Well, finally. Blizzard has announced the official release date for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. They also revealed what will be included in the game's limited Collector's Edition.

If you're a Guild Wars player and you're situated in Taiwan, then good news, as the latest update of the game is all about you and making your gaming experience better. From being able to access American servers to having access to pretty much everything else in the game, you'll feel the love coming right from NCsoft's servers. The details in the full article.

In its attempt to provide players a global experience, ArenaNet just released an update for NCsoft's Guild Wars that allows players from Korean language districts to visit American and European districts. Soon, Japan and Taiwan will also be able to interact with western players without having to go to International Districts. More on this at the full article.

One thing that's probably preventing some gamers from totally immersing themselves in an MMORPG is the cost that comes with it. Aside from purchasing the initial retail copy, most models today employ a monthly subscription payment, not to mention the other payments for expansions and whatnot.

Now, online gaming portal GameTribe is attempting to widen the MMO market in UK by bringing some of its already established titles in the said region. The company's head of marketing division Faisal Ahmed said: "We're excited to bring these acclaimed MMO games to Europe. Combined with GameTribe's expertise in games, we'll be providing the best service to European gamers."

Furthermore, there will be a total of three different titles available when the service goes live this coming October: full-blown MMO title Dream of Mirror Online with 400,000 registered games in Taiwan alone, 3D platformer KongKong, and street football game Kicks. The last one has an installed user base of 450,000 in Korea alone.

All above mentioned games will be free to play. Contextual items will be available for purchase for those who want to customize further the gameplay experience. Beta testing is also happening as of this writing.

Slipping back to our business suits, we've gotten word that U.S. market research firm Parks Associates has discovered that online gaming still outweighs video streaming or social networking over the Internet. The report entitled "Casual Gaming Market Update" claimed that at least 34% of adult Internet users play online games on a weekly basis. Games they play include casual games, confirming the rise in popularity of the casual gaming sector.

 

In contrast, 29% of those surveyed watch short online videos, and a smaller 19% visit social networking sites at least once a week. Additionally, online gaming is also experiencing a major surge in the North American region. Parks Associates observed a 79% year-on-year rise in online gamers, compared to the 46% climb of social networking users.

Still, video streaming users are ascending at a steep 123%, and the online gaming sector would do well to challenge that rate in the following years. The online gaming sector is becoming a ripe source of income, and Parks Associates still recommends the tried-and-tested Western business models for the region.

In the Eastern front, the online gaming sector is becoming a blossoming playground for the Asian gaming industry, as Taiwan, Korea, and China have experienced phenomenally market booms in the previous year. Market predictions are also off-the-roof for the Far East, and it may have already grown leaps and bounds in the first half of 2007.

Because people WoW and click Flash more than they Facebook or Youtube, we'll be monitoring for more developments as they come clicking by.

While the Eastern hemisphere has an uncontested foothold in the online gaming sector, Electronic Arts' director of E-commerce, John Burns, believes that online gaming in the Western front will also rise to the occasion. He claimed that in three years time, the world's online gamers could be spending up to GB£ 2.18 billion (US$ 4.4 billion) every year.

 

At a two-day conference held by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe, Burns spoke on the potential growth spurt that the online games industry would experience in the coming years. "Not only is gaming a significant industry in size now but online gaming is an important step for us as an industry," said Burns, being careful to point out that even the rise of female online gamers cannot be barred by the concept of "hard-core" games.

"It is very broad and widespread. There are many people playing online games of all ages, male and female," he added. Burns figured that around 100 million online gamers are spread across the world and its highly likely that the number would increase steadily in the coming years.

If the European situation is any indication, Burns pointed out that broadband penetration in the region has grown from 35% since 2006. He predicts that in about five years' time, it could rise past 45%. "Household penetration of broadband is also exponential - and we are looking at that growing in Europe from 40 per cent now to over 60 per cent in 2012," he concluded.

Taiwan, China, and South Korea have enjoyed an early boost in the MMORPG market, with millions of gamers and game companies contributing to its growth. The player base in some games, like the 60 million user base in Wizet's MapleStory, inflated due to the availability of affordable broadband connections and the spread of Internet cafes.

Burns noted that the sense of community is driving gamers to the online front, where interaction with other human beings through a virtual world entices both the experience and the imagination. "Online games expand your world. And players can replicate in a larger [online] world what they have in the off-line world," he said.

An official press release said Pearl Research's 77-page study on the "Online Games Market in Taiwan" has found that the growing local MMO and casual games market will most likely exceed $300 million this year. Given that the market worth is about a third of Blizzard's World of Warcraft revenue, that's a huge space to be filled by U.S. companies. Unfortunately for them, it's not easy as cake.

U.S. companies such as Blizzard Entertainment already established a foothold in the local market, although the Taiwanese (as Asians) are more inclined to play free-to-play MMOs than pay-to-play MMOs. The majority of the market actually spend more on free-to-play, microtransaction games than on subscription-based MMOs, said the study.

Also, the study has highlighted that the nation has its own game development industry and a "robust development community" who are also working on delivering games on the online platform. Some analysts believe that U.S. companies could enter the market with the right partner and right content, but they would also need the right price, too.

Much of the boom in the online scene is attributed to low cost game content (around US$ 12 to US$ 15) that caters to their cultural way of living, as well as popular trends. Coupled with a 67% increase of Internet subscriptions to broadband connections, the MMORPG market became the largest segment of the US$ 300 million market.

Casual games have also increased in popularity in Taiwan, garnering a 35% share of the MMO-casual games market, with the remaining 65% for the MMO titles. The study was a trend analysis of data compiled since 2006 to identify the growth and direction of the local Taiwan market in MMO and casual games.

In an exclusive interview with Sony Online Entertainment's David Christensen, new vice president of business development and international operations, Next-Gen was able to extract SOE's desire to trace Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft and deliver an MMO champ to be remembered by. Their first order of business was to establish an international footprint.

So while keeping a firm hand on Europe and North America, Sony Online Entertainment glanced over to the other half of the world and saw how much work lay waiting for them.

South America, India, Vietnam and the Philippines were just some of the names mentioned by Sony, after they identified the most active countries where MMO gamers would love to try out new games given the chance

But of course, Sony does have its share of competition. So far, Korean development companies have been also successful with their own local products that had taken Asia and parts of the West by storm. Trying to insert a viable product in the same market to compete with tried-and-tested (and free for the most part) MMOs would prove unnervingly difficult.

Hakkyu Kim's Granado Espada (Sword of the New World) is one such title that has just recently been tapped into by the Asian market following the recent announcement of a closed beta program. It's been gaining amazing foothold on most Asian countries and could become a brilliant Asian WoW by itself.

But Christensen is still keeping positive, claiming that they do have an ability to enter the local markets and not "be competing with several hundred MMOs" that gamers are already hooked into. SOE is currently trying to establish relations with key entertainment and online technology companies.

They already have games in Taiwan, China and Korea, but Christensen remains adamant that it's just "a very small footprint" they they have established on foreign markets. Is it safe to say that the world MMO market should be seeing Sony branded MMO games coming to other countries soon? With Sony's premier focus on catering to low-cost local economies, you could say that.

Blizzard has announced that the Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft has gone live in the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. The expansion's launch in mainland China is still being prepared, and localization of the MMORPG into Simplified Chinese is currently.

The Blizzard Online Store also has a couple of new items this month. First is BradyGames' official strategy guide for Burning Crusade. The strategy guide includes a lot of info on the new races and weapons found in the expansion. It also has a pretty in-depth look at the Hellfire Citadel and the Outland itself.

Those looking for some tips about the new PvP system in World of Warcraft will also get the lowdown on each of the new PvP zones. The strategy guide also covers every single recipe for every crafting profession. From 1 to 400, it's all in the guide. If that's not enough for you, there are also exclusive new World of Warcraft comics from Penny Arcade included in the guide.

The second new item is the Onyxia's Lair Raid Deck for the World of Warcraft TCG. The new deck comes with everything a player needs to control the iconic dragon and incinerate others into oblivion. In addition to a full Onyxia monster deck, each Raid Deck comes with Whelp tokens, oversize Onyxia hero cards, and a treasure pack with foil cards exclusive to this raid - not to mention a higher frequency of Loot cards.

We all know that World of Warcraft (WoW) is bugged but that doesn't stop us from playing. To compensate, Blizzard Entertainment implements various hot fixes and maintenance schedules every now and then to keep our favorite MMO running. Quite unfortunately, a blossoming love story ended, due to one of the said updates/fixes.

A maintenance schedule was put in effect in Taiwan World of Warcraft (TWoW) a couple of days ago. Now, one player known us Bimmy Frostwolf claimed that he/she was separated from a lover. This happened because after the downtime, when Bimmy was suddenly shifted to another server. Needless to say, our lov birds couldn't track eachother anymore.

Bimmy Frostwolf even made a music video of the sad event because he/she doesn't want to forget. The video clip was rather mushy but we have to remind you, this server shifting incident is a very serious one. Blizzard should try and fix this at once lest its developers want to see more than seven million WoW players lost, angry, and brokenhearted.