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World of Warcraft - Bad For The MMOG Industry?
CCDeathCC
Member Posts: 128
People like to find something and blame it for anything that goes wrong, or that goes badly. If you do bad in school, you blame it on the teacher. If you forget something, you blame your parent's for not reminding you. And lately it seems that MMOG enthusiasts are the exact same way, blaming WoW on failures in the industry including dropped project. Recently the Marvel MMOG project was even shut down because they didn't think it would be successful with the P2P model they originally wanted it to have because of World of Warcraft, saying it dominated the industry and provided little room for other games in that model type. Now everyone is moving on to F2P models, trying to revolutionize those with new innovations. But has the vast success of World of Warcraft actually hurt the industry, or has it actually been a blessing in disguise?
First off, most people are mis-led by the numbers. Having a friend who compiles MMOG information and analyzes it to see which models are most successful, and which games are most popular, I understand the numbers that are actually being compared. First off, most people gasp in amazement when they hear that WoW has a whopping 10 million subscribers. But unlike what you might think, that doesn't mean there's ten million players today. The game itself has been around since 2004, and has exploded ever since with millions of sales of the game. But that's what the 'subscriber' count is based on, the amount of people who have purchased the game. So if 5 million of those subscribers purchased the game, played for a month, hated it, and quit, they are still being counted as a subscriber today even if they haven't played since 2004
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So despite the fact that you might think it's the most popular, games like Habbo Hotel also attract a number in the multi-millions. Runescape is also way up there, even though a lot of that is players with numerous characters on different accounts. Therefore, World of Warcraft may, or may not, have the most players on the game today. But whether that be true or not, it does still have the huge amount of sales/subscribers behind it. But does this success harm other games in the industry using the same model? I personally find it hard to believe that it harms the industry in that way. If you take a look at the figures, a lot of people will tell you that World of Warcraft contains such a huge population of gamers that the rest of the games in the industry can't possibly be as successful. But what they're forgetting is that the amount of people in the world that knew what a Massively Multiplayer Online Game was before 2004 was microscopic compared to the amount know, after the huge public achievements by World of Warcraft, including their numerous commercials and celebrity endorsements. So despite the fact that looking at the figures you would see that the majority of MMOG players from a couple years ago are around the amount of World of Warcraft players now, more then half of them are new to the industry. How can a game bringing in such huge amounts of gamers be bad to other games? If one booth at a convention is popular, it brings publicity to the convention, which in turn brings attention from the spectators to other booths, even if it's just briefly such as a glance. World of Warcraft has brought millions of people into the MMOG industry, and for the ones that broke away from the game, they've found a new home on the vast variety of other MMOGs out there to satisfy their need for online gaming. |
Hey Everyone
Comments
If you actually *read* the news .. for example, this article:
http://kotaku.com/347552/world-of-warcraft-reaches-10-million-mark
It clearly stated that the 10M figure is for CURRENT subscribers defined by, and I quote:
"Blizzard's numbers included paying subscribers, people within their first month of free game time, and internet cafe users who have accessed the game in the past 30 days, but excludes those using promotional trials and of course, those who have managed to kick the habit entirely...for now."
These are clearly NOT people who have played in 2004 and stopped. Within past 30 days is quite reasonable.
Next time, do some research before you open your mouth.
Microsoft shut it down due to that. However Microsoft is 100% greedy for maximum profit. This is the 5th mmo they've shut down because it wouldn't be "profitable". However, the devs (Cryptic) have merely changed the name to base it off a pen & paper rpg known as Champions, and the game is now Champions Online. So WoW has nothing to do with it.
All that effort into your post and you didn't know that 10 million subscribers really means current paying subscribers...hehe. A little basic research would've cleared up that one. You pulled a Dan Rather=)
Warcraft is bad for the MMOG industry in one way. There's no room for anyone else. Games being shut down cause they can't compete and Blizz is just loving it. I actually read a statement once that had an employee quoted as saying.. "We're on top and no one can stop us." Seriously.. Blizz is king for the next decade and they know it. It's just a shame that all these other games are slowly dying cause of it.
It is bad for the industry, since most people may be like :
Is it worth making this game?
Oh I don't know, it may not be better than WoW..
Should I put it on the market?
No!@ ; I will never compare to Wow!!!
*Throws computer out window*
Unfortunately, WoW just takes away people trying to make a risk to make new games, on the fact that games cost money, and they do not want to risk losing what they paid to make the game.
Although there are many others who don't play WoW, most games are now compared to WoW, and if they do not live up to this "standard", then they think they will not go far. This is true in some ways, but false in others.
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In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten
Microsoft is great for starting and never finishing an MMO. The problem with companies like M$ is they want to make more money than the guy at the top, and if they feel they can't, they scrap the project all together.
Most companies now realize that it would be close to impossible to beat Blizzards Beast, so they dont bother trying. Instead they aim to make a game that appeals to a smaller number of players, mostly focusing on one of the 2 play styles (PvE/PvP).
The only problem is the WoW philosophy. Many people who play WoW are new to the genre (WoW being thier first MMO). Blizzard knew that to get new people into the MMO scene, they had to make the game easy to learn, highly polished (well, more polished than most games were after 2-3 years of being online) and constantly updated with more content on a regular basis. Thing is, Blizzard had the money, the talent and a franchise to build upon. They knew what people thought about thier games and knew how to exploit the Warcraft world. Other MMO developers had to start from scratch, or partner up with another company for the rights to thier IP. They had to plead thier case to investors, find and hire people who could build the game and, if they IP was licensed, constantly show the owner that they are doing the IP justice. What does that lead to? More MMOs go under before they even hit beta, those that survive have to explaing why they are not getting the numbers Blizzard is getting, or in cases of the licensed IP, give into the demands of the owner, which leads to poor choices and game breaking changes.
So all in all its not Blizzard or WoW who are really bad for the industry. Its the industry thats hurting itself. Gone are the days of starting small and expanding from a core concept. Now its all about how to bring the king to its knees.
Also, its the fans that are not helping. Some people following newer MMOs like to use the infamous "WoW Killer" term. They hype themselves up by going on the forums proclaiming or asking if "Game XYZ will be a WoW Killer". Will it kill WoW? who knows, and who cares. I myself can't stand WoW. I am following 2 or 3 games at the moment. All I care is if the game will be fun, offer something new and make enough money to keep up support rather than going the way of Auto Assualt.
What used to be a nerd passtime is now mainstream. There will be a lot of new MMOs coming out every year or so. Some will be good, some will be bad. Few might even come close to half the number of subs/profit that WoW gets. Just find a game you like and play it. Don't worry about WoW.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
when they shutdown their own mmo, Mythica
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythica
and that was 4 years ago (before WOW)
EQ2 fan sites
Fyerwall is quite right. The issue is not that WOW is bad for the industry. The issue is that suddenly, 300k players is an "underperforming game", when just a couple of years ago that would have been considered a smash success.
Now that investors know that a "WOW effect" game is possible, anything short of that tends to be seen as failure. And fans DON'T help by asking if such and such game is going to "be a WOW killer". The answer is no, no, it won't. Nothing is going to "kill WOW" except time. WOW is a fluke event, like any other fad hit - it's the ultra-popular boy band of the MMO scene.
OK, it's polished and professional too, so the boy band comparison is probably not apt. But you get the idea.
It's a 'lightning struck' sort of event, and may not repeat itself for quite a while.
Developers should focus less on beating WOW, and more on making a nice, well built, profitable game. A 100k game still earns ~$6 million a year, AFTER all expenses and salaries. No, that's not WOW, but it's still a tidy sum of cash.
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
In any industry, lack of competition hurts. WoW having so many subs allows their devs to be lazy... and locks down a potential market. Good for Blizz, bad for us. IMHO.
Blizzard and WoW was great for the MMO industry.
Blizzard and WoW is bad for MMO design for a short while.
Far too many people think that because WoW is so popular that its game design is amazing and its far from it. Yes, I played the game for the last 3 years but mainly stuck around due to friends. I recently quit for the 4th time in the last 6 months but this time it is truly permanent. The gameplay at 70 becomes painfully boring with 1 of 2 things to do, farm raid instances over and over for months on end or honor farm in the same 4 battlegrounds.
In the next few years we will see new games come out with much improved end game design and WoW will slowly fade until Blizzard releases its next MMO which I hope they really improve and bring innovative new design to the MMO market.
Microsoft shut it down due to that. However Microsoft is 100% greedy for maximum profit. This is the 5th mmo they've shut down because it wouldn't be "profitable". However, the devs (Cryptic) have merely changed the name to base it off a pen & paper rpg known as Champions, and the game is now Champions Online. So WoW has nothing to do with it.
Everybody in business is after profit.
Cryptic haven't just changed their name, they have lost their funding.
Frankly if Microsoft and Marvel can't see how to make money out of making a superhero game for computers, no other investor is going to be intrested either.
Champions online currently isn't a game at all, it is a game concept only.
WoW's massive financial success has alerted a lot of new investors to the potential rewards of the subscription based genre, but on the other hand it has dominated the market and raised the bar so high it is a difficult title to compete with.
So we can see after the run away success of WoW, that a lot of games, that wouldn't have done otherwise, have embraced the subrciption model. Hellgate London for example.
I put it to you that many more MMO's have entered into development since the success of WoW. Investors like successful formula's.
Unfortunately it has been a double edged sword for these developments as their prioducts are facing very stiff competiton for this market from WoW's excellent delivery.
After the initial rush to invest in titles with similar business models to WoW, the chickens have come home to roost and people have suddenly realised that making a game as successful as WoW takes more than just a successful brandname.
The MMO's that have been made since WoW have failed to repeat it's success. And now that kind of development has shown that it isn't the new golden goose for games developers that publishers initially had imagined.
WoW created an investment bubble. A bubble that has now burst.
WoW the first game for me but i saw this info from other site and post it here with the important of them so not me i write it !
Hey Everyone
MMo's are extremly expensive. Everything I've heard in the past indicates that you have to have 100,000 subscribers just to break even on server time and bandwith.
I think WoW is gonna be great for the MMOs in the long term. The game has brought huge amount of players to the genre that will be looking around for new experience. Even tho WoW is a great game it also has many limits that other companies can explore. But its gonna be important to catch the gameplay features of WOW if those games are gonna be succsessfull.
What is the future of MMOs gonna be like ? Personally I think Blizzard is doing huge mistake with their current PVP system. MMOs will always need to be build around PVE content first and formost. Reason for that is that players from diffrent places - diffrent connections and diffrent distances need to be able to enjoy the content. Small scaled PVP with huge rewards ingame is on the otherhand something that should be avoided at all cost. Cause players playing 2v2 for example will be heavily effected by features that have very little to do with skills but more to do with Latency. MMOs can never become FPS based on the simple fact that Latency is the key feature when playing online. Arena in WoW is in this term a big falure since it is biased toward players with good latency instead of giving players equal chance of progression.
So the future of PVP in MMOs will have to be based on the MMO part - not 1v1 or 2v2. At least not when ingame items are beeing given out based on the progress you make.
With all this said - this doesn't mean that FPS style gameplay can not work in MMOs. The PVP system just has to take note of the basics of what MMOs stand for instead of assuming that everyone stands on equal grounds regarding latency.
The two new MMOs coming out wil both produce PVP systems based on multiple players rather than individual competition. Not only will that reduce the latency factor but it will also reduce the need to create perfectly balanced class system where all kinda diffrent setups for limited numbers of players has to be given equal chance.
Secondly - WoW is not a hardcore or Mature game in terms of MMOs. Its the perfect springboard for players to test if they like basics of MMOs. IF they do then there will be games coming out that can provide even stronger features than WoW has to offer.
So - Basicly. WoW will have competitors that can provide better games in terms of the basic MMOs features. And Im talking about those competitors bringing out games this year. Not in the distant future.
You were actually making some good arguments up until this point.
First off, if you have a large scale PvP based game, it would be even more important that the classes are balanced than in a lower scale one. The reason for this is very basic and that is if you have a single class that outweighs all the others then what is to stop one side just building an army of them and basically rolling over everyone they come up against??
On your final two statements, well that is just wild speculation and bluster. You are an ex WoW player yourself and have enjoyed the game, does that make you a 'springboarder?' Do you lack the MMO experience required to play other games that are out there so you settled for WoW?? It is the cry of every troll on these forums and anyone that spends time in WoW will tell you that it has a lot more to offer than pretty much any other on the market at the moment. As for that, you have no idea what so ever if any of the current batch of 'under development' titles will have more to offer players than WoW does as they are exactly that, under development!
I am not too blind to see that WoW will find competition in the future at some point and i for one do hope that Warhammer is one of them, but no one can say either way until well after the release of these future games, so anything you say here is pure speculation at best.
As for the topic at hand, from a personal perspective WoW has done for MMO's what the Playstation did for games machines and thrust them into the mainstream. MMO's were the haunt of the gaming 'geeks' (for want of a better word) and as such were frowned upon for the most part, but wow seems to have caught the imagination and that can only be good for the industry as a whole.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Claiming that class balance in large scale PVP is even more important is just wrong. Why? Because in battles of 40-50 rather than 2 or 3 every player will have diffrent roles to play - just like in PVE content. There will never be one class that does most dmg - takes less dmg than others - can heal the most or has 10 diffrent CC talents. And thats exacly why having 10-20 players playing where some have cc while others can heal and so on is the MMO way. It can never be balanced for 2v2 for example where one team has 2 cc spells that can be repeated - while the other team has none. We all know the outcome of that fight without even starting it.
And at last - I actully know alot more about the MMOs coming out than you think. Im not allowed to talk about them or their features. What I can promise u is that some very exiting times are ahead in the MMO industry. The basic failure of Arena gameplay as most rewarding factor where you play 2v2 ... that kinda says it all about the MMO thinking of BLizzard atm.
Not really. A modern MMO costs like $50-60M to make. If it will take 10 years ($6M a year) to recoup the investment, of course it is a huge failure.
I get a little of what you are saying on the latency point, but c'mon, unless you are playing a on difference of say, a latency of 25 vs 350 it's not really going to make that much of a difference compared to the experience and gear of the players you are up against.
On the large scale PvP side, it is all very well and nice in an ideal world to say that the balance doesn't matter because everyone will play their own role, well yeah in an 'ideal' world! If there is one thing that i have learned while playing WoW, it is that as soon as one class is found to have an advantage in one way or another then there is a huge rise in players of that class, you only have to look at how many hunters there are running around now compared to a year ago. Mark my words that if they don't get the class balance right in a large scale PvP game it is going to get pretty boring to get your ass kicked every session by the same crowd of the same class!!
Finally, whether you are on the testing team in Beta or even on a development testing team, you still don't "Know" for certain how the new MMO's are going to turn out. If you have as much testing experience as you claim then you will know all too well how dramatically developments can change when financial, political, technical or other internal influances come into play. As much as project managers, developers and testers would like to think that they have influence over the software they are developing, we all know that the only people that actually influence the development are those that hold the purse strings and unless you have the money yourself to fund a development of that size, that is the way it will always be. The only time that we will know for sure how any of the new MMO's will look is when they are actually released and not before, so you can make all the claims and promises that you like (and i would hope that some of it is true), but until the game is on the shelf it just doesn't hold water.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Or MS dropped Marvel because they had fears of it sucking , they were smart enough to drop Vanguard ahead of time also - we dont know what they saw behind closed doors , maybe they saw a too-instanced game heading for a trainwreck and didnt want their name on it - who knows
I like Blizzard and WoW for at least letting other mmorpg devs know that rushed and extremely buggy/unpolished games launched way too early are going to fail - no mmorpg is finished , but LotRO knew this lesson and launched fairly stable , while Vanguard launched in a horrible state , currently PotBS is showing to be launched too unfinished also , and is taking hits population wise
I appreciate Blizzard and always have , they delay and delay and get a game as "finished" as possible before launching it (Diablo to Starcraft to even WoW for a mmorpg) ,
I despise devs that knowingly release a terribly rushed game
The genre used to be q small and confined to 'nerdy' types. WoW made it mainstream in a massive way, and the fact is that it could only be a good thing for the genre. Of the 10million people playing WoW, the 'simple' MMO, 1million or less might progress on to the more complex games in the genre like EVE online.
The problem is developers trying to do what WoW is doing, obviously it will not be possible to break WoW like that, because WoW is just better than all of those games trying to steal its thunder and has so much publicity that the target audience will not risk a similar game, but will go for the genuine article.
What developers should do is fight the urge to make WoW clones which won't ever be on the publicity level or quality level WoW has, and focus on doing their own thing more, cater for the people who might move on from WoW further into the genre instead of being blinded by dollar signs.
I can say this does happen as, well I played SWG/EQ2 a little but WoW was the first MMO I played for a sustained time from launch for 2 years, I have no moved on to EVE online, and I am sure there are plenty of others who used WoW to enter the genre and now want something more complex and different.
The problem is I can only see EVE as being that game a level higher in complexity that people would move on to, and it is very much a level up in that sense, it took me 2 2 week trials to get into it, and I nearly quit a few times at that before I learnt it (to an extent) and am happy playing it.
There don't seem to be any games that are a happy medium in between, and which are also quality games with solid populations. That is where I reckon the next profitable game will be, as WoW players get bored and want something more.
Just my thoughts anyway.
Here's a little related article for you,
In an interview yesterday, Activision boss Bobby Kotick expressed his belief that 1 billion dollars are not enough to create an MMORPG to compete with World Of Warcraft.
"We don't think that even if we made the USD 500 million or billion-dollar investment to get a product out that we would even be successful doing it," said Kotick. "When we first started looking at it, it appeared to us like a game in an insurmountable product category... EA, Microsoft, Sony and scores of venture capital investments had been put to work unsuccessfully in trying to develop massively multiplayer games as a product opportunity."
Kotick then explained that this belief was the reason why Activision opted to merge with Blizzard and acquire World of Warcraft in the process.
As soon as Kotick's words were published, response came from Lars Buttler, formerly the VP of Global Online at Electronic Arts and currently the CEO and co-founder of Trion World Network, who accused Kotick of trying to "scare off competition".
" Nice try Mr. Kotick. We understand that Activision has to defend its merger and scare competition - but I have to call his bluff," said Lars Buttler. "We couldn't be more impressed with what Blizzard has started but WoW is just the beginning; it's pretty wild to suggest that there's only one team that could ever realize the potential of the connected era - and that there's no one out there that can deliver, no matter what the investment. They are truly a great team but there are other great teams out there who will make smart decisions, leverage the full advantage of connectivity and define the future of interactive entertainment."
"There are challenges for traditional publishers in this realm, there's no doubt. But with the right tools and technology, creativity and grasp of the potential that the connected era brings, new teams will create amazing games. Our message to developers and gamers alike is: there's been a paradigm shift everyone; join the party! We would go so far as to say: if you disagree with Mr. Kotick, call us!"
http://www.megagames.com/news/html/pc/activisiontryingtoscareoffcompetition.shtml
Interesting. I am also considering getting into Eve as the "other" game I played aside from WOW. For the people who are bored with WOW, they can wait for 2.4 (new content) and the expansion. And there is a new Blizzard MMO on its way.