Three Articles About MMORPGs

Over the past day or so, I’ve encountered three interesting articles about massively-multiplayer online role playing games like World of Warcraft:

• From MAKE magazine, an insightful article proposing credit and loyalty cards for MMPORGs: “It’s not a matter of if, just when – credit card companies, Pay Pal, Amazon, eBay and the individual “gaming” companies eventually bridge the real and virtual currencies with loyalty programs and private label credit cards – there’s too much money out there to -not- to do this.”
• From Wired, an article about a global crackdown on online gaming and gamers: “Players in South Korea have been prosecuted for stealing virtual property. More than half of the 40,000 computer crimes investigated by South Korea’s National Police Agency in 2003 involved online games.”
• Finally, from BigKid.com.au, the cleverly titled The Dangers of Monogamey discusses how World of Warcraft’s dominance may be having a negative impact on the gaming industry: “Is it just a co-incidence that a number of the largest and most successful publishers such as EA, Activision and Atari are publicly talking about lay offs and downsizing as we speak. Today I also saw an article linked off Blues News talking about Microsoft’s interest in reviving the waning PC gaming market quoting a 14% drop in PC sales last year. Add this to the fact that World of Warcraft has surpassed 5.5 million active accounts and you have to wonder how many gamers out there are left to buy other products.”