Thursday, October 4, 2007

Aliens beat pirates

It is not the best of data, but it is the only data we got: Fileplanet has both a Tabula Rasa and a Pirates of the Burning Sea beta going on, and they display how many people downloaded the respective clients. The Tabula Rasa client got downloaded over 85,000 times, the Pirates of the Burning Sea client got downloaded 16,500 times (including the option to download it in parts). I would so love Pirates of the Burning Sea to succeed, but my vision might be clouded by my personal love for all things age of sail. On the mass market a pirate game doesn't appear to be as much in demand as an alien shooter.

And then there is Warhammer Online, who have a counter running on their homepage, displaying the number of beta applicants. It stands at 448,000 now. One of my readers in a comment redefined the acronym WoW as "Waiting on Warhammer", and that is what appears to be happening. And that is in spite of the fact that WAR only lets in a tiny fraction of those 448,000 applicants, while Tabula Rasa and PotBS are now open for anyone. Now certainly a part of the reason is that WAR is a much bigger budget game, with more polish. But why does everyone always want to play elves and orcs? Escapism is all fine and dandy, but you can escape by playing a pirate as well.

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