Posts with tag sales

We all know that the best way to enjoy a tall, frosty beverage is from a chalice fashioned from the skulls of your vanquished foes. But what's the second best way? Why, a giant World of Warcraft stein from Taverncraft, of course!

If you've always coveted these wonderful utilitarian works of art, we have good news: This weekend only, Taverncraft is offering 15% off its entire stock of collectable World of Warcraft steins. If you've been putting off ordering that sweet murloc stein or the epic Tankard O' Terror, this may be the time to bite the bullet and get it done.

According to Taverncraft's Twitter page, all you need to do to take advantage of the deal is to enter the code 5H7G3T prior to checkout.

Or you could drink the blood of your enemies in, like, a vendor trash-quality sippy cup. If you think you can pull the look off.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

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Proving that Deathwing wrecking up the joint can actually be a good thing, this recent press release from Blizzard shows us that after an initial burst of 3.3 million, Cataclysm went on to sell another 1.4 million copies over the next month.

Blizzard Entertainment Press Releases

"We created thousands of new quests, introduced new lands to explore, and extensively revamped the game world for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, making it our biggest and most ambitious expansion yet," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We've been floored by the community's response so far, and we'd like to thank them for their continued passion and support for World of Warcraft, and for helping Cataclysm reach this incredible milestone."

source

This pretty much cements Cataclysm's position as a huge seller for Blizzard and brings this expansion up above Wrath of the Lich King, the previous best seller. It's unlikely that anyone is exactly surprised by this news, but it bodes well for the game and its current success.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

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I hear this all the time: "Hurrr! Undercutters are ruining this market! Durrr!". Today, we're going to talk about this. Undercutting doesn't ruin markets, high supply does. Also, if it's still profitable, the market's not ruined, it's just being taken away from you. Cut your margins and undercut back. Or buy them out if you still think they're wrong and you're right.

But markets should be protected from undercutters!

Balderdash. Markets are a place where people can sell their goods for any price they want. You're describing collusion between sellers to reduce "lost profits," where every time someone wants to undercut with a new auction, they do so by the smallest possible amount.

More often than not, all your competitors will have the same cost that you do, and as soon as they see you commit to an auction, they'll undercut you right back. If everyone is knocking a copper off the next highest auction, they only way to undercut successfully is to try camp the AH and make sure you're always the competitor who has visited most recently. Needless to say, this is a colossal waste of your time, and you would probably make more money per hour doing argent tourney dailies.

The only way to effectively sell your product in a market with a lot of competitors is to undercut by more than just a trivial amount. You need to make it just cheap enough that your competition is less likely to undercut you, but expensive enough that you're still making money.

Wryxian has written a book on fishing over on the forums -- he originally responded to the thread with a quick link that affirmed in patch 3.3, you will never ever catch trash from fishing pools, regardless of your fishing level. If you put the bobber in a pool, you'll get what you're supposed to, no matter what (presumably to allow even low level players to do the fishing quests). But players have problems with that. First, there's the old issue of things always getting easier as the game changes -- people are complaining that they had to level with missed catches and trash, and those who level fishing after 3.3 won't. For that, I don't have a better answer than Wryxian does: that's just the way it works. The game is ever-changing, and most changes make things easier. That shouldn't devalue what you did before.

The other issue is that this may destroy the fishing economy -- if even low level characters always get the fish they want 100% of the time, that means more fish in the market, which means any money high-level fishermen would have made off of rare fish will probably go bye-bye. But Wryxian says that's OK -- people will still use fish for themselves, and he believes that the pain of losing that AH sale will be solved by the bonus of always getting the fish you want. We'll have to see -- it's true that between the updates to cooking lately (and the future fishy updates we're expecting), Blizzard is making sure the secondary professions are much less exclusive, which means there has to be the balance of also making them less lucrative.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Yes indeed, this Friday is none other than Black Friday, which means the deals will be aplenty, the crowds will be horrendous, and the holiday money drain will begin (of course, you could go with Buy Nothing Day, but that seems a little too grinchy to me -- why not go ahead and buy while the buying's good?). Fortunately, there are a few WoW deals floating around out there, in case you need to pick up a copy of the game for a loved one (or that Recruit-a-friend account you've been planning to make).

The regular WoW vanilla game (useful for leveling to 60, but if you want to go past that, you'll have to buy the expansions) is on sale in a few places for super cheap -- the Ladies of Leet saw it at Best Buy for just five bucks, and Gamestop's matching that price. Gamestop also will have the Battle Chest (with WoW and BC and a few other goodies) for $19.99, and Newegg has the same price if you don't want to fight the crowds. Unfortunately, there's no sign of Wrath on sale -- you'll still have to pony up the $40 if that's the one you want. But stay tuned in the comments -- if readers can find better prices on this stuff, we're sure you'll see them below. Good luck out there, happy deal finding.

Researchers are apparently using economies in virtual worlds like Everquest, EVE Online, and of course our own World of Warcraft to determine how real-world economies work, according to this article by Reuters. Scientists have, of course, used WoW to model real-world behavior before, but that was specifically for something biological, and thus there were quite a few differences between the virtual model and the real application. In economies, however, it's all just money and numbers, so researchers can easily see real patterns and movements in the data.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't go too deeply into their results (and it only talks about their findings from Everquest), but there is one nugget of conclusion: the economists saw inflation spike in one server over 50% in just five months. They say that the population rose on the server, which apparently made some items hard to find, thus raising prices. Economists say they've seen that same thing in the real world before: in developing nations, and in war zones. We can probably see similar effects right around a patch, or even just on weekends. As more people run to the AH to buy certain items, inscriptions or enchants, the price on those is going to rise. Interesting stuff -- it would be cool to hear what other similarities these guys have found between the virtual world and the real.

Gamasutra has received an interesting stat from the good folks at NPD: after hearing that The Sims 3 sold over 800,000 copies in its first month, they were curious to see what kind of unit sales our own World of Warcraft has experienced. And the numbers are pretty big: among the original game and all of the expansion packs since the vanilla release over four years ago, NPD says 8.6 million boxes of WoW have been sold in the US. That's a little misleading if you're comparing it to actual subscription numbers: remember that this is over three different releases (so the actual number of all-time players, not current players, is probably 1/3 of that), and it includes different collectors' editions of each of the three game editions. So there are nowhere near 8.6 million US players of WoW -- that's just how many times players have come through the retail line with the various releases.

What that is, however, is a lot of money. Gamasutra estimates that at an average of $30 for each unit sold (the vanilla game currently retails at $20, but the expansions all sell at $40, and of course the original game was more expensive once upon a time), that's $258 million in income for Blizzard. In short, Blizzard's making a mint at the retail counter, even before they sign anyone up for subscriptions.

Then again, if you look at their own costs, those aren't insubstantial, either -- Activision's Bobby Kotick claimed that anyone starting up an MMO to compete with WoW would have to throw at least half a billion dollars into the mix just to get started, so we can presume Blizzard has spent at least $500 million on their staff, development, and hardware. So it's not like they're taking it all to the bank, though we can at least presume they're sitting firmly in the black.

We've posted about a few BlizzCon ticket giveaways before, but Kingston, the computer memory maker, is holding the biggest so far: they're giving away a total of ten tickets to Blizzard's big event in Anaheim next month. This one's cake, too: just enter in your info on their page about you and the kind of computer memory you use and buy, and then they'll pick ten random winners to get hooked up with a ticket to BlizzCon. Unfortunately, you're on your own for transportation to and from the event (and, we presume, a hotel to stay in if you're transporting from out of town). But there's never been a better time to call up your cousin Ed who moved out to Irvine to be a game developer a few years ago and still has that old sleeper couch to stay on. Right?

Good luck to everyone who enters -- hopefully if you weren't able to grab tickets in the chaos that ensued during the original sales, you've been able to either buy, trade, or win for one since then. And if you do make it out there, don't forget: Thursday night we'll be rocking out at the Anabella. Come by and say hi!

Our economy may still be pretty much in the gutter, but one industry is still going strong. If you glanced at what site you were reading this on and guessed "online gaming," congrats! You win a gold star. Here you go: ★.

Anyway, according to this industry report featured on GameSpot, online gaming overall (including MMOs, in turn including WoW) was up 22% year-over-year in May 2009. 87.1 million people were estimated to game online in the USA, an impressive 28% of our estimated total population.

Of course, a huge chunk of this is browser-based games (think Bejeweled or Yahoo! Games). WoW is apparently the 21st most popular "online locale," clocking in at 2.2 million US visitors. Still, I'd say 21st isn't bad for a game with a subscription fee; 2.2 million players at $15 a month is $33 million a month (assuming the each have exactly one account). The next-closest MMO, according to this report, is RuneScape, at 202,000 players. Really? Aren't there other MMOs with more than that?

Anyway, online gaming, like online everything else, is on the rise. Single-player, localized games are starting to feel positively quaint, although I still think Chrono Trigger is the best computer RPG of all time.

We pretty much knew this to be the case, given that it's exactly what happened two weeks ago, but yes, just in case you haven't been paying attention, the second and final round of BlizzCon tickets is going on sale this Saturday, and Neth confirms it'll start at 10a.m. PST again. You'll have to be ready on the ticket page to jump into the queue at the right time, and then hope they don't sell out before you've gotten a chance to grab yours. The good news is that things probably won't break down, but the bad news is that they'll probably go really, really fast, so you'll have to be lucky to get in line before they close the doors.

And if you don't make it to the convention, there's always us: we're planning on covering the heck out of it yet again here at WoW.com, so even if you're not in Anaheim, we'll make you feel like you are. Or if you want to go the streaming video route, we're sure DirecTV will be happy to take your money as well.

So it's not the end of the world if you don't get your purchase done, but there'll no doubt be a lot of disappointed Blizzard fans no matter what. Good luck to everyone -- we'll see you Saturday at 10 a.m. Pacific.

Along with most of the Blizzard fansites, Arena Junkies is also conducting a BlizzCon ticket giveaway, and they want you to design your own Arena. Basically, you come up with an idea, supplement it with whatever drawings or pictures you'd like, and then submit it in their forum thread by June 5th. After that, they'll have the community choose the top three, and each of those winners will be on their way to Anaheim to visit Blizzard's big event. We bet there'll be some awesome ideas coming out of the contest by the end -- Arena players are nothing if not creative.

And in other BlizzCon news, Tokyopop has announced that they'll have a booth at the convention (not a huge surprise -- we'll expect to see most of Blizzard's licensing partners in attendance), and they've got a lot of fun stuff planned: artist Fernando Heinz Furukawa of Warcraft Legends and Starcraft: Ghost Academy will be there and drawing pictures for attendees, and there'll be various art on display and new books to be sold. Plus, they'll have a Blood Elf standup for pictures, and they even leak a little something about fellow exhibitor BradyGames: this year they'll be hosting a convention-wide "fishing quest." Sounds like fun.

If you don't have tickets yet, you have one more chance: they go on sale this Sunday, May 31st. Seriously, don't show up until then. (Ed: Schramm, stop trying to keep people out of your ticket line! The second round of ticket sales is this Saturday, May 30th. Good luck to everyone except Schramm.)

Yes, if you were around on Saturday, you know that the first round of BlizzCon tickets sold out, and sold out fast. Tickets went on sale right around 10am PST (which was 1pm EST), and sold out just about 28 minutes later. If the queue numbers are trustworthy, over 21,000 people (we've heard as high as 25,000 at a time) logged in to buy tickets that day, and from unconfirmed reports around the web, it seems like about 5,000 to 8,000 tickets were sold: most people who got in line around number 5,000 were able to pick a ticket up, and that was a few minutes in already. Some of those people are already selling tickets on eBay as well.

We believe (though aren't sure) that they'll be selling more than 15,000 tickets this year, since that's what they sold last year and they're using even more of the convention space. If that's true, then Blizzard probably went through only about half of the tickets, and will sell the rest during the second session on the 30th. But that's probably not much of a consolation -- given the frenzy around this last Saturday, there'll probably be more people trying for tickets, and given the prices on eBay, possibly more scalpers clogging up the queue. We'll see.

Update: Lots of people point out, rightly so, that I missed something in my guesstimates of how many tickets were sold: you could purchase up to five. My personal guess is that the majority of people bought only one or two, but even if you go with three as the average, 5,000-8,000 people in the queue is actually 15,000-24,000 tickets. Blizzard probably did sell the majority of tickets on Saturday then, not just half. So the process on May 30th will presumably go even faster.

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BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.

It only took four months, but a new title has knocked Wrath of the Lich King off the top of the PC sales charts, according to industry trackers NPD. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, the much-awaited RTS title featuring that other fantasy universe with "war" in the title, has taken the top spot, knocking Wrath down to number two (and the original version of WoW and the Battle Chest hold their spots around six and seven).

We suppose it had to happen at some point -- with PTR interest kicking in this past week, and the game having sold so many copies already, there had to be a point where something else jumped up above Wrath. But don't count the award winning expansion out of the number one spot yet. While Dawn of War II is getting reviewed very favorably, this little bump is likely due to an audience of fans who wanted to get the sequel on day one. Once first-week sales for that game level off, it's entirely likely that we'll see WotLK back up on top. Not that Blizzard needs any more money, of course. But it is good to be the (Lich) King.

Thermalnoise over on the WoW LJ thought of a great poll, and the results are interesting. He asked readers there what the average amount of gold they had on their characters was, and I thought the amounts were relatively high: between 2,000 and 10,000g for about 40% of those polled. The other big chunk is between 200 and 2,000g (a little under 30% of respondents), which is where I'd expect most of the player base to be, but no: apparently Blizzard's bigger rewards in Wrath of the Lich King (not to mention the higher gold sinks, requiring us to try and raise more gold if we want to fly around or ride a mammoth) have made us richer as a whole.

Thermalnoise also asked how much your savings of gold fluctuates, and for most people it apparently stays pretty much the same, or generally increases (probably as they run professions, do quests, or sell off drops and pay repairs). I'd imagine Blizzard is keeping a pretty close eye on just how our gold moves around, and that "steadily increase" is what they'd want all of our money to do, just to keep the game's economy moving around.

In fact, though I'm probably repeating myself here, it'd be nice to have them give us some insight on just what's happening with the ingame economy. We've gotten a few hints at what sells and doesn't on the realms, but it would be interesting to see some official numbers about the average amount of money that players have and keep at the various levels of the game. and exactly where it all goes when we spend it.

We've heard before about World of Warcraft strutting up the PC gaming market before, but could this game also be holding up the PC game accessories market? Seems that way for Steelseries -- they're the makers of the WoW mouse that we've mentioned (the one that might not be quite kosher with Blizzard's Terms of Service, use with caution). They've just recently inked a deal with Best Buy to carry some of their products (including the WoW mouse), and World of Warcraft played so much of a part in the deal that CEO Bruce Hawver credited Blizzard's MMO with creating his "high-quality gamers": "The way I used to pick up the phone after school, now, kids log into World of Warcraft and chat... Online gaming might cost $14 to $18 a month – less than a single movie visit for two people."

It does follow -- if WoW is one of the only reasons left for people to spend money on PC games, it does seem that it would be one of the only reasons for them to spend money on gaming accessories. High-end mice and keyboards use to be the domain of the FPS player -- guys like Fata1ity pimped their own lines and all the mice bragged about their resolution and ease of use. But the PC market has changed, and MMOs are the game of the day now -- everything is about squeezing function into as many buttons as possible and reaching this 11 million player group roaming around Azeroth. If Steelseries and other accessory manufacturers want to sell their products, they've got to try and sell them to us.