Posts with tag azeroth-advisor

Last week we reported that 38 Studios, a company working on its own MMO property, had picked up the Azeroth Advisor, a custom newsletter directed towards players of World of Warcraft. At the time, we were slightly confused -- why would another gaming company want to purchase a guide written to promote and help players of a competitor's game? To get the answer, we went straight to the top, and sat down to talk with Brett Close, CEO of 38 Studios, about the reasons behind his company's purchase of the Azeroth Advisor and the technology behind it.

Last week, Curt Schilling, the company's founder, spoke on The Instance podcast about the buyout (that took place in May of this year), and what Mentor Media's newsletter and technology had to offer 38 Studios, so we asked Close about that, including how they planned to extend the custom newsletters to games that didn't have WoW's Armory and why they want to support players of a competitor's MMO. And we also talked about the fact that the newsletter is going free and why they decided to start giving it away.

The conversation with 38 Studios' CEO starts right after the break.

Here's a strange little story -- 38 Studios is the MMO/entertainment company owned by baseball player Curt Schilling (who is himself a very big WoW fan). They're working on a secret project codenamed Copernicus (which our sister site Massively has been covering closely), but apparently they have other interests as well -- they've picked up a company called Mentor Media, whose main product is the Azeroth Advisor, a custom newsletter about World of Warcraft.

I don't know if we've ever mentioned Azeroth Advisor on the site before -- they claim to send you a custom newsletter (for a fee) built around your own personal character, but most of the information and guides you can actually get from them are pretty much equivalent to what you'd find here on WoW Insider (or less helpful, if we may say so ourselves see update below*). Still, for casual players who just can't get enough information (and who don't want to browse our WoW insider Directory to find guides for your specific class), it might give you something else to read.

But what's strangest about this is why 38 Studios, a company working on its own MMO, has chosen to pick up a company that produces an unofficial newsletter about World of Warcraft. It's like Bioware buying World of Matticus (not that Matt is for sale or anything like that). Maybe they eventually have plans to have Mentor Media start producing content about Copernicus, or maybe Curt Schilling just found the guides really helpful and figured he'd like to own the company that made them. Stay tuned for a possible interview with 38 Studios to see if we can figure out the reasons behind the purchase.

Update: I let my obvious bias for our site show a little too much there -- Azeroth Advisor provides a valuable service to some players, and they work hard to do so. I apologize for hinting otherwise. Stay tuned for an interview to learn more about the site and the people behind it.

Update2: The guys at The Instance actually asked Curt about all of this (including this very post), and he told them a lot of the reasons why they picked Mentor Media up, including that the newsletter is going free within the week, that they see the platform of delivering customizable newsletters as expanding even beyond the gaming market, and that Mentor is seeking writers for all kinds of content, including even other games.