Who DOES Blizzard need to fear?

[Nebu]

Helps if you're not there primarily for the PVP.  The PVP for me is something that's occasionally fun to do and there's also the fact that I'm able to compete due to still having pretty decent gear (no more raids for me).  I'm not paying any attention to the honor grind, the inherent unfairness of certain maps, or what side pwns the most.

I'd hope DAoC would have better PVP, because its PVE sucks spriggarn balls.

Well stated.  As for PvE in DAoC, I agree completely. 

[Margalis]

In the short term, nothing.

In the long term, arrogance and a dilution of talent. The talent loss has actually been going on for a while now. WC3 was worse than Starcraft for example, because they added D&D-style crap like hunting MOBs to what was supposed to be a skill-based competitive game.

Eventually they will be victims of their own success where key employees leave to start their own projects and are replaced by fanboys. Again this has already started to happen with the Guildwars guys leaving and Tigole and Furor coming on board.

However as long as they maintain a "release when it is ready" policy there is a limit to how low they can go. One thing they get very well is how development actually works, and that, unlike design talent, is something that can become part of company culture and sustain itself forever.

As long as competitors are focused on "we have to ship by 4th quater!!!" they will remain on top. Especially in the world of MMORPGs where the launch matters a lot and you expect the game to last for years, a delay is irrelevant in the long-term.

[Venkman]

As cool as PotBS will be, it's like Conan and Tabula Rasa: great games, but no huge IP with broad awareness in the game space to hang their hat on. It's like when CoH launched. Quality experience, but too generic to cast a wide net without a huge marketing budget.

It's not some beautiful theory on gaming, but a part of American culture.

It's a part of a part of the American culture. Don't look at it through the lens of the current playerbase. You won't get people in the F13/Corpnews/Lum-diaspora/been-around-since-UO crowd to accept legit-RMTing in the mass sense. But there's people designing games and communities with games in them for audiences very different and far larger than our own.

This is the fundamental basis behind my original question. It was really driven home at AGC in August: There is already a very big and easy to see divide in the development community: those chasing a better DAoEQWoW and those coming at this space from left field.

The former group is your predictable array of I-once-worked-at-SOE crowd while the latter are the YouTubes and MySpaces of the world. The first group defines success by rules that have already been mastered, in a way most companies simply can't match, for every point raised here and since Nov 2005: strong community, strong game-based IP, autonomy from the mothership that has a bottomless pit of cash, a strong decade of success such that autonomy is justified. Who else has this? Nobody.

To compete is to decide whether to adhere to the rules and hope to grab a fraction of the base you have the budget to get, or to toss the rules altogether and try for someone else.

Those "someone else's" have already been proven to be out there. WoW did not capture them. Blizzard captured more of us, both veterans of dikus and those who hadn't yet realized they liked this sort of game. Nah, the "someone else's" are the 25mil registered accounts in Neopets, the 50mil in Maplestory, the million or so in Club Penguin, the million in Second Life, the soon-to-be-million in Runescape. I mention those five games specifically because each has a business model totally different from the other and from what is measured at MMOGcharts.

The best summation of all of this that I've found is in the book Blue Ocean Strategy. The byline does a good job of summarizing:

How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

Rules are for the uncreative. The more closely their followed, the more predictable the results.

[Morat20]

Darniaq: In all honesty, I'd find the YouTube and MySpace crowd less likely to adopt a RMT or micropayment system. It seems antithecial to the way they arrange social spaces, and would seem a barrier to gameplay.

I'm sure someone will try sooner or later, so I'm guessing we'll find out.

[Venkman]

How do you think those places are making money? YouTube actually hasn't yet turned a profit, but what MySpace (and SL and RS) have done is create a community they can ply for revenue. This isn't unlike microtransactions for cellphone services or On Demand for you TV. The next gen of gamers are used to picking and choosing exactly what they want. They both have more money than us individually and command more dollar purchases for their household (as in, Dad, it'd be cool to have that). It's us and our elders that like the eaiser side of flat monthly no-thought taxes.

The games themselves will change too. I don't expect 40-man raids in some 12th generation WoW. I don't expect WoW either. Heck, even they won't have 40-man raids anymore. Why is that? Certainly not because of us. We've proven to like that shit. So why reduce to 25? For the next group.

For the people here now, things will remain as is for some time. We agree there. It's the next group coming, the folks who'll likely never find their way to this ever-aging corner of the net, the youngins' who have it so much easier than we did in our day ;)

[Morat20]

How do you think those places are making money? YouTube actually hasn't yet turned a profit, but what MySpace (and SL and RS) have done is create a community they can ply for revenue. This isn't unlike microtransactions for cellphone services or On Demand for you TV. The next gen of gamers are used to picking and choosing exactly what they want. They both have more money than us individually and command more dollar purchases for their household (as in, Dad, it'd be cool to have that). It's us and our elders that like the eaiser side of flat monthly no-thought taxes.

MySpace -- and LJ as well -- have a 'free' and a 'paid' content system, yes. I see that as more akin to cable versus broadcast TV. Or free singleplayer mode, small server charge for multiplay mode. Not an RMT/microtransaction model.

I think you're taking their social spaces and communications networks and applying them to games. Nothing of the younger generation indicates they're any more likely to want an uneven playing field. The whole point of games is that the field is, theoretically, level.

I think that fully supported RMT -- and most microtransaction systems -- are going to cause gamers to feel it's not a game, not a competetion, but "who has the most money". And frankly, that little contest is settled so many times a day in so many subtle ways that people flee to games to avoid it.

I happen to think in-game advertisement to offset costs -- that will probably be far more acceptable to them than to us.

The games themselves will change too. I don't expect 40-man raids in some 12th generation WoW. I don't expect WoW either. Heck, even they won't have 40-man raids anymore. Why is that? Certainly not because of us. We've proven to like that shit. So why reduce to 25? For the next group.

For the people here now, things will remain as is for some time. We agree there. It's the next group coming, the folks who'll likely never find their way to this ever-aging corner of the net, the youngins' who have it so much easier than we did in our day ;)

Actually, I figured the raid change was to keep the casuals and the people who liked the 1-59 game, but didn't want to raid. Fuck, I don't want to raid. Even 20-man instances are a pain to me (and I do MC weekly). I don't even like 10 man instances if I can avoid them.

[Morat20]

Just a note: Things like SOE's Station Pass (pay more for access to more games) or things like additional accounts/extra toons for a small bump in fee -- that sort of thing I can see.

Outright gold selling? Not unless you can sell the gold back later. :) Microtransactions -- pay a little bit to get access to this dungeon, this new area, this bad-ass sword? Around the edges -- maybe. Not so much mini-expansions (WoW's large and free content expansions are going to continue to make this unfeasible. People ask "Why am I paying more for this when WoW players get it for free?"), but things like GuildWars PvP thingy -- or the Guildwars model in general.

I think that culturally we want a sense that the game is fair -- that is that the playing field is level and that cheating is discouraged/prevented/punished. I can see some movement on frills -- in game pets, that sort of thing -- but even if you do something like "Pay extra for more bank storage or a larger house" you risk poisoning the playerbase. We don't mind paying for monthly service -- running the servers. We don't mind paying for large chunks of new content.

I think any generation, for the forseeable future, is going to resent like hell being nickel-and-dimed for incremental upgrades or outright gold -- because they will feel forced to keep paying in order to keep the playing field "fair". Which is kind of funny, because they probably WOULD be right alongside paying 15 bucks a month for the exact same thing -- even a gold stipend.

I don't see the notion of "Fair games" changing. And I think Americans in general don't like to be constantly reminded they're paying to have a good time. Better to pay once a month or so and not have to worry about 'real money' while you play.

[WayAbvPar]

I'd hope DAoC would have better PVP, because its PVE sucks spriggarn balls.

I had to quote this again, since it made me giggle like a sated meth addict. If I try, I can STILL hear the goddamned generic monster noise that spriggarns and half the other humanoids made, and it makes me want to kick Mark Jacobs in the crotch.

[Yoru]

My opinion, I don't think there's anything in the next release cycle that has a prayer of 'killing' WoW. Feeding off it, though, certainly. WoW will keep growing, but those on the way out of WoW will likely latch on to some of the upcoming titles.

No, WoW has won a crown that no other MMO has won yet: it has become a Pop Culture Phenomenon, the PC equivalent to Halo. What will 'kill' WoW eventually are churn, burnout and death-of-fad - over the course of ten years, probably. We've seen EQ and UO live nearly that long already. WoW is the gateway drug, I think - it gets people into the MMO space and some of them, probably a small percentage, will look for other experiences as they burn out and leave WoW. This will probably populate a bunch of second-tier WoWalikes - your Conans, your WARs, your EQ2s, each of which have some specific aspect of the formula polished up to appeal to a small segment of the community with a good-enough experience filling in the rest.

I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right, with a good launch. The number of FPS players playing these hardcore semi-persistent FPSes is pretty large; I think with the right Pavlovian mechanics and (this is the important part) a good, stable gameplay platform could lure a lot of them in for a low monthly fee or possibly some form of pseudo-subscription (e.g. paying for clan rankings, voice lines, etc.). But it won't kill WoW because it'll cater to a different segment of the gaming market.

Other potential WoW-killers? A console version of WoW with a lower subscription fee. Take WoW, add a slightly more consoley control scheme (with mechanics geared towards it), charge $5 or $10/mo., tops. A decade or more down the line, some game with a WoW-like experience and Skinner-box mechanics that's better geared towards 5-30 minutes of playtime whenever you want it, over many months, but with the option to play longer in a given sitting. And it will probably need to be available on a cellphone/portable console as well as (or instead of) a PC/console, so that people can get their fix on the subway, in traffic, at work/lunch, in lecture, whereever.

[WayAbvPar]

I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right, with a good launch. The number of FPS players playing these hardcore semi-persistent FPSes is pretty large; I think with the right Pavlovian mechanics and (this is the important part) a good, stable gameplay platform could lure a lot of them in for a low monthly fee or possibly some form of pseudo-subscription (e.g. paying for clan rankings, voice lines, etc.). But it won't kill WoW because it'll cater to a different segment of the gaming market.

Sold.

[Nebu]

I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right, with a good launch. The number of FPS players playing these hardcore semi-persistent FPSes is pretty large; I think with the right Pavlovian mechanics and (this is the important part) a good, stable gameplay platform could lure a lot of them in for a low monthly fee or possibly some form of pseudo-subscription (e.g. paying for clan rankings, voice lines, etc.). But it won't kill WoW because it'll cater to a different segment of the gaming market.

I agree as well.  I was a HUGE WWII OL fanbois until the actual release of the game ruined me for life.  If someone could make a working WWII combat MMOG, it would be my robot jesus.     

[Scadente]

No, WoW has won a crown that no other MMO has won yet: it has become a Pop Culture Phenomenon, the PC equivalent to Halo.

Ding ding ding!

WoW is up there with GTA. The only bad thing is that they are promoting games as a semi-evil tool for escapeists (At least that's how the general public sees it). Anyways, it get's games into pop-culture, games are finally moving above pornography as an accepted medium for adults! Now we only need the RIGHT kind of games, maybe promoting something positive, this time around.

WoW really has no competition, the rest are dead horses compared to the steroid monstrousity of WoW. I don't think Bioware stands a chance, but I might be biased (they pulled the orphan storyline too far, I hate them for that). WoW actually has some interesting questlines, so the 1-59 game feels fresh. I agree the "end game" is stale, and I guess alot of their customers leave the store by then, but they'll tell their friends, make a char with them, level and play together.

The only thing I can see making a dent in WoW's glory is WAR. But it's lacking that initial appeal, it doesn't have the freshness of WoW and it's not cute, at all. Some of the PvP crowd might move on to that, and that's quite alot of players. Also people who're burned out. As stated; as it stands today, WoW can only kill itself.

[Venkman]

Nothing of the younger generation indicates they're any more likely to want an uneven playing field. The whole point of games is that the field is, theoretically, level.

Actually, that's exactly my point.

This isn't about winning. It's about personalization. Someone said earlier that the only way RMTing could work is if it is for stuff that doesn't matter towards game play. That's the way it does work, because the ecosystem is different. Where's the "Game" in the social setting of SL? Maybe something somebody created sure, but for the most part people are buying creations to help them customize their own space. People buy magic brushes in Neopets. People buy furniture for their Igloo. People buy pretty stupid flowers in Maplestory.

That is the essence of the success of microtransactions, and why your "Cable vs TV" analog works (though I prefer to think of it as analog TV vs On Demand/Pay per View type). People are willing to, as has been proven, pay more for more options.

This isn't about diku. RMTing works there because it's a Black Market. But there's a reason EQ's Station Exchange servers are not the most populated. It makes some good free cash for SOE but it destroys the magic circle people want to believe in. But that's current gen people, millions of folks who don't play what millions of others are playing, and therefore don't care about the same sort of things. For us it's about swords and armor. For those others it's about flowers and tables.

Different markets, different demographics. My only point is that they are more numerous :)

Otherwise, I agree. ingame advertising (when done right) can work and is fairly well received (Neopets is a good example, as are the better advergames and ARGs).

I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right

I keep hoping. This arbitrary split between the control system that is FPS and the objective-management system that is RPG is pissing me off. PS "done right" to me is PS with a point. I don't think Tabula Rasa is going to blow away the genre, but it's one of the more compelling titles to me personally because it's trying this very thing (RPG with an FPS-like system).

[El Gallo]

Different markets, different demographics.

And therefore nothing Blizzard should fear. 

My only point is that they are more numerous

As are the markets for bacon, mortgages and blowjobs.  Also things Blizzard has no reason to fear.

[schild]

Haven't read the thread. But I've always said, Blizzard's biggest threat is Blizzard.

[Krakrok]

micropayments

You need to look at IMVU. That's how it is going to go down.

[sinij]

A game with PVP as good as WoW's (yeah, I said it), similar content quality, and out-of-the-box access to PVP content (the equivalent level 60 game currently) would win me over in an instant. I see a fair number of people who are frustrated by the fact that one has to spend a large amount of time in the game not PVPing in order to PVP.

I have news for you – WoW PvP is *very* lousy and repetitive when compared to PvP games. Try EvE, try SB.

[tazelbain]

Maybe if you are an uberguild, most of us aren't.

[jpark]

* Prays to Zod *


.... Behold the Fallout MMORPG!

[Xanthippe]

I don't know about you all, but I'm waiting for this.

[Yoru]

I think what will eventually surmount WoW in numbers will be some form of MMO Battlefield 1942 or MMO Call of Duty - Planetside Done Right

I keep hoping. This arbitrary split between the control system that is FPS and the objective-management system that is RPG is pissing me off. PS "done right" to me is PS with a point. I don't think Tabula Rasa is going to blow away the genre, but it's one of the more compelling titles to me personally because it's trying this very thing (RPG with an FPS-like system).

The only thing FPS-like about Tabula Rasa, when I tried it, was the appearance of the interface. As long as you keep the targeting reticle vaguely near the target (within about 40 degrees of arc), your shots are governed RPG-style. And if that's too hard, you can turn on full autoaim by holding down shift or something like that.

So basically, you select your target FPS-style (point and click), then hold down Attack (LMB) and Shift until it dies. There may have been special abilities, but I don't really remember it that clearly.

My opinion on TR remains "this could be neat; I'll try the beta"-style cautious curiosity.

Also, I was thinking that perhaps the theoretical 'big MMOFPS' could draw more from the AO and BF2142 revenue models, with perhaps a bit of Eve tossed in. Buy the box, buy expansion packs, ongoing revenue from in-game advertising (see AO), no subscription fee, optional services ingame (e.g. VOIP) for small monthly payments (e.g. the Eve VOIP thing). An alternate revenue model would be Teamspeak - allow small 'clan' servers up to X users, then have colo partners resell actual servers, charging the colo partners out the ass for the privilege.

[Chenghiz]

A game with PVP as good as WoW's (yeah, I said it), similar content quality, and out-of-the-box access to PVP content (the equivalent level 60 game currently) would win me over in an instant. I see a fair number of people who are frustrated by the fact that one has to spend a large amount of time in the game not PVPing in order to PVP.

I have news for you – WoW PvP is *very* lousy and repetitive when compared to PvP games. Try EvE, try SB.

Really? My experience in EVE so far has been flying around in circles autoattacking. SB I can't speak on, but there are other reasons I wouldn't touch that game.

[WindupAtheist]

Blizzard is Rome at it's height.  It rules the world.  No one can compete with it, everyone is it's bitch.  No crazy market paradigm shift or clever competitor will ever defeat it.  No ultra-quality persistent FPS with RMT is going to come along like a Great White Hope to unseat the reigning Diku.  Anyone with enough money to make that game is going to be too risk-averse to actually do so, and will instead make a pale but safe WoW wannabe game.

The only way it can ever fall is if it gets content, fat, and decadent.  And while that's bound to happen eventually, it's not likely to take place for a very long time.  Like I said, kneel before Zod.

[stray]

A game with PVP as good as WoW's (yeah, I said it), similar content quality, and out-of-the-box access to PVP content (the equivalent level 60 game currently) would win me over in an instant. I see a fair number of people who are frustrated by the fact that one has to spend a large amount of time in the game not PVPing in order to PVP.

I have news for you – WoW PvP is *very* lousy and repetitive when compared to PvP games. Try EvE, try SB.

Really? My experience in EVE so far has been flying around in circles autoattacking. SB I can't speak on, but there are other reasons I wouldn't touch that game.

Getting a good guild was a necessity in Shadowbane, but I see that as more of a plus than a minus.

Sure, WoW's PvP is convenient and solo friendly. Then again, it only takes place in 3 battlegrounds. It's convenient, but there's very little variety or depth. Even BF1942 has more variety and depth than WoW -- and that's a 5 year old shooter.

SB, on the other hand, had politics and war going on (not just "battles"), player cities, seiges, land grabs, and the like.

Another important point: You might have needed a guild in SB, but you were fine using plain white gear as well. You didn't need a lot of magic stuff.

You could level in half the time too, even without powerleveling.

Personally, I find it more convenient to level quickly and get a guild than level and roll for magic items for months on end.

Combat wise, SB does everything else better.....Except the Warrior class and/or heavy melee.

Blizzard is Rome at it's height.  It rules the world.  No one can compete with it, everyone is it's bitch.

If 7 million customers is "Rome", then MMO's are already dead.

I think it can do better.

Not that I mean Blizzard has anything in particular to fear right now though.....Just that the genre is still in it's infancy. There are untapped millions waiting to be.....err....tapped.

[Arthur_Parker]

WoW's bubble isn't going to burst anytime soon but I'd expect WAR to easily break 1 million subscriptions in the first 6 months if it's any good.  There's also another game (not starting with the letter V) due out next year that I suspect might break 1 million worldwide.

[Endie]

I find it surprising that people are seriously suggesting that WoW has nothing to fear for periods of between three and seven years from now.  In this field, seven years is an immense, geological period of time.

The lead time is an issue, yes, but look at the success of Runescape, which came pretty much out of nowhere, and has only really been noticed very recently by most people.  Not a WoW-killer, but it shows how numbers can build rapidly with very little warning.

Of course, I have no more idea who will seriously threaten Blizzard than anyone else here: if I did, I'd buy shares.  And like many people, I look to Bioware as some sort of King Under The Mountain who will come and save us.  But I'm willing to bet that, whatever the big thing in MMOs is in five years, it won't be WoW.  I doubt hugely if it will be as Dikuesque.  It may very well still be Blizz, of course.

I'm intrigued to see if someone can hit the mass console market, now that they'll all be hooked up and prepared for stuff like micropayments (I admit I don't know about the Wii's options here).

My utopian hope is that continued growth, together with better middleware, will lead to more and smaller MMOs, with greater differentiation between gameplay, worldiness, socialisation etc.  Raph, i am sure, will point to distribution in a power-law manner.  The hope is that if there are enough niches, there might even be something for jaded old us.

[Simond]

I find it surprising that people are seriously suggesting that WoW has nothing to fear for periods of between three and seven years from now.  In this field, seven years is an immense, geological period of time.

Everquest ruled the US MMOG market for, what four or five years?

I can see EQ-done-right (aka WoW) matching that easily, and doubling that length of time is pretty plausible as well...especially if Blizzard can somehow balance "One expansion a year" against "It'll ship when it's done".

[schild]

Ok, I'll be a bit more serious - though I was pretty serious with what I said already.

There are 2 things Blizzard has to fear:
1. Nintendo making a Pokemon MMOG. Seriously. We can chalk this one up to common sense.
2. Any other console company saying - I can do this too. And there exists a console revolution of MMOGs that completely overtakes any effort put forth by Blizzard. The only way to counteract this is to create a Diablo MMOG for the 360 and PS2. Really though, the 360.

Mythic/EA, SOE, NCSoft - they are nothing to Blizzard. NOTHING. I could say VUG would buy any company that did post a threat - but that's bullshit. VUG doesn't need to buy any companies because none of them are a threat. At least not in the PC arena. WoW is the biggest thing that will ever happen to PC Gaming (outside of Will Wright's stuff, but hey, no monthly fee and we saw how The Sims Online turned out) until Blizzard does World of Starcraft. And it will go down in history as PC Gaming's last hurrah once a ridiculously accurate mouse and keyboard set comes out for consoles. Which I think will happen by the next generation. Unless it happens with the PS3 - which it very well could. I'm not heralding the death of PC Gaming here. I'm simply stating fact. WoW is the biggest thing in PC Gaming. And the last biggest thing unless Blizzard (or maybe Valve) does something about it. It's pretty much up to them.

But there's always an outside chance a kid in a garage makes something better. Hey, it has happened before.

[schild]

Not that I mean Blizzard has anything in particular to fear right now though.....Just that the genre is still in it's infancy. There are untapped millions waiting to be.....err....tapped.

Yes, they're all sitting on their COUCHES waiting to be tapped.

[Ironwood]

In the long term, arrogance and a dilution of talent. The talent loss has actually been going on for a while now. WC3 was worse than Starcraft for example, because they added D&D-style crap like hunting MOBs to what was supposed to be a skill-based competitive game.

In Your Opinion.

[Endie]

I find it surprising that people are seriously suggesting that WoW has nothing to fear for periods of between three and seven years from now.  In this field, seven years is an immense, geological period of time.

Everquest ruled the US MMOG market for, what four or five years?

Well, I hate to mention the woodcock, but there's a big difference here between that light blue line that just stays ahead and the big green monster line at the right.

I'm not sure that all that many lessons can really be drawn from a time when (sorry, M59 et al) there were basically two games in the west, and one of them has a continuing reputation as a gankfest.  The other big difference for me on that graph is the sheer number of lines needed on the right hand side.

I'm not even beginning to be stupid enough as to say WoW is doomed, or that it will be gone in a couple of years, or even that it won't still be number one in four - I suspect that it will.  But I do think that by 2011 something else will be there or thereabouts, and if I had to bet between WoW and "Everyone else in the world", I think the latter might edge it.  For people to confidently say that it won't be threatened for (in some cases) most of the next decade seems rather over-confident.

Blizzard is a different thing from WoW, of course.  I think there is every likelihood that the no.1 PC MMO will still be from them.

[Venkman]

WoW is currently No.1, but you need to measure the genre one way in order for that #1 rating to apply. If you measure by the number of registered accounts, or the amount of money generated per player account, or the amount of time spent in a sitting in the game (eyeballs), those would result in different titles.

WoW isn't going to become #2 or less because someone out-Blizzards Blizzard. They'll get that way because the industry itself will change the measure of success. And that change won't happen because of WoW. It'll happen because what's important will be re-assessed based on the reality of microtransactions and ingame advertising.

In my opinion, of course :)

The only thing FPS-like about Tabula Rasa, when I tried it, was the appearance of the interface. As long as you keep the targeting reticle vaguely near the target (within about 40 degrees of arc), your shots are governed RPG-style

Yea, for me too. Last time I played it was E3, but things seemed pretty set in stone UI-wise. It's not dissimilar from PS either. But you know, those systems are good enough for me. I'm not a good FPS gamer.

But that's just me. I imagine FPS gamers don't want a gimped-FPS game but rather a massive version of what they're already playing. I didn't actually get a chance to drive Huxley at E3, but it looked like that comes closer. Meanwhile, TR, like PS, felt like a game more appropriate for an RPGer looking for some more twitchy action but not wanting real FPS (like me).

Really? My experience in EVE so far has been flying around in circles autoattacking.

In PvP? Was the other person AFK?

[Endie]

There are 2 things Blizzard has to fear:
1. Nintendo making a Pokemon MMOG. Seriously. We can chalk this one up to common sense.

Yeah, a bunch of us were talking about this a couple of days ago, in a Wii/360/PS3 context.  Done even vaguely right, it reeks of immense potential, and the whole point of the Pokemon thing - in so far as a 36-yo Scottish male can ever really get it - lends itself to frequent, paid-for expansions if they went down that kinda GW route...

[waylander]

I don't think they'll have any serious competition for the next 3-4 years. I mean even if they fell to a million subscriptions they'd still be over double the next largest MMO now.  The biggest thing they have to fear is stagnation, and creating barriers to entry for new players.

Warhammer will be successful, but on a scale of 100k-400k subscriptions. Yes its an old franchise with lots of name recognition, but so was Dungeons and Dragons and last I heard they were hovering somewhere around the 100k mark.

I think the most competition that WoW and any MMORPG is going to face is going to come from niche products, or Guild Wars (CORPG's) type games.  There's some cool new games coming out (Chronicles of Spellborn, Stargate Worlds, etc) and they'll likely siphon off accounts, but they are going to hit the other companies worse (SOE, Turbine, etc).  Also Bioware just doesn't make shitty products, and no one can argue that they can do Dungeons and Dragons or Star Wars license work with no equal. I think they would be a huge success if they are making an MMORPG in either of those settings (OMG wouldn't the Old replic of 3,500 years ago be cool).

But honestly, I think the only other PC titles that could be converted to an MMORPG and get millions of accounts are Diablo and Starcraft.  D&D could have, but not with Turbine at the helm and a gameworld no one gave a flip about.

[Numtini]

Blizzard has "some Asian company you've never heard of" to fear. That would be about it I think. Their largest market is Asia and I certainly have no clue about who's cooking up what in Korea or the PRC. That I think is the market where they could most easily be hurt in.

In the western market, I don't think they really have much to fear at all. I think there's a huge market for "the next big thing" to be some kind of "Runescape on a console." Or better on PC and more than one console. (The keys to the Runescape model I think are free to play and advance features with a low price.) But I don't think that's necessarily the same market as WOW. I don't see anything that could challenge WOW for a top shelf sort of experience in the west for a very long time.

What does the Warcraft/Starcraft franchise have to fear? Yes, AOE has done well and such. But really, if Blizzard wanted to grind out more XCraft games, it probably could do so into the visible future without any damage from competitors.