NY Times article on WOW and MMOs

[Lyion]

Link is here:

Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment wanted to make a big splash in the video game world back in March when it introduced Matrix Online, a massively multiplayer online game based on the once-hot film franchise. The game made a big splash all right, like a belly flop.

Over its first three months the game signed up fewer than 50,000 subscribers, a pittance, so in June Warner cut bait and agreed to sell the game to Sony. Last month Matrix Online was downsized from nine virtual "realms" to three, because users were having a hard time finding one another in the game's vast digital ghost town.

The troubles of Matrix Online were partly of Warner's own making; many players and critics agree that the game is a mediocre experience. But the online market used to make room for mediocre games. Now, the broader phenomenon is that so many contenders, including Matrix Online, simply cannot stand up to the overwhelming popularity of online gaming's new leviathan: World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif.

With its finely polished, subtly humorous rendition of fantasy gaming - complete with mages, orcs, dragons and demons - World of Warcraft has become such a runaway success that it is now prompting a debate about whether it is helping the overall industry by bringing millions of new players into subscription-based online gaming or hurting the sector by diverting so many dollars and players from other titles.

"World of Warcraft is completely owning the online game space right now," said Chris Kramer, a spokesman for Sony Online Entertainment, buyer of Matrix Online and one of Blizzard's chief rivals. "Look, Matrix Online is good, but it's like being in the early 90's and trying to put a fighting game up against Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter; it's just not going to happen. There are a lot of other online games that are just sucking wind right now because so many people are playing WOW."

Mr. Kramer is in a position to know. Last November, his company released EverQuest II, sequel to the previous champion of massively multiplayer games. Such games, also known as M.M.O.'s, allow hundreds or thousands of players to simultaneously explore vast virtual worlds stocked with quests, monsters and treasure. Players sometimes cooperate to take on epic tasks, like killing a huge computer-controlled dragon, and sometimes fight one another in what is known as player-versus-player combat.

But November was the same month that World of Warcraft hit the shelves. In a subscriber-based multiplayer online game, the customer buys the game's software for perhaps $30 to $50, and then pays a monthly fee of usually around $15. (There are also many games that are sold at retail but then are free to play online.)

Since November, World of Warcraft has signed up more than four million subscribers worldwide, making for an annual revenue stream of more than $700 million. About a million of those subscribers are in the United States (with more than half a million copies sold this year) and another 1.5 million are in China, where the game was introduced just three months ago. By contrast, EverQuest II now has between 450,000 and 500,000 subscribers worldwide, with about 80 percent in the United States.

Just a year ago, numbers like that would have classed EverQuest II as a big hit. The original EverQuest topped out at around a half-million players, and many, if not most, game executives came to believe that the pool of people willing to pay $15 a month to play a video game had been exhausted. The conventional wisdom in the industry then was that there could not possibly be more than a million people who would pay to play a massively multiplayer online game.

Now, World of Warcraft has shattered earlier assumptions about the potential size of the market.

"For many years the gaming industry has been struggling to find a way to get Internet gaming into the mainstream," said Jeff Green, editor in chief of Computer Gaming World, one of the top computer game magazines. "These kinds of games have had hundreds of thousands of players, which are not small numbers, but until World of Warcraft came along no one has been able to get the kind of mainstream numbers that everyone has wanted, which is millions of players."

Or as put by another Blizzard rival, Richard Garriott, an executive producer at NCsoft and one of the fathers of computer role-playing games: "Every year someone writes a big article about how the M.M.O. business has reached a new plateau and won't get any bigger. And then every year we seem to grow 100 percent. World of Warcraft is just the next big step in that process."

Worldwide, about the only subscriber-based multiplayer online games that can compare to World of Warcraft are Lineage and Lineage II, from NCsoft. Each game claims about 1.8 million subscribers, but in both cases the vast majority of players are in South Korea, where Internet gaming has become practically a national pastime.

World of Warcraft has taken off in many countries because Blizzard has made a game that is easy for casual players to understand and feel successful in, while including enough depth to engross serious gamers, who may play a game like World of Warcraft for 30 hours a week or more. Previously, many massively multiplayer games had seemed to pride themselves on their difficulty and arcane control schemes.

"The emphasis has clearly been on removing all sorts of barriers of entry," Ville Lehtonen, a 25-year-old Finn who runs Ascent, one of Word of Warcraft's elite player organizations, or guilds, said via e-mail. "The low-end game is a great triumph of usability - everything is aesthetically pleasing and easy to learn, making the experience a very positive one. Also the ease of leveling guaranteed that people didn't get frustrated too easily. These effects combined to lure in the so-called casual crowds in huge masses."

It is much the same formula that Blizzard has used with its other major properties: the action-role playing Diablo series and the Starcraft and Warcraft strategy franchises.

"This is what Blizzard always does," said Mr. Green, of Computer Gaming World. "They have an innate genius at taking these genres that are considered hard-core geek property and repolishing them so they are accessible to the mainstream. To do that without losing their geek cred is an incredible achievement."

Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, which is controlled by Vivendi Universal Games, estimated that about a quarter of the game's players are women, up from fewer than 10 percent on previous Blizzard games. "I think we've introduced a number of people to online gaming who didn't realize that they would even enjoy it, and so I think that's good for the industry," he said.

Some of Blizzard's biggest rivals seem to agree.

"World of Warcraft is absolutely expanding the market, and that's a positive for us because we don't want this to just be a niche market," said Mike Crouch, an NCsoft spokesman. NCsoft has at least three new massively multiplayer games on the way including City of Villains, a superhero-themed sequel to last year's City of Heroes that is scheduled for release this fall. "World of Warcraft is great, but people eventually move on and we will have the catalog for them to move on to."

But there is also trepidation.

"If you're only playing WOW and you're paying every single month, what does that mean for all of the other Internet games out there that are trying to get your $10 or $12 or $15 a month?" Mr. Green said. "WOW is now the 800-pound gorilla in the room. I think it also applies to the single-player games. If some kid is paying $15 a month on top of the initial $50 investment and is devoting so many hours a week to it, are they really going to go out and buy the next Need for Speed or whatever? There is a real fear that this game, with its incredible time investment, will really cut into game-buying across the industry."

In any case, as in years past, there are those who believe that paid online gaming is all a fad anyway.

"I don't think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month," said Michael Pachter, a research analyst for Wedbush Morgan, a securities firm. "World of Warcraft is such an exception. I frankly think it's the buzz factor, and eventually it will come back to the mean, maybe a million subscribers."

"It may continue to grow in China," Mr. Pachter added, "but not in Europe or the U.S. We don't need the imaginary outlet to feel a sense of accomplishment here. It just doesn't work in the U.S. It just doesn't make any sense."

[dammuzis]

this article basically tells me that the person who wrote this article is completely out of the loop.. 5 years of people paying $x a month is not a fad.
if looked at differently paying 50 initial fee and then 15 a month for something that will entertain you for years is alot cheaper then buying a new game every month for 50 for your average teen or 20 something

[Lyion]

this article basically tells me that the person who wrote this article is completely out of the loop.. 5 years of people paying $x a month is not a fad.
if looked at differently paying 50 initial fee and then 15 a month for something that will entertain you for years is alot cheaper then buying a new game every month for 50 for your average teen or 20 something

Or you can buy a few months old game for 10 to 15 bucks and play it.

I just picked up Dawn of War and Thief 3 for 9.99 each and I'm playing those.

MMOs seem to me to have quicker turnover now than a few years ago. Whether WOW keeps people for years straight is to be seen, but I bet many people play a few months, take a few months off, just like they did in EQ.

[kaharthemad]

helll how many of you goto the movies? I used to till it ran my ass 50 to 60 for me and my wife to go once you figure in two cokes(6.00) and a bucket of popcorn(5.75) plus two evening tickets(15.00) considering that you grab a bite to eat before the damn show (20-30.00). God help your soul if you actually bring the three kids...tickets kids get in for 6 I beloieve(18.00) add about 5 to 6 dollars to the snack bill...and about 18 to 20 to the dinner bill...


Ill stay with a game we both can play....(30.00) and buy the kids a fucking movie (20.00)

[mofish]

This guy is an out of touch ivory tower manhatten power investor.

If you do a search on him you will find out he also suggested dropping netflix stock and picking up blockbuster stock. Guess how that worked out.

In other words, he is a fool with zero vision.

"No one will ever need more than 640K memory"

[Harrison]

Gaming will be much better when retards finally leave WoW and start putting their efforts into other games infinitely more innovative.

WoW is stagnating the market.

[Zanchief]

Gaming will be much better when retards finally leave WoW and start putting their efforts into other games infinitely more innovative.

WoW is stagnating the market.

Stagnant = raising the bar?

[Harrison]

Once everyone leaves WoW games will get better.

Until that day, all of the market's money will be poorly spent on WoW and other games won't have the ability to make it big.

[Tikker]

It doesn't really work that way


people won't leave until something new, and better comes along


UO was bitchslapping everyone until EQ came along, then EQ bitchslapped everyone for 5 years until WoW came along


now it's up to the designers to build the next best thing to grab the market

Just because you sucked at wow, and didn't like it, doesn't mean that it wasn't the best game made, to date

[Harrison]

It is impossible to suck at WoW.

[Darcler]

Not true.

[Tacks]

Yeah because Finawin beat everything in the game right? lolz

[Harrison]

I didn't need to, I learned the game was too fucking gaytastically easy early on. Even gave it a second chance!

It failed miserably.

I prefer a CHALLENGE out of my games, thanks.

[Tacks]

Like I said, so I guess you beat everything in the game since it was so simple. I mean BWL is SO easy.

[Harrison]

I quit before that was out.

A meager 10% of the game with any difficulty that requires a guild, does NOT constitute general difficulty in the game overall.

The game is for kids.

[Adivina]

Leveling isn't hard, but there are some really fun instances. Not just the raid ones either....

I love the event to revive/wake Hakar in ST, the pitfight in UBRS where lord whatever throws all his little dragonkin at you and then comes in riding his damn dragon, shit even the very low level instances like Shadowfang keep had fun scripts and shit. Its not about a game being hard for me right now. I am having fun and not getting stressed while doing it. (ok so pvp and stupid people make me a little mad....but its ok) I had my time with MMO's that make you want to break the fucking computer, now I am just looking to enjoy myself. RL has enough stress why bother with it in game?

[Tacks]

I quit before that was out.

A meager 10% of the game with any difficulty that requires a guild, does NOT constitute general difficulty in the game overall.

The game is for kids.

You're rank 14 pvp? You've 5 manned UBRS Strath both sides Baron flawlessly over and over? You cleared MC including Rag flawlessly? I guess EQ was too easy as well because the mobs are taking just as long to kill and getting played by twice as many players. I'm not saying it's supremely hard but it's by no means "easy". Lets play lineage nuke and move 2 feet forward and nuke again, man that's difficult. or how about everquest lets quad kite mobs with our druids or solo trakanon.

[Zanchief]

I quit before that was out.

A meager 10% of the game with any difficulty that requires a guild, does NOT constitute general difficulty in the game overall.

The game is for kids.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

[Susvain]

Fina were you, Grimlorek in WoW? Didn't you go from 21-35 in 4 days or something?

[Lyion]

I must be senile or something. My one 60 character took me several months to level.

My 55 Mage seemed to be in the 50s forever.. Granted, I haven't levelled in quite some time but I found levelling in EQ to 60 faster than WOW for me...

Levelling is easy and usually fun first time through in WOW, but not as much fun for me relevelling. Certainly a much better experience than EQ camping. EQ levelling was new and fun but that was moreso because the genre was brand spanking new.

Raiding in EQ was harder for me, but that was more to the aptitude of the people, lagdeath 2400 modem using fuckers, SOE bugs, and general age of gamers versus the WOW crowd.

Anyways, gaming is meant to be fun. As long as people are entertained, thats all that matters.

I definitely disagree that WOW is for kids. It seems to be marketed squarely at the 20 to 40 crowd that has been buying Warcraft games for the past 15 years....

[Susvain]

I suck at leveling in WoW, more often than not i'll just grind with AE (im a mage). I can't find anywhere with alot of quests i can keep going on, i just run out of quests my lvl and do instances until i lvl

[Harrison]

Insert e-peen measuring bullshit no one cares about

Fina were you, Grimlorek in WoW? Didn't you go from 21-35 in 4 days or something?

I was Grimlorek. I don't know how fast I leveled at all. It was a long time ago and I was bored as shit while doing it. I was only playing for the guild at the time, not for myself.

Every once in awhile I am tempted to reroll as a priest for the guild. I still frequent the messageboards and shoot the shit with old friends. I just don't know if it's worth playing a sub-par game for the sake of friendships over the internet...been there; done that.

[Susvain]

What was your highest lvl? 40? You haven't done many fun things yet, or anything challenging. And yes, there is some hard stuff in WoW. I just wish their was alot more un instanced raid bosses, i dont like this instance shit much

[Harrison]

When I came back I was in my 50's (on a rogue on another server, forgot what level I got him to).

I quit before I made the run to 60, I got bored again.

I don't want another game where my sole purpose to playing is to wait for raiding while the rest of the game blows ass.

[Lyion]

I don't want another game where my sole purpose to playing is to wait for raiding while the rest of the game blows ass.

So what should the endgame consist of?