MMO Roundtable times2009-09-05Blizzard has had spectacular success with their MMORPG, World of WarCraft. Four million strong and growing, at last count. While this continued success could mean great things for the genre in general, moving it more to the mainstream audience, it could mean bad things too. As the New York Times recently talked about, an MMOG as successful as World of WarCraft has effects which ripples through the gaming industry. These effects are felt when looking at other titles like EverQuest II, which had modest success in comparison. The success of WoW can even be used, to a small degree, to understand how unsuccessful titles like The Matrix Online can fail to gain the right momentum, although many would agree that reasons for that go far beyond the stiff competition. This sort of things could spell bad news future MMO games. However, the issue is especially apparent when smaller games like Asheron's Call 2 decide to shut down their servers due to their inability to draw in a fresh audience and generate a strong income. Even that isn't the whole story. It remains possible, since MMOG's require a monthly fee and a great deal of time to play, that single player games may drop into a decline if MMO's become as successful as WoW. The reason being that there simply won't be as much time or money left to play them. So, we went around asking the GameDAILY staff their opinions. Is WoW making or breaking the gaming industry?
Steven Wong
It's hard to blame a game for being successful. It's not like World of WarCraft employed any dirty tactics to get where they are. They released a quality product, did the right marketing, and got great critical reviews. WoW is the hot thing right now, and that should be recognized. Whether or not that success will continue at its current rate is another story. Hundreds of people everywhere like to predict where the MMO genre is going, when it will grow stagnant, or when it will fade away altogether. Often, these people have been wrong. Games like Guild Wars already challenge the idea of requiring a monthly fee in order to be successful. When you get right down to it, an MMO title is only one kind of gaming experience. There will be times when people will want to take a break from that experience to try something new. While there may be some growing pains as MMO's become more mainstream in the United States, it is still far too early to tell how it will impact the industry as a whole. Take into consi...
