Spurned Chinese Publisher May Create WoW Knockoff 111
Earlier this year, Chinese game publisher The9 lost the rights to operate World of Warcraft in China. Now, it appears they are trying to solve their financial troubles by making World of Fight, which bears a suspicious resemblance to World of Warcraft. Others have noted similarities between World of Fight and Warhammer Online. Quoting Eurogamer: "According to the China Journal report, Chinese industry observers 'wonder whether The9 is launching a "shanzhai," or knock-off, World of Warcraft in hopes of keeping WOW players,' with iResearch analyst Zhao Xufeng noting that 'with the topic staying in the centre of attention, The9 can easily attract attention by doing this.'"
Dethroning WoW (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people have made the observation that it's basically impossible to raise the capital and perform the beta testing required to dethrone WoW. But all these factors aren't valid in China. Especially with their copyright laws. And the source code of WoW's servers...
A terrible idea (Score:5, Interesting)
This is about the worst idea a Chinese firm could have. It's one thing to knock off a physical good where you have access to the factory that makes the goods, and the manufacturing process is well understood. See knockoff chinese cars, watches, etc.
But, World of Warcraft is a gigantic software application. It probably has as many or more lines of code as any computer game ever created. It's been through years of testing and refinement, and has god knows how many hours invested into the artwork and graphics.
Recreating all that from scratch, even if you have a working example to clone, is a huge financial blunder and a waste of resources.
Note : I don't play WoW. My statements about it's internal complexity are based upon the fact that an MMORPG project is the biggest game project there is, with 5+ million lines of code. And WoW has a stupendously large budget, given the fact that the game charges customers over a billion dollars in subscription fees per year.
That's more money than any Hollywood movie has ever taken in.
One wonders what Blizzard does with it's cut of the revenue : in theory, they could use that money to create a WoW sequel that would be the most technically complex game ever made, with the best graphics and most sophisticated AI ever put in a computer game.
Re:Dethroning WoW (Score:2, Interesting)
they did chinese language localization for WoW. they ran WoW servers on chinese hardware. they censored some parts of the story for WoW. they sent chinese programmers to the usa to custom fit parts of the story to chinese audiences. they were paid a shitload of money to partner on WoW. what makes you think they dont ?
Re:A terrible idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A terrible idea (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think WOW has any spectacular code in it, it's all about the game design, story, tools and polish. That's what makes knock offs appealing, the code is cheap compared to other aspects of the game project. Having example ready and being satisfied with minimal changes and feature reductions will make whole thing orders of magnitude easier.
When I was selling the game projects myself it was always hard to explain the customers that source code is not the most valuable asset. We needed to be able to reuse and redevelop the code, no point in making same simple algorithms or patterns over and over again or figure out "appendix" where pre-existing or reusable routines are listed. Game projects are all about the game design, audio, art, and the whole refinement of the project. With many genres we are already in a point where scripting and tools are the main code that is written. Very little engine development needs to be done, unless something differentiating on the engine front is needed.
Of course with WOW there is a lot of code and it's going to be hard to duplicate, but to focus on the code as the main asset is not necessarily true anymore...
Re:Dethroning WoW (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people have made the observation that it's basically impossible to raise the capital and perform the beta testing required to dethrone WoW.
Now Blizzard might have more capital than most; but I wouldn't underestimate the resources of Bioware and their partnership with LucasArts. Given speculating about how good Star wars - Old Republic will be is pure conjecture at this point; though if anyone is going to "dethrone" wow in any near future I reckon Bioware is as likely a candidate as any.
Another 'WoW Killer' in the works? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dethroning WoW (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to denigrate their programmers' skills, but in Blizzard's case the "shipping late because they're not happy with it" thing generally refers to gameplay, not necessarily to the portability or maintainability or extensibility or whatever of their code.
Granted, not having easily extensible code for an MMO would be pretty stupid, and I'm pretty sure Blizzard is not stupid.