Marketing Genius (Bravo Blizzard)

I pretty highly regard the marketing of Apple and Nike. I've often thought if I were to rate companies on a scale from 1-1000, that I wouldn't be able to decide who to put in first but Apple and Nike would be numbers 1 and 2 (in whichever order) and would be in the 970 area. Whoever number 3 would be would be at about 750. So, I think those 2 companies blow everybody else out of the water.

Since the release of World of Warcraft, I would have to say Blizzard has been climbing up the ranks. I don't recall ever seeing a single commercial for Starcraft 1, Diablo 1 or 2, or Warcraft 1, 2 or 3 (to be fair, I lived in a small town that didn't have a "gamer" channel like TechTV or G4 until like 2000). But now they've launched cool commercials for WoW that include the Office Space one, the Mr. T one and the Verne Troyer (Mini-me) one. There are others, I'm just choosing not to go hunt them down on YouTube.

At any rate, there have been a few MMO games that were gonna be "the death of WoW." A couple that come to mind are Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Lord of the Rings Online. The newest game to be saddled with that burden is Warhammer Online, which I've written about previously. Warhammer Online officially releases on Thursday, September 18th. After having months of speculation of when Blizzard would release the next expansion to World of the Warcraft, entitled Wrath of the Lich King, they officially set/announced the release date on Monday, September 15th (for those wondering, the release date is November 13th).

What a stroke of genius! Right as gamers minds and energies are being focused on Warhammer, Blizz dropped the bomb that will make sure that their name and game is in the headlines and on the front pages of gaming sites.

Blizzard is no Apple or Nike when it comes to marketing, but they sure do know how/when to release information to stifle their competition. Bravo Blizzard, Bravo!

Gas Prices

Now it has been a couple of days since that "gas scare" that had everybody running out to buy gas before it was supposed to go up to $5 per gallon the next day. The $5 price didn't quite happen around here, even though there was a noticeable jump in the prices. Yesterday, I encountered prices ranging from blank (station just didn't have numbers listed up on the board) to $3.79 / gallon to $4.45 / gallon.

To be fair, these are prices I saw while driving past as opposed to actually going to the gas stations. So that doesn't account for any restrictions that may or may not have been in place at the stations. I've had friends encounter places that had 10 gallons per purchase limits. And also a $20 per purchase limit (practically a 5 gallon limit, that one just seems crazy to me).

Now that Hurricane Ike has made its landfall, hopefully the cleanup process can get started. People can get moved back in and begin to rebuild and get back into the groove of normal life. Hopefully refineries will get opened back up and get back up to capacity and prices can begin to decline without us hitting that $5 mark.

How bout that gas...

So, as Hurricane Ike is approaching, it seems that everybody in my town is fighting to get gas while the gettin is good. I don't know if this is happening all over the country or if it's just us southern states or what.

I visited 5 gas stations before I successfully got gas. 3 were actually sold out of unleaded gas! This is a first in my lifetime. I'm not arguing whether or not it has happened in my 25 years of life, but this is the first time in my memory.

I saw signs claiming as low as $3.45 a gallon and as high as $3.81. Lines at literally every gas station I went to until I came across the BP station where I actually bought gas. It was a pretty wild sight. I'm quite curious to see what is gonna be goin on tomorrow. Am I really gonna leave my apartment and see $5 a gallon gas? Just the thought of that sounds insane.

One of my friends and I occasionally reminisce about the days when gas was about $1 a gallon so you could estimate at a glance how much you'd be paying if you knew the size of your tank. But now there's math involved. You're adding and multiplying and carrying the 1 and evaluating the limit as it approaches infinity and yeah whateva...

Warhammer Online Open Beta

So I encountered an old friend that I haven't spoken to or seen in a little under a year today. We talked for about 3-4 minutes about what we were both up to.

He said he has been playing and loving the Warhammer Online "Open Beta." He simply had to mention it and somewhere in my iffy memory's bank of information I recalled, that just started yesterday didn't it? He said yeah and that he was loving it so far, getting to level with pvp and the way that queueing for and entering/exiting the instanced pvp activities was handled.

As my previous post pointed out, I was already keeping an eye on and interested in Warhammer so this was essentially enough to seal the deal for me. I decided that I was coming home and downloading the open beta right away. So I head to the Warhammer site to start what I assume will be a rather sizeable download before I go workout.

When I got to where I expected the download link to be, I was instead apprised of the way this so called "open beta" was actually being run. It turns out you have to have been accepted into the closed beta or have a copy of the game reserved at one of various retailers to be eligible for this "open beta." All I've really got to say is that sounds like a dicey use of the word "open."

All and all, no love lost for Warhammer or anything. Still the same amount of anticipation, still the same excitement, still the same hesitance to jump on in. But I'm definitely disappointed in that use of the phrase "open beta" when it sounds to me more like a closed beta with an additional way of entering the beta program (pre-ordering the game).

For the time being, I'll be experiencing the open beta vicariously through my old friend.