Blizzard to move WoW offline?

by Akela Talamasca Jul 15th 2008 at 11:30AM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Real life, Events, real-world, Game mechanics, MMO industry

This is either the craziest idea ever spawned by the mind of a game journalist, or right on the money. GigaOm writer Alistair Croll has taken the news that Blizzard is developing an unannounced MMO and put together a list of reasons that point to the possibility of an offline version of World of Warcraft.

Now, take a moment and let that thought sink in. Real-world orcs and Draenei running around doing battle in public. Crazy, right? Yet consider the reasoning: MMOs are so popular as to have completely saturated the market, so for a new MMO to be successful, it must innovate in a unique way -- taking it all offline is definitely that. For such a reality-based game to work, it must have a massive player base (10 million strong and growing -- check) in constant communication (mobile devices FTW -- check) with places to visit (geocaching -- check). Add to this how many WoW players already have their own costumes, and suddenly, this idea has legs. Is it likely? It seems pretty risky, but if any company has the resources to sling at an unknown market, it's Blizzard. Ask yourselves, jaded gamers -- would you play a Live Action World of Warcraft?

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Brian! said on 11:56AM 7-15-2008

This is a silly idea. Silly, silly silly.

Not to say that Blizzard does not produce games outside of the computer, like their board games, card games, etc... but their main revenue is COMPUTER games.

Their next MMO will be a computer game, period.

If anything, it might utilize smaller computers, such as cell phones, for additional gameplay.

PurityKnight said on 12:12PM 7-15-2008

Shouldn't this blog update be posted on April 1?

Silly.

Nadril said on 12:41PM 7-15-2008

Dear lord this would have potential of being instant comedy gold for any other person who doesn't play WoW. I invision a bunch of guys getting together for a "raid" in RL.

Blizzard NEEDS to do this. The sad thing is that with cellphones it would be entirely possible.

W. Graves said on 12:41PM 7-15-2008

if your gonna do an e-connected LARP game, it should meld better to the real world than wow.

the first person the cops on campus in a WOW costume gets tazed

PeterD said on 12:46PM 7-15-2008

Uh, no.

Frankly this would just be stupid. What's the business model? How does blizzard make money off it? Why would people pay for it when they organize and do crap like that on their own?

Making a computer game that can host millions of players in virtual worlds simultaneously is hard, and something the average gamer understands the need to pay for. They can't do it themselves. Dressing up like elves and running around smacking people dressed up like orcs with pretend swords is easy, and something they don't need to pay money to a massive corporation for.

There are many less-than-nice words I could use to describe Blizzard, but stupid isn't one of them.

Nadril said on 12:53PM 7-15-2008

Someone missed the humor :(.

rorenn said on 1:42PM 7-15-2008

I think the author of the original article got bonked on the head as he woke up from last night's raid.

One thing's for certain... I guess you can't tell someone to get off their ass and stop playing WoW if they're running around doing... quests. Oh wow, epic treasure can be found in a tree at 51*33.96N , 001*33.10W.

Alistair Croll said on 4:01PM 7-15-2008

(Since I wrote the piece I figured I'd weigh in here.)

The article started out as a speculation of how an MMO vendor might change the game. You need critical mass to do that, and it's something Blizzard has that few others (maybe Runescape) do.

I intended the story as a bit tongue-in-cheek (thanks, Nadril) -- I don't think they'll ditch billions in revenues to fuel some LARPer fantasy. But I do believe that MMOs will start to spill over into the real world soon (as many of you pointed out.) Is this what their next game will be? Probably not, but they'd be foolish not to factor in mobility. But down the road, I'm confident we'll see some kind of overlay of the real world with gaming.

So maybe my insanity was due to today's nerfing of mounts down to level 30. But I'm confident that the next transformation in gaming will have mobility and telepresence. There were people in the eighties who thought video games would never be multiplayer; now, we take it for granted.

A.