami
capcom
namco
atlus

When searching for new updates, just keep a mental record of the total Record counts. For example, "Blizzard Entertainment" has 83 records. Whenever that number changes, that's when I scan manually for any new changes. This way, you can go through as many companies as possible. (Keep using the back button to return to the search box.)

7. Copyright Searches & Ratings Approval Boards

This information is farther behind trademark registrations, but it can give you more information about what's in the game.

British Board of Film Classification (BBFC)

Search specifically: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/search/?searchwhere=db&q=blizzard+entertainment
Search all video games: http://www.bbfc.co.uk/search/?searchwhere=db&q=digitalmedia

And here are some others to help you out:

Australian Classification Board
All of the most recent Australian entries (very useful)
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
US Classification and Rating Administration
US Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB)
Pan-European Games Information
Singapore's Media Development Authority

8. Recruiting Practices

You can sometimes get a good sense of a game by the types of art a recruiter is interested in. For example; Kenny Carvalho, the Blizzard Titan recruiter, stated that:

At least for me (Blizzard), I look at portfolios before I ever open a Resume. If I see something that looks impressive or shows potential, I will then look at the Resume to see if my analysis of the portfolio makes sense. I wouldn't worry about what game(s) or companies you are or have worked at. Keep your personal portfolio moving forward and you will be fine.

So the first thing he looked at was their portfolio, before even reading the resume. And who specifically did he apply this method to? The following artists who were hired to work on Titan.

Matt "Empty" Taylor
Michael "Orb" Vicente
Laurel "Tully" Austin
Rory "Rory_M" McMahon
Travis "Darkrusader" Castillo
Joshua "Moof" Anderson
Matthew "mheyman" Heyman
Philip "PhilipK" Klevestav
Joshua "Moof" Anderson
Artem "X-Convict" Volchik
Paul "Autodestruct" Richards
Vadim "Slipgate" Bakhlychev
Martin Holmberg
Bram "Peris" Eulaers
Nick Carver
Vitaliy Naymushin aka Rawkstar
Renaud “Guntharf” Galand

If you search their art and portfolios, you may notice a recurring trend from all of the artists. Of all potential artists out there who applied for a job with Blizzard and with all of the different styles, he selected the portfolios that had scifi, armor, robots, ancient cities, and dinosaurs. They must have seemed like a good fit for the Titan project?

It's sort of like information research. If you start working on a new game, and then suddenly the company is researching World War 2 era information or hiring historical experts on related subject matter, chances are that it's a WW2 style game.

9. Other Sources of Information

When searching through resumes, keep in mind that most employees are well aware of keeping confidential information off their public profiles. However, contractors aren't so careful. Search for resumes belonging to Voice and Body actors and for smaller developers they often outsource graphics and audio work to outside contractors as well.

Many resume searches can't be found through Google, so you need to find professional Job Search Databases where you can search through resumes as a potential employer. Target the Actors Jobs databases in particular.

Look for voice actors in other countries, the ones who provide language translations. This is a highly untapped market, and if there is voice acting in Titan for example, you should see multiple voice acting jobs in other countries (China specifically) appear as the game gets closer to the heavy content/lore build out stage. (Unfortunately, by posting this tip Blizzard might be better prepared now.)

Listen to Shareholders calls very carefully, get a recording, and try to obtain the transcript. They often contain a lot of information that are missed by gaming news sites. I've seen it happen MANY times: they only report on official News Releases, but they don't pay attention to little bits of information stated during financial calls. They rely on you and smaller blogs for that type of information. You need to know your subject matter first to know what to listen for.. so try not to look for leaks on too many games, only do it for the developers or games that you love to play.

Will continue to add on to this, there are some other approaches but I just need to decide which to share or not. :)

Question was brought up during the 2nd Day WOW Q&A.

Gregg Street mentioned that they've been talking about this particular question, and one of their ideas is to still have the maximum cap of number of characters, but allow the players to distribute them to whatever specific realm they want. (So, 50 toons on one realm.)

No promises though, it's still being discussed.

I think it's something unavoidable though.