MMO Roundup: Last week on Massively
by Alex Ziebart 
Dec 14th 2010 at 1:00PM
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World of Warcraft will reign for another 20 years, according to industry analysts With all of the recent focus on World of Warcraft following its latest expansion, it's no surprise that the industry leader is at the center of another round of "What will topple WoW?" discussions. In an article on Eurogamer, industry analysts and developers lend their thoughts as to what made World of Warcraft so dang popular to begin with, and what it will take -- if anything -- for another game to beat its popularity. |
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Square Enix staff restructuring, seeking "new direction" for Final Fantasy XIV Square Enix dropped a bomb on its fan base late last week with an announcement of a staff restructuring, a plan for a completely new direction for Final Fantasy XIV, and a delay of the PlayStation 3 version of the game. |
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The Old Republic video talks crew skills and PvP BioWare has recently release a five-minute video of Star Wars: The Old Republic in-game footage. BioWare's Daniel Erickson explains the game's gathering, crafting, and mission components that make up crew skills, as well as the game's PvP system. |
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The Perfect Ten: MMO cataclysms The notion of an in-game cataclysm is hardly the sole domain of Activision-Blizzard; on the contrary, large-scale apocalypses pop up all the time in MMOs. After all, nothing grabs the attention like the end of the world (but hey, you still feel fine)! |
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EA puts faith in The Old Republic's lifespan and profits With all the cries of doom and gloom against Star Wars: The Old Republic -- not to mention accusations of a wildly bloated production budget -- one may be led to believe that TOR will fail even before it sees the light of day. EA, on the other hand, is expressing a calm confidence in the game's potential longevity and financial success. |
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Week in Review: Cataclysmic Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking as far as Massively's best content of the week goes. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup. |
Filed under: MMO Roundup
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Grovinofdarkhour Dec 14th 2010 1:09PM
20 more years? Damn.
Guess we won't be catching up with the Chinese any time soon.
strusell Dec 14th 2010 1:14PM
Logged in for the 20th anniversary and still no pet.
Al Dec 14th 2010 6:27PM
Forget the pet, I'm still waiting for those 16 steins.
Amaxe Dec 14th 2010 1:17PM
From the linked article:
"Undead Labs' Jeff Strain thinks that MMO studios should be looking at it a different way: "They should instead be striving to achieve the same level of success with their own game ideas.""
I believe he is right. However, there seems to be one more aspect which these experts don't seem to consider, and that is the collapsing from within not being overtaken from without.
In 20 years span, who knows where the people who made the Warcraft franchise will be? Who knows whether they or their replacements will continue putting out quality to keep things going.
In other words, these projections don't anticipate Blizzard jumping the shark, pissing off the fan base or otherwise imploding. If these things happen, WoW could last considerably less than 20 years.
Mcdreamy Dec 14th 2010 2:02PM
I agree! This article doesn't delve into the "Bobby Kotick will destroy us all" possibility. He seems to almost have a disdain for games, so I honestly feel that he will be the biggest challenge to WoW's success.
roseclown Dec 14th 2010 2:30PM
/agreed
For instance: The realID nightmare. I myself canceled my sub during that, as did many other people. Sure, I renewed it the moment they took it back, but really? If they try any stuff like that again, I'm gone.
WoW will toppled itself. Whether it be a voluntary stepping down, or a huge mistake, that is what is going to happen. Because right now, they are still innovating the game. WoW, despite being around for awhile, has changed and is different from most other MMO's.
We will need something larger than life to beat it.
David Dec 14th 2010 6:20PM
@roseclown
the RealID nightmare where "loads" of people left isn't even that accurate. At most a few thousand people left out of 12 million, that wouldn't even HURT Blizzard.
Al Dec 14th 2010 6:30PM
Keep in mind they repealed it pretty quick, so most of the people who would have cancelled over it didn't have time.
Saephon Dec 14th 2010 1:37PM
The only thing that will end WoW is Blizzard themself. And I don't mean it's going to jump the shark; I mean eventually Blizzard will decide they've done everything they've wanted to do with it, and it will be succeeded by a new MMO of their making. How far away that day is is anyone's guess...I'd estimate we're getting at least a few more expansions.
In the meantime, I truly wish the industry would stop trying to make it that market. It's too saturated; there is currently no room for a huge budget, get-rich-quick game that appeals to a massive audience. If you want to succeed, hit a niche market or do something no one else has done yet. There ARE a large number of MMO lovers who detest WoW (as lame as some of their reasons can be); these same people jump from game to game, usually F2P ones, looking for something that does it right. The reason they keep hopping is because none of those games have really struck gold to get more than a tiny market. If you figure out how to do that, start small then work your way up thanks to a loyal fanbase, and TRULY boast something unique about your game, then you will find success.
As long as WoW's around, that is an MMO developer's only path. Either be unique and don't have huge aspirations and costs that you can't recoup in the first year, or try to imitate WoW and scratch your head in confusion as people try the game for a week and then go back to WoW because it's well-established, polished, and better. I mean, really? Is it that hard to figure this crap out?
Rob Dec 14th 2010 2:39PM
I think it is hard. LOTRO for example and DDO are good or maybe great games. But I don't play them. I tried them, sure. And its alot like WoW, only not as good. So whenever you are competing against something you know and love it's really hard to penetrate.
Star Trek could have been great. Huge fanbase, etc. But the launch didn't go that great, people ran out of content very quickly, and now nobody plays. Maybe in 5 years if they keep plugging away the game will be great. But the number crunchers aren't going to see that, they see the bleeding and kill it. The thing about WoW which is i guess unique is that they kept plugging away, day after day, year after year. In the beginning I guess the game was pretty sucky. I jumped at BC, and i thought it was great. Then they did Wraith, and showed that raids could be more accessable and quests a bit funner. Now with cata we have new races, new zones, great questing, everything streamlined. Every patch, there is something in there that surprises me or delights me. Alot of the number adjustment nerfing i could do without, but the point is with every patch the game gets better. For example, everyone expected the world to implode on cata launch day. Nope, it was fine. And they have gone through dozens of major content patches already.
I think any major studio that keeps working after 5+ years on the same code base must be getting it to a state where it's really pretty good. Sure there will always be bugs, but on the whole, they did a really good job with WoW.
RogueJedi86 Dec 14th 2010 3:24PM
Would it be in bad taste to mention SWTOR? I'm very eager for it, and I think it has a shot of standing alongside WoW. I won't say "WoW Killer" since that term has been used too often and has failed every time, but I think it could come close to WoW. BioWare Austin seems to be going over everything that works in the MMO scene and scrapping the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. Stuff like a full single player narrative for each class is just the next step to the soloability that WoW has pushed. The offline crafting just takes out some of the tedium of crafting. They have the big budget that an MMO needs to compete with WoW, and they have a quality company behind it that is known for making great RPGs.
So while I won't say TOR will kill WoW, I am eager to see it possibly stand beside WoW as an equal. Some competition would help WoW too, encouraging Blizzard to get off their laurels and do more(I hate to say it, but finishing dance studios maybe?). What is it they say about people doing best when there's competition to motivate them?
Amaxe Dec 14th 2010 3:59PM
Well SWTOR would probably be the one game to get me out of MMO retirement.
However there is this caveat: When Warhammer online was announced, I was excited about what I heard. The problem is: the closer I got to launch, the less fun it sounded. Depending on how the news goes, I may find myself becoming less interested.
seanbob91 Dec 14th 2010 2:02PM
"World of Warcraft will reign for another 20 years, according to industry analysts"
At least no one here on the WOW team @ AOL will have to worry about losing their jobs :P
Mesphito Dec 14th 2010 3:25PM
Warhammer 40k Dark Millennium looks like its going to be badass. If there was game that would tear me away from wow it would be this game.
http://www.darkmillenniumonline.com/
xenite46383 Dec 14th 2010 3:35PM
WoW will not last another twenty years at least not in this incarnation. The game engine is to dated and in twenty years nobody will want to play what will be equivalent to Ultima Online graphics wise.
I give this incarnation of WoW another 6-8 years. It could last longer but it's going to require a completely new game engine, which is possible.... sort of a Cataclysm 2.0
Amaxe Dec 14th 2010 4:37PM
I would guess this would depend on the trend of other MMOs. I do know UO and EQ1 were the big names of the past. Did they ever upgrade their engines? Does WoW intend to?
So if the game is to last 20 years, it would have to upgrade the engine (I don't think you can even run those old games on a 2010 computer without it being ported) since we have no idea as to the capacity of the computer in 2030 compared today. Let's look at the hardware/graphic of 1990.
In 1990, we had 286 to 486 CPUs with a speed of 16-50MHZ depending. We didn't see Pentium until 1993. We were just starting to get into 32bit. Windows 3.0, SVGA graphics, mostly with 800x600 (I think 1024x768 was huge), no Sound Blaster card until 1991, etc. You still had the 640 kib bottleneck. I think it was about 40-60$ per MB of memory (1990 seemed to be a breakthrough year for memory with prices falling and card sizes expanding). CD-ROM drives were 1x.
No way in hell you could run something built for that on a computer built in 2010 without it being ported. It seems unlikely WoW would be around in 2030 based on the advances every year unless they chose to meet every new change in computers. Just like we can't run 16 bit any more, we may see the loss of running 32 bit.
So would Blizzard want to do this? Or will they cut their losses over time and move on?
Rude Hero Dec 14th 2010 5:12PM
By this point, WoW isn't just a game; it's a cultural phenomenon. Even if a better game comes out (which is a significant challenge in and of itself- WoW's had almost a decade of development time applied to it already), the real challenge will be pulling people away from the culture of WoW.
If you want to switch games, you probably won't want to switch without your friends, who won't want to switch without THEIR friends, and so on and so forth. It's a social network that won't easily be unwound.
Al Dec 14th 2010 5:34PM
"20 years already, huh? Congrats.. now, how about improving Oceanic service? At all?"