I am sure everyone has seen the World of Warcraft commercial that seems like it has been in every commercial break. You know the one coupled with Mountain Dew where the two people go into the grocery store, turn into orcs and start attacking each other? I doubt you’ll need it, but I’ll put it into the post below. The thought occurred to me though that this commercial is probably well loved by WoW fans even if it is an amazingly annoying and awful commercial.
And why wouldn’t they? This advertisement is a form of validation to the WoW player and they need anything they can get, as anyone who plays constantly waving the paid prescription number in everyone’s faces can prove. In fact all MMO players generally need this validation in reality. The MMO market has been looked down upon by anyone and everyone, even other gamers. A commercial that gets aired as regularly as this one is like these guys proving that what they do is worth doing.
There have been similar instances in the past. The main one I can recall is when Sony Online Entertainment put a feature in Everquest 2 that allowed players to order pizza from Pizza Hut from within the game by typing /pizzahut. This got lambasted by WoW players at the time, and Blizzard even poked fun with a /pandaexpress April Fool’s Joke.
So the irony is not lost on me now that they are selling out to their own commercial interests and WoW fanboys are loving every minute of it.[1. Just check the comments on this video, 2400 comments, most of them love fests and a 4.5 star rating on a below average ad.]
I mean lets forget that this tie in isn’t as good as the Pizza Hut one completely. At least the Pizza Hut tie in brought something to the table. I mean it made sense. Gamers like pizza, MMO players don’t like to leave their game. So why not bring their food to them? Now don’t get me wrong, Pizza Hut is really crappy pizza and I would have rather they chosen a different brand, but the idea behind it was top notch. What do you get for the Mountain Dew commercial? That’s right, annoyed.
Still, I don’t necessarily blame them. I am sure if a similar advertisement came out for EQ2 or another MMO and/or game that I really enjoyed I’d love it too, despite being horrible. It’s just kind of the nature of the beast. The real question that should get asked though is how many new sodas will Mountain Dew sell for this tie-in? I doubt they bring anyone new into the mix.