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11 Innovation Lessons From the Creators of World of Warcraft
Ant writes "Colin Stewart's OC Register Inside Innovation blog has up a post discussing Blizzard Entertainment's success in the games industry. According to the site, Blizzard has learned eleven lessons on innovation that can help almost any business. The industry leader used these innovation methods not only to create the world's most popular massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft, but also to keep the game fresh and challenging for more than 10 million players. Because many of those customers pay $15 a month to continue playing, Blizzard's ongoing creative achievement is worth more than $1 billion a year in revenues, not counting the multi-millions it tallies from its other games."
Look, the game is pretty, fun for a while, and very addictive. They took the tried and true method of giving item hoarders, dungeon crawlers, D&D fans, and basic gamers a basic concept that each one could easily get addicted to. TFA had nothing you didn't already know. They basically took the best parts of Evercrack, UO, and D20 systems and made a pretty game out of it. End of article. Making red-colored crack and successfully getting a whole bunch of people addicted to it isn't really that impressive, and neither was TFA.
Never play it. Ever. If you don't find yourself addicted to it you will become so awkward you will eventually cease to have a social life (assuming you had one in the first place).
All of this thankfully learned from observance and not experience.
"Blizzard remains ahead of the competition because the company was able to parlay its strength in one game format to create an online service, which created a whole new product line and different type of revenue stream," he said. Wow. Imagine a world before WoW where there were absolutely no MMOs an no one had ever thought of a monthly fee for these games that didn't exist.
The irony of this whole piece is that just about every single on of Blizzards "innovations" are things Sony Online was doing with EverQuest for half a decade before it (Beta tests, test servers, employees playing the game, upgrades, cancelling titles that didn't work, broad demographics, stats analysis, the fun of a gaming company).
The more interesting thing is, EverQuest only ever achieved roughly a twentieth of WoW's subscription figures. So, more valuable than simply listing the things SOE already did as Blizzard innovations* would be to look at what Blizzard did differently that got them 20 times SOE's subscriber base - and fifty times that of most other competitors.
As a fluff piece, it's nice to congratulate Blizzard for innovations they didn't come up with. The thing is, they evidently did something different and the article manages to miss that far more fascinating angle.
*Note: Not claiming SOE came up with the innovations either. Ultima Online was doing much of it several years earlier still. And they took over from a lot of MUDs, MUSHes, etc. If anything, there've been a series of advances that have been made one at a time, everyone else copying whenever someone else has success with a new idea.
I'd suggest Blizzards real achievements were something more like:
Truly earn loyalty from your customers: People who bought Diablo and Starcraft played for years on a service they didn't have to pay any extra for. Any other company would have turned those servers off once they weren't making money from boxed copies of the game. Blizzard kept providing it and earned a fierce loyalty from their fans where everyone else leaves their fans feeling screwed the moment the dollar signs don't add up in the short term.
Set the barrier of entry LOW: While SOE was playing with the brilliant idea but agonizing experience of StarWars Galaxies and everyone else was chasing prettier graphics, Blizzard put out a game with cartoony graphics that everyone and their mom could play. Ten million general players doing something simpler beats out a few hundred thousand beardy ones and housewives with enough time to learn your complex game mechanics.
Don't milk the cash cow until its teats fall off: Blizzard's managed to get what, one expansion out so far? SOE has put out how many for EQ2 that was released at the same time? Sure, your balance sheet looks better if you can say, "I'm going to get 200% revenue from my begrudging players this year." It actually looks even better if you say, "I'll stick with 110% revenue from 2000% of the number of happier players."
Kudos to all you folks who've ground it out longer than 4 months!
-AC
#12: Post generic bullshit slogans off motivational posters as major new insights
#13: Profit???
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
not many people give a fuck for super complex game rules (that's why nerds love DnD) they want something that's fun and group based. WoW gives that.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Lesson #12: if they get addicted, they'll pay more.
... just lots of little ones. There's not a lot in WOW that hasn't been done before in other games, either MMOs or other genres, but what Blizz has done is make the innovations of previous games work. Previous MMORPGs have been innaccessible, imbalanced, prone to exploits, buggy and often just downright boring.
WOW has so often overcome these issues to become one of the biggest games of this decade with a lot of well thought out and well designed gameplay.
Take the whole bind on pickup/bind on equip mechanic for items, meaning that some in game items can be bought and sold freely, but others (usually top tier weapons and armour) can only be gained by achieving in game goals. This means that there is still a viable cash economy, but players cannot simply 'buy' their way to the top, they need to go out and complete quests etc.
Wow was not the first game to feature an ingame economy, but what it did was make the economy fun and useful to players whilst at the same time limiting it's potential to be expolited.
- shazow
In my opinion, Blizzard did do a few things differently, but I don't see the ones I'm thinking of in the list.
What they did differently was this:
They made a good UI.
Blizzard usually has good UIs, and WoW's is no exception. They've even modified it over time to add some new things to it (such as additional button bars)... things that were being done by AddOns before.
They allow... no, encourage people to make UI Addons
Certain types of Addons have had the ideas behind them incorporated into the main WoW interface, too. Examples of this include the current Raid UI and the multiple button bars.
They don't nickel and dime you to death. See: EQ2, where even new dungeons (AKA "Adventure Packs") cost money.
Keep It Simple Stupid (the KISS principle)
WoW still has the same 9 classes it started with. While the abilities these classes have has changed over time, it's still easier than juggling 20+ classes like most other MMOs. While there will be a 10th class introduced in the next expansion, it will automatically start at a certain level (although Blizzard hasn't yet said which... rumors say 50 or 60) and will only have to be balanced from that level up.
(This would have been a numbered list, but Slashdot is apparently stripping out ol and ul tags now, despite them being on the Allowed HTML list)
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I admit, I would want to rant about their success. Is it jealousy? Maybe. But let's keep that aside for a moment.
They talk about innovation.
Nearly every aspect of World Of Warcraft is stolen from other games.
Example: UO. You can find a lot of similarities, from mounts to gray death screen. UO still has features, WoW hasn't. But most importantly: UO takes a lot of innovation from the so called freeshard-scene, and i think, this is also the reason origin never pursued those emulated servers in the first place.
E.g. the speech system which does not allow you to read other's language is something which was developed on UO roleplaying shards (as for I know, but it could have been also in some MUDs) - so it is not new in WoW.
So, why is WoW still better than the other mmogs? well, let's face it: it is because they took all the good things and tinkered it to something better.
So, yes, they are successful. And yes, they can talk about how to get successful, how to keep successful.
However, I rant, because it is not innovation, they should talk about. There is hardly any great innovation in WoW from my perspective.
It's a fun game, trying to suit the majority of players, the company cares for the players, they did some good decisions (e.g. low hardware specs, scriptable client), and of course, don't forget, they had a lot of publicity from previous games (the warcraft series, diablo, starcraft and lost vikings), and those WERE innovative in a great deal.
Still, talking about WoW, I think they really should talk about success, not innovation. Because it was more advertisement, more strategy and more publicity behind the success of WoW, than innovation.
Face it: Most Innovation comes from innovative and creative minds, which are not bound to deadlines or sallaries. Innovation was to include a modding engine in HalfLife, which kept a very bad coded game alive until CounterStrike came out (so innovation lead to innovation). Innovation was to include a Level Editor and Sound Editor in Warcraft2, which made the game popular for custom maps, and in WC3, innovation from the _users_ has lead to a lot of custom maps, like tower defense or dota (because the game was very scriptable and moddable). WoW lacks all those opportunities of customization and blizzard has hunted down any modding scene from the beginning, who tried to do something else, than interface scripts (which are limited in innovative ideas), like emulator software (but that is perfectly understandable! emulators are bad for business!).
Because the userbase can't contribute a lot of new ideas, and because the game itself has very few "new elements" at all, but sums up all the other MMOGs before it, I simply can't accept blizzard as teacher in innovation, regarding WoW.
Marvel Online got cancelled before ever seeing the light of day despite massive numbers of comic book readers past and present.
Matrix Online had a HUGE franchise that translated in to a game no one cared about.
Disney has a massive fanbase yet Toontown putters along quietly.
Ultima Online followed on the back of a game series that many people would argue was far more beloved than Warcraft - long established as near a dozen of the greatest RPG experiences on the PC. Even there, its numbers were never anything close to WoWs.
I think the IP helps. It certainly got a lot of the initial interest though I'd suggest most people who've since picked it up only heard of the RTS series later. But I'd suggest there's more to it than just milking an IP.
By "More Realistic" you mean "Everything is Brown"?
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
You'd be surprised how non-obvious it is to some people exactly wth Blizzard did right, even when it's spelled out for them.
E.g., Sony has been in a frenzy to copy the secret sauce of WoW into their own games for years, but it mostly resulted in blunders of epic proportions. Yes, eventually they got some things right-ish by sheer trial an error, but it's been a lot of trial an error, and a lot of changing people's characters and skills completely, for no good reason.
Just as one example, and I'll deliberately pick a mild one, because I'm not trying to start a flame war: the rested xp bonus in WoW. It's been discussed to death since WoW beta, and spelled out repeatedly why it's there and what effects it has, so you'd think it would be a no-brainer to copy it. Right? Well, Sony's first attempt was to go, basically, "oh, yeah? Well, we'll give ten times more in EQ2! And not make you go to an inn either!" So effectively, unless you were in a group all the time and/or playing 16 hours a day, the rested time would rise faster than you could possibly use it. Even as you'd run to the next mob in the middle of nowhere, you'd gain at least half of what you used on the last mob.
Now it's definitely not game-breaking. I did say I'd pick a mild one. And, hey, I'm not gonna say "no" to free xp. But it missed the point by a mile.
As a less mild example, Sony seems to have done a lot of over-simplification to their games (arguably even the much maligned and surrealistic SWG NGE) based on their and their fanboys' view that, surely, WoW only gets so many people because it's simplistic stuff for retards. Actually it's the contrary. WoW is a more complex game by far, and that makes it more interesting. It's intuitive and has a gentle learning curve, as it feeds you that complexity gently and gradually, but that's very different from being oversimplified. Essentially, Sony lobotomized their games, well at least SWG is as good as lobotomized, based on not understanding what they're trying to copy.
So, yes, bleeding obvious as that stuff might seem to _you_, I'd say it's good to see someone spell it out. Because some people seem that unable to comprehend it on their own.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Just to go through that list and tell you from first hand experience how non-obvious that can be to some people:
1. RELY ON CRITICS
I've actually been in places where they treat you like an Enemy Of The People criticizing the Communist Party, if you dare question the tiniest detail of their masterpiece. Heck, half the industry still is in a mind that deleting posts and suspending accounts is the right way to deal with bug reports. Sony is still infamous for beaming into space the people protesting one of their most heavy-handed and ill-advised ban-sprees.
Others just let the fanboys run amok and call everyone names if they report a bug or make a sugestion.
Heck, I've worked in one place where even internal criticisms didn't make it past the designer's continent-sized ego.
2. USE YOUR OWN PRODUCT
It should be obvious, but it isn't. I've seen for example FPS where the demos were recorded in god mode. That should have been obvious right there that even the devs can't play it on the normal difficulty setting. It's one of the things that should give one pause for thought, you know: if playing the game as you ship it isn't funny even for you, then why inflict it on the rest of the world like that?
3. MAKE CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENTS
Again, it should be obvious, but it isn't. E.g., one syndrome of many games is to rush to do an expansion pack, while the old crap is left as it is.
But more importantly, it really ties in with #1 and #2 above. What it says there is that long before the customers even see the product, they have internal teams trying to find out what sucks about it. In an industry which routinely ignores even the beta-testers' bug reports, that would explain why Blizzard's games are launched more finshed and polished than other games get after a dozen patches.
4. GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
Basically what TFA there really says, is: if your co-workers or testers say "dude, that idea sucks", then listen to them. In fact, see #3, encourage them to be honest and think about which stuff sounds good and which doesn't.
As an example of where that obviously wasn't the case, take SWG's NGE. There's (among many other blunders) a quest for example whose reward is a scope for a sword. Worse yet, it's really a potion, because they don't have item slots and such, so you can't actually attach it to the sword. The very fact that someone just shrugged and coded it like that, tells me that any kind of internal review or criticism, is non-existent or doesn't work. In any normal place, one of the guys who has to script, review or test it, would go "excuse me? am I the only one who thinks it's freaking stupid?" That noone listened, or maybe even they felt so much like a cog with a quota that they didn't even bother reporting it, speaks volumes.
Similarly in EQ2 there still are such dumb quests in the game as killing bears and deer to see if they stole a book. I mean, FFS, what would they do with it and where would they keep it? And then you get to kill your faction's own foresters to see if they stole the book. And that's the good faction, btw. And later you have to beat up badgers until they tell you where a sage is. (And it's not a druid quest or anything.) You have stuff like giving yourself a quest to avenge a knight, then digging up his tomb and taking his shield as a reward. You have stuff like giving yourself quests, and then giving yourself some money and an item as a reward. How schizophrenic is that? Etc, etc, etc. That that kind of mass-produced drivel even made it into the game at all, much less survived there since launch, tells me that their internal review process doesn't work. Or maybe reviews only if you met your quota of lines of script/code.
And again, I've been in one place myself where ideas were a one way street, from the High Priest... err... designer to us peons, and it wasn't the peons' job to criticize them.
5. DESIGN FOR DIFFERENT KINDS OF CUSTOMERS
Again, this should sound obvious, but it's not.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
UO gets the pioneer badge for MMOs, IMHO.
EQ gets the 3D pioneer badge for MMOs, IMHO.
Shadowbane was probably the first to do massive battles in a working manner. WOW still doesn't have anything like this - and they actively prevent it actually. I do so miss the nightly attacks on Southshore. They use to crash the server - and that's a problem, so blizz did everything they could to basically push people away from world PVP. And they did a very good job of it. Now it exists as mostly people running around griefing a few people. There's no such thing as an epic PVP battle anymore - BGs/Arenas have turned even PVP into a grind. *snoore*.
So yeah, WOW is pretty cool and they definitely got the glue of MMOs down, but pioneers? Not really. They are behind the curve on several items actually (housing, character customization, mentoring) and the PVP is pretty unbalanced. The UI customzation is awesome however and has set a VERY high watermark for other games to reach.
And actually that puts at the heart of what makes WOW tick - gear. Everything in WOW is way too gear dependent - but this is one of the primary ways they keep people coming. They are the masters of the treadmill - if you just raise your faction to here, you can get that one piece of armor/weapon that will help you to do better in the arenas. So you can get some more weapons and armor. For the Arena.
And before you beat me up, I'm a pretty active WOW player with two accounts and 4 70's. The game can be fun, but they have basically perfected the treadmill.
EK
WoW is not perfect. It's actually far from it. I tried it and quit right away. I've spent more hours playing online RPGs than most WoW players but WoW didn't appeal to me. In my opinion there's one thing that they completely screwed up and it's the economy. Please, don't defend them and say "but it's to prevent people exploiting the economy". It's not. They took a lot of decisions influenced by how badly the economy was screwed in Diablo II. However the real reason the economy was flawed in Blizzard's Diablo II is because the programmers have been completely incompetent with regards to the blatant item duping going on.
And here, instead of learning a lesson and make item duping impossible while still keeping a great economy (cool trades, super items that could be switched from character to character, from account to account etc.) they FUXXORED big times and invented silly 'binding' rules for items.
I saw that and I quit disgusted by the game.
Because it is a fact that when you control the server side it is possible to make item duping impossible. Yet they did NOT learn the lesson from Diablo II. Instead of coming with a cool economy they went with a broken one.
Items binding and no perma-death.
A game for noobs... But, granted, they learned how to milk noobs.