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Don't worry: WoW will die... someday
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It's lonely at the top.
Human nature dictates that as soon as something takes its place on the top of a mountain, many of us will immediately start looking for that 'next big thing' that will knock it off the mountain. In fact, it's safe to say that this phenomenon tends to divide us into three distinct teams: those that are sure the king of the mountain is there to stay, those that feel the next big thing will knock it off, and those that simply don't care one way or the other.
And while I am relieved to point out that the last one -- those that don't care -- are the overwhelming majority, that doesn't keep the other two from being quite vocal minorities.
In the early part of this decade, the Everquest sat atop the MMO mountain. Released in 1999, the game quickly earned the nickname 'Evercrack' based on its addictive qualities and the occasional news story about how it caused a divorce or how some guy played 658 hours straight before collapsing.
First, Asheron's Call was going to knock it off the mountain. Next up was Anarchy Online. And then, Dark Ages of Camelot was going to be the 'EQ killer'. Pretty soon, people started thinking that the only thing that could kill EQ and its massive 400k subscriptions was Sony itself.
And then the giant stepped into the ring.
Blizzard's success is no great surprise. While millions of WoW fanatics foaming at the mouth will no doubt disagree, the Blizzard name alone was enough to cement its fate as the EQ killer. After all, Blizzard already had millions of fanatics ready to purchase anything the software giant produced before Blizzard even decided to enter the MMO market.
This isn't to say World of Warcraft is a bad game. After all, it wouldn't have grown to over 11 million subscribers if it were crap. I think it is safe to say WoW is a great game.
But should we proclaim it as immortal? According to Gigaom, Michael Cai thinks we should stop looking for a WoW killer.
"Stop looking. The only company capable of building a WoW rival is Blizzard itself, says gaming industry analyst Michael Cai. He arrived at his conclusion while researching an online games study entitled "Networked Gaming: Driving the Future II" that will be released this month by research firm Parks Associates. (Cai has since left Parks to pursue an opportunity elsewhere.)
Instead of squaring off against another juggernaut, according to Cai, WoW's biggest competition will be a swarm of Lilliputian-sized MMOs that will whittle away its user base with the promise of free play. By his estimation, WoW accounted for half of the $860 million in revenues that MMOs generated in the U.S. in 2008. He expects all online games to generate $1.6 billion by 2013."
What Michael Cai is referring to is called the "long tail" strategy, which is a strategy of gathering together a lot of little things to equal one big thing. This is like Amazon being able to sell millions of not-so-popular print-on-demand books and make huge profits on them by virtue of having unlimited shelf space.
There's one major flaw in this logic: The person that lounges beside the fireplace enjoying Dickens, Faulkner and Vonnegut isn't likely to discover the eBook lineup of Samhain Publishing and throw the classics in the bottom of their sock drawer to collect dust evermore.
While free, advertising-based and micro-transaction MMOs are definitely a growth market, that doesn't mean they will directly compete with World of Warcraft any more than the growth of gaming on Facebook is killing off the Call of Duty series.
We may very well see the top MMOs keep subscription fees down by implementing other revenue streams like micro-transactions and in-game advertising, but it is still going to take a huge lump of cash to compete with World of Warcraft, and that means box sales and subscription fees.
So what's the big WoW killer?
Casual MMOs will never take more than a small dent out of World of Warcraft because WoW players are not casual gamers. They may have been before they got their hands on WoW, but now they've been converted to the gaming ranks.
But looking for a single WoW killer is futile. The only title coming up that is likely to take a huge bite out of World of Warcraft is Bioware's The Old Republic. Like World of Warcraft, this title has two major things going for it: Bioware has a huge fanbase due to a reputation of putting out great game after great game, and The Old Republic is based on Star Wars, so it can draw in legions of Star Wars fans. It only needs one more thing to take out a big chunk of WoW subscribers: it needs to be a great game.
Will it kill World of Warcraft? MMOs are remarkably resilient. Everquest is quickly approaching the 10 year mark, and yet it still has enough subscribers to warrant Sony releasing regular expansions.
So, no, The Old Republic won't kill World of Warcraft.
DC Online wants a slice of WoW's pie.
But what about when we add in DC Universe? It doesn't take a genius to realize that people are superhero crazy these days, and while I think Champions Online will be the real superhero gem, DC Universe has the big name stars: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.
Let's also add in Blizzard's next MMO, which will have MMO's lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan working on it. While the entire legion of World of Warcraft subscribers won't abandon ship for Blizzard's next MMO, it is a rather safe assumption they'll lose a chunk of subscriptions.
What's going to kill World of Warcraft? The next wave of great MMOs.
Right now, we are in a very stale period of MMOs. How many of us checked out Age of Conan or Warhammer Online and went away thinking "I've done this before -- I did it in EQ, I did it in DAoC and I did it in WoW."
But we've only seen the tip of what these games are capable of providing, and as the industry moves away from the blueprint EQ created and WoW perfected, we should see more exciting and interesting games appear.
We'll see the beginning of this with The Old Republic, and WoW's next MMO will put the trend in full motion, but the true WoW killer will be a full gang of great MMOs. And yet, don't expect WoW to hit rock bottom. If EQ has lasted this long, World of Warcraft could still number over a million subscribers in 2015 even if it is no longer the king of the mountain.
(Note: Michael's statements were slightly misconstrued in the quoted article. Based on his findings, 'Lilliputian-sized MMOs' constitute the next big growth spurt in the MMO market, but subscription-based MMOs like World of Warcraft will continue to grow.)
Suggested Reading:
- 10 Great MMO Settings
- The Top Five Best and Worst MMO Ideas
- Blizzard's next MMO: A Starcraft MMO or a Diablo MMO?
Star Wars: The Old Republic Screenshots
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