11 Innovation Lessons From the Creators of World of Warcraft

Ant writes "Colin Stewart's OC Register Inside Innovation blog has up a post discussing Blizzard Entertainment's success in the games industry. According to the site, Blizzard has learned eleven lessons on innovation that can help almost any business. The industry leader used these innovation methods not only to create the world's most popular massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft, but also to keep the game fresh and challenging for more than 10 million players. Because many of those customers pay $15 a month to continue playing, Blizzard's ongoing creative achievement is worth more than $1 billion a year in revenues, not counting the multi-millions it tallies from its other games."

Lessons learned

[Rinikusu]

From Blizzard:
1) Money doesn't buy you happiness.
2) Money will buy you lots of shit that make you happy.
3) Did I mention we have lots of money? I know it's not really a lesson, but it's our list and we're rich, beyotch!
4) Money isn't very flavorful. We had a buffet lunch of money once and after the 10th or 11th thousand dollar salad, I had to switch to the lo-carb dressing. Ugh.
5) Money.
6) If you have money, girls (some) will like you for it. As long as you have a proper pre-nup, wear rubbers (always) or get a Vasectomy to reduce risk, enjoy the ride.
7) It's amazing what you can do with money. This one time, we filled the company pool up with crisp dollar bills. The first guy to dive in got massive paper cuts from the crispness. Wow, like millions of dollars worth of cuts. We had to drive him to the hospital, while we used $100 bills to try and stem the flow of blood.
8) The morning commute into the office is so much nicer in my Ferrari. Vroom Vroom my ass, Mazda.
9) Money money money money money!
10) Sometimes, you have more money than you can spend. Paper crafts are so much more fun!
11) Nerf warlocks, bitches.

Re:What I learned from WOW

[Starrk]

you will eventually cease to have a social life (assuming you had one in the first place)

Aha. I seem to have found your mistake.

Main Innovation

[monoqlith]

Blizzard executives went to the crack-addled streets of inner-city LA, bought a bunch of it, gave it to their employees, and said to them, "Figure out how to make this crack into a computer game. Feel free to try some of it too." The crack enabled them to stay up late enough to think of WoW.

Re:Timing, maybe?

[Shazow]

EQ2's userbase is nowhere near where WoW's is.

Neither is the game quality for today's standards.

Ultima Online surpassed MUDs.
EverQuest surpassed Ultima Online.
World of Warcraft surpassed EverQuest.
EverQuest 2 surpassed a shriveled piece of ginger root vaguely shaped like a one-armed voodoo doll.

- shazow

Re:Totally Crapified Article about Egomaniacs

[Missing_dc]

"Read through them, and ask yourself: would a McDonald's Junior Manager know this as an intrinsic part of his job servicing customers?"

And as I read through your post I wondered "What does this guy do for a living, and how is he so intimately acquainted with the training a McManager gets?"

Re:Platitudes

[Minwee]

Way to miss the point, genius. The article wasn't about WoW, it was about Blizzard's internal policies and processes.

What's an "article"? Is it something you're supposed to read before commenting?

They left out a couple of items.

[ScrewMaster]

12. Hire lots of good lawyers

13. Use them.

Re:11 lessons

[Repton]

So, all I need to do to be successful is go back to the drawing board and quickly create an excellent new type product specially designed for specific types of customers! It's so simple!

Re:Lesson #12

[Anonymous Coward]

This type of thing is why, coming from a psychology background, I dislike the entire current conception of addition.

I have also noticed that basic math and psychology don't mix.