EA Mythic: $1 Billion Not Needed to Compete with WoW

[Slayerik]

I have never, ever had a Warhammer product. I know nothing about the Warhammer universe. I think it's something to do with tabletop gaming miniatures and that game shop franchise that was completely useless to me as a teenager because it had no videogames or AD&D. It looked hardcore nerdy.

Warcraft was already a mainstream single-player videogame brand. I am wondering whether Warhammer really has as much market awareness as hardcore nerds think, or I'm just ignorant.

This.

I knew the 'but it's huge in Europe' comments were enroute though. I keep hearing it's...well....huge over there. That's cool. Hopefully it's a good game that has more gaming life than Conan. My guess is it flops as in retains less than 500k. You know what else is huge in Europe? Oh yeah, that OTHER MMO.

[amiable]

They have some 800,000 folks signed up to Beta, so I think 500k is at the low side.  Yes I know there are many folks here who "sign up for beta's but don't buy the game" but I think it is still a relatively good gauge of the interest in the game.

[Lantyssa]

They have some 800,000 folks signed up to Beta, so I think 500k is at the low side.  Yes I know there are many folks here who "sign up for beta's but don't buy the game" but I think it is still a relatively good gauge of the interest in the game.

By that measure, AoC will have done better...

I knew what Warhammer was growing up.  It was a miniatures game involving these little dudes in space.  It was a cool idea, but I could host a fourteen team B'Tech brawl for the same costs, if I went with actual miniatures over the paper markers which came with my game.  Only the nerdiest of nerds with more money than sense played it around here.

Warhammer Fantasy?  I didn't know it existed until the first couple of failed attempts at an MMO.  If it does well in the US, it's because of MMO players wanting a new fix, not because of a huge loyal fan base.

[Tale]

I have never, ever had a Warhammer product. I know nothing about the Warhammer universe. I think it's something to do with tabletop gaming miniatures and that game shop franchise that was completely useless to me as a teenager because it had no videogames or AD&D. It looked hardcore nerdy.

Warcraft was already a mainstream single-player videogame brand. I am wondering whether Warhammer really has as much market awareness as hardcore nerds think, or I'm just ignorant.

Seconded, I've gone to conventions, I've played DnD and I think I'm pretty nerdy but I'm 28 and I've never really known much about warhammer except A, I thought it was all in space and B. it was a minatures game with space marines. That said I do enjoy the lore and setting but damned if it's a mainstream product.

Both of you are in the US, right?  Tabletop gaming was always a niche in the US, and fantasy (vs. historical or sci-fi) was a niche of the niche.  In Europe, it's a lot better known.

No, I'm European born, Australian raised, still living there.

[Nija]

I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I say that MJacobs doesn't really know what he's talking about.

[UnSub]

Warhammer 40K is certainly more popular (that I've seen) here in Australia, but the fantasy Warhammer universe isn't unknown.

But again, it's not the IP that is bringing in most players to WAR. It's the DAOC pedigree and the desire to play The Next Big Thing.

[Abelian75]

I knew what Warhammer was growing up.  It was a miniatures game involving these little dudes in space.  It was a cool idea, but I could host a fourteen team B'Tech brawl for the same costs, if I went with actual miniatures over the paper markers which came with my game.  Only the nerdiest of nerds with more money than sense played it around here.

Warhammer Fantasy?  I didn't know it existed until the first couple of failed attempts at an MMO.  If it does well in the US, it's because of MMO players wanting a new fix, not because of a huge loyal fan base.

I've never done anything related to WH either (40k or otherwise) and only know about it because one of my friends in the navy played it a lot.  That said, having played the game now, I'm pretty sure the IP makes it a better game for me even without any preexisting knowledge on my part.  I don't really know how marketing and psychology work in that regard, but I suspect IPs, at least ones that fit well with the product you're making (as this one clearly does for the type of game they are making), have a positive impact beyond simply attracting a pre-existing fanbase.

In this case, the world just feels... rich to me.

I dunno, this game seems like a real winner to me.  I'm certainly recommending it to a lot of peeps I don't ordinarily recommend games to.

[Azazel]

It's also been getting a ton of press over the years, predictably enough, in White Dwarf, which is Games Workshop's in-house monthly Warhammer magazine miniatures catalogue. There are still a ton of Warhammer players out there, and the crossover from Warhammer Players>Computer Gamers (especially stuff like WoW) is actually pretty high. I think they're banking on a lot of conversions from the actual Warhammer players as opposed to just "MMO Fans".

[WindupAtheist]

It's also been getting a ton of press over the years, predictably enough, in White Dwarf, which is Games Workshop's in-house monthly Warhammer magazine miniatures catalogue.

Oh man, it's been getting press in Game's Workshop's in-house miniatures catalog?  Look out bitches, this shit is going mainstream!

[Azazel]

You're missing (or ignoring) my point.

Regardless of Jacob's mouthing off, there's this:

There are over 330 "Official" Games Workshop stores across the globe and over two thousand independant retailers who carry Warhammer prodcuts. There is also a Warhammer Museum in the UK...seriously

Lets say, as an average, 10 people purchase a Warhammer product per day, per store, per year. Not too crazy a number eh? That simple, modest figure of 10 people would amount to 209875000 people over 25 years across globe. That's not taking into account all the video games, word of mouth etc. That's just 10 people a day walking into a store and buying a miniature or pot of paint etc. Now chances are many of those people may be repeat buyers and chances are more than 10 people on certain days will be in the store ( sometimes maybe 50). Then there are games conventions that hold thousands of Warhammer fans all over the world, every year. My point is it's easily in the millions.

Those are the Warhammer players. Not the computer gamers. Not the pvp-hardcore-elite jumping from WoW to Conan to whateverthefuck else. Yes there is crossover, probably quite a lot between WoW and WH, but there is most likely a huge, untapped potential market of Warhammer players.

Not Star Wars movie fans.
Not LOTR movie or book fans.
Gamers, who are used to rulesets, troop types, and buying shit on a regular basis to game with. (as opposed to Star Wars figurines to put on the shelf).

Unlike Sims gamers, who were proportionally very much made up of my sister and your mum who balked at the idea of a sub fee, WH gamers are used to paying for their hobby on a regular basis. (not to mention WoW has paved that particular road pretty effectively). One blister pack costs the same as a monthly MMOG sub. This was probably parly behind Jabos' bullshit about potentially charging a higher subscription fee for WH (which they backed off of).

I'm not saying it'll be a roaring success, or WoW competitor, let alone WoW-killer (ha!) but it will get a lot of WH players trying it out. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see it easily double Conan's initial box sales on this basis. As for stickyness, I'll make no predictions there.

[Khaldun]

Naked titties have more fans than Warhammer, I'm guessing, so I don't think it will compete with Age of Conan's initial box sales.

And licensed property fans are not an asset for MMOGs generally, whether it's a movie or a game that is the licensed property. Because the basic architecture of Diku-style MMOGs doesn't capture popular fictions well and it doesn't really evoke any other kind of game well. (To the point that a few of the game-studies formalists have argued that virtual worlds, including Diku-style ones, aren't really games at all. They're wrong, but I get where they're coming from.)

The very point you raise, that Warhammer devotees are gamers, is probably even worse for Warhammer the MMOG than Star Wars fans being Star Wars fans. A Star Wars fan who bought SWG and had never played a MMOG had no idea what they were getting into. If you've played tabletop games and maybe even the Warhammer RTS, you're likely to know very well how a MMOG is NOT going to be the game you love, and in fact, is likely to violate both some of the lore of the game AND the basic architecture of play that you enjoy in tabletop gaming.

[Lakov_Sanite]

To be fair, naked titties have more fans than just about anything. AoC just failed to corner the naked titty market.

[WindupAtheist]

Lets say, as an average, 10 people purchase a Warhammer product per day, per store, per year. Not too crazy a number eh? That simple, modest figure of 10 people would amount to 209875000 people over 25 years across globe.

So you're telling me that if we assume every single Warhammer store to have produced 3650 brand new Warhammer fans per year, every year, for the last quarter century then 3% of the planet's population are Warhammer fans.  You arrive at this conclusion by pulling some imaginary sales numbers out of your ass, and then assuming that no one in the world has ever bought more than one Warhammer product so they must all be unique customers.

Despite the fact that (in your world) two-hundred million people have all bought a Warhammer product and then decided to never buy another one ever again, you consider all of them to be relevant to the concept of a Warhammer MMO.  The guy in the shop today.  The guy who hasn't played in 15 years.  The guy who bought a figurine in 1985 because he was high as hell and thought it would look totally rad hot glued to the top of his stereo but has been dead for 8 years.  All of them.

Like Warhammer stores are the fucking Borg or something.

Three percent of the world's population.  Hell, after putting aside the billions of Third World peasants who don't play many fantasy wargames and factoring in my own demographics, not only must I be a Warhammer fan, I must be five of them.

This post of yours was wall-to-wall fanboy delusion, and while the assumption that "tabletop wargamers = MMO gamers" is one of your less blatantly insane ones, it's probably the one the falsity of which is most relevant.  Thinking that people who aren't computer gamers will play (and stick with) a Diku MMO because it's Warhammer is ridiculous.

EDIT:  Wait... 10 sales per day, times 365 days per year, times 25 years, times 330 stores...

10 x 365 x 25 x 330 = 30,112,500

So basically the worldwide fanbase for Warhammer throughout it's history is only three times the currently active WoW population, even by lunatic fanboy "Every sale in my made-up numbers is a unique yet dedicated customer" standards.

[Tale]

LOL WUA. Sorry, Azazel. Yes, this was my point. Nobody goes into Games Workshop shops except tabletop gaming nerds. Most people in shopping centres have no idea what those shops are. They don't wander in and "buy a pot of paint". It's a minority activity - only nerds who know nerds who know nerds are into tabletop gaming figurines.

In decades of computer gaming, and before that pen-and-paper gaming, Warhammer has only crossed my path in two ways: I wondered what the shops were for, and I saw the occasional thread on MMO guild forums about people's painted miniature collections. They always seem to assume everybody else is interested, but only get a few responses. So I'm wondering about the awareness of any Warhammer IP outside fan communities.

[Venkman]

Besides, which has been mentioned ad nauseum, the WH that is popular with the mallrat geek set is not the WH that is coming in this game. If this was WH 40k the MMO, maybe comparisons to mall-store/miniature-painting/tabletop-gaming would make sense.

That isn't to say this game won't do well. Rather, it is to say that WAR's success is more dependent the millions of players WoW brought to this genre and are mpw bored than any new set of millions of people waiting for that very first fantasy-themed addiction-inspired low-end-PC-supporting subscription-based AAA PC CD/DVD-ROM retail box.

Because the probability that a WH player has heard of WoW is a heck of a lot higher than the other way around.

[TripleDES]

Until now, still virtually every non-nerd I know playing WoW got to the game mostly due to brand recognition the game gained pretty quickly. Once there's such a thing, anyone else will have a very hard time to catch up. A lot of people I know that don't even play games know at least heard of WoW, but no other MMO. And spending money like throwing shit against a wall and see what sticks won't make it a success.

[Threash]

WoW was on southpark, in tacoma commercials, and theres this.  You just can't compete anymore, even a better game wouldn't have this kind of name recognition for years.

[Lakov_Sanite]

... even a better game...

This.

First, someone needs to make a 'better' game.

[Azazel]

Christ on a crutch, you're good at missing the point. And it's not exactly a fanboy post, either.

I'm saying
I'm not saying it'll be a roaring success. I don't think it's going to challenge WoW. I'm saying:

1) There are a lot of Warhammer fans, past and present, who are all potenial customers in a sense that LOTRO, Star Wars and yes, even naked titty fans aren't.
2) White Dwarf has been pushing it pretty hard for awhile now. The people who buy that magazine are the GW "hardcore", who are likely to buy WAR and give it a go. Especially as the GW market is trained to buy new releases on a regular basis.
3) There's millions of current and former Warhammer players out there anyway. Just because you don't know any personally in bumblefuck, Indiana or whatever place Tale lives in doesn't mean they aren't out there.
4) These guys are a different bunch of people to the "Hardcore PVP" crowd this forum is always going on about with regard to Conan and so forth. Look past the end of your fucking nose.
5) I'm sure Mythic/EA/etc see these guys as an "untapped market". I agree, to an extent. But I don't think it's going to be nearly as big as they seem to do.
6) All of this is the kind of logic I believe Jacobs is using when he goes on his silly rants about how WAR is going to "challenge" WoW.

7) I think it will do well in box sales, but I can't see it challenging WoW, which is as mainstream as a computer game can hope to get these days. I think it'll be stuck when it comes to retention after 6 months.


Other shit -
Darniaq -  40k is bigger in the US. Fantasy is bigger in Europe.  You are not the centre of the universe. Sorry. Warhammer as a whole is also bigger in Europe than it is in the US. And yes, I agree that most WH players have probably heard of WoW.

Tale - They have GW branded stores in fucking shopping malls that sell nothing but GW. Pull head from arse and think about what this says for the market penetration of that shit. Just because you're in one community of nerds doesn't mean the other ones don't exist. You seem to be taking the argument "I DONT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WARHAMMER THEREFORE NOONE CARES ABOUT IT". Again, you are not the centre of the universe. Sorry.

WUA - I pulled the numbers from some other post on some other forum. Still, the Warhammer hobby cycles through a shitload of a lot of people. As stated before, most kids in the UK have had contact with it. You have no idea how huge it is over there. Their biggest "turnover" market is in 12-16 year olds who get interested for a few years, then discover girls and hormones a few years later and may leave gaming entirely.
Ans yes, looking at them in the daytime I can see how the numbers I posted in the last post are inherently flawed at a basic level, (they looked ok at a glance when I nicked them initially, due to the lowballing of daily customers and knowing how many teens move in and out of "the warhammer hobby") but each one of those stores does still service hundreds of customers at the very least. Otherwise they would not be able to afford their shopping mall rents.


Now please, stop being fucking obtuse. WAR will sell a lot of initial boxes. It will do better than AoC. It's not going to be a challenger to WoW.

[Tale]

It's not going to be a challenger to WoW.

But I started saying this because Mark Jacobs thinks he's challenging WoW :) From the original post: "Realistically, if you're going into this space for the first time, and you want to compete with 'WoW' and you want to compete with us -- because we're going into that same space -- you've got to make sure that you have at least 100 million dollars."

[Abelian75]

I don't think he was really implying that he expected to beat WoW's subscription numbers, just that he was saying they'd be in the same category.  Like, "the big MMOs" as opposed to "the wee MMOs" I guess.

I mean honestly I'd be really surprised if blizzard didn't consider these guys their most significant competition so far, so I doubt he's wrong.  There's obviously no way they're going to dethrone WoW or anything, but I'd be equally surprised if it wasn't a solid success.

Well, ok, not even close to equally surprised.  But at least a little surprised.

[Slayerik]

What's Warhammer again?

[WindupAtheist]

There are a lot of Warhammer fans, past and present, who are all potenial customers in a sense that LOTRO, Star Wars and yes, even naked titty fans aren't.

Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Sims, Dungeons & Dragons.  All of them are brands with more general public awareness and more relevance specifically to computer gaming than Warhammer.  None of them meant shit.  The handful of tabletop fantasy wargaming grognards who A) would care about a Diku MMO and B) aren't already playing WoW are fucking irrelevant.  The Warhammer Fantasy IP is fucking worthless to an MMO in and of itself.  All it has going for is that Blizzard took a lot of cues from earlier incarnations of it, so it gives you an excuse to make a game that looks a lot like WoW.

I mean fuck, we could replace the word "Warhammer" with "D&D" in your posts and it would look like any number of deluded fanboy posts that preceded the failure of DDO.  If WAR manages to be anything besides another failure bumbling along with fewer subs than EQ1 in it's prime, it'll be because it out WoW'ed WoW enough to siphon off some of the people Blizzard brought into the genre.  And nothing else.

Also, shit, double-check math before you post it.  I'm embarassed that I had to run back and edit my last post just to catch a fuckup that obvious.

[Ingmar]

There are a lot of Warhammer fans, past and present, who are all potenial customers in a sense that LOTRO, Star Wars and yes, even naked titty fans aren't.

Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Sims, Dungeons & Dragons.  All of them are brands with more general public awareness and more relevance specifically to computer gaming than Warhammer.  None of them meant shit.  The handful of tabletop fantasy wargaming grognards who A) would care about a Diku MMO and B) aren't already playing WoW are fucking irrelevant.  The Warhammer Fantasy IP is fucking worthless to an MMO in and of itself.  All it has going for is that Blizzard took a lot of cues from earlier incarnations of it, so it gives you an excuse to make a game that looks a lot like WoW.

I mean fuck, we could replace the word "Warhammer" with "D&D" in your posts and it would look like any number of deluded fanboy posts that preceded the failure of DDO.  If WAR manages to be anything besides another failure bumbling along with fewer subs than EQ1 in it's prime, it'll be because it out WoW'ed WoW enough to siphon off some of the people Blizzard brought into the genre.  And nothing else.

Also, shit, double-check math before you post it.  I'm embarassed that I had to run back and edit my last post just to catch a fuckup that obvious.

I agree with your ideas in principle here, except the Warhammer setting does have value in and of itself, even to people who've never heard of it. It has enough detail and a cool enough 'look' to grab at least some people once they've tried it - we've seen some evidence of that already. Gameplay is still king, but I don't think there's any doubt that Warhammer is a much better setting for an MMO than one that's mostly defined by specific hero personalities like Star Wars or LotRO. There's a lot more room for the player hero in a setting like Warhammer that was designed as a gaming setting rather than a story setting, and there's also a lot more room for the designers to add their own stuff as well.

D&D's execution was so different than any of the other MMOs that it becomes hard to compare it in terms of how they used their license. They, alone of all the games mentioned here, actually kept the system as well as the lore and that did so much to make the game weird for people that I think it overshadows anything else. I think a D&D setting *could* have been as valuable as any, but not with the baggage of the actual D&D rules, which are great for tabletop play, or single player RPGs with a defined ending, but not so much for an MMO. MMOs need to work in smaller chunks than a d20 will allow, and they need more granularity in character advancement.

[UnSub]

To be fair, if they are Warhammer fans, they empty their wallets at the altar of codexes, new miniatures and tiny pots of overpriced paint. Which leaves no money for a WAR subscription. 

Tale - They have GW branded stores in fucking shopping malls that sell nothing but GW. Pull head from arse and think about what this says for the market penetration of that shit. Just because you're in one community of nerds doesn't mean the other ones don't exist. You seem to be taking the argument "I DONT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WARHAMMER THEREFORE NOONE CARES ABOUT IT". Again, you are not the centre of the universe. Sorry.

I've seen these stores and knew people who worked in them. Never seen a female in them. They are like an XX-chromosome free zone. Also, they are like pyramid schemes for nerds - you get a few through the door, get them interested, who in turn get their friends interested so they have someone to play, and they those friends try to hook in the people they know ... 

[Venkman]

Darniaq -  ... you are not the centre of the universe

Heh, as far as you know :smile:

What are people buying in Europe buying though vs what is actually being delivered in WAR? Oh, wait, "An immersive extension of an extremely-popular IP". Where is the gameplay this mythically huge audience is looking for in an MMO? That's always the risk of tapping a game IP for extension into a different genre.

We all agree WAR is going to sell a lot of boxes. I think there's more disagreement over how long they stay though. And that has nothing to do with the existing fanboy market (who will buy it if they exist as you say) and all to do with the gameplay (which stands unto its own regardless of at-launch IP popularity-based box sales).

[Simond]

It will do better than AoC.

Talk about damning with faint praise. 

[Ratman_tf]

[quote author=Darniaq link=topic=14315.msg507606#msg507606 date=1220789079
What are people buying in Europe buying though vs what is actually being delivered in WAR? Oh, wait, "An immersive extension of an extremely-popular IP". Where is the gameplay this mythically huge audience is looking for in an MMO? That's always the risk of tapping a game IP for extension into a different genre.
[/quote]

Totally agree, and this is what I mean when I say that IP is irrelevant. (Or at least, not all it's made out to be.)

Our favorite whipping boy, SWG, proved this in spades. You just can't "Sell shit in a box marked "Star Wars" ", and get away with it for long.

[WindupAtheist]

I agree with your ideas in principle here, except the Warhammer setting does have value in and of itself, even to people who've never heard of it. It has enough detail and a cool enough 'look' to grab at least some people once they've tried it - we've seen some evidence of that already.

I really have a hard time seeing anyone's decision to stay or to go being seriously influenced by the nuances of this particular "humans, elves, dwarves, and orcs fight in a medieval society" IP versus others.  Compared to considerations like gameplay and polish, it's a very minor factor.  I can't see anyone who likes the gameplay and basic fantasy concept leaving over the specifics of the IP, nor anyone who dislikes the gameplay staying because of it.

Really, I'm pretty much convinced that IP doesn't matter unless your company is named Blizzard.

[Venkman]

And even for Blizzard, their IP only matters because they've been wrapped about good gameplay. People don't buy games to read stories. But they will read stories if it punctuates or involves good game play.

[krazyk]

Warhammer IP doesn't mean jack shit. I don't know anyone who has ever heard of warhammer and yet there they are anticipating the game. A lot of people are looking to get into this type of gaming. I know about 20 people who are gamers. One of them played EQ/WoW. Another one hasn't touched an MMO since EQ. That leaves 18 people I know who are excited about darkfall, or WAR and have never played a single MMO. That is anecdotal, but WoW has brought awareness to these types of games. I think if a game were to be released today that was fun and just as polished as WoW that allows people to get in on the ground floor I think it could potentially blow the doors off WoW. I doubt that game will be WAR though.

Also and this is anecdotal too, but I know a lot of Chinese gamers also who are starting to get interested in these types of games as they all get their first computers and their first disposable income and the Chinese gamers I know are rabid for this sort of shit and they don't care about IPs or other bullshit they just get excited when I tell them they get to kill whitey over the internet. I think it will be the Chinese gamers who will really take this genre out of the stone ages. It definitely won't be Warhammer nerds though lol @ that.

[schild]

Dude.

You have 18 (apparently non-WoW playing gamer) friends that haven't played MMOGs but know about Darkfall? That means one of two things:

1. You or one of your mmog-playing friends introduced them to darkfall, why they would be excited is beyond me.
2. You're lying.

The game has gotten shit for press, no big gaming sites talk about it, and it's nearly completely unknown outside of online gaming circles. Also there's absolutely nothing exciting about it whatsoever.

As such, I humbly request that you stop lying. If you aren't lying, stop getting people hyped up about Darkfall. It makes you look like a jackass and makes your friends like silly.

I think it will be the Chinese gamers who will really take this genre out of the stone ages.

WoW is the single most profitable and popular game in the history of gaming.

[Venkman]

I think it will be the Chinese gamers who will really take this genre out of the stone ages.

[quote="Schild wrote"WoW is the single most profitable and popular game in the history of gaming.
[/quote]

How are these two not related? 

Seriously though: Chinese gamers "starting" to get interested? Last I read they make up half the total MMO population worldwide themselves. You don't need a home computer to play an MMO.

[krazyk]

Dude.

You have 18 (apparently non-WoW playing gamer) friends that haven't played MMOGs but know about Darkfall? That means one of two things:

1. You or one of your mmog-playing friends introduced them to darkfall, why they would be excited is beyond me.
2. You're lying.

The game has gotten shit for press, no big gaming sites talk about it, and it's nearly completely unknown outside of online gaming circles. Also there's absolutely nothing exciting about it whatsoever.

As such, I humbly request that you stop lying. If you aren't lying, stop getting people hyped up about Darkfall. It makes you look like a jackass and makes your friends like silly.

I think it will be the Chinese gamers who will really take this genre out of the stone ages.

WoW is the single most profitable and popular game in the history of gaming.

Most of my friends are console gamers and they like FPS style games (like Halo). They said Darkfall seemed interesting due to the fps aspect (and I said not all of them were interested some seemed interested in WAR). I don't care if you think I am lying. I have a large network of friends who play games. I am guessing you are not a very social person and the idea of having friends is foreign to you.

Not everyone likes WoW its a fucking treadmill game and I steer people away from it whenever I can because I know my friends and I know their likes and dislikes. They don't like treadmill games. Most of them probably won't keep playing as soon as they get their shit torn apart a few times in a game like DF, but they're at least going to give it a try because the gameplay looked fun in the trailer.

As for WoW it doesn't get nearly as much revenue from Chinese gamers as you think it does. If you think WoW gets 15 dollars a month from Chinese gamers you're one dense dunce.

I always love the popularity argument. If we judge things by how popular they are then I humbly request you go eat a huge pile of shit millions of maggots do it everyday so dig in.

[krazyk]

I think it will be the Chinese gamers who will really take this genre out of the stone ages.

[quote="Schild wrote"WoW is the single most profitable and popular game in the history of gaming.

How are these two not related? 

Seriously though: Chinese gamers "starting" to get interested? Last I read they make up half the total MMO population worldwide themselves. You don't need a home computer to play an MMO.
[/quote]

You must not realize how that is a small chunk of Chinese gamers and is nothing compared to the legions that will someday be playing.