Curse.com, a portal that offers many tools for MMO players, has purchased MMO-Champion.com from Major League Gaming. MMO-Champion.com is one of the most popular World of Warcraft news sites boasting more than 7 million unique visitors and over 80 million page views a month. The site is popular for it’s simple design and Blue Tracker as well as providing many sneak previews of upcoming changes to WoW. MMO-Champion’s founder and administrator, Fabien Bonte, will be joining Curse as a full-time employee and maintains that “99% of the decisions on the site” will still be made by him. While Curse has been a leading provider of MMO tools and resources since being founded by Hubert Thieblot in 2005, some gamers will also be wary of the deal since Curse, along with WoWInterface, led to the downfall of WoWMatrix. Here is the press release as found on MMO-Champion.com:
San Francisco, CA – July 19, 2010 – Curse, Inc. announced today the purchase of the #1 World of Warcraft news site, MMO-Champion.com. The site was bought from Major League Gaming for an undisclosed amount.MMO-Champion is a natural fit for Curse which already possesses the largest repository of add-ons available for MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games such as World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online and Runes of Magic as well as extremely popular forums for Runescape, Aion and Final Fantasy XIV. The World of Warcraft news site attracts 7 million unique visitors and more than 80 million page views per month (Google Analytics WW, June 2010). The combination makes Curse the #1 MMO destination online.
“The acquisition of MMO-Champion markedly sets Curse apart from the competition,” said Hubert Thieblot, CEO and Founder. “Not only does the addition solidify Curse as the largest MMO destination on the web, but it plays a central role in delivering a complete Curse MMO solution. Curse is now the ultimate resource for MMO news, forums, databases, and add-ons.”
Gamers and advertisers alike will benefit greatly from MMO-Champion’s purchase by Curse. In the next few months, visitors can expect an updated page design and improved user experience. To insure the site’s strong content offering will not be compromised, Fabien Bonte, the site’s founder and administrator, will be joining the Curse staff as a full-time employee. Advertisers can take advantage of Curse’s extended reach into the core MMO market, making MMO gamers easier to connect with than ever. For more information about Curse and MMO-Champion, please visit www.curse.com.
While the acquisition of sites is nothing new, patrons of the site may fear that things will change a bit too much for their liking. One of the major draws of the site currently is the ease of finding information as it is basically a blog featuring the days news in full layout on the front page. A redesign as well as the addition of premium content may hurt the sites fan base but some features may be getting an upgrade as well, so time will tell if the move is positive or not from a gamers perspective.
I think the move will probably be positive as far as nice upgrades go, but I’m not too worried about anything negative. The guys over at MMO-Champ have always been pretty straight up with their stuff, so I believe them when they say they’ll keep anything that was free in the past, free in the future. Besides, I got wowhead for my game research and, as far as news goes, I look no further than The Instance.
I agree, this sounds like only good news. I’ve missed out on MMO-Champion, but I have no problem using Curse. Two things it has me thinking though a) does Major League Gaming need the cash? and b) will content now shift or get combined into one uber site, or will they remain separate web destinations? Good article, thanks
i dont trust curse very much, so i dont have much hope for this holding out too long.
“..the #1 World of Warcraft news site..” really…number 1? Really? Dude, Really!?
To be honest..i couldn’t care less. I get most of my info from the instance
But i dont think curse will be a negative impact on MMO-Champ.
@npoleon yes,really. Learn to read. 7 million unique users a month haven’t been beat by any other WoW news website.
MLG got all the cash. Bibi sold his website to MLG 3 years ago.
I’ve been using MMO-champion only for wow info updates, good news though curse let the MMO-champion admin manage the site for them, so basically not much changes except some new funds pumped into the site I guess.
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