ohai — our first MMO, City of Eternals, is in open beta! Here’s usage stats from our private alpha!

ohai everyone –

Today we’re excited to announce that our first MMO, City of Eternals, is coming out of private alpha! Now, anyone can go to CityofEternals.com, log in with their Facebook account, and get into our game world of vampire fun. (And if you just happen to be a hipster who’s over vampires, then what’s better than jumping into City of Eternals and inflicting your Smug Glance of Hipster Disdain on some vampires? Or if that doesn’t work, unleash your Self-Esteem Shield of Ironic Distance.)

Our first MMO should give you a taste of what ohai is all about: applying web development principles to game dev – rapid iteration, agile frameworks, and constant adaptation to the market. That also means City of Eternals is still evolving. Even though we’re “launching” this week, you’re going to see many changes, much more evolution. This isn’t your grandfather’s static MMO! You’ll see new content and features pretty much every week, if not every day. Because of the backend architecture and toolset that we’ve built, we’ve been able to get City of Eternals to public beta in 9 months with 3 engineers’ efforts. Game development in web style, baby!

As we launch, I want to share some player stats from our alpha test, which involved over 40,000 players. Unlike every other MMO out there, City of Eternals has a near-equal gender split: 60% male, 40% female, while 70% of our most active players are female — women like Nileena, who’s a dentist in the Bay Area, or Diana, who’s a professional violinist from Transylvania (it’s now known as Romania, but it’s most famous for being Dracula’s birthplace.) Then there are our experienced gamers like Greg, who does a great job with our player wiki, cataloging game missions, recipes, and much more.

We’re tremendously proud that our mission to make MMOs for everyone is so far paying off. We’re also honored to build products for customers who are so passionate about what we’re doing. Thank you, alpha testers!

Here’s some more data from our alpha test:

- Average time spent in game: 65 minutes
- Most active players spend 7+ hours per day in game
- 42% active users play multiple sessions daily
- Our most active player in the last 7 days, Tanya, has averaged 12.77 hours every single day in game. In the last 30 days, Heather has averaged 10.85 hours every single day in game! Wow, that’s even more than our Community Manager Matt!

We’ve also been testing monetization of virtual currency for about a month — here’s some interesting early data:

- Average transaction size of ohais (our in-game currency) is $16.50 – a number of people buy more than once.
- One of our passionate players has already spent $584 in the last 30 days in City of Eternals! (wow! thank you!)
- Female purchasers: 44%, Male purchasers: 56%
- Generally speaking, male players buy less items overall but spend more on expensive individual items, while female players will buy many more items at lower prices.

While City of Eternals is free-to-play, we’re especially grateful to our players who’ve put their trust (and their money) in what we’re doing.

But as I say, this is just the beginning. Launching is just the start. There’s much more to come and so much more hard work to do. We’ll be sharing stats and insights on our blog frequently, so be sure to subscribe to our feed.

<3,
susan, chief ohai

Chief ohai Susan tells PBS’ Media Shift how virtual goods might help the news industry

ohai, PBS’s Media Lab has a very interesting editorial on what virtual goods can teach the news industry, which is struggling to find new ways of funding itself in the digital age. Chris O’Brien points to the virtual goods industry as an inspiration, and gets some wisdom from chief ohai Susan:

Here’s what she understood early on about the value of virtual goods: In the real world, we have all sorts of intangible interactions, from shaking hands to smiling to offering blessings. The value of virtual goods is not about the object, but rather its ability to express an emotion or feeling in a way that has value. “Sending someone a virtual beer is not about the beer,” Wu told me. “It’s a way to show, ‘I have an affection for you.’”

Much more here.

ohai welcomes what the iPad will do for next gen MMOs

Everyone here at ohai is pretty excited about the iPad, just announced today. Apple has an incredible track record of opening up entirely new markets with simple and elegant consumer devices. And since our whole mission at ohai is about bringing World of Warcraft-caliber MMOs to as broad of an audience as possible, we’re going to be making full use of these new platforms. MMOs haven’t gained much traction in iPhone’s App Store, but we think the iPad’s big screen and interface will make them much more accessible. Full-scale MMOs on your touchscreen personal device, anywhere and everywhere? Awesome!

What’s all this mean for City of Eternals and other ohai MMOs we’re cooking up? Stay tuned, we think you’ll be as psyched as we are!

Original Jobs and iPad photo (before Batty-fication) by Ryan Anson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.