MMORPG Search Trends

I was looking at my blog stats this morning. When I came to the search terms that people use to find my blog, it occurred to me to have a look at the search trends for the big three games of this year.

Google provides a handy little tool called Google Trends that uses their historical search data to produce a series of graphs showing where different search terms stand in relation to each other. BTW, a search term is the text that you type into Google when doing a search. That’s all there is to it.

Anyhoo. I thought it would be interesting to have a look at the numbers and scales of people performing searches for the big three games of 2008: World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online.

The Google Trends tool allows you to select a time frame for the graphs. I picked on three: All Time, 2008, and the last 30 days.

On all three graphs, The blue line is Warhammer Online, the orange line is Age of Conan, and the red line is, of course, World of Warcraft.

Trends for All Time (since 2004)

Trends for 2008

Trends for the Last 30 Days

As you can see, World of Warcraft remains the eight thousand pound gorilla for searches. In terms of search volume, there’s only one time when they weren’t the most searched for in the MMORPG world, and that was when Age of Conan was released.

Unfortunately for Age of Conan, the spike in search terms appears to resemble the stats that XFire put out for their members who were playing the game. Shortly after launch, when everybody was keen and interested in the game, searches for info on the game skyrocketed. But when players started leaving, interest waned and  the search volume plummeted. It’s now almost to the point where it was before the game was released. Not good.

You can see a similar pattern starting to happen with Warhammer Online in the 2008 trends graph. With the announcement of a release date interest in the game is starting to rise. I expect a rise similar to Age of Conan around the time when the game is released. I reckon it will then settle down at about 50 percent of the peak search volume… more or less. Providing the game is in a good release state.

One interesting thing, if you like graphs and statistics I suppose, is that the search volume for each game is remarkably consistent and low level until the game is released. There is a small amount of increase in the last year, but then at release, boom, everybody’s searching. It seems to be true for all three games charted here.

The final trend I’ll comment on is that it appears that the search volume for World of Warcraft is waning somewhat. This could be due to a number of factors.

• WoW Players are getting bored with the game and leaving. I don’t think this is the case. It doesn’t gel with the fact that World of Warcraft has 10 - 11 million players.
• WoW Players no longer need to search for information. This is more likely. After four years and few expansions, most players know a lot about the game, and have their sources like Wowhead, Wowwiki, and various other sites and blogs bookmarked. No need to search.

If the trend of players searching on release continues, I expect we’ll see a rise in World of Warcraft searches at that time.

What does the data tell you?

Popularity: 6%

Wrath of the Lich King Tames The Devil

Devilsaur that is.

Absolutely marvelous I say.

One of my pet peeves (okay so that was a bad pun) with the whole hunter pet system in World of Warcraft is that the final product gets nerfed. I’m not so much talking about fighting ability here, but about appearance.

I’m not sure about the reason, but once a nice fightin’ beastie is tamed, it shrinks down in size. Large critters become a whole lot smaller. Perhaps more understandably, the new pets stats are normalized for their class — cats get standard cat stats, raptors get standard raptor abilities, you get the picture.

It appears that for Wrath of the Lich King, players are now able to tame the mighty Devilsaur. Now that’s a pretty cool pet. And while it still shrinks down once tamed — I guess it’s hard to justify having a 50ft devil compressing itself into tiny passages — it still stands head and shoulders above its new master.

Just a thought. I’d be happy if the Devilsaur kept its original size and could only be used outdoors. It would be so special to let him loose in the battlegrounds.

Popularity: 5%

Wrath of the Lich King is Imminent

With Blizzard’s announcement that they have opened the beta for Wrath of the Lich King, all of a sudden the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion feels closer than ever before.

If Blizzard keep to a timetable similar to the timetable they had for the Burning Crusade expansion, Wrath of the Lich King should be released in the next three to four months. Burning Crusade was released on January 30 16, 2007 after going into a closed beta early October 06. This puts my estimated release of WotLK sometime around the end of November — just in time for the Christmas shopping season.

Just around the corner really.

If you want to be a part of the beta all you have to do is:

1. Upgrade your World of Warcraft account.
2. Copy up to four characters to the beta realms. These characters must be at least level 68.
3. Create a temporary Blizzard account. This is used only for providing the login info for the beta realms.
4. Download the beta client.

There’s a lot more info on the Wrath of the Lich King beta page as well as a FAQ. You can also access the beta forums. Since there’s no NDA, these forums appear to be open to normal World of Warcraft subscribers.

Popularity: 5%

Blizzard v MDY - Pwnd!

You’ve probably heard by now, the legal battle between Blizzard and MDY over WoWGlider is over with the judgement falling to Blizzard

For those of us who are sick and tired of getting gold spam tells, or seeing bot’s grinding away in our favorite leveling places, this does appear to be good news. It does however set a legal precedent about how I can use my computer, and that does make me somewhat uneasy.

While I don’t condone cheating, and that includes using bot’s to either make it easier to level or harvest gold, there are a couple of things I don’t like about this judgement.

1. It’s my computer and I’ll use it as I want to. If Blizzard want to install a Warden or other monitoring software and cancel accounts if I cheat, fine I have no problem with that. (Well, maybe I would if I were a cheater.) But I do have a problem if they sue me for it. Remember that Warden supposedly checks for certain websites too. Would you like to be sued for visiting MDY’s website just because you were curious?
2. A big part of Blizzards argument wasn’t about copyright or EULA infringement, but about facilitating that infringement. They complained that WoWGlider was making it faster for players to level and thus reducing the possible subscriptions. Does that mean websites that provide information to help players level faster will be next on the lawyer hit list; how about the leveling guides?
3. Some of the argument went along the lines that the copyright infringement occurred when the client program was copied into memory. Of course it was. Every program, since they started storing software on media (paper tape, punch cards, core memory)  is copied into memory — that’s the only way it can work. Do we really want to give companies the power to sue us for copyright infringement if we are simply using the program as designed, perhaps because we offended them in some way?

I believe that legal precedents that remove consumer rights are not necessarily a good thing. While some of the situations I mentioned above are fairly unlikely to happen… at this time, the erosion of rights nearly always happens slowly and with good reason.

Today we applaud the decision by a court to punish cheaters. Will the same court tomorrow punish guide makers or bloggers who happen to criticize a game against the terms of the EULA?

Popularity: 5%

Stroppy Video - The Ballad of the Noob

The moral of this ballad. Ex wives will sometimes cost you more than just alimony.

Popularity: 14%

New Pet - Warp Stalker

Just a quick update tonight since it’s getting a bit late and I have a full day tomorrow.

I spent a short time hunting in Terrokar Forest this evening. I was only in the game for a bit over an hour, but still managed to clear up three quests. I also did a bit of exploring around the bone wastes, and found and picked up another couple of quests.

I also decided to try out the Warp Stalker as a hunter pet. I wanted the Warp Hunter, but couldn’t find one less than 64 so I settled on the Stalker. Looking at the stats, the Hunter is tougher, so I’ll have a look at taming one when I hit 64.

The Stalker was a pretty easy tame and didn’t hurt too much while I tamed him. I ended up calling him Cromulent.

So far I’m not sure how good the Stalker is. He hasn’t increased the loyalty level yet, so I haven’t been able to train more than Growl. The Ravager had his natural armor and stamina increased by training, and had an armor of around 7000, so he was tough. He also did some great DPS and was able to burn the mobs down quickly.

Once I get a few loyalty levels on Crommy, I expect he’ll be a lot tougher. In the meantime he needs a little more care in the mending department, especially fighting those buzzards.

I definitely agree with Znodis at the Mystic Hunter. There is a deep and abiding need for more than two stable slots.

Popularity: 14%

Thank Goodness For That

From the MTV Movies Blog and Filmonic comes the news that the director of the worlds worst game to movie adaptations has approached Blizzard to bring World of Warcraft to the big screen.

Uwe Boll (IMDB reference) has directed such shockers as Bloodrayne, Bloodrayne II: Deliverance, and Alone in the Dark. It’s also been reported that his productions are designed to use as some sort of German tax write off — apparently loss making movies earn some sort of large tax credit. Make a flop and earn a lot of money. It doesn’t sound like that’s the sort of situation any game developer would like to see their IP in.

It seems Blizzard feels the same way. Uwe Boll according to the MTV Movies report approached Blizzard’s Paul Sams to buy the movie rights to World of Warcraft and was soundly rebuffed.

Sams, reportedly (by Boll himself) said:

‘We will not sell the movie rights, not to you…especially not to you,’” Boll revealed. “Because it’s such a big online game success, maybe a bad movie would destroy that ongoing income, what the company has with it.”

Thank goodness that the folks at Blizzard have the sense not to hand their valuable property over to someone who would only destroy it on screen. The rumor according to Filmonic is that Blizzard is interested in making a World of Warcraft Movie –  I’ve heard the same rumors — but that they are highly invested in getting a movie of the quality of The Lord of the Rings.

I’m still burned about what Hollywood did to the Doom movie. (That wasn’t Boll.) Getting rid of the decent into Hell aspect and turning the whole scenario into a biohazard gone wrong cliche. I still can’t believe the Id Software guys let that happen.

Hollywood unfortunately doesn’t have all that good a track record with turning game properties into movies, something that was also the case with comic book movies up until a few years ago. Fortunately those have improved immensely. I wonder how long it will be before game movies catch up in quality.

Let’s have a little fun now. I’ve put a post up on the forums about what you’d like to see in a hypothetical World of Warcraft movie. Do some brainstorming, share your celluloid fantasies and who knows, you might end up with a career in the movies.

Popularity: 11%

WoW, Gadgets, and a Plug

Wow. What a weekend.

I finally hit level 63 with my Orc Hunter. I got a little bored with the quests in Zangarmarsh about three quarters of the way through the level and decided to see what Terokkar Forest held in store for me. I’d already done a little bit of exploring and had got the flight point in Shattrath City — needed to get a portal back to Org at level 62 in any case — but I decided to ride in.

I picked up the first quests near the Cenarian Thicket and worked on those. It was then into the Bone Wastes where I found a bunch of refugees who needed my help and while doing those quests found myself in Stonebreaker Hold. So many quest markers, not enough space in the journal.

So I deleted a bunch of quests left over from Hellfire Peninsula and the group quests from Zangarmarsh. I then loaded up on the Stonebreaker Quests, picked up the flight point, and got stuck into it.

While I was hunting Warp Stalkers I popped the level. Woo Hoo!

A little after dinging my ADD kicked in and I decided to have a little vacation in Nagrand. So I rode around there for a while and uncovered quite bit of the map. I also got to see the biggest diamond in the universe. Selaeya, my Belfadin, wants it. After all diamonds are a girls best friend. All she has to do to get it is to level high enough and wrest it from the cold dead hands of the demons guarding it.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was going to be taking a trip to Sydney in May. Well that’s still on, and partly what I spent the other bit of my weekend on.

I headed into town on Saturday morning to buy myself a new camera. I had already decided on a Nikon D40X DSLR, and just needed to find a store that sold them and had one in stock. They’re a pretty popular camera from what I’ve been told. I ended up buying from a place called Ted’s Camera Store at Rundle Street in Adelaide.

Why the plug for Ted’s?

I was also looking at buying a GPS system for the trip, and the brand I had selected was around 600 to 850 Aussie dollars. The unit I wanted, a Tom Tom, was recommended as the best in Choice Magazine (an Australian consumer mag, they review heaps of products and rate each one, I also used them for the camera) and Ted’s only had the display unit left. The camera was A$1100, and Ted’s did a deal for the camera, a free case, extended warranty, lens protectors, and the GPS for about A$1500. I walked out of the store very happy.

Needless to say, the rest of the weekend — aside from WoW and a birthday dinner — was spent playing with the gadgets. In retrospect, it’s amazing I spent any time in the game at all!

Popularity: 15%

WoW Journal - April 6

With all the focus lately being on Age of Conan and Warhammer Online PvP, I started thinking about doing some PvP in World of Warcraft. So I loaded up WoW, got the patches up to date — not that they were that far out — and jumped in on Saturday evening.

I did several battlegrounds and a 2v2 arena.

Boy was I rusty. I didn’t realize it under afterward but it would be a good twelve months since I participated in any PvP. I didn’t play much World of Warcraft for most of last year, spending my time on LotRO, Tabula Rasa and some others. The other problem was that the patches messed up my UI fairly well. It took me a while to sort it all out.

The arena was the big surprise. I chose to do the practice version, and was effectively clobbered in about 3.27 seconds. I’m going to have to get familiar with the arena system. Fortunately, Big Red Kitty has been posting about Hunter PvP tactics recently. He has some decent videos up. I wasn’t really paying attention because I wasn’t PvPing.

I think it’s time for a refresher.

The Battlegrounds I attempted were Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Eye of the Storm. WSG was on a low level character I had on another server, a level 13 Warrior. While the Horde was victorious, I didn’t do that well. The opposition were fairly heavily twinked out — as were our guys — so I was fairly repeatedly slammed.

Thinking that I might do better on my 62 Hunter, Stropp, I changed servers and headed to the Battlemaster. The next BG was Arathi Basin, which we lost, but not by all that much. I was fairly heavily targeted by the rogues and stealth druids, and didn’t really do all that much damage.

On to Eye of the Storm. I think I must have been getting my eye in by this stage since I was starting to do better here. I was still reasonably vulnerable, but for some reason I wasn’t being singled out this time. Horde won here, and I had a pretty good time.

The conclusion I came too was that I need to stack on a few more levels before I have another go at PvP.

So come Sunday morning, I headed back out to the Outlands and started doing quests in Zangarmarsh. I has pretty much just started when I got a invite from a guildie to run the Blood Furnace. I figured that instances are usually pretty good for XP so I accepted.

Unfortunately, we were in a PUG, and within a short amount of time has wiped twice. We had two Druids, a Warrior, a Rogue, and myself. One of the Druids was the tank and the other the healer. Unfortunately, the healer was under-geared and didn’t really know what to do. After a couple more bad pulls, my guildmate quit the group in frustration.

We managed to land a 70 Shaman, and the healing Druid feeling left out quit. That was fortunate, because the Shaman knew what he was doing and we were able to progress. We then managed to land a 69 Mage, and continued through the rest of the instance.

Overall, I think I got about 25 percent 62 to 63 here which is pretty good really. Instances can be good XP earners. The loot wasn’t anything to write home about. I picked up a blue ring which I can use, and some green cloth and a mace which I couldn’t.

Once the Blood Furnace was complete, I headed back into Zangarmarsh and hammered away on quests. Zangarmarsh and Hellfire Peninsula are the land of never ending quests. It seemed for every quest I finished, two more would open up. Blizzard really need to increase the size of the quest journal.

I finished up this evening about three quarters of the way to 63. I’d hoped to have dinged a couple of levels today. I’d forgotten how slow leveling was after 60. At this rate AoC will be out before I get to 70.

Popularity: 12%

Blizzards Lawsuit

I’ve been following this Blizzard versus MDY/Glider lawsuit recently, and I’ve come to a somewhat unsettling conclusion.

Law is strange.

There are a couple of big issues at stake in this lawsuit. One of them is Blizzards contention that Glider allows bots that ruin World of Warcraft on several levels (that’s my non-lawyerly interpretation.) These bots essentially make hurt a players experience causing them to quit and thus damage Blizzards profits. Something like 20 million dollars worth of profit I understand.

The other is that Glider violates Blizzards EULA and Terms of Service (TOS).

Okay.

I think the contention that Glider is damaging Blizzards revenue is a novel approach. There are laws around that allow companies to sue based on interference with their business. If Glider does that, then Blizzard may have a case.

But didn’t Blizzard just reach ten million subscribers? Didn’t Blizzard make over a billion dollars in revenue last year, with a 500 million dollar profit?

It certainly doesn’t look like Glider has done any damage to Blizzards revenues. In fact it almost looks like Blizzard is making similar claims to the music industry about piracy. We’re making record profits, yet these bad guys are making us lose money. A 20 million dollar loss out of a 500 million dollar profit doesn’t seem to be a sustainable argument for damage to me.

I wonder how Blizzard can prove that players are leaving because of Glider. Is there a question on the unsubscribe form to ask players if they are quitting because of Glider?

The violation of the terms of service and the EULA is also interesting.

In essence, a EULA is a sort of contract. It’s an agreement. It’s my understanding that both parties have to agree to a contract before it becomes enforceable. Did MDY agree to Blizzards EULA and TOS?

Well. It’s pretty certain they did agree. After all, MDY would have to test their software. That requires a running copy of World of Warcraft, which requires the user to agree to the EULA and TOS before logging in. How enforceable this is, is another question.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not condoning the use or creation of the Glider program. MDYs claim that it is just for letting players avoid the level grind is somewhat bogus. There are plenty of players who want to do that, sure. But Glider has a lot more use with the gold selling industry, and that’s where it is hurting the community.

The thing is though, that using bots for gold farming is really at the lower end of the evil scale. Yes, it’s annoying to run into a bot that’s clearing an area that you need to work, but it’s much worse to be hacked with a keylogger, or to get your account stolen and characters cleaned out.

I’m sure that Blizzards lawyers believe that they have a case against MDY. It looks like MDYs lawyers believe the same thing since they are counter-suing Blizzard. It may be early, but it doesn’t look like there is a settlement is sight.

Popularity: 14%