Who DOES Blizzard need to fear?

[SnakeCharmer]

When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether."

This has bothered me for a few days. 

Are you saying you *didn't* know what Bliizard was up to with WoW?  If memory serves, you were promoted up and out of SW:G about 3 months after it released, which would have been November-ish 2003.  WoW was release in November 2004, just one year later. So it's not like WoW was still on paper, it was in fullfledged beta.  NDA or not, I find it hard to believe that you didn't know WoW was going to be what it is.

[Raph]

When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether."

This has bothered me for a few days. 

Are you saying you *didn't* know what Bliizard was up to with WoW?  If memory serves, you were promoted up and out of SW:G about 3 months after it released, which would have been November-ish 2003.  WoW was release in November 2004, just one year later. So it's not like WoW was still on paper, it was in fullfledged beta.  NDA or not, I find it hard to believe that you didn't know WoW was going to be what it is.

I was actually offered the CCO job in Dec of 2002, and postponed taking it until SWG shipped. I didn't move to San Diego until December 2003, but I wrote the email in question in the early summer of 2003.

I did actually have hopes that SWG could have been the uber-Diku, in a sense. And I still enjoy (and plan to make) virtual world games. But I don't expect it to be within the context of how the current MMO industry works.

[Falconeer]

I also prefer 40k over fantasy. Always have.

No, I know. I understand. I was just saying that I know lots of local gamers but I don't know in person a single one that prefers 40k over fantasy. Just to agree on the fact that local polls are always wrong as apparently it's true that Europe seems to prefer Fantasy while US is on 40k, but they are both very popular and moneymaking settings.

[SnakeCharmer]

When I was first made CCO of SOE, one of the first emails I wrote was one that said "Someone is going to make an uberDiku spending more than anyone imagined, with top notch story and art and experience design taken from their expertise in other arenas, and eat everyone's lunch. We should be looking for alternate markets altogether."

This has bothered me for a few days. 

Are you saying you *didn't* know what Bliizard was up to with WoW?  If memory serves, you were promoted up and out of SW:G about 3 months after it released, which would have been November-ish 2003.  WoW was release in November 2004, just one year later. So it's not like WoW was still on paper, it was in fullfledged beta.  NDA or not, I find it hard to believe that you didn't know WoW was going to be what it is.

I was actually offered the CCO job in Dec of 2002, and postponed taking it until SWG shipped. I didn't move to San Diego until December 2003, but I wrote the email in question in the early summer of 2003.

I did actually have hopes that SWG could have been the uber-Diku, in a sense. And I still enjoy (and plan to make) virtual world games. But I don't expect it to be within the context of how the current MMO industry works.

What I was curious about, when you wrote that email - were you aware of what Blizzard was doing with WoW?  I don't know if you missed that part of my post, or are intentionally avoiding it.  In my mind, it's always good to know what the other guys are doing.  And if you, or anyone else as high up or higher on the corporate ladder *didn't* know what Blizzard was putting into WoW, then I don't know what to say.

[Azazel]

If I'm Blizz I wouldn't want to lose 250K folks.

Blizzard just banned 70,000 accounts for gold farming/cheating.  They did it without blinking.  For most MMO's that'd be the majority of their playerbase.

What? Again? Or is this a reference to the bannings they did a few months ago? Margalis nailed it though. They really just created 70k more box sales and set some Chinese guys the task of levelling up their night elf and undead rogues and hunters all over again.

Ban 5000 people that buy gold and you'd do a lot better. I imagine it's quite lucrative for Bliz. Ban the accounts and you then get the box sales. Plus you get approval from your playerbase for doing it. I certainly have nice feelings for Bliz whenever I see one of these announcements.

I wonder about how they'd go about proving something like that though. Transfers of large amounts of gold between players outside of trades is a natural thing in these games. A friend lent me 540 gold to buy my epic mount awhile back, and I've been sending him the money back in 100g chunks. Did anyone read that article on Something Awful where the guy was impersonating a flirty chick and all these morons laid gifts of cash and items etc all over her(him)?

Easier to ban the clearly-macroed bot farming felcloth in Azshara.

[Mandrel]

If I'm Blizz I wouldn't want to lose 250K folks.

Blizzard just banned 70,000 accounts for gold farming/cheating.  They did it without blinking.  For most MMO's that'd be the majority of their playerbase.

What? Again? Or is this a reference to the bannings they did a few months ago? Margalis nailed it though. They really just created 70k more box sales and set some Chinese guys the task of levelling up their night elf and undead rogues and hunters all over again.

Yeah, again.  Another 70,000 in the middle of October.  Totaling 165,000 accounts banned in 6 months.  Those bannings also removed 63 Million gold from said accounts.

Most games would be happy to even HAVE 165,000 accounts...

[Raph]

What I was curious about, when you wrote that email - were you aware of what Blizzard was doing with WoW?  I don't know if you missed that part of my post, or are intentionally avoiding it.  In my mind, it's always good to know what the other guys are doing.  And if you, or anyone else as high up or higher on the corporate ladder *didn't* know what Blizzard was putting into WoW, then I don't know what to say.

Oh, sure; everyone was. I don't think there was an expectation of how much they would spend, how much time they'd put in on it, and how much bigger than everything else the eventual userbase would be.

[Ironwood]

Fear itself.

Oh, I like you.

[Arthur_Parker]

I also prefer 40k over fantasy. Always have.

No, I know. I understand. I was just saying that I know lots of local gamers but I don't know in person a single one that prefers 40k over fantasy. Just to agree on the fact that local polls are always wrong as apparently it's true that Europe seems to prefer Fantasy while US is on 40k, but they are both very popular and moneymaking settings.

Why does Europe prefer Fantasy over 40k?  Pretty much anyone I talk to about Warhammer here in Europe thinks 40k would be more interesting than the Fantasy.  I think PVP is more popular in Europe (Europe has a larger percentage of PVP servers in WoW than the US), but I'm not seeing a Fantasy bias.

[Endie]

Why does Europe prefer Fantasy over 40k?  Pretty much anyone I talk to about Warhammer here in Europe thinks 40k would be more interesting than the Fantasy.  I think PVP is more popular in Europe (Europe has a larger percentage of PVP servers in WoW than the US), but I'm not seeing a Fantasy bias.

Did the US get the two in a more "compressed" time frame than Europe?  If my memory serves me right then here in Scotland I saw WFB - I still have the 1st Edn - quite some time before 40k came along.  Perhaps by that point people were used to the fantasy setting: it had market share, so to speak.

If I was in America, then would I have become aware of the two of them at pretty much the same time, when GW decided to try and break into the US market?

On an anecdotal level, most of my friends went for 40k, leaving my sizable army of Brettonian knights with nothing to do but practise heavily armoured gymkhana routines.

[Arthur_Parker]

I don't know about time frame, I do know around the time when WFB was in 2nd edition and 40K in first, the US only had a handful of GW stores and the top seller over there by a massive margin was the board game Talisman.

In the UK, Talisman barely got a look in, WFB and 40K out sold everything else.

[Falconeer]

Why does Europe prefer Fantasy over 40k?  Pretty much anyone I talk to about Warhammer here in Europe thinks 40k would be more interesting than the Fantasy.  I think PVP is more popular in Europe (Europe has a larger percentage of PVP servers in WoW than the US), but I'm not seeing a Fantasy bias.

Again, I can't speak for Europe, just for a veeeery small circle of gamers that counts about 100 heads.
I have the impression that Fantasy Warhammer is more popular in Europe than 40k, but of course I could be wrong.
On the reasons, maybe it's because fantasy Warhammer flavour is so medieval that we feel some sort of ties with our cities, our history and so on...
For me that's often the catch. My country is filled with ruins of castles, towers, manors... everything here echoes that fascinating past. Playing in a medieval setting lets me "live" those places before they were ruins (or before they were turned public offices, hospitals, banks...).

No idea if 40k lets US players relive their past in some ways, or their future.

[waylander]

And I still enjoy (and plan to make) virtual world games. But I don't expect it to be within the context of how the current MMO industry works.

There's a reason people still fondly remember UO. It had less to do with Richard G., and more to do with how the world was setup and run.  Updated a little bit with what we know now, and I'd still be fond of an enhanced UO virtual world concept.

The challenge would be to make the rest of the game interesting.

[Modern Angel]

Why does Europe prefer Fantasy over 40k?  Pretty much anyone I talk to about Warhammer here in Europe thinks 40k would be more interesting than the Fantasy.  I think PVP is more popular in Europe (Europe has a larger percentage of PVP servers in WoW than the US), but I'm not seeing a Fantasy bias.

Again, I can't speak for Europe, just for a veeeery small circle of gamers that counts about 100 heads.
I have the impression that Fantasy Warhammer is more popular in Europe than 40k, but of course I could be wrong.
On the reasons, maybe it's because fantasy Warhammer flavour is so medieval that we feel some sort of ties with our cities, our history and so on...
For me that's often the catch. My country is filled with ruins of castles, towers, manors... everything here echoes that fascinating past. Playing in a medieval setting lets me "live" those places before they were ruins (or before they were turned public offices, hospitals, banks...).

No idea if 40k lets US players relive their past in some ways, or their future.

I worked retail for them for about a year in the late 90s. My mother is also a Brit and I spent a few summers overseas playing. 40K is DEFINITELY more popular here in the states but I'd say it's about an even split in the UK. I'm not precisely sure on the reasoning for it beyond some mix of gun culture, 40K being closer to GI Joe/Transformers/whatever kids play with today, and rules simplicitiy.

[shiznitz]

And I still enjoy (and plan to make) virtual world games. But I don't expect it to be within the context of how the current MMO industry works.

There's a reason people still fondly remember UO. It had less to do with Richard G., and more to do with how the world was setup and run.  Updated a little bit with what we know now, and I'd still be fond of an enhanced UO virtual world concept.

The challenge would be to make the rest of the game interesting.

If one built a UO today, how would quests get integrated? Clearly, the customer base expects quests to steer the story and their character from place to place quite a bit. But without exp, are players going to be as interested in quests for loot only? Probably, but hard to know for sure. A lot of the game dynamics people have come to expect aren't as applicable in a skills-based system so that would seem to mean that a dev team would have to really break away from current systems.

We can hope, but don't hope too hard.

[Scadente]

Last time I played 40k the rules were anything but simple.

Like Falconeer said, most of Europe has a long history, WH Fantasy does tie into that. So you can do all sorts of historical references. 40k is more about guns, which I'd think American kids are more up for. I'm actually starting to look forward to WAR, I'm just doubting how commercially viable it is. Sure they'll make money, but it won't be as big as WoW in the next five years, looking like some good stuff though (but reading/watching anything from Mythic is pretty embarrassing  :-().

[Modern Angel]

Last time I played 40k the rules were anything but simple.

Like Falconeer said, most of Europe has a long history, WH Fantasy does tie into that. So you can do all sorts of historical references. 40k is more about guns, which I'd think American kids are more up for. I'm actually starting to look forward to WAR, I'm just doubting how commercially viable it is. Sure they'll make money, but it won't be as big as WoW in the next five years, looking like some good stuff though (but reading/watching anything from Mythic is pretty embarrassing  :-().

40K got stupidly simple in third edition.

Regardless of the reasons, it's true that 40K outsells Fantasy in the US. I've no interest in 40K anymore due to the overly simple rules but I can't find a fantasy player to save my life anywhere. I live in Raleigh which is smack dab in the middle of alot of tabletop minis geeks and they're simply nowhere to be found. Lest you think it's endemic to this area it was like that while I was working the GW store and before, no matter where I lived. Additionally, while I didn't get firm figures on WFB vs. 40K sales it was confirmed to me by the regional manager one day when we were shooting the shit.

Anyway, I don't expect WAR to threaten WoW in an overall, big picture sort of way but in a manner that takes away a certain stripe of player. Alot of PvP folks are dissatisfied with WoW's pvp. That sort of ties into the whole death by a million cuts theory.

[HaemishM]

The future of massively multiplayer online gaming lies in big-budget subscription-based games.  Those eleventy million people playing Bejeweled for free are never going to pay cash money to a bunch of ragged MMORPG development refugees just because they slapped a chat box and a virtual dollhouse onto the game.  Those eleventy million people are more likely to go back to playing Windows Solitaire while chatting on AIM first.

I'm sure those Myspace guys have huge moneyhats, but Myspace isn't gaming.

But. But. It works in Asiaaaa!!!! And cel phone games!!! They all work in Asia!!!! We should be looking to Asiaaaa for inspiration!!!

They aren't looking to Asia for inspiration. They are looking for a MARKET. American audiences just aren't obsessive compulsive enough.

[Morfiend]

but I can't find a fantasy player to save my life anywhere. I live in Raleigh which is smack dab in the middle of alot of tabletop minis geeks and they're simply nowhere to be found.

They are all at home playing WoW.

[DataGod]

"They aren't looking to Asia for inspiration. They are looking for a MARKET. American audiences just aren't obsessive compulsive enough."

Ding! Ding!

Spot on!

[Daeven]

Regardless of the reasons, it's true that 40K outsells Fantasy in the US. I've no interest in 40K anymore due to the overly simple rules but I can't find a fantasy player to save my life anywhere.

Denver = WH Fantasy land, with literally new faces every time to show up for a game. Hell. There is even a strong Warmaster / Ancients contingent.

It's probably the lack of oxygen. Makes us do odd things you know.

[Venkman]

If one built a UO today, how would quests get integrated? Clearly, the customer base expects quests to steer the story and their character from place to place quite a bit. But without exp, are players going to be as interested in quests for loot only? Probably, but hard to know for sure. A lot of the game dynamics people have come to expect aren't as applicable in a skills-based system so that would seem to mean that a dev team would have to really break away from current systems.

We can hope, but don't hope too hard.

Some quests were already there, in the form of those news posts you'd see outside Empath Abbey. Click, read, get told in what heading and distance was some event, go, it spawns. Same basis as mission terminals in SWG: game generated mini-missions.

As for big quests, that's just pure content. UO was a complex system. Making quests for it, with the usual array of triggered/timed spawns and epic drops is comparably easy.

Finally, UO had XP. It was just gained through use and you could gain many tracks simultaneously. There were levels too (when abilities unlocked/could be learned), they just weren't called that. Ultimately, there were Classes too, except they were called "templates".

Still confusing to the average person who wants straight content and easy-to-understand ladders, but that too could be programmed into the system. Ask a player what they want to be when their character is fleshed out, have the player select, and then give the player every skill they needed in order to achieve the end template.

UO was so friggin' close to a perfect game. So close. Do it 3D and add in both the content and game-direction and you'd have a winner. Unfortunately, the only way to do that responsibly is to start a new project you fund against box sales. And nobody's got the balls to try it. They want easy or niche.

[Modern Angel]

Regardless of the reasons, it's true that 40K outsells Fantasy in the US. I've no interest in 40K anymore due to the overly simple rules but I can't find a fantasy player to save my life anywhere.

Denver = WH Fantasy land, with literally new faces every time to show up for a game. Hell. There is even a strong Warmaster / Ancients contingent.

It's probably the lack of oxygen. Makes us do odd things you know.

I'd sell my family for a group of people who played Ancients. My miniatures have lain fallow for four years now because I simply do not care to play 40K with the stripped down "rush to the center of the table and have a big melee" rules and it's all anyone plays. Fuck it... turning off my brain with WoW is a hell of a lot cheaper.

[UnSub]

Who should Blizzard fear?

1) Vivendi. At some point one party (Blizzard or Vivdendi) might try to stretch the friendship and end up causing lots of internal / external problems. I've got no idea of the respective agreements these guys have, but if Vivendi could shut down distribution or force people out of Blizzard, things could get ugly very quickly.

Probability: Not likely, unless Vivendi pushes too hard on the next Blizzard product.

2) Niche games. If a player gets bored of WoW and starts looking around for some other game to play, they might find a niche MMOG they prefer. If enough players get bored and head off to two dozen different niche products that Blizzard can't adapt to, then they would start to have problems with decreasing size of the player base.

Probability: Not likely - there are a lot of ifs and you need a lot of niche MMOGs to pull this off. Might be more likely 2 years from now.

3) The next big Asian MMOG fad. Just by the way the market operates, Asia tends to see MMOGs come through that post big numbers for a while, then get replaced by the next MMOG that everyone plays. Sure, the "old" MMOG doesn't just die immediately, but if WoW were to lose 1m players in Asia over a short time period it would certainly draw attention.

Probability: Maybe. Something new and big will come along at some point, but it might be next month or in 2009.

4) The next big gamer IP MMOG. WoW attracted a lot of attention when it built on an existing game IP that everyone had heard of. In general MMOGs based on IPs have sucked, probably due to the IP owner and / or capitalists behind the MMOG jumping up and down for the devs to just release the damn game already. Blizzard took their time to get things done "right".

So, if the next big gamer IP title (not that there are huge numbers of them, but a Halflife MMOG would certainly attract attention) or even general nerd IP MMOG (as an example: the Marvel Universe Online) was done "right" could see a lot of players jump ship from WoW as well as attracting new players into the genre.

Probability: Maybe. As has been said, there is a tendancy for players to not just cancel one MMOG to start another - they'll run two accounts for a while. So it may take a while - even a year or two - to accurately gauge the impact of a major new MMOG title on WoW's player base.

5) Reception of The Burning Crusade. Yes, some players will love it. The question is what the proportion of players will be who play through the new parts and go, "Is that it?". It's those players - the players who are just hanging on until the expansion can make their boredom go away and things get fun again - who hold a big question mark over the future of WoW. I don't know how many there are or how long they will last after BC comes out, but I'm sure that Blizzard wonders exactly how entrenched their player base is in their game. We'll know after the expansion comes out.

Probability: Good. I'm not saying that WoW will die after the launch of BC, just that Blizzard must fear it because it is the first expansion and will be used by players / commentators to see what Blizzard's hand is regarding the future development of WoW.

_____

WoW isn't going to die any time soon. However, it's very hard to determine what is going to knock it off its perch given that there is a lack of ability to determine exactly what made it such a big hit to begin with.

[HaemishM]

Who should Blizzard fear?

1) Vivendi. At some point one party (Blizzard or Vivdendi) might try to stretch the friendship and end up causing lots of internal / external problems. I've got no idea of the respective agreements these guys have, but if Vivendi could shut down distribution or force people out of Blizzard, things could get ugly very quickly.

Probability: Not likely, unless Vivendi pushes too hard on the next Blizzard product.

Not happening. WoW and Blizzard MADE Vivendi after they almost bought the farm. Had WoW failed, Vivendi would have gone with them. Blizzard is now the butch in this relationship, not because they have the power but because without Blizzard, Vivendi has fuckall.

[waylander]

If one built a UO today, how would quests get integrated? Clearly, the customer base expects quests to steer the story and their character from place to place quite a bit. But without exp, are players going to be as interested in quests for loot only? Probably, but hard to know for sure. A lot of the game dynamics people have come to expect aren't as applicable in a skills-based system so that would seem to mean that a dev team would have to really break away from current systems.

We can hope, but don't hope too hard.

Some quests were already there, in the form of those news posts you'd see outside Empath Abbey. Click, read, get told in what heading and distance was some event, go, it spawns. Same basis as mission terminals in SWG: game generated mini-missions.

As for big quests, that's just pure content. UO was a complex system. Making quests for it, with the usual array of triggered/timed spawns and epic drops is comparably easy.

Finally, UO had XP. It was just gained through use and you could gain many tracks simultaneously. There were levels too (when abilities unlocked/could be learned), they just weren't called that. Ultimately, there were Classes too, except they were called "templates".

Still confusing to the average person who wants straight content and easy-to-understand ladders, but that too could be programmed into the system. Ask a player what they want to be when their character is fleshed out, have the player select, and then give the player every skill they needed in order to achieve the end template.

UO was so friggin' close to a perfect game. So close. Do it 3D and add in both the content and game-direction and you'd have a winner. Unfortunately, the only way to do that responsibly is to start a new project you fund against box sales. And nobody's got the balls to try it. They want easy or niche.

Yeah the quest type content would need to be handled differently, and my comment was more or less directed towards the virtual world element (not gameplay).  The world had finite resources, so lots of things affected lots of other things. In the end nothing seemed tedious, it was just that you had to understand how supply and demand worked.  So just from a world building standpoint, the way UO worked was and still is my favorte.

Other than that Darniaq summed up what I would have said.

[Reifz]

Who should Blizzard fear?

1) Vivendi. At some point one party (Blizzard or Vivdendi) might try to stretch the friendship and end up causing lots of internal / external problems. I've got no idea of the respective agreements these guys have, but if Vivendi could shut down distribution or force people out of Blizzard, things could get ugly very quickly.

Probability: Not likely, unless Vivendi pushes too hard on the next Blizzard product.

Not happening. WoW and Blizzard MADE Vivendi after they almost bought the farm. Had WoW failed, Vivendi would have gone with them. Blizzard is now the butch in this relationship, not because they have the power but because without Blizzard, Vivendi has fuckall.

Vivendi own Blizzard lock, stock & barrel.  They have done since 1998.  Vivendi says "jump", Blizzard says "How high?"

[Merusk]

Which is why BC is shipping at the end of November, just like Vivendi said it would.

Err, wha?

[schild]

Interesting angle, saying Vivendi is pwned by Blizzard.

Interesting.

But completely WRONG.

[Teleku]

I really wish GW would give in and just make a god damn WH40k/WHF online computer game, based around the actual minitures game.  Just transfer the rules straight into computer form, give me access to all the armies, and charge me a monthly fee.  I would love to get into WH, but I just dont have the fricken money it takes to put together an army, nor people to really play it with for that matter.  Im sure it would be really popular.  Having a computer to inforce rules would be a god send, so I dont have to worry about the stats for the 20 different guns each member of every squad is carrying.  You also wouldnt be restricted by lack of terrain features as well.  I seriously dont think it would impact the minitures market much anyways, since people who like to model will keep playing the physical form, while the shit tons of other people who dont have the time/money to do that would pay for a computer version.  WHY DONT THEY MAKE THIS GAME.

[Endie]

Vivendi own Blizzard lock, stock & barrel.  They have done since 1998.  Vivendi says "release", Blizzard says "Not yet, it's not polished enough, come back in a few months", Vivendi says "Shoah tin', massa, just please don't leave en masse and let us bleed money and die"

There, fixed that for you.

[Simond]

Some of the doomcasting of WoW at this moment in time is akin to the belief still held by certain devs (Brad McQuaid being the most obvious example) that "Sure, WoW has lots of subscribers now but come back in a few months and they'll have all quit. Yup. Just wait. You'll see. Uh-huh."

That was a possibility two years ago, when nobody knew what WoW's retention would be like. Nowadays...not such a smart position to take. Hell, EQ kept 400K+ subscribers for five years through everything Verant and then SOE did - and it took SOE massively screwing up an expansion (Gates of Discord) and a big-name 'successor' game actually pulling off the "EQ done right" trick for the EQ playerbase to significantly decline.

It'll take something similar for WoW to begin its death spiral, and I don't see either of them happening in the next couple of years, let alone both.

[HaemishM]

Vivendi own Blizzard lock, stock & barrel.  They have done since 1998.  Vivendi says "release", Blizzard says "Not yet, it's not polished enough, come back in a few months", Vivendi says "Shoah tin', massa, just please don't leave en masse and let us bleed money and die"

There, fixed that for you.

Yeah, that's about it. Vivendi has what... Sierra? While Sierra does have some hits, they don't bring in Blizzard money. I'd wager that all of Vivendi's other game stuf combined does not equal the money Blizzard makes for the company with WoW. Vivendi was practically broke before WoW came out.

[shiznitz]

I just want to clarify. When you write "Vivendi" you mean VUG, not the huge french conglomerate as a whole?

[HaemishM]

Correct. VUG is a boil on the butt of Vivendi proper, were it not for Blizzard. Legally, VUG has all the power over Blizzard, but they'd be cutting their own throats if they soured that relationship.