The New, New Media

All-powerful videogame warlord Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, recently had the following to say about Blizzard's MMORPG World of Warcraft:

• "We started analyzing the online experience and realized that World of Warcraft was like nothing we'd ever seen," Kotick says. "It's not even just a business. It's a social network with this incredible entertainment component to it. People in our industry have tried and tried to build successful online games, with Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons and all kinds of things, but most of them failed," he continues. "We realized that to do something ourselves that would be big enough to affect our margins would cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. But even if we tried, we'd probably get it wrong."
  

With enough clout to inspire an episode of South Park and medical research, WoW obviously has a lot of reach. Not to mention its 9+ million subscribers who pay $15 a month to run around a glorified chatroom and pew pew fireballs at each other. So polish up your nerd lingo and re-work your pitches because I know there is a Level 70 Orc Warrior who wants to hear about your super cool event while he tanks Illidan the dark lord of the Black Temple.