A little bit of light humor here, triggered by the recent announcement of a new Zombie TV series. =]

If you recall, back in early November, I made a light-hearted blog entry post-dated to the future (March 26, 2011).

It turns out that a lot of what I wrote about is coming true. =]

- The cost of the game was going to be $59.99 (the main purpose of the post was because THQ's CEO complained that the standard price of $59.99 was too much for games, and that they were going to change.)
- Homefront was going to sell around 4 million copies.
- The PC version would get pushed back.
- There would (will) be a UK expansion pack.
- Cataclysm would sell about 3 million copies.
- A major WoW nerf following Christmas sales.
- Another new zombie-based TV series would be in the works due to the success of The Walking Dead (which first premiered the week earlier).
- And homefront DLC with zombies (ie, an announcement of the future release).

Not bad so far.

The CW is developing a zombie apocalypse series entitled "The Awakening" and NBC is developing "Zombies vs. Vampires".

The PC version hasn't been delayed _yet_, but as you recall they're having a lot of issues finishing off the game. Lots of overtime and stressed workers. It hasn't been pushed back yet.. they might still, or release it with bugs and patch later (to meet commitments). For now, March 8 is still the official release date for all 3 platforms (PC, PS3 & X360).

(UPDATE: IT GOT DELAYED!)

Now I'm just waiting for launch day to see their sales figures, expansion pack info, and maybe a mention of a Homefront DLC with zombies. =]

In other "spooky" news,

- I nailed that Active Subscription Count estimation using Blizzard's own geography based subscriber statistics. That was a nice vindication.

- I anticipated something really big happening within Take Two in November and just two days before they announced major "restructuring" and the TTWO CEO stepping down, etc. I also anticipated even more layoffs by TTWO, which has just happened (publicly) in the UK with more coming. There were even some silly stock trader enthusiasts from some Yahoo Finance forum that called b.s. on all of that.. I wonder how much money they lost by not watching the signs? =]

- And then there was a post where I talked about the "Insane in the Membrane" title and the return of the Zulian Tiger & Qiraji Battle Tank. I forgot all about that actually, until someone recently reminded me. Those were several months before the official announcements and before anyone else knew. Although.. those weren't really predictions.. I received more of a confirmation from a source. =] (The new Zulian Tiger isn't out yet - but there's still a plan for it by the way.)

I'm not sure if I missed anything else. I usually forget what I've written about and just move on to new posts. Often I need to go back over old posts to remember. =]

- Oh right! This isn't really a prediction, but if you had wisely followed my Gold Making Guides on collecting rare recipes from opposite factions, you would now be proud owners of the most expensive cooking recipes known to man. =] They're easily selling for 10-20k each now, and they'll be selling as high as Dirge's Epic Recipe eventually. I have about 100 recipes (that are impossible to get post-Cataclysm) that will easily sell for 100-250k gold in a year or so. =]

Sometimes I scare myself.

* UPDATE (03/16/2011):

LOL - They're dropping the price of Homefront from $60 to about $40 on the second day of release. They should have done this from the beginning, but many game studios use inflated prices to give the perception of quality.

Looks like they not going to even go over 1M sales on the first day, even after all of that hype. The game leak (almost 2 weeks early) and various information reveals (e.g. single player campaign length) certainly didn't help. Piracy can't be blamed here though, it was all about quality. During the first 24 hours, they sold 375,000 copies in North America alone.. normally the other countries would sell at least the same amount or more, but since it launched in NA first gamers are seeing all of the bad single-player reviews (which is why it's always a good idea to launch worldwide simultaneously). Multiplayer is looking pretty good though, and it should do well in the long run.

So, it was just "announced" that Blizzard and PayPal are now in bed together. (Technically, Markeedragon talked about it back on the 20th, but it's now making the rounds on other news sites.)

They will be walking together hand-in-hand fighting those dangerous virtual gold sellers. Take note, though, that they're targeting gold sellers & merchants, not gold buyers. They have no idea who buys gold except for those (who were caught) within the World of Warcraft.

But, there are two things very interesting with this whole situation:

1. Blizzard and PayPal are calling it an "intellectual properties violation" and that it "infringes upon the intellectual property rights" of Blizzard for the sale of virtual merchandise. We all know, of course, that it's not illegal (for the moment) to buy or sell virtual currency or commodities.

This is more about the wording, though. PayPal isn't saying it's illegal.. "violate" could just as easily have been swapped out with "annoys", "pisses off our partner", or "hurts Blizzard's feelings." But, those just don't sound as intimidating.

2. How did they find out and confirm the PayPal IDs of the gold sellers if they're not publicly advertised?

There was only one way they could do it: registered an account on various gold seller websites, and bought WoW gold from them. =]

So, Blizzard violated their own internal and external policies, the World of Warcraft Terms of Use, Gaming Policies, and even violated their own intellectual property (which is also now PayPal's policy).

A little hypocritical don't you think? Maybe I should change the headline to "Blizzard Buys WoW Gold!". I wonder if Blizzard's PayPal account is going to get banned now.. =]

In order to keep this up too, Blizzard will need to continue buying virtual gold from sellers as well (although right now, they just targeted the biggest suppliers). They can't just tell PayPal to ban certain PayPal IDs (email accounts) that are posted on webpages or forums for example. They'll need to confirm in-game that the person is indeed selling gold (ie, setup a sting operation.) Otherwise, social engineers and troublemakers could just create fake gold seller webpages, post PayPal email addresses, and get them banned.

Anyways.. this might not have as big of an impact that Blizzard is expecting. Gold Merchants have many payment alternatives at their disposal and this was just a bad business decision made on the part of PayPal. Unless, of course, there were other (more invisible) factors at work that "encouraged" PayPal to change their stance on the matter.

This is very good news for PayPal's competitors though. =]

After all, this new process will not impact the market demand for virtual currency.

So, if there are any smart online payment intermediaries out there that compete with PayPal, they should get into communication with these companies immediately. (If you work for a PayPal competitor, talk to management right away as these businesses will be looking for a new service provider and they transact tens-of-millions per year.) =]

This may also open up a new market for independents and smaller sellers. Since BlizzPal is targeting the larger gold sellers, we might see a shift in power or a distribution of power to many sellers.

I'm curious how this will effect gold prices. The big gold sellers might drop prices (a lot) so that they can offload their stocked gold as quickly as possible. Then once the dust settles, gold prices might end up being higher then they've ever been in years (same demand, but more difficult, more risk involved for the sellers, more independents, etc). Should be fun.

* UPDATE:

Apparently, the infringement notices are targeted at gold seller websites (that use PayPal) and not the individual PayPal accounts themselves. So, I guess Blizzard hasn't been confirming anything - but rather just telling PayPal to check their own accounts to see who owns the website and ban them? (Or maybe there's a combination of both.)

What I do know is that there have been multiple waves of these threats from PayPal over the past 2 months and they have mailed big and small sellers alike. Many PayPal accounts have already been banned, while the larger gold sellers are attempting to stall for as long as possible.

Since this has been going on since December, I wonder if it's one of the reasons why gold prices fell so dramatically after the Cataclysm expansion pack..

Here we go again..

Nintendo has made the bold statement that the new 3DS is unhackable, foolproof, and that piracy is now a thing of the past.

Where have we heard this before?

Microsoft made the same claim about the original XBOX, however it was broken within a week. Microsoft also said that NTFS and Windows 2000 were uncrackable. Regarding their XBOX 360, they simply said that it would be "as difficult as possible to hack." Smart choice of words.

Infineon's chip was proclaimed to be "unhackable". The Laserlock STAR DRM was also claimed to have been "uncrackable" by the manufacturer.

Did you know that Blizzard once made that "unhackable" claim too? On May 30th, 2000 when speaking about Diablo 2, Blizzard stated that "The game can basically be considered unhackable." =]

The PS3 and PSP have been (historically) described as "unhackable" only by users, and I haven't been able to find any evidence of Sony making the claim themselves. A very wise decision.