I read a good post by Wilhelm at The Ancient Gaming Noob the other day, and I’m finally getting around to commenting on it. I agree with a lot of what Wilhelm usually says, but this particular post stood out for me as something I needed to counter with my Cuppytype opinions.
But do you know the real, number one reason that World of Warcraft is the top dog in the MMO market?
It is because Blizzard is a successful software game company with a track record of very good, hugely successful games under their belt.
This is a debate that’s been going on since the game released, and its a statement that I have always disagreed with. WoW has gained a ridiculous amount of success because of the amount of non-gamers that it has drawn in. People who don’t know anything about games. The high school jocks, geeks, metalheads, and every other stereotype you can find are all playing WoW because their friends introduced them to it. In my old raiding guild in WoW, I’d say about 90% had never even played the Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo titles. Some had no idea that Diablo and Starcraft were even made by Blizzard!
Of my friends that play WoW, only one or two actually played another Blizzard title before buying World of Warcraft. They didn’t buy the game because they knew anything of Blizzard’s history with making quality games. They didn’t even know who the publisher of the game was! Wilhelm’s statement is most likely true in Asian markets – but in North America I believe that its definitely an issue where more people who didn’t play MMORPG’s or PC games in general were introduced to something new and fun that they could play with friends and jumped on the bandwagon.
So the next time somebody poses the question about whether a given game is a potential “WoW Beater,” look at the track record of the company in question. Do they consistently make high quality, best selling games?
I’m going to have to disagree with that as well – because the current games that are relative contenders to WoW (Runescape, other browser based free games) are showing promise because of two reasons.
1) Cheap or free to play. People are a sucker for things they can get into easily.
2) Mild system requirements. The majority of the people who will need to be suckered in to play this games in order to contend with WoW will have to be traditional non-gamers. You’re not going to find non-gamers who are willing to shell out $2000 on a gaming rig to pick up a game that they haven’t played.
I’m a firm believer that the reasons that WoW is successful are because of the system requirements and the polish of the game. I don’t think WoW did anything else spectacularly innovative over the competitors. I think they made it easy for non-traditional gamers to pick up their game, made it easy to connect with their friends. Coupled it with competitive pvp/battleground environments that appeal to a wide range of gamers, provided a leveling game that was linear and easy enough for people who don’t normally play games to follow.
Given this comparison, it isn’t much of a leap to think that EQ2 really never had a chance of matching WoW in subscribers no matter how polished the game was. The user base that was willing… that is willing… to invest in an SOE game is just not big enough.
EQ2 didn’t have a chance to match WoW because of a few things. First of which was the lack of Asian influence behind the EQ IP in the first place vs. the Warcraft line. Second was the system requirements at launch. The games launched within weeks of each other and the differences in minimum hardware requirements to run the game at decent framerates was ridiculous. Third was the newness factor of the graphics in WoW. We’d seen traditional realism looking fantasy MMO’s before – but this was a bigname cartoony stylized world. It was new, fresh, and something that appeals to a wide range of ages and enthusiasts.
Basically, the odds were stacked against EQ2. I don’t think they were aiming for 8 million subscribers though. As I’ve said before, I think EQ2 is doing fine with the amount of subscribers they have. As long as they can continue putting out progressive, interesting and polished content like they have been – I’ll stay a subscriber. Thanks Wilhelm for the topic to discuss =)
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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One other thing WoW has going for it that not a lot of people talk about is that it has a very visceral feel to the combat.
You press a button and your character *reacts*. There aren’t many attacks where you’re waiting for the next combat swing or it takes a moment or two to register that you want to use your ability. When you press the cleave button, you cleave with a great sound effect and a splatter of blood. When you start a fireball, your hands immediately leap into flame and prepare for the devastation you’re about to unleash.
It adds tangible excitement and is something I haven’t always seen in other MMOs.
Cuppy, you (and a couple of people who commented on my post) are taking a limited view of what success has meant to Blizzard. It does provide them with a dedicated user base, but it also provides them with the market clout to get advertising, end caps, promos, and other ways to get the word out about their game. The 90% of your guild who you think have never heard of Blizzard before WoW (which seems like a very high percentage for a raiding guild) had to hear about the game some how. Past success gave Blizzard the market clout for future success.
As for this tendency to dismiss Blizzard’s success because so much of it is in Asia, that is self-delusion. WoW has 3.5 million players in North America and Europe. That seems to dwarf their $15 a month competitors. (Which was the category I was addressing, so bringing up Runescape or other low price/free to play games seems, to me, to be opening up a new topic.)
I totally agree with you about the extent of WoW’s superior advertising to EQ2 and other games. I believe that has definitely been the biggest factor in raising the subscriptions up as high as they did. But WoW had amazing initial success, which I believe was due to the reasons I stated and not advertising. From there, it was a good combination of advertising and more viral marketing (word of mouth) that spread the game like wildfire. But right off the bat, WoW was clearly the successful game over EQ2, hands down. There wasn’t a question in my mind personally.
BTW, when mentioning Runescape I meant to compare it on a North American/European level to WoW, not worldwide. I feel it was a valid point and along this subject.
Personally I think Wow is just one of the anomalies that pop up once in a while.
They hit a rather untapped market place with a ‘very’ commercial release and the rest is history.
Will this type of success be repeatabe, probably, but not in the for seeable future.
I mean if the biggest IP (Lord of the Rings cant do it, then what will …
Again, I think the initial success of WoW was heavily influenced by Blizzard and its reputation as a company. “Blizzard makes an MMO” got lots of press, produced fan sites, blogs, beta reports, and all sorts of word-of-mouth activity. That activity was driven, initially, by press that recognized Blizzard as a serious player to watch in the MMO space and people who were likely fans of Blizzard already. That got the ball rolling.
There was similar activity around EQ2, but not only was the fan base smaller, it was primarily made up of people already playing an MMO. Blizzard’s fan base was bigger and had a much larger percentage of non-MMO players. That is a double shot in favor of WoW. Not only did they start with more potential players in their core audience, but those players were more likely to switch to WoW, since we know MMO players do not easily part with their favored game. That EQ still has the population it does is a testament to that. But a Diablo II guild (and there were a lot of them) or Warcraft III clan had much less invested in their games, so the likely hood of their moving seem, to me, to be much greater. (I was in a big D2 guild that is now a big WoW raiding guild. And my old EQ guild… is also a WoW guild now. Hrmm.)
As for Runescape and other browser based games, I feel in my gut that they are a different demographic. You would have to convince me that they are actual competitors of WoW (i.e. people actually stop playing WoW to pick up Runescape) rather than a separate segment of the gaming market. EQ2 vs. WoW strikes me as an appropriate comparison of like games with like business models in the same market. WoW vs. Runscape or other such games do not.
Anyway, to wrap this all back to the original point of my post, when people write about why Blizzard is the big gorilla in the MMO market today, they list all sorts of very valid reasons that all played into the success, but they seem to leave off the fact that Blizzard was a pretty darn big gorilla when it decided to enter the market, something that I contend had a major impact on WoW’s success. But my minor in college involved wholistic analysis of human created systems, so I’m always happy debating and weighing different factors in any process.
Willhelm,
You keep bringing up the price of admission as the measure of competition (“other $15 a month games”). In my mind, that’s not quite a solid comparison.
That’s like pitting an independant film against a summer blockbuster because both only require a $10 ticket to watch – and then comparing the box office receipts as the only measure of success.
The bottom line isn’t subscribers or costs per month. The bottom line is profitability and sustainability. SOE and Blizzard simply have different business models.
Blizzard (and Vivendi – we keep neglecting to mention the real deep pockets for WoW here) pumped HUGE amounts of money into World of Warcraft’s development. We’re not talking about $10 or even $30 million dollars here. That’s chump change compared to the money World of Warcraft had spent on it before the first server every opened for character select.
Per Vivendi, World of Warcraft had well north of $60 million dollars spent on development. That figure probably doesn’t even count marketing or deployment costs, with some estimates putting total initial release costs well over $100 million. The9 and CocaCola split the costs in China for one marketing campaign which allegedly costs around $30 million. No one – NO ONE had spent anything close to half of that amount on an MMO up to that point.
Now I’m not saying that Blizzard’s previous reputation had nothing to do with it’s start up success, but you simply can’t attribute the various elements that lead to WoW’s domination by simply pointing to past success.
Because frankly, nothing Blizzard had put out in the past (with the exception of Starcraft) even came close to the level of success that WoW has seen. Then again, Starcraft costs a fraction of the amount spent on WoW, too.
Even then, does this mean that having 200-300,000 subscribers is a failure? Are SOE producers and executives driving ‘91 Hondas home each night to rundown apartments, so they can cry over their gov’t cheese they could barely afford?
No, they may not be diving into a pool of money like those Blizzard executives, but they aren’t exactly waiting in line at the soup kitchen, either.
There wasn’t any one thing that got WoW to where it currently stands, and there isn’t any magic formula to follow to get there again. Honestly, if there was, you don’t think every company in the business would be trying it? You think they’re allergic to subscribers and money? You think that Blizzard’s designers are just that much smarter than everyone else?
Blizzard didn’t have any idea how successful WoW would be. The insane queues, server instability, and constant forum complaints at release were the stuff of legend. You can bet money that Blizzard was as surprised as anyone when they started smashing the record books as quickly and as thoroughly as they did.
Honestly, if anyone had told Pardo back in ‘03 or ‘04 that by Fiscal ‘07 he’d be grossing over $120 million a MONTH, I think they’d have spent just a few more bucks on the project than they already had.
There’s a lot of reasons Blizzard completely dominates the industry now. Pegging it on just (or even mostly on) past success is just inaccurate. The subject is far too complext than that.
We talk about EQ2 vs. WoW because, like most humans, we enjoy picking sides and talking about confrontations. We love taste tests and war stories and that game winning touchdown back in ‘95. But at the end of the day, this isn’t even a fair comparison. WoW is in a completely different league than EQ2, and has been since they started signing the checks they did.
Sure, SOE could have (and really should have) done a lot of things differently. But even if they had, the descrepency in spending was enormous. More than any other single factor, I think that was the 900lb gorilla in the room.
Well posted Kendricke.
@Kendricke:
I had two off-brand corn dogs for dinner lastnight. Does that count?
(Of course, I do really like corn dogs.)
It’s true. Hartsman wins the corn dog eating contest at SOE every single year.
Of course, he organizes the event and is the only participant, but he seems to enjoy topping his previous record each year.
That said, the day he came to work coated in corn meal was a bit much. Smed spoke to him about it and it hasn’t happened since, to my knowledge. But yeah, the floor mats of his car? Covered in corn meal.
The floormats of his ‘91 Honda of course
I heard he put a Fae decal on it after EoF.
AND another thing…
I really have to stop posting some of my best stuff as comments on other people’s blogs. How will I ever get more than 3 readers at the Tracker. *sigh*
Kendricke,
I was trying to corral things back from comparisons with “free to play” and web based games. If you want to get into the gritty details, no two games have identical business models. EQ2 vs. WoW is just a handy example and one we with which we are almost all familiar. The surface level, external business models, that $15 a month subscription, puts them in the same market competing for the same players.
Vivendi pouring capital into Blizzard is an excellent point. You would be hard pressed to convince me that the huge investment in Blizzard by Vivendi was not directly influence by Blizzard having a literally unparalleled series of successful games, and no flops, starting with Diablo. You seem to imply that StarCraft was their only real success. It wasn’t. All of the games I listed in my past post were #1 sellers in the US for multiple weeks. Diablo II moved more than a million copies in its first month. That does not seem like much in the post-WoW days, but it was a big deal in the past. That sort of success enabled the investment that in turn enabled the budget to create WoW. Success drove success.
That investment made it possible for WoW to be the summer blockbuster. EQ2 was the independent film because SOE lacked that similar history of success and, thus, similar access to financial backing. It certainly did not lack for a parent with pockets as deep, if not deeper, than Vivendi. Not that SOE is not successful, or that EQ2 isn’t profitable (nor did I ever state or imply that they weren’t or that SOE was in any sort of fiscal predicament), but neither are in the same league, nor could have been in the same league, as Blizzard and WoW.
Again, in summary, I am not pointing to Blizzard’s past success as anything like the sole factor in the success of WoW, merely that it was a factor and one that largely gets ignored by people comparing the games. On that point it sounds like we are vigorously arguing for the same thing in our own ways. If you are reading more into my post than that, then you are reading way too deep.
whether or not you spend 60 or 100 million on developing a game there has to be a potential audience for it to make a return on investment.
Vivendi went with a company that has a reputation through out the world for polished marketable games.
An audience that is more likely to step up and try a mmorpg related to an IP they have played or have heard off previously.
Either way throwing around this sort of money to build a game is one big risk. I guess if you want it to band around that sort of cash you go with a pre-established company with a A + plus record for games, and is internationally recognizable.
A great gamble that pd off not only for the devleopers, investors and also the game industry as a whole … polish makes a happy pixey
Your quote was “do you know the real, number one reason that World of Warcraft is the top dog in the MMO market?”
I think what we’re saying is that, although a factor, I don’t think it was the main factor in the success of WoW.
Are we still friends? =)
BTW Kendricke, I know at least 4 people who read your blog. So, hah.
Okay, I do suffer from an ailment known as “point drift” where the point I am arguing at any given moment of time may have no relationship to where I started.
I actually went back and read my post after I just responded and cringed. Such is life. At least my life.
I will settle for it being a required factor to create the success that is WoW on the whole Vivendi investment path.
Now, if we took WoW out of the picture, what would the rest of the market look like? So many games are judged so harshly in the light of that 8.5 million subscriber number. Has that just spoiled the market for everybody?
I also think that people were tired of EQ and wanted to try something simple and easier to deal with. EQ2 didn’t make it easy for the newbie to learn and with the system requirements, its wasn’t going to pick up a lot of casual first looks either.
WoW is simple, easy and well crafted for the person that wants quick gratification from their MMO. When I switched from EQ2 to WoW, that was one of the main reasons. No time consuming crafting, leveling was a breeze and soloing was easy with just about every class. Its an MMO set on easy mode. I don’t think throwing tons of money is what got Wow. They just happened to fill a need, people wanted an easy, fluid world to play in so they could get a quick MMO fix, and WoW was it.
But now with BC out, WoW is losing people from what I have observed. Some are venturing back to EQ2, (ME) and some are trying LOTRO. I think the mistake Bliz made was the original game was too easy so now they wanted to ramp it up a bit. BC is for Hard Core players, who have been wanting something more challenging and more complicated. Because of this, they are losing a lot of causal players.
The next game that comes out which grabs the top spot doesn’t need to be from a company that throws tons of money around, but a company that knows what the public is looking for, makes sure it runs well and support the community it creates.
Blizzard has done all this and done it well.
Willhelm,
I do understand what you’re saying and yes we’re still friends, but I’m just not buying what you’re selling here.
Again, it’s not just one factor. It’s several. Saying World of Warcraft succeeded because it had X, where X = any one single factor is just not enough. I think that’s where you’re seeing the disagreement here.
I’m not saying Blizzard didn’t have a reputation. However, the reputation did not and does not account for the audience they managed to pull in.
It’s a variety of factors really, but what it really comes down to – the “magic bullet” here – is that a company managed to put together a solid, easy to pick up, easy to put down, easy to learn, easy to install game.
Honestly, Vanguard could have been the next WoW killer if money and reputation were all that was needed. Unfortunately, you still have to deliver a product that works.
Seriously, I may as well bring up The Sims Online to fit “the formula”:
-Well known company with solid string of hits (EA)
-Well known designer (Will Wright)
-Big following (seriously – 85 MILLION units of “The Sims” sold worldwide!!!)
-HUGE budget
-Worldwide distribution channels
-Marketing Blitz
So why isn’t The Sims Online considered a runaway hit? Why is it nearly universally considered one of the flops of the industry? Every factor was there to indicate an absolute smash. Yet, last I heard, they had well under 40,000 subscribers from a maximum of around 100,000 at its peak.
I actually think the Matrix Online has more subscribers than TSO.
Like I said, it’s not about “the formula”. If there was a “sekret sause” out there, every company would be lining up to buy some. The problem is that there is no easy answer, and certainly no one single factor that contributed more than any other.
Ken – FYI it was me that asked if we’re still friends, not Wilhelm.
Oakstout, I liked this part. “The next game that comes out which grabs the top spot doesn’t need to be from a company that throws tons of money around, but a company that knows what the public is looking for, makes sure it runs well and support the community it creates.”
That’s ideal. You just have to find your proposed audience, make a game that will fit what they’re looking for, embrace it and support it, and make sure it looks good and polished. Easy enough right? =P
Remove the the beast that is blizzard from the picture and you are left with … well a normal realistic picture of the mmorpg industry.
Where subscriptions in the 200 – 3oo k are a very succesful game. They have money for development, updates, expansions, a new car or two, beach front villa…
As too the wow subscriptions, unfortunatly they have painted a very unrealistic picture of success that players hold up other games to.
However does it effect a games bottom line, do Soe or Turbine appear worried that they dont have 8.5 million subscribers. I would guess not, they have profitable games, could they be more profitable … yes but then everyone likes to have more money
In the overall scheme of things, people are buying these games at a healthy rate and subscription numbers seen pretty steady so my guess is its an artificial goal that really not effecting the player base as one might expect
I’m pretty sure that the next game that people will jump on will probably be a really good Scifi MMO, course, I know that you won’t be on board Cuppy, but I think thats what people will be looking for. And if its Bliz with a Starcraft MMO or someone else, if its not riddled with bugs and the company takes the time to test it and make sure its not rushed, and they support the community of players that buys it, it will be a hit. One thing that Blizzard is famous for, it won’t release a product until its absolutely finished with the product.
People were screaming for Diablo 2, but it wasn’t out till they were good and ready to release it. The same was true with Burning Crusade, they even pushed that release back a few months to make sure it was right.
But, again, to be honest, you never know what the public will like till its out there. One minute Lost was the hotest show out there, now the producers are naming a date for the show to end. Next people will want a Bob the Builder MMO. lol
SOE may not have 8.5 million subscribers from a single game, but combine the totals from their ever growing stable and the numbers aren’t exactly trivial. SOE has a very diversified portfolio of MMO’s to work with, and no less than six studios working on them.
Blizzard better hope no one figures out the formula to find the next “Wow-kiler” though, because they certainly have a lot riding on World of Warcraft.
Oh, I’m sure they could bounce back and they aren’t exactly broke, but any game that manages to draw even 25% of World of Warcraft’s audience away would significantly and negatively impact their operations.
Turbine maybe able to work on getting some of those numbers away from Blizzard.
Lotro isn’t a bad game and if they can polish it up a bit more, open up more servers and with the promised release of some free content in the coming months, it might pull some hard core Wow players away from the fold. I don’t think it will impact too much on SoE, but I think SoE should stop buying up other MMO’s and concentrate on promoting and polishing the onese they already have.
The next wow killer will be another mmorpg delveloped by blizzrd, one that takes its own subscription base away from wow …
That’s probably why they have not realized any details as to developing one.
Although saying that i remember gaming Steve mentioning something about an unspecified mmorpg in development by blizzrd a year or so back. Also they certainly seem to advertise alot for mmorpgs devleopers / world developers a lot on there web page.
Perhaps it is for wow but you never know.
Would make sense in away. Give it a 5 year development cycle and wow might have a dwindling subscription base by then and what better way to draw subscribers back to them by announcing a new mmorpg
Someone mentioned in a Podcast that I can’t remember who or where, that Blizzard recently had a job posting that mentioned they were looking for dev’s for a MMO they were developing or something to that effect. This announcement was recent.
I’m sure they are working on something. It would be silly to not try and cash in on the stable of content they have from previous game lines that they have developed, i.e Starcraft. The smart thing would be to not create a separate MMO, but to incorporate another part of the Blizzard World into an expansion for WoW, but could also run separte of it. Did that make sense? lol Meaning, Diablo could be a part of the over all Blizzard world, but you could get there from World of Warcraft. That way, you don’t truly lose your existing base of players, but gain those that want to experience the Sci Fi aspect of MMO’s.
They could just have a portal where the two worlds could meet up..Separate, but together. lol
dont think the gamin world is ready for that type of inovation yet Oakstout he he
i predict god of war online to be the next wow killer
Vivendi announced a year ago that they could and would be putting all Blizzard titles out eventually as MMO’s. They felt that they had the resources and know-how to perfect a 3 year development cycle for $50 million.
http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=167
Kendricke,
Of all the things I am trying to sell (can I interest you in a VoIP based contact center application?) “past success” as the only/single/sole factor in not one of them. If you find I have said that, I will retract it and buy you a beverage of your choice.
Even my hyperbole (as I will declare it retroactively) of calling it the number one factor does not make it the sole factor, but simply a factor that enables other factors to be possible and as an indicator of who might have the talent to make something on the scale of WoW.
Imagine my simplified WoW chain as:
1. Success
2. Big Investment
3. Doing an amazing number of things right
4. Be #1 MMO world wide
Step 3 is the hard part, the part where TSO failed. But that TSO failed does not mean that a track record of success is no long going to be a requirement for step 2. I think Vanguard will almost guarantee that solid track record will be required for that kind of investment going forward.
Or, take the reverse tack. If past success is not a reliable indicator of future success, then what should be? I do not know what to suggest as an alternative because the future is always a risk. What indicators do you suggest? I ask that honestly because I am drawing a blank.
So, in my little view of the world, without the past success, you do not even get to step 3 unless you find somebody who never heard of Vanguard. You end up with a smaller budget which translates into more time, less polish, or reduced content and the possibility of being what would have once been a rousing success in the MMO world but in the shadow of WoW might seem tepid at best to those without a sense of perspective. That is not a bad thing certainly, but it lets the air out of anybody hoping that particular product is going to be the elusive “WoW beater.”
On Vivendi’s “All Blizzard titles are MMOs to us” announcement… I have a draft somewhere predicting no Diablo based MMO. Take WoW, make the Horde demons, axe the gnomes, remove the guns, turn down the lighting, and implement clicky-combat and you’ve almost made a Diablo MMO… but why would you?
And yes, Cuppy, we’re all friends here I hope. I’m having fun, though it can be tough to see that in text though.
Cups,
While I do agree with you that this game has mass appeal, especially when you stack it next to the current titles available in the MMO genre – I think you might be a bit off base about the following Blizzard has. I am not saying you are wrong, I am just being argumentative
If we look at their previous history, you have (in recent memory), Warcraft 1-3, Starcraft and Diablo 1 and 2. These games have, or had, a very rabid core fan base. Along with those, they had a massive casual following. I suppose BattleNet could be credited a great deal for this success, as free-to-play is very attractive to many people; especially the pre-teen – young adult demographic. Blizzard produced several solid products built around BattleNet and they did indeed become quite popular. I have no figures in front of me to quote box sales or anything like that, but it was obvious from the BattleNet forums, the amount of people online when you logged in, and the general buzz about the games that there were many many people playing them. I do find it odd that so many of your current/past guild mates in WoW didn’t really know much about Blizzard, or their previous titles. My personal experience is the exact opposite. I don’t think you can ask anyone, in any of the guilds I have been in WoW, if they knew about/played WC or SC or Diablo – and actually get a “ummm wha?” response. Almost everyone I know hold Warcraft and especially Starcraft, very dear. Obviously my sampling of players, or your sampling of players cannot really show an accurate picture of the WoW player base as a whole, but it does go to show that there is indeed a broad spectrum of players.
So with that in mind, I don’t think you can discount that, out of the 3.5 million players in NA/Europe that Wilhelm stated, a good portion of them aren’t either 1) Blizzard fanbois or 2) players who like Blizzard products from past experiences. I also don’t think you can discount the now-18+ year olds who grew up playing WC and SC and such for free. Now they have jobs and are in/out of college and can afford to pay $15/month to play.
Now, if WoW was developed by some small time company from Bangladesh, would it be so vastly popular? Who knows – I would venture to say it would be quite popular – but I don’t think it would be near as massive as it is today with the Blizzard name attached.
For the other side of the coin, you have the mass appeal- the ability that WoW seems to have to draw in people who have never touched an MMO before.
The graphics are a big part of this. Technically, the WoW graphics are rather lackluster. They use very low resolution textures. Bump-mapping is all but absent and other current graphic technologies either don’t make an appearance, or they do in a very limited fashion.
Now, from an aesthetic viewpoint – the graphics are very nice. Nice vibrant colors, armor that appears intricate and flashy. Nice huge, over-exaggerated weapons (and should pads!) that make you say “wow, my character is friggin’ p.i.m.p!”
As well, pre-raid WoW is considered by many, and I agree – to be “ezmode MMO”. Combat is easy to get into and it doesn’t take many new people long to learn to play their class effectively. Tradeskills are very easy to level up and progress through; even for low level players. Grouping in pre-raid, and especially pre-TBC instances is fairly easy and can be quite fun the first several times you do them. Plus, there are other facets of the game that Blizzard really did “just get right”. Their UI, especially the ability to write custom applications/modules for it, is really revolutionary in the MMO scene. Even today, 2.5ish years after release, I think WoW is really the only MMO with this level of customizability – I could be wrong here though. This appeals to the codemonkey/hardcore geek in many of us
It’s also very easy to just play casually, unless you get into raiding. PvP is another area that attracts many players. While it’s not the most extreme kind of pvp that the hardcore pvpers go for, it does have a broad appeal. I had never really pvp’d in an MMO, aside from a few months stint in DAoC when it released, until WoW. I loved it – though I did absolutely adore the pvp in DAoC. I loved that PvP actually required some skill. Coming from a hardcore FPS background (Unreal Tournament series), this really appealed to me. So yes, the mass appeal of the game does indeed account for a vast number of players as well.
Sorry for the essay here – but I guess what I am saying is; I think that despite its mass appeal, Blizzard’s name on the product accounts for more players than you might think
See ya in game
-Din
If nothing else then, this is a lesson that branding matters – and matters a lot.
Blizzard didn’t just make games like Starcraft and Warcraft II and put them out in front of the public and then sit back and quietly hope they succeeded. They threw piles of money at marketing – not just for the games, but for the brand.
It’s similar to Pixar studios. Go look at a Dreamworks movie poster sometime and you’ll see HUGE fonts given to the voice talent (MYERS, MURPHY, DIAZ in Shrek) with the Dreamworks tag almost an afterthought. Go look at a Pixar movie poster and it’s the opposite – Pixar is the star, as well as the characters from the story, but you have to really look to find out who does the voicing most of the time.
Blizzard did a great job at showing Blizzard as the star. It was Blizzard, Blizzard, Blizzard. Blizzard presents the Blizzard production…
One of Sigil’s big mistakes then (if we’re to follow this lesson) is that branding should be about the company, not the individuals within the company. Brad McQuaid spent a lot of time talking about Brad McQuaid and Vanguard, and not necessarily a lot of time pushing “Sigil”. In the end, the company is gone, but the game is still around.
Should 38 Studios pay attention? After all, 38 is the real draw there, but big names like Schilling, Salvatore, and MacFarlane are. Even names like Moorgard and Blackguard hold more water with the MMO gaming community than “38 studios”.
One could argue that World of Warcraft was successful in large part because they not only put out a good game, but more than that, they found a way to market that game to the masses…and it didn’t rely only on word-of-mouth and magazine articles.
They sunk tons of cash into their website, their E3 trailers, store relationships, and their advertising.
As much as gamers hate the idea of marketing, and enjoy ragging on the admen, the fact is that there’s a reason they have a job. Blizzard knew this and still does. Can we say the same about SOE? About Sigil? About 38 Studios?
(…and yes, I know 38’s a long way off from anything close to an official announcement on anything, but that’s all the more reason to consider these issues now rather than after the fact.)
Ken….its not about branding alone or pure marketing. You probably already know this, but I’ll state it anyway…even if they spent all that money on branding and delivered a piece of crap, then they wouldn’t be the Blizzard we know today.
Blizzard knows how to execute the quality process to a tee…there in lies their greatest strength. Blizzard doesn’t have to lift a finger for marketing…all they need to do is say “we’re making a new game” and we do it all for them. All because they execute better than anyone else in the software design process.
D