Hail to the (Lich) King, baby
by Amanda Dean 
Feb 16th 2008 at 1:00PM
I didn't know there were quite so many MMORPGs active on the gaming market. WoW is unique among this video game genre because of it's continued growth. The player base for other games have leveled or tapered off. I couldn't even guess where the population will top out. With the popularity of the Burning Crusade and anticipation of Wrath of the Lich King, I would not be surprised to see more than fifteen million WoW players.
What makes WoW different from the competition? I did not play any MMORPGs before WoW, but I've heard horror stories about killer levels and excruciating raids from veterans of other games. With a little instruction I was able to ease into the game, and have found it a wonderful diversion for my off hours. World of Warcraft offers a range of experiences for players with a range of goals and time commitments. Ten million subscribers can't be wrong.
Will WoW be unseated as king of the MMORPGs? What would it take for a new game to ascend to the throne?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Ranking, Odds and ends, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
SHADOW RENEGADE Feb 16th 2008 1:16PM
I can't say any of the current games that are out or i have heard about will push it off its pedestal,although I'm still a believer that when you make a game this good the only person who can do it better is you, so what I'm saying is this new blizzard mmo is the only likely contender.
Bodlar Feb 16th 2008 1:24PM
To some extent I really hope Warhammer Online makes it big, but I don't think that will happen. I really think World of Starcraft will be the only thing to do better than WoW.
KillerKarl Feb 16th 2008 1:25PM
I imagine that there are millions of active accounts that no longer actually play the game. I know 9 people that haven't played in about a year but haven't stopped the automatic payments being charged to their credit cards.
Michael O'Connor Feb 16th 2008 3:53PM
"I imagine that there are millions of active accounts that no longer actually play the game."
Maybe a few thousand... but *millions* of non-active subscribers?
*saves this chart* Any time I see someone on the forums bitching that Blizzard is going to lose their entire customer base if "they don't fix this, that, or the other thing.", I'll link them to this.
Rich Feb 16th 2008 1:26PM
The question really isn't what will unseat WoW as the king of MMO's in the world, but will unseat WoW as the king of MMO's in the US and Europe. With about 5 million players, an MMO that comes out and say pulls 500,000 people away and keeps them at the new game, that's 10% of WoWs population. If AoC and/or WAR turn out to be good game, you can expect to see upwards of 20% of the userbase vaporize. That's being generous but i am just proving a point. If they keep people, it will be a majority of raiders and pvp'ers.
WoW is going to be around for a long long time and it will more than likely have more people playing it than any other game out there worldwide. The people in Asia seem to love all things Blizzard and we'll see WoW achieve Starcraft proportions in the near future.
The real wild card in all of this is the casual player. Is there an MMO that will pull them away? No not really, AoC and WAR won't steal a big portion of the casual crowd. There is only one game I can see putting a big dent in that crowd.
Spore...
Zo Feb 16th 2008 3:08PM
WoW has a lot more than 5 million players. about double it last i checked
Rich Feb 16th 2008 3:09PM
I should have more specific. There are about 5 million players in the US and Europe.
SHADOW RENEGADE Feb 16th 2008 1:28PM
I think it comes down to copy right,i mean blizzard own everything related to wow,but do the people who make warhammer/swg/and lord of the rings own 100% of the rights,now the things that makes wow great is the constant content we get,i mean can swg war and lotr do that?
Rich Feb 16th 2008 1:34PM
Owning the licsense really doesn't mean much if you don't do something with it. There are alot of great IPs that will make great MMOs. But its the execution, not the idea that makes the game. Matrix Online and SWG are two prime examples. FANTASTIC storylines, potential for content all ruined by bad game design.
Markymark Feb 16th 2008 1:32PM
I agree with the first comment. Please lets keep this blog post mature and not filled with "Warhammer owns" and etc. Warcraft is popular franchise all over the world before WoW was released so mix that with imporved principles of older MMO's and you get our current king. I don't think anyone will have numbers like WoW but success is measured by what you aim for in your goals. So if your goal is not to top WoW but maintain in the Market then you've reached your goal. I love WoW to death lol and if i stray I always find my self coming back.
SHADOW RENEGADE Feb 16th 2008 1:37PM
I think maybe the moral of the story is,wow dies when mmo's die.
Eternalpayn Feb 16th 2008 2:24PM
I don't know if you guys have played any other MMOs recently, without knowing what you are doing. They are confusing as hell. WoW? It was incredibly easy to know what was going on.
Kaiyr Jun 3rd 2008 5:06PM
"WoW is unique among this video game genre because of it's continued growth. The player base for other games have leveled or tapered off."
I'd just like to disagree with this, as EVE Online has yet to stop growing since it's release in 2003. Of course, it will never have as many subscribers as WoW, but it's to be expected of what is a far more niche game.
As for why WoW is so popular, I believe the answer is simple. Blizzard took the proven formulas of all the previously released MMOs and polished them to a shiny ball of fun. It then took it's money and advertised well, and used it's well known name in the games industry to generate hype and get people interested in their game. Once WoW was released, the mix of word of mouth interest and good advertising alongside the respected brand made it a guaranteed success. And I think that success will continue.
I also think that it's unlikely that another game will ever be as popular as WoW. WoW has cornered the standard MMO market, and so other MMOs need to have something unique and interesting to keep them going.
WoW may eventually lose it's place in the market, either because Blizzard had to stop expanding the game, or the game was expanded too much and new players just couldn't be bothered with the grind, but if it does, by that time people will know enough about MMOs not to need the introductory guide that is WoW (or in my case as an EVE player, the best choice for the standard MMO), and will instead pick from the wide range of choices in smaller games.
digibluez Feb 16th 2008 2:37PM
wow has one point out of game, that no other game has nor will, that are player made videos with wow engine,community websites...
Ancalimon Feb 16th 2008 3:12PM
@3 Either your friends have more money than they know what to do with it, or they're just too lazy to cancel their accounts, 'cuz i know they aren't payin to keep their toons in the system, as blizzard doesn't delete them for a VERY long time, if at all. mine was still there 7 months after my payments stopped. so if it's the money thing, they are more than welcom to pay my way through WoW.
Fel Feb 16th 2008 3:30PM
And it's hard enough to get a group in WoW.... this is exactly why I stopped playing EQ and CoH/V.
Kaiyr Feb 16th 2008 4:02PM
"wow has one point out of game, that no other game has nor will"
Incorrect again. I think most games have videos and fansites, and EVE certainly has some absolutely stuff dedicated to it. There are very few WoW videos that come close to the excellence portrayed by some EVE players in this department.
But I'll stop. It's a pretty bad idea to bang on about another game on a WoW fansite /o\
Dave Feb 16th 2008 4:31PM
How many times does this same topic need to be posted?
Someone needs to look up the word 'taper' because it doesn't mean 'slow but steady subscriber increases'.
Most of the games on the chart are NOT going down, they're slightly increasing their numbers. I'm not sure how you're reading charts, but it's clear there's a bias that wants to just ignore any data that doesn't agree with a preconcieved idea that WoW is making every other game developer cry and that they're all bleeding customers like it's a zero-sum game. (it isn't).
There are a few games that appear to be dying out, but they're almost all games that have been announced as end-of-life or are generally accepted to be dead in the water as far as development of new content goes. Lineage for example is clearly superceded by Lineage 2, so there's no reason to expect anything but subscribers to leave and pick up the sequel. (at least in the US, people in Korea picked it up, dropped it and have moved on to something else in large amounts).
Most other MMO's are gaining subscribers despite the popularity of WoW. Your analysis is completely incorrect.
Yes, WoW is still the big dog, but that's a blindingly obvious statement that can be made by anyone who knows absolutely nothing about anything at all really.
Familiarity breeds success. Blizzard is the big recognized name, everyone knows someone playing WoW, etc etc. There's absolutely nothing but Blizzard doing something horrible that'll unseat WoW as the king. That's not the same thing however as other games coming along and being successful which is what this whole nonsense that keeps being posted seems to imply.
An MMO can be profitable on as little as 100,000 subscribers. Maybe less, maybe more depending on economic factors, but No other games need to be the king! They don't even need to try, at all, in any capacity to beat WoW's monumental subscriber base. When they do, the games tend to be fairly boring and uninteresting, which is why Tabula Rasa and LOTRO aren't exactly burning it up.
Do you like WoW with Guns and future tech? Tabula Rasa! Would you rather have Hobbits and Ents instead of Gnomes and Treants? LOTRO! They're fundamentally the same game, so why not?
The only thing that's going to unseat WoW, is a fundamentally different game that's both fun to play and offers the same amount of replayability in different varieties.
Game makers aren't making that game. They're making WoW clones and hoping enough people like the familiar feel of the game to stop playing WoW. It's a stupid idea, by stupid executives who don't understand why people play games and why they keep playing the games they like.
Every single new game will fail, until this very simple concept is realized. Why quit WoW for the same game in another form where you don't have your stuff, friends and knowledge about the game? It has to be different, on a fundamental level.
If there's a re-do of a Star Wars MMO from the ground up to be a fun and exciting game (lets say the KOTOR times, or New Jedi Order times) rather than something shoehorned into existing SW lore... that could kill WoW. BioWare is rumored to be making the KOTOR game, and if that's true I think that WoW will be in serious trouble. BioWare makes top notch games, and Star Wars is an undeniable brand name. That's the initial winning combo that WoW had... and it's really the only thing I can see that will steal people from WoW in significant amounts.
I sure know I'm done with WoW if there's a quality Star Wars MMO. There's absolutely no way for anything in WoW to compete with lightsabers, force powers and bounty hunters if its done well.
Markymark Feb 16th 2008 4:51PM
I doubt a star wars MMO would top WoW. I think it would have to be a new IP or a different genre then fantasy. WoW will probably fade away but i doubt that's anytime soon.
Matdredalia Feb 16th 2008 5:52PM
In my opinion, what makes WoW overwhelm the competition is that not only does it have more global support than other games, but it also had not one, not two, but three award-winning franchise's under it's belt before it attempted this endeavor into the land of MMO's.
How many millions of fans do you think Blizzard gained through Diablo I & II, Warcraft I, II, & III, and StarCraft? Even if the person only played one of these games and really enjoyed it, that was a fan. They had six games to draw fans from, as well as a lot of experience to pull from on keeping those fans happy with BNet.
Also, WarCraft I, II, & III had already spawned several books, and the games themselves had a mass amount of lore to draw from. Thus, there was a prebuilt world that Blizzard and their writers and developers could draw from and run with.
Also, by the time WoW came out, the MMO market had already been in full swing for quite some time with games like EverQuest, Final Fantasy XI, Lineage I & II, Ragnarok Online, Dark Ages of Camelot, Horizons, Star Wars Galxies, etc. I would be willing to bet that a lot of Blizz's dev's played one of the aforementioned games, if only to get an idea of where they needed to set the bar (or, as Blizzard usually does, pass it).
For example, EverQuest had already been out for five years when WoW came out, and in that time, they screwed up. A lot. Blizzard had the advantage of learning from their mistakes, as well as others. They got to see where EQ excelled, and where it lacked, and figure out the best way to exploit both of those things.
However, there is going to be a developer, eventually, that is going to have played WoW, EQ, SWG, etc. That developer is going to know to take all of the best things from these games and compile them. Yes, WoW will be conquered as "King of the MMO" (though I really don't think it is, I think it's king of long-running franchises.....EverQuest basically invented the MMO genre and is what really put it on the map in the western world and they did it without any previous fans of franchises). The reason that Blizzard will be knocked off their throne is simple: they did it to themselves.
They have opened the MMO market to an entirely new group of players. And they are luring more and more people in every day. However, not all of these players like everything about WoW. So, they've gotten a taste for the MMO experience and like some of it, but not WOW's version, so they head on over to another game. Maybe a little EverQuest II?
MMO's can only get better, not worse. And if they use Blizzard's experiences and learn from Blizz's mistakes, they will, ultimately, build a better mouse trap.