EQ1 - Move Over Geeks, Its Barbie Time : EQ1 EverQuest 1 News

You can be assured that all of us old school gamers will soon be shoved aside by screaming girls signing up in droves for Barbie Girls, the new MMO from Mattel. The beta is getting 50,000 subscribers a day, and now brags of four million subscribers:

Barbie Girls™ – "Biggest Bit of News in the Online World..."

In late April, the beta version of BarbieGirls.com launched globally, providing girls with "virtually" everything they could want online, including giving girls the opportunity to create a highly personalized avatar and "move" it throughout the Barbie Girls™ world, design their own rooms, shop with B Bucks (virtual currency) that girls can also earn, play games, watch videos and have real-time chats with other girls online. With 4 million users registered to-date, the site has been a runaway success in its beta phase and is scheduled to come out of beta in late August, receiving notice by industry experts.

"The biggest bit of news in the online world industry didn't come from E3 in Los Angeles...in the first 60 days of its existence, the new online virtual world Barbie Girls has signed up three million members, and they're adding new ones at the rate of 50,000 a day," said Wagner James Au, GigaOM. "This is staggering growth by any standard, but even more so because Mattel's MMO is still in Beta."

Barbie Girls is free, but you don't want to be on your Barbie yacht without the new gadet Mattel has designed to go with the MMO:

This week, BarbieGirls.com looks to build on this unprecedented growth with the highly anticipated debut of the Barbie Girl™ device. Rolling into stores now, with a suggested retail price of $59.99, the multi-functional Barbie Girl™ device will be one of the most exciting tech gadgets introduced for girls this year, functioning as a portable music/MP3 player, next generation fashion doll and a "key" to unlock exclusive play features and trillions of character and room combinations on the popular BarbieGirls.com website.

Velvet rope, sound familiar? We have trading cards that give us cool mounts and gear; Barbie fans can receive a tiki hut and a puppy, among other items.