Just so you guys don’t think that we’re spending all of our time playing SWTOR… (We are… that’s why posting has been so slow lately)
Apparently, Blizzard has decided to call off Christmas Blizzcon this year. That’s a shame, since at least one other Dragon*Con director and I were planning on attending this year, sporting the very latest in Alliance t-shirt wear and seeing if any of the resident homophobes wanted to say something about it.
Oh, but wait! There’s more! It seems that Bobby Kotick has come up with another scheme to add money to Blizzard’s bottom line and at the same time contributing absolutely nothing to the state of the art of online games.
Are you ready for product placement in your MMO?
Just imagine World of Warcraft with in-game advertising to go along with your monthly subscription and item store purchases. Oh, wait, Mists of Pandaria is on the way, so you’ll get an interactive trailer for Kung Fu Panda 3 as well as a custom version of Pokemon.
(Ok, so I know that Blizz did Pandaren long before those movies came out, but since when did I let the truth stand in the way of some good snark?)
Meanwhile, the 30-day trial period for SWTOR has elapsed, and while I don’t have any firm numbers on the subject, the servers seem as populated as they have always been. Can’t say I’ve seen a great deal of cancellations, and I’m working on getting my second character to level 50. (Imperial Sniper) I still believe that the only thing that is going to kill off WoW is Blizzard’s own asshattery, but the gap between them and the rest of the pack is getting narrower by the day. 38 Studios is set to release Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning in the near future which promises to close that gap even further. (And did we mention that R.A. Salvatore, one of the minds behind that game, is coming to Dragon*Con this year? Did we mention that? )
We’re about 6 weeks away from our first volunteer staff meeting, which means things are going to get a lot busier on the D*C front really soon.
Out.
-Grim
