I have a feeling that between all the new AAA mmos coming out and WoW not having another expansion until probably at least next fall that it will start to lose steam. By the time Blizzard's new game comes out WoW will have probably lost a nice chunk of subs bring them down to maybe 8-9mil? It depends on how far into development Titan is.
What I could see is that Titan will eventually pass WoW subs when it goes much lower and never really hitting that high point that WoW had at its peak because the MMO market will be much more spread out by that point. This does not mean it will be the top dog either. I could see SWTOR pulling in around 5mil by the time Titan is released depending on how successful it is.
Speculation aside -- this could all be a good thing.
If Titan brings a new style of gameplay to the genre and get some fresh blood as well as subs from WoW it is not necessarily a bad thing. A large majority of the players who will pickup Titan will probably be people who are playing WoW right now and it is unlikely that they will continue to pay for WoW as well due to the nature of the demographic Blizzard looks for. With a game like SWTOR,GW2,Tera, Archeage, or anything else that comes out in the next year or two they don't have to worry about Titan. While WoW has a major portion of everyone playing MMORPGs right now, it does not take away from already established titles. Chances are that if a game like SWTOR has 3-5mill when Titan comes out; those SWTOR guys won't jump ship for Titan. (Similar to the way not many people jump ship off WoW to other games)
Maybe I am wrong about all this, but I hope at least part of it is right. I am sure most people would at least agree that competition is only a good thing when it comes to development of mmos. The strong titles will still come out successful in the end and the smaller games only benefit from the new players to the genre.
Anything that Blizzard releases is pretty much gold in the gaming industry.. Titan will be no different, even if it sucks it will do extremely well, I doubt the game itself will suck however Blizzard Entertainment is getting really greedy and it's showing, that greed may one day give them a very bad reputation. Let's wait till this years Blizzcon for the first looks.
Guild Wars 2 will be extremely successful, it has already got a large following due to Guild Wars 1 plus almost the whole MMO Market is looking for a new MMO, that and the fact that Guild Wars 2 will have no monthly fee, FREE = Success.
They can't continue to try to tack crap onto WoW because it's already starting to wear thin.
True, because Everquest doesn't have 17 expansions....oh...wait, it does.
The rest of your post was true (and a little obvious, tbh.) Of course Blizzard is going to aim for a homerun with Titan -- what company doesn't aim for homeruns? Only bad companies. And Blizzard has proven time and time again to be a great company.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
So I know Blizzards next mmo is likely pretty far off but what effect do you think it will have on the soon to come releases such as GW2 and SWTOR? Assuming one of these new titles does really well and builds a substantial subscriber base, will Blizzard just snatch them right back with their new release?
I guess what I am asking is do you think a game like GW2 (if it becomes successful) will have enough pull to keep players from leaving? I personally think that Blizzard's influence is simply too strong for these newer games to compete with even if they do end up being very good games, but what does everyone else think?
I don't think there should be a concern.
It is far off. by that time GW2 will have shown what it could do and how it might progress, many people will try new games anyways so games will alwas lose players, the blizzard pull isn't 'that" strong as not every mmo player is a wow player.
Point of note, I have yet to get a character beyond late 30's in wow. It just doesn't hold my intrest. I can't seem to finish Diablo let alone get to diablo 2. I recognize blizzard games as being good games but for my taste they only hold me for so long. I imagine that there are other people like me who have interests in other types of games.
I don't think it will ruin competition in a way that doesn't allow other game companies to put out different types of games.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Blizzard made Starcraft - thats best game what they've done so far. They dont do best games, they just know what "brand" means and they know how to work with that - they know how to sell theirs games. Marketing wins.
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online Playing: CS:GO
I guess what I am asking is do you think a game like GW2 (if it becomes successful) will have enough pull to keep players from leaving?
Well. If Titan rips gamers away from SWTOR they'll take a big hit and the damage will be much worse compared to GW2, which has a B2P model. So even if gamers get led away they can always return to have some fun.
i am going to laugh when blizzard makes the mmo and you all see their *real talent* for yourselves. Then i betcha u wont be singing that are the best anymore :-P
i am going to laugh when blizzard makes the mmo and you all see their *real talent* for yourselves. Then i betcha u wont be singing that are the best anymore :-P
Yeah you mean like the best selling RTS of all time, best selling MMORPG of all time (with three record-breaking expansions), and one of the universally hailed masterpieces of PC gaming (Diablo II)?
Yeah those Blizzard guys are just terrible at their jobs. People don't know what they're doing, man.
So I know Blizzards next mmo is likely pretty far off but what effect do you think it will have on the soon to come releases such as GW2 and SWTOR? Assuming one of these new titles does really well and builds a substantial subscriber base, will Blizzard just snatch them right back with their new release?
I guess what I am asking is do you think a game like GW2 (if it becomes successful) will have enough pull to keep players from leaving? I personally think that Blizzard's influence is simply too strong for these newer games to compete with even if they do end up being very good games, but what does everyone else think?
GW2 success will be about boxsales, because it doesnt have subs. Having no sub for GW2, also means that ppl take less risk in buying it. And same as with GW1, ppl can go play other sub based MMO's for a while, and then return to GW2 without having to start a sub. By the time Titan releases, it will be already known if GW2 is a success or not.
So if GW2 turns out to be a good game, I dont see any P2P MMO threaten its success.
I dont know about SWTOR though. Itll depend on how good it is at release of course and how much time it gets to get a large amount of subs before the next very good P2P MMO will be released.
i am going to laugh when blizzard makes the mmo and you all see their *real talent* for yourselves. Then i betcha u wont be singing that are the best anymore :-P
Yeah you mean like the best selling RTS of all time, best selling MMORPG of all time (with three record-breaking expansions), and one of the universally hailed masterpieces of PC gaming (Diablo II)?
Yeah those Blizzard guys are just terrible at their jobs. People don't know what they're doing, man.
Its not the same Blizzard anymore from back in the days when Warcraft RTS and after Diablo was developed. Some of the Diablo devs went to form Arenanet that created Guild Wars I think.
WoW is of course a huge success and also a very good game. But its not original like Diablo and Warcraft rts series were. Fatboy21007 has a point in saying that since WoW, Blizzard hasnt shown original ideas anymore.
Titan would be either a huge success or a disaster.
Blizzard redefined MMORPGs with WoW and I am sure they will try to redefine again the genre with the new game
In my view the next big thing in MMOs would be something like Battlefield or COD online (MMO FPS)
FPS is the most popular genre in the gaming industry so I guess is a matter of time before they invade the MMO industry (Planetside, Global Agenda, Firefall are the first attempts)
So I guess if Blizzard did their research right, their next MMORPG will be an FPS.................which could be either a huge success or a disaster if they fail to put enough MMO elements in the game to distinguish it from a normal multiplayer FPS
Blizzard don't have to make good games, they just make games that are easily accessible to the general public, are polished then run a huge marketing campaign - and all their fanboys will come.
So yeah, Titan will dominate. But not because it's 'good'.
Blizzard is just like apple. Polish generic crap, market well, profit.
Blizzard seems to have so many successful games, they know the right ingredients to create good MMORPGS. Said before , they redefined the gaming world. Sure, it may take overly long for their realeses but in the end, always worthful.
Actually Wow was one of the smoother launches. There weren't very many bugs or server crashes, just an annoying loot bug. The biggest problem was the queu.
Titan is going to be a FPS MMO... think COD with a subscription fee. Look at Xfire, Different versions of COD are all over the top 10 games played. Blizzard obviously sees that and would love to put a stable, subscription model in place on those gamers. It is also perfect because a FPS MMO is about as far from competing as you can get with WOW.
There is NO CHANCE it is facebook game. Blizzard is building up RealID and battlenet to get the same social factor as facebook games without having to deal with facebooks craziness. Trust me, no major company is looking at the fued between zynga and facebook and trying to expand into facebook. Startups will use Facebook as gaming platforms.. established companys will just use it for cheap advertising,but not as the basis for a gaming platform. (again, Blizzard has been ramping up an alternative with realid and battlenet).
As for the people that constantly talk about WOW losing subscribers in EU and USA, but gaining them in china. They just released revenues. While subscriptions dropped by 600k, their actual reveunes increased by quite a bit. This obviously indicates that the people who quit were using the cheaper subscription model (china) while WOW is gaining revenues from the more espensive markets (eu and na).
TLDR. A ton of people play COD every day. Those people are very different from WOW players. Blizzard could easily launch another multi-million subscriber MMO just by making it an FPS based on COD.
What is Titan? And if you don't know anything about it, how the heck can you say it will dominate anything? Brand association?
Could it be from John Varley's "The Gaia trilogy" I read these books several years ago and would be an excellent setting for an MMO. Who knows? The books were incredible!
Titan is going to be a FPS MMO... think COD with a subscription fee. Look at Xfire, Different versions of COD are all over the top 10 games played. Blizzard obviously sees that and would love to put a stable, subscription model in place on those gamers. It is also perfect because a FPS MMO is about as far from competing as you can get with WOW.
As for the people that constantly talk about WOW losing subscribers in EU and USA, but gaining them in china. They just released revenues. While subscriptions dropped by 600k, their actual reveunes increased by quite a bit. This obviously indicates that the people who quit were using the cheaper subscription model (china) while WOW is gaining revenues from the more espensive markets (eu and na).
Actually, all the tools that measure player activity show an ongoing decrease of sub numbers, tools that are foremostly used for western areas of the world.
I think it's more along the line of what you said elsewhere:
Originally posted by Azrile
There was so much nerdrage when Blizzard opened the item shop.. and then I logged in and saw half my server riding around on the $25 mounts.
The additional digital services that as they mentioned themselves have been raking in more money besides a sub, from authenticator to AH services to itemshop horses and such. But then again, since Blizzard hasn't released separate sub numbers for their regions anymore since they stopped it in 2008, it'll be guesswork and speculation, your guess is as good as mine, I guess
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
i am going to laugh when blizzard makes the mmo and you all see their *real talent* for yourselves. Then i betcha u wont be singing that are the best anymore :-P
Yeah you mean like the best selling RTS of all time, best selling MMORPG of all time (with three record-breaking expansions), and one of the universally hailed masterpieces of PC gaming (Diablo II)?
Yeah those Blizzard guys are just terrible at their jobs. People don't know what they're doing, man.
Exactly.
Blizzard is the fine restaurant. They actively focus on making good food, capitalizing on all food-making knowledge the food industry has garnered.
Whereas other companies seem to value new types of food, regardless of whether the new thing is high quality. (And since it's experimental and innovative, it usually isn't.)
Then Blizzard capitalizes on the wasted efforts of other companies by figuring out which new types of food have potential -- and they make a high quality version of that type of food.
So it comes as no surprise that when all the MMORPG restaurants charge the same price, customers have seemed to strongly prefer one restaurant over the others.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
What is Titan? And if you don't know anything about it, how the heck can you say it will dominate anything? Brand association?
I read 6 months ago a statement of a blizzard dev member that he was so thrilled playing /testing titan ,how awesome it is even now in the prepreprepreprepre alph stage titan is right now. He said that even now while loads of things havent been implemented ,the game is way in front of all other mmorpg's that curently are on the market or nearby upocoming. He said somethings about combat also being so awesome and some other thing im forgetting now. Am i believing him?
I tend to dislike blizard personally for the route they choosed for wow,but i cant help but nod to their success and ability to deliver what they aim to. I cant recall any gaming products failures since bullfrog times till now. Thats the diference beetween blizzard and other companies. The just succeed where others are failing.
Blizzard is well aware that while they have had amazing success with WoW they have also created an industry segment that is millions strong and is very quickly growing bored with the current MMO formula.
That's like saying children everywhere are growing bored with coloring books.
Yea, they grow up and stop coloring. But more kids are born.
Someone playing WoW for 5 years is bored with it, but someone born 12 years ago just started playing WoW for the very first time.
They probably aren't bored with it yet.
And of course the same situation is true for all MMO's
Venge
Incidentally, that also applies in another scenario: the so-called "casual vs. hardcore" debate that takes place quite often.
Time and again, you see people saying "MMOs requiring more time investment were fine when I was younger and had fewer responsibilities and could play for hours at a time. I don't have that much time anymore since I'm grown up and have a family and a full-time job. Therefor, MMOs need to "evolve" into more casual friendly experiences that I can play in my limited time and still keep up with everyone else. The "old-school" style of play is obsolete and outdated".
The ego-centric arrogance of that attitude has always annoyed me, personally. They're basically saying "It's okay if I enjoy it... but if I don't, then it needs to change, and everyone else just has to deal with it".
The same exact counter applies here: Those who are getting older and find themselves lacking the free time they had are being replaced by younger gamers who have the free time now that they once had. Also, there are some people who are older and have all those responsibilities who still prefer a more involved and less casual-focused game experience and don't need to feel "they've accomplished something" after 30 minutes if that's all the time they have to play (I know I'm one of them).
That said...
I think it's way premature for anyone to say what Titan will be exactly or who it will appeal to exactly. In terms of how successful it will be, not even Blizzard knows that. Blizzard didn't even expect the success they had with WoW. The projections they made for WoW's growth were nowhere near what it actuallly ended up being.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I see many people claiming that Titan will contain no new concepts and will simply be "WoW in space." What makes you think Blizzard will add nothing new, especially in a game that will undoubtedly have completely different gameplay mechanics being a shooter mmo? I am not saying you guys are wrong because obviously we don't know, but it would surprise me if titan containes nothing new.
Warcrafts largest player base per se is China. In china is is extrememly difficult to profit in the subscription model with games due to piracy and intellectual theft etc. (Look it up if you think im full of it) Cah shops rule supreme as the monetary model for games atm.
I believe Titan will release with a cash shop from day one with Bobby K at the reins and be geared for the china market. Thats where the money is. You get a hit in china with a cash shop that 100 million people hit up for hell even 3 months you just trumped 5-6 million NA - EU subs/cash shop for the next 5 years money wise. Bobby K is all about return on investment.
On another note people keep talking about blizzards talent at making games... most of the "talent" that created warcraft -1 warcraft 2 and World of Warcraft and Diablo are long long gone. the people that were passionate about making games are gone. What "new" talent came up with umm starcraft TWO, xpacs for wow using the SAME MODEL of gameplay etc. And no ..real ID and sparkle ponies is not GAME CREATION TALENT. The current talent at blizz is good at making "sequels' and x-pacs (imo not overly impressive at that)
Bliz does make kickass raiding PVE though - I got to give them that.
I have no expectations of "Titan" with the current crop of devs and leadership at activision other than WoW lite in <insert theme> with a facebook link in game and a cash shop. IE a steaming pile
I would say this depends on if people like FPS more than RPG. Because that is what Titan is. As for me this is a total turn off. Blizzard fails when it comes to doing content for everyone and not just one kind of player in my opinion. And I don't know about a lot of people but I can not even play FPS due to eye problems so even if I wanted to I could not. And i hate playing games where I can not see my character.
I also have issues with playing games that are just to go out and kill with not much storyline and Blizzard seems to have lost the ability to do much as far as a good storyline goes in recent things that they have done.
Comments
I have a feeling that between all the new AAA mmos coming out and WoW not having another expansion until probably at least next fall that it will start to lose steam. By the time Blizzard's new game comes out WoW will have probably lost a nice chunk of subs bring them down to maybe 8-9mil? It depends on how far into development Titan is.
What I could see is that Titan will eventually pass WoW subs when it goes much lower and never really hitting that high point that WoW had at its peak because the MMO market will be much more spread out by that point. This does not mean it will be the top dog either. I could see SWTOR pulling in around 5mil by the time Titan is released depending on how successful it is.
Speculation aside -- this could all be a good thing.
If Titan brings a new style of gameplay to the genre and get some fresh blood as well as subs from WoW it is not necessarily a bad thing. A large majority of the players who will pickup Titan will probably be people who are playing WoW right now and it is unlikely that they will continue to pay for WoW as well due to the nature of the demographic Blizzard looks for. With a game like SWTOR,GW2,Tera, Archeage, or anything else that comes out in the next year or two they don't have to worry about Titan. While WoW has a major portion of everyone playing MMORPGs right now, it does not take away from already established titles. Chances are that if a game like SWTOR has 3-5mill when Titan comes out; those SWTOR guys won't jump ship for Titan. (Similar to the way not many people jump ship off WoW to other games)
Maybe I am wrong about all this, but I hope at least part of it is right. I am sure most people would at least agree that competition is only a good thing when it comes to development of mmos. The strong titles will still come out successful in the end and the smaller games only benefit from the new players to the genre.
Anything that Blizzard releases is pretty much gold in the gaming industry.. Titan will be no different, even if it sucks it will do extremely well, I doubt the game itself will suck however Blizzard Entertainment is getting really greedy and it's showing, that greed may one day give them a very bad reputation. Let's wait till this years Blizzcon for the first looks.
Guild Wars 2 will be extremely successful, it has already got a large following due to Guild Wars 1 plus almost the whole MMO Market is looking for a new MMO, that and the fact that Guild Wars 2 will have no monthly fee, FREE = Success.
True, because Everquest doesn't have 17 expansions....oh...wait, it does.
The rest of your post was true (and a little obvious, tbh.) Of course Blizzard is going to aim for a homerun with Titan -- what company doesn't aim for homeruns? Only bad companies. And Blizzard has proven time and time again to be a great company.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I don't think there should be a concern.
It is far off. by that time GW2 will have shown what it could do and how it might progress, many people will try new games anyways so games will alwas lose players, the blizzard pull isn't 'that" strong as not every mmo player is a wow player.
Point of note, I have yet to get a character beyond late 30's in wow. It just doesn't hold my intrest. I can't seem to finish Diablo let alone get to diablo 2. I recognize blizzard games as being good games but for my taste they only hold me for so long. I imagine that there are other people like me who have interests in other types of games.
I don't think it will ruin competition in a way that doesn't allow other game companies to put out different types of games.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Blizzard made Starcraft - thats best game what they've done so far. They dont do best games, they just know what "brand" means and they know how to work with that - they know how to sell theirs games. Marketing wins.
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online
Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online
Playing: CS:GO
Well. If Titan rips gamers away from SWTOR they'll take a big hit and the damage will be much worse compared to GW2, which has a B2P model. So even if gamers get led away they can always return to have some fun.
Edit: Meaning fail.
You have my vote for the single lamest response to a forum post in 2011.
i am going to laugh when blizzard makes the mmo and you all see their *real talent* for yourselves. Then i betcha u wont be singing that are the best anymore :-P
Yeah you mean like the best selling RTS of all time, best selling MMORPG of all time (with three record-breaking expansions), and one of the universally hailed masterpieces of PC gaming (Diablo II)?
Yeah those Blizzard guys are just terrible at their jobs. People don't know what they're doing, man.
GW2 success will be about boxsales, because it doesnt have subs. Having no sub for GW2, also means that ppl take less risk in buying it. And same as with GW1, ppl can go play other sub based MMO's for a while, and then return to GW2 without having to start a sub. By the time Titan releases, it will be already known if GW2 is a success or not.
So if GW2 turns out to be a good game, I dont see any P2P MMO threaten its success.
I dont know about SWTOR though. Itll depend on how good it is at release of course and how much time it gets to get a large amount of subs before the next very good P2P MMO will be released.
Its not the same Blizzard anymore from back in the days when Warcraft RTS and after Diablo was developed. Some of the Diablo devs went to form Arenanet that created Guild Wars I think.
WoW is of course a huge success and also a very good game. But its not original like Diablo and Warcraft rts series were. Fatboy21007 has a point in saying that since WoW, Blizzard hasnt shown original ideas anymore.
Titan would be either a huge success or a disaster.
Blizzard redefined MMORPGs with WoW and I am sure they will try to redefine again the genre with the new game
In my view the next big thing in MMOs would be something like Battlefield or COD online (MMO FPS)
FPS is the most popular genre in the gaming industry so I guess is a matter of time before they invade the MMO industry (Planetside, Global Agenda, Firefall are the first attempts)
So I guess if Blizzard did their research right, their next MMORPG will be an FPS.................which could be either a huge success or a disaster if they fail to put enough MMO elements in the game to distinguish it from a normal multiplayer FPS
Blizzard don't have to make good games, they just make games that are easily accessible to the general public, are polished then run a huge marketing campaign - and all their fanboys will come.
So yeah, Titan will dominate. But not because it's 'good'.
Blizzard is just like apple. Polish generic crap, market well, profit.
Blizzard seems to have so many successful games, they know the right ingredients to create good MMORPGS. Said before , they redefined the gaming world. Sure, it may take overly long for their realeses but in the end, always worthful.
Why would i playTitan or Fireball when i can play GUILD WARS 2 for free? xD
RIFT launch was a million better.
Titan is going to be a FPS MMO... think COD with a subscription fee. Look at Xfire, Different versions of COD are all over the top 10 games played. Blizzard obviously sees that and would love to put a stable, subscription model in place on those gamers. It is also perfect because a FPS MMO is about as far from competing as you can get with WOW.
There is NO CHANCE it is facebook game. Blizzard is building up RealID and battlenet to get the same social factor as facebook games without having to deal with facebooks craziness. Trust me, no major company is looking at the fued between zynga and facebook and trying to expand into facebook. Startups will use Facebook as gaming platforms.. established companys will just use it for cheap advertising,but not as the basis for a gaming platform. (again, Blizzard has been ramping up an alternative with realid and battlenet).
As for the people that constantly talk about WOW losing subscribers in EU and USA, but gaining them in china. They just released revenues. While subscriptions dropped by 600k, their actual reveunes increased by quite a bit. This obviously indicates that the people who quit were using the cheaper subscription model (china) while WOW is gaining revenues from the more espensive markets (eu and na).
TLDR. A ton of people play COD every day. Those people are very different from WOW players. Blizzard could easily launch another multi-million subscriber MMO just by making it an FPS based on COD.
Could it be from John Varley's "The Gaia trilogy" I read these books several years ago and would be an excellent setting for an MMO. Who knows? The books were incredible!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(John_Varley)
Actually, all the tools that measure player activity show an ongoing decrease of sub numbers, tools that are foremostly used for western areas of the world.
I think it's more along the line of what you said elsewhere:
The additional digital services that as they mentioned themselves have been raking in more money besides a sub, from authenticator to AH services to itemshop horses and such. But then again, since Blizzard hasn't released separate sub numbers for their regions anymore since they stopped it in 2008, it'll be guesswork and speculation, your guess is as good as mine, I guess
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Exactly.
Blizzard is the fine restaurant. They actively focus on making good food, capitalizing on all food-making knowledge the food industry has garnered.
Whereas other companies seem to value new types of food, regardless of whether the new thing is high quality. (And since it's experimental and innovative, it usually isn't.)
Then Blizzard capitalizes on the wasted efforts of other companies by figuring out which new types of food have potential -- and they make a high quality version of that type of food.
So it comes as no surprise that when all the MMORPG restaurants charge the same price, customers have seemed to strongly prefer one restaurant over the others.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I read 6 months ago a statement of a blizzard dev member that he was so thrilled playing /testing titan ,how awesome it is even now in the prepreprepreprepre alph stage titan is right now. He said that even now while loads of things havent been implemented ,the game is way in front of all other mmorpg's that curently are on the market or nearby upocoming. He said somethings about combat also being so awesome and some other thing im forgetting now. Am i believing him?
I tend to dislike blizard personally for the route they choosed for wow,but i cant help but nod to their success and ability to deliver what they aim to. I cant recall any gaming products failures since bullfrog times till now. Thats the diference beetween blizzard and other companies. The just succeed where others are failing.
Incidentally, that also applies in another scenario: the so-called "casual vs. hardcore" debate that takes place quite often.
Time and again, you see people saying "MMOs requiring more time investment were fine when I was younger and had fewer responsibilities and could play for hours at a time. I don't have that much time anymore since I'm grown up and have a family and a full-time job. Therefor, MMOs need to "evolve" into more casual friendly experiences that I can play in my limited time and still keep up with everyone else. The "old-school" style of play is obsolete and outdated".
The ego-centric arrogance of that attitude has always annoyed me, personally. They're basically saying "It's okay if I enjoy it... but if I don't, then it needs to change, and everyone else just has to deal with it".
The same exact counter applies here: Those who are getting older and find themselves lacking the free time they had are being replaced by younger gamers who have the free time now that they once had. Also, there are some people who are older and have all those responsibilities who still prefer a more involved and less casual-focused game experience and don't need to feel "they've accomplished something" after 30 minutes if that's all the time they have to play (I know I'm one of them).
That said...
I think it's way premature for anyone to say what Titan will be exactly or who it will appeal to exactly. In terms of how successful it will be, not even Blizzard knows that. Blizzard didn't even expect the success they had with WoW. The projections they made for WoW's growth were nowhere near what it actuallly ended up being.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I see many people claiming that Titan will contain no new concepts and will simply be "WoW in space." What makes you think Blizzard will add nothing new, especially in a game that will undoubtedly have completely different gameplay mechanics being a shooter mmo? I am not saying you guys are wrong because obviously we don't know, but it would surprise me if titan containes nothing new.
Warcrafts largest player base per se is China. In china is is extrememly difficult to profit in the subscription model with games due to piracy and intellectual theft etc. (Look it up if you think im full of it) Cah shops rule supreme as the monetary model for games atm.
I believe Titan will release with a cash shop from day one with Bobby K at the reins and be geared for the china market. Thats where the money is. You get a hit in china with a cash shop that 100 million people hit up for hell even 3 months you just trumped 5-6 million NA - EU subs/cash shop for the next 5 years money wise. Bobby K is all about return on investment.
On another note people keep talking about blizzards talent at making games... most of the "talent" that created warcraft -1 warcraft 2 and World of Warcraft and Diablo are long long gone. the people that were passionate about making games are gone. What "new" talent came up with umm starcraft TWO, xpacs for wow using the SAME MODEL of gameplay etc. And no ..real ID and sparkle ponies is not GAME CREATION TALENT. The current talent at blizz is good at making "sequels' and x-pacs (imo not overly impressive at that)
Bliz does make kickass raiding PVE though - I got to give them that.
I have no expectations of "Titan" with the current crop of devs and leadership at activision other than WoW lite in <insert theme> with a facebook link in game and a cash shop. IE a steaming pile
I would say this depends on if people like FPS more than RPG. Because that is what Titan is. As for me this is a total turn off. Blizzard fails when it comes to doing content for everyone and not just one kind of player in my opinion. And I don't know about a lot of people but I can not even play FPS due to eye problems so even if I wanted to I could not. And i hate playing games where I can not see my character.
I also have issues with playing games that are just to go out and kill with not much storyline and Blizzard seems to have lost the ability to do much as far as a good storyline goes in recent things that they have done.