Diablo III and the world of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games)
Quick Facts:
- The most popular MMORPG is the World of Warcraft with over 12 million Subsribers (wiki)
- Every player playing World of Warcraft pays a monthly subscription of at least $12.99 (if the six-month plan is purchased) to $14.99 (month-to-month)
- Final Fantasy 14 is the latest big name MMORPG which was released on September, 2010
- Diablo II was released June 29, 2000 making it 10 years+ for the highly anticipated sequel to be released, although a release date has not yet been set
The World of MMORPGs
I’ve always been fascinated by MMORPGs. There are millions upon millions of people at this moment clicking away at their mouse and keyboard killing a monster or collecting virtual currency so that they can be the best in their world. Their MMORPG world that is. Like I stated in the quick facts, World of Warcraft alone has over 12 million subscribers as of October 2010 according to Wikipedia. That’s an astounding number!
To dig deeper into the World of Warcraft or WoW as the gamers call it, there have been two expansions since the initial release of the game. To buy the initial game and the two expansions would set you back about $80 and you’ll also need to pay a monthly subscription as there is no free play option with the World of Warcraft. You do the math that can amount to a decent amount of money for Blizzard, the game’s parent company. Just by looking at the 12 million subscribers multiplied by $13.99 (the 3 month-plan rate) the company is grossing around $167.8 million a month. Blizzard is also coming out with the third expansion sometime this year, which is very soon, and will be a nice bonus in sales. The third expansion called Cataclysm is on Amazon.com for $39.99.
Diablo III Finally?
Diablo II was released by Blizzard back in 2000 and was one of the most popular games of the day. I remember when I was going to University; I’d have friends that would skip classes so that they wouldn’t fall behind in Diablo II. I’m sure the same thing, albeit on a much larger scale, occurs today as there is a much larger MMORPG population. 10 years is a long time but Blizzard had no need to rush as they are making plenty of money from the World of Warcraft and Starcraft II. Starcraft II was released earlier this year.
A release date still hasn’t been set for Diablo III but considering how much publicity the game has received as of late there’s a chance we could see a release date sometime late next year or 2012. Blizzard has maintained that they want to make sure they have a game up to their standards so we should be able to have high hopes without being disappointed.
A Sound Business?
In case you’re wondering how you could invest in some of these companies that create and maintain MMORPGs online, you can. Blizzard is actually a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ as Activision Blizzard Ltd. The stock ticker is ATVI. Do your research before jumping in however as the World of Warcraft isn’t the only thing that Activision Blizzard does, you need to look at the whole picture and see where their company is headed.
Be Careful About Investing in General
If I’ve intrigued your mind about investing about stocks or investing in general, feel free to browse around this blog as I have written some posts about investing in general. I plan to do so more in the future as well. You can also visit Investopedia.com, which is a great resource, and I have learned a lot from that site. Do be careful with a lot of the information posted on the Internet, a lot of the people that write things about the stock market, including analysts, hardly know what they are talking about.
Visit well-known sites like Investopedia.com or read books that you can borrow at your local library and build your Financial Knowledge. By doing this, you’ll be able to create investing ideas for yourself and will be much more comfortable and successful than by acting on another person’s advice. I will definitely touch upon this with later posts down the road. How am I different? I won’t tell you to follow my advice, instead I’ll give you my take and my ideas and hope that you will decide for yourself if I’m worthy of listening to, hopefully I am!
Diablo III photo by faseextra on Flickr.
