Viator

Everyone better hope that's not the case as far as SC2 before the next expansion. WoW is still an absolute behemoth but it's slowly losing the zeitgeist. I don't mean at all that something's going to come along and outsubscribe them but there's some very stiff competition in the 250k to 500k sub range coming up over the next year. It would be a death by a thousand cuts type deal and the industry's slowly wising up to the fact that you can't compete with WoW by making WoW.

If the pvp heads were offered a game with meaningful world pvp, where you could create, run and besiege cities or change the borders of a nation, how many would jet? Or take Pirates of the Burning Sea which is going to have the type of player driven content you see in EVE. PotBS, Conan, WAR and Fury are emphatically NOT going to beat WoW at its own game but, instead, offer a potential death by a thousand cuts approach as they each appeal to a subset of the WoW population that may be leaning toward something new.

To keep in the public eye as the deluge approaches and stave off the crotchety old man rep that UO and EQ garnered when WoW (the new big thing) was released they have to step up the pace of content releases, both patched content for everyone and expansion packs. Not that EQ2 is a prime example of success (though it's carved an extremely nice niche for itself) but they're about on a pace of an expansion and a half per year at this rate and the expansions are BIG. If Sony can do that with dwindling resources WoW can do it with their budget.

Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork

 

Daenrya

Normally, I'd agree with you, but then I look at the fact that Starcraft and Warcraft III *still* have huge followings and huge presence. Simply put, Blizzard creates games that attract loyal followings. Some degree of churn is normal, but I don't think the little bites that niche games may contribute to WoW can really be classified as killers. I strongly suspect that the only that could kill WoW for the forseeable future would be another Blizzard MMORPG based off of the Starcraft or Diablo worlds.

Well you have to keep in mind that Sony also has alot of experience producing expansions. Their first expansion release was pretty damned ugly. I remember the Kunark era far too well. But they learned from alot of their mistakes with Velious, did some regression with Luclin, and then got better with PoP (to a degree, I also remember quite well the first incarnation of the Rathe Council...) They've had alot of time to fine tune their developement process.

WoW is still a babe in the woods in those terms. This is a company that has (as far as I know) yet to ever put out a second expansion for any of their games, and it's also a company that has always said flat out 'We'll release it when we feel it's good enough and if you don't like it, tough' and yet still consistently wins Game of the Year awards.

To be perfectly honest, I'd rather Blizzard take their time and do their thing instead of get into a groove of mass producing xpacs.

 

Viator

The problem with comparing WoW to the RTS games is that the MMO market operates by different rules. To have a sustained market penetration you have to keep churning out the content; I work on one of the above games (I'm wary of my NDA and the potential for ZOMG TELL ME ABOUT THE GAME spam so I'll demure on stating which one) and the expectations are just different when I compare it to stories from my friends working at standard gaming companies. You have to hit the nail on the dev cycles just right: too short and you can't keep up, too long and people will leave you for the next thing that offers what they're looking for.

And the last bit is extremely important. WoW has set its niche up to be raiding for the masses which is a nice niche to be in but the all important pvp market is starting to chafe a bit. Not to mention that the churn's already settling in. Assume for a moment that you're in a tightly focused raiding group that went from about 60 people in 1.x down to the 40 we see now. Pretend that 20 people quit WoW for various reasons in every guild. They're faced with a choice: do some more levelling with their friends (which is an absolute blast and a big draw even for the raiders) with a new expansion or pick up a new game with some new dynamics. Now pretend that option one doesn't exist because, well, it doesn't.

That isn't idle speculation; you can watch the cycles happen with all MMOGs. The difference is that WoW's not going anywhere. WoW's not going to dip below five million subs worldwide ever. But those 500k sub games are coming and coming fast. Interestlingly (or perhaps not) each and every one is focusing on meaningful world pvp of some sort; that's the market that WoW stands to lose the most of. It won't be the Blizz kids or the raiders but the ex Shadowbaners and Guild Warriors who came to WoW and are waiting for the next pvp-centric game; I know a couple dozen, in person, just by myself. That's a market WoW can probably stand to lose but they probably won't like it.

Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork

 

Cromfel

In response to Viator.

They have done a lot of work in trying to make the world pvp appealing, without hurting "pve" people (even on pvp realms). And I think thats major flaw in their thinking. PvP should have meaning out there. There should be some reason why you want to conquer the area. Halaa is getting there, its propably most active outdoor pvp objective. But still all of the attempts just feel empty. They dont have essence of pvp in them.

Lets make example from Silithus sand carrying. As base the sand give pathetic honor. Its always plus on long queue realms. I even know people who did the sand carrying a lot pre tbc because it was almost competitive with the long queue times. It could have been great pvp objective with small changes. As you can understand its marketing the honor, and it should be relatively better source than Battlegrounds. Why you ask? It would make BGs obsolete? No, because silithys spots are good way of limiting the pvp activity. More people get there to carry the sand, less effective it gets. Lets say we had break point around 15 players per faction. When we would be reaching 30ish players per each side, the carrying would become a lot worse than actual BGs, and hence naturally reducing the amount of players.

Ofcourse there can be and will be many flaws that needs thinking in it. But in general the base idea of making working outdoor pvp can be built from these base mechanics to give carrot, what gets smaller the more players there are.

.:. Retribution Paladin Hideout .:. http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/

 

Baraz

I agree with a lot of what you said, and just wanted to add something to this last bit. It's not just hardcore PVP'ers that are looking at a change of pace, I know myself as a long time raider in EQ and WoW, I am looking for a change of pace and maybe a lessening of play time so I am definitely looking at PVP centered games coming out in the future, as well as a general falling out with the raiding game after having done it for so many years across games. I don't think we'll see just PVP'ers go to some of these new games, but PVE'rs as well that are frustrated with the constant attempts to balance PVE and PVP to such a point that it can make one or the other very boring and frustrating to do.

 

mek

As the WoW generation matures, this will undeniably become a factor. As age increases, the viability of the raiding lifestyle decreases. At any rate, dwindling to 5mil subs after several years of domination is not and should not be seen as something negative by the Blizzard team. MMOs grow old and they die; WoW's technology was not cutting edge when it came out, and it should eventually roll over for something better. WoW has exploded the MMO genre and now that a lot of that is coming to fruition (WAR, Tabula Rasa, Conan, Gods and Heroes, are some of the bigger names) the subs will naturally chip away. Blizzard is run by smart people and planned obsolescence should be expected and encouraged; do you really think Blizzard isn't planning their own WoW killer?

 

Viator

I absolutely think they're planning their next WoW killer the same way I think they're hard at work on the expansion and are silent about it. The question with Blizzard isn't IF they're going to release something but WHEN. That's where the normal Blizzard ponderous releases can hurt them because the competition certainly isn't waiting.

Re: pvp. It's too late for WoW's pvp. You have to add it at the start, not go back in and stick world pvp objectives after the fact. I don't mean arenas and other forms of 'sports pvp' here in this instance but balls to the wall world affecting pvp. But I don't think Blizzard ever had any intention of making world pvp viable nor do I think they do for the future. Blizzard is a company which is very aware of keeping as many people as possible happy. As soon as you offer, say, epics from beseiging Orgrimarr and allow a 3:1 ratio win the day 9after day after day) you've made people unhappy. They won't do that or allow looting player corpses or salt the earth style Shadowbane pvp or free market in microcosm piracy a la EVE or... well, you get the point.

The next wave of games don't have to worry about offending people with the kind of pvp that's coming because they're niche by the very virtue of not being WoW. Which is why Blizzard is good for the industry: you cannot compete with them on their terms so you offer something a little off the wall, get your comfortable box sales and go home.

Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork

 

Jubling

Maybe they're waiting to see what the next wave of mmo games do wrong, so they can improve on that in "WoW 2" or whatever it'll be. Just like WoW improved on the EQ-style games that came before it.

 

Tyrian

Viator - I found your comments most interesting to read

My question for you after reading your comments on wow/pvp/wowkillers is what course of action blizzard is likely to take when planning how to slowly evolve from First Expansion -> 'Wow killer' release while fending off competitors and trying to maintain subscribers.

With niche-mmos coming out that will cut into wows business, do you think its likely they will keep trying to add features to each expansion that other games are going to attempt to use as we're-better-than-wow selling points (new pvp mechanics, 'meaningful pvp', new graphics updates)? With this said, im very curious to see how PVP will be handled in the 2nd expansion, with this knowledge that many people realise thats where blizzard stands to lose subscribers to newer pvp-orientated games next year, the same time the expansion would be due....

Or is it more likely they would let wow stagnate for a while, keep doing 'the same old' thing for now - let other games carve a niche - and come back in a few years with the next-gen wow killer and take a big gamble hoping its so good everyone will come running back to blizzard?

 

Viator

I figure they're going to do the smart thing which is corner the market on the raiding for the masses they've created. If they went the WAR route with moving borders and besieged capitals it would run counter to every design decision they've made so far. Why would they change the game now? It's an enormous success and it's got so much momentum that they can easily withstand other games cutting into their subs here and there. They have an extremely clear vision of what they want their game to be (tweaks such as removal of SSC/TK keys notwithstanding) and mass world pvp simply doesn't seem to be a part of it.

I wouldn't hold my breath for WoW2. Sequels tend to cut into your previous game more than whipping up a new batch of nine million subs. It'll probably come some day but I don't see it coming any time soon.

Someone mentioned mini-expansions and I think that could be a good model for them. They're going to need to step up the pace and that may be the best way to do it.

Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork

 

Ukerric

Bad MMOs die. Good ones just fade away

Ultima Online is still around. EQ is still around, although, after 8 years, they've finally entered "end of life mode": they won't push two expansions a year (well, amost 2 a year) anymore.

The "5 year" comment was around during early FF beta, when Blizzard did have absolutely no idea how World of Warcraft would turn around. It's mere success guarantees that it will last beyond 5 years - the executives who dare to suggest shutting down or even scaling down a franchise that brings 40 million dollars a month in gross (plus asian market, but those are managed outside of VU's sphere) would find himself/herself quickly on the job market ("why did you leave your previous job? I wanted to shut down WoW, but nobody else would" "hhhhmmmm, we'll write to you for the next interview, thanks for coming").

 

Daenrya

Honestly, I think Blizzard has more than the raiding niche locked up tight. They're pretty solid on keeping the casual players happy too. When I look at pre-Xpac WoW vs. TBC.... my lord, have they *ever* done some casual hand holding. The 2.1 patch had a fair amount of casual content as well. So yeah, WoW has the 'big raid MMO' title locked up pretty solid, but it's also got a hefty chunk of the 'ooo, it's a pretty chat room!' crowd too.

Here's the thing though - those games will not only have to compete against WoW, but each other as well, so they'll be cutting each others throats by going for the pvp crowd. Then there's the simple fact that there's no guarentee those games will get it right either.

 

Daenrya

If it's feasible, of course they will.

They're the big boys on the block, and they can afford to steal and implement any good ideas that any other mmo comes out with, within reason (as Viator has mentioned, what most would term 'hardcore' pvp systems would be a big no-no in WoW). It was something that Verant was very good at. Whenever a new game that threatened to take players away from EQ was about to release, we got a new patch implementing some cool new stuff (which may or may not have been making an appearance in another mmo) or fixes that people had been asking for.

Blizzard will do what it can to keep the majority of it's customers happy, they've already proven that to me. Reverting the TBC tailored sets nerf in under 24 hours and the lifting of the attunement requirements for SSC and TK are very telling.

 

andastra

I agree that WoW has locked up PvE pretty tight. I'm in a hardcore guild that's middle of the pack in progression (going to start working on Kael). Blizzard seems to have people enjoying casual world and dungeon content to casual raiding to more hardcore raiding. I'm primarily a PvE player and WoW seems to be the only MMO in the market with good PvE. All the new ones coming up seem focused on PvP and/or trying to make MMOs that are more action-oriented and less RPGish. They're not my cup of tea so I'm sticking with WoW.

It seems to me that all of these companies are trying to carve a niche for themselves in some segment of the PvP population while nobody is really trying to go after WoW's PvE population. If I'm going to stop playing WoW in the near future, I'm probably switching back to mostly single player or non-MMO multiplayer games. Of course, there's a dearth of good CRPGs and even action RPGs nowadays. Everybody's focused on making MMOs, specifically more PvP-oriented niche MMOs that I think a super saturation is going to occur with most of these games losing money. As a fan of single player RPGs, I'm actually hoping this would be the case. I enjoy WoW but there's barely any RPG to play nowadays when my guild isn't raiding.

 

Zoee

According to Blizzard they have now over 9 million subscribers. I thought as well that they've been on a decline, but apparently I was wrong.

 

Linnet

My (wild) guess is that enough time has passed for people to get burned out on TBC raiding, take a couple of months out, then resub and reroll (maybe bringing some more friends along). So I wonder if the number dipped and then rose.

For PvE games, I would have said that LOTRO was precisely that. I think it has been quite successful, although not on WoW levels.

 

• Wodin

One of the things that's made me most happy(as a general fan of the MMO genre as well as a specific fan of WoW) is that LOTRO was successful. I knew some of the guys who worked their asses off on it, and the fact that it turned out well and was received well by the public and has a dedicated following demonstrates that the quality of the game is what matters. If you make a good game, regardless of what particular facet it's good at, people will play. The fact that EVE, LOTRO, and EQ2 are still cheerfully ticking along with their fanbases and communities while WoW continues to grow means that there are many different options available if you want something different, and I think that that's a big plus.

 

Tyrian

I'm very interested in how the Blizzard movie (still years away...) could possibly tie in with setting the stage for a possible next-gen mmorpg from blizzard (wow2?) or a major upgrade to existing wow (expansion+big graphic/azeroth revamps etc) .

If you already have the biggest game in the world - having a massive (Last I read, the wow movie budget was 150+ million dollars) motion picture is certainly some very desirable leverage to use to promote something - I really wonder how they plan to use it. If the movie is only 2-3 years away and a possible wow-sequel is 5+ years away, thered be a big question of how best to use the amazing publicity for their existing (albeit aging, by 2009/2010) product. You couldnt use it for an sequel which might still be several years off... but perhaps a major expansion etc

With that said, id love some movie snippets of new information from blizzcon, the very idea of a wow movie gets me very excited =)

 

Vaccine

I was hoping for it in TBC after the announcement of Karazhan but it never came unfortunately.

But what I'd really love to see for the expansion and in future is a Tiered progression for either 10 or 15 man instances, on par with the 25 man ones. So you'd have your 10 man karazhan style instances, and also 10 man versions of gruul's.

For loot you'd use the same formula as ZG and AQ20, that is your tier 6 BT equivalent as an example, drops blues of equivalent level to the BT epics. Each boss has one or two epics on their table and the last boss and maybe a side hard boss (or this timer rescue mechanic they mentioned for ZA) drop guranteed epics. You tune it so the risk vs reward still favours 25 mans over 10 mans and you're golden.

I can really see them doing this. Lets be honest, Karazhan has been a resounding success and looks like they will follow it up with ZA which in all probabilty is going to be around T5 (or maybe T4.8) items. Its yet to be seen whether it will be all epic like kara or largely blue (likely due to the shorter reset mentioned).

As someone said above, Blizz is really pulling in players with the easily accessible raid content for casuals whilst still having a pinnacle thats near impossible to reach as a target to keep them playing. Carrying on this forumla is sure to bring them continued success.

 

Tyrian

So true, there must be some very intelligent/wellpaid people at Blizzard to pull this off so sucessfully.

 

Peekaboo

I agree this is the case for many small guilds who have cleared Kara. In addition, many guilds DON'T WANT SO MANY PLAYERS. Many of us have alergies to raiding guilds. Our guild is in a guild alliance JUST TO RUN KARA!

For our group, finding 15 to 20 more skilled and geared players in small guilds to join our alliance...on our server its next to impossible.

--
That said, there are many hopeless guilds in Kara whose players never could down Gruul even with awesome gear and specs. I've seen these people in action. Many struggling small to medium-sized guilds are stuck with inferior players just to fill out their numbers. So the original poster is also correct that Gruul is too hard for many of these "no recruiting requirement" guilds.

 

spronk

Most of the current growth is occuring in China (and rest of Asia), where the market is vast. The profits are miniscule however, as its a joint venture for Blizzard (so only 49% ownership) PLUS the Chinese market is a pay-per-hour model and no monthly subscription fees nor box to sell, and the monthly subscription fee is ridiculously low (less than 5 cents/hour I believe). Of course 10+ years from now the profits from Asia will probably dwarf US/European profits so its smart to learn now and get branding out there.

The European and US markets have definitely declined in the last few months, not much however, as new subscribers are more or less keeping in check with lapsing subs.

We're probably a few years away from WoW's next MMO but IMO it will be one that tries to leapfrog the staleness that has become the MMO market, and try to incorporate things like a more active, dynamic, reactive world and more integration into the Internet and the world at large.

I would say the vision is something like Gibson's Neuromancer or Stephenson's Snow Crash, and these are the baby steps towards it.

 

andastra

Wise man say: Give a man a shiny object and he will be content. Give a man a shiny object and show him an even shiner object and he'll obsessively chase after said shinier object. Eventually let him have said shinier object and show him an even shinier object and he'll keep on chasing.

That's basically Blizzard's model for WoW.

 

Viator

I absolutely disagree with that. There's extremely little that's innovative or new about WoW. Blizzard's strength is its polish and the integration of many elements from other games. That's not a knock but you could go down a list

Raiding/Dikuness - Everquest done right
BGs/Realm combat - Dark Age of Camelot
Arenas - Guild Wars

But that's what keeps me coming back to WoW. I might sit there sometimes and think, "Man, I wish arenas were as well balanced as the team pvp in Guild Wars," but I hate everything else about the game. And go down the same list of stuff that got lifted from other games only to say the same thing. It's that total package that offers everything instead of just one thing. What will draw me away is a game that offers one aspect that I absolutely can't ignore such as WAR and Conan are poising themselves to do with pvp.

Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork

 

Maledict

I feel like I'm reading something from Brad at this point predicting the early demise of WoW despite all evidence to the contrary. It's worth pointing out that anecdotal evidence of a decline in subscribers on the NA / Euro servers is exactly that - purely anecdotal. No actual numbers there. And the surveys that attempt to capture numbers, flawed as they might be, show that the game still has more players now than at any point pre-TBC.

Also, just to point out, TBC has not even been released in China yet. If that release follows the same numbers as the rest of the world, you can expect to add probably another million subscribers at that point.

I do think that when discussing WoW future peopel tend to get very blase about it, without fully thinking of the numbers involved. Were WoW to lose 50% of it's subscriber base instantly, it would still have more than 5 times the subscriber base of every other western MMORPG out there. LoTRO has been the most successful MMORPG launch post-WoW, and it's a great game that has been extremely well recieved by critics and gamers alike, and even has that brand name - and it hasn't hit one million people yet. To be talking of replacing WoW, or WoW entering it's "end phase" is just silly - the numbers are simply too big.

Also, BTW, the release of all the other games isn't necesserily going to impact on WoW. They seem to hurt each other more than anything else - WoW has broadened the genre, but people don't leave it. Since WoW's launch, there have been a string of failed MMORPGs that have sunk - even DDO has just announced a round of server merges. Vanguard, Horizons, Overlord, Darkfall - if you look at the success to failure rate for MMORPGs, it doesn't seem too great nowadays.