Jul
20

Recentering the Rudder

6 Comments

I want to take a look a the Bartle comment a little closer, because I think there is something we’re missing.

Here’s the interesting quote from his blog:

Actually, now WoW has done all that, if it were to disappear overnight then it would be a huge boost to the rest of the industry. OK, so there?s my easy answer: if I were given control of a major MMORPG of my choice, I?d choose WoW and I?d close it down. It wouldn?t take long before the majority of its players found the same new place to nest, but enough would stick in the smaller, up-coming worlds to give them a chance to shine, too.

Now, the premise there is that if WoW shut down, the “majority of players” would then go find other smaller, up and coming worlds. I just don’t think that would be the case…and here’s why (…and I bring this up in the comments in the other post I made..)

The vast majority of people are playing WoW right now because it’s a good game…not because it’s a good MMO. That is a huge difference and quite a telling difference for the other MMOs out there right now. If WoW was closed down right now, those 8.5 million players would go looking for a GAME in which to fill the void, NOT necessarily an MMO. Sure, some will find EQ2, a few might find CoH/V…whatever, but no where near a “majority of players” would reconstitute themselves into the MMO market.

Second premise is that getting rid of the top dog would be a boost to the industry. How? You’ve just lost 8.5 million players, none of which are guaranteed to jump into another MMO because they don’t find the others to be fun games. However, keeping the top dog in the play does two things, 1) keeps players in an MMO, 2) keeps companies aiming to knock the top dog off. As long as players are in an MMO, they may look for others. As long as companies are aiming for the top dog, innovation keeps chugging along. Win-win-win all around.

D out.

Posted in Editorial
6 Comments Posted by Darren

6 Responses to "Recentering the Rudder"

  • yunk says:
    July 20, 2007 at 7:50 pm

    With all the people playing wow who never played an MMO before, there is no guarantee they will go to another MMO. Especially when you consider how many busy, casual adults play. Those types of players will likely look for another passtime that won’t require much committment. If the other MMOs are all more realistic, involved, time consuming, they won’t win many of those players.

    The funny thing is, Bartle didn’t say this but I’ve seen others say it, is WoW is a “dumb” game. So if all those people want is a dumb, simple game, why would they go to a “better” game that is not dumb or simple? WoW is exactly what the market wants right now. Just because an MMO is good doesn’t mean it’s what the market wants. Of course he admits above “the majority” would go to the “next new place to rest” which I think is the same point. WoW players are looking for something, but it might not be an MMO. I’d be willing to bet a lot of them will buy Wiis, it’s certainly casual and fun. :)

    It really depends on the demographics.

    However, WoW will dissappear someday, when they either stop listening to players, or something else comes along to satisfy their needs.

  • Rick says:
    July 21, 2007 at 1:21 am

    Nope, still not buying it :) I went into it a bit on my blog, but I’ll repost the short version here. Look, don’t get lost in this “new to mmorpg’s because of Blizzard and WoW” thing. Remember, as of August of last year, when total subscriptions were around 7 million, 5 million were in Asia, 1 million in the US, 1 million in Europe. Going from the pre-WoW days of EQ, DAOC, SWG, COH, we weren’t terribly far from a million people playing mmorpg’s. We were at least halfway there.

    Asia, in particular, was already much further ahead. If you remember the Sir Bruce MMOG chart, Lineage had over 3 million subscribers, Lineage 2 had over 2 million subscribers. Hmm, 5 million mmorpg players, just about what they have playing WoW. The market has always been much bigger over there. You say “whatever, but no where near a ‘majority of players’ would reconstitute themselves into the MMO market.” I absolutely disagree. A sizable majority of the 5 million Asian WoW players came from other Asian mmorpg’s. People there would certainly move back into other mmorpg’s if WoW didn’t exist.

    Blizzard made a great game, and it’s very enjoyable, but they’re not responsible for expanding the mmorpg market from 500k EQ subscribers in 2001 to 8 million WoW subscribers in 2006. Blizzard’s real success is making a game that appeals to both the US/Euro and the Asian market. It’s the only game that’s made the crossover to that extent, but the Asian market already existed to a large extent. They just managed to tap into it better than any other US game.

  • Adele says:
    July 22, 2007 at 8:38 am

    I completely agree with you. It would hinder and not help. A lot of WoW players play because like you said, they look at it as as game to pass their time. It is a very easy game, and most MMOs are not that easy, and I think a lot of WoW players. The players that have that game as their first MMO will find it hard to switch to another MMO because they will not find that same ease of play. This is why they have so many subs.

  • yunk says:
    July 22, 2007 at 6:12 pm

    Interesting there were 5 million or so MMO players before WoW?

  • WoW, the MMORPG Killer? MMO Explorer says:
    July 23, 2007 at 4:59 pm

    [...] disagree with this conclusion. Instead, similar to The Common Sense Gamer, I think that World of Warcraft’s playerbase is not the same playerbase that mmorpgs have [...]

  • Heather says:
    July 24, 2007 at 10:26 am

    I’ve known quite a few people who started playing WoW who’d never played or even considered an MMO before, and who have absolutely no interest in trying other games. Were WoW to shut down, I can say with a great deal of certainty that they’d go back to console games at best, other pursuits entirely at worst. Besides, if folks enjoy Warcraft, how is it a good thing to “force” them to choose something else? If you want to capture that part of the market then guess what—you have to actually lure them to you with a really good product. If WoW is pushing developers to try to make things that more people will enjoy because they have to overcome that competition, then I say good for it.

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