Mythic founder: WoW "will be in its decline" in a few years
by Mike Schramm 
Aug 20th 2007 at 2:15PM
You could probably fill a library with the number of stupid things game developers say about their competitors, but here's one more. In an interview with Shacknews, former Mythic co-founder Matt Firor, charged with putting together a brand-new MMO, says this about World of Warcraft: ... Any MMO starting development today isn't going to have to worry too much about competing with WoW--it'll be in its decline by the time any new game launches.
Think so? From what we've heard from Blizzard, they don't. Even if Blizz only goes two more expansions (and Everquest, the most popular MMO until WoW, went for fourteen), WoW is sticking around for five or six years. And yes, there are those folks who are done now, but Azeroth's population hasn't stopped going up yet-- does Firor really think they won't be a competitor in just a few years?
That doesn't mean Blizzard is unbeatable, but it does mean that they're competition. As Firor's former employer says (EA Mythic is now working on Warhammer Online, which some say is WoW's biggest threat in the MMO market), you have to play a different game.
WoW is The Beatles, who changed music forever. You can't be the Beatles; they already exist. You can't copy them. If you try, you become The Monkees. You've got no chance. We're not The Beatles. We're Led Zeppelin.
Staking your new game on WoW's decline is a bad idea, and predicting that decline to be just a few years off is a worse one. WoW won't last forever, but Blizzard's monster MMO isn't done yet.
[ via WorldofWar ]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Sylythn Aug 20th 2007 2:30PM
Reminds me of statements like this:
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
-Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, 1981
Eldiablohijo Aug 20th 2007 2:42PM
I feel that WoW's numbers are going to start slacking off within the next two years, and I think Blizzard knows this too.
There are life cycles with any game, and there is only so long you can keep a large audience doing the same thing over and over again.
The World (of Warcraft) continues to grow but I personally believe it's at it's peak, it's going to become harder and harder for new players to enter the game with each expansion, and that will only cause numbers to lower.
I have a feeling Blizzard is already working on a successor to WoW, something in the Diablo Universe, or possibly just a new Warcraft MMO.
My personal guess is that WoW will no longer be the supperior MMO on the market around expansion #4.
Of course time will only tell.
amasen Aug 20th 2007 2:43PM
If wow stays the same path... Then it will be in it's decline in the next couple years. All someone needs to do is come up with an equally fun game with an endgame model that isn't broken (IE hardcore raiding needed to see content)
Brian Aug 20th 2007 2:45PM
im gonna dissagree and go with the guess that history repeats itself. Food for thought (http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/06/15/how-open-big-virtual-worlds-grow/)
Juliah Aug 20th 2007 2:45PM
Sounds like wishful thinking on Matt's part to me. I think WoW has a lot more life left in it.
Obiter Aug 20th 2007 2:46PM
It's arguable what he means by "decline." Games like WoW never really die unless the company pulls the plug. And as long as its making money -- any money -- that might never happen. Just look at Ultima Online. Or EQ1!!
However, as a force of *innovation* I think WoW is passed the point of decline -- its dead. Blizz has heard for two years how players want guild housing, capturable and seigeable cities, player-driven guild-on-guild warfare, etc. None of that and a million other innovative ideas (in the MMO context) have been forthcoming. Blizz is so committed to incremental change that their game has basically peaked from a design perspective. Which by definition means its in decline from a design perspective.
I'm pumped about Warhammer 40K Online and other innovative games like Pirates of the Burning Sea as much as I looked forward to WoW two or three years ago. BUt as for WoW today, I just don't see it charting new ground any time soon.
Dracula Jones Aug 20th 2007 2:50PM
And StarCraft MMO will be there to get all those subscribers who leave WoW. StarCraft II is being developed as the prequel to the MMO, just like WC3 was for WoW. The missions are entirely story-driven. I fully expect to be making delivery quests to Jim Raynor in 2011.
And by the time the SC MMO is dwindling, WoW2 will be out. Just don't expect a Diablo MMO... you're playing it now, it's called World of Warcraft.
Paw Aug 20th 2007 2:51PM
WoW has done something no MMO before it ever did, attract "casual" gamers in ridiculous numbers. As such, the ability to predict it's eventual demise is ellusive. Trends could reasonably be calculated in games with fewer hardcore players and fans, but WoW has attracted peopel from across the gaming spectrum. I know diehard FPSers who loathed RPG in any fashion who are totally addicted to WoW. Only WoW. Everything else they play is shooter genre. WoW will wane in popularity, this is without doubt, but how, when and to what new game is completely unpredictable. I think that Blizzard's own next MMORPG will be the single biggest bringer of doom for WoW. It will be hard for others to lure away the massive number of players who otherwise would not be playing an MMO game. Sure, some of the hardcore will head out to the likes of Warhammer, and some may dabble in Tabula Rasa for a different spin on things, but a majority of the players, the casual-types who make up a bulk of the population, will likely keep with this one for quite some time yet.
Pingmeister Aug 20th 2007 2:58PM
This is all PR. I can pretty much guarantee that as a business man he will not count WoW out for many years to come. He knows it's his biggest competition and will be for many years.
He just has to keep feeding lines like those to the press so that they eventually repeat them enough for folks to believe it.
pokute Aug 20th 2007 3:00PM
there're actually many good reasons for saying stupid things like this, but they have nothing to do with truth or any sensible prediction of the future
you have to understand that no one want to compete with a juggernaut like wow... least of all are potential investors
(draw your own conclusions here)
and then there's always the ideology of marketing
"if you say it enough times it must be true"
(again, your own conclusions)
Bob Aug 20th 2007 3:04PM
One things for sure, the PvP servers will be empty when Warhammer Online comes out. Then again, PvP'ers are a minority of the game so who knows.
Levi Aug 20th 2007 3:17PM
So if WoW is The Beatles, is Blizzard catering to casuals Yoko Ono?
Morrigän Aug 20th 2007 3:22PM
@6: ever watched Bruce Almighty?
Fact: people do NOT know what they want. Most people want cool things that probably would break some existent game mechanic.
Kara is a good example of how they're still kicking about design and innovative encounters, Blizzard excels on that in any game they do/did.
IMHO, WoW's downfall will be the graphics; while the artistic side is awesome, the technical is by far outdated.
Xie Aug 20th 2007 3:41PM
I hate to say this but Mythic is, in fact, correct, if a bit "politically incorrect" by saying what they did.
WoW's paradigm is getting old. My particular server, a formerly high-pop realm that was one of the first stood up on opening morning in Nov. 2004, has shrunk considerably in the last seven months. We went from supporting more than 25 guilds fielding 40 man raids on MC/BWL last fall, to currently about 12 guilds running 25 man raids (according to wowjutsu.com). That means we went from roughly 1000 "raiders" per week (fluctiations as people swap in and out of raid spots for each other, of course, but the number of people required to float the raid doesn't change)... to now, only about 300 people doing the 25 man raids.
Our auction house is sparse compared to the old days. Many on my friends list, in my guild, in my friends' guilds, have quit. Half a dozen people from my guild are beta testing WAR and are making comments like "this is a much more polished version of Warcraft, with better x y and z".
The Wrath expansion is being made fun of in my guild's voice chat during raids. I'm sorry but if they're so stretched for something cool to advertise that they're putting in stuff like "change your hairstyle" and "new dances" as something that might entertain me for more than 30 seconds, they need some serious clues. :)
As usual, they have borked the high-end raid content to be so intolerant of average to above-average raiding groups that few have seen them, and few will see them. Fewer than 75 people on my server raid Black Temple, and I don't expect that to change appreciably in the next six months.
Raiding guilds across the server are recruiting - the thread begging for people on our official realm board is very very long. Guild officers are rolling up critical classes so we can continue to progress, since we cannot find many competent players to recruit.
Most telling was our warlock class lead, who needed to recruit another lock as three of our locks have quit the game in the last two months. He got so desperate that he was sitting ingame doing /who warlock 70 to find people, and sending likely candidates tells. The most common response? "Sorry I'm not interested in raiding anymore, it's not fun."
There's only so much faction grinding you can do, also - once you have farmed for your 300 skill, and you've farmed your netherdrake, Skyguard rep, Ogri'la rep... you run out of things to do. In the
"old game" the natural progression was to join a guild that went to MC, and spend one night a week raiding for your tier 1. These days, the natural progression is to try and join a guild that's capable of running Karazhan, but then find that every other week your run has to be cancelled because the MT cannot make it or whatever, and there are no backups - because any tank or healer who really wants to raid has an easy ticket into the 25 man raiding guilds, because they're starved for critical classes.
Guilds on our server have disintegrated since they could not get the right people together for raids; Our raiding population has shrunk by 2/3. People are BORED. My guild is raiding SSC and TK - mostly because we just want to play together a few times a week. We find the raid content to be poorly designed and buggy as all hell. There is no "recovery", as if any key class disconnects during the fight, it's a wipe no matter what. Blizzard's desire to move beyond "tank and spank" bosses has led them into creating fights that are just ridiculously choreographed, given the vagaries of the internet and people's connectivity issues- what a pain in the arse, for the most part.
We have already as a guild decided to leave for WAR as soon as it opens.
Now you can argue with me all you want - the population on my server has shrunk tremendously. 80% of my friends list as of December 2006 has now quit the game. Some are playing LoTR til WAR opens, some are taking a break from MMOs til WAR opens, but we'll go to WAR big and several hundred strong, when the time comes.
How long has it been since Blizzard needed to add new servers to the US realm list?
So yeah - I don't doubt that Blizzard's numbers might be climbing (I used to work for a gaming company in the 90s, and I do know how numbers can get fudged and inflated using trial accounts, prepaid cards, and the like), according to their math. But I do think that if the numbers are climbing, the biggest source is overseas, where WoW is new to some markets. In the United States, WoW has passed its zenith. Consumers here are ready to experience something new.
Hellbena Aug 20th 2007 3:41PM
@6
You didn't read any of the BlizzCon stuff, did you. Capturable / Seigeable Cities? We already have Halaa, and then there will be Lake Wintergrasp, an entire seige ZONE. Guild vs Guild PVP? They're looking into that as a good possibility. Guild Housing? They're finally introducing the banks in 2.3, now that they've figured out how they want it to work, so housing may not be as unlikely to ever happen as you think.
And like #13 said, people don't know what they'll want, and change things once they do.
gundamxzero Aug 20th 2007 3:45PM
All I can say is war will kill a big chunk of wow. As proof look at how many people have already signed up for beta I think the numbers is like 500,000 last I checked. Thats huge.
Melador Aug 20th 2007 3:50PM
I pretty much agree, at least for certain demographics (the raiders, in particular). For a while Blizzard was adding servers constantly, and now I haven't heard of a new server in I don't remember how long.
A lot of servers are basically dead raiding-wise too. My old server, Detheroc, alliance-side is pretty much totally dead. All the raiding guilds have transferred off to higher-pop servers in search of better talent pools.
I wouldn't be surprised to see server merges at some point.
Maybe the overall playerbase won't decline too much, but IMO it won't be the "hot thing" in a couple years, and new MMOs will have a much better chance against it than they did a year ago, or they do currently.
MartinC Aug 20th 2007 4:10PM
@15:
Get a clue. The large majority of WoW players are *not* hardcore raiders, so making statements like "We only have 75 people raiding Black Temple now" are pointless. The majority of WoW players will never see Black Temple, and quite honestly, don't care. They play because they are having fun doing what they are doing, which is usually playing casually, and not dedicating their life to WoW.
New things like "change your hairstyle" and "new dances" are HUGE. Yes, HUGE. Once again, this is the kind of stuff that casual players have fun with, and the kind of stuff that draws new players to WoW. Let me tell you, most of the females I know that play WoW, are *very* critical about how their player looks. Of course all the hardcore raiders could probably care less about this stuff, but they are in the minority, so Blizzard is most definitely doing the right thing here, trying to please the majority, and also bring in more new players.
robotrock Aug 20th 2007 4:32PM
As a big Monkees fan I take offence to the idea that the Monkees were trying to copy the Beatles. If you know music history you'd know the Beatles loved the Monkees and neither band felt as if the Monkees were attempting to copy the Beatles.
bill gates Aug 20th 2007 4:41PM
You would have to be a seriously stupid person to think that Blizzard is not going to be a force in the MMO market in the future, maybe not WoW as it is today but you can bet your ass Blizzard is working on another MMO to pick up where WoW left off. WoW won't last forever, well no duh, but its going to take a while longer then 2 years to lose its crown. Blizz is run by a very smart group of people, they aren't going to sit on their thumbs and watch WoW fade into the sunset 10 years from now. Blizzard has to answer to Vivendi Interactive who wants to be making more money in 10 years not less. Its no wonder WoW is on top with competition this F-ing stupid.