Academics Speak On 'Life After World Of Warcraft'

simoniker writes "Are MMO populations 'tribal', and if so, what's the next tribal shift after World of Warcraft? At Gamasutra, academics including MIT's Henry Jenkins and Ludium's Edward Castronova discuss what's next for the MMO market, based on their research and play patterns. Jenkins states that WoW is getting _too_ much analysis from researchers right now: 'WoW deserves attention because it has so captured the imagination of gamers over the past few years. That said, I don't think it is healthy for the field of games studies, which is still emerging, to be so fixated on a single game franchise — no matter what the franchise. A few years ago, it might have been The Sims or GTA, now it's WoW.'" For more on this topic MMOG industry veteran Gordon Walton spoke on this topic last week at GDC Austin, and notes from that event are also available at Gamasutra.

Comments

There Is A Reason....

[Atomm]

No other MMORPG has captured the audience that WoW has. This alone is a reason to study this MMORPG over all others.

As for upcoming MMORPG's, none of them will command the attention that WoW has. If Lord of the Rings Online couldn't make a dent in WoW, especially given the long, great history of the Tolkien Universe, what chance does any other MMORPG have?

Warhammer might have a chance to top some of the other MMORPG's like EQ, Eve, AO, etc... But that is only because they copied a lot of the aspects of WoW and present a very similar style of game and universe. Don't believe me, look at the goblins in both games. It's like looking at cousins.....

So yes, WoW deserves to be studied to understand how they could capture and maintain an audience many times over any of the previous MMORPG's.

Re:I wouldn't be that sure

[Evangelion]

In fact, I'm sorta surprised that WoW hasn't fallen back yet. Again, I don't wish it or anything, but it's not like they have a patent on what made WoW successful. Everyone else is free to copy the elements that made it sell well. It's just that everyone else seems to be surprisingly slow to understand it. Oh, they've tried to copy bits and pieces of WoW, but they just can't seem to understand _what_ they copy. It's... a bit like watching a clock maker try to copy random individual cogs from a competitor's clock, without understanding what they copy or the larger scheme of the mechanism in which it must fit in.

But eventually it's bound to happen.


The problem is that it's not just one thing that makes WoW successful. It's alot of things that Blizzard is doing right all at once. The key though, is that Blizzard, despite what you read on forums, does listen to it's players. The game as it stands now is vastly, vastly different from when even I signed up in 2005 -- and they're laregly positive changes.

• World PvP sucks? They added instanced PvP.
  
• You miss World PvP? They created world PvP "minigames".
  
• Honour system is a joke? Scrapped, in exchange for a token system.
  
• Unorganized instanced PvP too much of a hassle? Have short (on the order of minutes, seconds if you're up against a 'lock) 1v1 - 5v5 arena matches.
  
• Farming for the 1% elemental drops sucks? We'll split them up into more common drops (motes), so your farming doesn't suck as much.
  
• Crafting seems useless as a moneymaker? Epic crafted items now require a BoP drop, so you can now actually make money from your profession.
  
• Hybrid classes and off-specs getting the shaft? There are different versions of the new class armor sets for different specs.
  
• Instance runs taking too long? All the new 5-mans are split up into wings a'la SM, so that you can run one in less than an hour.
  
• Want epics in 5-mans? Okay, we'll add a heroic mode, but it'll be harder, and you can't expect to go in green quest rewards.
  
• Having trouble getting a group? We'll tie entry into heroics to specific reputation grinds which can only be done in instances, so people have incentives to run them.
  
• Still having trouble? We'll create an actually useful LFG system, and tie entry into the LFG channel to registering with it (to avoid it looking like Trade - City)
  
• Don't have a warlock in your group, or he's out of shards? The summoning stones can summon raid members with only 2 people present.
  
• Reputation grinds suck ass? Okay, instead of having one or two factions with everything, and a miserable rep grind (I'm looking at you TB), we'll create lots more factions and make each grind easier.
  
• Need an easy source of money? We'll make daily quests you can repeat each day, which give cash (and rep) rewards.
  
• You want to fly? Sure.
  

Ontop off all of that listening, the technical quality of the software from Blizzard is continually top notch. They've folded in popular mods (Scrolling Combat Text, etc), and there were mentions about built-in VOIP, so voice chat won't be limited to guild runs.

Really, it's Blizzard as an organization that someone would have to copy to unseat WoW from the fantasy MMO genre, not any specific attribute of the game.