Matrix Online vs. World of Warcraft? Interesting...

[Lantyssa]

Polish has to apply to the game design as well.  It is not just for the art or most basic building blocks.  Imagine a SWG where they had time to polish combat, player cities, and any of its systems that were innovative.  Think about other games which introduced great new ideas but floundered because people couldn't be bothered with the rest of their crappy systems.  Put Blizzard's level of care into those clever ideas as well as the general experience and they would be absolutely amazing.

[Venkman]

The interesting part is that in my opinion World of Warcraft marks the death of game design, year zero

While I now understand the source of the title ;), I can't agree with this above statement, because experience has shown otherwise.

What you need to do first is break the genre down into sub-parts. Here is when referencing the movie or music industry actually works. Companies can push out $200mil guaranteed/programmed blockbuster movies all day long or some here today/gone tomorrow forgettable "hot" voice". Those things are easy because generic business folks with lots of money can buy the talent they want. They being generic though usually means they heavily compromise the vision of the execution.

The same is happening in MMOGs, and started even before WoW. Consider EQ1 to EQ2. EQ2 was sort of vanilla/generic. It would have done fine if not for WoW, which while following the same formula wasn't strictly vanilla in the sense. There's a lot of creativity in WoW. So much so it compelled SOE to redesign major parts of EQ2.

Now, I definitely agree WoW has less "massive" than the predecessors, but why is that? Is it because Blizzard is less creative? Or are they responding to demand of the players? There's only so often one can look at a number like they have now (7.5mil+) and say "yea? well all those people are ignorant!" ;) Fact is, there's a healthy chunk of veterans who flocked to WoW and are still there, precisely because it lessened some of the more sucky parts of EQ1 and DAoC. And some of those parts include the idea of an all-public-zone world where everyone gets in front of everyone else.

But let's set aside WoW for a second and look at other segments of the genre:

• Virtual lifestyles (UO, SWG still, Eve)- Are these players, the big fans of virtual lifestyle experiences, easily transportable over to WoW? Not always. Eve, for example, is additive to the genre because the game is as fundamentally different from WoW as most of the players it attracts. Could SWG have done the same? Sure. But you only get measured in this space by results. Dreams and whatnot are great for retrospectives and post mortems, but only serve to teach developers what not to do next time.
  
• Building games (ATiTD, SL)- Again, as different from WoW, and therefore additive.

There's other genres not really exploited too much, notably MMOFPS. Maybe Huxley, maybe something else. Probably not Tabula Rasa.

Basically, there's lots of ways to break down this genre. Some people feel success is now measured against WoW. I completely disagree. Success is purely based on properly identifying your target player, building the game they want, and keeping your business scaled to how much money you can expect. WoW was the most expensive MMOG ever made as far as I know. They needed millions of players to buy boxes. And a hell of a lot of people work at Blizzard. CCP (Eve) meanwhile? Very different. Still an MMO. Still successful. Just at a very different level of success.

So success entirely matters on who you're talking to, and ultimately from where you get your development money. Not all of the easy money comes from one place.

[stray]

DDO has trimmed down 'massive' more than WoW has. CoH to the same degree as WoW probably. It didn't make a huge difference for them.

That's not why WoW is successful.

[Venkman]

I think we all either agree in part or in whole on why WoW is successful. As a whole, on a financial level, nobody else can touch what they did unless they're a pharmaceutical company. But that's not the question here.

Rather, it's about what your target wants. Not "people", not "gamers", not "everyone". The ones you want. They can be different, particularly if you can't afford to compete against what some bottomless-pocket developer/publisher can afford to try and get.

And WoW is less massive. But it only is such by having removed some elements. CoH and DDO did it other ways. In addition to boutique personalized adventure zones, neither has/had crafting and as such a fairly one-dimensional (and someone avoidable therefore) economy. At least CoH had random/social public-space encounters though.

[geldonyetich]

I'd say what DQ is talking about gets you a solid game that caters of a specific niche.

World of Warcraft's ludicrous success, however, was a solid game taken to an exponential level of players from simple Blizzard name-brand appeal.  WoW isn't at the #1 spot just because it's a solid game, it's there because it was able to ride the coattails of success of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo.  The bandwagon effect also helped considerably.

Developers, make a solid game, but don't expect WoW subscription numbers to happen unless you're Blizzard.

As for Massive, I'd say it hasn't done Dark and Light or Anarchy Online any favors.  Bigger isn't better - go for quality, not quantity.  City of Heroes hasn't torn up the charts, but it has had a very high retention rate that is the envy of many more massive games.  If SirBruce's latest chart is correct enough, you'll find an interesting comparison between Everquest (about as massive as it gets) and CoH (a partially instanced game).

[Teleku]

I`ve never bought the "people just play wow/Blizzard games because its made by Blizzard" argument. Almost NOBODY actually does that.  The games sell great because they are god damn fun.  None of these people would last more than a month on Wow if it wasnt a fun game to them, name brand be damned.  That argument only works up till the moment they open the box, so maybe you can say initial box sales of Blizzard games are higher due to their good reputation.  They would never have the record breaking sales numbers they get for their games if any of the games were even mediocre.  For me, Wow is innovative to the MMOG scene because it was fun.  The first one!  Hurray!  I`ve played pretty much every MMO up to this point, and after the initial thrill of "wow, a vitual world!" wore off around EQ/UO, I havent been able to stand playing them past the initial free month. 

This is what the polish is that everybody is talking about.  Its not just the way the game looks, Falconeer, its also the game mechanics.  Wow has very polished game mechanics, unlike most other MMO`s that seem to concentrait on creating some grand virtual space where tons of other players can log into the same server, then tacking a half assed game into it.  Im hoping that Blizzards success in the MMO market will show the compitition they need to start working on all the damn aspects of their game, most importantly the GAME part, before they push out what is just another string of half assed implimented mechanics.  So I see WoW`s success as a positive thing for MMO game design ;).

[schild]

No one ever said people just play them because they're made by Blizzard. HOWEVER, Many many people bought them because they wanted into online persistant gaming and were waiting for a decent one. No shocker that it came from Blizzard. People trust Blizzard. Blizzard is the good housekeeping seal of PC Gaming. They're not the "bad guy."

However, attrition in WoW is probably very low. When you've got 6 Million people in a game, everyone probably has enough friends that Blizzard doesn't even need to create much content to keep people in there. They still have to create some content - and patch like a motherfucker (7 million is a permanent big beta test).

Now as for WoW's gameplay. I suppose you could call it polished. But they're just polishing a turd. Luckily they found 6.what? They're at 7.5M total now, right? So about 6.8 Million players who didn't know anything about this turd. 6.8M players that didn't join Star Wars, Final Fantasy, etc. etc. We know what the biggest name is, Blizzard. There's simply no question any more. So while you can say you don't buy into the "they play just because it's Blizzard," it's not to far a leap that they "paid" and "told all their friends" and "haven't quit yet" because Blizzard plays a huge roll in that. Hell, look at DoTA. There's a fucking music video.

Blizzard is a meme now, there's no two ways about it.

[Trippy]

Just cause you don't like it that doesn't make it a turd.

[schild]

The diku model? No, it's definatley a turd. Any system that hasn't evolved in 15+ years is turdish. You won't hear me support the original JRPG system either. Though, I'll allow Hironobu Sakaguchi to use it at Mistwalker since he invented the goddamn thing.

Turdish? Turdishstan. Hmm.

[Falconeer]

The diku model? No, it's definitely a turd. Any system that hasn't evolved in 15+ years is turdish.

But that's my whole point:
Designers who tried to evolve failed, some more some less.
While those who just cleaned the turd, even simplifying it here and there, won and became kings, emperors, gods.

Wouldn't that be a little depressing, being a MMORPG designer now?
If I were one, I think I would have gone nuts, as John Carradine's character Dr. Bernardo in that Woody Allen Movie:

Helen: You're insane!
Dr. Bernardo: That's what they called me at Masters and Johnson for creating a 400-foot diaphragm. Contraception for the entire nation at once!



I would end up designing the uber uber uber diku with 9999 levels, boob-mobs and physical punishment upon character death.


And P.S: It's not that you fail if you can't beat WoW. You don't fail just because you make an independent movie, get good reviews and money but you don't make the some money as Titanic. I am afraid the gaming industry works different though: mmorpgs, even indie ones, costs "potentially" more than an indie movie where content is the only thing that matters. So if your project it's not marketable, you don't get any funding at all. And while you can make a succesful movie out of pocket money (Clerks, El Mariachi), technology needed to craft MMORPGs still costs a bit more than that.
More, I wonder if a project like EVE could raise any funding today, after WoW. They probably got their money when everything online was a good idea. Would they get investments now, with a project that it's not a WoW clone?

[schild]

I'm not talking about people failing. I'm talking about that 112.5M per month not being for the rest of the industry.

[Trippy]

I'm not talking about people failing. I'm talking about that 112.5M per month not being for the rest of the industry.

FYI, it's more like $65 million a month.

The percentage of royalties they get from their Chinese operators is small and the price the mainland Chinese have to pay to play is quite low. The9's revenues from WoW for this year through September was US$29.1 million and Blizzard gets between 22% to ~38% of that (22% for game time card sales, 37.7% or 39% for CD-keys which are 30 Yuan, roughly US$4). The9 is also obligated to make yearly minimum royalties payments up front (US$13 million in 2005, less in 2006 though I'm not sure by how much, probably around US$8 million).

Edit: Actually $65 million a month is still too high. I'll try to get some better numbers later.

[tkinnun0]

Developers, make a solid game, but don't expect WoW subscription numbers to happen unless you're Blizzard.

That's about as stupid as saying "Developers, make solid Web 2.0 sites, but don't expect Google numbers unless you're Google". That mentality doesn't produce YouTubes or MySpaces. That mentality led to the half-assed execution of SWG. Just saying "we can't do it because we're not Blizzard" is setting yourself up for failure.

"Are we making something that 5 million people will be willing to pay 15$ a month, month after month?" That question must/should have been on the minds of SWG devs, and the answer was a definite NO. So they didn't. Ironic that SOE is one of the few companies that has access to WoW kind of money through their parent Sony, they just weren't willing to campaign for and spend it.

[schild]

Youtube, Myspace and Google were all created for different things.

World of Warcraft and other Diku-derivitive things are all fighting over the same thing. Though, it's more like the other diku shit is competing for the table scraps under the table that WoW sits at.

When Google, Youtube, and MySpace all start charging $15 a month and all serve the same function, go ahead and make that argument.

[lamaros]

I think WoW is actually one of the LEAST fun MMORPGs I've played in regard to "creating your own stories". I think others agree; take a look at the "best MMORPG moments" threads, not many are from wow, and many are from admittedly flawed games.

But, simple as you want to call it, the point others have already made seems to be the important one: WoW is a good game.

If you took what you have there so far, the class options, the art design, the game mechanics, the progression, and turned it into a 5 player co-op RPG people would play it and love it. The fact they have then added to it to make it a MMORPG has just drawn in more people to play it, and give people reasons to keep playing it, but the game at base is very solid.

WoW is a great straightforward RPG with a strong social grounding. Which is what most people want in their games; a bit of fun, some social activity, and things to work most of the time. Why do people keep playing once they've done their 20-30 days /played and seen most of the content? I don't really know. Do they even? Are most of them just not there yet?

That the only thing that puzzles me about WoW. I have no idea why so many got lured into raiding as that seem to be completely at odds with people's normal desires and frustrations. Count up the catasses all you like, most of the 7.5 million WoW players are people with social obligations and interests outside gaming, and the raid treadmill is one I except(ed) them to step off. I'm going to assume they were, and that this is why WoW has been changing over time. If this is the case I think it's a very clear demonstration that the MMORPG aspects of it are not as much of an influence on the success as people are making out.

I think people should think less about the WoW in comparison to other MMORPGs and just think about games in general.

[Venkman]

The diku model? No, it's definatley a turd. Any system that hasn't evolved in 15+ years is turdish.

Go has been around for thousands of years. Time does not a turd make. Diku as a system works just fine. Like TCGs or tabletop roleplay games. There's enough love to spread around.

As to your earlier comment about attrition, I think they're going to have a problem pretty soon. Retention for WoW, and the more important re-attraction, is going to be tougher than it was for EQ1 at its height because five years ago there wasn't much competition. And after two solid years, even the greenest newb to the genre can get bored with WoW.

[stray]

Count up the catasses all you like, most of the 7.5 million WoW players are people with social obligations and interests outside gaming, and the raid treadmill is one I except(ed) them to step off.

I was under the impression that not even 10% of WoW's playerbase are raiders...?

[stray]

The diku model? No, it's definatley a turd. Any system that hasn't evolved in 15+ years is turdish.

Go has been around for thousands of years. Time does not a turd make. Diku as a system works just fine. Like TCGs or tabletop roleplay games. There's enough love to spread around.

Go, Chess, Checkers, etc., offer open ended, often unpredictable, and much more organic gameplay than a diku does. Once you crack the diku 'puzzle' (what little there is), you'll know it from the inside out for eternity. It's not even in the same boat as the others. Hell, it's not even in the same ocean.

[lamaros]

Count up the catasses all you like, most of the 7.5 million WoW players are people with social obligations and interests outside gaming, and the raid treadmill is one I except(ed) them to step off.

I was under the impression that not even 10% of WoW's playerbase are raiders...?

Exactly. So the other 90%, the huge majority of the 7.5 million subscribers, don't give two shits about the 'endgame'; which as far as WoW goes is the point where they verge very strongly from co-op RPG to MMORPG. So why assume that WoW is a success for its implementation of the MMO aspects?

The fact it's a subscription based game is confusing people understanding of the reasons people play it.

[lamaros]

The diku model? No, it's definatley a turd. Any system that hasn't evolved in 15+ years is turdish.

Go has been around for thousands of years. Time does not a turd make. Diku as a system works just fine. Like TCGs or tabletop roleplay games. There's enough love to spread around.

As to your earlier comment about attrition, I think they're going to have a problem pretty soon. Retention for WoW, and the more important re-attraction, is going to be tougher than it was for EQ1 at its height because five years ago there wasn't much competition. And after two solid years, even the greenest newb to the genre can get bored with WoW.

And stop playing games.

There are people, many many people, who only play games when they're good.

When they get bored of their good game that just stop playing games. Completely.

People will get bored of WoW and stop. They wont go play other MMOs unless they're great. If their friends stop they'll stop. If a new expansion comes out they might start again. But they won't by trawling the game world for the next big thing and trowing their subscriptions dollars to the next company to give this MMO thing s go. They'll just stop playing games.

Schild has said it a few times, but WoWs numbers are not MMO numbers, they are 'popular game' numbers. It's like people who don't watch many movies will go and see one that makes a huge splash. But afterwards they don't have a huge interest in the film's genre, or even film in general, they just live their life like they did before.

[Trippy]

Schild has said it a few times, but WoWs numbers are not MMO numbers, they are 'popular game' numbers.

We don't know if that's true yet. All the MMORPGs released since WoW in NA have been mediocre at best and down right crappy in lots of cases so it's not surprising that they don't seem to have had any effect on WoW's numbers.

[Nebu]

We don't know if that's true yet. All the MMORPGs released since WoW in NA have been mediocre at best and down right crappy in lots of cases so it's not surprising that they don't seem to have had any effect on WoW's numbers.

We don't?  WoW isn't that great a game.  It's a polished game from a very popular game maker.  I'd argue that WoW is a game on the better end of the mediocre spectrum that benefits from the branding of the name.  The game really isn't all that much better than EQ2, so please explain the huge number differences beyond the brand recognition. 

WoW is a popular game that happens to be an MMOG, not the converse. 

[schild]

I'm pretty sure I'm right.

EA knows the power of a brand.
Nintendo sells systems - millions of them - based on 3 brands (Mario, Link, Samus).
Sega once knew the power of the brand.

SOE does not know the power of a brand... yet. They need someone there with FUN ideas, rather than ones that simply sound good on paper.

MMOG companies for the most part have no clue how to handle a brand or even make an actual game. I would even go as far to say that the MMOG section of the industry is the most incestual pie piece of the whole. More than that, the vast majority of people in the MMOG industry (though, things are changing) have a crap record for making games. Or they've only made MMOGs. Raph was right when he said people needed to step back and examine what's fun. Dave Rickey was right when he said he needed to make games for other people (if only everyone else did that). I could go on, but there's no need. The amateurs have shown their cards. They got caught with their pants down by a company that "gets it."

It's a shame that company was Blizzard. Only one other company and one other person could have achieved this fame. Those being Valve and Will Wright.

[Trippy]

We don't know if that's true yet. All the MMORPGs released since WoW in NA have been mediocre at best and down right crappy in lots of cases so it's not surprising that they don't seem to have had any effect on WoW's numbers.

We don't?  WoW isn't that great a game.  It's a polished game from a very popular game maker.  I'd argue that WoW is a game on the better end of the mediocre spectrum that benefits from the branding of the name.  The game really isn't all that much better than EQ2, so please explain the huge number differences beyond the brand recognition. 

WoW is a popular game that happens to be an MMOG, not the converse. 

WoW was far superior to EQ2 when they both released at the end of 2004. People say EQ2 is much better now but the improvements came far too late to give EQ2 any traction against WoW.

[Nebu]

WoW was far superior to EQ2 when they both released at the end of 2004. People say EQ2 is much better now but the improvements came far too late to give EQ2 any traction against WoW.

That might explain 400k vs 100k.  It says nothing about 7 million. 

Brand recognition and marketing.  WoW just isn't THAT good a game and it's certainly nothing new.

[schild]

EQ2 never had any traction against WoW. Still doesn't. I mean, comeon. EQ2 takes twice the computer to run. And when it came out it was optimized for shit. Just not competition. Not even on the same playing field. It's funny, I've never really met or talked to any of the artists at SOE, but I gotta lay this down: those guys need to reexamine the human body, how it movies, and how it interacts with the world. Also, their males are scary and the females are scarier (across all of their games).

Also, EQ2 wasn't made by Blizzard. Guaranteed, if it said Blizzard on the original EQ box, would have sold a million copies - minimum.

[Falconeer]

That might explain 400k vs 100k.  It says nothing about 7 million. 

Brand recognition and marketing. 

Definitely. I dwindled for EQ2 back in November 2004 whenboth launched and I said the same thing back then.
WoW was not better as an online world, a diku, a massively multiplayer, etc... just a "smoother" overall experience, thanks to the right engine (as opposed to the worst ever conceived by man, woman or dog) but not so appealing to me, having played the same identical model for years before WoW came out. Plus it had queues, loong long queues, that would have killed ANY other MMORPG in the world.


So I agree, brand recognition, marketing, and what Cartman hints to in the Southpark WoW episode:
""Go buy World of Warcraft, Install it on your computer and join the online sensation before we all murder you"

Apparently, no one likes to be left out.

[Megrim]

It's a shame that company was Blizzard. Only one other company and one other person could have achieved this fame. Those being Valve and Will Wright.

Not ID?

[stray]

Valve is the new Id.

[edit]

Perhaps Romero really did matter, after all...

[Trippy]

WoW was far superior to EQ2 when they both released at the end of 2004. People say EQ2 is much better now but the improvements came far too late to give EQ2 any traction against WoW.

That might explain 400k vs 100k.  It says nothing about 7 million. 

Brand recognition and marketing.  WoW just isn't THAT good a game and it's certainly nothing new.

I don't think you guys fully understand where this 7.5 million number is coming from. WoW is the first real "international" MMO, having been translated and released in far more countries than any other MMO. Of that 7.5 million, 44% is coming from NA and Europe and the rest from Asia. So if you want to credit Blizzard for their brilliant marketing by making WoW into an international game go right ahead.

However on the brand recognition side, it's not as big an effect as you might think, otherwise you would expect that in S. Korea, where they fricking have television channels dedicated to broadcasting StarCraft matches, that WoW would be the clear number one MMORPG when in fact it's not (it was #3 back in April). It also may or may not be the number one MMORPG in mainland China (it depends on who you talk to and what numbers you are looking at) which is not surprising since it faces stiff competition from other MMORPGs both imported and home-grown. So in both S. Korea and mainland China WoW is one of the leaders but not the clear leader in their MMORPG markets.

In NA and Europe it is a different story. With 3.3 million subscribers combined WoW is far beyond the other major NA and European MMORPGs. If we just look at NA and assume there are around 1.7 subscribers here that's not so ridiculously much larger than some of the other major NA MMORPGs were at their peak -- i.e. it's about 4x bigger than EQ was in NA at its peak (which is oddly enough about the same 4x ratio in your example).

So if you break it down by market, WoW is competitive in Asia (at or near the top) and hugely dominate in NA and Europe but not an order of magnitude dominate as the 7.5 million subscriber figure would imply. Which is why I specifically mentioned NA releases in my earlier post. Other companies have shown they can compete with WoW in Asia and the subscriber numbers WoW is generating there are arguably true MMORPG subscribers, not just Blizzard fanboys. Here in NA, however, the MMORPG releases post-WoW have not been good enough to compete with WoW so like I was saying it's unclear if the WoW players here are just Blizzard fanboys (and girls) and WoW has not in fact increased the size of the NA MMORPG market, or if it's more like Asia and a decent NA competitor just hasn't come along yet to grab some of their subscribers away.

[Trippy]

Valve is the new Id.

I consider Epic the new id.

[schild]

LOL@iD. Or rather, no, they aren't. Their shit is far too bloated.

[schild]

I was always talking about the world market when referring to WoW. Comeon, Warcraft and Asia? Diablo and Europe. Still, brand recognition.

[Trippy]

I was always talking about the world market when referring to WoW. Comeon, Warcraft and Asia? Diablo and Europe. Still, brand recognition.

Yes Warcraft (the RTSes) was big in China (go go pirates!) but again WoW may or may not be number one in a very large Chinese MMORPG market which was already huge before they entered and they definitely aren't number one in S. Korea the one place in the world you would expect them to be.

[geldonyetich]

That's about as stupid as saying "Developers, make solid Web 2.0 sites, but don't expect Google numbers unless you're Google". That mentality doesn't produce YouTubes or MySpaces. That mentality led to the half-assed execution of SWG. Just saying "we can't do it because we're not Blizzard" is setting yourself up for failure.

In addition to what schild said about YouTube and MySpace performing a unique service where yet-another-EQ-clone can only cater to niches, I'd like to add that I'm under the opinion that gamers are considerably more finicky about what they play than web browsers are about the pages they visit.

I'd said it before and it didn't harbor much disagreement: If some total unknown developer (or worse, a developer with a bad rep) came out with a game that played exactly like WoW, maybe even improved in a few areas, there's no way they'd get WoW-level subscription numbers.  This is because Blizzard being Blizzard took a solid game much further than it would for most anyone else.

But this isn't a direct insult levied at WoW, the game that would not succumb to my doomcasting it as a short term game at best.  If WoW was anything less than a solid game, Blizzard being Blizzard wouldn't have helped it retain subscriptions.