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.)
Blizzard announced their Sales Figures today, and all of the major media organizations (IGN, Joystiq, Gamepro, etc. etc.) are reporting that Cataclysm sold 3.3 million copies within the first 24 hours.
In actual fact, all of that information is completely false. It's like they just read the Subject Header without actually reading any of the factual information.
Blizzard sold a "record 3.3 million copies sold through as of its first 24 hours of release*". There was even a asterisk pointing to a small little caption at the bottom of their announcement, but no one seems to be paying attention. =]
Normally, Pre-Sales are included in industry announcements - but the new Digital Download process makes this a very different case. It's like heavily hyping a game, pushing it's "first" release date, allowing players to buy the game and install it on their PC, then have a "second" release date but say all of the sales were actually made on the "second release date". Most if not all other developers can't do this, making this a special case.
Jay Allen Brack originally stated, "We expect the Cataclysm sales to exceed the levels of the previous versions, but we do not have an exact target." So that new announcement needed to be worded in such a way that it didn't make him look bad. I'm really disappointed with the lack of transparency.
But it gets even more sneaky..
1. Let's ignore all of Digital Downloads (over one month prior to retail launch day) for a moment.
Blizzard didn't actually count sales during the first 24 hours of Dec. 7th. In fact, they included sales from Dec. 7th, Dec. 8th, and Dec. 9th. Dec. 10th was the actual "ending date" of the 24 hours sales period. =]
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm was simultaneously released in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand on December 7, and became available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on December 9.Cataclysm became available in Korea and parts of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on December 9th. So, they counted the 24 hour sales period from geographies that contained the smallest number of sales but added in 3 WHOLE DAYS OF SALES from their largest subscriber based geographies. Nice.
That's a HUGE amount considering the daily trends of average game sales. For example: 5M sales opening day, 3M sales next day, 1.5M next day, 750k next day, etc. If Cataclysm sales were based on previous Expansion Pack sales (and there was never a Digital Download), that 3.3 million number was actually calculated over a 3 day period, and it would have ACTUALLY been closer to 2 million on the first day, 1 million the second day, 300-500k on the third day, and so on.
2. Blizzard stated that Cataclysm sales made "it the fastest-selling PC game of all time.*". However, that statement also had a little caption attached. It was, in fact, the "fastest-selling PC game" based on Blizzard's internal lineup of games and the use of special calculations from their own "internal company records". Meaning that they included 2 months of sales, but are classifying it as "sales in 24 hours".
3. They also called it a "PC game", but Cataclysm is not a stand-alone video game. It's an expansion pack (it could even be classified as a large patch or DLC) with a much cheaper pricing model than a real PC game purchase. I don't know if you could even classify the retail DVD as a large patch.. it's just the 4.0 update which players can (and already have) download for free. Really, if you get technical, you're just paying for a code to "unlock" new stuff for your account.
Sales did not actually "shatter" anything and if you've been reading earlier posts you'll know that 3.3 million sales over a 2 month period are not good at all. It also looks like this little prediction came true. =]