Another "irrelevant unless you WoW" post

Wolfgangdoom (Shout Out!) posted a comment to my Ashamed of WoW entry where he mentioned something that got my creative juices flowing...that's not as dirty as it sounds :D

Wolfgang compared us gamers talking WoW at work to fellow coworkers talking about their sports team and dissecting their team's weekend performance as if they were the managers, when really they're nothing more than a fan who spent $60 on a jersey, with, as Wolf stated, "someone else's name on it."

In WoW (and most likely other MMORPGs) most players belong to a Guild, and most Guilds have a Tabard. The neat thing about WoW's Tabard is if you change Guilds and the new Guild has a Tabard, the Coat of Arms on your Tabard changes to match that of your new Guild. You don't need to buy a new Tabard, and you don't have to worry about looking out of place when your Guild goes on a run because you're automatically wearing the correct colors.

Most Tabards, WoW's Tabards in particular, are throwbacks to days gone by and so look like what you'd expect to see on Athos, Porthos, or Aramis. On a fanatasy hero that's completely acceptable garb, but perhaps a little less so in today's times. However, there's literally no reason why a Tabard could not be cut in a more modern, stylish fashion that wouldn't have people pointing and laughing, after all, a stylish Tabard with a coat of arms on the front could very well pass for a sports team's jersey. And that's what got me thinking, although this idea will go no further (for me, at least) than this Blog.

What if you could buy a modern, stylish looking Tabard with your Guild's Coat of Arms on front? And instead of someone else's name on the back (ok, it's sort of someone else's name), you'd have the name of your Main Character, along with the very distinguished (in WoW at least) #14. As I said, irrelevant to anyone who doesn't play WoW, and even if you do WoW you may not get the significance of #14 ;)

While the number of WoW subscribers is allegedly 8,000,000+ (@ $15/month that's $120,000,000 Blizzard earns every month, or $1.44 billion ((if you're an American)) in a year...from just one of the games in their stable) the market for Guild Tabards would be considerably less than that number, drastically less. I could see Tabards being bought by a group of close, RL friends, or perhaps by a Guild that has a BBQ/Get-together of some kind with members flying in from all over the country that want to be able to ID each other. But I really don't see a huge demand for them, so it's not something I'd pursue even if I had the necessary resources. Besides which, Blizzard already sell t-shirts, sweaters and jackets with the Alliance and Horde Coat of Arms on them, so most of the Tabard market is probably already tapped out.

But it's an interesting idea, if you WoW ;)