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Why making a WoW clone is a poor business decision
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
So many developers seem to think that in order to be successful their game needs to emulate the industry leader, WoW. This is similar to the "knock-off" phenomenon you see in fashion where Louis Vatton puts out a $10,000 purse and then 2 weeks later there is a generic purse that looks exactly the same for $50. This works great in the fashion industry because, even though the knock-off is inferior to the name-brand, its price point is so much lower than many people will still purchase it. It appeals to a different market.
This logic does not apply to MMORPGs though. When a game is released, it is the most expensive it will ever be. As it ages, its price (typically) drops as it falls behind the technological curve. This is true of WoW and its expansions (the retail price at least).
So if I am a gaming company and I release a game that is designed to emulate WoW, my price point winds up being HIGHER than the original. So now my game is trying to be a better "WoW" than the real WoW that has been out for years and has several expansions AND my game is priced higher. What product would you purchase? The original at $20, or a knock-off that is bug-riddled and lacking in content at $60? Better graphics simply aren't enough to trump the huge advantage WoW has at being the best "WoW" out there.
These developers NEED to start segmenting the market. Instead of trying to make a game to be the next WoW, or the WoW-Killer, try to make a game that appeals to gamers that are being underserved by WoW. The sandbox crowd comes to mind for one, I'm sure there are more.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree that WoW clones are more or less destined to fail from a business perspective because they are competing with "the master?" Or do you think that there is merit in emulating the king?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Comments
Agreed. The problem is that Blizzard already had all the time to cover all important corners of present day MMO play.
What's left are the peanuts: housing, a guild hall, some mechanics like not relying on a holy trinity.
The big gorilla is in the room and the only thing to do is to create another room.
Something completely different. An NPC talkie and single line story telling is not going to create that room either.
What more are there? For kids? Club pengium covers that. Girly? Hello kitty online covers that.
Tell me some alternative game design route that arn't wow or eve or uo.
What an original post, I definitely haven't seen it thousands of times before.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
Beg to differ on the title.
Runes of Magic is the biggest F2P title now, is it not? Ever logged in to that game? Wow's biggest clone, save maybe Alganon.
What more is there to discuss here? All the post here can be sub categorized by:
1) Company should stop making wow clone!
2) I'm an old time gamer, and old game rocks, new one sucks
3) F2P vs P2P debate
4) sandbox vs themebox
and lotro, FFXI. both among the top 10 most profitable MMO last year?
Also perfect worlds I thin think is the 3rd most profitable MMO last year?
Preachin' to the choir, mate.
1) Company should stop making wow clone!
2) I'm an old time gamer, and old game rocks, new one sucks
3) F2P vs P2P debate
4) sandbox vs themebox
Exactly, none of those should be posted. If you are new here, search -> read. There isn't even a horse left to beat.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
I think the problem is a bit different.
Meridian 59 set the stage for the current genre. Everquest however added a lot of the things that people think of as MMO. Wow took all that and polished it up.
But everything is already polished up and we played it for something like 13 years now, why start playing something that is just more of the same?
It is easier to stay at your current game until something comes out that offers a different experience, we already have done the grinding there so why start from the beginning in a game that differs so little?
So, yes. Wow clones (well, it is really Meridian clones) is a bad idea, because it has been done and people are tired of it. So to make a new huge game you need to offer something new, just shine graphics isn't enough.
Not even Blizzard could pull people away from Wow by releasing a game that is more or less the same and they know it.
It isn't so easy. Both old games and new games have their advantages, but we already played both for a long time.
F2P, B2P, P2P, sandbox or themepark is not really the issue either, the fact is just that we need a game that actually feels new and different.
Most of us really don't rage over the fact that many companies copies other games, our problem is more that most games feels exactly the same to play. You do the same things and if you change from one to another the tactics is still the same and very little differs.
A new game must add something to the genre or it will fail badly, or it could puzzle together many different ideas from many other games, that works too.
A new game that wants to be large must feel like a new game. Copying Wow or EQ is not the way to do that.
15 yard penalty and loss of down for using the terms Wow-clone and Wow-killer in the same post.
Currently bored with MMO's.
RoM is full of players. Ditto. It seems to work very well.
RoM is successful because it has a lower price point. It's basically an exact analog of the fashion example I gave with the Louis Vatton purse.
Yes, you can be successful with a knock-off if you market it to a different segment by getting a lower price point. However, you also have to consider that RoM's revenue per player is probably much less than WoW's.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Maybe when the industry resolves some of the issues that spark these posts, we will stop posting about them.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I agree with the following back and forth I read in the SWTOR forum in response to this foolish thread:
Originally posted by Faelsun
Ok just to get it out of the way, EVE is buthering WAR, LOTR and AOC in subs its statistically right there with FF online, although it passed it up a few years ago. No game company wants to go FTP unless they have no other choice. D@D online is soon to be replaced by the Neverwinter nights project and is just dead weight, LOTR is as good as dead, AOC is by all accounts dead, WAR is a year away from being FTP itself.
There are 4 games with more subs than EVE right now, WOW, L1,L2, and Aion. WOW clones are the equivlent of dead roadkill.
Originally posted by Cyphers
Heh, you're funny. Unrealistic, but very funny.
Oh, I fixed your quote to the current realistic situation. LotrO as good as dead? There is not one person that will follow you in this mad delusion that themepark MMO's and EQ-styled MMO's are doomed to fade away.
And even more when MMO's like GW2, SW:TOR, Rift and TERA hit the scene, it'll be obvious how enormous the gap between themepark/EQ-styled MMO's and sandbox MMO's is. It already is as the numbers show, even when you want to cling to that false hope that MMO's like Fallen Earth is sandbox MMO too.
But hey, I can see how people have to have hope. If you so much need to believe that sandbox MMORPG's will triumph over non-sandbox MMORPG's, then feel free to do so
We all need hope and a dream, even how unrealistic and foolish it sometimes may be.
There Is Always Hope!
I know I've been posting that few times recently, but because most companies stay with the same two pricing policies (monthly subscriptions or cash shops), this market is hard to segment.
WoW became this current behemoth by adding new features over new features during its lifespan. As a result we got one massive game with plenty to do. PvP, GvG, Raids, exploring, achievements, .... Meanwhile, the monthly subscription fees remained unchanged.
And still, every new games entering the Western market came with fewer features but with the same monthly subscriptions model. Most of them were delivered to us with impressive critical bugs. What do they expect? Some players are going to drop their WoW subscriptions to play on their substandard software? No. They are going to try it during their free month, they may come back from time to time to play it again, but they'll fall back to whatever they were doing before because they don't want to keep multiple subscriptions at the same time.
Why aren't they importing pricing models from Asia with their pay by hour subscriptions? This way, I'm sure niche games like Aion would receive a lot more subscriptions. I'm also sure players would venture further than the free stuff in games like LOTRO or DDO. I think this is a good and viable alternative, other than the Free to Play model and its limitations, to a monthly subscription model that only favors established behemoths (or The established behemoth).
You forgot the holy trinity and aggro are crap and should be abolished or they are great leave them alone.
--John Ruskin
They need to make a first person mmorpg like Oblivion. Just increase the speed of spells and add better more solid graphics, with an unbelievably excellent storyline(like Oblivion) and boom billions of dollars as long as the devs keep it balanced
My grip is people dont' want a wow clone, but what else is there to make. Yes there's sandbox, but what else is out there.
I mean the new companys are making robic eve clone, or upgraded version of 2nd life(blue mars?), open world full loot pvp game(UO/darkfall/mortal).
But what else are out there? no one really can really say anything concrete.
The subtle difference between almost all MMO out there(even those that dont' call them wow clone) is is it level base or skill base or time base, is it open world pvp, does it have auto aim, quest or no quest, instance or no instance, big or small world, fast travel or no fast travel, player made construction or no. Can people really name some thing more concrete?
To be fair its not the developers thinking so stupid you know, more so the stupid publishers
Best example Vanguard which has been awesome (i know bugged) till Beta 2 but then they dumbed it down and Soe continued sabotaging it.
If we are talking about clones I would prefer an Everquest 1 clone.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
How about...
Instead of thinking of the games as just the sum of their features, you start thinking about game design in terms of why a player would WANT to play the game. For example, UO and Darkfall have very similar features on paper. However, if you had played both of those games, you would realize that they are nothing alike...at all. UO was a full fledged virtual world with an excellent culture that developed inside of it. Darkfall is basically a grindfest/gankfest.
The "WoW-clone" games are typically designed to appeal to people who want to get more powerful and find cool equipment. That's fine, lots of people like that, I even like that from time to time. But why not try designing an MMORPG for people who like the virtual world experience? An actual, real successor to UO...not just a game that attempts to appeal to the hardcore PvP crowd like Darkfall and MO.
I know you guys think that we whine about this too much, but it's because it seriously needs to happen. UO was a great game, but it was the only one of its kind. No MMORPG since has come remotely close to being what UO was. They weren't better or worse, just completely different.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
so what concrete thing made UO an actually culture and darkfall just a gankfest? Better PVE?
You have identified the business mentality that is the hallmark of MMO’s these days, once run by enthusiasts, now run by suits. The CEO’s now come from cleaning product companies (like EA’s) and bring that ethos with them. It is sell low and squeeze those margins, which in the case of MMO's are content and R&R into new styles of game play.
Geez, everyone says the same stuff over and over....
Do you know for certain?
You have identified the business mentality that is the hallmark of MMO’s these days, once run by enthusiasts, now run by suits. The CEO’s now come from cleaning product companies (like EA’s) and bring that ethos with them. It is sell low and squeeze those margins, which in the case of MMO's are content and R&R into new styles of game play.
...Sorry I could not resist that