A quick warning.  On Kil’Jaeden (where I play) there is a new scan going on and I expect it is probably happening on other servers as well.

You get an ingame mail from the Argent Dawn saying something like:

Thank you for all your hard work killing demons for the Argent Dawn, please accept this gift as a small token of our appreciation.

The mail will claim to be from some Argent Dawn figure and will have an attached package – typically one of the various gift wrapped items (like the reward from those grudge-covered objects in Gnomeragon). 

The scam is that it is COD and it’s easy to fall for because it looks like you are getting a present and 100g/300g (whatever they send).  But really you are getting a present for 100g/300g COD gold.  So when you click you lose the gold.  Boom!

I got one of these for 300g and fortunately didn’t fall for it.  I’ve seen several people sending warnings about the scam in general chat.  So be careful, it would suck to have some random scam yank hundreds of gold from you.

/Alert

Article from News.com:  eBay bans auctions of virtual goods

Well this makes my weekly tracking report on account sales in World of Warcrat difficult to continue.  I was waiting to restart it once things stablizied, since the release of The Burning Crusade (the expansion) it has been unclear what the right metrics were.  There have been a few level 70 characters up on eBay, but not many.  So given this announcement I’ll delay the report.  I’ll start tracking gold again this week. 

This is unfortunate.  I, for one, think that being able to sell your account is a good thing.  It you put thousands of hours (like most level 70s) into this, you should be able to sell what you’ve accomplished.  It’s a shame a few purists think you should just have to throw all that away. 

Games are a big hobby for many people, most hobbies involve collection/building and generate some value (although are not often wildly profitable).  MMORPGs are no different – as you play you collect stuff for your characted and you build it up.  This has some value – no where near the time you put into it – and you should be able to extract that value if you leave.  It is unfortunate that some game companies do not take this broader view.

Please also read The Prince, The Pauper, and The Purist, if you are interested in this topic.

OK, so my last post was perhaps a little to vitriolic, but I was pretty pissed.   I kept getting an empty blackscreen after the first reboot.  Anyway, I will say that Microsoft’s tech support was helpful, I only wish I hadn’t needed to call them.  It turns out I had to unplug all my USB devices to install Vista.  Wow, never would have thought of that.  I’m pretty computer saavy and I’m beginning to wonder how normal people ever get this crap to work.

Oh, even better, I had to download a driver from Dell (for my hard drive, which admittedly is Raid) to get it to do a clean install.  What fun.  I had to guess which driver.

Anyway, I finally got it working.  Although I’m still languishing in the world of 1280×800 which really pisses me off.  But I finally got to the bottom of it.  Apparently this is nVidia’s fault.  The nVidia 8800 GTX (top end video card) is stuck in 1280×800 because of a driver problem.  So if you are considering Vista, an nVidia 8800 card, and/or an Apple 30″ LCD… they do not currently work together.  Supposedly the Dell 30″ works.  Here is the quote:

Well after two hours I have Vista working.  It looks AWESOME in 1280×800 on my 30″ LCD.  WTF.  I’m not sure if it is Microsoft or NVidia who is at fault, but when you buy Vista Ultimate it should WORK.  I mean it is $259 for the upgrade and it is targetted at enthusiasts and gamers.  I have an NVidia 8800 GTX card in my PC.  Right now this is the best card out there.  It ran awesome on Windows XP SP2…. in 2560×1600.  Now the highest available resolution is 1280×800. 

This operating system has been in development for years and they still released it too soon. 

I guess I’m going to have to reinstall XP on this computer.  What fun.  Like I wanted to waste five hours on this crap. 

So maybe I’m part of the problem, because I like to buy the newest stuff which encourages the release of crappy products.  But when I have to think about downgrading a $600 video card because Vista won’t work with it, that is just retarded.  Microsoft and NVidia should be ashamed of themselves.

This is an interesting article on Crapware from Ars Machina.

I’d probably pay $40-$50 to keep all the crap of a new computer I buy.  Frankly if I wasn’t worried about breaking something with the drivers I’d do a fresh install as soon as I got the computer.  I wonder if the OS CDs come with the crapware on them, never tried that.  Anyway, it’s a waste of an hour or two deleting all the crap that comes pre-installed – even just getting it out of the start menu. 

This is definitely entertaining:  Get a First Life!

Previously by the same guy:  Apple Dei

This guy is clever and funny.  Definitely geek entertainment.

So far so good.  I braved the Texas Blizzard of 2007 (lol) to get my copy at midnight Monday (or Tuesday depending).  BTW, a Texas Blizzard basically means freezing rain or the possibility of freezing rain.  In this case there was some freezing and it even snowed a little on Tuesday.  OMG! 

So anyway, during the freezing craziness of this last week I got some time to play.  I am now level 63.  Exciting!  I like the new expansion.  Advancing again is fun.  Exploring new areas again is fun.  Lots of cool new monsters and landscapes. 

More to come.

The Burning Crusade is out!  (Hence the delay, more on that in another post.)

Accounts for Sale:  287 (down 631!)

High Price: $1,300 (7/9 T3 Paladin with KT Loot) – down $200, although I no longer consider this a good indicator since people are posting stuff at delusional price points

Highest Price w/Bid:  $810 (14 bids, 8/9 T3 Warrior with Thunderfury – Based on the formating and e-mail contact I think this is a fraud though – see my previous post on this type of fraud).  There are a fer  bids in the $500-$700 range, but not many.

Accounts with Kel’Thuzad weapons:  1 (down 3) 

Accounts with Legendary items:  12 (sown 26)  (This number is somewhat inflated because it counts splinters of Atiesh and a lot of people have those – not too useful though unless you’re in a guild that can kill KT.) 

Gold: 

• 1000g on Tichondrius (Alliance): $228.78-$336.99 (trending up about $30)
• 1000g on Frostmane (Alliance): $228.78-$278.83 (range closed, but low price up $100)

Sources:  EZgaming, IGE, MOGs

COMMENTARY

Gold continues to remain roughly flat, with a lot of variance in prices between vendors.  Shop around.  I expect gold to fall dramatically in the next few weeks as gold is much easier to obtain in TBC.  However, since epic flying mount training costs 5000g I expect there will be a big jump in demand for large gold purchases.

Account sales are down dramatically.  If you are thinking of buying in for TBC, go for a good T1 character and forgo the T3 premium prices.  You will gear up fast in TBC and T3 will be obsolete at level 70 anyway.

Good luck in the Burning Crusade! 

From Time:  Confessions of a 30-Year-Old Gamer

This is a very good article about MMOGs (Massively Multi-player Online Games) and, in particular, World of Warcraft.  I think the author does a good job of explaining why it’s addictive and powerful.  I think anyone who has friends, significant others, family members, etc. that play MMOGs should read this – it might help you understand.

I’m a pretty heavy MMORPG fan, although somehow I’ve never played Everquest (or EQ2).  I started in MUDs, moved to Ultima Online, then Asheron’s Call, then a break, then to World of Warcraft.

Any objective observer in the MMORPG space can see that World of Warcraft has been a genre shattering success with around eight million subscribers.  Clearly this game has broken beyond the initial MMORPG and fantasy game playing crowd.  Since the biggest (non-Korean) MMORPGs were only at a few hundred thousand users this is a big deal.

World of Warcraft has been out for over two years.  On January 16th it’s first expansion, the Burning Crusade, will be released.  No doubt this will get everyone excited and re-energized about the game for some period of time.  

So, in pseudo-case study form, I ask:

You are the Publisher / GM / CEO / Studio Manager / Executive Producer of a MMORPG.  Your MMORPG has a little buzz in the hardcore fan community, but no one outside the most 10-20k most rabid game fans have ever heard of it.  You have two choices:

• Release on January 30, less then two weeks after the biggest MMORPG in history (by a lot) releases its first expansion.
• Defer your release by sixty to ninty days which results in you losing some revenue, but allows you to make the game better and more polished.

Ok, let’s take what we know about MMORPGs for supporting information:

• MMORPGs consume a lot of time.  They are typically monogamous games, meaning people play only one MMORPG actively at one time.
• MMORPGs have high switching costs.  If you have played World of Warcraft any length of time and are level 60 (or close), you don’t want to walk away from that.  Especially since now you can go to level 70.
• MMORPGs are expensive – often $50 for the game and $10-$20/month for a subscription.

Now, taking that all into account.  Let’s take a look at Vanguard (official site).  This game has been in development quite a while by some of the original team from Everquest.  Original it was going to be published by Microsoft, but subsequently changed publishers to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) which publishes Everquest I and II and Star Wars Galaxies.

So I follow this market.  I remember reading about Vanguard a few times.  While writing this post I went back and read some other articles.  It looks like World of Warcraft with a little more capabilities for character crafted items and one big “selling point” which is player housing.  Fun.  So I looked at the screenshots.  They don’t look as good as World of Warcraft.  Oh and I watched the movies… which focus almost exclusively on flying mounts, which probably seemed innovative and exciting at the time.  But, woops, they are in the World of Warcraft expansion too.

This is a big problem for MMORPGs:  If you are making a persistent world MMORPG like World of Warcraft, you are going to have to get WoW players to play your game.  The first thing they are going to do is go look at your reviews, screenshots, movies, etc.  And if they aren’t at least at parity with WoW, what would make you think they would even consider shelling out $50 and a lot of time to try it? 

ESPECIALLY WHEN THE WOW EXPANSION JUST SHIPPED.

So since Vanguard doesn’t look as cool as WoW (at least from the screenshots and movies I saw, I’m probably not going to try it.  If the WoW expansion sucks (unlikely) I may be motivated to give it a try.  It’s possible I buy it and try it so I can blog about it – either as a review of a pseudo-major MMORPG release or as a follow-up to this post.  But thinking purely as a player, I would wait.  If it got really popular and people were raving about it, I might try it.  Otherwise my monogamous persistent world MMORPG relationship will continue with World of Warcraft.

Anyway, this seems like a dumb move.  Lecture 2 will be in a month – two weeks after this is out to see how it goes for them. 

Oh, one other thing…  A lot of user comments out there keep saying this game looks good but it isn’t finished.  Blizzard (the maker’s of World of Warcraft) are known for pushing game release dates (a lot) to make sure the game is finished and good.  This has made them a lot of fans and is at least part of the reason almost all of their games are spectacular sellers.  Shipping a game that competes against them and isn’t ready yet:  even dumber idea.

Some user quotes from Gamespot:

apanizo
Heh, they spent 4.5 years and the largest development budget for an MMO to make a bad WoW clone with Eq2 graphics. Everyone point and laugh at SOE, again.

Khimarhi
I am very disappointed in the beta so far. . was thinking about jumping ship from wow to Vanguard. . but not now. . this game is boring in everyway. . good graphics are nice but animations are poor . . and if they are still planning on releasing it at the end of the month then they are making a big mistake. . way too many problems. .

There were, to be honest, a few (not many) positive comments.  Mostly from the few people who don’t like WoW or have an overwhelming love for player housing.

Stay tuned for the next round.