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."

Comments

Platitudes

[OMNIpotusCOM]

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.

Re:Platitudes

[Pennidren]

In some ways you are correct. The game isn't very remarkable or innovative.

But on the other hand, people are finicky. To have kept the subscription count as high as they have for as long as they have is impressive no matter how much you want to label it as obvious and inevitable.

Simply put, Blizzard's best skill has always been to shine and polish an old idea.

Re:Platitudes

[somersault]

The article doesn't mention many specifics from WoW; it does talk about company values and such though, did you even read it?

Getting people addicted to a game is very impressive. If you've ever tried to design and develop a game you'd know that. Personally I don't want to be addicted to WoW so I'm not going to play it, I'd probably enjoy it, but I get more satisfaction out of more skill based/action games than repetitive RPGs... the social aspects of it are slightly attractive, though the social aspects of real life are preferable :P

Re:Platitudes

[DarkProphet]

I think the reason that WoW STILL has 10 million subscribers is simply because it takes a LONG time to do things right. Levelling goes very fast(faster than ever since patch 2.3), but grinding for reputation, items, gold, and professions is a huge time-sink, in terms of hours. If you are the kind of person who ISN'T allowed to play for 12 hours a day, it can take many many months to move toward end-game content.

And that is to say nothing about PvP and Battlegrounds. The only other online games I've ever bothered to get into are Quake2 and Quake3. There is something irresistible about CTF and the other battlegrounds games. But to kick ass, you need a twink, which obviates the need for your main to spend all kinds of time grinding to fund your twink.

Then there is arena, where you attempt to twink your main, basically.

To have it all, it takes a huge time investment, which is reflected in the number of subscriptions Blizzard maintains over the long-term.

Now, I am not saying it is wrong for Blizz to extend the gameplay time by making it take forever to get anywhere on foot, or low drop rates, or the price of an epic mount versus the amount one can reasonably grind in say, 50 hours of play.

Well, the travel time actually is nothing short of ridiculous. Travel-time between "flight points" should be instantaneous. Just replace flight points with portals. PLEASE! Travel time between kalimdor and anywhere in outland is just crap. C'mon now.

OTOH, Blizz has been pretty good about regularly adding new content (even outside expansion releases), adjusting item and talent specs, and generally making the game more accessible to people with less time on their hands.

They've struck a good balance between making their product more open to new subscribers, as well as maintaining their long-term customer.

They've executed a well-crafted plan to widen their subscriber base while retaining a solid number of existing customers. That is the hallmark of any successful business. </verbose>

Re:Platitudes

[Swampash]

They basically took the best parts of Evercrack, UO, and D20 systems and made a pretty game out of it. End of article.

Way to miss the point, genius. The article wasn't about WoW, it was about Blizzard's internal policies and processes.

Re:Platitudes

[OMNIpotusCOM]

Not that it's worth the time or bandwidth to get into a geek slap fight with you, but since you put the condescention in your post, I'll take the time to enlighten you. The article was about innovation. The article also spoke at length about the innovations in WoW. My point was that WoW was not that innovative, and therefore not worth reading. The game was pretty, it was shiny, and it was a rehash of things that have already been done, while the article was rhetoric fitting for a Slashdot Sunday.

Now if you want to banter on the ultimate point of the article, I would say that the point of the article was to get hits from Slashdot, because everything I read in there was a useless diatribe... otherwise known as platitudes.

Internal policies and processes that nobody gives two shits about. The article didn't reveal the reason that Blizzard is a gaming phenomenon, why WoW is the biggest ticket in a crowded MMO genre, or much of anything. It was filled with floating daisies and self-appreciating drivel.

If you wasted your time reading it, like I did, and then came on here to try to make some grandiose statement, thereby wasting my time and yours... mission accomplished. All I wanted to do was cut out the middleman for some other poor, bored, tired soul and let them know the article was not worth reading. Then they can better waste their time on here in the WoW sewing circle.

Re:Platitudes

[walnutmon]

"Well, the travel time actually is nothing short of ridiculous. Travel-time between "flight points" should be instantaneous. Just replace flight points with portals. PLEASE! Travel time between kalimdor and anywhere in outland is just crap. C'mon now. "

I respectfully disagree with you. I think having time between points is what makes it imersive and fun, the large world does the same. You made the best point I've read here though, subtley... This game is successful because it's good for a long time. When someone says "dude, after you get to level cap it's so boring!" I have had an active account for a high percentage of time since it came out, my highest is a level 59, I have a bunch of other characters, but I just have them so I can play different classes, they mostly fall in the 20's. I just think the atmosphere of the game is great, and the play style is very relaxing. Well work the 15/month... but 15/month isn't very much to me; I could understand if I was much younger I'd think it was a big deal.

Re:Platitudes

[Minwee]

Way to miss the point, genius. The article wasn't about WoW, it was about Blizzard's internal policies and processes.

What's an "article"? Is it something you're supposed to read before commenting?

Re:Platitudes

[snkline]

This is absolutely true. Certainly WoW is very polished, and has alot of fun to it. But what keeps you going after your 200th night in the Black Temple or Hyjal, is your sense of obligation to your guildmates. It is the social connectedness people develop with the people they play with that keeps people playing, even when they have grown rather bored with the game.

Re:Platitudes

[somersault]

I do kinda have to concede that. I started playing Maplestory just because I literally felt I had nothing else to do at that time in my life and one of my friends introduced me to it. I played the game all by myself for a month or two, then joined a guild (leader was the person that introduced me to the game), and stayed in the guild for a while, enjoying the social aspects, having a fake online marriage and such (as you do), hehe. One day I just stopped playing though, and didn't start again. That was of course because I got addicted to a MUD (again). Without the social aspects, it would be very difficult to make a game that was so addictive that you keep playing it - I think games like WoW work so well because they're basically an IRC chatroom with some really intricate games to play while you chat :P I realised that while playing MUDs, but MMORPGs are just MUDs with fancy 3D graphics.. and believe me you don't need the graphics to have fun :)

Re:11 lessons

[The MAZZTer]

1. Rely on critics
2. Use your own product
3. Make continual improvements
4. Go back to the drawing board
5. Design for different kinds of customers
6. The importance of frequent failures
7. Move quickly, in pieces
8. Statistics bolster experience
9. Demand excellence or you'll get mediocrity
10. Create a new type of product
11. Offer employees something extra

RTFA

Congratulations on inventing MMOs

[nick_davison]

the company created a new type of product line by selling ongoing subscriptions for online access to the game, said Unnikrishnan at CSU Fullerton.
"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."

Re:Congratulations on inventing MMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't read TFA. But your arguments seem about right:

- The reputation is a big one. In addition to keeping the servers going, you also have things like the patch to Diablo II years after it came out that was so huge as to almost be an expansion pack. Also, Blizzard has arguably never made a bad game. That carries a lot of weight. It also helps that people knew and already liked the Warcraft world.

- Balance. People love to whine, but the truth of the matter is every Blizzard game is scrupulously balanced - I am not sure anyone is better. I have some friends at a rival MMORPG studio (not saying which) who actually make fun of their designers because the game is so badly balanced. This is not good.

- Difficulty. People also love to harp on how easy WoW is, but it's accessibility has a lot to do with why it's so popular. And of course what these people fail to mention is at the high end - raiding or PVP - it's as hard as anything else. This keeps the hardcore players hooked and gives the others someone to look up to while also giving them easy ways to inch closer.

- Graphics. This is more personal opinion, but I think Blizzard must have some of the most talented artistic designers around. I think WoW pushes way less polygons than some of the competition, but it just looks so much more alive, and so much more unique to me.

Blizzard innovates only in minor ways, but they are polished to an extreme. And in the end, I think your average consumer prefers polish over innovation.

Re:Congratulations on inventing MMOs

[Sanguis Mortuum]

Exactly what I was thinking when I read this. Everything WoW does was done before, WoW just happened to do it better and marketed it in a way that appealed to more people...

Re:Congratulations on inventing MMOs

[Wilson_6500]

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."

My MMO playing friends would from time to time claim that the continuing fees of MMOs were there at least in part to ensure that there would be continuing updates and new content, aside from server maintenance costs. Naturally, I'd look at it as a slap in the face if, having that attitude, a company asked me to pay an additional charge for that content in the form of an expansion pack.

Something I've always wanted to see would be a serious, impartial, disinterested observer sitting down and going through a point-by-point comparison of WoW, Guild Wars, and Diablo II, and maybe throw in FFXI or some one of the other popular MMOs, just to see what is objectively different between them. It would be interesting to see in light of all the noise of fans crying that such-and-such is an MMO, is worth the money, etc. Of course, that latter point is nearly entirely subjective. Most of what people claim to get out of modern MMOs I was able to get out of games like Halflife--and that without paying every month for it.

Re:Congratulations on inventing MMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Blizzard was making money off of those services. They got sponsors for the Battle.net Servers ("D2USWest-1 Hosted by AT&T") and in turn would only run ads in the BNet GUI for that specific company. The execs at Blizzard were very good about getting other companies to play ball on their terms while making money or AT LEAST breaking even and appeasing their user base. You're correct, though, it's a lot more than just Blizzard throwing money at services just to make sure their customers are happy.

Re:Congratulations on inventing MMOs

[Koby77]

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."
I also agree that Blizzard's success has nothing to do with following certain business principles. Instead, Blizzard's popularity was because it brought MMOs to the masses, and it achieved that because it set the speed of game play correctly.

For single player games, especially console RPGs, you progress in the game at a certain pace. You may earn a level increase every few minutes. You'll go back to town and purchase some new equipment every now and then. But MMORPGs prior to WoW were unacceptably slow. A single player game which progressed at the speed of a pre-WoW MMO would be labeled as a failure. Simply put, it would be very boring.

Unfortunately, other companies got greedy. After playing many other MMOs, I could see that they designed their game around forcing a player to subscribe for a certain length of time to achieve the "endgame" content. If they didn't have enough content for their players, no problem! Simply slow down the pace of leveling or money acquisition. If your game is boring, people will still forced to play it and pay for it, right?

Blizzard was the first company to significantly change the trend. It eliminated the common "camp & grind" game play, and allowed players to gain levels and equipment at a significantly faster pace. This made the game fun, and attracted a ton of subscribers in doing so. As you said, it turns out that having lots of subscribers is preferable to forcing a few die-hard subscribers to pay. In the end greed wasn't good, and a fun game beat the alternatives.

Re:Congratulations on inventing MMOs

[GaryPatterson]

Blizzard have released many expansions without cost. The most recent patch, 2.4, added a whole new island with end-game content. Sure, it's for 5- and 25-player groupings, but there are several 'dungeon' areas (some outside) there.

Same with many other patches. Zul'Aman was introduced a while back, as was Ahn'Qiraj and a whole bunch of other places.

PvP content is updated every so often as well, and a whole slew of new items (green, blue and purple) are introduced over time as well.

The paid expansion packs are *big* expansions, equivalent to another continent being added to the world. They include many new regions to explore, lots of dungeons, new crafting recipes and so on.

As a non-'dungeony' player, I don't get a lot out of the free updates except bug fixes and improved class balancing, but I still appreciate that many players love the 5- and 25-player dungeons. They're getting new content throughout the year as part of their subscription price. I could too if I cared to play that content.

I'm all about exploration and crafting, so the paid expansions give me lots to do. I'm okay with that.

Re:first post

[Anonymous Coward]

keep the game fresh and challenging What game are they talking about? It CAN'T be WoW, which is "fresh and challenging" for approximately the first 2-6 weeks that it takes you to hit the level cap. Thereafter it becomes an infinte repetition of essentially the same content for as long as you're capable of withstanding it (usually a period of time inversely proportional to the intelligence of the user).

Kudos to all you folks who've ground it out longer than 4 months!

-AC

Lessons learned

[Rinikusu]

From Blizzard:
1) Money doesn't buy you happiness.
2) Money will buy you lots of shit that make you happy.
3) Did I mention we have lots of money? I know it's not really a lesson, but it's our list and we're rich, beyotch!
4) Money isn't very flavorful. We had a buffet lunch of money once and after the 10th or 11th thousand dollar salad, I had to switch to the lo-carb dressing. Ugh.
5) Money.
6) If you have money, girls (some) will like you for it. As long as you have a proper pre-nup, wear rubbers (always) or get a Vasectomy to reduce risk, enjoy the ride.
7) It's amazing what you can do with money. This one time, we filled the company pool up with crisp dollar bills. The first guy to dive in got massive paper cuts from the crispness. Wow, like millions of dollars worth of cuts. We had to drive him to the hospital, while we used $100 bills to try and stem the flow of blood.
8) The morning commute into the office is so much nicer in my Ferrari. Vroom Vroom my ass, Mazda.
9) Money money money money money!
10) Sometimes, you have more money than you can spend. Paper crafts are so much more fun!
11) Nerf warlocks, bitches.

Totally Crapified Article about Egomaniacs

[lancejjj]

This is a piece about some egomaniacs that want to express that they're simply smarter than so many others in business.

They actually think that their "11 Innovation Lessons" are new, different, and special.

Even a junior manager at a McDonald's has learned this stuff within their first 30 days on the job. Really. They are intrinsic to running any service organization.

Read through them, and ask yourself: would a McDonald's Junior Manager know this as an intrinsic part of his job servicing customers?

The short answer is YES, a junior manager at McDonalds would know 10 of 11 of them. The 11th just doesn't apply to McDonalds. Because Big Macs are perfect.

Re:Totally Crapified Article about Egomaniacs

[VGPowerlord]

You may think this list is silly, but certain other MMO makers haven't grasped them.

Sony Online Entertainment, in particular, tends to piss off its userbase on a regular basis. They even totally changed (read: trashed) one of their properties with about two weeks notice a few years ago.

Re:Totally Crapified Article about Egomaniacs

[Missing_dc]

"Read through them, and ask yourself: would a McDonald's Junior Manager know this as an intrinsic part of his job servicing customers?"

And as I read through your post I wondered "What does this guy do for a living, and how is he so intimately acquainted with the training a McManager gets?"

Re:11 lessons

[clarkkent09]

#12: Post generic bullshit slogans off motivational posters as major new insights

#13: Profit???

No innovation at all...

[timmarhy]

.... but blizzard did something even MORE important - they did a damn good job of giving people what they wanted.

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.

Not the best example

[propanol]

Blizzard's not exactly the best example when looking for innovation. Sure, they've made some solid games, but all of the ones I'm familiar with (that is, most of the major ones save WoW as I don't do multiplayer-only) were awfully derivative; the RTS stuff from Dune 2/C&C, Diablo from Rogue/Nethack etc.

Lesson #12

[Plazmid]

Lesson #12: if they get addicted, they'll pay more.

Re:Lesson #12

[crashfrog]

if they get addicted, they'll pay more.

Oh, you people crack me the fuck up. "WoW is addictive!" No. Cocaine is addictive; it causes physiological changes to your brain that cause you to want it more at the same time that it gives you less effect.

WoW is a computer game. It's entertainment, and the secret of its success is that it is entertaining to play. I've been playing it since the beta stress test, and paying the subscription fee throughout. I bought the expansion. In fact I've done all this twice, once for me and once for my wife, who I play it with.

Why? Because it's fun. It's worth the money. I like MMO games, and WoW is hands-down superior to the other games I've tried in every way. Better art (instead of generic Bryce landscapes and Poser NPC's), better class balance (instead of "controller" characters who have no power beyond their ability to help a party), a seamless, dynamic, shared world (instead of walled outdoor "rooms" and doors that unexpectedly trigger loading screens.)

There's meat on those bones, that's why I keep coming back. I know it's popular to hate on WoW, here, but 8 million people play the game not because Blizzard invented a way to send crack cocaine over broadband, but because they created a compelling, entertaining, immersive game experience that's rewarding at all levels and to all kinds of people - not, as it's popular to state, just the people who play it 12 hours a day, grinding for the slightest bump in rep or gear.

Blizzard didn't cheat, people. They haven't managed to enthrall 8 million people by some magic spell or trick of brain chemistry. They did it the hard way - by spending the time and effort to create a compelling, entertaining product that is rewarding to play in a way very, very few video games ever are. I guess the idea that they've earned the success and acclaim they enjoy is too much for some people. If you played WoW and you didn't like it, I don't think you're a bad person or something, but you're not "above the influence" either; you're just someone whose interests lie elsewhere. I wish you the best with whatever those interests might be. (If you didn't play it and you still trash it, you're an idiot who does not know whereof they speak.) Understand that, for me and my wife, and 8 million other people, one of our interests is enjoying World of Warcraft. Not because we're addicted; not because Blizzard has us in the throes of some kind of "addiction"; but because they did the hard work of creating something we don't mind paying to play.

Re:Lesson #12

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you people crack me the fuck up. "WoW is addictive!" No. Cocaine is addictive; it causes physiological changes to your brain that cause you to want it more at the same time that it gives you less effect.
WoW and cocaine share many of the same qualities. Granted, WoW is much less expensive, but they both do some of the same things to you when used in excess. Excessive WoW playing can lead to loss of relationships, friends, jobs, and so on, and we've all heard stories detailing such things, sometimes right here on /.

That said, I've done both. Ironically, one of the things I used to keep myself busy after struggling with cocaine addiction was playing WoW, because it consumed a lot of my time and kept me entertained. I did however eventually quit WoW after I had to play it

more at the same time that it [gave me] less effect. Still, this wasn't the same type of physiological addiction one could attribute to cocaine. Raiding twice or more a week simply yielded less reward, and made the game more like work than play.

Ironically, the thing that Blizzard and drugs have taught me though is that I easily get addicted to things that are bad for me, and they're both experiences that I have learned from. The nice part about WoW though is that abusing it tends not to enable you to accidentally kill yourself.

I felt compelled to post because I had to let you know that I feel, from personal experience, that there is credence to what people say about WoW's addictiveness in relation to things that are physiologically addictive, like cocaine.

I've been clean for almost three years now, and I value my life a lot more than I did back then. It's been two years since I quit WoW, and I similarly value my friendships a lot more than I did back then.

Re:Lesson #12

[harry666t]

> Oh, you people crack me the fuck up. "WoW is addictive!"
> No. Cocaine is addictive; it causes [blah blah blah]

BS.

You can get addicted to almost ANYTHING, including a computer, a person, a sound, an emotion... Or, to be specific, to ANY emotion that is associated with doing something, seeing something, thinking of something... See, emotions are also chemicals. Some chemicals get people addicted faster, others - slower.

It's sad how one can get addicted to anger, or to a feeling that he/she's a victim, but I've seen such people. Believe me or not, but you CAN get addicted to a game.

Re:Lesson #12

[RockModeNick]

This type of thing is why, coming from a psychology background, I dislike the entire current conception of addition. Our brains like to offload work and analysis by simply keeping up behaviors that have been previously sustained. Pleasurable behaviors where we consciously associate enjoyment with specific behavior are easier to designate as addictions, but it's really all the same, offloading the work of deciding if we should do something or not by simply setting up automatic responses. Sometimes these responses are so closely worked into normal brain function that ceasing them causes a disruption in expected brain function, in a full spectrum from nearly undetectably minor(A passing question to the self on the way to work of "am I less sharp because I missed my coffee today?") to so much a part of our expected brain chemistry that function without them can take a LONG period of adaption(I WILL KILL SOMEONE if I don't get a cigarette soon). Obviously with examples where we're adding an outside chemical to our brain chemistry it gets a bit more complex vs systems where we're simply behaviorally altering our internal chemistry, but it's all still the same basic system. I strongly believe that this makes the term "addictive" nearly meaningless as it is typically used today.

Re:Lesson #12

[crashfrog]

WoW and cocaine share many of the same qualities.

No, they don't. Cocaine is a drug that you injest, and in return it causes physiological changes that make your body dependent on it.

WoW is a game that is fun to play, and the game style is such that time spent playing produces in-game rewards.

Nothing alike. It's a spurious argument. Maybe you played WoW and didn't like it. That's fine.

It's not cocaine, though, just because other people had a good time when you didn't. The comparison is idiotic.

Excessive WoW playing can lead to loss of relationships, friends, jobs, and so on, and we've all heard stories detailing such things, sometimes right here on /.

Excessive anything does that, and that situation isn't evidence of "WoW addiction", that's evidence that that person simply didn't value those relationships, friends, and jobs in the first place.

WoW has never ended a marriage or kicked someone out of school. It simply provided an excuse to blame for those things which were going to happen anyway. If WoW ended a marriage it's because the marriage was already over. If WoW got you kicked out of school it's because you clearly didn't like school, and were going to leave one way or another.

Don't act like people never got divorced or left a job or classes before WoW was invented. There's no evidence, despite 8 million people who play, that WoW has any effect on the rates of either.

Ironically, the thing that Blizzard and drugs have taught me though is that I easily get addicted to things that are bad for me, and they're both experiences that I have learned from.

Then clearly you're the one with the problem - you have an addictive personality. And if it weren't crack, or WoW, it'd be daytime TV, or maybe volunteering, or maybe working out, or maybe one of a million other things that people sometimes do to excess.

Drugs are addictive, clinically, because they cause changes in your body that require you to crave more of them. WoW doesn't do that. It's impossible for it to do that. Thus, it can't be "addictive" in any objective sense. It is something that people of a certain personality type get obsessed with, but they can do that about nearly anything.

I think my point stands.

Re:Lesson #12

[crashfrog]

You can get addicted to almost ANYTHING, including a computer, a person, a sound, an emotion...

That's not addiction, that's dependence. Addiction is a physiological state with a precise clinical definition. It doesn't apply to WoW except by the shysters peddling "game addiction" clinics and the people, like you, who enable them.

Re:Lesson #12

[crashfrog]

WoW is boring, killing 20 boars, then 20 super-boars, then 30 mega-boars is not fun.

If you didn't like it, then you didn't like it. That's fine. I'm not threatened by the fact that we have different tastes in games.

The only thing I'm defending is Blizzard, and I'm responding to allegations that they're a company of drug peddlers, when in fact they're a company of artists and programmers who put the time in to release a product that people like to play. I'm not saying that's an achievement for which they deserve medals, but it's certainly one for which they deserve to have some of my money.

It's a MMO with permanent training wheels and it's killing what was a fun genre.

You're complaining about grinding but holding up MMO's as a "fun genre"? I don't think there's an MMO out there that's less grindy than WoW, it's a feature of the genre. And I don't know what you think you mean by "real PvP", trust me, those Horde guys are all played by real people.

The only games WoW killed off were the ones that were less fun to play. Simple as that. If they had been more fun, people would have left WoW to play them.

But they didn't. It's a free market. Blizz doesn't have a monopoly on MMO's. They just have the one that the market (including a lot of people who never expected to ever enjoy a video game) has overwhelmingly preferred. It's not a mystery, it's not a trick of brain chemistry, it's just what happens when you get a bunch of people with talent together and demand that they create an exceptional product. Why get so angry about that?

Re:Lesson #12

[crashfrog]

I love WoW as a dungeon crawler, but there are much better Role Playing oriented MMOs.

I guess, if that's your experience, but I don't see how real role-playing is something that could even be done at a computer, or in the context of a virtual game world. It's something to do at the table-top where your actions aren't constrained by what programmers decided to allow you to do, and the world is maintained by the imagination of a human being who can react flexibly to your actions.

So I don't blame WoW for not being something that no computer game could really be. For that role-playing experience I grab the dice and hit the table-top; that's really the only place it can be done.

Re:Lesson #12

[Pluvius]

You've got the definitions totally switched around.

"The medical community now makes a careful theoretical distinction between physical dependence (characterized by symptoms of withdrawal) and psychological dependence (or simply addiction). Addiction is now narrowly defined as 'uncontrolled, compulsive use'"
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

Rob

Blizzard hasn't had big innovative ideas...

[sharopolis]

... 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.

Re:What I learned from WOW

[Starrk]

you will eventually cease to have a social life (assuming you had one in the first place)

Aha. I seem to have found your mistake.

Main Innovation

[monoqlith]

Blizzard executives went to the crack-addled streets of inner-city LA, bought a bunch of it, gave it to their employees, and said to them, "Figure out how to make this crack into a computer game. Feel free to try some of it too." The crack enabled them to stay up late enough to think of WoW.

Blizzard's strengths

[VGPowerlord]

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)

Re:Timing, maybe?

[VGPowerlord]

I must point out that EQ2 and WoW launched within a few weeks of each other. EQ2's userbase is nowhere near where WoW's is.

success

[g4b]

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.

Re:Timing, maybe?

[Shazow]

EQ2's userbase is nowhere near where WoW's is. Neither is the game quality for today's standards.

Ultima Online surpassed MUDs.
EverQuest surpassed Ultima Online.
World of Warcraft surpassed EverQuest.
EverQuest 2 surpassed a shriveled piece of ginger root vaguely shaped like a one-armed voodoo doll.

- shazow

Franchise != Success

[nick_davison]

Yeah they took an established franchise millions loved (warcraft) and made an MMO out of it StarWars is vastly more beloved but sandbox so beautifully complex it took two years to seed itself and never really became easy to use before being so brutally modified as to lose what those who had persevered loved didn't make anywhere near WoW numbers.

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.

Re:Supermodel at Fat camp

[zire]

> First they do not listen to critics, If it gets placed on the test realm it WILL go live.

That is incorrect, there are many changes on the test realm that do not go live.

For example, in the last patch there was a change to the way mana replentishing food/drinks worked in the test realm. Players gave negative feedback about it and it was taken out.

Re:Supermodel at Fat camp

[tacarat]

First they do not listen to critics, If it gets placed on the test realm it WILL go live.

Right... Listening to critics is not the same as mindlessly obeying critics. There have been plenty of changes that either didn't get past the test realm stage or got reverted/tweaked shortly afterwards. You're only remembering the buffs and nerfs that you didn't like making it live. The easiest to remember change that didn't go live was when druids in bear/cat form were able to finally drink potions. The reversion of that buff drew outrage to the point of organized protests across the live servers and a lot of my beloved forum trolls getting themselves banned due to overly flaming or critical posts.

The REAL 11 lessons of WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

As others have said, the list in this article is fluffy and useless.

However, I've been following the design of MMORPGs over the past decade, so I will offer a list of things that Blizzard *actually* did well, that together (combined with the strength of their pre-existing brand) are what I believe are responsible for WoW's overwhelming success.

1. Polish, Polish, Polish! -- WoW is probably the most polished MMORPG ever to be released. It makes a huge difference.
2. Smooth Newbie Experience -- this is critical, making it easy for casuals and spouses to get started (or "hooked")
3. Fun, Fun, Fun! -- if it's not Fun, get rid of it. Blizzard ruthlessly excised most of the un-fun stuff from the standard MMORPG design.
4. Don't Ship Until its Done -- several MMORPG disaster launches have shown that you really must wait until its ready
5. Low System Requirements -- 95% of the PCs in peoples livingrooms can run WoW, compared to like 25% for most games. This is no accident.
6. Reward Quests More Than Grind -- WoW was the first MMORPG where questing was the most efficient way to level for most players. This kept them moving around and doing different things, which is way less boring than 30 hours of grinding foozles. This idea is also behind the daily quests, for example.
7. Something For Everybody -- crafting, raiding, casual content, battlegrounds, PvP servers, lots and lots of quests, epic mounts... there is stuff in WoW that appeals to each of the Bartle playertypes.
8. Customizable UI Makes Players Happy -- even Everquest could be customized somewhat, but WoW made it possible to make powerful and useful custom UIs, and made it easy for other players to then use them. There are now a lot of players who will not want to play some new MMORPG unless it has a customizable UI.
9. Infrastructure Is Important & Hard -- they knew this from battle.net too. Again, they underestimated some things--like bandwidth--in the first year, but it eventually got sorted out.
10. Manage Community Expectations/Customer Service is Important & Hard -- they already knew this from battle.net, of course. The WoW forums are a cesspool, but that is unavoidable for a game of that size. In all other respects they've done a pretty good job.
11. Keep Cheaters, Botters and Farmers Out -- they watched Diablo I get absolutely destroyed by cheaters, and Diablo II had its share of setbacks here. Currently they can't stop Glider, but at least they're trying.

They left out a couple of items.

[ScrewMaster]

12. Hire lots of good lawyers

13. Use them.

Re:What WoW Learned From Everquest

[Medevo]

By "More Realistic" you mean "Everything is Brown"?

Re:11 lessons

[Repton]

So, all I need to do to be successful is go back to the drawing board and quickly create an excellent new type product specially designed for specific types of customers! It's so simple!

Re:11 lessons

[fractoid]

"Rely on critics"? I have never seen they do that. There is now a 5-man gear progression. PvP gear is competitive (in fact superior to) raid gear and is attainable without working 12-hour shifts to grind to rank 14, but still rewards skill as well as time invested.

"Excellence"??? the game is full of bugs(created in game) even a gm could fix it with 5-6 letter command word and yet they still refuse to fix things up. WoW is the worst MMO out there... except from all the others. I'm guessing this is just lack of clue.

I really think Blizzard archived this high number of players because of "friend factor" Now you're getting somewhere. WoW is popular because 'critical mass' is an extremely important factor in MMO success, and they achieved it early and maintained it. MMO games are only fun when they're, for want of a better description, "massively multiplayer". If the game ceases to have a large-enough player base that finding groups is quick and easy, it rapidly falls apart. 'Everyone' leaves, and everyone else does too.

You'd be surprised how non-obvious it is

[Moraelin]

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.

And just to go through that list

[Moraelin]

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.

Pioneers????

[Evil Kerek]

Blizzard was one of the pioneers in a new category of game - massively multi-player online role-playing games. Um...I can think of at least 4 MMOs off the top of my head (I'm sure there are way more) that came out WAY before WOW. What place do you have to be in to be considered a pioneer?

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

[ZenDragon]

I have been a WoW subscriber since its inception. However, most of you have a completely misconstrued idea of the typical WoW player. Yes, I will concede that there are some whom you might consider addicted. Those that play for 10-15+ hours a day and take the game way to seriously. This however does NOT represent the majority of player base at all.

A vast majority of the people that I have met, and those whom I know personally are adults. Ages 20ish to 30. Many of whom live successful lives, are married, own their own houses, etc. The game is not just a bunch of pimple faced teenagers and hopeless introverts. There are quite a few women who play as well, many of whom are the wives and girlfriends of other WoW players. Fact of the matter is, WoW is more like a social club than a MMO. Its happens to be a common similarity and a social enabler of many of todays working sub 30 adults.

Of course there are quite a few younger subscribers as well. My 9 year old son even plays on occasion, with the chat disabled of course!

I have been around, I've seen my share of MMO, and I've played many of them simply because I enjoy that genre better than any other. However, I can honestly say it is NOT WoW itself that keeps me playing, if it weren't WoW it would be something else. WoW is just the path of least resistance in terms of MMO's. I enjoy playing and and the vastness of the world itself keeps me from getting bored with it.

There is some grinding involved in WoW however it is not nearly as bad as EVERY other MMO that I have played. And I guarantee you, the average player will never even have the opportunity to experience some end game content let alone repeat it endlessly as some you have suggested. Over the course of 3 years, across all my characters, I have logged only 24 days total "casual" played time, and have taken several extended vacations in between. Nevertheless, I am just as well geared and/or equipped as 80% of those on the server on which I play. My point is, you do not have to be some lifeless introvert to enjoy and progress in this game, and THAT is why so many people play it.

Re:WoW is NOT perfect. What Blizzard did NOT learn

[Gunuku]

Permadeath would be a horrible thing to have in WoW since death can't be avoided if you want to instance or PVP. Latency spikes or the world server going down would also randomly kill you even if you were careful as possible. The Bind-on-Pickup is to ensure that there is always a reason for people to enter dungeons and raid and try to add a sense of 'worth' to powerful epics - though it is easier to gear a character now than ever before which isn't a bad thing.