Hey, loser, play our game!

Wow, Travian advertising opts for the non conventional approach again! Previously the 'Play (with my boobies) my lord' adverts were infamous (and entirely miss leading of content).

Now...well, you have to self identify as a nobody...I suspect the guy in charge doesn't actually have a sense of conscience. Well, you can imagine that - you see anyone else in the world but you as mere pawns to you. Meat puppets. Of course such an advert makes sense to you.

Though the horrid truth is, don't we all use these games as a pecking order/keeping up with the jones's method, to some degree? Must have the epic purple Jimmy got last week?

GOGOGOGOGOGO ANDY!

How to attract customers - "Your about to become the victim of a brutal ambush!"

I love the pitch that your going to be royally screwed if you come play our game. It is indeed refreshingly different. Also perhaps they could say 'Hey, why climb a bell tower in real life and be gunned down by cops, when you could express your dark bitterness in our game (after an extended subscription because 'time is on your side') pretty much endlessly, without being riddled with cop bullets that are probably banned by the geneva convention?'

Ya know what, no ones going to remember that they ganked you months ago. They can't even remember their own passwords half the time.

I think lawyers should start pitching the idea of marrying, so you can really get someone in a divorce years latter (Time is on your side!), and the lawyers obviously garner up the moolah from it. Same principle - set up dysfucntional human relationships for cash-money!

'You can't out-WOW WOW' - a fallacy?

I've heard this one before and I've even subscribed to it for awhile. But I'm thinking it's rubbish now.

For the simple fact that WOW (world of warcraft) 'out-wowed' other mmorpgs. It took components from all of them and 'out-wowed' or more technically apt 'out-mmorpg-ed' them.

But even there I don't think its subscription numbers are due to 'out-mmorpg-ing' other prior mmorpgs.

It just had a wicked hot advertising campaign! An advertising campaign that quite possibly started well before the idea of seriously making a mmorpg even occured to anyone at blizzard.

The warcraft RTS games - it's all advertising for wow. Years in advance. Every single session of play, millions of them - promoting that warcraft brand.

Then every single other company goes 'HAI I WANTS MONEY LIKE THAT 2!' and makes a mmorpg. They even make, arguably, better games/mmorpgs than wow. But they don't do as well.

They just lack years of indoctrination...sorry, I mean propaganda...sorry, I mean advertising!

The guys who made torchlight, they put it out as a single player, with plans for some sort of big multiplayer in future years...they've got the idea!

Literally years of advertising before the product even exists. Advertising that people paid to aquire - an advertising campaign that profited in itself, let alone in terms of the eventual product sales/subscriptions. Think about it.