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Can Anyone Beat WoW?
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Aug 31, 2006 11:51 AM
from the tough-crowd dept.
from the tough-crowd dept.
Next Generation is running an article penned by DFC Intelligence Analyst David Cole, exploring the overwhelming popularity of World of Warcraft. Coles asks Is It Possible to Surpass World of Warcraft? He explores the reasons behind WoW's success, and what it means for the market as a whole. From the article: "All of these factors point towards one conclusion: World of Warcraft's success, admirable as it may be, will be extremely difficult to duplicate. This will be bad news for all the frothy investors who are suddenly discovering the MMOG business model. In the new DFC Intelligence Online Game Market report we forecast revenue in the MMOG market to grow over 150% from 2006 to 2011. However, this doesn't account for all the investment money that is likely to be lost chasing after that revenue growth."
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The only way... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The only way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently not. [everybody-dies.com]
Re:The only way... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While it is funny, it's also the truth. When you quit WoW, at first it feels like you're giving up a part of you, but with time, you actually feel that sense of success that you never felt while playing. It's like quitting smoking. You never started smoking with a specific goal in mind, so there was is no 'end'. Quitting is the only way tou can beat smoking, drinking, drug addiction... etc.
And some people say WoW isn't an addiction....
For many (most?) people it's not (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, same deal with WoW. There's plenty of people who play just for fun, and play on their own terms. I have a coworker who just now, after like 2 years of play, got his first level 60 character. HE just doesn't have time to play a whole lot, has a family and all and that takes priority.
Even those of us that do play a lot aren't addicts simply because we do. Personally, I'm evaluating what I want to do in WoW. I enjoy raiding, but it's getting a little old. I'm trying to decide if I want to switch back over to a PvP server, or maybe just cancel my account and play other games. I don't feel any "need" to play WoW or meet some artificial goal, it's simply what I choose to spend a fair amount of my free time on because it entertains me. I suppose I could spend it watching TV, or knitting, or in a bar, or any of the other more "acceptable" activities but I like games so that's what I'll spend my time on. At this point, WoW is the one that gives me the most entertainment, though as I said, it's growing long in the tooth.
So if you find yourself addicted to a game, unable to quit, having it interfere with your life, then that's not a good thing, but don't project that on to all others. There's plenty of us that can just play for fun, and leave when it's not any longer. WoW is my 4th MMORPG to date. It has lasted much longer than any others (9 months was the prior record with DAoC) but I doubt it'll last till next year. It doesn't force you to play it, you force yourself to play it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I Beat WoW! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I Beat WoW! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
World of Starcraft, with localized Korean (Score:5, Funny)
OMFG WTS 30x Zerg Rush 15g (Score:4, Funny)
"You have insufficient creep to cast that now."
5 Elite Protoss Zealots unstealth and gank you.
"LFG 3M marines, 1M medic"
Or seeing a cloud of Carriers or Mutalisks come screaming over the horizon, hell-bent on laying waste to your camp.
Parent
Re:OMFG WTS 30x Zerg Rush 15g (Score:5, Funny)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
World of Starcraft will make hearing "Nuclear launch detected!" a much more personal experience.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Just like there will never be another Doom (Score:5, Interesting)
The question is: do we really want a single dominant game in any genre?
Re:Just like there will never be another Doom (Score:5, Insightful)
WoW was not the game that defined the MMORPG genre. EQ was the game that developed the critical mass for wide appeal to take that crown.
It is more like StarCraft and Counterstrike... a game that has been refined to the point of wide lasting appeal.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I would suggest that subscription numbers disagree with your conclusion. At, what, 6...6.5 million subscribers currently, it pretty much means EQ is now only a pre-cursor to the true, defining game of this genre: World of Warcraft.
If you mean "first of its k
Re:Just like there will never be another Doom (Score:4, Insightful)
EQ == Warcraft II (The one that set the standard for the genre)
WoW == Starcraft (The one that basically perfected the genre)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Everquest defined the visual mud.
Wow was the first to hit the right balance of difficulty- Everquest drove away millions of customers through their hardcore attitudes. They would have BEEN Wow if not for Brad and "the vision". And then after it was all over, they sold out to being an easy game after all (still *way* harder than WoW but no longer pure in the same way EQ was back in 2002).
Wow was hard AND easy enough to be fun. And WoW didn't require being in a 72 person raidi
which means you have to build off a franchise (Score:5, Insightful)
Watch for a big name title to go MMO...
Parent
Yup, exactly, and here it is: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just like there will never be another Doom (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no point in me, as a user, leaving Wow to play a game that is almost as good -- i have too much invested in my Wow character(s).
Would you rather have a game that had all of the depth as WoW, perhaps even more story, but didn't have the singular character advancement? One more focused on the progression of the story and environment of the world, and not the player? A game such as that might be doomed to failure since the user has less to identify with in the game, so there is nothing that actually ties the user to the game. I don't know which way is better, I'm just curious as to your opinion. It seems by your port that you'd be more likely to part with it.
I ask because it seems that some people avoid WoW on purpose because it is requires such an investment of energy to play, despite the fact that it is no doubt fun. Personally, that's why I avoid it, but I might play a game that doesn't make me build up mountains of a character's skills and attributes.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In the MMOG arena, first you had MUD's, remember them? Then there were a couple of graphical MUD's, then EQ, which was the bee's knees. EQ ruled. Ult
um no (Score:4, Informative)
UO [wikipedia.org] - Released on September 30, 1997, by Origin Systems.
EQ [wikipedia.org] - EverQuest (EQ) is a 3D fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that was released on March 16, 1999
I will not have your revisionist history. UO pioneered the genre.
Parent
Is it possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
All joking aside, WoW will not be beaten... in this generation. In any emergent industry based on non-commodity goods, the first player to hit mainstream success will be the benchmark that all others fail to meet. After the first product goes mainstream, competition increases and even an increasing market has too many players for any one to achieve the saturation of the first one.
Now, if the whole MMOG industry was to die down, it's quite possible that someone new could come in and create a renaissance where they could dominate a larger market than existed during the previous incarnation... like Nintendo did after the video game industry 'died' in the early 80s.
However, I don't think the MMOG industry is going anywhere anytime soon. It's natural outgrowth of the online socializing that today's youth has grown up with -- I expect more variety, but don't see any shrinkage for quite a long time.
Re:Is it possible? (Score:4, Insightful)
But online chat isn't an industry. Or did you pay to chat in IRC or with an instant messenger ?
Online gaming is here to stay. However, in order for it to stay an industry, it must make money. Currently this is easily done, since the games require centralized servers and this in turn leads naturally to such things as monthly fees. But what if the underlaying technology was to change ?
The system is currently basically the old central mainframe / dumb terminal -setup. The servers take care of all the processing, and the client program just reads user input and gives output. A glorified MUD. Unfortunately, it is not scalable.
The number of simultaneous players is rising constantly, and the server size can't be increased forever. So, in time, more and more of the actual processing needs to be offloaded to the client machines. The main problem is that the server needs to prevent cheating somehow; the easiest ways of doing this include using DRM or simply offloading the task to several clients at once and comparing the results. Eventually this system would resemble the Napster of old, where all the actual interesting things were on people's computers, and the servers basically just coordinated the whole thing. At this point people would propably also connect directly to each other to decrease lag.
So, what happens when someone introduces the Gnutella of MMORPGs ? A system which doesn't need a central server to function. The players would run "servents", each of which would not only provide the user interface but also run a tiny area of the gameworld. Walk to the edge of the current area, and your servent connects to another servent. Enough people concentrate to an area, and the servent running divides parts of it to nearby ones; an area is empty enough, and the servent asks other servents for more areas to run.
Such an MMORPG would have no need for monthly fees. It's running costs would be divided between its players in their electrical and bandwidth bills. It would mean the end of the industry, not because MMORPGs themselves became unpopular, but because the model of monthly fees would be unmaintainable - you don't need a central server to play, so you don't need to pay anyone to run one either.
Of course content makers would stand to make a killing selling cool new models, but that's how it should be. And of course this MMORPG with no central controlling entity would likely have some rather unwholesome areas, but then again, that's how it should be, IMHO :).
Parent
WOW Success (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, but not just yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Games run their course. Blizzard has been really lax in adding new content, and fixing bugs. If they are going to average a major update once every 2 years, customers will start to leave for other games.
While it may be a long time before anyone beats the subscription numbers that WoW currently boasts, as more people get broadband and more people start having better systems, the MMO market can handle more people.
But it won't happen for a few years. As much as I am looking forward to Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, it won't challenge WoW for numbers. And nothing else in the works that has been talked about is really lighting any major fires. And even Eve's slow but steady growth will only go so far, as it's a game of Haves and Have Nots, and new players are mostly Nots.
Re:Sure, but not just yet (Score:4, Insightful)
>Nots, and new players are mostly Nots."
This is only partly true.
First, the upper tiers of skill training take a long time. So, for example, getting to the point where you have a 20% bonus in Engineering takes only a fraction of the time it takes to get to a 25%
What this means is that someone who invests a lot more time in it will only generate a slightly better character.
Second, tactics and numbers beat raw points. Give me a dozen or so people who have been playing less than a month, give them the right mix of easy to get skills, and we'll go all evening taking down battleships, force recon ships, etc with barely in losses. Sure, they won't beat a force of equal numbers flying interceptors or anything funny like that, but they can decline engagements they can't win and will just cause a massive amount of damage relative to the total number of skill points in the group.
Skills and 1337 eq aren't everything.
Parent
New genre? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, didn't anybody say the same thing about FFXI? I would guess that people will eventually get bored with WoW just like they did with FFXI and look for the next big thing.
Blizzard has their work cut out for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Convince the company to go public (Score:2)
Possible strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the game does need to be worth playing in order to entice anyone away from another MMO
Popularity (Score:3, Interesting)
It can be done (Score:5, Interesting)
StarGate can do it if it's done right. They have the brand name. They just got to remember this is a MMORPG and there needs to be more than one way to succeed in the game. If they can break this cycle that you have to always fight something to advance they'll win over big. That's what Star Wars had. Docs, dancers, musicians, and artisans could do what they liked doing and succeed.
Believe it or not some people just liked standing around chatting.
Some points (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance the MMO that gives acceptable rewards for soloing sees a good deal of its playerbase at max level relatively quickly. This impacts the long-standing belief touted by casual gamers (the main audience of WoW) that the journey is the fun part, and the end game item hoarding and raiding is boring. Also it leverages the HUGE userbase tha
Yes, but not in the way the article presents it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Crap! I KNEW there was something I was suopposed to be doing instead of playing WoW!
Looking Back (Score:5, Insightful)
The game was successful because everyone wanted a 'casual friendly' game to play - and that's exactly what it *WAS*. But once everyone reached 60 and the developers lollygagged their way to the first expansion (after what? 2 years? 3? I can't even remember how long the game has been out thanks to being locked in a cold room full of empty coke bottles and a broken '2' key for Sinister Striking!)
Once you hit that top level and started raiding, it became a horrible addiction. The only way to see real character advancement is through new gear, and the GOOD STUFF (as all crack heads want!) is only available via raiding A LOT. I went from a happy casual player to a 5 day a week 'second full time job' player.
I don't think another game will have that much success anytime soon - im sure it's possible.. but I also think that the hayday of WoW is going to slowly come to an end. I don't know if their numbers are still going up or not, but im sure as more and more new games will be released that will slowly steal games from WoW... Blizzard might try to hold onto the throne with World of Starcraft or World of Diablo or basically just rehashing WoW with one of their other brands to keep it 'fresh', but eventually even they will bow down eventually.
Besides... WoW is in a whole new 'era' of gaming IMO. 20 years ago a fun game was playing cards after dinner with your parents (maybe a few more years than 20...whatever) The point is that as technology continues to develop and becomes accepted, more and more people jump 'on the wagon', and thats just part of what the gaming community is seeing today. Is it that WoW just happened to be 'the right game at the right time', or will it be looked at years from now as 'one of the first good games in the 'Gamers-Generation.' (I know that sounds a bit silly but hopefully you understand my point.)
Disclaimer: I fall upon my rights as an american to post this message without using spellcheck. Thanks!
I sure hope so... (Score:4, Interesting)
What I do like about WoW is the quality, it seems minimally buggy in comparison to most MMO's (except for the Blizzard servers after release). This is so important and it's a problem in so many of the games in this genre.
If another MMO comes out with the same quality control and a well known license attached, you'll see a split in the user base. The casual players will stick around mostly (as will some of the hardcore fanboys) but a new challenge is something an MMO addict can't pass up.
Convinced (Score:4, Interesting)
I think for a game to beat WoW they will have to trump graphics and remain simple. Let the casual user have an easy game but make it complex enough for those that want complexity. WoW has done this fairly well. Anyone can get to 60, but a true game fan can find and adventure for specific equipment items and specific stats. A fanatic fan can break the game down into math and figure out exactly how much his DPS (damage per second) would increase if he got a certain item or certain enchant. But you don't have to do that.
Customization is a big (HUGE) key that WoW has completely missed. You cannot create a community in WoW beyond a guild. Again going back to UO.. that was a great feature, albiet implemented very poorly at times and the implementation/security of it varied greatly every content update. If you wanted to, you and some friends could build a small town out of user-purchased homes, complete with NPC vendors that you controlled. Second Life has huge customization features but is lacking graphics, intuitive UI, and just doesn't have the appeal that most games do.
Faulty Analysis (Score:3, Interesting)
All of these factors point towards one conclusion: World of Warcraft's success, admirable as it may be, will be extremely difficult to duplicate.
In five years does anyone doubt that most people will be playing a game with better graphics than WoW, even if it is WoW II? The social component of MMORPGs makes it more likely, not less that gamers will flock to one particular game among the offerings they have. The question then becomes, how do I make my offering the next king kong of MMORPGs?
Gameplay is one key. It has to be fun and it has to be addictive in order to build and maintain sufficient body count. Accessibility is another key. It needs to run on Macs and PCs and ideally on Linux. You can't afford to exclude 5% of the market, because that 5% will contain some of the hub people that will draw in others. If 1 person can't play a game, 20 might stay on a game their friend can play too. Those 20, make up some of the mass needed to be a blockbuster. The barrier to entry cannot be too high. Initial cost cannot lockout the bottom half of the market, and it has to run on the average machine, not just top of the line. A free trial is a big plus as it gives people a free way to get hooked, just like crack.
Aside from graphics, and more refined gameplay, there are a lot of things a new MMORPG can bring to the table. One is more diversity and another is standardization. This may seem contradictory, but hear me out. If a company puts out a game that works with open standard modules, then multiple companies can create and sell those modules for it. Buy access to different fantasy settings, cyberpunk, world war 2, etc. This allows for the maximum diversity of gameplay with the minimum barrier to entry. Since it would almost certainly rely upon one or more standard gaming engines, it would also remove a lot of the work that goes into building one from scratch.
I've advocated this as an open source project, but have not heard many people enthusiastic about it. It is, however, a perfect fit for the OSS business model since content and the service are not tied to the code and are what people are willing to pay for. I think if someone creates the Apache of MMORPG engines, they will be a rich person with a huge reputation that will allow them to cherry pick work from then on.
Open Source or not, however, a single, service or game is almost certain to be a magnet to gamers, like WoW is today. It is part of the nature of the social network, which is a huge component of MMORPGs today.
Sony dropped the ball (Score:4, Interesting)
The reasons I left EQ (and why WoW may not avoid these problems) were...
1. The game was so hard you cannot meaningfully accomplish things solo once you're high (e.g. 60th+ level). As a casual player who does not spend a long time online in one session I spent a large percentage of my time looking for a group. I even arranged a second subscription so that I would have two characters whilst I was soloing. Wow was therefore more accessible because you can solo meaningfully and it also halved my subscription costs. However, both systems are designed so that the greatest rewards are only achievable by massive multiplayer effort. and at that point, all the players who have real lives drop out.
2. Very few pieces of software are perfect, with a MMORPG this sometimes requires human intervention. The customer support at SOE was appalling. GMs sometimes abused their powers and if you had a problem you sometimes had to wait days for resolution. WoW support used to be fairly good and prompt, but I've noticed a drop in quality over the months.
Over time, it looks like the WoW software has got more buggy to the point where I suspect EQ has the upper hand now. If you've got 40 people who spend hours trying to achieve a goal and all wipe because of lag (for example) then they're going to be fed up.
3. Even though the area to explore was huge, (and I'd explored for almost 4 years), I had only visited maybe 50% of the regions that were available. A lot of the new regions required quarterly expansions costing about $45. Every time an expansion comes out you are reminded that you're paying a subscription AND you're being asked to pay for the expansion. Blizzard had been very good at improving WoW for the standard subscription and I dont begrudge them an expansion every 18 months or to, but Sony's 3 monthly expansions to add broken content drive people away.
4. It became obvious that some mechanisms in EQ were overt time sinks (e.g. some people waited days for certain creatures to appear), now, obviously, the whole idea of a game is to be an entertaining time sink, but you're supposed to be enjoying yourself whilst doing it. WoW has a few irritating time wasters, such as flight paths but generally its a lot better.
So in summary, Sony destroyed Everquest's dominance of the MMORPG market by offering poor support for buggy software and charging lots of money for it whilst only a few hardcore players got bragging rights over their leet characters (at the cost of family, jobs and sleep). I can see a few faint shadows of this disease on WoW, and hope it won't get worse.
If someone wants to make a killer MMORPG then listen to the majority of players, not the vocal hardcore. Allow people to stop and attend to real life. Listen to them when they've got a problem and fix it as a priority before working on something shiny, new and broken. Let them play the game as fast or as slow as they like, so they can socialise or be a tourist. I'd love to play a casual wow-type game in the Everquest world, there were so many cool areas, monsters and quests that I miss.
It depends how you look at it (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not necessarily something that future MMO's should draw from. Of course there will be WoW clones, but I think all of the companies will benefit from the success of WoW.
You'll see people start with WoW and find that they need more depth and challenge. Games like FFXI, Everquest, and the soon to come Vanguard will all benefit from the influx of gamers into the genre.
I don't think WoW will be "beaten". It will co-exist with all the other MMO's, and everyone will benefit from WoW's ability to attract the casual gamer.
The only way to beat WoW (Score:5, Funny)
thxbye
So wait. You expect people to surpass the best? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well to beat WoW you need to approach it the same way. Take a well built world that has been seen in multiple games that everyone knows and loves, something like Mario or Zelda (note Final Fantasy doesn't have the same world so it doesn't work the same way) Make it identifiable but playable, allow the players to play any of the major races, Invent a couple new ones and you should have WoW.
The problem is no one has a game that was as popular as Warcraft available for this quite yet. And those that do arn't willing to go to MMORPG. Mario and Zelda will never be MMORPG if there's a god in heaven. Stuff like Command and Conquer doesn't have the races to go along. GAmes like Final Fantasy doesn't have a viable world.
The problem really comes in when games try to be so different it hurts. Star wars galaxies anyone? If there was a game world that could be better than WoW it would be Star wars, but there's not enough developer items. LOTR is coming soon but isn't sounding like a strong contender. Star trek could work, Ender's game would be fun but too obscure.
The problem is for something like WoW you need to have Devs who've created successful games in the world, interest in going into MMORPG, and the patience and money to really create solid beta, Just paying a company money to make a MMORPG won't work because they might not work with the source material, they might not have enough time, they might just not understand the material (Scarface? The main character is going to get up from the ending, so the whole moral is gone and it's a stupid run and gun). WoW will be beaten, but probably not for another 4-5 years. But that's ok. That's actually the way MMORPGS work. They have very long life times but it also takes a long time to create a successful one.
Shadowrun could beat it (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally think that the world of Shadowrun could come close and compete with WoW because of it's blend of fantasy and cyberpunk. The two big limiting factors on Shadowrun are A) Microsoft holds the IP license and B) there isn't enough hardware power to populate an entire city for thousands of players to run around in at the same time. But in terms of the content possibility (criminals vs cops, the lower class vs the evil corporations, magic, matrix, etc), you can't really beat the potential of the Shadowrun universe. You can have soloing in the world, then you can have instances as runs against corporations. Most importantly, the Shadowrun universe doesn't lend itself to the gear grind like WoW does. The playing field remains pretty level throughout the character advancement process. You don't gain more hitpoints and mana as you advance. It just becomes less likely that you will lose them as quickly. One of the big limiting factors I see to doing Shadowrun "right" would be the adult oriented nature of the game. I'm not sure how many parents who fork over $15 a month for Johnny to fight orcs and trolls are going to be happy with Johnny running drugs for the mob and killing the family of corporate whistleblowers.
Re:Shadowrun could beat it (Score:4, Funny)
Or at least that is what the guys playing those characters tell you.
Parent
Sorry, but a lot of those "women" are men (Score:3, Interesting)
Trust no identity whose face you don't see on a live cam. And not even all of those...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)