Showing posts with label Domain of Heroes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Domain of Heroes. Show all posts

Friday, December 04, 2009

On Monetizing MMO Blogs

Recently, I asked for some feedback on the site, as well as opinions on MMO bloggers monetizing their blogs.

First, I run advertisements in three forms on this blog currently: in-line text ads, search traffic only ads, and referral links. The first two are powered by Chitika and pay per click. The referral links are to Amazon.com and pay a percentage of any purchases made via that link.

What do you need the money for?

The biggest question that people ask me is what I do with the money I earn. The blog is free to host on Google's Blogger, so there are no web costs (outside of an annual $10 domain registration fee). And it's pretty obvious I don't make my living doing this.

I use the money to pay for some of my gaming. When my blog was more popular (my traffic is down 50%+ this year), I made enough for a monthly subscription to an MMO. Recently, I have used it to micro-transact in games like Battlefield Heroes and Domain of Heroes.

However, since I've not played a subscription game in a while, I have pocketed a good amount of the money made (actually its sitting in my Paypal account). My most recent game purchases have been covered by bonuses I've gotten from work.

The Amazon.com referral links pay out via Amazon gift certificates. When I earn enough for my first gift certificate there, I will purchase more games, books, and movies to write about on this blog.

For the most part, the money earned here can be viewed as an investment back into the blog. However, it still leaves me sitting on a pile of cash that I haven't spent and I am going to work out a percentage to donate to Child's Play (my favorite charity). Going forward, charity will have a lot to do with the money made here after my minimal new web costs are covered (I am bringing some new stuff online in the near future).

Feedback

Surprisingly, most people that left feedback were fine with bloggers monetizing their blogs as long as it wasn't intrusive or contradicting(for example, gold seller ads when I am against gold selling). Chitika has been good about running legit advertisements, but they rarely match search ads to anything my readers would be interested in.

The Amazon.com referral links are more targeted. If I talk about a game, I will usually link to the games page on Amazon. If I review a book or movie, I will also link to Amazon. Or when Amazon runs deals like $3 in FREE MP3s, I will link to the promotional page and collect referrals as people cash in the free codes. This is hit or miss, but is the least intrusive of all advertising and the most honest.

With the feedback gathered, I think I am going to move towards straight Amazon.com referral-based advertising and be more open about my links. Along with the charitable giving, I am hoping this honesty will spur some purchases!

Lastly, I am going to take down the in-line text ads, as well as the search based ads from Chitika on the main page. I'm always open to advertising opportunities, so some form of automated advertising may return in the future.

Monday, September 07, 2009

The Great GAME Purge of 2009

Ardwulf purged the MMOs installed on his PC:
That time has come again, to free my overloaded hard drive of games (MMO and otherwise) and software that I’m not playing, and won’t be, for the foreseeable future.
Since I am no longer MMO-centric, I am going to list my GAME purge of 2009. As a bonus, hard drive space is super valuable to me currently as I am shooting a ton of high def video of little Heartless_.

Action Games

Battlefield Heroes: Staying. Its free-to-play and I've spent a few bucks to customize my heroes. Its easy to get into and offers casual FPS game play.

Team Fortress 2: Staying. Every time I think about removing this game, Valve releases an update that pulls me back in. Also, I still want a damn hat!

Left 4 Dead: Uninstalled. I haven't played in months and the friend I played with from work switched to a night shift and is never online when I am. It was a fun romp while it lasted. Also, as the game was downloaded via Steam, it is a simple 1-click reinstall.

Call of Duty 4: Reinstalled. I want to play through the single-player campaign again, and I have to admit that the CoD4:Modern Warfare 2 videos have me drooling for some CoD4 multi-player action.

Quake Live: Staying. Its contained in a browser plug-in and easy to jump into. I may suck at it, but its completely free and worth keeping around.

MMOGs

The Chronicles of Spellborn: Staying, but only if I can fix it crashing my PC. I purchased a new video card and now when I boot up TCoS, it BSODs my computer. If I can't fix this, I will have to remove the game. I don't want to, but TCoS is frozen in development, so no fixes are likely to come down the line. This is the only game that crashes with my new video card.

Runes of Magic: Uninstalled. Since the WoW Cataclysm announcements, I feel dirty playing RoM. For $15 a month, I could be having a much better experience in WoW. RoM is fun and well developed, but I have five years of WoW bias to fight every time I'm logged in. Plus, the PvP in RoM sucks.

Maple Story: Uninstalled. I said I was going to try the game that 90+ million people have tried, but outside of the card game I've lost interest. The iTCG is out of beta, so it now costs money and I doubt I'll be going back to it anytime soon.

Free Realms: Uninstalled. While some people are treating Free Realms as the next coming of Jesus, I see through its thinly veiled exterior. Its a bunch of mini-games in a world where players can interact with each other. All of the good stuff is locked behind the pay wall. I will only admit that it is well executed and offers a quality experience, but it is nothing special. Kongregate, I'm coming back.

Domain of Heroes: Bookmark deleted. Yes, I spent $10 on this lackluster game and then promptly stopped playing. It was after the $10 that I realized how hopeless the development of the game was. Changes were either slow or completely out of left field. It could be a great and fun game, but the balancing act required seems out of reach for the developers.

Dungeons and Dragons Online: Possible new install. I have to wait and see how the game reviews in its new free-to-play form. I never agreed with the fundamental design of DDO, but it could turn out to be a decent freebie that is worthy of a few hours.

Miscellaneous Games

The Path: Staying. I still haven't unlocked everything in this little gem of an indie-game. Plus, I think if I uninstall the game, strange things start happening in real life.

Metaplace: Staying. I don't know what to think of Metaplace. I don't believe it can be a gaming platform of any kind in its current state, but I'm curious to see where it goes. Plus, it takes up no room on my hard drive, so it makes the decision easier.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

My First Micro-Transaction

I've gone and done it. I've completed my first micro-transaction.

The game? Domain of Heroes.
The item? Starter pack, which gives increased inventory, an increased logout timer, a mule, guild-worthiness, chat message size increase, and extra wishes (wishes being the dual currency of DoH).
Price? $9.99

Anyone that has played or seen Domain of Heroes may be shocked that I spent money on it, but I had the $10 sitting to the side from a work-related bonus, so I wanted to treat myself.

Also, I felt comfortable supporting the development of DoH. The game is still rough around the edges, but looks to be maturing into an awesome casual web game. The developers/support folks are nice and can often be found online actually playing their own game and interacting with the playerbase. The community is also top notch.

Having played DoH for a couple weeks now, I've started to realize how narrow minded my game mechanic thought process has been during my years playing of AAA MMOGs. While DoH doesn't go too far off the beaten path, there are tons of small changes, along with the "set it and forget it" playstyle that make it refreshing to play.

All of this combined to increase my willingness to complete a micro-transaction.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Domain of Heroes: Caught Between Progress Quest and a MUD

Domain of Heroes, a free web-browser MMOG, has caught my attention as of late. Part text-based MUD, part graphical adventure game, DoH is:
Unlike any other browser RPG

Other games feel like...well...like using a website. Not us. Domain of Heroes uses the most modern technology - you never leave the game page!

Play anywhere, anytime, for FREE.

Domain of Heroes is a FREE browser-based massively-multiplayer web RPG/PBBG. What a mouthful!

You can play at home, at school, at work (yes, we condone it), or at the coffee shop — as long as you've got a browser and an internet connection, you are ready to be a Hero!

You can play on PC or Mac, PS3, Wii, even iPod Touch!
Unlike Free Realms or Quake Live, Domain of Heroes is operating system agnostic and requires nothing outside of what a normal web browser provides. This makes it a TRUE web-browser based game in my book.

The true beauty of the game is that it almost plays itself ala Progress Quest. Players simply "set it and forget it". Journey to a location, search for monsters, and a player's character will do all of the work as battles cycle infinitely until the character dies or the player leaves the area. This makes it great for the casual gamers out there or the "no worries boss, I am really working, not playing web games" gamers.

With that said, combat can be involved as well. Characters have multiple skills and options during combat. In the early levels these are not needed as much, but the higher up a player levels (max being 75), the more involved in the combat a player will want to be.

Outside of combat, the game offers a surprising level of depth. There is a PvP conquest system where warring factions can take over areas of the game world. There is an open trade channel and a market to play for items. Guilds and guild tools are offered as well.

Lastly, there is an amazing amount of possible class and race combos. To exemplify this, I am playing as Heartless the Squirrel Illusionist! Yes, I am playing as a small, furry rodent most often found in one's backyard.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Free-To-Make-Money

Gamasutra is running a great article on Free-To-Play, but not really because there are micro-transactions, and the revenue they generate.
Yes, good money can actually be made in the rapidly-growing world of free-to-play massive multiplayer online games (MMOs), but just how much can micro-transactions actually generate? Unfortunately, average revenue per user information is often concealed behind the fog of competition by privately held game makers reluctant to report either very high or very low results.
The article contains some great quotes from Daniel James, CEO of San Francisco-based Three Rings Design.
"There seems to be a perception," he explains, "that there is a business advantage to not being transparent. But I disagree."

As James blogged recently: "People often ask me, with a wary look such as you'd give a lunatic, 'Why do you dish out your numbers like this?' It's a good question. There are possible downsides, but they are limited; if a competitor looks at my numbers and then goes on to execute better than us, I don't think that has much to do with our numbers. They executed better, that's the hard bit. Well done to them.

"The upside," he continued, "is that the more information that circulates the startup and games community, the more people will share their data. This rising tide will raise all boats. If I can shame my fellows into parting with their data, we'll all benefit."

Indeed, James reveals that Three Rings' MMO Puzzle Pirates takes in approximately $50 each month from each paying user (ARPPU) for a total of $230,000 a month, all resulting from microtransactions.
I've often railed against the micro-transaction model as inferior to the traditional subscription model in regards to revenue. However, after reading this article, I'm a bit surprised how well some Free-To-Play games fair.

Also, I want to share my desire for companies to be more transparent with their data, as I strongly believe it leads to negative stereotyping of the business model. Before this article, and seeing Puzzle Pirates and Domain of Heroes (in the comments) revenue numbers, I just assumed that the average revenue for a paying player was well below the standard $15 of a subscription-based player.
I'll break the figures down into Lifetime (8 months) and 7 day (last week). Daniel didn't mention this, but I would add that the numbers seem to get better each month as long-time players continue to make purchases and new features are added that retain/convert newer players.

Lifetime:
ARPU: $2.03
ARPPU: $59.27

7-Day:
ARPU: $3.51
ARPPU: $46.66
If the numbers hold true in the article, it is far greater! In some cases, close to $50. The benefits of which Raph Koster, of Metaplace, sums up nicely:
The biggest reason to go with a micro-transaction model, says Koster in a recent blog post, is because "it opens up both ends of the curve. People who would not be willing to pony up the full $15 a month [subscription fee] are enticed to pay at least something, thereby hugely broadening your market."
So, color me conflicted on micro-transaction business models. I still don't believe it beats a subscription model, but no longer is it the EVIL that I thought it was.