The WoW-Killer will be Blizzard's next MMORPG. They have the large revenue stream that is needed to make a game of this quality, and it will be hard for another company to get the huge chunk of cash to make a game of WoW's quality. Especially with the past few attempts having flopped.
 

The only things limiting WoW are their own design decisions (effectively abandoning the old world chief among them) and their insistence on the subscription business model. They will likely be a force to be reckoned with for as long as they choose to be, but they won't see the expansion that they could without adapting to the changing market forces in order to welcome even more users.
 

To be fair only AoC has flopped and that still earns Funcom a decent bit of cash, WAR is a little down bevasue of WoTLK's release and it's pve game is lacking a bit, i still enjoy it but i'm wondering wether SWTOR will down them before blizz's next mmo, Obviously it's too early to tell yet but seeing as a fair bit of money is being poured into it and the IP is very popular and Well it's fresh a new sci-fi mmo will probably draw some attention.

So yes i like some things of WoW but i dislike other things, for instance the paladin balancing debacle. Playing my paladin isn't fun or fresh at all, where as my hunter is loving the new pets etc and my warrior loves the dual-wield 2hs and while i haven't played my warlock much demon form is pretty nifty. i can't comment on the other classes but it really seems like paladins got nothing "Shiny" oh well.
 

thats the point, they cannot keep up the quality with the timeline so yea, you will get bored and need to quit for a year. Eventually something will pull you away permanetely, that is the nature of the beast.
 

The question is: how long before even quality PvE becomes old? Note that some of the innovative quests you described are taken for granted in single-player games.
 

It's all up to the player to decide what makes a fun time for him/her. Fortunately, WoW is the idea of a good time for 11 million+ people.
 

Averaen has got it right. Blizzard's dominant market position gives them the profits to invest in high quality content, this high quality content allows them to keep their market leadership. This is a classic "virtuous cycle" business model. The only reason we don't see this type of dominance more often in the games industry is that most games are one off short term experiences where novelty and hype are bigger selling point than quality. MMOs are a long haul proposition and allow Blizzard to fully exploit their market dominance. Of course Blizzard could get lazy and screw up but if they don't there are probably only two ways to beat them - either invest a ridiculous amount of money (billions - perhaps a Microsoft MMO) to develop an even better game or else find a niche that WOW doesn't cover where you can develop your game off Blizzard's radar. EVE is the most obvious example of a game that has a found a niche WOW doesn't touch. Curiously LOTRO is another example, while most folks assumed at launch that LOTRO was a WOW clone but in fact it has developed into a very different game primarily because it has attracted a very different type of player. Unfortunately if any of these niche games get big enough to challenge WOW then they are in for a tough fight.
 

I think it was on Relmstein's Blog that I read a comparison of WoW with a snowball that has been rolling around for years and getting bigger an bigger as it picks up more snow aka features/content/... the article was called "Jack of all Trades" and may be an interesting read.

Personally I am enjoying the addon a lot. Right now WoW is going strong and Wrath helped that along nicely. But Blizzard is slow getting out new content, the biggest weakness I see, can they afford that in the long run? That may be the eventual reason for another company to come in, at least in my opinion. As long as they create content faster than people get bored it will be hard for any competition. But I guess the MMO market just looks way too tasty for companies not to keep trying to compete and competition is good for the players!
 

Initially. I wasn't too keen on WotLK, but I must admit all my concerns were wiped away after playing for 5 minutes. I decided to start my Paladin in the Borean Thundra, trying to keep the Howling Fjords for my hunter (I remember being soooo bored after having to play TBC areas twice in a row....), dinged him to level 71 yesterday and never had to do one dull quest. If this goes on until level 80, I'll be more than glad to have bought the expansion. It's maybe just me, but I prefer the Morthrend area just sooo much over the outer space TBC scenery...
Another strong point is how smoothly the start went: no downtime waiting for respawns of important quest mobs (no wonder, they take 30 secs to respawn) and even the 'kill 10 foozles' quests went nicely although there were many players competing for the mobs in the same area. I feared the starting regions would be unplayable due to this, but Kudos to Blizz for handling it so well.
Finally, I never got a waiting queue (on Eu server Dalaran at least), never got a disconnect, never had any serious bugs.... Congrats, Blizzard, on a fabuloaus launch weekend :-)
oh, and please, get the Pally right, I'm tired of all the nerfs...
 

I think the "X quests completed in Y" achievements will work against them in terms of content longevity. People are doing absolutely every quest in each area to get those achievements, and a significant number will have cleared all the non-instanced content in a few weeks. Encouraging your players to run out of things to do is a little counter-productive in a subscription model.
 

Not bad,not bad sofar. I agree with Paladin. The launch went much better than expected. No crashes, a few minutes of queue, and not much boredom or frustration about 1000 people in the same zone. As much as people love to give blizz crap about everything, it went much better than expected. Imagine what it took to ensure that millions of people could log on and play together with very minimal issues (technical or gameplay.) And personally I didnt mind that it took 2 years. Yeah perhaps a tad slow, but release this expansion 6 months earlier and i am not finishing SSC, The Eye, and venturing into BT, Hyjal, or Sunwell. Maybe I am just not "hardcore" enough, but to get time to see these places before rushing into the next expansion is a plus for me. Give me polished, well thought out and planned expansions every 2 years rather than rushing out some unfinished product every 1 year any day. And I agree with the first poster. The only thing that's going to outdo WoW at this point is a new game by blizz. They have the money and experience to find what the masses want and give it to them. Sure a lot of people want more complex combat, more intricate character customization, etc. The masses do not, and blizz has realized that. While not perfect, WoW continues to be the gold standard by which all other MMORPG's will be measured.

And pallies are ok. Don't complain when you can drag 20 mobs, AOE and kill them all while keeping yourself alive. My resto shammy is sitting in awe watching you rack up the XP.
 

Utgard Keep was a little drab, but Nexus and AzjolNerub are not only fantastic to look at, they are fun to play as well.
Great job, Blizzard. I hope the rest of the instances are as good as these.
 

WotLK is just about everything I wanted from a WoW expansion. So far I've just hit 72.25 on my paladin and I havn't even cleared the first zone. I'm taking my time though, no rush for me.....even though I felt the need to step it up a bit today when I saw a level 80 priest decked out in half-epic gear from a Naxx run.

Unlike the BC, I'm actually excited to start raiding come end game. Knowing that the starting raid dungeons are easy enough for a good guild to clear on their first run through is good news. I refused to raid what so ever in end game BC due to Karazhan being a total freakin joke (remember countless wipes with full trash respawning every 30 minutes?). While perhaps Naxx is too easy right now, let it be. I'd love to see the content. Blizzard can ramp up the difficulty of the next few raids after Naxx. One thing that would really suck is if Blizzard catered to the forum whiners and they up the difficulty of Naxx so that when I ding 80 it is Karazhan all over again.

I'd also like to point out that the Death Knight starting area is incredible. Anyone who doesn't even want to play a DK should atleast clear the starting zone. It is about three levels worth of content(55-58) but only takes a couple of hours due to quests giving up to 16k exp.....which is a ton for a level 55.
 

I agree with you 100% on this, Tobold. Regardless of various quibbles people (including myself) have on balance issues and project timeline, Blizzard's product quality is just impossible to beat. And that's something you feel within minutes of playing another game. It's going to take a fundamental change in a company's development religion to kick out something that's half as "good" as WoW.

Of course, you didn't get to experience the several days of downtime and mail disaster like we did on the NA servers. Still, that's a rather minor blemish.
 

"yay, i the game is so much better and the dungeons are so good"

"yay, i quested all day long and none of the quests were dull"

"yay, the quality is amazing and I can't wait to get the X area"


Are you saying WotLK is a sucess like 5 days after it has launched? I am not naysaying here, but i would wait some more weeks before acclaiming this as a success. The same happened in TBC, and 2 months later people were not so sure anymore.
As for raid sizes, i also remembering people jumping up and down becasue now "everybody" was going to raid due to 25-men raids. I still get a big LOL when i remembered casuals posting in the beginning of TBC and those same casuals posting one year later. :)

So this is a bit of rain in your parade. When people realize that is more of the same but with Ice and minor tweaks (oh, and basicly making character building more meaningless that it already was) the burn out will it again with a vengeance. And that is the main reason i am not giving in to the temptation to reactivate my sub. What's the point? Take the snow and the copycat PvP and it's still the same great game (yes, it is a great game) that i grew bored of due to it's repetitiveness and the blandness of it's gameplay/character creation.

The only thing that is kind of depressing is that the next big thing will be WoW with a twist. Blizzard has shown THE way.

Give me the next little thing. :)
 

I'm very new to Tobolds' blog having been introduced by my WoW addicted brother. I was a casual WoW player up through TBC. 1 lv 70 Hunter, 1 62 SPriest (couldnt face BC again), 1 58 Lock (couldnt face BC again). I dont have time for raiding so for me solo PVE and PUGs were the order of the day. I love Blizz and wish them continued success but ... I've seen this before with EverQuest and SOE. Before you start throwing things at me, No ... Blizz is absolutely not SOE. But there was a time when no-one expected EQ to fade easily into that goodnight. It did. WoW vanilla came along and was enough to dethrone the "SOE king." WoW WotLK is a far different game than WoW vanilla but ... there will be something new one day. And it may not be the next Blizz MMO that seriously threatens their hold. Look at Bioshock. HUGE! A completely innovated gaming experience that spread like wildfire. Started slow, caught hold and flared into a huge success. I expect the next MMO to seriously threaten WoW to do the same. LOTRO, WAR and even COH/V have introduced modest differences to a generally similar play experience to WoW. That's not going to cut it. I believe the game that has a real and significant draw against the WoW player subscriptions (the only measure of the next King!) will be a very different playing experience. Do I dream of a StarCraft done to the high quality standards of WoW ... oh yes! Do I think Blizz and their massive revenue stream has a dominate advantage ... of course. But $$$ will not be the only thing important in dethroning WoW; or even seriously threatening it. Creativity, Innovation and Distinctiveness especially will be core to any serious contender. Till then ... enjoy WotLK and post screen shots so I can enjoy from a distance.
 

The keys to Blizzard's success are some core design philosophies, some of which are considered heretical by many in the gaming community.

The first is accessibility. The game was made from the ground up to be accessible (both from the technical/machine point of view and the gameplay/"pickupability" perspective), and it has gotten more, not less, accessible as the years have gone on. You never needed to have a super rig to play, you didn't have to be an MMO geek to play decently well, and so forth. Vanilla WoW had an endgame that was not accessible, but over time Blizzard has changed that as well. The design idea is to cast a wide net, and it has worked for WoW to beat the band, to say the least.

The second is quality control. WoW is pretty much an amazingly high quality MMO. Sure, Blizzard has had four years to "polish" the thing, but it was always very high quality, even in 2004 when the network and server issues were crazy. When they decided to go with a lower polygon graphical approach for accessibility reasons, they compensated for that by exercising a LOT of quality control in art direction. Similarly, the animations are crisp -- more crisp and responsive character movements than in any other MMO really, other than AoC (which is four years younger) -- the animations in WoW make Warhammer look like a bad joke, to be honest. The musical score is another example of this -- very high quality, atmospheric music, etc. Blizzard didn't skimp, even though they had to work around a lot of issues to stick to the accessibility goal. The result is a game that is not only highly playable and accessible, but also relentlessly high in quality.

The third is something that has been a philosophy in other games as well -- focus the design on the fun aspects of the genre. WoW plays very "fun", and it always has. It's just a very entertaining experience. It isn't busy trying to be serious (like LOTRO) or hardcore (like (EQ) or innovative (like a bunch of games) -- it's focused on delivering fun to the average player, and that has driven its success to a significant degree.

And the fourth is that WoW is designed to be "something for everyone". If you want to be a hardcore raider, WoW has that. If you want to be a competitive PvPer, WoW has that. If you want to play casually and run daily quests and five man dungeons, WoW has that. If you want to be social with other players, WoW has a very social environment (remarkably social compared to newer games like Warhammer). Wow provides a varied game experience that the player can tailor to his or her own interests and playstyle. Some would say that this approach would make the game weaker as compared to a more focused game, but in fact that hasn't happened, because when you combine the jack of all trades approach with the other factors I mention above, it leads to a fantastic formula for retaining players.

======================

I honestly think Blizzard looks at player retention a bit differently than the conventional model. Their expansion production schedule is slowish -- 2 years on average. I think Blizzard realizes that they won't retain *that* many people for the entire cycle. So the strategy is to allow people to pick up the expansions, level their characters to max level, play around with the endgame content until they get bored, and then suspend until the next expac. It's a bit risky because you don't know how many people will come back. But if you create sexy, interesting expacs, and people already have level capped characters, both BC and LK have shown that a LOT will come back. And therein lies Blizzard's strategy, really. I think if Blizzard can keep on creating high quality, entertaining expansions every couple of years, the game will be around and very large for another 2-4 years at least. The only thing that could put a dent in during that time period would be another MMO of the same quality, accessibility, variety and fun factor that WoW has. We haven't seen that since 2004. It would cost a bazillion to make at this point. But it is in theory possible. Until then, however, WoW will remain the king, and not for trivial reasons.
 

I'm not sure "keeping up with advanced technology" is as big an advantage as it may seem at first. With technology related to newer computer parts, games will run into problems with people not meeting system requirements, or having to make expensive upgrades (Age of Conan is an extreme example, but other games have also pushed up requirements enough that computers which work excellently for just about everything else have trouble with newer games.)

(This may be another reason that WoW sticks around so well, it can be played on relatively lower system requirements than some of the newer stuff coming out, though I don't have any actual stats to back any of this up.)
 

I think that's right -- and it's also pretty much heresy in the gaming community. The gospel in the gaming community is that you can't really succeed unless your game has eye-popping cutting edge high polygon graphics. This is why we see so many games (MMO and SP alike) so focused on eye candy graphics. Blizzard deviated from that approach, and focused on accessibility in terms of GPUs, and tried to compensate for that through high quality art direction and animations. I think it worked pretty well, all things considered, although there are still quite a few more elite gamers who refuse to play WoW because of its "cartoon graphics that are made for children". On balance, however, the accessibility approach really worked for Blizzard.
 

"you didn't have to be an MMO geek to play decently well"

What do you have to be to play Second Life decently well?

In any case this is the mindset out there: challenging games are for geeks, easy bland games are for normal players.
 

I'm not sure it's a mindset issue, it's more of a marketing/design issue.

If you look at a game like EQ, that was a very time-consuming game. People -- many gamers -- stayed away from it for precisely that reason. DAoC was similarly time-consuming, and with a complex skill system and the like. The decision Blizzard made was to streamline both the key systems (that is, to simplify them) and to streamline the time required to play and progress in the game. This made the game appealing both to gamers who previously avoided MMOs like the plague (because here was an MMO that wasn't nearly the timesink of games like EQ or Camelot) as well as attracting people new to gaming in general, because of its accessibility. It was a design/marketing decision, and it worked.

That doesn't mean that there isn't a market for gamers who like more complex systems. EVE, for example, is quite complex compared to WoW, and has a good sized playerbase now for a game of its type. There *is* a market for games like this, but it will take financing sources and publishers who are willing to finance/support a niche type game rather than swinging for the seats and trying to nab Blizzard's customers. That's really the main issue right now -- too many developers and publishers have dollar signs in their eyes and are designing games that are similar enough to WoW in an effort to woo its large playerbase.
 

Brendan, be that as it may, I still think the Achilles' Heel is the subscription model. They have created a game that works well and appeals to a wide player base, but have an antiquated subscription model that is geared for the hardcore player. Those with a casual player's limited time to play will not get their money's worth out of the game. The more casually you play the game, the more expensive it is. That's not the way to get casual players playing. The game itself is well designed (for the most part), but the business model hasn't kept up.
 

@Averaen Money isn't the only limiting factor. In fact its only a piece to the puzzle. You need solid quality control, vision, adaptive reasoning and excellent programming skills. Blizzard has almost everything in spades. The only thing they don't do is listen to their customers fast. Other than that they have always been and will always be a flagship game company. EA has the money, just as much as Blizzard, but they have yet to make an MMO that's very comparable in quality level.
 

Well, Tesh, the sub model isn't outdated just because it doesn't suit your needs.
What you can ask is for more options like paying by actually played game, or even weekly payments.

As for the mindset, would you say that the most commercially successful music is the one with most quality? Are the movies blockbusters of last year the best movies so far? Is the best selling book the most well written and thought out book in the shelves? Most of the times the answer is "NO". And I think is so because they are catering for the masses and using the lowest common denominator. It's like producing art based on demographics and consumer trends.

I'm not saying that all these products don't have loads o quality and effort involved. That investment isn't, however, where you expect it to be.Games are, apparently, following the same path.
 

I think we're using different standards for "quality". For me, a game has "high quality" if it is highly playable, not buggy, entertaining, and provides a crisp player experience. If a game has all of that, it is a "quality" game, as I define that, even if I don't like the playstyle, or don't find it innovative or what have you. LOTRO is like that for me -- it's a game that is clearly very high in quality and polish, but not my cup of tea in style. A game can also be innovative and still lack quality, in this sense. Warhammer, in its current state, is sort of like that: public quests are an innovation for the genre, but the entire design of the game is poorly conceived in many respects, and it's also quite glitchy and clunky in "feel" from the player's perspective. So it gets some marks for being innovative, but gets dinged in the quality area. The same could be said, to a lesser extent, for Conan.

If a game were to be released which was innovative and original in design and yet had the same quality control as WoW does, that would be a spectacular game. But that game hasn't been released since WoW, really.
 

Yesterday I looked at my bookshelf and noticed all the old subscription based games that I purchased but no longer play. They include: EQ,EQ2,SWG,LoTRO,and Vanguard. I never bothered to purchase DDO, and I have not gotten around to AoC and WAR. I am married and have a three year old daughter, so my playing time is very limited. However, after three years I still have an active subscription to WoW.
I tried to nail down what WoW has that all these other games do not. They are not bad games by any means, but they just did not hold my attention in the long run. I guess the only analogy I could come up with is this: If those other games could be compared to contestants on American Idol, they are all talented, but WoW has the 'IT' factor.
You cannot describe IT, but you know IT when you see IT.
It is what makes the difference between a backup singer and a Star.
I look forward purchasing WoTLK and continuing the same gaming goodness that I have come to expect from Blizzard.
They are also one of the few companies that are probably immune to this 'economic downturn'. With 10 million Americans out of work, and thousands more joining those ranks daily, what else are we supposed to do? Expect the queues to get worse, not better.
 

Let me cut a long reply short by just saying: Britney Spears also has the IT factor... ;)
 

Quality is definitely the key to WoW's success. In my eyes anyway. It's the main reason it's my main "fallback game". I used go to other games for a break from WoW, but now it's the opposite. I go to WoW for breaks from other games because there's very little frustrating about PvE nature of the game. It's calming, really. The 5 mans, the solo/small group content.

I prefer the RvR of WAR to the PvP of WoW, and I think I prefer the classes of WAR honestly. But comparing the two is comparing Simpsons to Family Guy... they share a LOT of similarities, but each have their own merits and audiences. Many of the games' players play both, and will play both, on and off again ad nauseum, and I see nothing wrong with that.
 

You're right about the polish, Tobold. I've been thinking about a lot of the same things, and trying to figure out what it is about Northrend that makes it so much more fun than the past incarnations of Warcraft. Vanilla WoW and TBC undeniably had polish as well.

I have come to believe that the real source of this superiority is "story". They've really made Northrend into a theme park with interesting, logically consistent context and conflict throughout.

I explain in more detail in my blog post today, here: http://esc-hatch.blogspot.com/
 

Even after two years of development, with all the resources that Blizzard has, WotLK still isn't 'done'. They still have more raids to patch in later. The stuff they produce absolutely crushes what any another company can do, but the trade-off is the time it takes. And if even Blizzard struggles to create a zone of this high caliber, it's easy to see why other games can't match it.
 

@thalian, Yes you're right. Blizzard originally made wow on a relatively tight income stream (they almost went under during development) but they stuck to their ideals and managed to come through with a rock solid product. Now that they have that massive revenue stream and clearly still have their commitment to making great games they're going to be dethronable for awhile.

As for people who think the subscription model is the weakness, you're too caught up in this whole 'casual' gaming thing. Not a single person I know that is playing the game thinks paying $15/month for a fantastic product is too much. Sure if they ditched the subscription model they could get more players but where does their revenue stream come from then? Do they sell in-game commodities? No, that ruins the game balance. Do they sell their patches as 'mini-expansions' for a few bucks a pop? No, that leaves the game with a divided population, some have the new content, some don't. The subscription model is clearly 'casual' enough for most people (my mother, ex-girlfriend and sixteen year old little sister are all paying it) so why would they change anything?
 

I am really enjoying the expansion, the quests are great and the areas look fantastic. I have two comments that slightly detract from my experience.
1. While they've fixed the problem of gear making you look like a clown (gear looks great), most of the quest rewards are very similar in appearance and stats. A little more crit, a little less haste; a little more armor penetration, a little less stamina. I've not seen many standout items that are "must have".
2. Some of the longer group quest chains kind of fizzle. In BC you wanted to do these for the story and for the good quest rewards (blues) at the end of the chain. In Northrend (I've only really been in the two start areas) most of these just end without a great climax, either story wise or gear.

I have also started to experience some quest that I cannot do and need to drop the quest and start again to complete (or even log off and on again), this happened to me occasionally in Outlands since the 3.0 patch. GM's just say their usual "this quest is challenging, perhaps you should try a different tactic", when I've reported it. They used to say this about the bugged netherwing quests...
 

@Anon above this post, be sure to finish the big plot quest throughout Dragonblight. The ending has an in-game cinematic and several extremely cool events.
 

Wyrm, there will always be those to whom the sub model is fine. I'm not saying abolish it. You pegged it; offer more options, and more people will come.
 

It's the 2300 queue and 2hr plus wait to log on thats irritating
 

With intermittent time off (months) from WoW, my lack of rush to level cap, and playing only one character, the current pace of expansions is just right for me. I like to explore, complete all the quests, and while I am very happy to group, I usually go solo (irregular play schedule, and "inefficient" use-of-time model in-game; I like my own pace). I am so far impressed with what Blizzard has done with WotLK (I'm through Howling Fjord), and I really like the move to a more classic Tolkien/Martin/Jordan-inspired setting compared to Herbert's Dune.

Just my 2 cents.
 

The #1 reason I don't play WoW anymore is: EvE Online
 

maybe Kotor MMO to defeat World of Warcraft :)
 

The LOTRO expansion doesn't even rate one line of comment on this blog?