After a quick announcement last week, the FigurePrints site opened yesterday, offering Warcraft players an easy (if not necessarily cheap-- each figure runs about $115) way to recreate their ingame characters in real-life figurine form.
But we still had lots of questions. How did these figures get made? What kind of material were they made of, and where did FigurePrints get the models and information to turn ingame characters into real sculptures? For the answers, we went straight to the source. Ed Fries has been in and around gaming for a long time, and after playing WoW for years (and creating games for years before that), he had the idea to create a way to bring Warcraft characters to life with a 3D printer. WoW Insider got a chance to talk to Ed on the day that his company's site went live, and all the answers to your questions about FigurePrints are right after the jump.
Our favorite WoW crafter, Mana Princess, sends word that she's updated her store for the holidays-- not only has she added some Alliance and Horde ornaments (just in time for tree setup), but she also told us about her Black Friday sale, in which she's selling a gift pack of everything you see above for just $35. It's the perfect gift for the WoW player in your life (even if that's you). And because it's in honor of Black Friday (and also her birthday), when those items are gone at that price, she says they're gone.
Now, lest you think we're guilty of favoritism here, while we do like MP a lot, we do realize she's not the only WoW crafter on the block. If you've got some crafts you want to show off (whether you're selling them or not, feel free to drop us a line over on our comment form, and give us a heads up on what you're up to. We love everything WoW, and while Mana Princess makes some great stuff, we're sure she's not the only game in town.
Blizzard's publisher Vivendi is rolling in the cash-- they just announced their their quarter videogame numbers, and they're up a whopping 19%. They claim that World in Conflict gave them a nice boost, but c'mon, do you know anyone who's played World in Conflict? Didn't think so.
No, the boost came from our favorite game, World of Warcraft-- Blizzard raised their subscriber numbers by just under a third of a million, making their population now 9.3 million, a raise of over a million in the past year. Burning Crusade's release in China definitely helped, too, and Vivendi's games division raked in $315.2 million.
Now, far be it from us to call a number like 9.3 million "disappointing," but it doesn't seem like WoW will hit that 10 million mark we all expected in 2007. Then again, patch 2.3 could bring a lot of folks back to the game-- is there a chance that .7 million people will sign back in, or will we have to wait for the next expansion to see a big boost?
I love the Auction house. I've got a mule parked there just specifically so I can log over periodically, scan, and then snap up any bargains and either stash them for tradeskills, send them to an alt, or resell them if it's an item that has been severely under priced. (I can't tell you how many copies of the Savory Deviate Delight recipe I've bought from the AH for 40s that I resold for at least 5g.) But I have to admit, I've never thought that the search interface was too terribly good. Then I saw a blue reply to a forum request for changes to the auction house that made me a happy panda. According to Eyonix: ...We're also working to improve our user-interface, which includes the auction house. Below are some of the changes slated to be implemented for the next patch.
The Auction House now has a reset button that will reset all fields you have entered to allow you to quickly try a different search.
When items are being put up for sale on the Auction House, if the item you are putting up for bid is the same item and quantity as the previous item you put up for bid, it will automatically fill in the price and buyout for you with your previous price.
Gems are now searchable in the Auction House under the heading of Gem with the gems then broken up by color so you can search for all gems of a specific color.
I just wonder if the end version of automatic fill they implement will remember prices from when you were logged in before like Auctioneer does? Or will the auction house "forget" things as soon as I log out -- or perhaps even as soon as I close the auction house interface? It's not enough of a change to replace Auctioneer for me, but it's a step in the right direction at least.
And I lest I forget -- Hooray searchable gems by color in case you missed it in the previous patch notes!
Gamasutra reports that the Burning Crusade expansion has surpassed the 3.5 million sales mark -- 2.4 million of which were sold within 24 hours of release. Regions that play on North American realms (which includes Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia) accounted for 1.9 million copies, while the remainder were sold in Europe. BC was recently released in South Korea, and work is underway for Simplified and Traditional Chinese localizations for mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, with an official release date "as soon as possible." The worldwide subscriber base has now reached the 8.5 million mark, with an increase of 500,000 new players in less than two months. For the mathematically-minded among you, that's a 6.25% noob increase since BC's release.
Our good friends over at Joystiq are reporting the first of the Burning Crusade sales numbers: in a mere 24 hours, the WoW expansion sold 2.3 million copies on North America and Europe, and an extra .1 million to make it 2.4 million worldwide. That makes Blizzard's expansion the fastest selling PC game ever. And that's game as in game, not just expansion. The other interesting figure is that Blizzard says they have only 2 million players in North America, which is a much smaller portion than I expected of the eight million worldwide players. But of those 2 million, they say 1.2 million bought the expansion in the first day, which (just over 50%) is a huge sellthrough rate for an expansion no matter how you slice it.
Now, I thought the Walmart figures were crazy, but they said the expansion would sell 5 million in the first ten days, and considering they've sold at least half that in the first day, that means they're on pretty good track to do exactly what they thought-- at least. And they've just plain rocked the best selling expansion pack ever (Sims: Livin' Large), which sold what seemed like a whopping 700,000 copies in its first year.
Say what you want about Blizzard (the Warriors definitely do), but these guys know how to sell a game.
While we're still waiting on sales figures from Monday's launch of the expansion, at first glance, looking at the pictures posted here and elsewhere from around the world, it was pretty darn successful.
That's right, it looks like Blizzard pulled it off-- almost simultaneously, within the same 24 hours, they were able to both get a game on shelves, get it home with players, and let them sign online. Lag problems aside, that's a huge task, and I'm not sure they could have pulled it off any better.
As a final note on the launch, Rushter over at WorldofWar has done a little YouTube crawling, and pulled up a list of video from events all over the world. I thought things were crazy here in the US, but look how insane they got in Germany.
Look at that line! When I first heard the 5 million copies in the first ten days figure, I was skeptical. But with lines like this all over the planet, it might just be true.
Nelson dropped us a link to this apparent handout to Walmart employees about the upcoming release of the Burning Crusade expansion in that store. There's some common info on there (did you know WoW "has taken the PC gaming world by storm"?), but there's also some interesting info about how sales might go, and exactly how many copies are showing up in each store.
After a little introduction about the game and how popular it is, there's two stats that jump out: Walmart expects (due to a survey-- done by.. Blizzard? Analysts?) that a whopping 90% of current WoW players will be buying the expansion, and that 75% said they would pick it up within the first 10 days of release. By my math, considering their figure of 7.5 million players, that's just over half a million (I need to stop doing math on this site-- thanks, JP) 5 million copies of the expansion pack sold in just the first ten days (!). As a comparison, the best-selling expansion pack of all time so far, Sims: Livin' Large, sold 700,000 copies in its first year. Holy moly!
As for Walmart numbers, they say 2,008 stores will each be receiving half-pallets of 60 copies, which is 120,480 right there. The flyer also notes that product will be showing up in stores on the 8th (which means it's there RIGHT NOW), and that it's not to be sold until 12:01 am on the 16th. From my time working at Gamestop, I well know that some of these stores will break street date (usually they just don't realize how important the item is, and accidentally sell it early), but I also know that if the publisher finds out they did so, they risk not receiving product next time-- so try bribing the Walmart people at your (and their) own risk. But with these numbers, and this plan, it looks like Burning Crusade might be ready to make history on Tuesday.
As
Reuters
reports today, Vivendi Universal, the big, scary parent behind Blizzard, has reported a 5.7% rise in 1st-quarter
sales this year, spurred on mainly by the enormous cash cow that is WoW & it's six million subscribers, and from
recording artists such as...Prince?
Ok, I grew up with Prince, and I'm a fan, but I have to admit, I had no
idea he had made a single note of music in years; last thing I heard, some basketball player was suing him for renting
his house to Prince, only to return & find it painted purple inside & out. At least I can just type his name
& not have to find a character for that stupid symbol...
.jpg)
Blizzard's publisher Vivendi is rolling in the cash-- they just announced their their quarter videogame numbers, and they're up a whopping 19%. They claim that 
I love the Auction house. I've got a mule parked there just specifically so I can log over periodically, scan, and then snap up any bargains and either stash them for tradeskills, send them to an alt, or 
Our 
Subscribe
