Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

WoW Helping or Hurting the Industry?

Posted by Zonk on from the that's-a-lot-of-gorrilla dept.

alstor writes "The New York Times has an interesting story about the success of World of Warcraft, and whether it is hurting or helping the gaming industry; this goes along with an earlier post on an article from CNN. From the Times article: 'WoW is now the 800-pound gorilla in the room. I think it also applies to the single-player games. If some kid is paying $15 a month on top of the initial $50 investment and is devoting so many hours a week to it, are they really going to go out and buy the next Need for Speed or whatever? There is a real fear that this game, with its incredible time investment, will really cut into game-buying across the industry.' What is the Slashdot opinion on World of Warcraft's impact on the gaming industry?"

2 of 692 comments (clear)

  1. Perhaps by novalogic · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I've been in game since November on the Bronzebeard server (Aramova). I've had times of burn-out in WoW, as many people have. They are now starting to turn out some good end-game content, but for a very long time there was really little to do but grind the same instances over and over.

    Subscriber base is going to die off shortly, and pickup other games, around the Christmas season, but when WoW2 hits, we'll have this all over again, cause Blizzard has done MMO right, and everyone knows it.

    WoW at this point is the iPod of MMORPG's, something really amazing is going to be needed to unseat it.

    --
    --
  2. Re:Huge market by Jarnis · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It's cheaper in china - that is true - but that's just local pricing. It's not being dumped (near) free to 'foil pirates', because it can't be pirated.

    Also of note - the chinese version is good for creating accounts only on the chinese servers. Same restriction is in place US vs European version.