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Blows Against The Empire
Industry analysts DFC Intelligence answer the question: is it even possible to compete with World of Warcraft any more?\’c2\~ (Hint: yes.)
The game has raised the bar for MMOG products, particularly in terms of revenue generation. However, there are some fundamental misconceptions about the game that are particularly problematic. In the end, it is a great game that has perhaps recalibrated investor expectations for MMOG products beyond what makes sense. There is a lot of supposedly new talk about the “World of Warcraft model”. To longtime industry observers, this talk is more retro (or even tired) than it is revolutionary. We have heard this tune before, only where the lyrics once featured EverQuest, now they sing World of Warcraft.
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about 4 years ago
The only game that can beat World of Warcraft will be developed by Blizzard.
about 4 years ago
Yeah, nothing really surprising there. Or, I should say: “Nothing surprising there, except to newbie analysts, VCs and investment funds.”
about 4 years ago
I don’t have to queue up and stand in line\\camp for 10 hours to get my uberfoozle from some fuzzle in WoW. I think that alone makes it a superior game compared to EQ. No Abashi in WoW either, so that means I play when it’s fun rather than put Blizzard into that special evil place that Sony is.
Is it possible to compete? Of course. Make a better game. Easier said than done it may be, but still true nonetheless.
about 4 years ago
Really, everyone in business should know certain things. One of these is quite simple: you don’t become successful by duplicating an existing business and then competing against it. You either seperate yourself far enough to fill a different area of the market, or you improve upon the existing business plan so greatly as to overtake it. I sure as hell don’t see anyone beating Blizzard at its own game.
about 4 years ago
Wouldnt Hollywood do great under this model.
VC guys: Is this movie going to make more than Titanic?
99.99999999% of Every good movie ever made, Producer: Ah no probably not.
VC Guys: Never mind then
about 4 years ago
/roll
so WoW is at the MySpace level and will only be eclipsed by time? If so does that mean it’s a “fad” (and isn’t every MMO a fad?) I wonder about MySpace like WoW, what will happen when so many of the first time MMO players and younger players start to grow out of it. Of course, that’s going to take another few years. Also, you’d think that bulk of Chinese subs might be a little open to competition from over there, or else suffer from any government upset. Pretty sure in a crisis the Chinese government will be throttling their Interweb.
about 4 years ago
lol @ hollywood.
Now I don’t think any straight up MMORPG will ever top WoW. No fantasy IP has the strength… even within the Blizzard offices. Sure Starcraft is HUGE, but Warcraft is much bigger now. Starcraft is a competitive sport in Asia and throwing a MMO on top of that could possibly ruin what Starcraft has become. Diablo, while great, just doesn’t have the wide appeal that WoW has now. Subject matter is a bit more mature and a little less friendly to those who don’t like the whole heaven vs. hell storyline.
What will beat WoW is a casual, free to play game. Something that gets attached to Cable TV like a Puzzle Pirates : Channel 99.
about 4 years ago
IP has nothing to do with it. Making a game on a franchise only gives you two things: Intial buzz and source material. Intial buzz can backfire. Look at SWG. In hind sight, there is no way the actual game could have lived up to the fanbois’ expectations. The same goes for source material. The existing source material can be as much a liability as a benifit. If the players are buying the game because of the IP, they are expecting a certain type of experience. They do not want to be a hero, they want to be THE hero. This can lead to dissappointment when they are expected to be happy slaughtering mongbats instead of taking down Lord Blackthorn.
about 4 years ago
I don’t see any other MMO coming close to World of Warcraft numbers until someone is able to polish another genre to perfection like Blizzard did with the fantasy MMORPG. I think the most likely suspect would be a MMOFPS that figures out how to get around the simplification of combat that guns bring to the table.
I expect Huxley and Tabula Rasa to do a lot of the groundwork on combining First Person Shooters with a persistant virtual worlds. However, it will be the game that can take their ground work and make it into a widely appealing game that will have a chance of getting numbers like World of Warcraft. Be on the lookout for any games that announce development after those two have gone live.
P.S. It would be ironic as hell if World of Starcraft took over this genre.
http://relmstein.blogspot.com
about 4 years ago
Just yesterday I was reading through an old message board post from the early days of DAoC. It was a collected “wish list” of desired additions/features for the game, as voiced by the player base. For almost every bullet point, I found myself thinking, “Blizzard did exactly that with WoW”. And most of the features were fairly simply, not anything earthshaking or groundbreaking.
Take a look at a similar “wish list” for WoW…what does the player base still want in a massively multiplayer fantasy game? The game that provides that (without adding bugs or other barriers to casual play) is going to be the game that beats WoW, pure and simple.
about 4 years ago
I agree that an MMOFPS is the untapped genre that could be the next WoW of the market, however, there are a few issues with this.
EA is working their ass off to make MMOFPS a blip in gaming history, like a zip drive or a beeper… you’ll think back and go “oh yeah, I remember those.” BF2142 is basically Planetside, except better, requiring more skill, and probably allowing more advancement. Their system of allowing players to run their own localized servers which connect to the master server for persistance is probably going to be the way of the future for the MMOFPS, and unless our broadband gets up to South Korea’s level of speed, a centralized MMOFPS server will always be sluggish in comparison and lack because of it.
Also, I feel that Huxley and TR are actually working the genre in the WRONG direction. An MMOFPS only has the ability to do one thing that a regular FPS cannot: Provide a sense of REAL WAR. Huge fights, land conquering, resource management, and strategic combat. To make an MMOFPS that doesn’t make use of those points is to put the genre to waste and failure which will kill it.
about 4 years ago
Off topic: Is google putting RMT ads on your site?
Relevant to the readers interests, IMO! These BroGame people offer 10-20% lower prices than market average, sweet!
about 4 years ago
EA is not capable of making a MMOFPS that would be a success. Pretty much every EA fps suffers from stupid annoying bugs that never get fixed. Stuff like the server browser not working correctly in the Battlefield server for about 6 years now. EA is much better at putting out console games like Madden that get updated every year. MMOGs? forget it.
a true MMOFPS (not this Tabula Rosa fake targeting crap) is going to be hard to make and will require good QA (something EA really sucks at) and a long term commitment. (Another thing EA sucks at)
about 4 years ago
“Their system of allowing players to run their own localized servers which connect to the master server for persistance is probably going to be the way of the future for the MMOFPS”
Could you imagine the kind of exploits that might come of that? Connecting to a master server pretending to be a legit server and BAM, you just won 1st place in the 10-minute killarama tournament with 1 million kills (second place guy only got 200), enjoy your ipod!
about 4 years ago
“Just yesterday I was reading through an old message board post from the early days of DAoC. It was a collected \’e2\’80\’9cwish list\’e2\’80\’9d of desired additions/features for the game, as voiced by the player base. For almost every bullet point, I found myself thinking, \’e2\’80\’9cBlizzard did exactly that with WoW\’e2\’80\’9d. And most of the features were fairly simply, not anything earthshaking or groundbreaking.
Take a look at a similar \’e2\’80\’9cwish list\’e2\’80\’9d for WoW\’e2\’80\’a6what does the player base still want in a massively multiplayer fantasy game? The game that provides that (without adding bugs or other barriers to casual play) is going to be the game that beats WoW, pure and simple.”
This is exactly right, and the big wish list item for WoW right now is good, meaningful PvP, but not too meaningful that it destroys the game for the losing side. If Mythic can deliver that, they may at least get 1 million subs, and steal a lot of the business from Blizzard.
To beat WoW, one must learn the Lessons of WoW. With well over half the players in NA/Euro playing on PvP servers, despite the fact that on PvP servers you can be ‘ganked’ during 80% of the leveling process, means that PvP is not only ‘safe’ put in casual MMOs but is probably required. Add to this that participating (notice I didn’t say competing) in PvP at the endgame is more accessable than PvE in the endgame, and you can see that PvP is a large part of the paradigm. I would go so far to say that from looking at WoW, any game that does not incorporate PvP in some way is committing suicide.
about 4 years ago
Freakazoid said:
The way I see it, cheating is going to happen. If someone wants to cheat to unlock all of their equipment, so be it. People will also exploit bugs, they’ll create aim bots, and speed hacks have yet to be completely defeated!
What I should have said is that this is the way of the present and near future. What is Battlefield 2 and 2142 if not an MMO? Is it the Guild Wars of the MMOFPS, perhaps? These games keep persistant character data, they allow you to play with millions, and they reward time invested with neat little medals and shiney things.
I would very much like to see some companies return to attempting the MMOFPS genre. I feel that WWIIOL and Planetside laid down some great framework for what could come in the future, and 64 player maps are not enough for me. But for now, it is far more practical to give players the persistance they crave in a setting that is familiar to them (localized privately owned servers).
A note on exploitation: I am not sure if EA requires you to do a deal with them in order to get your server “ranked”, that is, have it communicate with the master server. I know that in BF2 and BF2142 they have a “Rent a Server” button, but since I am not a clan leader or server operator I have never bothered to look into it. My point is though that you could limit exploitation by requiring server owners to have some level of credentials in order to connect with the master server, and especially if you had the right at any time to revoke their “ranked” status for foul play.
about 4 years ago
EA requires that you deal with them to get a Ranked server. For example. the peeps at ECGNetwork are required to provide 10 free public servers if they want to rent our Ranked private servers.
That being said, BF2 would be a complete flop if it required a monthly fee to play.
about 4 years ago
I’ve played 3 alpha or beta MMOs in the last year all of which I compare directly to WoW unless I’m citing something I don’t like that AC, EQ, Eve, whomever *also* did badly.
Take the WoW UI, for example. Not only is the “stock” version pretty damned good, but the community that is UI modding have done some sick, SICK things entirely within the toolset that Blizzard provided. That particular bar has been set and frozen forever in my mind now. Any new game I play MUST start out with an above-average UI AND have the capacity to grow and change based on how I want to play the game. Anything less is a failure/bad.
I don’t envy anyone stepping into the fantasy MMO space right now. Unless your business plan calls specifically for a very modest subscription base the sheer awesomeness of a mousetrap required to “steal” WoW’s thunder must be incredibly daunting, to say the least.
about 4 years ago
Off-topic:
damijin says:
Off topic: Is google putting RMT ads on your site?
Yes.
On-topic:
Competing head-on with WoW is going to get nobody anywhere fast. It’s like trying to take Microsoft head-on, in the OS wars. Linux vendors didn’t attack MS on its own terms, they went with guerilla tactics. (and no, Linux hasn’t beaten MS, but they’ve sure nabbed a lot of their market share) If some publisher wants to unseat WoW, they’re going to have to tackle the problem with a similar mindset. Completely blindside Blizzard with a product they simply cannot compete against because the playing field has been up-ended. That product is not going to look or play like the MMOs we’ve been playing.
about 4 years ago
Interesting points, all around. Thought provoking.
I’m going to start a list of the companies I think that could craft the WoW killer. Feel free to add to it:
Blizzard (World of StarCraft).
Bioware (?).
SoE (failed, EQ3 maybe?).
Mythic (currently trying/hoping with WAR).
NCSoft (if you release 1,000,000 MMOGs, you’ll eventually beat something)
Anyone else?
about 4 years ago
“Competing head-on with WoW is going to get nobody anywhere fast.”
People are missing something important here, WoW is already 18 months old, in a years time it will be 2.5 years old. If someone release an almost identical game with new content and graphics next summer it will strip huge numbers from WoW because so many people like new shiny things.
If you combine your WoW clone (and it will have to be a dang good one) with those wishlist features mentioned earlier you will have a WoW beater. The early adopters will try it, find its as good as Wow in all ways and better in a few and tell their friends. Whole guilds will move and the exodus will begin.
about 4 years ago
slog said:
That’s alright, I’ve always felt that the subscription system doesn’t lend itself so well to an MMOFPS anyway. With an MMOFPS players are more prone to burning out, quitting, and then coming back because usually theres no significant level grind that they’ve fallen behind their friends on.
Throw in some micro transactions for new skins, models, stuff that shines, and you’ve got yourself a business model!
In fact, make people forget that “modelling” and “skinning” are something that most communities already do for free on fan sites. Give the players a character with some armor on it and let them purchase new armor that does nothing except look different. Maybe a tiny stat bonus in some game mode that almost no one plays. Sooner or later they’ll completely forget that they could manually just change it to look different on the client side, and you’ll have hordes of idiots buying leet gear from the in-game store. Of course you also have to allow them to accumulate points from regular gameplay that they can spend on this gear. Perhaps make the first few upgrades easy to get, cool looking. Then slow it down, reeaaal slow. Till they finally snap and type in their credit card information.
Korea would be proud.
about 4 years ago
People who play MMOs don’t necessarily like shiny new things as much as other people. If they did, they’d be spending their gaming dollars on single player games, getting a new one every 2-3 months, instead of paying to subscribe to a persistent online gaming service, playing the same game month after month.
Also, cloning WoW would still be a tremendous effort. WoW is content driven, and has a shit load of it. If you wanted to clone WoW, without taking years and paying out the nose for the content, you’d need to make something a bit more player driven content-wise, bringing us again back to PvP which is what the marketplace (‘the marketplace’ meaning mostly people already playing WoW) seems to want.
about 4 years ago
\’e2\’80\’9cCompeting head-on with WoW is going to get nobody anywhere fast.\’e2\’80\’9d
People are missing something important here, WoW is already 18 months old, in a years time it will be 2.5 years old. If someone release an almost identical game with new content and graphics next summer it will strip huge numbers from WoW because so many people like new shiny things.
If you combine your WoW clone (and it will have to be a dang good one) with those wishlist features mentioned earlier you will have a WoW beater. The early adopters will try it, find its as good as Wow in all ways and better in a few and tell their friends. Whole guilds will move and the exodus will begin.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
DAoC all over again.
about 4 years ago
I think all those people in MMOs who are constantly upgrading gear with shiney new stuff proves you wrong, or at least not completely right. Even casual players like new stuff… WoW works because you can get new stuff all the time with very little effort. Through even the most casual sessions where you actually fight monsters or do a single quest, you are very likely to get something from it, and unless you’ve bought gold and/or twinked yourself out, most things you get you’ll be able to use.
about 4 years ago
Ok, they like new things, as long as they’re not really new, and god forbid they be really different from what they already had.
about 4 years ago
Now you’re getting it!
about 4 years ago
“An MMOFPS only has the ability to do one thing that a regular FPS cannot: Provide a sense of REAL WAR.”
Careful, down that path lies WW2O, or something like it.
about 4 years ago
I\’e2\’80\’99d just like to add my overly common $0.02 worth. Wow will be beaten and beaten badly. It\’e2\’80\’99s only a matter of time before someone at long last figures out there are about 30 million MMOG players in waiting. They are waiting for a game where they can from logon to logoff accomplish something in 30 minutes. Yes, this game will not appeal to the million or so of the \’e2\’80\’9creal gamers\’e2\’80\’99 that have been holding back the MMOG industry for the last eight years, but so what?
about 4 years ago
they really all need to read a book on disruptive technology (heh, the other buzzword we’ve heard too much of)
of COURSE there will be a replacement for WoW, and if history is any judge, it will NOT be developed by Blizz, since that would mean they’d have to deliberately kill their cash cow.
Will it be any of the suggestions above? maybe, maybe not. Usually the new kid that triumphs is laughed at and ridiculed though, but they just hit the right formula that the other players denounce.
Microsoft tried very hard to avoid this fate, Gates knew monopolies ended up being their own worst enemies, but now it looks like Google might take the crown from them. Who knows.
about 4 years ago
Having jumped in the MMO game late-I started playing with guildwars last year- I haven’t really played a wide variety of games; so I will start with what I loved about guildwars, and why I eventually left GW for World of Warcraft, and what would prompt me to leave WOW for something else.
I enjoyed GW because for the first time I was able to play a game other than Halo or Madden online with other people. I loved being able to instantly travel from one area to another and having more than 50 skills that I could change at anytime kept my character fresh.
What I didn’t like about guildwars was how people were able to pay runners to get them to the town with the best armor and then warp back to the newbie area and clean house without a challenge. This practice was so common that I wasn’t able to find a group unless my character had Droks armor. Bad deal.
I tried world of warcraft as a 10 day free trial and by day 2 I was a subscriber. WoW’s crafting system, rep system, and game mechanics -ie swimming and jumping- kept me logging on for the past 5 months. Now that I have a char that is 58 and 3 more ranging from 19-38 I am starting to realize why I am beginning to long for a game that offers more realism and less time sinks. Epic mounts are considered the crown of achievement, and yet acquiring one will run 800+ Gold which I think is a crock. Most of the poeple in my guild only got their epic mounts because they bought ebay gold and while I do not encourage people to buy gold online, when it comes to their epic mount, I understand why they would do it. Also, PVP in world of warcraft is a joke, you never suffer any durability damage, never lose an item, and thus you accomplish nothing other than the thought of knowing you just caused someone to lose travel time. whoopie. I’m not saying that the penality should be harsh like die once and you are done for, but I do think that there should be some system in place where a player is rewarded for icing another player; especially if you kill a player of a higher level.
The game that I long for is one that has meaningful PVP, interchangable skills, crafting, rep bonuses, affordable transportation, and realism. Age of Conan so far looks and sounds awesome and I can’t wait to see if that game is able to bring forth a rated M MMO with some serious PVP options. But until then, I will continue to enjoy WOW and wait for Burning Crusade to expand the playability of a great franchise.
about 4 years ago
I don’t think SoE is going to try to build a WoW killer. They seem more interested in diversifying their interest and getting lots of small chunks of the the market and bundleling it under Station Access.
about 4 years ago
Theres no way you can build a game that 30 million people want to play. 30 million people don’t like the same thing.
about 4 years ago
SOE already has “EQ3″ in the works, its called Vanguard. They tried casual and easy with EQ2 and it flopped badly; now they bring back the hardcore, “I hate all you players – heres the tedious gameplay (Vision\’e2\’84\’a2) you masochists seem to enjoy in spades” from Brad.
No, SOE is definitely not challenging the WoW behemoth anytime soon.
BTW, IMHO the big news ought to be how SOE fumbled the SW:G license so badly. THAT could have been a WOW beater, or rather beaten WOW to the gajillion subs numbers since SW:G came first. SW:G is the ultimate wasted opportunity.
You want big numbers?
Cut SW:G loose as a lost cause or close it down. Relaunch a completely new Star Wars branded MMOG. Cut out all the tedious catass gameplay, gigantic timesink tradeskill rubbish and artificial enforced social interaction BS. Its too late now for the Star Wars license though. Should have done all that by the time the third movie was released.
about 4 years ago
Third movie as in “Revenge of the Sith” Star Wars III. Not, “Return of the Jedi” Star Wars VI.
about 4 years ago
SWG failed because it was boring to say the least … nothing more nothing less (i didn’t even stay till the second incarnation).
Time sinks are part of MMORPG’s, it’s a fact of any of the ones I have played. Things designed to be fun are soon condemed as time sinks by players, I’ve hear the term grinding for honour and grinding for weapons and armour. Seriously one persons grinding is another persons fun.
WoW won and is winning because it’s easy to get into but takes along time to hit the pinnacle of raiding (if that’s what you want to do) or the highest ranks in pvp. EQ, daoc, ao and a few others were long and laborious, tedious and repetitive to start with.
Just an example, I went back and started a new character in EQ when they opened the new progression servers (for a laugh) about 3 weeks after they had opened so I didn’t get caught in the 300 other people camping the same spot to exp. It took about on average 10 times longer to level to 15 than it did for a WoW character.
This combined with spells (if you are lucky) coming every 4 levels in EQ compared to skills and spells (no matter the class) in WoW giving reward for every little thing you to start with. They may not be massive improvements for the character and the big levels (every 10) give a good improvment with major skill/spells, contributes to the sense of achievement in WoW compared to EQ and others.
That’s just my thoughts anyway.
about 4 years ago
Exactly what I’ve been saying. WoW is successful because its very easy, and doles out ‘funness’ very rapidly at the beginning with little to no investment, and then because it at first slowly, then sharply ramps up the difficulty at the very end, doling out ‘funness’ in large accomplishments only after even larger investments.