Triumph of the Hot Pink Flightless Bird

With a few days to spare, I've snagged one exceedingly pink mount - the Valentine's Swift Lovebird, which takes the relatively less common Strider model and turns it very pink indeed.  The latest addition to the event is not without its downsides - you can snag 30-40 tickets per day (with an extremely limited/costly approach for getting more in a hurry if you must) and the mount requires 270.  I.e. you'll have to play on most of the days of the event if you want the mount.

That said, this mount differs from past world event grinds in that almost all of the grind is earned from killing mobs that you'll be killing anyway in just about any activity that you can do in WoW.  There's a quick and easy daily to hop the portal to Uldum, and the obligatory fight against a holiday boss who may not last longer than the duration of Heroism/Bloodlust/Timewarp, but in general all you need to do is play. 

This is a much better approach than introducing some new activity, such as a minigame or a trick or treat RNG-fest.  If you're playing WoW, you are probably willing to tolerate killing mobs. 

10% of WoW Subscribers Are Annual Pass Customers

Headlines about today's earnings call by Blizzard have focused on the top number for World of Warcraft - the game lost "only" 100K subscribers, for a total of 1.8 million over 2011, ending the year at 10.2 million.  The figure that I find more interesting is the annual pass statistic.  "More than one million" annual passes have been sold "in the west". 

That's 10% of the overall subscriber base, and a larger portion of the Western market.  If, to put a completely made-up number next to a real one, half of WoW players are in Asia, the "over 1 million" could be 20+% of the Western playerbase.  This fake number happens to be just about the result I saw when I polled my readers to examine how polarizing the Blizzcon announcements were - 32% though Blizzard was jumping the shark, while 21% (including myself) had signed up for the annual pass.  

A few implications:

• Us bloggers have referred to 2011 as a bad year for World of Warcraft.  The reality is that there is maybe a single MMO in the world right now that has more month-to-month subscribers than Blizzard has ANNUAL subscribers, to say nothing of the other 80%.
• It's easy to be cynical and write that this whole thing was a trap to make sure that people are "paying, even if they weren't playing".  Perhaps some of the same people who pay hundred dollar price tags for free to play lottery boxes literally snapped this thing up as an impulse buy for the bonuses.  Even so, we're likely looking at hundreds of thousands of players who picked this thing up because they thought they would be in WoW for the long haul.  I'd be very curious whether other games have anywhere near 10% of their players signing on to even six-month commitments.  
• With the promotion, possibly one million battle.net accounts will never purchase the $60 DIII box.  (I say possibly because you can in principle purchase separate annual passes for multiple WoW accounts attached to the same battle.net account.)  Blizzard may come out ahead on that deal in the long run, but I'm definitely curious whether it will put a dent in the game's launch sales/revenue.  
• With the same caveat as above, possibly one million battle.net accounts will be invited to the Pandaria beta.  Thanks to SWTOR, a million beta players isn't entirely unprecedented, and not all may go to the trouble of participating, but I'm curious how the logistics (e.g. number of servers) will work. 

In the long run, the real implication may be that large numbers of players are experiencing the game as something that they don't really pay for by the month anymore.  My experience has been that the game is actually more fun if you play it when you feel like playing it, instead of trying to cram all the grind into as few monthly fees as possible.  Blizzard's increased focus on weekly, monthly, and annual holiday events over daily requirements seems to support that approach as well. 

The question, then, is how many annual passes there will be this time next year.   Will players grow accustomed to this model and stay subscribed?  Will Blizzard not be able to find a carrot as enticing as Diablo III to get players to sign up for another year, and then have trouble retaining them on the old, pricey month-to-month basis?  Will the proportion of players on long-term plans increase as more casual players and those who disagree with the game's direction wander off and the die-hards remain?  Whatever happens, I'm going to be much more interested in the annual number than the monthly number in the year ahead. 

A Barter Economy With Coins?

This week, I've learned that I was dramatically underestimating my level of income in World of Warcraft. 

Because I don't generally play the game for more than a few nights per month, there had been an extended stretch in which the rate at which new gear that I could obtain was added to the game far exceeded the rate at which I was obtaining it.  What I observed was my overall gold balance dropping steadily, as I used my cash reserves to pay for gems and enchanting materials for my latest acquisitions. 

Now that my gear acquisition has plateaued out - half of my gear is now the best available to me for the rest of the expansion, and the remaining upgrades include several pieces on the valor point vendor that can only be obtained at a rate of one every 2-3 weeks - I'm seeing that the net change was not the whole story.  It turns out that I was bringing in substantial income the whole time, only to have that wiped out by even more staggering costs.  Now that the costs have abated, my cash balance is shooting steadily upwards.

I've balked at paying thousand gold prices for minipets on the auction house, but it turns out that I make that in 2-3 evenings.  Ironically, I no longer need any of the reputation rewards for any of the daily quest factions (other than the shoulder enchant token, and various achievements).  Instead, I'm effectively pulling down a third of a minipet or a stack of tradeskill ingredients or whatever else gold can buy as a reward for basically whatever I was doing in game anyway. 

I didn't realize this is what I was doing, but effectively I had already made the choice that my time playing the game has more value than the virtual currency.  I'd subconsciously arrived at a budget threshold for what I was willing to pay (e.g. yes to blue gems, no to purple enchants) based on how quickly my gold balance was dropping.  Knowing the real numbers may or may not change my behavior, but it's interesting - even though there is a currency involved, I'm effectively functioning as if it was a barter economy. 

First Time MMO PC Builder, Part 4 (Continue Testing)

Meet GArMOS-1 (short for Green AR-madillo Made,
with added Portal reference)

I've been up and running on my new PC for about three weeks now, and things have been uneventful, which I suppose is what one would be hoping for on a brand new machine.  I've got over 150 GB and counting in MMO clients on the data drive (good thing I didn't try to go pure-SSD), as I install everything I'm playing, and a bunch of things that I might hypothetically play in the future (since this machine will unfortunately be deployed on the wrong end of a DSL connection, which I distrust immensely, in the near future).

So far, everything I have attempted to run has run, despite the older graphics card.  Given what I'm hearing about specs for the next generation of GPU's, I'm definitely expecting to get better value in a few months.  In the mean time, the only settings I have had to downgrade are things like max quality shadows or anti-aliasing.  I guess I sort of notice these, but I don't consider these performance issues so much as cosmetics.  While modern MMO's are delivering maximum settings that require some serious computing power, developers aren't abandoning the mainstream (and my machine is a bit above mainstream even with the out-dated GPU).

Several people during the process commented that my tales of troubleshooting prove that I should have just paid someone to build a machine for me - in particular, the Canadians apparently have a chain that is well known for this sort of thing.  I'd say a few things to this:

• Paying someone else to build the machine - and provide a warranty - may be more costly than you realize.  Doghouse Systems (official sponsor of numerous MMO podcasts) charges $1750 for a machine that's roughly comparable to what mine will be when I upgrade the graphics card, only mine cost under $1200.  Maybe your local shop manages to be cheaper without compromising on reputation, but they have to pay the employees who will provide your warranty service somehow, along with shipping, any expenses for parts, etc. 
• As those of you who have read my posts about F2P business models know, I'm someone who derives some degree of satisfaction out of pursuing and obtaining a good deal.  Technically speaking, it may be correct that my time is worth more than the money I save on this exercise, but that's part of the fun for me.  I could definitely see how someone with a different personality would find this less enjoyable.  
• In the longer term, I value the knowledge I've taken away from this project.  Because I assembled this machine, I don't have to shrug when something stops working.  That knowledge - especially since this is unlikely to be the last computer I ever assemble, has some value in the long run.

At the end of the day this type of project may not be for everyone.  I personally enjoyed it greatly, and I wish the best of luck to anyone else looking to take the plunge.  

World Events Collide

This week is an odd confluence of world events in World of Warcraft.  We are currently midway through the Lunar New Year event, which is set by the Chinese calendar and therefore does not always fall in the same window in the US.  WoW's Valentine's event has been expanded out to two full weeks to accommodate a lengthier token grind - albeit a big improvement from the original iteration of the event, which was both short and purely random number generator dependent.  On top of that, the newly revised Darkmoon Faire carnival is up and running for the first full week of the month. 

I actually am in game working on various projects during this busy stretch.  I just completed the token tour for the new lantern minipet, during which I dug up a bunch of Archeology sites.  Charm bracelets for the Valentine's event, and its new pink ostrich-ish mount, are earned through normal killing of mobs.  Effectively, these events are holding my attention because they offer additional rewards for stuff I was planning to do anyway.  The other side of the coin, however, is that I tend NOT to work on WoW when there is NOT an event going.  I suppose I'm holding out for a little more in exchange for my time in WoW, in the same way that I hold out for a little bit more in exchange for my money in non-subscription titles?

Ever Test An Indie MMO?

Eric at Elder Game has opened up signups to test his one-man indie MMO, Project Gorgon.  I don't have the time to justify taking a slot among his testing ranks, but it's definitely an interesting project.  It's fascinating for me as someone who analyzes game design to see the choices that a real live developer makes on allocating development resources - choices that are easier to comprehend because of the scale (one developer, as compared to the $100 million AAA MMO studio).

If you have the time, and you find what he's written on the project interesting, I recommend the project.  It sounds like fun, and you might learn a thing or two.

STO hits 2 years, two weeks

Star Trek Online has a curious double-two birthday - two years as a game and two weeks as a free to play game.  This game has been on my list of things to maybe try when it went free to play.  The promise of a raincheck for a free level 50 ship - there's a thinly veiled implication that it will be cash store only whenever after this weekend it returns - was enough to get me to sign in and grind out the requisite five levels. 

Lt. Green Armadillo, commanding officer of the USS PVD-1, and his bridge crew

It's hard for a rank newbie to say much about a two year old game that hasn't already been said by two years' worth of rank newbies.  The two week old business model is a bit more interesting to judge.  There are definitely things about the model that are attractive to a visitor - such as no charges for content.  The catch is that this feels more like a traditional F2P game than a retro-fitted subscription game.  Case in point, there was a kerflaffle a few weeks back where they introduced a desirable new ship using a cash store-facilitated lottery approach.  Not necessarily an auspicious start to a free to play game, though I'm told that some of these antics existed back when the game also had a monthly fee.

That said, the big thing that this game has going for it is that there are some things it does very differently from what we see in any MMO - not just the space combat system but how the crew system is used to determine your ship's abilities.  While I maintain that free to play games that charge for content are generally more trustworthy, the cost of trying this one for a bit for some variety - $0 - is not that bad.

The anniversary Enterprise-looking ship, which may someday possibly be the USS PVD-5 (or however many ships I go through before then)