MMORPGS (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) such as World of Warcraft have become some of the most popular games online. World of Warcraft is just one of the many MMORPGS located online, it is also the most popular. Currently there are 9 million subscribers and over 3.5 million users, it’s not hard to tell how staggering those numbers are. But what does this mean in terms of marketing opportunities?
For starters the number of users currently involved in MMORPGS provides a huge opportunity, it is simply amazing how many people subscribe to and play these types of games. In theory, if you could place an advertisement in the World of Warcraft game, somewhere in the interface you could have close to 3.5 million people seeing that advertisement. Of course this isn’t realistic, Blizzard (Warcraft’s parent company) simply will not allow this. Putting an advertisement in the game would obviously take away from the experience. Warcraft has no intention of becoming the next Facebook, I’m sure they want to remain advertisement free.
However, it is possible to partner with World of Warcraft in order to create marketing opportunities. Co-op advertising is a huge opportunity for marketers, it can produce an advertisement that is experienced by millions of people. Toyota Trucks did this with great success. Toyota came up with a commercial with their truck involved in a World of Warcraft scenario. The commercial was highly successful and was viewed by a large amount of people. Toyota took advantage of the game’s growing popularity and tried to ‘latch on’ hoping truck sales would increase. The advertisement was met with some discouragement though; World of Warcraft players felt that the commercial was commercializing the gaming world.
In order for advertising to succeed in MMORPGS marketers must make sure not to step on any toes. Marketers must avoid turning the gaming world into a commercialized world. I don’t want to speak for gamers, however I’m sure that they don’t want to see advertising placed in World of Warcraft. Marketers must considering co-op advertising in order to succeed. Even though Toyota was met with some complaints from Warcraft users, it was still a perfect example of co-op advertising.
