| Mail |
You might also like: WoW Insider, Joystiq, and more

Reader Comments (8)

Posted: Jul 15th 2008 11:56AM Anatidae said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
This is a silly idea. Silly, silly silly.

Not to say that Blizzard does not produce games outside of the computer, like their board games, card games, etc... but their main revenue is COMPUTER games.

Their next MMO will be a computer game, period.

If anything, it might utilize smaller computers, such as cell phones, for additional gameplay.

Posted: Jul 15th 2008 12:12PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
Shouldn't this blog update be posted on April 1?

Silly.

Posted: Jul 15th 2008 12:41PM Nadril said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
Dear lord this would have potential of being instant comedy gold for any other person who doesn't play WoW. I invision a bunch of guys getting together for a "raid" in RL.

Blizzard NEEDS to do this. The sad thing is that with cellphones it would be entirely possible.

Posted: Jul 15th 2008 12:41PM Wgraves said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
if your gonna do an e-connected LARP game, it should meld better to the real world than wow.

the first person the cops on campus in a WOW costume gets tazed

Posted: Jul 15th 2008 12:46PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
Uh, no.

Frankly this would just be stupid. What's the business model? How does blizzard make money off it? Why would people pay for it when they organize and do crap like that on their own?

Making a computer game that can host millions of players in virtual worlds simultaneously is hard, and something the average gamer understands the need to pay for. They can't do it themselves. Dressing up like elves and running around smacking people dressed up like orcs with pretend swords is easy, and something they don't need to pay money to a massive corporation for.

There are many less-than-nice words I could use to describe Blizzard, but stupid isn't one of them.

Posted: Jul 15th 2008 12:53PM Nadril said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
Someone missed the humor :(.
Reply

Posted: Jul 15th 2008 1:42PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
I think the author of the original article got bonked on the head as he woke up from last night's raid.

One thing's for certain... I guess you can't tell someone to get off their ass and stop playing WoW if they're running around doing... quests. Oh wow, epic treasure can be found in a tree at 51*33.96N , 001*33.10W.

Posted: Jul 15th 2008 4:01PM (Unverified) said

  • 2 hearts
  • Report
(Since I wrote the piece I figured I'd weigh in here.)

The article started out as a speculation of how an MMO vendor might change the game. You need critical mass to do that, and it's something Blizzard has that few others (maybe Runescape) do.

I intended the story as a bit tongue-in-cheek (thanks, Nadril) -- I don't think they'll ditch billions in revenues to fuel some LARPer fantasy. But I do believe that MMOs will start to spill over into the real world soon (as many of you pointed out.) Is this what their next game will be? Probably not, but they'd be foolish not to factor in mobility. But down the road, I'm confident we'll see some kind of overlay of the real world with gaming.

So maybe my insanity was due to today's nerfing of mounts down to level 30. But I'm confident that the next transformation in gaming will have mobility and telepresence. There were people in the eighties who thought video games would never be multiplayer; now, we take it for granted.

A.

Featured Stories

Betawatch: May 19 - 25, 2012

Posted on May 25th 2012 8:00PM

Coming soon
Engadget

Engadget

Joystiq

Joystiq

WoW Insider

WoW

TUAW

TUAW