Geek Gestalt

The inside of the 'Wrath of the Lich King' retail box teases players with a challenge. The expansion to the hugely popular 'World of Warcraft' goes on sale tonight at midnight.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

For World of Warcraft players who over the years have grown accustomed to seeing busy in-world auction houses, the last few weeks may have seemed odd.

Normally bustling with players eager to buy or sell weapons, clothing, armor, or other goods, business at the auction houses has recently slowed to a crawl. But it's not because of the global economic crisis.

Rather, say WoW aficionados, players have been hoarding their gold in anticipation of the release Thursday of the game's latest expansion, , and holding off on buying items that would soon be obsolete.

This is just one example of players of the hugely popular massively multiplayer online game behaving differently as Lich King's release approaches.

The game will go on sale nationwide after midnight (12 a.m.) Thursday, and retail stores expect lines across the country.

Blizzard Entertainment has recently opened up the beta for its forthcoming expansion to 'World of Warcraft,' 'The Wrath of the Lich King.' According to people familiar with the beta, the expansion offers some big improvements and appears likely to sell millions of copies.

(Credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

Since its launch in the fall of 2004, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft has shattered expectations at every turn.

Prior to its release, no American massively multiplayer online game (MMO) had ever reached what was then seen as the magical million subscribers level--even major hits like EverQuest and Ultima Online. Yet almost before anyone could blink, WoW, as it's known, had surpassed 4 million paying users and now has more than 10 million worldwide, and at $15 a month for most users, it may well be bringing in more than $1 billion a year.

Then, prior to the January 2007 release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, no one had ever heard of the kind of nationwide midnight madness lines associated with iPhone and Xbox launches for a game expansion. Sure enough, however, people lined up at game stores everywhere for hours for the right to be among the very first to buy Burning Crusade, and the update went on to sell millions of copies.

And now, with the second major WoW expansion, The Wrath of the Lich King, in beta testing, Blizzard is getting ready to prove yet again that when it comes to American MMOs, it is the undisputed gold standard.

"It's just beautiful," said longtime WoW player and Lich King beta player Katrina Glerum. "The game really feels epic in a way that The Burning Crusade didn't....Burning Crusade felt like an extension of the (original) game. This really feels epic, and that you're part of something grand."

I woke up this morning to news that France's Vivendi has agreed to buy a controlling interest in Activision, perhaps creating the world's-largest independent video game company.

The new entity will be known as Activision Blizzard--a suitable name based on the fact that Activision has the best-known video game brand in the new company, but that Vivendi's Blizzard Entertainment unit also produces World of Warcraft, one of the most successful massively multiplayer online games of all time.

But what is not clear is whether the new company will be able to achieve something that is clearly part of Vivendi's rationale for making the $18.9 billion deal: to become the most visible video game company in the world.

For that, I think, it is still going to need to go through Redwood Shores, Calif., the home of Electronic Arts.

EA may have its problems, what with laid off employees, questions about its ability to create hit original games, and a stock price that had dropped into uncomfortable territory earlier this year before rebounding. But there can be little doubt that it is the best-known brand in the business.

Its games are everywhere: Madden, The Sims, Harry Potter, Need for Speed and so on. But more than that, I think that the name Electronic Arts, or the abbreviation, "EA," are short-hand in many people's minds for the video game industry.

Which isn't to say, of course, that neither Activision nor Vivendi nor Blizzard aren't household names in their own right.

But to me it's pretty certain that, in the United States, at least, EA is the far-better known brand, and will continue to be so for some time.

And in that regard, the new Activision will have to work very hard to associate its hit franchises--Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty and so on with its brand name in the same way EA's games are with it.

I'm sure that there are those who will argue with my assessment, or even the premise of this story, but when a company like Vivendi spends as much money to make a splash with a transaction like this, you can be sure it's not entirely about the bottom line. It's about perception.

And in this case, I think EA is still going to be top dog in the perception game for some time.

Especially if it decides to follow Vivendi's move by making a major purchase of its own.