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by Mike Schramm 
Oct 26th 2009 at 5:00PM
So now, two months from the end of 2009, let's just say it: it's not possible. World of Warcraft is an aberration, an extremely well-made game that happened to be in just the right time and place (the casual game explosion, the adoption of MMOs and subscription model gaming, the "mainstreaming" of fantasy/sci-fi geekiness) to become an uber megahit. In short, game developers simply can't recreate WoW, at least not on purpose. As BoJ says, that doesn't mean they can't try -- there are certainly lots of original and interesting games and MMOs out there, and it's completely possible to be an MMO that isn't WoW-sized and be successful. But as for the actual question of beating WoW and its worldwide audience, game developers have pretty much moved on.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 6)
Candina@WH Oct 26th 2009 5:30PM
Time will Kill WoW. No Franchise is forever. Writer/Creative fatigue will (has?) set in. The core technologies won't age well. Eventually the player base will tire of the idiom and wander away. Fragmentation will kill WoW, not a new killer game.
WoW is an abberation. And while another game may put up the numbers that WoW had at it's peak, I doubt any game will have the same impact that WoW has had. WoW's number are amazing. But they are part of the growth computer gaming moving more into the mainstream. WoW would never have reached it's size without changes that made computer gaming more socially acceptible and more economically feasible (cheap, pervaisive highspeed internet).
Fierna Oct 26th 2009 7:16PM
I don't know, that little plumber guy still keeps cranking out the hits on the consoles.
Candina@WH Oct 27th 2009 7:43AM
@Fierna
Actually, you inadvertently proved my point. Donkey Kong was HUGE. Mario Bros. was Huge.
But those games are dead now. Derivative titles exist, but they are not as popular as the original (numbers wise, more people may play them, but they have a lower percentage of people playing).
WoW will die, over time. A WoW sequel or derivative may emerge, but WoW will die and fragment.
jasonkidd1234 Oct 26th 2009 9:43PM
I've tried a few other mmo's, and personally I don't see WoW losing the MMO crown any time soon.
I used to dislike wow. I got 3 characters to 40 but never bothered to finish leveling them, so I switched to warhammer, thinking it would appeal more to me.
Well, I played it, got to 20, and abrubtly quit. (Along with 4 other friends) If an MMO wants a chance to beat WoW, it needs to be more polished than WoW at realese, and have some gimmicks that will help it attract people.
Warhammers biggest problem was that it reminded you of playing wow. It was kinda like playing a Beta of a WoW expansion in a different universe. It had some fun new features, and the PVP was fun, but it made me want to play WoW more than ever.
Another important aspect of beating WoW is too have an appealing community. Warhammer Online's community was made up of pvp freaks, lore freaks, or people who were like me and just wanted to try it out. This lead to interesting chat between the group, and the WoW bashers were quickly flamed, which lead to a "rift" between WoW defenders and Warhammer freaks, which made it seem more hostile than WoW's community (crazy idea, I know) and made you miss the people that played WoW and WEREN'T jerks.
If Aion and other fantasy games hope to dethrone WoW, they'll need good community, nice gimmicks, and not be too simular to WoW (Unless they are more polished than WoW).
I honestly think that Warhammer HELPED WoW out a bunch. I know I'm not the only person who went back to WoW after "quitting" because Warhammer reminded me of a less polished version of it.
jfofla Oct 26th 2009 5:38PM
There is one thing about WOW that all the pretenders don't have and don't seem to understand the importance of it.
A Mac Version.
That is what makes WOW universal.
Blizzard gets it.
Frank Oct 26th 2009 7:58PM
it's true that mac support has always been something that blizzard has understood: they treat their mac base as well as their treat their windows base. it's one of the things that has certainly kept me coming to blizzard for games.
Kyle Oct 27th 2009 2:41AM
I can't even stress how important it is for developers to invest in making a Mac friendly game engine. If your game only works on PCs, you've just cut yourself off from additional subscribers and a much larger community. This will be a contributing factor to why Aion will not ever be as big or as good as WoW.
kmfolino Oct 26th 2009 5:40PM
Also realize that WoW came on the heels of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, so the mass population were in the fantasy world mood!
Moonkinmaniac Oct 26th 2009 5:42PM
Just thinking of NCsoft and Aion makes me angry. I had two of their games one worked fine the other I got a warning on patch day that it was trying to download a trojan onto my machine!! I contacted the help after searching long for their email and their hours and they were incredibly rude. They said it was a common problem that it was likely nothing, but I've been playing computer games for many many years and never saw a message like that. before I don't like how Blizzard does everything, but there's no beating WoW right now especially if their biggest competition is NCcrapsoftware.
Artificial Oct 26th 2009 5:51PM
Um, you can't really blame NCsoft for the poor quality of your malware detector.
jbodar Oct 26th 2009 7:03PM
I was trying out Avira antivirus and it claimed that the installer for TBC was a Trojan during a full hard disk scan -- I had installed the expansion months earlier. I reported the false positive to Avira and they confirmed it in a couple days. The next definitions came out and the file scanned as clean. You have to take these things with a grain of salt. Maybe NCSoft could have been less "rude" but they had a reason for not taking you too seriously. AVs are not infallible and some are notorious for false positives. I no longer use Avira, BTW.
BigB Oct 26th 2009 5:43PM
not to start a stupid pc/mac flame war but remember wow came out on both platforms at the same time, and while mac gamers aren't a huge niche, its big enough to cause large word of mouth for Blizzards games via word of mouth for their support for the mac platform.
All these others MMOs are PC only, and like I said mac users aren't enough to turn a game into a super hit, every little bit helps I think.
Jafari Oct 27th 2009 6:05PM
I think the market tapped by the mac-friendliness is larger than mac users. One of my most frequent questing/dungeon partners who is also a rl friend plays on a mac. I actually quit the game for five months just before wrath came out, and it was him starting to play that brought me back. So, in a way, I'm a customer who was brought in due to the mac support (although I use a PC)
Chirri Oct 26th 2009 5:46PM
I consider WoW to be the second 3D MMO that's had this sort of lucky placement and developer love. In keeping with that sort of experience, I'm of the opinion that an MMO like this will only be overtaken or outdone when the developers decide it's time for that to happen - and by developers, I mean the developers of our currently beloved game, NOT the people trying to outdo them.
I've been playing MMOs for about a decade now - not a super long time for old school MMO players, but I was never able to immerse myself in MUDDs or the like. I never experienced a welcoming community to dive into, and without that, relying entirely on my own imagination for such games wasn't an option for me.
I got into EQ (and helped create a very small MMO community I still participate with to this day).
EQ changed a lot between it's start and today, and the main reason I left EQ was because Verant and then Sony's (primary) developers left EQ. They basically moved on to greener pastures, and with those creative minds and that particular inspiration gone, the magic of the game simply disappeared. It wasn't over night, and IMO it was sort of a conscious decision: Sony wanted to make a new EQ from scratch, tailored to their own specifications. EQ2 came out not long before WoW came out. EQ2 failed to capture my attention, WoW was alright and WoW was where most of my gaming friends had landed - so WoW is where I ended up.
I feel the same will need to occur with WoW: When the next MMO from Blizzard starts going into serious production, WoW will start to be allowed to go slowly fallow. Some would argue this is already happening, or began quite some time ago, and that may well be the case, but we're all aware that if it IS happening, it's still a rather slow decay right now. At the very least, they're still using WoW as their testing ground for possibilities in the future, rather than churning out tiny pay-for-small-content encounters in a bid to keep people interested (our content patches are freeeeeeeee!).
Neglect on the developer's part will be what hammers the final nail into WoW's coffin, not a brand new shiny game. (I've tried all of the other MMOs that have come out in the last 10 years that might possibly hold any interest for me, and they're not bad, but I haven't been able to make any of them my new MMO Home; I likely won't be able to until my community makes a move to the next heavy hitting MMO en mass)
Phil Oct 26th 2009 5:58PM
While I agree it won't happen before the end of year, I am not at all convinced that WoW cannot be over taken by an unrelated IP. We have a interesting situation coming up, Bioware, like Blizzard has consistently released awesome games over and over agian. Blizzard's first venture into the MMO market was a massive success obviously.
Now we have Bioware, another extremely successful game developer who is taking its first foray into MMO's. I believe if any of the MMO's announced or otherwise have a chance Star Wars: The Old Republic is the only one that could over take WoW. Let's face it we have a company that has delivered the goods time and time agian. Their first Star Wars RPG was fantastic (at least in my opinion) and they have a good knowledge of how a successful RPG should work, granted none of these were MMO's. But i suspect they have the talent and knowledge to make a great MMO, that is already set in a universe most nerds/geeks/gamers/etc know and love.
I am also willing to bet Blizzard is trying to release Cataclysm around the time SW:TOR goes live as well.
Just my thoughts
dhj Oct 26th 2009 6:53PM
I love bioware and their games. They are easily as good a developer as blizzard. The big difference, and the biggest problem at least from my point of view, is the IP.
Blizzard used their own IP and thereby they have complete control over the story and such.
BW on the other hand is using Star Wars. Now, i don't know how much control they have over everything, but if you look at SWG, they probably wont be the ones to take the biggest decisions, at least story wise.
I also have a hard time playing anything from a publisher such as LucasArts because of the way they tend to rush everything, and go by the old "Release now patch later (Maybe) strategy.
If BW does get complete control over the story arcs and such though, i believe that TOR will be one hell of a game and perhaps one to rival WoW.
BWJ Oct 27th 2009 12:20AM
The one thing that will keep SW:TOR from being a WoW killer is this:
Not all of us are Star Wars junkies, and there's a lot of people like me, who find Star Wars fanbois so annoying, we won't go anywhere near a Star Wars title.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movies, but the game is going to be crammed with uberfans, and I really want nothing to do with that crowd.
It's the same for Star Trek. The shows were enjoyable, the movies fun, but I don't want to be immersed in that world and deal with the Trekkies and Trekkers.
WoW works because it's easy lore to get into, there's no pre-existing group of people like the Star Wars and Star Trek camp to deal with (and even tho WoW has grown it's own equivelants, they're not nearly as established or annoying), and the lore and world of WoW is a mix of ALL genres, with in-jokes and campiness and seriousness.
SW:TOR is going to be a brutal game for non-fanbois to play - servers will be packed with endless arguments over lore, over who's better, Han or Luke, and massive nerd rage if they don't get every little detail exactly perfect. I just have zero interest in that community, and that community already has far too much invested personally to be open and welcome to newbies.
The only fantasy world that could compete with WoW right now and do as well as or overtake WoW is Harry Potter's universe. It has a built-in fan base that is enormous and is international, it's a fairly easy world to enter, and it's got enough humor and seriousness to satisfy everyone - as long as they did'nt make it a day care center for 6-12 year olds. Wow is fairly similar to Harry Potter in many respects, in terms of characters, humor, accessablity to a wide age group, and just enough dark humor and content to keep the hardcore interested.
A new IP would have to be that good to compete - and not be based on an insular and very newb hostile crowd like Star Wars, or any of the Nerd Canon titles. Star Wars is a beacon of light for a very specific and small community of people, and the average person on the street has already been exposed to that community and feels uncomfortable joining it - the Star Wars crowd has been the butt of jokes and ridicule for decades now.
Besides, the way to beat Wow is to ignore Wow. Who says that anyone needs to beat WoW? There's plenty of people out there who've never played an MMO, and there's plenty of room for a new title to build it's own playerbase without having to steal from WoW. Too many of the games are based on the same tired ideas, and few of them have the right mix to appeal to a broad appeal of people who aren't obsessed with a specific movie or set of books.
The next game that comes close to WoW will do what WoW did, and make it's own rules, and carve it's own way in the wilderness, and throw away the rule book.
I don't see a whole lot of that in the current crop of publishers. *shrug*. Dunno. We'll see.
busuan Oct 26th 2009 5:52PM
I think Cataclysm will be a critical point.
So far, WoW lore is essentially a continuation of Warcraft1/2/3 saga. It stops when we down Arthas the Lich King. Cataclysm will have to create its own momentum, unlike WoW could comfortably rest on Warcraft3 characters and lore.
Cataclysm/wow4.0 will be the truth new game. WoW will either take off from there, or be forgotten.
The same time next year would be a good time for us to ask this question again...
Evelinda Oct 27th 2009 11:06AM
technically, cataclysm is still resting on the rts games' lore... deathwing is from wc2 :P
Chris Anthony Oct 27th 2009 3:37PM
I think you're vastly overestimating the number of WOW players who have ever even seen screenshots of the previous Warcraft games.