Genres and Fans

I need to get my wife this shirt.

I’ve been havign a discussion with Pitrelli over at Kill that Cheerleader after he created a post in response to one of Syncaine’s. The hot topic of debate that Syn is so good at stirring up, refered to WoW of course. Syn’s original premise is that 60% of players to the majority of new MMOs don’t count as possible customers. They are merely part of the WoW-tourists (trademark Syncaine) that are poking their heads out of their holes like curious little prairie dogs. Any company would be wise to keep in mind that a large percentage of your initial player base is in no way possible to retain. I happen to agree with Syn for the most part on this theory. Nothing that I have seen has yet to prove in any way, shape, or form, that WoW is anything other than a statistical anomaly. Until their level extra-ordinary (now hyphenated for clarity!) level of success is duplicated, they are an outlier on the MMO landscape.

Shiny Cap’n

I had the priviledge of playing around on the test server last night. It was hosted by Andy of Mythic, and we had a slew of folks on one vent channel all running around in glorious battle. I believe the number I heard told was 220 people max, all in Praag, with our “Oooohhh Shiny” setting turned on. I have to say, I was impressed by the bloom at how good it looked, with only a few minor quibbles. The even better thing was that I recorded about 30 gigs worth of video. My FPS wasn’t righteously amazing, but even during a keep siege with over 200 people in one location, I never went below 9 FPS with Fraps running.

Also, don’t believe the cake. The cake is a lie.

Video coming this weekend or Monday, depending on how busy I am with school work and how lazy I feel.