Blizzard 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 consideration the fact that nations like Korea have many more MMO games than the U.S. (it's practically a pastime their), with other genres continuing to thrive there, and you have some proof that all facets of gaming can coexist.
Robert Workman
Well, it's really a double-edged sword. On one side of things, you're opening up a broader side of gaming that's seldom seen any kind of mainstream success. With more than four million subscribers in tow, it's really opening up a wide community for gamers of all types, even giving such options as allowing for ordering pizza and arranging for donations and such. It's really rather cool. But then on the other hand, you have the people who play this sort of game excessively, losing their minds if they have an item stolen (like one dude freaking out over his Cloudsong) or even playing to the point of starvation, like a few unlucky international gamers have suffered. Sometimes, the world can be so overwhelming, it can take us away from the real one. I don't play the game myself, but I've heard good things from our PC community. I probably won't get into it, as I have my hands full with other offerings. But it's got pluses and minuses, like most items out there.
Eli Shayotovich
Personally, I think it's a lot of hogwash. There's room for every type of game. Look at how well c0nzol3s do... even without the ability to do MMO's.What I really think is going on here is the lament of the game makers. Today it costs well over 8 digits to make a game, thus driving up the number of units that need to be sold in order to have a
monetarily successful product for the company. Unless it's something like Half-Life 2 or GTA:Hot Coffee (er, San Andreas), or a game from a multi-billion dollar company (Microsoft, Sony, etc.) - the "creative" little guys can't hang. HL2 and GTA really are the exception instead of the rule, and I think game makers are starting to find that making games in today's market ain't exactly all it's cracked up to be.MMOs fix that problem by always having incoming funds. Thus the reason why you see so many bad MMOs being made and trying to jump on the bandwagon (cough-The Matrix Online-cough). Obviously, the more subscribers they have, the more they make. Although, there's a really good article in PC Gamer about where your monthly MMO money goes.Granted, MMOs take up a great deal of time, and for casual gamer types that's going to be the main factor in them choosing to play it (or not) because it's not something that's easily accessible to those with limited time. Plus, at some point you have to justify the $15 a month, and the only way to do that is to play the game. I'll admit, before City of Heroes I was an MMO-hater. Now I'm hooked. And with City of Villains in beta (OMG is it fun to be evil!) I'll soon have to contend with playing & paying for TWO MMOs a month! Knowing how much time was engulfed in CoH, I'm doomed!I think what we're seeing with videogames, and MMOs in particular, is the next wave of interactive entertainment for the masses. I was just reading an article in the new Entertainment magazine about the decline of movie revenues having something to do with (aside from the high ticket prices)
people actually not wanting to go to the theater to have a communal experience that can sometimes be rudely interrupted by the putz with the cellphone, crying babies, slurping slurpies, etc. But I think there's something else... I think people want more interactivity.With games in the $50 (and soon to be $60) price range, people want more for their money. Yes, games have been the same price for a very long time... but that's not the consumers fault. Were we getting raped for years for paying $40-$50 for a game when the entire thing could fit on a floppy disk? Probably. But between the poor economic state of our country (soon to get worse before it gets better), and the ever increasing need for more intelligent entertainment... MMOs, with their ever changing face, seems like the solution. Can't argue with 4+ million subscribers!Chris Buffa
The
bottom line is great games deserve to be played, and four million people playing WoW is a great thing. What I've noticed is a lot of these MMOs all look the same. Everyone's gotta develop some Middle Ages fantasy piece of crap. I think WoW will challenge developers to think in different ways, because if you want to attract customers you'll have to provide them with a different type of gameplay experience. Enough of the whole dwarf/elf/broad sword/magic BS. The genre has its king in that particular category. Time to think up something new.
The issue isn't whether people playing WoW have the time to play single player games. The real issue is whether they're still purchasing single player games. It really doesn't matter if they buy something like GTA and never play it. So long as they hand over the cash, the wheel keeps on spinnin.
Willis Lambert
Almost every single game Blizzard has released has been incredibly solid, incredibly addictive, and seemingly worth every penny to the people that play and enjoy them. I think WoW isn't really a detriment to the industry; people are going to play what they want to play, and if the flavor of the week is WoW, then I think it's alright to look on the bright side
of things and see it the bar being raised. It's going to take a hell of a good game to pull people away from WoW if it's as insanely popular as the NYT describes, so what's wrong with that? Competition, as far as MMOs go, can't be a bad thing. Who is going to, or wants to pay, upwards of $15/month for a subpar game?
Article Source: www.gamedaily.com.
