Found on Kotaku!

If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, it’s “Bradster” ’s gaming setup. That’s 11 computers that can run 36 World of Warcraft subscriptions at once. he pays $5,711 a year in subscription fees to keep together his one-man raiding party.

He also has further plans to spend another $1,500 on 36 copies of Wrath of the Lich King so his army of level 80 Shamans can start pounding down Stormwind and Ironforge on day one. That’s crazy! But kinda hot too. Besides the obvious question of: how does he do this? I’d like to know how can he afford this?!

We play MMOGs (massive multi-play online games) because they’re fun. They’re fun for 86,000 reasons. They keep making ‘em because we keep playing ‘em and we keep paying for ‘em. Is it all just a fad? Are we just going to stop playing World of Warcraft and Maple Story and go back to checkers?

Research analyst firm Strategy Analytics predicts we’ll continue to play MMOGs. The report estimates that by 2011 there will be 80 million subscribers to various MMORPG titles, revenues over $11.5 billion, equal to 11.7% of the total gaming industry’s revenue.) I know those are humongous number already, but MMOs to equal 11.7% of the total gaming industry? The gaming industry’s a behemoth! The estimate for total gaming revenue for 2011 is $48.88 billion. But…80 million MMORPG players worldwide! Anyone who’s anyone will have an avatar.

What’s driving the growth of online play? The fact that headsets are now seen as “cool”. Just kidding, it’s the increasing availability of broadband, of course. Of course!

Over the weekend, I saw “American Teen”, a documentary about high school seniors in suburban Indiana. No spoilers here so don’t worry! It was a good film, very entertaining, but you won’t miss out if you wait for the Pay Per View or DVD version. Unless you’re a parent. I would say it’s recommended viewing for every parent of a teen.

Anyway, the entire cast was interesting, but there was a kid Jake who was an avid gamer. He LOVED ZELDA. And girls. And played in the band. And I guess archetypes are archetypes…you can find them everywhere and he was the ultimate “band geek”. You don’t have to watch Gossip Girl to guess that in the totally draconian social hierarchy known as High School, Jake’s social standing would probably be somewhere between the kid whose mom is the lunch lady, and the smelly kid in the AV room. Jake’s a pretty cool kid though - and his story struck a chord with me. Simply put, he could not find PEOPLE LIKE HIM. He couldn’t find people to appreciate the same things he was into; who couldn’t appreciate him for HIM. That means belonging to a group that respects your accomplishments, whether it’s scoring the game-winning touchdown, or consistently topping damage meters in Black Temple. It means finding men/women who are attracted to you just the way you are and not scoffing when you “have to” raid, because they have firm raiding schedules too. I mean, is that too much to ask for?! Finding like-minded individuals is as relevant and important when you’re in your 30s and beyond as it is in your teens. Ask anybody you know with a hobby or interest in ANYTHING.

I’ve always had what you would call “different” interests. Niche is a nice, non-geeky word for it. I joined the Dungeons & Dragons Role Playing Club in high school, scoured AOL profiles in chat rooms looking for mentions of Nintendo, hung out in comic book stores to see where my next Magic TGC match would come from, you know, stuff like that…When all of my friends were going out and getting tanned. (and getting in trouble, kekek). Then the internet exploded! And…not too much changed, to be honest. There were easier ways of keeping in contact WITH my friends, through IM, email, Skype, etc. And the community forums out there made it easier for us to talk about our interests, but I was always left wondering: Who are you? What else are you about? But it was still difficult to find these people in the first place.

I’m hoping mmochi can change that.

Is too much for my feeble mind to even fathom!

Over at GigaOM (a popular tech blog), writer Alistair Croll makes an interesting case of why Blizzard may take World of Warcraft offline. Yea, you read that right - a real life MMO. Or is it an Alternate Reality Game? Too genre-bending for me to even fully envision its possibilities. I mean, holy cow. Massively (a popular game blog) notes that in addition to the list of reasons found here , “add to this how many WoW players already have their own costumes, and suddenly, this idea has legs”. Haha. How awesome would that be? It’d be like Manhunt, but a zillion times better. Because who hasn’t wanted to shadowbolt a friend IRL and get XP for it?

Watch this classic epic battle to fully comprehend how awesome a real life WoW would be!

Pop Quiz: Which one of these girls play video games?

Answer: All of them.

w00t!

Can I get a w00t? How many studies have you read about gaming addiction, antisocial behavior, or other evidence of how “gamers” are overall social misfits. But a new study from Victoria University in Australia investigating aspects of gaming (mostly addiction) as it relates to physical health and other vices like alcohol and gambling finds that only about 15% of gamers should be categorized as “problem gamers”. Unfortunately, “we found that those who played Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), such as World of Warcraft, were more likely to exhibit problematic game play”. Damn, pwned after all. I know to me, Starcraft/Warcraft 3 is like heroin, and World of Warcraft like crack, but now I’ve got it down to the management level of Vicodin. But the psych grad student who conducted the experiment added, “I think it’s an evolution of social and cultural stereotypes that suggest only nerds and geeks play computer games,” he added. “The reality is that nowadays everyone is playing video games.”

Doubly unfortunate is that it was games like World of Warcraft that was a MAJOR agent in increasing playership and of MMOs, and MMOs are a huge catalyst in changing the stereotype of who a “typical” gamer is. So if the “typical gamer” is also the “problem gamer”, and there are more atypical gamers than ever (due to MMOs) - such as women and older people, then why are the problem gamers coming mostly from MMOs? What gives? lol.

Some of you know that I organize the NYC World of Warcraft Meetup Group http://warcraft.meetup.com/118/

This grew out of a need to find other like-minded individuals (to geek out with) and to further understand the gaming mind (besides my own). Well, now we are over 175 members strong and have two meetup guilds, one on Undermine (PVE) and one on Ursin (PVP) server. Maybe now we can finally put some old stereotypes to rest!

I think the prevailing one has been that “gamers” are by nature, loners, or definitely lacking in typical social skills. I always knew this to be false, because I played a lot of video games and I had many friends who did too. We were all surprisingly normal, and really adept at other (some would say higher) forms of communication. How gamers express themselves can be different, choosing conventions, LAN parties, forums, Ventrilo/Teamspeak, IM, etc. And if you ever saw what goes on in the WoW Meetup group, you’d know that it’s sometimes just hanging out over a pizza and beer too. It’s just that we usually talk about the games we play!

I’m not saying that all gamer stereotypes are false, but that’s another blog post.

Online games are a catalyst for a monumental change in how people identify themselves, and how they want to be perceived. It’s all about the avatar, be it your Second Life character, World of Warcraft shaman, or Nintendo Mii. It’s been over 20 years since I started gaming, and the industry is undergoing tremendous changes. I am not speaking exclusively about console or PC gaming; both have changed dramatically and the faces of “typical” gamers have changed dramatically.

And we want those faces on mmochi!