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WoW will most likely be the longest-lasting game on the market
Tsathoggua
Member Posts: 100
I know there are those gems like UO that are still up and running,
though their subscription base is but a tiny portion of what it once was.
Blizzard is doing something extremely intelligent with their game--
they are making it more accessible, adapting the play-style (according to other releases),
and they are improving the foundation of the game (Graphics and Client).
On top of the growing MMO market in the first-world countries,
as developing countries gain more technology-- there is a higher chance that WoW will become
their first MMORPG due to the extensive advertising that Blizzard is known for.
More casual = more customers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~```
Now -- I see the graphics overhaul in WoW as extending the game's lifespan for at LEAST another 3-4 years.
Overall you can figure in 1-2 characters per player with a level 80 (so they can see the changes on both the alliance and horde side.)
I think if they pack the next expansion with content, then they can easily make WoW last 2-3 years more after the original 3-4 estimate.
By "lasting" I mean existing with at least 1/2 of its current player base.
Comments
It depends.. If WoW will compete will Blizzards next MMO in a big way and cannibalize many subs they might shut it down. On the other hand, I doubt they will release a new game which will go head-to-head with WoW, and your statement is therefore quite probable. It is a huge cash cow and will be so for many years still, and it will not be taken down until it slips below the break-even mark.
They've already stated that their second MMO will be completely different (so that it won't compete with WoW).
Think how long it will be until they hit below that break even point...
They have hundreds of servers to consolidate--
Hundreds (Maybe thousands?) of developers to move to other projects--
It's just ridiculous.
Sorry for double posting--
but I was just thinking: Maybe they'll even set up some Vanilla servers in time and bring back the thousands of players who miss the hardcore WoW.
WARNING.
mmorpg.com posters don't like to hear what you are saying OP.
But of course you're right. No one can see into the future, but if you think about it ...Blizzard could top your predictions with ease.
The catch with CATA was a nice one btw. Many "old gone" players will be surprised in seeing what changed in these last years. And I don't mean the burnt out 6 year old players who rant on forums.
Nope CATA is destined for 3 categories: the fan - the old player who wants to revisit Azeroth after he left 2 or more years ago - and a very massively bunch of new players.
Only a fraction of the possible casual market was even touched by WOW in these past years. Morhaime said it already and I think he's right.
I see more potential in CATA than the previous 2 expansions, both in nature and mechanics. It bumps up the game mechanics to 2010 standards.
Playing CATA with all options on will be a bewildering experience for a new player of mmorpg's.
Spoiled to death they will be. Far more than Vanilla WOW ever delivered at launch.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
How dare you imply such blasphemy. Everyone knows that WOW is not a true MMO, and that its just a game for carebares whom sells flying mounts and sells out at every possible opportunity! This game is horrid and should be striken from our lives and the internets if there is any justice in the world.
Never you mind the fact that this game has more subscribers than most other games out there..... no, never you mind that at all. Because that would imply that people like this game.
In fact, WOW is not a true game at all. Its just a wannabe game... copying everything out there that came before it and stuff.
If you disagree with what ive said, then obviously you are wrong, and should be labeled a moron, noob, idiot, whatever.
If you cant tell, im joking.
I get the feeling that, while WOW will last for awhile. It will die before many other MMOs. Why? Because WOW is all about maximum profit for minimal effort. Blizzard will likely shut it down once it doesn't drive upwards of 15 million per quarter. Games like UO and DAOC will stay up until they are not just in the red, but in the red by hundreds of thousands. Blizzard needs WOW's profits to keep their other games under devlopment, or daddy vivendi will make them just activision. Turbine doesn't need just 1 of their games, as they have many. Same with Square Enix and many other game devs. Blizzard is a business, while the other companies are more of artists. Artists want their work to be there forever, for all the world to see, even if they make minimal profit. Businessmen will shut down an investment as soon as they feel taking that money elsewhere will yeild a larger return.
To get 15 mil/quarter would be equivalent to having under 1 million subscribers--which is 90% lower than their current playerbase.
They'll still be making huge profits due to server consolidations--staff cut backs-- etc...
Edit: Also look how long they have been supporting Battle.Net for WC3 and SC2
No.... really?????????????????
They'll have to drop prices dramatically to get new players. Just checking Amazon tonight, to get the battle chest and WoTLK is about sixty bucks, then another forty for Cataclysm? Seems like a lot for a brand new player.
I expect that soon after cataclysm is released (maybe right before?), they are going to cut that down to 50$ and have a battle chest that contains all WoW-BC- and WotLK.
Man, I don't remember when it was--but on some holiday I saw boxes of original WoW selling for 2$ a pop at best buy-- I should have swiped em up ..but I was in a WoW hate mood.
That's what most MMORPGs do as they age. Nothing new here really.
And I wasn't really aware you can make a game MORE accessible than WoW. I mean, it's pretty much an arcade game now. Sure, it was the easiest and simplest MMO on the market when it launched, but its gotten even worse since then.
The rewamp of content included in original WoW will be free of charge. You can play the game up to level 60 even if you own only the original game, wich won't cost too much. Most of the casuals will be happy just with that for months.
By then, they will be too hooked to the game to care about the expansion price.
No, forum visitors don't like it when it is turned into an e-peen contest, a 'who has the biggest, nah-na-na-nah' maturity-level kind of posting, which, admittedly, some WoW posters tend to do.
Also the strange playing victim role, the 'boohoo, we are the largest group but they hate us or our game on mmorpg.com, boohoo' doesn't sit well, at least to people like me.
Add to that the inability to see the bad aspects of their favorite game, to acknowledge the valid points of other posters with a different opinion and to see the good qualities of other games that a number of fanbois have, which makes it difficult to have a good, constructive debate about games.
Of course, that applies to fanbois of any game, but since there is a very large group of people playing WoW, you'll also have more 'enthusiastic' - or 'extremist', depending on your mindset - fan(boi)s of WoW.
i think WoW will be around for a long time as well. It'll open up in other countries where the fee to play will be smaller or will have a different payment model like is happening in China and Korea already, while the EU and US will probably be the places where the largest part of the revenue is raked in from.
Plus it has a very low tech-threshold to get into, so it's easy to get into. Next to that, WoW has brought in so much money, that it's easy to invest any resources necessary to implement the overhaul or updates needed to keep WoW fresh or interesting just that little bit longer for many players.
Of course, after years a lot of players will be getting tired of the same game again and again, but in MMO's it's often the people you play with that keep you longer, plus people will be playing WoW off and on, taking breaks or playing other games and MMO's inbetween for variation. Next to that, there's always the influx of other countries where WoW isn't as established as the US and Europe yet.
So, it will certainly stay for years to come. Will it be able to compete with the new batch of MMO's to come? Well, only time can tell 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."
The three biggest reasons I see for wow's success and longevity are as follows.
1: Name reocgnition among gamers.
(rightly or wrongly blizzard is seen as doing no wrong in the industry and a large fanbase adores them)
(also, warcraft is a Grandfather in the gaming industry, many of us got into PC gaming when this game hit the scene way back when)
2: Popularity and its addictive nature
(the fact that its popular and that's where people associate the term "mmo", draws in more people simply because it HAS a large fanbase, ie, difficult to get people to play when you go into a town and nobody is there.. It barrows a lot of the formulas that made diablo addictive in terms of gear hunting and shere number of items to find)
3: The scalability of the engine...
(this is the biggest one in my opinion, when the vast majority of PC's made and sold come from places like bestbuy with integrated graphics andor low end grahpics cards, you have to have a game that will run on the majority of hardware being sold)
That about sums it up for me.
The game itself, when it comes right down to it, isn't what I would call groundbeaking or memorable, or inovative.
But it keeps people playing because of its addictive nature, its ablity to run on just about any PC these days, and face it, people are sheep. They go where the other sheep are... popularity counts for a lot when drawing in new customers.
and as we all know, popular doesn't exactly mean "good"
Eh, basically to camp1111 and to others as onesided in their arguments as him, but since you agreed with his first sentence I included your post.
Relax, i wasn't flaming or so, I just wanted to correct camp's strange fantasy that most mmorpg.com posters hate WoW or so, or at least shed a different light upon it, that it isn't as much the game but more the way how some like to debate it :-)
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."
So true. And that's the reason why it is so popular, and why it will be the longest-lasting game on the marking. I have no doubt in that.
Lets take it huge population aside, you have to look at the big picture here.
The Blizzard which created Vanilla Wow is dead, most Wow developers left after Vivendi took over. The former topguys such as Tigole and Pardo stayed but moved on to other Blizzard projects in the past. Why? Simple Blizzard has gone from an artist company (which isn't always about the most money) to a greedy Activision relationsship and therefore Wow will run as long as they think it should.
You can bet your house that Activision will force them to release their new MMO asap make it P2P + cash shop AND taking away subs from Wow. Sure they aren't gonna tell you the truth but thats the sad fact. Artists are there to built something that lasts forever while companies are just there to run the game as long as the income is enough.
Sadly this is not an artist decission. So no one can predict how long this thing will run personally I'm thinking two more addons and then they'll force you into buying their new even more arcade made game.
Ultima Online is dead since Trammel Mythic ruined it.
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."
Uhhh.... Blizzard, an artist company? The game company that has never taken a single risk, or done any big innovation?
Lets ignore their other titles. But WoW here... an artsy game?
The same WoW that mainstreamed the MMO genre. The same game that was so dumbed down just about ANYONE could pick it up? The same game that is basically a simple version of EverQuest?
WoW never innovated. It never had soul. It was simply designed for mass market appeal and nothing else. All those saying WoW is "casual" now have been blinded. Because thats what WoW always has been.
People seem to be forgetting that as long as any game made before WOW still runs, WOW will NEVER be the longest running MMO. And lets face it, the PVP in games such as Lineage and Dark Age of Camelot will keep them going until MMORPGs are wiped from the face of the planet somehow. And ya know what? Those games...STILL...GET...UPDATES! Granted they are barely faster than WOW's updates, but 1 guaranteed update every quarter is more than blizzard even offers with WOW in its "prime."
Edit, To the guy above me, Blizzard ceased being an artist company less than 6 months after releasing WOW. They lost everyone except the original writer, Metzen, within a year after that. The people who made diablo went on to make the fail known as Hellgate:London, which due to lacking the name Diablo, was pretty much a stillborn game. It never had a chance. The people who made WOW went to various companies, one of which was ArenaNet (hey, battlenet reference!) and made the wildy successful pvp semi-MMO Guild Wars. They will be releasing Guild Wars 2 within a year, a true MMORPG which will be more like the WOW we noncasuals remember from years back.
The only thing I think that will stop WoW from being around a uber long time is people getting tired of doing the same gear grind over and over.. You can only run a new dungeon so many times before it will even feel like you've already done it a million times even though it was your first run. Yes the old school games are around but in some of them they were just more open ended type of games so thats why they are still around.
It's possible but as you pointed out UO has been around for quite a while longer. It's now 12 years old.... I would say that it is possibly older than a fair number of WoW players actually lol. UO isn't going anywhere and with the "other" shards it will probably last as long as the internet. How long wow will last, who knows... probably until activision gets a wild hair up their backsides lol.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
A friend of mine told me, although I don't know how true it is, that Blizzard plans to continue developing WoW until the level cap reaches 100, meaning 3 more expansions(after cat) if they continue to raise by 5 levels each time. Once they reach that point, the game will no longer be developed, but will remain up as long as it is profitable. Again, this is what I heard, not what I know. Worth looking into.
Vivendi purchased Blizzard in 1998, about six years before WoW was released.