The Quest To Build a Better Warcraft

Red Herring tackles the rush into virtual space, talking about the MMOG goldrush and the business consequences World of Warcraft has had on the games industry as a whole. Though sometimes it doesn't seem to fully understand the difference between a single player game and a Massive one, the article still touches on a number of important points. Lots of folks are looking to cash in on WoW's success, and they're importing or licensing every Massive game they can find to get on the bandwagon. "The problem is that no one knows what the next WoW killer will look like. Creating a hit video game, which combines strong characters, a compelling story, and top-notch production values, is part art and part inexact science. Making a hit game can be much more difficult than producing an Oscar-winning movie. After all, the hit video game must be compelling enough to keep players coming back for more." Even if a lot of their conclusions are odd, and they call Puzzle Pirates silly, it's worth a look. What do you think it's going to take to crack Blizzard's deathlock on the Massive genre?

Comments

Game engine

[wilsonthecat]

The content is all that amazing in World of Warcraft, but the game engine is second to none. Make a game engine as good as WoW's, with the character animation, UI and scripting support and you've got a WoW-killer. Until then they are just bad immitations.

Re:Game engine

[seebs]

Who cares?

Seriously, it's a total non-issue to me, and I think that's why they're succeeding. What sold WoW three accounts in my household was that their client was playable on an old G4 iBook.

Make Smarter People Sign Up

[Apple Acolyte]

Give me an MMO with the quality of WoW and a higher caliber of people to play with, and I'm there.

What about the rest of us?

[RichPowers]

You don't need FedEx quests, level grinding, and fairytales to have an MMO. All you need are lots of players interacting online. Yet for some reason the major studios don't get this. They feel that every MMO needs dumbassed level grinding, quests, etc. The same stuff we've seen over and over. There's no reason why a game as simple as Team Fortress Classic couldn't be an MMO.

WoW dominates the "traditional" MMO market right now. It's foolish to directly compete with WoW unless you have a strong IP, huge marketing budget, and gameplay that makes players to give up their WoW timesink for your timesink. Most startup MMO companies lack at least two of those things...

But you have a chance if you create an online game that appeals to other gamers. What do Half-Life 2, Halo, and Gears of War have in common? They're shooter games and they're best-sellers, yet no one has created a successful FPS MMO. That market is a potential goldmine...as long as devs steer clear of the traditional MMO crap.

Imagine a MMOFPS similar to Guild Wars. No monthly fee, but frequently-released expansions. There would be a co-op campaign where you and your party fight the baddies and advance through the game's storyline, all while gaining access to new weapons/skills. Add in some arenas for on-the-fly PvP combat, territorial conquest zones, and a some sort of guild structure. Now you've got yourself a game. Simplified, I know, but a competent studio could easily pull that off.

Re:What about the rest of us?

[code-e255]

Although some people don't like the leveling treadmill, all those artificial time-sinks keep the people playing for a long time, and that's what MMO companies want.

What would be so great about an MMO Half-Life or whatever? As far as I know, the HL dedicated server already allows you to create a server with hundreds of players, but either the server can't handle the load, or people's connections aren't good enough to make everything appear smooth. In RPGs it doesn't matter if you're lagging a bit, but in an FPS, even a slight bit of lag can make the game unplayable. Internet technology isn't quite mature enough for a "real" twitch-skill MMOFPS.

Also, imho, in FPS games can have too many players. If you've got too many people shooting rockets and sh*t all over the place in a very small area, the quality of gameplay just deteriorates as you don't really have much control over winning. And if you'd have huge outdoor maps like in PlanetScape, you end up with loads of bland, uninspired terrain and no real exciting maps like in traditional FPS games.

"Warcraft" is not a MMORPG. Warcraft is an RTS.

[Qbertino]

"World of Warcraft" is the MMORPG.
On the issue:
Building a World of Warcraft successor is easy. Look at what they do, copy it and do it better. Improve the things that aren't good and add the things that are missing. Generally the japanese do this sort of things when it comes to electronics. It's the very same way people could build an iPod killer. It's just that somebody still hasn't built a single device that can compete with it on the most simple specs (large memory, video capability, ease of use, decent looks).
Same goes for WoW. Look at the game. Play it. Aside from Monopoly sucktion it's advantages are very real and obvious.
1) Runs easily on older hardware without looking like crap.
2) Runs on Macs and plays nice with mac users. (potential universal opinion leaders when it comes to nice gaming and fun stuff)
3) Takes 90 seconds for the most ultimate n00b get into.
4) Slowly reveals it's complexity bit by bit without overwelming anybody at any point.
5) Has a powerleveling 'grind option', but not an omnipresent one.
6) Has an optional powerquesting stance.
7) Is beautyful and content laden enough for all who just like to run around and are not to interested in 5 or 6.
8) Has a super addictive end-game that even amplifies the underlying 'diabolo collectors habit' subnote of the entire career in conjunction with strong multiplay / competetive play.
9) Has subtle Humor made by the actuall builders, doesn't take itself so serious - important if your offering a full-time imersive VR.
10) Builds on a world that is not and doesn't have to be realistic or even plausible when considering distances between regions (this is why LotR online will fail. The Shire is 25 minutes away from Mordor - how weird is that?)
11) Dedicated company and team with sufficient cash and corporate strategy backing. Blizzard made a decision and came through with it all the way. No half-assed stuff. And, look, a miracle! They've got a game that works and people like! Unbelieveable!

Re:Second Life

[TeraCo]

Sure, except there's no fucking gameplay in Second Life. I play WoW because I want to kill dragons with morons, if I wanted to stand around with morons I'd go outside.

Re:Second Life

[discord5]

I had a look at Second Life recently and I think that it (and the systems which will come after it) will appeal to a much broader market than games like Warcraft.

Second life is essentially a chatclient to spend real money on virtual goods (or for the few who actually build stuff make real money on virtual goods).

The problem with second life is that for many people there is no reason to "play" it. There is no real objective to the game, eg. you don't get to slay dragons and rescue the princess, you don't get the rarest of rarest of items that increases your stats so you can brag in your guild about your latest armor or sword, you don't have that rare drop to fit on your brand new spaceship you use to pirate.

Many people play MMOs in a really competetive fashion, or for the challenge, or because they're addictive. I don't really see any of these qualities in second life. It's basicly a market of virtual goods, and they're making a lot of noise because they're selling baked air, everyone knows it, and appareantly everyone

The broader market? I dunno, I've met a lot of different people in WoW. Ranging from the immature adolescent ("lolol i'm so l33t") to the student with time to waste ("I raid every evening, have calculated the best uber stats for my character, troll forums, and somehow have to get a passing grade this year") to the adult with spare time ("My kids play this game, and this is a great way of keeping an eye on their online activities, and it's fun too" "I'm single and bored on weekday evenings" "My wife has another headache"). I think that WoW and Second Life have all of these groups as well, but that the WoW player is in it for the gameplay and the Second Life player is in it for the chat.

None Will Succeed

[Ka D'Argo]

I only played WoW briefly, but I know enough as a regular player does to know no other company at present will "beat" WoW. Why? Their personal limitations.

Other companies, won't take a chance. How many MMO's can claim they offer player based scripting for god knows how many in game effects? Or any of the other features WoW has? Despite the fact I dislike WoW, Blizzard did do that that right; Instead of coming up with some super special features of their own that other MMO's didn't have, they cherry picked what they thought were the best features. Not stolen content mind you but just things that an MMO should have. Case in point, umpteenth kinds of filters for the various chat huds. You'd be amazed that not every MMO offers a good deal of filters like WoW, or hell even any filters at all.

And the engine itself, of WoW, is the killer. Sure it's not really some supreme graphical eye candy people expect three years later after it's release but that is the point. Blizzard took a chance. They released a game engine that surprisingly works very well on low end hardware PC's which people tend to forget makes up the majority of gamers. Ever wonder why Counter Strike 1.6 is probably the most popular first person shooter, still, to date? Cause Half Life 1 can be run on some very low end hardware (if I remember right, the HL1 engine is a modified Quake 2 engine). Point being, no other MMO company is going to cater to low end PC users. More and more MMO's have such huge graphical requirements. You think Vanguard is going to topple WoW? No. Even if the gameplay and options of the client matched that of WoW, they'd still be eliminating a huge chunk of the 7 million WoW base (asssuming Vanguard had 7 mil) simply cause a good portion of those people wouldn't be even able to run the game.

Blizzard rolled the dice and won. They took a chance on merging a ton of features from various MMO's and a game engine that wasn't exactly the top of the game when it came out, and it worked. You find me another developer that will take those chances, and you'll find yourself a candidate for a WoW successor.