Free Guild Wars: Factions PvP Weekend

Gamers everywhere can try Guild Wars for free this weekend with the following keys:

American Players:
888D9-H27PG-NM72D-PLHJ1-2HG11

European Players:
66DG9-C4RHB-9FKD6-287BJ-LRGCJ

Note that you don't have to be in the same country as the servers you select. Download the game client for free here.

They're billing this global free-for-all PvP weekend as a preview of the upcoming Factions expansion, which includes new locations and professions (assassin and ritualist). Feel free to buzz me when you get there; my main character's Jacques Marteau, a warrior-monk who loves hammering things.


Also, meet my new assassin-warrior, Iwamura Sayuri. Sayuri is the name of the heroine of Memoirs of a Geisha, and Iwamura is the family name of her romantic lead. A Japanese ninja girl, in a Western fantasy world, built by Korean developers -- don't you just love multimedia cultural crossovers in gaming?


At one of the new locations, Sayuri observes the most masochistic NPCs in the history of RPGs. They just stand on the beach suffering from various conditions, die, and resurrect, only to suffer those conditions and die again. Why do they do this, you ask? They suffer and die, over and over again, just to demonstrate in-game maladies. If you can think of some other poor bot, in some other game, with a worse job, I'd like to hear about it.

Guild Wars' business model relies on the theory that gamers who hate server and item fees will pay for expansion packs. They tested the waters with Direct Song audio add-ons; Factions will be the acid test of that theory.

By the way, Direct Song, get another payment gateway aside from PayPal. They can't receive my payments from the Philippines. If Factions succeeds, your business model will be further validated, and PayPal won't be enough.

New Whitepaper on Ecommerce Best Practices

Just read a new whitepaper entitled Click to Buy: The Essential Guide to Best Practices in eCommerce. It's a collection of articles offering up-to-date tips on shopping cart design (obvious but rarely used), web analytics (more managers should use them), email marketing (still useful if smartly customized), security (certs create sales), and search engine marketing (hot channel, scarce talent).

It even features a case study from the Direct Marketing Association, whose Philippine counterpart granted me the privilege of speaking at their latest event. Worth a read if you're doing ecommerce.

Forrester: 23% More Site Stat Use in 2006

Forrester just released a new report Friday predicting that 23% more businesspeople will rely on web analytics in 2006. In my experience, web analytic tools help companies find ways to better serve their customers online.

Taking that one step further, sharing relevant reports with customers reflects a mindset that sees customers as partners. That's why we discuss stats from PinoyCosplay.com's multiple analytic systems with users, right on the site.

PLDT Purgatory

My PLDT DSL service at home (and the surrounding area) has been down for four days.

For readers not in the Philippines, PLDT is the entrenched local telco monopoly. This is the service level you can expect from people who didn't even have the basic foresight to buy the most obvious domain name, but did have the temerity to challenge the owner in court. They lost, by the way.

ePLDT handles PLDT DSL's customer service, but not the repairs. As such, customer service grunts actually answer the phone (atypical behavior in PLDT), but are completely clueless as to when my service will be repaired. I'm now shopping around for a new broadband provider.

Update, 8:17pm: The service is back up. This had better improve. Upstart rival provider BayanTel just called, courting me with a lower price.