Almost Three Million Lose Life To Lich King

Wrath of the Lich King is the fastest selling game of all time beating the old champion: Burning Crusade. Believe it or not, Blizzard is saying 2.8-million people picked up the expansion to World of Warcraft and are currently sitting at home forgetting to eat their dinner in the first 24-hours of launch.

This probably doesn’t come as any surprise to Burning Crusade owners, but think on this… you can’t play Wrath of the Lich King without the core game and the Burning Crusade expansion. New adopters of the WoW haze will be investing a good deal of money, before monthly charges, to get into the full experience of Lich King.

The original Burning Crusade expansion sold 2.4-million copies in the first 24-hours, in some ways this is disappointing because their was only a minor influx in this new expansion. It’s hard to complain about epic sales on a game expansion, what other title can boast number so high for an expansion pack?

The real question is, how many gamers have taken days off of work to get their Death Knights to level 80 first?

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Episode 319: Someone Is Butt-Hurt About MicrosoftEpisode 319: Someone Is Butt-Hurt About Microsoft

There’s no Gaming Flashback or Gaming History, but there is a crapton of news this week on TD Gaming Podcast, which Jonah Falcon and Jordan Lund eagerly read.

That, and Jordan really wants to know what you have been playing.

The news this week includes:

  • Microsoft officially announces indie self-publishing, to be unveiled at GamesCom 2013
  • Phil Fish explodes on Twitter, cancels Fez II in a huff
  • Shadow of the Eternals back on Kickstarter, no longer episodic
  • Neil Gaiman has announced his first videogame, Wayward Manor
  • Lanning: Nintendo will be around for “100 years,” but probably not Zynga or Microsoft
  • Activision-Blizzard buys out $8.2B of its own stock from Vivendi
  • Paid subscribership of World of Warcraft down to 7.7M

All this and Listener feedback.

Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?Activision Blizzard Trying To Scare Off Competition?

A few months ago, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said investing $500 million to a billion still wouldn’t be enough to compete with an MMORPG like World of Warcraft. The MMORPG space is a costly investment and you’d need to really burn a lot of money to start competing against the mega-giant, but Mythic VP and Warhammer Online lead designer Mark Jacobs disagrees with that quote.

Jacobs says $100-million dollars would be needed to start competing against the giant subscription generator that is World of Warcraft. Although few developers are sitting on $100-million USD, it’s a bit more realistic an investment for a studio to scrape up compared to a billion bucks! A billion dollars is a scary number when you consider that’s the start of an investment that may, or may not, pay off in the end.

Kotick may not be using complete scare tactics, he may be working off experience when dealing with MMORPG’s. A startup MMO isn’t a cookie cutter system, there is a lot of development efforts, $100-million dollars worth, but MMO developers slip dates many times. When you start slipping your dates you’ll start burning more money and, before you know it, you’re a billion in the hole. Jacobs thinks $100-million will cover development costs and messing up, so a billion is still way over budget.

Perhaps this is a bit of a scare tactic, assuming a developer will fail and slip their dates isn’t really a great way to start quoting prices. However, shooting too low isn’t always the best method of building your development assessments. The end result, scream ONE BILLION and you may scare off any potential startup MMO developers.

Warhammer Online lead designer did mention one big barrier to entry: the need for “at least half a million subscribers to be successful.”

(Thanks, 1up)