Find out why WoW conquered the world

by Samuel Axon Mar 31st 2008 at 11:30PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Culture, MMO industry, News items

Gamasutra has published an article titled "Why World of Warcraft Made It Big." The article was written by Michael Zenke, a member of the family here at Massively! Zenke argues that there's no one reason WoW was the game to explode into the mainstream in Western markets, instead of EverQuest II or City of Heroes. Accessibility, low system specs, polish, storytelling, fun factor, and yes, timing -- all of these had something to do with it. He also suggests that in the wake of The Burning Crusade, WoW is as strong today as it's ever been.

So, this begs the question -- and this is not one that's addressed in the post -- is there a game coming that will leave WoW in the dust just as WoW surpassed EverQuest? Or will Blizzard reign as kings throughout the foreseeable future? Maybe we'll see an industry like the one Corey Bridges of Multiverse described -- a place where democratization of the MMO development process creates hundreds or thousands of successful, user-generated experiences? As curious as we are, we're smart enough not to make blind predictions. So let's see what happens this year with the big releases like Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, as well as the democratizing experiments like MetaPlace.

Tags: accessibility, blizzard, everquest, everquest-ii, fun, gamasutra, industry, michael-zenke, success, system-specs, world-of-warcraft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Verses said on 12:40AM 4-01-2008

One of the major things that made WoW popular is also (at a small scale) the fact that you can play it on both PC and Mac platforms, with Apple computers having a larger part of the market than it used to, the Mac gaming community greatly helped WoW.

DM said on 12:50AM 4-01-2008

"Fun," as many have commented, is highly subjective. WoW made steps in the right direction, but what I think it really did well was "polish." It didn't crash and burn out of the gate, taking months and years to be the game it was supposed to be. Certainly, it was released as incomplete as many games, but it worked and worked well (server lag issues aside). It's (along with the failure of titles like Vanguard) primarily why so many developers delay releases and cite "polish," because MMO gamers are notoriously wary of new releases. I think this is helping Mythic with WAR, because it's so like WoW down to their approach of "releasing it when it's done." People equate WoW with quality (even if it's not the best, gameplay wise), and when WAR becomes WoW with RvR, it benefits accordingly.

Snailking said on 5:17AM 4-01-2008

It doesn't "beg the question"; it asks the question or raises the question. Begging the question refers to circular logic in which the conclusion of an argument is also an unstated premise within it.

Chilblain said on 10:37AM 4-01-2008

If a company took the Star Wars universe and did a proper MMO, that might be a WoW contender. But until then, nothing will touch it. With a 10-million player head start, these companies are just saturating the market with WoW clones that bring little, if any, innovation. Most of us have friends and a community in WoW, which would be really hard to give up and start over someplace else. And for what? The next flavor of the month MMO? Something you sink six months into only to see the player base stay at 100,000 people with little growth potential?

How many times do we see success duplicated? "Spider Man" has the biggest opening in movie history, so every studio buys up licenses for superhero movies... and they release "Superman" and "The Hulk" and "The Fantastic Four" and most of them are utter garbage. Did any of them come close to the success of "Spider Man"?

Leshrac said on 11:44AM 4-01-2008

Roughly 2 million of those 10 million subscribers reside in North America. The bulk of their subscribers are located in Asia. Starcraft was the launchpad for Blizzard into Asia. And the subscribers in Asia pay differently then the monthly method in the rest of the world, so you can't say 10 million x $14.95, etc.

Anyway, I believe that the success of the game is attributable to a lot of things; Blizzard polish with a well known IP along with a fun game, removing the meaningless tedium, in a readily accessible game that will run on a wide variety of low and high end systems.

I remember reading a long time ago that the developers of WoW kept asking themselves the same question throughout development and that was "am I having fun? is this fun?". And like every other Blizzard game they dangle that carrot in front of you from the moment you enter the world till the day you cancel your sub.

I think an MMOG based on Starcraft will surpass WoW, but other then that no other MMOG will hit 10 million worldwide. Even if Bioware does an MMOG based on Star Wars, unless they tap into the Asian/Indian markets. AoC will/has a mature rating and requires a beefy system to run and WHO is more pvp centric, thus scaring away the aunts, uncles and dads of the world.

foodle said on 1:03PM 4-01-2008

One huge difference between WoW and other games is the speed of entry into the gameworld. It takes less than a minute from clicking the icon to being in the gameworld. The logo/intro/menu crap in most games is bypassed: click icon, type password, pick toon, kill murloc. You can get your fix fast.

Then inside of the gameworld any time you spend is forward progress (more xp, more gold, completed quests). Even if you just have 10 minutes, you can do something that is (seemingly) worthwhile.

I don't think anything can topple WoW as the dominant MMORPG as it is currently defined. In order for something to be the next big thing, there needs to be a paradigm shift in the way we perceive online gaming. Maybe something with ties into the real world in some way or some radical new social aspect. MySpace + WoW = ???