For All Its Hype...

Champions Online, the City-of-Heroes-warmed-over MMORPG that skews more towards action, couldn't even come close to selling out Amazon's allotment of half-priced copies of the game.

Selling for under $20, only 7% of copies were claimed by Amazon buyers. As video games go, $20 is as much an impulse buy price as a pack of gum in the supermarket checkout line. But on the biggest online retailer's site, they couldn't even move 10% of the stock set aside for the deal.

Is the game that bad? Has the market for MMOs not named World of Warcraft just dried up that much? Is this an indication that many dismissed it for its similarities to City of Heroes (including being made by the same studio)? Or is this a preview of how any super-hero MMO (cough DCU Online cough) will perform in the marketplace?

On a side note: they made Marvel change the name of a comic book for THIS?!?

Blizzard Response Regarding Screen Grabs For Webcomic With Advertising

I received the following response from Blizzard when I posed a hypothetical question to them regarding the use of screen grabs to create a webcomic on a page one sells advertising for:

From: machinima@blizzard.com
To: Kevin Huxford
Date: Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 8:01 PM
Subject: RE: Fair Use Question
Mailed-by: blizzard.com

Greetings Kevin,

Thank you for your patience! I am afraid that this is against our current policies and I apologize for any inconvenience this causes. We do wish you luck with future projects and take care.

From: Kevin Huxford
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 12:00 AM
To: machinima@blizzard.com
Subject: Re: Fair Use Question

Still hoping to get an answer on this. Thanks!

On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 5:07 PM, Kevin Huxford wrote:

What is Blizzard's policy on screen shots being used to create a webcomic and then selling advertisement on the webcomic site? I'm worried that compensation for ads on the same page as the webcomic would constitute commercial use.

Thanks,
Kevin Huxford

Folks, Blizzard owns the images. Using screen grabs for 100% of a comic that you profit on without any licensing fees paid to the owner of the images is a violation of copyright. Doing it rarely might be able to skate on parody exceptions; doing it in perpetuity will not.

Pwned, indeed!

A Big Thank You To Cru The Dwarf Fans!

Sean F. directed you all to my blog entry contending that he is infringing Blizzard's copyright by using barely altered screen grabs of World of Warcraft to "create" his webcomic, Cru The Dwarf.

I'd say he added about 200 hits to my usual Monday traffic, making this one of the site's best days in a long time. The hits-to-defense-of-Cru ratio is about 66-to-1.

Blizzard Gets In On April Fool's Again!

Blizzard, producers of World of Warcraft, said there'd be a Panda race and some wispy race, along with being able to order Panda Express chinese food through the game, one April Fool's.

This year? The Bard Class, ala Guitar Hero.