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Can Anyone Beat WoW?
Next Generation is running an article penned by DFC Intelligence Analyst David Cole, exploring the overwhelming popularity of World of Warcraft. Coles asks Is It Possible to Surpass World of Warcraft? He explores the reasons behind WoW's success, and what it means for the market as a whole. From the article: "All of these factors point towards one conclusion: World of Warcraft's success, admirable as it may be, will be extremely difficult to duplicate. This will be bad news for all the frothy investors who are suddenly discovering the MMOG business model. In the new DFC Intelligence Online Game Market report we forecast revenue in the MMOG market to grow over 150% from 2006 to 2011. However, this doesn't account for all the investment money that is likely to be lost chasing after that revenue growth."
There will always be that one game that defines a genre. Doom was not the first FPS, but it was the FPS that made the genre a sensation. Command & Conquer did the same for RTS. WoW is just that defining game for MMORPGs; it built upon the pioneers and has reached that critical mass where MMOs stop being a niche genre and have become mainstream.
The question is: do we really want a single dominant game in any genre?
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
No, that's why they made a level cap.
All joking aside, WoW will not be beaten... in this generation. In any emergent industry based on non-commodity goods, the first player to hit mainstream success will be the benchmark that all others fail to meet. After the first product goes mainstream, competition increases and even an increasing market has too many players for any one to achieve the saturation of the first one.
Now, if the whole MMOG industry was to die down, it's quite possible that someone new could come in and create a renaissance where they could dominate a larger market than existed during the previous incarnation... like Nintendo did after the video game industry 'died' in the early 80s.
However, I don't think the MMOG industry is going anywhere anytime soon. It's natural outgrowth of the online socializing that today's youth has grown up with -- I expect more variety, but don't see any shrinkage for quite a long time.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It will be incredibly difficult to reproduce the success of WOW for a number of reasons. The main being that WOW is incredibly accessible to gamers of all skill levels. Having played many different MMORPG's WOW was easily the easiest to pick up and run with. Other games have an incredibly steep learning curve and to the casual gamer are turned off. With WOW you can jump right in and get to doing quests without having to go through the tedium of starting off so weak you can't do anything. Additionally, Blizzard has been incredibly successful with almost every game they have released. I'm hard pressed to find a Blizzard title that wasn't both a commercial and critical success, with the exception of the long-anticipated, maybe to eventually be released Starcraft: Ghost. Additionally, from my experience WOW is the only MMORPG you can play for short periods at a time. If you have a half hour you can jump into WOW and actually accomplish something. Other games, they require large chunks of your life to achieve a modest level of success. I'm not saying that the other games are bad, because they are by no means, but they are not as accessible to the casual gamer as WOW is. WOW definately isn't perfect, what with the lack of overall storyline, but in terms of quick fun it beats the others hands down.
Can't someone (possibly Blizzard) just do the same thing again, but in space, a la Starcraft? I don't know about others, but I for one greatly favour sci-fi over fantasy. Dammit Phantasy Star Universe, where are you?!?
Also, didn't anybody say the same thing about FFXI? I would guess that people will eventually get bored with WoW just like they did with FFXI and look for the next big thing.
My opinion is that World of Warcraft's popularity is due to its original base in the hugely popular Warcraft series of games. Without that, it would be just another EQ clone like the rest of the games. For 3 million people, the name Warcraft introduced them to the MMORPG, something a new title like Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot wouldn't do. Would Spiderman the movie have been nearly as popular if it was called "Webman" and was loosely based off of Spider-man? I'd say not.
Star Wars Galaxies could have done it but they were too busy reinventing the game every 4 months.
StarGate can do it if it's done right. They have the brand name. They just got to remember this is a MMORPG and there needs to be more than one way to succeed in the game. If they can break this cycle that you have to always fight something to advance they'll win over big. That's what Star Wars had. Docs, dancers, musicians, and artisans could do what they liked doing and succeed.
Believe it or not some people just liked standing around chatting.
Apparently not.
First off, this article seems to have been written by someone who played two MMO's: Everquest and WoW. Most of the "revolutionary" features of WoW were present in other MMO's (instances, battlegrounds, solo centered play) previous to WoW's existence. Some were done worse, but I'd bet some were done better as well. While WoW is an international success, in my opinion, it's an average MMO. I've played my share of the genre and beta'd a few that never made it as well, and I found WoW to be technically sound but overall pretty sterile. I was bored enough to cancel pretty quickly and even tried to return with some friends thinking that would help, but alas it was not meant to be. If it works for you, that's cool, but I disagree with anyone that calls it the be all end all of MMO's. It's not THAT great.
What I do like about WoW is the quality, it seems minimally buggy in comparison to most MMO's (except for the Blizzard servers after release). This is so important and it's a problem in so many of the games in this genre.
If another MMO comes out with the same quality control and a well known license attached, you'll see a split in the user base. The casual players will stick around mostly (as will some of the hardcore fanboys) but a new challenge is something an MMO addict can't pass up.
"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."-Oscar Wilde
I'm convinced that a lot of WoW's appeal is the color and graphics style. There are many other MMOs out at the moment but most of them have graphics more seated in reality. Unfortunately, it seems that many game artists are not capable of working with earth tones very well and most of the graphics end up washed out and grey. EQ2 is a prime example of graphics-gone-wrong. EQ2 had a lot going for it, actually... the crafting system was pretty damn innovative and was a throwback to UO (post-T2A) where your skill directly impacted the quality of your goods. You couldn't get away with a blacksmithing mule without putting a lot of effort into it. Contrast that skill and time-based system to WoW's crafting system where any dumbass that gets 300 Alchemy can transmute Arcanite every 2 days just as well as you can. A lot of other games tend to have similar graphics problems (Note: part of this is hardware limitations. With a more cartoon graphics style, you can get away with a limited number of polygons and colors. Realistic graphics need heavy shading and heavy textures to make it look good.)
I think for a game to beat WoW they will have to trump graphics and remain simple. Let the casual user have an easy game but make it complex enough for those that want complexity. WoW has done this fairly well. Anyone can get to 60, but a true game fan can find and adventure for specific equipment items and specific stats. A fanatic fan can break the game down into math and figure out exactly how much his DPS (damage per second) would increase if he got a certain item or certain enchant. But you don't have to do that.
Customization is a big (HUGE) key that WoW has completely missed. You cannot create a community in WoW beyond a guild. Again going back to UO.. that was a great feature, albiet implemented very poorly at times and the implementation/security of it varied greatly every content update. If you wanted to, you and some friends could build a small town out of user-purchased homes, complete with NPC vendors that you controlled. Second Life has huge customization features but is lacking graphics, intuitive UI, and just doesn't have the appeal that most games do.
All of these factors point towards one conclusion: World of Warcraft's success, admirable as it may be, will be extremely difficult to duplicate.
In five years does anyone doubt that most people will be playing a game with better graphics than WoW, even if it is WoW II? The social component of MMORPGs makes it more likely, not less that gamers will flock to one particular game among the offerings they have. The question then becomes, how do I make my offering the next king kong of MMORPGs?
Gameplay is one key. It has to be fun and it has to be addictive in order to build and maintain sufficient body count. Accessibility is another key. It needs to run on Macs and PCs and ideally on Linux. You can't afford to exclude 5% of the market, because that 5% will contain some of the hub people that will draw in others. If 1 person can't play a game, 20 might stay on a game their friend can play too. Those 20, make up some of the mass needed to be a blockbuster. The barrier to entry cannot be too high. Initial cost cannot lockout the bottom half of the market, and it has to run on the average machine, not just top of the line. A free trial is a big plus as it gives people a free way to get hooked, just like crack.
Aside from graphics, and more refined gameplay, there are a lot of things a new MMORPG can bring to the table. One is more diversity and another is standardization. This may seem contradictory, but hear me out. If a company puts out a game that works with open standard modules, then multiple companies can create and sell those modules for it. Buy access to different fantasy settings, cyberpunk, world war 2, etc. This allows for the maximum diversity of gameplay with the minimum barrier to entry. Since it would almost certainly rely upon one or more standard gaming engines, it would also remove a lot of the work that goes into building one from scratch.
I've advocated this as an open source project, but have not heard many people enthusiastic about it. It is, however, a perfect fit for the OSS business model since content and the service are not tied to the code and are what people are willing to pay for. I think if someone creates the Apache of MMORPG engines, they will be a rich person with a huge reputation that will allow them to cherry pick work from then on.
Open Source or not, however, a single, service or game is almost certain to be a magnet to gamers, like WoW is today. It is part of the nature of the social network, which is a huge component of MMORPGs today.
I played everquest for years. If it weren't for mismanagement of Everquest we would be shaking our heads and wondering how a single MMORPG could dominate the market for 6 years. However, the gorilla on the block since 2005 is now WOW though I suspect it is starting to suffer the same problems. I hope sanity returns and they avoid EQ's fate.
The reasons I left EQ (and why WoW may not avoid these problems) were...
1. The game was so hard you cannot meaningfully accomplish things solo once you're high (e.g. 60th+ level). As a casual player who does not spend a long time online in one session I spent a large percentage of my time looking for a group. I even arranged a second subscription so that I would have two characters whilst I was soloing. Wow was therefore more accessible because you can solo meaningfully and it also halved my subscription costs. However, both systems are designed so that the greatest rewards are only achievable by massive multiplayer effort. and at that point, all the players who have real lives drop out.
2. Very few pieces of software are perfect, with a MMORPG this sometimes requires human intervention. The customer support at SOE was appalling. GMs sometimes abused their powers and if you had a problem you sometimes had to wait days for resolution. WoW support used to be fairly good and prompt, but I've noticed a drop in quality over the months.
Over time, it looks like the WoW software has got more buggy to the point where I suspect EQ has the upper hand now. If you've got 40 people who spend hours trying to achieve a goal and all wipe because of lag (for example) then they're going to be fed up.
3. Even though the area to explore was huge, (and I'd explored for almost 4 years), I had only visited maybe 50% of the regions that were available. A lot of the new regions required quarterly expansions costing about $45. Every time an expansion comes out you are reminded that you're paying a subscription AND you're being asked to pay for the expansion. Blizzard had been very good at improving WoW for the standard subscription and I dont begrudge them an expansion every 18 months or to, but Sony's 3 monthly expansions to add broken content drive people away.
4. It became obvious that some mechanisms in EQ were overt time sinks (e.g. some people waited days for certain creatures to appear), now, obviously, the whole idea of a game is to be an entertaining time sink, but you're supposed to be enjoying yourself whilst doing it. WoW has a few irritating time wasters, such as flight paths but generally its a lot better.
So in summary, Sony destroyed Everquest's dominance of the MMORPG market by offering poor support for buggy software and charging lots of money for it whilst only a few hardcore players got bragging rights over their leet characters (at the cost of family, jobs and sleep). I can see a few faint shadows of this disease on WoW, and hope it won't get worse.
If someone wants to make a killer MMORPG then listen to the majority of players, not the vocal hardcore. Allow people to stop and attend to real life. Listen to them when they've got a problem and fix it as a priority before working on something shiny, new and broken. Let them play the game as fast or as slow as they like, so they can socialise or be a tourist. I'd love to play a casual wow-type game in the Everquest world, there were so many cool areas, monsters and quests that I miss.
-- Don't believe everything you read, hear or think
Amen baby!!
http://www.wowdetox.com/
Right, I agree. Am mmo with a million subscribers would probably leave the development team ecstatic- just because it might pale in comparison to wow doesnt mean its not a success.
Honestly though, most people interested in mmos i think knew that wow was going to be phenomenal. Blizzard games always have exceptional polish, something notoriously lacking in mmos prior to wow. Wow was unique in its ability to actually live up to the extreme hype put before it.
People might complain about the end game raiding system, but really, there arent any perfect ways to keep hardcore, 30 hour a week gamers interested in a game for years and years. Some people are just going to put forth that much time to be the absolute best, why not give them something to do? If it was just as easy for players to have the same equiptment while playing 5 hours a week, the hardcore people would just stop playing.
I personally think that the world of Shadowrun could come close and compete with WoW because of it's blend of fantasy and cyberpunk. The two big limiting factors on Shadowrun are A) Microsoft holds the IP license and B) there isn't enough hardware power to populate an entire city for thousands of players to run around in at the same time. But in terms of the content possibility (criminals vs cops, the lower class vs the evil corporations, magic, matrix, etc), you can't really beat the potential of the Shadowrun universe. You can have soloing in the world, then you can have instances as runs against corporations. Most importantly, the Shadowrun universe doesn't lend itself to the gear grind like WoW does. The playing field remains pretty level throughout the character advancement process. You don't gain more hitpoints and mana as you advance. It just becomes less likely that you will lose them as quickly. One of the big limiting factors I see to doing Shadowrun "right" would be the adult oriented nature of the game. I'm not sure how many parents who fork over $15 a month for Johnny to fight orcs and trolls are going to be happy with Johnny running drugs for the mob and killing the family of corporate whistleblowers.
WoW's addiction is easy to overcome. I play it every summer and quit in the fall when I go back to college. I guess my willpower is strong because I never had a problem quitting.
Honestly, once you hit 60 and experience everything its too repetitive for my tastes.
I had a 60 priest, rogue, and paly (rogue to 60, paly to 42 first summer.. priest to 60 and paly to 60 2nd summer.. and a 30 warlock).
But you know what? The game is amazingly boring. Why do I do it? Because I see my girlfriend every morning/afternoon.. I go to work around 4.. come home around 9 or 10 and I play WoW until 4am. I occasionally get drunk after work but I still play WoW after. But whats the point?
You get good gear from end game instances once you hit 60.
Then you get slightly better gear from raiding. I say slightly better because as a priest my end game instancing gear was pretty decent (not devout) and I had no problem healing MC, AQ20, ZQ, BWL, AQ40. Get even more upgrades like prophecy, benediction, and some good blues like wandering nomad boots or something.. decent rings.. trinkets.. etc.. but wait. I spent all this time to gain 20 mana per 5 seconds and +100 healing? Yes, this an upgrade and arguably awesome, but it's not worth the time and to spend so much time for something so little and pointless (I'm talking about in real life terms.. not in WoW) that I can't do it to myself anymore. Also, raiding the same stuff over and over again gets so boring after a while.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
A long, long time ago in the world of MMO's there was a man Named Brad McQuaid. Mr. McQuaid was in charge of a little project called Everquest, some of you might have heard of it. Well, Brad left Everquest and formed his own company, Sigil Games, to start a new project. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes ( http://www.vanguardsoh.com/ or http://www.joinvanguard.com/ ) I suggest the first link. This game has been in development for several years now and is slated to come out this winter. Will it beat WoW? I don't know, maybe not in subscriptions, but I can almost guarantee it will be it in terms of artistic quality, content depth, character development, story line, and almost every other worthy category out there. To me, and this is only one man's opinion, I don't think there is another MMO currently, or in the near future that will be able to touch Vanguard in the categories I described above... Take a look at the sites I provided and see for yourself
You work up to 60 and most everything up to there is new or fun and interesting. Then you hit 60 and what? Find out that that two months you put in hardcore won't even touch what you need to do to be 'at the top'. Now it requires rep or raiding or PvP until people you know are concerned enough to talk about interventions with you.
Not to mention that once people learn the ultimate rule they won't have near the interest. And that is he with the most time will do the best. Not skill, not talent, and sure as hell not strategy, but simple time. And in what they think will make their money for them over time, is what will lead to its demise. I'm sure some would level more characters if they could get them to a decent status, but when you have to spend months and months of non-casual gaming (PvP up to 300k honor for the week, or Raiding 3-6 nights for 4 hours each), all of your fan base with a life, families, or jobs will all have to walk away. Because you just can't compete with 13 year-olds that don't have to work and have no responsibility.
- Kal`Goblez
There was a recent /. article talking about how men log on MMORPGs as women players, especially to get preferential treatment (such as gifts, help, etc.).
Trust no identity whose face you don't see on a live cam. And not even all of those...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!