It’s an accepted fact that competition among companies is good for consumers, as it gives them more options. In the MMOG space, that good becomes questionable, as players are attached to their characters, and are not likely to move onto a new game just because of a few key improvements. However, for players of World of Warcraft (WoW), the future looks a tad more promising now that Blizzard has taken notice of Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR).
First, Blizzard followed Mythic’s announcement that WAR would have a built-in achievements system, and now with WAR touting 500,000 players shortly after release, Blizzard is again following Mythic’s innovation and claiming that they’re reevaluating WoW’s non-Arena PvP mechanic. And fear they should, because WAR’s draw isn’t purely on its general improvements on WoW, but on WAR’s PvP focus that enables more casual gamers to participate in end-game content that’s not raid-targeted.
Hardcore Casual’s syncaine [sic] inserted entertaining commentary in a Blizzard post on the state of their PvP, and while somewhat exaggerated, the essence of Blizzard’s thinking is kept intact. In short, Blizzard was able to keep up a stagnating product because there was no real competition out there, so greedy players were relatively content paying for a product whose quality was drastically slipping in regards to gameplay options. With WAR now available for consumers, and having earned a respectable player-base already, the million or so WAR players expected by the holiday season means that Mythic isn’t just catering to those who want a WoW alternative, but rather targeting Blizzard’s very own subscription base. Sure, the MMOG market is bigger than the pool of WoW subscribers at WoW’s height, but the pool of interested fantasy MMOG players isn’t quite the same size, and WAR is clearly the the closest MMOG to WoW similarity-wise, and polish-wise.
So finally, Blizzard has competition worth a damn, and sadly, the resulting reaction from Blizzard doesn’t make us happy that Blizzard is gearing up for some gameplay evolution, but rather makes us sad at just how obvious it’s become that WoW let a weak PvP system last this long. While Blizzard ought be respected for what they did for the MMOG scene, they should also be lambasted for not pushing the envelope after their initial high-speed WoW success. That is to say, we’re rather disappointed that the Blizzard we’ve come to love is no longer the Blizzard around today, and it makes us hesitantly skeptical about future Blizzard products.
Competition in the MMOG space is definitely good in the long run, but it will undoubtedly disappoint many WoW gamers who will be forced to abandon their beloved characters if they want to keep playing an innovative, evolving MMOG. We don’t feel too sorry for them, though, else we wouldn’t keep our fingers crossed that WAR surpasses the one-million player expectation by year’s end. Let’s shoot for two.
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