Do you think this could be pointing towards a free-to-play MMO? Where Blizzard just gets money off a in-game market and advertising? What do you think?

that would never cover the costs of constant updates, patches, expansions and lets not forget general upkeep.

i would say they are looking for to get a bit of money from the advertising and might reduce the cost of subscription..

In game advertising is something I have expected for a long time now given how common it is in things like movies and tv series.

As long as it ads to the game world and isn't blaringly in your face I don't see a large problem with it.

I don't believe it would be sufficient to replace a subscription or microtransactional model but more of a supporting income.

Remember they are introducing RMT in D3. Combined with regular box sales for content expansion and ancillary shit like server xfers they may be looking at just dropping the subscriptions.

An FTP Blizzard MMO could be seriously dominant and is probably scaring the shit out of lot of people in the industry.

The first thing I got from this is that the new MMO will be in a modern day setting. I can't see Blizzard putting Mountain Dew signs into a fantasy world with swords and magic. Then again Blizzard is dead, ActivisionBlizzard may just do that.

Also I don't see this as rumor, that job listing is pretty damn conclusive.

I tagged it as rumour because it isn't quite "official" from Blizzard whether they are doing it or not.

Entirely from this thread, I suspect virtual Internet land, akin to second life but actually appealing.

Oh hell no!

Oh hell no!

But serving as a platform for entering any number of games within it... Prelude to virtual reality. I have been able to extract aaall this information from taking what I've wanted to build, combined with the fact that they're building something potentially with ads in it - so I have no basis for it all really. :P

I'm all for 'background' ads in any/all games.
Coke Billboards/posters wouldn't draw anything away from the immersion of games like Syndicate/Deus Ex etc.

As long as it's not in your face, out of place or annoying I support it 100%
The more money they make from things like that, the less they need from me to make awesome new games.

I'll be keenly watching this - I helped write a patent covering this kind of thing about 5 or 6 years ago.

battlefield 2142 era would be pretty cool and could see advertisements working in that.

bf2142 had ads in it in ES/Euro, but not in .au because of some strange law we have.

I've always thought about real life advertising in games, I guess it's finally happening and why wouldn't it easy money for the publishers.

I remember seeing the McDonalds billboard in NFS:Underground.

Disagree, I think they are definitely looking at doing free to play. It'd be a huge kick in the nuts to any other premium MMO competitor if they can pull it off. They have already proven that they can have a successful optional extras market with their vanity gear and they make a bucket load from paid name, race and server changes.

They may still have a premium subscription though which will contain most of the end game content and probably have an option to remove the ads but I think they will do as much as they can to make a legitimate claim at "Free to play".

I agree.

A basic free-to-play version with ads and a subscription version with extras and maybe no ads makes sense to me.

I played Splinter Cell Conviction a little while ago (a long time after release) and was playing the fun fair level and noticed they had up-to-date ads with posters of the maccas ad they had going for a while where shane warne's face was covered while they were promoting some chicken item IIRC. I was impressed as the ads did not take away from the game and i was surprised that considering how old the game was (probably a year or 2) yet they still had up-to-date ads.

As people have said, if the ads arent annoying and somehow cut costs of the game, bring it on. I dont even mind those pop up ads on iphone games you get occasionally that allow the game to be free.

What are some examples of bad in-game advertising you can remember? I recall Bionic commando had glaring obvious and indestructible pepsi machines that were pretty shit.

I am so keen for this game.
Just to see how blizzard are going to make an MMO-RPG that will surpass the current industry standard.

I believe Global Agenda has ads in-game, not sure on that though. Will definitely be interesting to see what Blizzard has in store. It will most likely be a very polished MMO at the least.

Could you imagine a Harvey Norman ad trying to fuck your face while you try and play?