With potentially huge money to be made, it is easy to understand how MMO marketeers sometimes lose sight of ethics, honesty, and even good taste. The MMO industry is barely ten years old, and has only been huge for about five. The lack of maturity in the industry has led to a commensurate lack of standards when it comes to advertising and marketing.
Examples include World of Warcraft's exaggerated subscriber numbers, Evony's blog spam and faux porn ads, City of Heroes' "free expansion" claims, and more.
At what point will marketing tactics like these actually hurt the industry? Do customers see through it and ignore it, or do methods such as these turn them off completely from the genre?
Blizzard Entertainment has announced the opening of beta registrations for “World of Warcraft: The War Within,” inviting players to explore new subterranean worlds beneath Azeroth.
Danish from eXputer: "Despite Blizzard's attempt to give a fresh new spin to World of Warcraft, some fans still seem to be stuck in the past."
HG writes: "Blizzard is usually pretty bad at keeping secrets, but the company somehow managed to keep this one under wraps until now. Plunderstorm is a special limited-time event that’s basically World of Warcraft’s take on the Battle Royale genre."
shut up and look at the boob
Disturbing Trend? I love me some boobs!
Sex sells...especially to curious pubescent gamers
Don't know whats so "disturbing" though
Seriously, I don't know.
I certainly hope this is a temporary trend. While I definitely do not object to the use of boobs in advertising, there should at least be some in the game as well!