Gamasutra - News - GDC Austin: An Inside Look At The Universe Of Warcraft
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am on the ga

Thursday morning's GDC Austin keynote was met with a large crowd as Blizzard Entertainment's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce took the stage to offer a detailed look into the inner workings of the genre-dominating World of Warcraft.

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"As part of his experiment, Myers decided to play the game by the designers' rules -- disregarding any customs set by the players. His character soon became very unpopular."

Interesting blog about Professor Myers' research and paper on MMO rules vs MMO social norms

David Myers, a Loyola professor and computer game scholar, looks at his computer screen with his "City of Heroes" online computer game character "Twixt" reflected in his glasses at his home in Slidell Friday, July 3, 2009. "Twixt" became perhaps the game's most reviled, abused player because his playing methods were unpopular.

He admits he really didn't know what to anticipate in terms of revenue; there was nowhere to go to research how well microtransaction-based MMOs did elsewhere. "We just jumped in," he recalls. "There were no data points and, frankly, every game is different, every play population is different, and extrapolating from one developer's data to your own is, well, an interesting intellectual exercise but it doesn't necessarily tell you what to expect." Four and a half years later, James has learned a lot -- that the average revenue per user (ARPU) is between one and two dollars a month, but only about 10% of his player base has ever paid him anything. As a result, he says, approximately 5,000 gamers are generating the $230,000 in revenue he sees each month.

What Are The Rewards Of 'Free-To-Play' MMOs?

Like the original Ultima games??