Posts Tagged ‘David Georgeson’

OMG! zOMG! nets half a million signups!

Monday, December 8th, 2008

OMG rly?  Gaia Onlines’ first entry to the casual MMO space has certainly stuck a chord with audiences world wide, with Gaia recently reporting that zOMG! has reached the 500,000 player benchmark – clearly indicating that they’re onto something good.  Something VERY good.

The new MMO entered it’s open beta testing phase on November 6th, and in just over a month Gaia has seen a landslide of registrations and active players on it’s servers.

As discussed in our coverage of the opening of the beta, zOMG! is flash based a casual MMORPG that pits players against monsters and enemies in 16 different zones with a wide variety of battle rings and recipes to choose from.  The main story centers around the unexplained transformation of inanimate objects into now living beings bent on wiping out the human race.  The ‘Animated’, as they’re know in-game consist of yard flamingos, gnomes, plungers, etc. can only be defeated by characters equipping themselves with magical rings and battling it out.

Existing zOMG! players now have an entire new army of fellow players to engage and play with in their ongoing campaign to smash the evildoers and live in peace and harmony.  And it’s not all just smash and grab in the land of zOMG! as the game also incorporates elements of social networking and entertainment, streaming music, and naturally, Gaia Online’s in-game, microtransaction based item mall.

When zOMG! went into an open beta phase, Senior Producer David Georgeson stated,

“Our top priority is providing a high-quality MMO gaming experience that’s fun and challenging, and also user-friendly for all levels of players.  We received a lot of great feedback from gamers during our Closed Beta, so we’re throwing open the doors as we update the game with new features and additional content.”

It seems like Gaia and company are and have been listening to players’ feedback,

“Positive feedback from satisfied players not only aids our team in modifying and ultimately perfecting the zOMG!! gameplay experience; it is truly rewarding,” said David Georgeson, Senior Producer of zOMG!! at Gaia Online. “After a lengthy development process, it’s almost surreal to watch players dig right into the storyline and begin realizing the game’s full potential.”

While Gaia Online is no stranger to massive usership, currently home to seven million plus gamers that enjoy Gaia’s wide selection of free-to-play titles, another 500,000 players in the zOMG! space doesn’t hurt anything.

Given the troubling financial climate, Gaia Online is also attributing a bit of the success of zOMG! to the inherent nature of the business model: Free-to-play.  If the price wasn’t enough of a selling point, providing a feature rich game in a browser based format makes adventuring through zOMG! even easier with no download, or credit card required.

Learn more and take zOMG! for a spin on your own over at zOMG.com.

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zOMG! Now open to the public

Monday, November 10th, 2008

If just writing zOMG! wasn’t fun enough, this new free-to-play offering from Gaia Online will certainly bring a smile to your face.  Unleashed upon the public last Thursday, this is Gaia’s first casual MMO game.  Having completed a successful closed beta test, the open beta zOMG! is an adventure game that pits players against monsters in 16 different zones with a wide variety of battle rings and recipes to choose from.  Gaia Online seeks to successfully meld the attractiveness of the online social community experience with a fun and enjoyable MMO gameplay experience.

“Our top priority is providing a high-quality MMO gaming experience that’s fun and challenging, and also user-friendly for all levels of players,” said David Georgeson, Senior Producer of zOMG! at Gaia Online. “We received a lot of great feedback from gamers during our Closed Beta, so we’re throwing open the doors as we update the game with new features and additional content.”

Listening to the community, and it’s needs and wants, has never been something that Gaia has shied away from, and by opening the beta doors, they’re expecting an even larger pool of feedback and suggestions to learn from.  Gaia is actively soliciting feedback from players via the site’s message boards and forums.

Lucy Newman over at gamertell.com reports on Kate Pietrelli’s announcement surrounding zOMG!

“In development since 2006, zOMG! is a fun and engaging casual game that blends social online community experiences with accessible MMO gameplay. Gaia community members currently hang out in the virtual world with their friends, watch movies online together in the theater, share artwork in the online art gallery, and chat through the Gaia Instant Messaging (GIM) system. The community asked for new ways in which they could interact and play with their friends in Gaia, and so the MMO game was designed to be an extension of the Gaia virtual world with all the fun social elements of chatting and hanging out with friends, in addition to playing a challenging multiplayer game with quests, monsters, battles and more. Gaia Online will monetize the game through the sale of virtual goods (battle armor, rings, etc.), which tie into their current microtransactions based business model.”

While I’ve yet to personally give the game a look-over, I have visited and spent some time with Gaia, and I can’t imagine they’d deliver anything less than outstanding.  Grinding rep this weekend was about as thrilling as watching the grass grow, so perhaps a break from the uphill battle is just what the doctor ordered….and with a name like zOMG!  you just KNOW there’s got to be some fun somewhere therein.

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