Comments on: Defending Warcraft

By: Cataclysm, Shmataclysm « Tish Tosh Tesh

Cataclysm, Shmataclysm « Tish Tosh Tesh — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:32:44 +0000

[...] for Blizzard need not necessarily be what’s best for gamers. It’s not like WoW is the root of all evil and the herald of doom and all that, after all. (Please read that whole article. Ferrel is having a bit of fun, but voices some [...]

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:41:44 +0000

“They do know that EverQuest players are the enemy, though. That is one thing they’ve gotten down.”

Pfft. You haven’t read many F2P rants lately.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:28:48 +0000

Investors are a big part of problems with a lot of things in the economy. Unfortunately, since MMO production is still an expensive beastie, they will be a significant part of MMOs for a while.

By: Ferrel

Ferrel — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:08:15 +0000

Oh I fully agree with you there. It isn’t their “fault.” It is just a product of their game. The problem is investors still expect that so something has to be done to change that attitude.

By: We Fly Spitfires

We Fly Spitfires — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 10:57:11 +0000

“Blizzard has set unrealistic expectations for the marketplace. That leads investors to expect more than what is possible from development houses which, in turn, leads to bad games.”

Thing is, I don’t think that’s Blizzard’s fault. They managed to make a game that’s hugely popular and achieved a massive amount of subscribers. It’s not their problem that other developers are unable to achieve the same success or think they have to clone WoW to get it.

By: Green Armadillo

Green Armadillo — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 04:55:53 +0000

I agree that we’re talking about two different demographics, but I think the different has more to do with minimum time commitment than a specific fondness for Blizzard.

In general, grouping requires longer sessions with less time AFK. Because that was far and away the most supported form of gameplay in the pre-WoW era, there was a kind of a soft-minimum time commitment required to play and enjoy the genre. By allowing solo play in WoW, Blizzard dropped the minimum time commitment for a productive game session down to almost zero. That dramatically expands the pool of potential players.

If you look at the approximately 4-6 million US/EU WoW players (excluding China for more of an apples to apples comparison) versus the 400-600K subscribers for the most popular pre-WoW games, you’re talking about a 10-fold increase. Some of that increase is improved quality and some of it is an undue fascination with Pandaren et al, but I’d argue that the majority of the increase (i.e. possibly 75-80% of the WoW demographic) are basically single player RPG fans who are only willing/able to play online RPG’s that allow soloing. Whatever the proportion is, you’re absolutely correct that those players cannot be enticed to go play games like EQ1, because those games just won’t fit in player schedules.

Moreover, solo play has steep quantity requirements that favor the large production values of a “game launches when it’s done” company like Blizzard. This is why it consistently ends so poorly when a game that has no intention of devoting the majority of its resources to solo content attempts to tack on solo leveling in the hopes of cashing in on WoW players.

The catch in aiming for 10% of the market (whether you choose to call that a niche or not is your call I suppose) is that you can’t have 100% of the budget. The costs per user aren’t exactly linear, and you could theoretically charge more if the market will tolerate it, but your developer will inevitably have fewer resources to work with.

P.S. When people look back fondly on how much better/harder WoW raid content was in 2006, you have to bear in mind that 90% of the content Blizzard was adding to the game was aimed at a single digit percent of players who were able to run the toughest raids.

By: Ferrel

Ferrel — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:51:39 +0000

I’d think there would be at least 300,000 out there that would play a slightly modified EQ clone! If I ever hit the big game I suppose we’ll find out!

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:41:49 +0000

I agree with most of what you said. I will, however, say that there is an element of rose-tinted glasses when talking about older games. I think some people probably didn’t like EQ, but the tolerated it because it was the game their friends were playing. Yes, some people really do like the challenge, but I think there are a lot of people who prefer playing games as a low-impact social pastime. The exact breakdown is debatable, as always. So, the real question is: how large is the population of people who would like to see something that is more of an EQ1 clone than a WoW clone?

Of course, I’d still like to see games that aren’t necessarily clones.