Friday, August 15, 2008

Let’s Play a Game in China


 

On the surface, last night’s report was a winner. Total revenue surged 28% to $104.4 million for China ’s online gaming juggernaut. Earnings clocked in at $0.49 a share, well ahead of the $0.34 a share it rang up a year ago. Wall Street was looking for a profit of just $0.39 a share on $99 million in revenue.
Don’t break out the party hats just yet, though. NetEase’s results were peppered by a business tax refund that accounted for roughly a fifth of the company’s gross profit. In other words, analysts weren’t as far off as you may think in nailing the company’s bottom line.
Since Netease was the lone multiplayer game specialist to miss expectations in China three months ago, it’s only natural for investors to be skeptical this time around. Hiding behind a tax break isn’t helping, as the company didn’t formally break out its net earnings per share figure without the one-time windfall.
That’s probably as far as you should pull in with the cynicism, because there were plenty of things to like about the report.
Revenue growth accelerated during the period.
Online gaming is the key driver here, at 83% of the revenue mix, but online advertising through the company’s portal saw revenue there climb 60% higher.
The company’s coffers continue to grow, closing out the quarter with $722.4 million in cash, or $5.58 a share.
If that flurry of positive activity isn’t enough to warm up to NetEase, maybe a Blizzard will do the trick.
The wizards of Blizzard Shares of NetEase climbed 6% yesterday, ahead of last night’s report, bucking the trend of weakness at its rivals. The catalyst for yesterday’s gains was a deal with Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI) to license several of its Warcraft and Starcraft games in China .
The deal doesn’t include the iconic World of warcraft
franchise. That is still The9’s (Nasdaq: NCTY) baby in China . However, it’s definitely a welcome form of validation when the world’s largest video game company chooses you as a licensee in the world’s largest nation.
The news also slammed The9’s stock, since so much of that company’s financial performance is dependent on Blizzard’s global online powerhouse. If NetEase is able to catch that kind of lightning in a bottle in any of its licensed releases, revenue growth that is already accelerating after a temporary lull can really get cranking.
The name of the game is value The most surprising aspect in all this is that the online gaming sector in China is trading at ridiculously low multiples. Peers like Perfect World (Nasdaq: PWRD), Shanda Interactive (Nasdaq: SNDA), and Giant Interactive (NYSE: GA) are all trading at low forward P/E ratios, despite the sector’s breakaway growth and chunky margins.

Price8/13/08
2009
EPS est.
2009
P/E
Perfect World
$24.79
$2.27
10.9
NetEase.com
$24.05
$1.66
14.5
Shanda Intl.
$25.16
$2.46
10.2
Giant Intl.
$9.95
$1.05
9.5
The9
$18.16
$2.22
8.2
If you like NetEase at less than 15 times next year’s earnings, you’re going to love its rivals trading at pre-teen multiples. Compare that to stateside behemoths Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS), trading at multiples of 24 and 21, respectively.
Obviously there are risks here. The Chinese government can be restrictive. It has cracked down on underage players and regulated the opening of Internet cafes in the past. This is also still a nascent industry. Who knows if China ’s youth will still fancy these multiplayer fantasy games in a few years?
However, when you see growth stocks fetching value stock prices, you tend to forgive the potential potholes. You look past the worst-case scenario. You forgive the business tax refunds inflating the bottom line.
It’s how you play — and win — the game.
Tags: wow gold，World of warcraft gold

 

Posted by JImmy at 07:29:08 | Permalink | No Comments »

Beta blog: World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King


 

Welcome to Eith’s (entirely non-sing-a-long) Wrath of the Lich King blog. A couple of days ago I was handed a shiny beta key so this blog will be my musings and impressions of Blizzard’s second expansion for the juggernaut that is World of warcraft gold
. There’s a lot to cover, including the introduction of the first ‘hero class’ in the game (Death Knights), new professions, new zones, new graphics, a new achievement system, even new hair. So, spoilers ahoy, and should you want to keep your eyes pure and virginal for the actual launch consider yourself warned.Do you smell something? I know a lot of people are interested in how Blizzard has decided to implement the new hero class so I rolled me a Death Knight and took her through the beginner zone. It’s really refreshing to have a brand-spankin’ new character and not be faced with the horror that is Stranglethorn or other zones that are a pain to get through, ganked or not.As far as initial impressions go this class is fun and in many ways (both lore-wise and game mechanics related) they function something like a corrupted paladin; extremely limited abilities at range, but an enjoyable blend of melee and casting when you’re in the thick of a fight.

member of the Scourge players begin in an instanced starting-zone-version of the Plaguelands as a level 55 Death Knight. Yes, it’s a lot of fun to have a new character appear withquite significant green items, but I wasn’t happy about my missing talent points. The developers, however, have come up with a pretty interesting way of handing out those precious points – quests. Each quest completed in the instanced zone rewards some wow gold and between one and six talent points to spend. The quests are also a lot of fun, in that evil Scourge way; there’s something inherently satisfying about riding a frostworm, killing humans by the hundreds and swooping down on a Scarlet Crusader so your dragon can eat him on the wing. Pure class. By the end of the zone you’re fully kitted out in blues and get a kick arse quest/event that ends the instanced zone and sends you out into the world and into your faction.Face-rolling funOkay yes, I admit it, in some ways the Death Knight seems overpowered – though perhaps that’s just the fact that you start out so much higher than a normal starting character. Time will tell whether the class normalises through levelling to 80.Death Knight talent trees come in three plague-ridden flavours; Blood, Frost and Unholy. I’m yet to try out the Frost (nominally the ‘tanking’ spec of this class) or Unholy (the PvP build) builds but Blood is face-rolling fun. Yes, you can roll your face across the keyboard and get a good result. Blood spec is fast and furious – little downtime and capable of taking on multiple high level mobs and surviving easily. Combined with the Rune Tap ability and Blood Strike to heal a Blood-specced Knight, this seems to create an efficient levelling machine.Death Knights grow runic power as they fight, much like a warrior pools rage. That runic power can then be tapped by different abilities from the Frost, Blood or Unholy trees – two runes of each type are available at a time. The UI’s representation of which runes are available or on cooldown is kinda small at this stage in the beta however. Death Grip a Fel Reaver… and dieAs expected, upon my arrival in Outland to continue levelling, I was faced with dozens of Death Knights. Also, as expected, general chat was flooded with talk about using the ranged pull ‘Death Grip’ on passing Fel Reavers. However, it seems even heroic classes aren’t up to the challenge of taking on a Fel Reaver at level 58.

a great mechanic, particularly as a ranged pull for a class that functions mainly as melee with limited local area spell capabilities. It has a great animation sequence that lifts your targeted mob into the air, pulling it towards you and forcing it to fight (I suspect this will also be great for retreating mobs, but I’m yet to confirm this).Blizz has taken some pity on Death Knight noobs as they make their way into the world – First Aid starts out at 275, which is helpful to say the least, but other professions have to be acquired the old-fashioned way.Recent (shocking) discoveriesI’m sure a lot of you run mods like Cartographer or similar, which open the world map and reveal areas even if your character has never actually explored that element of the zone. So, having recently dropped tailoring and enchanting to pick up the new Inscription profession while on the beta server, I sent my 70 mage (that would be Eithriel -ed) into Elwynn Forest to start herbalism, the matched profession.It was as I was running around following herb nodes on my map that the familiar ‘ding’ noise went off, and I learnt that I’ve finally, after 70 levels, explored all of Elwynn Forest. Phear my leet mage skills. So, that’s how achievements work – some will be automatically awarded on installation of the expansion as far as I can tell, for characters already of a certain level, but new characters can experience the joy of extra ‘ding’ noises as they complete 50 quests, for example. Hopefully next week we can get into the nitty-gritty of Northrend, where it’s frozen all the time but the quest givers keep asking you to go swimming. Oh hai, hypothermia.
Tags: wow gold,World of warcraft gold

 

 

Posted by JImmy at 07:26:30 | Permalink | No Comments »

World of Warcraft Gamer Wins Gold Digging Court Case


Account returned after gold farming closure
SPOnG’s all in favour of the little guy delivering a punch in the chops to big business, but the case of Zhou Xujun winning a case to have his World of Warcraft characters returned is a little… beguiling.Xujun will have his characters and tools returned (and his litigation costs paid) after his WoW account was blocked back on March 7th for wow gold farming. The Shanghai Pudong New District People’s Court ruled in favour of Xujun when he sued The9, which operates WoW in China . The court found that pre-existing system bugs were used by Xujun to acquire in-game wealth, rather than prohibited means such as plug-ins. wow gold farming is something of a grey area. It involves players of MMOs acquiring in-game wealth by repeating certain tasks, sometimes using programs such as bots to play the game automatically. There’s now a huge market for trading in virtual gold or characters that have already been levelled up. Operators of MMOs don’t like it, but are struggling to control it.The9 said in May that it had closed 5,772 game accounts for illegal wow gold farming. The last thing it needs is scores of disaffected gamers coming out of the woodwork to challenge its actions.
While SPOnG appreciates that WoW can bring out obsessive behaviour in people, however, isn’t taking account closure to court going a bit far? Opinions in the Forum, please.
Tags: wow gold,World of warcraft gold

 

 

Posted by JImmy at 07:25:24 | Permalink | No Comments »

China’s The9 earns epic loot from The World of Warcraft

Practically gold farming in real life
The owner of six of China ’s fastest privately-owned computers continues to rake in cash thanks to more than a little help from orcs and elves.
Video game publisher and online operator The9 said today it posted $66.3m in second quarter 2008 revenue, an immense 69 per cent increase from the same period last year. The lion’s share of revenue came from being the Chinese proprietor of the immensely popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft. Revenue from running subscription-based games was $60.7m — contributing over 90 per cent of the company’s earnings.


“Our solid financial results were driven by the continuing growth of Blizzard Entertainment’s World of warcraft goldand Soul of the Ultimate Nation, despite our closing of all servers for three days on observation and respect for those impacted by the earthquake tragedy,” said The9 CEO Jun Zhu.
But Zhu is giving SUN way more credit than it’s due. That’s likely in order to shake off investor fears the company relies so heavily on one game alone.
But just look at the numbers: The9 reports that in Q2, it attained aggregate peak concurrent users (PCU) of approximately 1.3 million for games in commercial operation. WoW’s PCU, however, surpasses the 1 million mark in China .
In total, the company reports over 41.5 million total registered users.
Net income for Q2 was $16.9m, a 129 per cent increase from 2007. Not a bad amount of growth, and with China ’s expanding market of PC owners there’s more to be had. There’s also Blizzard’s upcoming expansion to WoW, Wrath of the Lich King. But right now the company is busy trying to diversify. After all, eventually World of Warcraft will be dethroned.
The9 said it’s continuing to focus on marketing itself to lower tier regional markets, expanding game licensing deals and bolstering its in-house game development team.
“Through our operational and strategic initiatives, we are gradually and relentlessly executing our business strategy, so as to generate sustainable and scalable long-term growth for the Company,” The9 said.
Tags: wow gold， World of warcraft gold

 

Posted by JImmy at 07:23:32 | Permalink | No Comments »

Blizzard Posts Details About BlizzCon 2008

 

Blizzard Entertainment, makers of World of Warcraft, have posted details of their forthcoming BlizzCon 2008 event, taking place on October 10 - 11, 2008 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif.
BlizzCon is Blizzard’s now-annual gathering of gaming enthusiasts to celebrate Blizzard’s popular games. Blizzard is the developer of World of warcraft gold
, StarCraft and Diablo game series. The company is developing new games or expansion packs for all three franchises, and they’re developing them all for the Mac as well. Tickets to BlizzCon 2008 cost US$100 each.
BlizzCon features tournaments for players who want to test their skills against others in Warcraft III and World of Warcraft. The top prize is $25,000 per player, and players and teams will be venturing forth from North America, Europe, Korea and Taiwan . There will also be a StarCraft Invitational.
Other events planned for BlizzCon 2008 include a costume contest for cosplayers who want to dress up like their favorite Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo characters, a diorama contest, original song contest, motivational poster contest, BlizzCon dance contest, “silly contest” and more. Attendees will also get a “goody bag” filled with exclusive stuff.
Tags: wow gold， World of warcraft gold

Posted by JImmy at 07:21:31 | Permalink | No Comments »

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

It is no great surprise that World of Warcraft is as big a hit as it has clearly become. Its 10 million subscribers (no doubt increasing by the second) have been captivated by its ability to be simple to learn, but complex to master. In recent times, it has even managed to keep the more casual gamer playing with its daily quests scheme in order to gain more wow gold and achievements and an easier levelling curve, a feat that is no mean task when you look at how other MMOs have struggled to maintain their user base. Throw in some excellent marketing (who hasn’t seen Mr T or William Shatner advertise this? It even made my mother pay attention) and you’re onto a winner. But to keep that trend up, Blizzard needs to keep adding innovation to its Warcraft world and it certainly looks like it’s doing that with Wrath of the Lich King.
Unlike The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King is primarily aimed at the end-game players, with nine new zones aimed at level 68+ players with a variety of new instances suitable for a variety of different purposes; the level cap being increased to 80, a new and unique outdoor PvP area and a new neutral capital city, Dalaran. Lake Wintergrasp will be WoW’s first non-battleground zone that is solely devoted to PvP action, even on PvE servers. There are plans for a fixed schedule of attacking and defending the area for both factions, as well as a variety of new daily quests with various amount of wow gold. For those more interested in new instances, there are many dungeons aimed at 70+ players with a mixture of five man instances and larger 10 or 25 raid scenarios. Ulduar is one that will interest many end-game players as it is planned to be the next progression step from Naxxramas. Some of the five man instances should only take a couple of hours to complete for many groups which makes it ideal for those who can’t devote a full day to raiding. After all, Blizzard have to contend with the fact that many of their players have now grown up with the game and may not have as much time to raid as they used to. Thus there is plenty for both hardcore raiders and more casual players to sink their teeth into.
Besides new zones for high level characters, there are a few bonuses for all players. There is the addition of a barbershop facility, to be implemented in Ironforge, Stormwind, the Undercity, Ogrimmar and Dalaran, which look like they will be added in the new patch around the launch of Wrath of the Lich King - rather than solely for expansion owners. Nothing has been confirmed yet. These will enable players to change their haircuts for a small in-game monetary fee; a small, cosmetic effect but its always nice to see little things added to a long-running game such as this, especially for free.
With a nod to Xbox Live’s method of doing things, there will be a new achievement system available to all players encompassing 500 unique achievements with more to come, Blizzard assures. From what I have seen, they range from the standard ‘reach level 50/reach level 60’ tasks to such randomness as ‘fall 65 yards without dying while drunk’, and slaying a number of turkeys in a set time. There is even one devoted to hugging corpses of players you have killed in PvP. Blizzard promise that some of these achievements will be linked to in-game rewards such as tabards, pets and unique titles although nothing has been demonstrated yet. Everyone likes to be acknowledged for their accomplishments so it will be nice to see rewards for even the most obscure of achievements. The eventual plan is to link these to a universal Blizzard account so that other Blizzard products can also have achievements, essentially leading to a gamerscore system much like Xbox Live.
For the professional grinders there will also be the addition of the Glyph interface. These glyphs add another layer of depth to the game’s upgrade system with the ability to add up to six Glyphs, comprising of Greater, Lesser and Minor. All of these Glyphs provide upgrades to spells at various levels, ranging from greater Glyphs enabling abilities such as increased damage in spell-casting to minor Glyphs merely changing the colour of a spell graphic. These Glyphs are created through the use of the new Inscription skill, which is bound to make more creative players very happy, as will the new increased profession caps.
Of course, I can’t forget to mention arguably the most exciting part of the new expansion - a new class to play: the Death Knight. However, this is a new class with a twist. For one thing, you can’t play as a Death Knight from level 1, one of your other characters has to be level 55 or above. You can then create a Death Knight as a separate entity from your original 55+ character, meaning you don’t lose access to any of your existing characters. You start as a level 55 Death Knight in Archerus, the Ebon Hold within the Eastern Plaguelands . The Death Knight is the first ‘hero’ class within the game. A plate-wearing DPS based tank character; the class uses a new resource system based on cooldowns. Instead of using mana or rage like other classes, you can carve runes into your character’s weapons and then use those runes to power abilities. The initial few opening quests teach you all of this as well as help you acquire and learn to use your new skills, which include your own skeletal Deathcharger mount. The early stages of playing as a Death Knight are cleverly scripted in a manner that quickly grabs the player’s imagination, drawing you into the world of the Death Knight very well. In a strange sort of way, the scripting added a bit of morality to the character, pillaging villages felt so easy in early quests; it felt cruel on these simple NPCs, they didn’t stand a chance against the might of my Death Knight. This seems to be the exact reason why the early quests are so tightly scripted, they are meant to make you realise just how powerful your character is and it adds a nice role-playing element to a game that is often lacking in ‘true’ role-playing. Plus it’s just plain fun to feel quite so incredibly powerful, even if these villagers are just minions in the grand scheme of things. Most of the early quests are reasonably entertaining, and are even fairly humorous in places such as one quest involving stealing a house being called Grand Theft Palomino, a nice homage to GTA.
As well as these large additions, there are also graphical updates to be introduced with the expansion launch patch and some fairly major class changes. As so many long term Warcraft players know, every class seems to have its day of being amazing before getting ‘nerfed’ in favour of another class. This time round, it looks to be Paladins that may have the most successful improvement with this patch, but only time will tell just how long that will remain the case. There are a few minor bugs floating around such as NPCs being impossible to click on, but already this pack shaping up to be a quality addition to the World of Warcraft franchise. It is perhaps a bit of a shame for lower level players that it’s not really worth their time buying this expansion yet, they’re even better to append money to gain wow gold, as so many of the relevant features for them look to be introduced in the patch anyhow, but at least it will give them impetus to get levelling-up to see just how much fun it is to play as a Death Knight, and it’s certainly much easier to level up from 1-55 than it used to be.
I honestly can’t see any Warcraft player being annoyed by any of these additions; it is shaping up to be a worthy supplement that will keep many addicts going through those dark winter nights. I should know, I’ll be one of them.
Tags: wow gold， World of warcraft gold

 

Posted by JImmy at 07:19:43 | Permalink | No Comments »