Wow is good for management skills. The best sign that someone’s qualified to run an Internet startup may not be an MBA degree, but level 70 guild leader status, according to the latest issue of Harvard Business Review. “Leadership’s Online Labs” by Byron Reeves, Thomas W. Malone, and Tony O’Driscoll is based on the authors’ research into the leadership and management skills required by fantasy/sci-fi MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Eve Online.
In those multiplayer games, the hardest-to-achieve goals (such as killing the demi-god dragon, wiping out a competing space corporation, and so on) often require dozens or even hundreds of players working together in concert, so the skills required to lead a successful mission, the authors argue, are very much like those needed to run a profitable business. The theory is hardly new; venture capitalist and hardcore WoW player Joi Ito has been talking about this for years. Rotate Individual Managers to Individual Goals To Get Better Management, Change the Game Quite literally. Age of Conan launches 9 new servers to meet growing demand - Massively. Why people don't want to leave WoW. I always think it's interesting when I hear developers talk about how World of Warcraft opened up the MMOG market for new entrants.
We have all these new and exciting games coming out: Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, The Chronicles of Spellborn, and plenty more. However, the overwhelming response that I get from WoW players when I talk about these games is a blank stare and something along the lines of, "Okay, that sounds all right... but why would I ever want to leave WoW? " I think that developers tend to underestimate how attached people get to their MMOG of choice.
There are now over 10 million World of Warcraft players. The question is, do they even want something different? I've read a number of bloggers in the past few months and talked to a number of players who claim that they're only playing WoW right now because "it's the best thing out there. " Your first MMOG is kind of like your first love. Here's the kicker: This game that I loved so much? So what does all of this mean? Wow fellowship of the dragon. Gaming in 2008, the dominance of WoW. Lord of the Rings Online made its debut early in 2007 Challenges to the dominance of World of Warcraft over online games and gamers look set to emerge in 2008. So say industry watchers looking back on a year in which the field as a whole matured and signs emerged which show how the industry sector is developing. During the year Blizzard's flagship title consolidated its hold on gamers as its subscriber base kept growing.
But debuts by Age of Conan, Warhammer Online and many others may mean that hold begins to weaken. Numbers game "We expected, like all the analysts, to see a dip in subscriptions in 2007," said Paul Younger, an editor at the Inc Gamers network. At the start of 2007, the number of active subscribers playing World of Warcraft was eight million but by the end of summer the number had passed 9.3 million. According to statistics gathered by Nielsen the average WoW player racks up 17 hours of play per week - 12 hours more than its nearest competitor The Sims.
Fantasy figures.