This is the other major bit news out of Blizzcon.

Diablo III is offered free!*

*If you subscribe to World of Warcraft for 12 months.

If you had an active or inactive subscription on the 18th October 2011. New accounts can’t get it. More details on the deal are here.

Beta access to Mists of Pandaria is also part of the deal.

Oh you get a free World of Warcraft in-game mount too : Tyrael’s Charger

I view this as a smart move from Blizzard. It looks generous and it holds up flagging World of Warcraft subscriber numbers.

But it’s not so generous as it might appear.

Blizzard can clawback any ‘losses’ via the long 12-month subscription and the extra pressure get the World of Warcraft Mist of Pandaria expansion, since you’re paying for the subscription anyway. There will also be opportunity for making money from purchases of Diablo III expansions and other merchandise (digital or otherwise). This will also increase Blizzard’s profits made via the real money auction house in Diablo III.

Still it’s a deal which will appeal to many especially those already committed to World of Warcraft.

EVE is one of those games where it seems to be more fun watching the CCP developments than playing the actual game. CCP are the developers for EVE Online a space sci-fi Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game.

I guess I first have to mention the rise of virtual items in MMOs which is related to the rise in microtransactions. Many of these games already have virtual currency for use in the virtual world and naturally virtual items have come in where the items are effectively bought with real currency. Second Life is a good example of this because the entire game runs on it, albeit the items are not generally made by the developers, but rather the players.

The 14th free expansion for EVE Online, Incarna 1.0 has been released. Incarna introduced a third currency for vanity items called aurum. Through this currency you can buy vanity items such as a $20 USD skirt, $US25 blouse, and $US68 for the popular ocular implant module. All of these are vanity items meaning they are for looks and show rather than function.

Needless to say these prices are steep and indeed might be more than real world items. Microtransactions are suddenly macrotransactions. The clamour has been enormous and predicted by CCP.  CCP seems to pride itself on maintaining media attention.

World of Warcraft makers Blizzard will be so jealous. They have to go through all the effort to animate and form virtual pets and mounts which only go for $25ish.

But it may not stop there. A leak on twitter of EVE’s internal newsletter shows CCP is committed to milking the cash cow beyond vanity items to include other items, ships and ammo.

In the meantime what I’d really like to know is how many coughed up for the ocular implant. Is such an implant a reverse vanity item where displaying it means displaying abject stupidity?

I close with this rant, one of several on Youtube.  I guess I liked the Ferengi reference.

Both Microsoft and Google have made quiet announcements highlighting a push into PC gaming.

Microsoft’s Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reckons Windows 8, will be designed with gaming in mind and released in 2012. Microsoft did some hilarious back-pedalling from that position so you can decide who you believe, the CEO of the company or the company.

You can get some sense of where Microsoft is going with gaming below. The video is an internal release showing the concepts and principles of what the Windows Gaming Experience (WGX) team hopes to accomplish. This likely ties in with the changes being made to Windows LIVE. Microsoft have also clearly seen the potential of the virtual items market.

Google isn’t sitting still either with their new emphasis on Chrome Web Store to act as the gaming marketplace. A position which slots in nicely with their Chrome OS moves. I have looked at this store but there’s a very long way to go before they outdo even the likes of Apple’s money machine.

So PC gaming is returning but it’s with a twist. More social, more browser and web focused. No doubt Steam will get in this too at some point as it’s already halfway there. However this needs great games and frankly Farmville won’t cut it. A lot of opportunity there for Indy devs who can wind through this maze.

While on twitter I saw a scheme known as Pay With a Tweet. In other words, it’s about selling digital products such as eBooks and games by tweeting.

So in a sense this is viral marketing so that one tweet prompts more tweets and so on until there are many people aware of the product. Now a lot of viral marketing is anything but positive yet this method is giving something for each tweet.

I tried it out with both the Temple of Tangram which I’ve reviewed recently, and the Pay With a Tweet’s own eBook. Both worked without any problems. I guess it is possible to exploit the system to a degree yet there’s little incentive to do so on the seller and buyer sides and it appears it doesn’t happen much in practice. Yet anyway.

So the buyers pay via a tweet. One single one. Expensive socially if the product is not good yet quite cheap financially. The sellers are getting good exposure and promotion but no money so it’s clear that they would need to take advantage of that exposure. They would also need to be careful that the Pay With a Tweet product is good enough that the viral marketing campaign doesn’t blow back in disappointment.

I am also reminded of the pay what you want idea.

Which all leads to the question; can advertising and marketing be positive?