One of the primary reasons that World of Warcraft (WoW) managed to make MMOGs mainstream is because of timing. That’s not to say that WoW isn’t a good game in its own right, but chances are, if the stars weren’t in perfect alignment, WoW wouldn’t have amazed observers with its vacuum-like prowess at sucking in millions of gamers. Hardcore Casual’s syncaine wrote a great synopsis of these events:
In short, late 2004 was a ‘perfect storm’ of sorts to launch an MMO. The current king shot himself in the foot, removing himself right before your arrival. The previous king told his core audience to screw, and gaming itself was moving out of its nerd niche and into the mainstream thanks to Sony and the Playstation brand. Oh yea, and WoW was a great game.
Among the contributing factors to WoW’s success was the rather poor timing of Blizzard’s competitors, such as Sony’s arguably premature release of Everquest 2, and Mythic’s change of focus with Dark Age of Camelot’s Trials of Atlantis expansion. These, and other factors, allowed Blizzard to release WoW in a state in which gamers were willing to put up with significant blunders:
It’s nice to think WoW had this perfect launch, and by 2004 standards it sure seemed like it. If fact, it was so perfect, Blizzard handed out weeks worth of free account time to players due to servers being down for 8+ hours at a time, and server queues of an hour+. If you happen to pick one of the ‘troubled’ servers in the early days, it was not uncommon 3-5 MONTHS after release for that server to still be down for extended maintenance.
This was on top of some major balancing issues, back when WoW’s PvP game was an afterthought at best. Most WoW players today can’t even recall when Druids were unbelievably slow to level thanks to unbearably low DPS, and when Shamans were king of the roost for virtually all PvP engagements, though serving little purpose in end-game group environments. With hindsight, one can see the rather drastic changes Blizzard made with WoW’s classes, and how the poor state of the game would be ridiculed were it reflected in any new MMOG release. In other words, if a publisher released an MMOG today with the same release deficiencies WoW had in its day, no matter how polished or innovative compared to WoW, it still wouldn’t pose a significant threat to WoW because the market simply isn’t as tumultuous as it was in 2004.
How then, to capture an audience larger than Warhammer’s 300k? Simply, by filling a niche made up of “real” MMOG players and letting them pimp the game. In other words, targeting WoW directly by attempting to lure its players en masse will be impossible, as the majority of WoW gamers are casual “lemmings” (to use syncaine’s term), who are only playing WoW because that’s where they were influenced to go in the first place. It’s the early adopters of WoW, who were already versed in MMOGs, who will ultimately decide where the industry goes next. Some of these early adopters are the “tourists” eagerly trying out whichever MMOG flavor-of-the-month is available, while some are the “jaded” gamers currently filling Mythic’s pockets by subscribing to Warhammer.
So yes, 300k is the number MMOG publishers need to initially shoot for, with an understanding in place that a new MMOG’s infrastructure needs to be scalable reasonably quickly, and that the core mechanics need to be adaptable to a casual gamer’s play-style down the road. Perhaps Blizzard was right, then, to initially focus on end-game raiding versus casual play, because that’s what sucked in the MMOG faithful. By the time WoW had firmly enraptured the masses, hints of casual gameplay began to materialize, to the point where Wrath of the Lich King is regularly referred to as a casual expansion.
The fortunate variable for future MMOG publishers is that Blizzard’s business strategy in regards to future expansions is simply not sustainable. One can’t simply keep raising the level cap and adding new PvE content, because even if it captures the attention of past subscribers, it’s doubtful that the same people will re-subscribe over and over again. Realistically, these expansions will simply keep the majority of subscribers busy enough until Blizzard releases their next MMOG, with the major risk being taken that the right competitor will release mid-way between WoW expansions. That kind of timing is what Blizzard needs to be afraid of, because it will be at a point where leeriness of WoW will be at a peak, and when capturing 300k subscribers will be much easier than when a new MMOG title is in direct competition with a new WoW expansion, however mediocre this expansion is.
Ultimately, the luck involved in succeeding at MMOG publishing can be influenced to some extent. Observing the market conditions, and predicting the state of one’s competitor’s games at the end of one’s own release cycle, is key. After all, 300k subscribers won’t pay one’s bills until a handful of years have passed, which means that while 300k is a population to shoot for, it needs to be a goal that will springboard the population to greater levels for true profit to be realized.
Fortunately, for a lucky few, that profit isn’t a pipe dream.
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