Brother Vinny
Active member
I just noticed an ad for Blizzard's World of Warcraft MMORPG on the TOL home page. The ads here seem more-or-less geared towards me--I have to applaud the cookie-tracking software behind that--so I wasn't surprised.
Blizzard's enticement to return to their virtual world of Azeroth is that it will be free for me to play up to level 20. While I daresay this might give me a week or two's pleasant diversion, if falls miserably short, and fails to take into account the changes in the marketplace since WoW premiered.
MMORPGs of the quality WoW has to offer are fairly common. RIFT (my current favorite) started out as a pay-to-play similar to WoW but has since become completely free to play. It continues to make money by offering subscriptions with perks and items that can be purchased using in-game cash (which, in turn, can be purchased with real cash). Other MMORPGs that have similar models at Runes of Magic and Allods.
I loved WoW back when I first played in, and back when it was the only game in town. Back then, paying $7 a month didn't seem like a steep price--hours of entertainment across a month for about what one would pay for a movie ticket. But the economy and the marketplace have changed, and Azeroth won't be tempting again until the level cap comes off their free-to-play model and Blizzard starts finding other ways to milk their cash cow.
Blizzard's enticement to return to their virtual world of Azeroth is that it will be free for me to play up to level 20. While I daresay this might give me a week or two's pleasant diversion, if falls miserably short, and fails to take into account the changes in the marketplace since WoW premiered.
MMORPGs of the quality WoW has to offer are fairly common. RIFT (my current favorite) started out as a pay-to-play similar to WoW but has since become completely free to play. It continues to make money by offering subscriptions with perks and items that can be purchased using in-game cash (which, in turn, can be purchased with real cash). Other MMORPGs that have similar models at Runes of Magic and Allods.
I loved WoW back when I first played in, and back when it was the only game in town. Back then, paying $7 a month didn't seem like a steep price--hours of entertainment across a month for about what one would pay for a movie ticket. But the economy and the marketplace have changed, and Azeroth won't be tempting again until the level cap comes off their free-to-play model and Blizzard starts finding other ways to milk their cash cow.