WoW Database Site Sells For $1 Million

MattHock writes "Wowhead (a WoW information database) has been sold to ZAM (Affinity Media) for the price of $1 million. ZAM is the owner of several other WoW databases, including Thottbot and Allakhazam. Until recently Affinity was also the owner of IGE, a highly controversial company that sold in-game wealth for real life money. Affinity recently sold IGE, which Wowhead claims as the reason they allowed the sale to go through. But did ZAM really sell IGE? The blogger who put this story online doubts that IGE and ZAM have actually distanced themselves. He believes that the supposed sale was just actually a means of restructuring to hide the relationship, similar to how IGE's relationship to Thottbot was hidden for a number of months through a convoluted set of parent companies."

Another conspiracy theorist blogger

[FireballX301]

From wowhead's press release, they were explicitly told that neither ZAM or its parent companies controlled IGE or other gold-selling operations, and that no gold-selling ads would appear on wowhead.

Ultimately, as long as no gold selling ads appear, the wowhead user won't see a difference, and the wowhead staffers pocket a good chunk of change. Whether ZAM in fact does own IGE or support chinafarmers isn't relevant as long as it's properly compartmentalized away from wowhead.

Removing the word rumor always helps

[niceone]

The rsit like of TFA:

There's a lot of buzz in the World of Warcraft fan site universe this morning, with reports and rumors flying about fan sites being sold, about $1 million sale prices...

not quite as exciting as the slashdot headline I guess...

Re:Another conspiracy theorist blogger

[klingens]

So it's OK to do bad things if you don't see them?

So it's ok if the FBI uses illegal means to snoop on citizens phones cause they also hunt serial killers, just as long as it's properly compartmentalized? Hezbollah can kill as many Israeli civilians as they want as long as they keep their soup kitchens for the poor Lebanese and build social housing for them?

If it's true that IGE is still owned by ZAM or involved with them, then wowhead is in the same position as an italian restaurant owned by the Mafia: while the restaurant itself does nothing wrong and might not even cheat on taxes, it's still part of an illegal crime operation.

Also: ZAM did own IGE in the past which means the money ZAM paid to wowhead owners was earned with chinafarming. It is "dirty" money.

English?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

Can someone translate this article into English for the rest of us please?

WoW? WoW Database? WoWHead? Database site?

Rich.

Re:Amazed

[MysteriousPreacher]

No, your brain really does have to adjust. It reminds me of when I tried to play Counterstrike a few years ago after having played a lot of Counterstrike: Source. While I was able to play it with no problem when it came out, returning to it after several years was difficult because it no longer appeared to have depth to it. It looked like a flat cartoon with no dimensionality. It was a strange experience.

I have to see that I never thought this a problem myself, it looks and feels like a 3D environment to me. When I frst started playing, I saw a lot of similarities between WoW and WCIII and that is probably why I continue to play WoW - I like the Warcraft universe and those graphics are what I expect. I suppose people will have differing opinions though on the graphics - some people prefer the more photo-realistic approach.

I like the cartoony approach because it doesn't look odd. With fantasy worlds, there's difficult decision to be made. Cartoony graphics can work very well because it's easier to reproduce fantasy monsters. If you go down the photo-realistic approach, it becomes tricky because it can end up looking bad or just plain freaky. I'm probably not doing a good job of explaining this but I've seen rotoscoping used to recreate human animation and it just looked freaky. It wasn't a photo, it wasn't a drawing - it was a strange hybrid.

I hope the wowhead thing works out, they have a nice site there. It's true that interest in all games will wane but WoW seems to be going strong at the moment. Besides, there may be more to wowhead than the site itself. I'm sure there is some expertise and technology that comes along with it - stuff that can be applied when the next big MMO comes along.

Re:My son's experience trying to sell a WoW charac

[Fex303]

So, I have no idea how he can sell his WoW character reliably. As an outsider, to me the WoW community looks like a den of thieves and scammers. How do other people sell their characters?

It's not that WoW is a den of scammers. The character buying and selling is where the scammers are. You're dealing with a bunch of people who want to buy a character and pretend that they did all the work for it. By definition, these people are somewhat dishonest.

Re:Amazed

[Holmwood]

I partially disagree with parent and Grandparent.

You guys are talking about two different things.

The graphics for WoW are fairly primitive, with low polygon counts, and, yes, cartoony.

The art for WoW is fantastic.

The decision to go with great art and fairly modest graphics was brilliant. The game stays fresh as parent says, and also (importantly) runs well on older hardware.

I started playing WoW about 3 years ago during one of the betas. I was struck by how well it played on my aging PC. I tried EQ2 at release (around the same time as WoW's general release), and lasted about a week. With WoW I'd get 30-40 fps. With EQ2? Maybe 10-15 fps.

Worse yet, though EQ2's graphics were more 'sophisticated', the game (IMHO) just didn't have the art that WoW did.

Now Vanguard, which someone above mentioned?

Yes, much better graphics than WoW, though seemingly quite poorly implemented. Art that's as good as WoW, perhaps even better in some places (and worse in others). (They had the late Keith Parkinson as Art Director, and it shows in parts of the game).

Deeper game play than WoW, though less elegant and less tested. (The entire sphere of Diplomacy is a great example).

And generally horrible performance on release and even today. Frequent crashes, framerates slowing to 0.2 fps and even freezing up for seconds at a time on high-end machines with the latest graphics hardware.

Result?

WoW, with its cartoony but endearing graphics that run on any half-decent machine sold in the last 4-5 years has nearly 10 million players with fairly modest churn.

Vanguard hit perhaps 200,000 subscribers, and lost perhaps three quarters of them after people had played for a month or three.

Everyone coming out with an MMO is going to be looking at those numbers, for good or ill. Delivering a polished title that runs well on the actual base of hardware that's out there is what matters.

-Holmwood