$395 Million Invested Into Virtual Worlds In 2008 Alone
TrendDomaining.com has hit the 2 month mark, and, 40 posts later, I’m still chugging along. I figured I would tap into a fun time of my younger internet days.
As a domainer, I’m sure you know of World of Warcraft (WoW). MMORPG’s have been around for quite a while now.
I was playing Ultima Online(UO), the first big online game, back in 1998. I’ve played dozens of others, including WoW. You just can’t get the same satisfaction playing against a computer that you can against a human being.
People have always looked down upon this genre. Back in the early days it was seen as a highly geeky thing to do. It was almost as taboo as meeting someone online. In fact, it went beyond regular geekhood; geeks made fun of online gamers!
But their numbers grew every year: After UO came Everquest and Asherons Call, and when WoW hit, the genre exploded. WoW now has over 10 million subscribers! Do the math at $14.95 a month.
By this time, online games drew a more diverse fanbase including younger- or to be more fair and accurate: immature- players. Online games are now stereotyped as being cesspools of immature players. And it’s hard to argue against that; it’s the main reason why I stopped playing them.
The genre had a hard time breaking out of the fantasy setting until fairly recently. Online universes are turning more into alternative realities, or virtual worlds, with Second Life and now Lively.
Like meeting people online, online games are mainstream and considered (almost) “acceptable.” And this is just the beginning.
Virtual Worlds Management has published an article detailing the money being pumped into this genre this year alone. $395 million have been invested into 39 virtual worlds so far in 2008! The largest investments have been in the companies Turbine and Realtime Worlds with $40m and $50m, respectively.
These games have some hardcore dedicated fans in large numbers; most willing to spend a few extra dollars to help enhance their game experience. WoW aside, do a search for Age of Conan (AoC). You’ll see fansite after fansite: community sites, forums, auctionhouses, guilds etc. And they all need domain names.
Just stay away from the trademarks. It may be hard to find an alternative to WoWAuctions.com, but it’s worth avoiding the trouble.
Now how do you tell what will be the next WoW? Big franchises are usually a good gamble, like Warhammer or Harry Potter. Or take a successful Star Wars game and throw in BioWare to get Knights of the Old Republic Online. These games can take years to create, so it can be costly to buy those names early on in production. Especially if the game fails. But the payoff could be nice.
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Related:TrendDomaining.com Is 6 Months Old Today, Answers: What Is Trend Domaining?
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Congratulations on your 2 monthiversay, Scott. 40 posts - may there be many more!
***EDIT***
Thanks Marcus! Hope I don’t run out of trends O_O
-Scott