[MUD-Dev] BIZ: Europe & Distrubution

[Johan]

Vincent Archer <archer at frmug.org> wrote:

> No large-scale MMORPG, you mean.

> A Tale in the Desert was released exclusively over the net. As was
> the ill-fated Rubies of Eventide, if my memory is right. One is
> alive and well after over a year, but the other went down
> promptly.

Yes sorry about that, I meant that no large-scale game has been
available online from day 1. Say Blizzard offering to buy the game
over the Internet now, download the client end purchase a
cd-key. This way Europeans could buy the game without having to pay
double the price on ebay or a US retailer.

> As a veteran of very large corporation (Alcatel), I assume that it
> probably has more with the directory of Blizzard Europe wanting to
> keep his sales at home, so that he presents a better report to
> Vivendi Universal, and get a bigger bonus for 2004.

> This is called "market segmentation", "internal profit centers"
> and other buzzphrases that are used in multinationals like VU.
> Which means that Blizzard US has to accomodate Blizzard Europe in
> this segmentation, because that's corporate policy at high level.

>   (note that I'm not working for VU, don't have contacts at VU
>   management, and it's all out of familiarity with other
>   multinationals and the "modern management")

> There are no real technical reason for the move (including the
> lockout by billing information, not just by which box you buy), so
> one has to look for the financial/marketing one.

No of course not. That's what's so upsetting. Being lied to from day
one. Shows that Blizz is really going for the casual/new player
segment who has less to none experience with MMORPG's and with whom
they could pull this of. There was a complaints thread on their
forum, it got to some 28 pages before it magically stopped, I wonder
why ;P

Similar concerns has recently surfaced at Vanguard's forum, even
thought that game is 1-2 years away.
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