Free Guild Wars mini-pet drives readers wild for free digital magazine for MMORPG gamers
MMOZine, the fifth regular, free videogames magazine from GamerZines, has achieved a record number of downloads in under two weeks. GamerZines launched its latest free magazine for gamers only a fortnight ago and already it has proved a huge success. Dedicated to all things MMO, the magazine brings news, previews, reviews and tutorials on all the popular MMORPG games.
As an amazing launch issue giveaway, MMOzine teamed up with NCsoft ® Europe and ArenaNet™ to offer the first 40,000 readers an exclusive pet for Guild Wars® players. It was the first time that a Guild Wars mini-pet has been given away online and the pet is a unique breed especially for MMOZine readers. It was only available via an interactive form within the magazine itself and formed the world’s first “e-covermount” for a digital magazine.
“Originally, we planned to try and attract 30,000 readers over the magazine’s 8 week cycle,” says Publishing Director, Dave Taylor. “It quickly became apparent that we had massively underestimated the demand for the magazine and we had to triple our server capacity in the first 24 hours, which proved something of a challenge.”
“The Guild Wars minipet acted as fantastic catalyst for the magazine, with word spreading across the Guild Wars community like wild fire and then out into the wider MMO community via forums and blogs. What was truly inspiring was the response and emails of support from gamers during the first day as we battled to bring enough servers online to cope with demand. Everyone was really positive, which goes to show just how sociable MMO gamers are.”
MMOZine is a GamerZine, from the publishers of established digital magazines 360Zine, P3Zine and others. Gamers simply require Adobe Reader 8 on Windows to read it. There is no charge and no registration is required. Best of all, the magazine is written entirely by professional journalists and the pages are enhanced with video and interactive screens that bring the pages to life.
“The gaming world is moving online and gamers love spending their time in our digital worlds,” says NCsoft’s PR Manager, David Blundell. “This is the ideal time for a magazine dedicated to MMOs, and clearly a digital format is perfect for gamers who are always online. We really pleased that Guild Wars gamers enjoyed the first issue of MMOZine and look forward to future issues pushing the boundaries of what a magazine can do.”
Given the success of issue 1, Cranberry Publishing Ltd has now raised its expected settle down readership figure for issue 2 to 50,000.
Issue 1 of MMOZine is still available for download from http://www.gamerzines.com/
