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Duplicating WoW's success
For those of you who don't read slashdot:
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3715&Itemid=2
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3715&Itemid=2
Comments
well written article.
Notice it points out what some of us been saying for a while.The chinese market has the majority of WoW customers but apart from fact that blizzard uses a second company the9 ,the sub rates as we know it are very low meaning the game generates less then it does from the USA/europe market by a good margin.
I also said before that my trip to Russia thought me a lesson.Don't ignore the other markets because you think they are too poor to pay $15 a month.Blizzard knew this .I can tell you a vast majority of Russians leaving in the cities have internet access and can easily afford $15 a month(i myself before my trip thought it was beyond the reach of most there boy was i totally worng).
Wide marketing and trying to break into the "virgin" market is all the key to it.WAR learn from blizzard this as i think WAR can duplicate something close to WoW if it markets well.
As it's been said before, this tune has already been played.
Stop beating a dead horse in its mouth.
World of Warcraft is the first truly global online game. At least as impressive as the game's success in China is its more than 1 million customers in Europe.
What about Guild Wars? They are a global online game too if I recall. And didn't GW come out before WoW?
Next two runner up... Warhammer Online & Age of Conan will take a chunk from World of Warcraft.
GW had: North America, Korea, Euro. Then added: Taiwan and Japan with release of Faction expac.
GW had: North America, Korea, Euro. Then added: Taiwan and Japan with release of Faction expac.
There's Chinese people there too. I'm going to see when WoW & Guild Wars was released... brb.
Guild Wars was released April 28th, 2005.
World of Warcraft was released November 23, 2004.
I guess you're right.
Love it or hate it, WoW's going to be on the top of the heap for a long, long time. The closest contender is WAR, but unfortunately I think that game will fall short due to EA's corporate culture (see also: a long and consistant record of releasing unfinished games and making development decisions based on marketing rather than solid game design).
The only game on the horizon that could be a WoW-sized success is the currently unnamed MMO under development at Bioware.
good reading, however i hate wow =
lol
80% of WoW's success is marketing/reputation in my opinion. There are no companies that have the rep Blizzard had. That isn't a knock against the game.
Bioware has a lot of cache for RPG enthusists, but it doesn't have the crossover that Blizzard had.
The only possibility is something that cashs in on something already popular such as a Star Wars or Fallout. If you combined Bioware and titels like that it might make.
I think WAR will attract a good number of people because of Warhammer and it will steal a good portion from WoW, but I don't think it will do more than half of what WoW had/has at whatever its peak is.
it's like back in the day. When people all joined AOL because it was the only way.. And then earthlink came along..And then cable, isdn, etc etc..
But I think not only did the company reputation help wow to grow, but word of mouth. Just think of who plays wow now? age 10-70+.. I went golfing once, and because we were only two people in our group they coupled us up with some old man.. older then my pops, guess what he started talking about half way through our game? WoW, so then my pops tried it out.. Word of mouth it spreads like a wildfire.
However to me, WoW is the virus that pleagues the mmo worth, and there is no cure so it just keeps growing. Too bad because it used to be good! Before all the old men and all the young kids joined..
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Do I ever sleep?
Maybe I'm biased here because of my own experiences with wow but I cannot imagine that people will continue to pay to play the same game for that long without wanting something new. I can accept that WOWs success may not be duplicated but the game is far to repetive and to old for the new games to atleast not cut heavely into wows market share and collectively steal alot of subscribers.
There is one constant in this world, no comapny stays alone on top forever.
For every Microsoft there is an Apple, for every Coke there is a Pepsi, etc.
One company might dominate, but there will be serious competitors at some point down the road for WoW.
It will take a company with a huge bankroll to do it, though. Blizzard even has said that much. It took somewhere around $50-100 million to develop WoW, plus more to support it. They made a huge profit, but that is a large gamble.
I know people think WAR might compete, and while I agree that it has a chance because of it's European support, I still don't think it will have anywhere near the kind of subscribers WoW has.
I find it interesting that the article mentioned EVE. What EVE has done is slowly grown it's subscriber base over years. I think a game that can do that on a larger scale will be WoW's biggest competitor. Slow growth over time, the tortoise would beat the hare. A consistantly stable MMO, with frequent content updates, easy to use UI, easy to laeran, hard to master, good customer support, and treating it's subscribers with respect is the key.
But Guild Wars isn't THAT popular in Korea and China, or even Japan. heck, just login Guild Wars and keep an eye on the Hall of heroes messages. most of the time its europe that wins (?) , and if europe doesn't win, then its USA. very rarely its korea,taiwan or japan that wins. I don't even think GW is released in China.
Well, now that you mention it, that's specifically what I'm really hoping for from Bioware. Star Wars or Fallout. But I mentioned Bioware not because of their rep (which IS a big asset) but for the things they have in common with Blizzard.
Bioware, like Blizzard, does not release unfinished games, like a lot of other develpers. But on the flipside, they don't keep their games in development for so long that they become obsolete, as is the case with many independently developed MMOs. Also, like Blizzard, Bioware knows how to make a game fun. Say what you want about WoW, the game is actualy fun.... well, the first 59 levels anyway. More than anything else, I think that's the main reason for its success. Most MMO developers, insterstingly enough, have never developed an offline game. Maybe that's why so many of these games lack a sense of fun.