11 Innovation Lessons From the Creators of World of Warcraft 243
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."
Re:11 lessons (Score:5, Informative)
- Rely on critics
- Use your own product
- Make continual improvements
- Go back to the drawing board
- Design for different kinds of customers
- The importance of frequent failures
- Move quickly, in pieces
- Statistics bolster experience
- Demand excellence or you'll get mediocrity
- Create a new type of product
- Offer employees something extra
RTFA [nyud.net]Totally Crapified Article about Egomaniacs (Score:5, Informative)
They actually think that their "11 Innovation Lessons" are new, different, and special.
Even a junior manager at a McDonald's has learned this stuff within their first 30 days on the job. Really. They are intrinsic to running any service organization.
Read through them, and ask yourself: would a McDonald's Junior Manager know this as an intrinsic part of his job servicing customers?
The short answer is YES, a junior manager at McDonalds would know 10 of 11 of them. The 11th just doesn't apply to McDonalds. Because Big Macs are perfect.
Re:Platitudes (Score:5, Informative)
I think the reason that WoW STILL has 10 million subscribers is simply because it takes a LONG time to do things right. Levelling goes very fast(faster than ever since patch 2.3), but grinding for reputation, items, gold, and professions is a huge time-sink, in terms of hours. If you are the kind of person who ISN'T allowed to play for 12 hours a day, it can take many many months to move toward end-game content.
And that is to say nothing about PvP and Battlegrounds. The only other online games I've ever bothered to get into are Quake2 and Quake3. There is something irresistible about CTF and the other battlegrounds games. But to kick ass, you need a twink, which obviates the need for your main to spend all kinds of time grinding to fund your twink.
Then there is arena, where you attempt to twink your main, basically.
To have it all, it takes a huge time investment, which is reflected in the number of subscriptions Blizzard maintains over the long-term.
Now, I am not saying it is wrong for Blizz to extend the gameplay time by making it take forever to get anywhere on foot, or low drop rates, or the price of an epic mount versus the amount one can reasonably grind in say, 50 hours of play.
Well, the travel time actually is nothing short of ridiculous. Travel-time between "flight points" should be instantaneous. Just replace flight points with portals. PLEASE! Travel time between kalimdor and anywhere in outland is just crap. C'mon now.
OTOH, Blizz has been pretty good about regularly adding new content (even outside expansion releases), adjusting item and talent specs, and generally making the game more accessible to people with less time on their hands.
They've struck a good balance between making their product more open to new subscribers, as well as maintaining their long-term customer.
They've executed a well-crafted plan to widen their subscriber base while retaining a solid number of existing customers. That is the hallmark of any successful business. </verbose>
Re:Congratulations on inventing MMOs (Score:2, Informative)
Blizzard was making money off of those services. They got sponsors for the Battle.net Servers ("D2USWest-1 Hosted by AT&T") and in turn would only run ads in the BNet GUI for that specific company. The execs at Blizzard were very good about getting other companies to play ball on their terms while making money or AT LEAST breaking even and appeasing their user base. You're correct, though, it's a lot more than just Blizzard throwing money at services just to make sure their customers are happy.
Re:Supermodel at Fat camp (Score:2, Informative)
That is incorrect, there are many changes on the test realm that do not go live.
For example, in the last patch there was a change to the way mana replentishing food/drinks worked in the test realm. Players gave negative feedback about it and it was taken out.
Re:Supermodel at Fat camp (Score:2, Informative)
Right... Listening to critics is not the same as mindlessly obeying critics. There have been plenty of changes that either didn't get past the test realm stage or got reverted/tweaked shortly afterwards. You're only remembering the buffs and nerfs that you didn't like making it live. The easiest to remember change that didn't go live was when druids in bear/cat form were able to finally drink potions. The reversion of that buff drew outrage to the point of organized protests across the live servers and a lot of my beloved forum trolls getting themselves banned due to overly flaming or critical posts.
Re:Congratulations on inventing MMOs (Score:3, Informative)
Same with many other patches. Zul'Aman was introduced a while back, as was Ahn'Qiraj and a whole bunch of other places.
PvP content is updated every so often as well, and a whole slew of new items (green, blue and purple) are introduced over time as well.
The paid expansion packs are *big* expansions, equivalent to another continent being added to the world. They include many new regions to explore, lots of dungeons, new crafting recipes and so on.
As a non-'dungeony' player, I don't get a lot out of the free updates except bug fixes and improved class balancing, but I still appreciate that many players love the 5- and 25-player dungeons. They're getting new content throughout the year as part of their subscription price. I could too if I cared to play that content.
I'm all about exploration and crafting, so the paid expansions give me lots to do. I'm okay with that.
wow (Score:2, Informative)
I have been a WoW subscriber since its inception. However, most of you have a completely misconstrued idea of the typical WoW player. Yes, I will concede that there are some whom you might consider addicted. Those that play for 10-15+ hours a day and take the game way to seriously. This however does NOT represent the majority of player base at all.
A vast majority of the people that I have met, and those whom I know personally are adults. Ages 20ish to 30. Many of whom live successful lives, are married, own their own houses, etc. The game is not just a bunch of pimple faced teenagers and hopeless introverts. There are quite a few women who play as well, many of whom are the wives and girlfriends of other WoW players. Fact of the matter is, WoW is more like a social club than a MMO. Its happens to be a common similarity and a social enabler of many of todays working sub 30 adults.
Of course there are quite a few younger subscribers as well. My 9 year old son even plays on occasion, with the chat disabled of course!
I have been around, I've seen my share of MMO, and I've played many of them simply because I enjoy that genre better than any other. However, I can honestly say it is NOT WoW itself that keeps me playing, if it weren't WoW it would be something else. WoW is just the path of least resistance in terms of MMO's. I enjoy playing and and the vastness of the world itself keeps me from getting bored with it.
There is some grinding involved in WoW however it is not nearly as bad as EVERY other MMO that I have played. And I guarantee you, the average player will never even have the opportunity to experience some end game content let alone repeat it endlessly as some you have suggested. Over the course of 3 years, across all my characters, I have logged only 24 days total "casual" played time, and have taken several extended vacations in between. Nevertheless, I am just as well geared and/or equipped as 80% of those on the server on which I play. My point is, you do not have to be some lifeless introvert to enjoy and progress in this game, and THAT is why so many people play it.
Re:Lesson #12 (Score:3, Informative)
"The medical community now makes a careful theoretical distinction between physical dependence (characterized by symptoms of withdrawal) and psychological dependence (or simply addiction). Addiction is now narrowly defined as 'uncontrolled, compulsive use'"
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction
Rob