The only WoW Killer is RealID

07 Jul 2010 No Comments

by ryanin Gaming Tags: , , , ,

Yes, the headline is overdramatic (what WoW-related post couldn’t be), but it’s also the biggest thing to hit gaming in a many a year.

For those not following gaming news or who doesn’t play World of Warcraft, Activision Blizzard announced over the weekend that they would not only expand RealID to their forums for Starcraft and World of Warcraft, but that it would be mandatory that posters to the forums to use their real-life first and last name. Old posts would not be retcon’d, but any new reply or new post would have the person’s real name attached to it.

This move is, rightly so, garnering some attention. A laundry list of reasons to oppose this have crept up, from examples of real-life stalking from game activity, to the potential to out closeted gay gamers, to identity theft, to potential employers searching on your name and finding your forum posts.

Posting on the forums is, as Blizzard points out, completely optional. Your real name doesn’t show up in-game unless you opt in and allow someone to see your name. But, as a commenter on Reddit points out, this is a step in a new direction. Games like WoW are inherently social; you have to group for quests sometimes, you are in a guild to raid, you talk with people to trade goods. With RealID, you have a real-life social network tied to a virtual one. The possibilities for adverstising dollars and monetizing a userbase of millions is probably still making some executive horny.

Make no mistake; this is an experiment. One they’re committed to, but an experiment nonetheless. I play, but I don’t use post on the forums (cesspool that they are). I think this will diminish the quality and quantity of posts, but it doesn’t affect me. Not yet, anyway.

What I do see this as is a step towards mandatory RealID in-game as well. Experimenting with the forums is a litmus test for the reaction versus the effectiveness. It’s the allergy test before you actually consume a suspect food. People will quit the forums, people will quit the game, bad things will happen. These are known consequences that factored into the decision.

The question isn’t will they, the question is whether they can tolerate the consequences. If they extrapolate the numbers to the main subscription base, will a move like implementing RealID in-game allow them to continue making millions of dollars every month?

If they can, Blizzard will be the leader in a brand new field of social marketing. If not, they may have set their own house on fire.

It’s an interesting risk; we’re watching Blizzard, but you’re walking a very, very thin line with many people.

Infinity Ward castrates Modern Warfare 2

05 Nov 2009 No Comments

by ryanin Gaming Tags: , ,

As Ars Technica says: “You have to wonder if there are any actual PC gamers working at Infinity Ward”.

When MW2 was first announced I have to admit I was salivating. Infinity Ward has made some of my favorite FPS games. So the sequel to Modern Warfare had me getting all ready for a couple of months not playing World of Warcraft to frag some n00bs (or, be fragged, as the case may be).

Then, IW dropped the bomb that they wouldn’t be allowing hosted servers. They were moving to a centralized system where their own servers choose a users machine to host the game and others playing there, sort of like consoles. That was bad. The great thing about CoD games was that clans would build great communities around their servers. If you found a great server, you could keep going there. Clans would build maps, fix physics, add weapons; you know, enhancing an already great game.

This is an important point in that the hosted server community was a huge reason the Call of Duty games were so popular. Clans spent innumerable hours building on top of the game to make it that much better. Tournaments and ranking systems grew, motivating people to keep playing. Now, with that community hobbled, all that community was going to be hard to maintain.

Then, two developers from IW did an online interview to promote the game and dropped the remaining bushel of shoes.

The short list:

  • no console
  • no choice on host
  • if the host leaves, the games pauses for 5 seconds (yeah, right) while the system selects a new host
  • no ability to lean (a regression)
  • can’t record a match (meh)
  • no ability for players to kick or ban cheaters, hackers, or plain or douche bags

Good luck with that, IW. All of this and it only costs $60. The price tag had given me pause, but with a feature set like that, I’ll be skipping this. I’d hope the games tanks so that other PC game makers won’t repeat these idiotic development decisions, but that’s wishful thinking. The game will still sell millions of copies; I just won’t be one of the throngs plunking down my cash.

PC Modern Warfare 2: it’s much worse than you thought – Ars Technica.

Awesome Half-Life-Inspired Video

18 Mar 2009 No Comments

by ryanin Cool!, Video Tags: , , ,

The best 9 minutes of video you’ll see today.

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