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IGE divests itself of, well, itself.
The other rumor F13 posted last week got confirmed. Basically, the web publishing arm of IGE (Thottbot/Allakhazam/Ogaming) sold the gold farming/brokering arm to everyone’s friend in space, Jonathan Yantis.
It’s interesting that running Thottbot apparently makes more money than selling gil in FF11. Or, perhaps, much like porn, there’s a whole lot of competition out there now.
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about 3 years ago
…Wow.
Oh man.
That’s… There’s so many LAYERS here, I don’t even know where to begin.
Despite the fact that I strongly believe that Johnathan Yantis is the worse thing to happen to the Gaming World ever, I cannot help but welcome him back to the field of battle in a fit of nostalgia.
I wonder if he’d still be trying to buy Boards out from underneath their communities if WoW had as many thriving non-official boards as EQ did.
about 3 years ago
And the only reason that EQ had non-official boards is because someone at SOE thought it would be a great idea to shut down the official boards rather than pay a couple salaries to keep them barely policied ala the Blizzard boards.
But they did already buy the most popular WoW website around years ago, which easily congregated wow users in a way that community forums never could. And it has, over time deteriorated into a sub-par site that people tend to ignore, especially since Burning Crusade, in Favor of WoWhead which actually has relevent info to the expansion. I am seriously curious who runs wowhead.com though… While thottbot used to be the best place to find out about new datamined items and sets, wowhead now tends to be the newsbreaker…
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?z=1&h=300&w=610&h=400&w=700&site0=wowhead.com%2F&site1=thottbot.com&site2=allakhazam.com&site3=&site4=&range=6m&size=Medium&y=12&z=1&url=wowhead.com%2F&x=25&y=9
If it’s true that allakhazam + Thottbot generate more ad revenue than the gold selling business of IGE put together, It looks like wowhead has certainly helped catch a slice of that pie.
about 3 years ago
Yeah, I can see gold selling ad revenues being bigger than selling gold itself. Unlike virtual gold, which is literally a limitless supply of data, ad space is limited and actually enforced in many ways.
about 3 years ago
Posting a rumor in advance of a press release? But I thought that was a dick move? It was when Kotaku did it
about 3 years ago
I suspect the “gold brokering” business gets hit harder than the gold farmers themselves when bans occur as they probably hold more inventory than the farmers do. Gold farmers farm and flip their gold (I believe), they don’t hold it long.
I agree, the competition in the market has got to be hurting… remember IGE’s relatively recent announcement that they were going to focus on power-leveling services?
about 3 years ago
Funny, wasn’t it IGE that was loudly braying about how lucrative the “secondary market” is? Why sell it back to Yantis, then? And why do I suspect the purchase price was basically pocket change?
about 3 years ago
Nobody’s mentioned Affinity’s P2P auction business in Korea, which is enormously lucrative. http://www.itemmania.co.kr
–matt
about 3 years ago
I can see why people “get into” those markets. There’s SO MUCH MONEY left lying on the table by every single developer out there it’s not even funny.
Take 3 or 4 staffers in the trenches at Blizzard and code up section to their online storefront. 49.99 for a level 60 character of any race/class on any unlocked server or server which you have a current 60+ character.
Drop them in the appropriate dungeon-2 set for their character and default-bind them to Shattrath. Throw in 1-200g to cover the first levels worth of nominal fees and voila, instant revenue stream that doesn’t rape the end-game/economy and gives players a great boost. Those toons still have to play TBC and pre-60 stuff has no real value beyond a solid base for TBC leveling so no harm, no foul.
That’s actually something I’d take advantage of, honestly. I have no problems playing the 10 levels of TBC stuff, but I just have zero desire to grind out 55 levels in the old world. Been there, done that, no thanks.
Of course a system like that for other games would be very, VERY bad before the first “major” content push. No “buy-in” system should ever exceed the majority of the players that “earned” their stripes.
… how far off topic did I get there?
about 3 years ago
People resent having to pay for stuff like that. It’s not “leaving money on the table,” it’s a conscious public relations decision.
Blizzard does make some coin on transfer services, and nobody resents that because it’s something only they could do, and it isn’t achievable in the game. It seems reasonable to pay $50 to transfer your character between servers. Realistically, they probably spent a week coding up a quick database script that copied some stuff from this server to that one, and pay a junior developer peanuts to oversee it. Brilliant!
about 3 years ago
See that’s just it… SOMEONE is paying these 3rd party douchebags. Apparently not as well as the people buying ad space, but I have to concur with Lum’s assessment that competition is the real issue there and not a lack of customers.
That’s why I hung the L60 thing out there. This crap bothers me to no end, but I really wouldn’t have a problem with someone buying a 60 from Blizzard with only the basest of equipment. The new content isn’t trivialized and you still have to PvP/Raid/Level in Outland to accomplish anything useful.
I think of it as a more WoWified version of the /level command. Hell, if they wanted to REALLY spice things up Let anyone with a 70 /level a character to 60 for free. Cap it out at one usage per month and credit people 1 credit per year of subscription? Voila! You just hamstrung a big chunk of the power-level business without major harm to your economy AND with a revenue stream that should pay for any labor investment over the first 6-12 months!
Now if only someone would pay me for this genius!
about 3 years ago
Sure, once a player has finished paying the powerleveller to get them to 70 so they can take advantage of the new promotion…..
(PS. I support the idea you mentioned, I just don’t think your justification is quite right.)
about 3 years ago
While a /level command resolves part of the problem (and is something I recall DaoC implementing) it’s not just ore even mostly about levels/powerleveling. The other ways to take the pressure off powerleveling-wise is to implement mentor/sidekick, or level-locking.
Here’s the two reasons I hear most often regarding buying in-game gold: 1)I want my mount, at the level available (not 10 levels later) and I don’t want to spend my limited time farming for it.
2) I want to be a crafter, and it looks interesting/fun, but as usual it is a total money sink, and doesn’t make sense to embark on until max (adventurer) level.
Sound familiar? Is DaoC the only game out there that made it possible to actually make coin (albeit small) while skilling up crafting?
about 3 years ago
“Is DaoC the only game out there that made it possible to actually make coin (albeit small) while skilling up crafting?”
No; crafters in EQ2 can take NPC tasks which provide a modest profit while advancing in crafting levels. I haven’t really looked at costs/profits in LOTRO crafting.
about 3 years ago
My rant vanished…! It was here ealier.
Ahh well, just make up something sharp and witty with a bit of caustic humour about how, even with a high end system you still can’t play due to memory leaks.
Yep, crash within 5-7 minutes of play time in Tursh. Built in addiction control – yay!
about 3 years ago
“Is DaoC the only game out there that made it possible to actually make coin (albeit small) while skilling up crafting?”
Horizons and Vanguard are built like that. You can start crafting with your level 0 character, skill-up and get money from NPCs, with zero investment.
Vanguard took it even further, you don’t even have to harvest resources in order to skillup, you take so-called work orders, craft the item with the materials provided, give it back to the task giver for crafting exp, good money (better that the regular loot adventurers were getting) and a chance to get some nice crafting item (tool, clothing, rare).
And none of these two games tie your crafting level to your adventuring level. Crafting is its own sphere as it should be.