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WoW Has Peaked? Maybe… But It’s Blizz’s Fault
By Cameron Sorden | April 9, 2008
The big news today is Jack Sorenson (Head of Development at THQ) remarking that World of Warcraft has peaked, as far as he’s concerned:
Speaking to Eurogamer at the Gamer’s Day event in San Francisco last week, Sorenson said, “However long it takes World of Warcraft to go through its cycle there will always be people on it, probably always be millions of people on it, but does it keep at that peak? And I think that, I wish I could see the numbers, but my guess is that it probably already has peaked - but it’s still a great business.”
You heard him, folks. Ten million is the cutting point. Here we stop, and here we begin our slow descent into a nice, happy, 4-8 million player churn mill that will endure as long as the original EverQuest. At least, that’s what Sorenson thinks (unless he’s just posturing). Is he right? Maybe. Maybe not.
Here’s what I know: I see more people jaded, burned out, and tired of WoW right now than at any other previous point in the game (even the old end-game). I’ve seen more people complaining about the issues of balance, broken classes mechanics, ignored issues, and lack of developer attention than at any time before. I’ve seen more people complaining that there isn’t enough to do, that they’re bored, that they wish there was something (anything) else to play out there right now than at any time before. The casual players, hardcore raiders, and hardcore PvPers are at each other’s throats on a daily basis. And yet, World of Warcraft still has more people playing it, loving it, coming back to it, and picking it up for the first time more than any other MMOG on the market right now.
Is it stagnant? Has it peaked? Maybe. But do things have to be like that? If it hasn’t peaked yet, it’s certainly in danger of doing so. When I talked to Scott Hartsman at IMGDC, one of the things we discussed is what World of Warcraft did to the MMOG scene. He mentioned that it took all of the things that were wrong with EverQuest (the “pain points”) fixed them, and made an unstoppable juggernaut that rolls onward to this very day (almost three and a half years after the game originally launched). They single-handedly changed the reasonable expectations for what a quality MMO was, and shaped what the idea of an MMORPG should be for millions of players. Now, with this new game era and this new set of expectations, people are beginning to see a whole host of things that they don’t like about WoW.
One of my favorite things to talk about is how WoW could improve itself (from my perspective). I’ve made many, many posts on the topic, and so have lots of other bloggers and forum goers. Part of the issue is that Blizzard is a big fan of just doing what it wants, and doesn’t listen to the community much (when it does communicate on rare occasions, you can never be sure if you’re getting the truth or an easy lie). There’s no guarantee that if it did, it would be any more successful. But a larger issue, in my opinion, is the one that AimedShot brought up in my comments the other day: Blizzard (and Vivendi) are very likely using World of Warcraft as a cash cow to fund other projects instead of investing any significant portion of the profits back into the game, which is why you don’t see any more development on WoW than on any other major MMOG.
That’s fine. We like new games. But you know what? I love WoW. It’s got so much going for it. I like the combat, I like the skills, I like the classes, I like the feel, and I know the game. This, more than any other, is my game. It’s going to be the perennial favorite that I, and many other players, return to for nostalgia and fun for years, much like the original EQ is for me now. Most importantly, my friends will also want to return. I’m not going to have to sell them on it like I would with a new game.
If Blizzard wanted to, they could pump some significant resources back into WoW. It’s a cultural phenomenon that’s starting to pierce all kinds of other pop-culture elements. There’s virtually no reason why they couldn’t have a design team working on content and mini-expansions for all aspects of WoW. There’s no reason why we can’t have a team working on frill stuff, like an equipment display tab or heroic versions of old instances. WoW could pump out expansions like nobody’s business and the sheer momentum of their game and the wide array of stuff to do would block any potential attrition like mad.
But they don’t care. At least, they don’t seem to. The interest in making WoW “the best game ever” simply doesn’t exist. Instead, they seem to be fine with doing just enough to make sure that people pick up the next expansion pack and sit on the cushy laurels of 10 million subs. And as much as it galls me, I can’t really blame them. From an immediate business perspective, the push just isn’t there. They don’t care about having a great game with lots to do for everyone– they want your money. A game that keeps you playing is good enough. They’ll worry about the long term tomorrow, and screw the players that they’re alienating– there’s nine million more where you came from.
You know what, though? The longer they do that, the more I see cracks in the behemoth. You know what I would call those cracks in the behemoth? “Pain points.” If Blizz is okay with WoW peaking, if they’d rather milk the cow dry than take care of it, if they’re willing to just keep it floating along instead of using their momentum to create a lasting, unassailable game that could easily keep up these same numbers for 10+ years (if not continue growing exponentially), that’s their call. The WoW brand is easily one of the most valuable brands in computer games, and they don’t have to drag it through the mud, but if they’re going to, they’re going to.
All I have to say is this: Just because WoW was a wild success and because Blizzard is Blizzard, there is no guarantee that their next game will be anywhere near as successful as WoW. The initial rush of players that they could funnel into any project in no way guarantees long term subs. Blizzard was smart, and Blizzard got lucky. Now, they have a phenomenon (and a big ego about it). It’s like people are saying: the next big thing could come from anywhere, and Blizzard doesn’t have the patent on creativity.
So, go ahead, Blizzard. Ignore your community. Ignore glaring issues in many aspects of the game. Ignore the rising discontent and friction between groups of players within the game. Sit back, dole out the development necessary to keep people paying and playing, and laugh everything off. Laugh off these comments of you peaking. So what if you’ve peaked? You’ve still peaked at 10 million subscribers, and you might not have peaked at all. You’re right. You are the gaming gods. But just remember…
Hubris never ends well, and you’re not invincible. Someday you might be scrambling to pull a few million subs back in, and you’ll probably wish you had the framework in place already instead of rushing to compete with a sharp new upstart. You’re probably counting on having a shiny new WoW replacement when that day comes… but we saw how well that worked for SOE. Did ya learn anything from that?
Idleness brings want
To work today is to eat tomorrow
It is best to prepare for the days of necessity
Topics: Blizzard, World of Warcraft |
April 9th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
In real-world application software development, designers typically plan on annual updates with major rewrites occurring every five years — past that, the cost of maintenance becomes greater than the cost of rewriting it with new tech.
Blizz isn’t stupid. The original game has a good couple of years of life in it, after which they must either rewrite it to take into account all the goodness that has happened since they released; come out with WoW 2.0; or just keep it on life support as long as they can keep profitable (we’ll refer to this as the EQ1 approach).
MMO software is no different from any other kind of software.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
You don’t think that World of Warcraft, with proper care, has more staying power and potential to attract new players than business software?
April 9th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
I think you made an excellent point Cameron. WoW is where it is today because they were eager and hungry to innovate. Unfortunately, success often leads to hubris. Some other eager young pup out there is taking furous notes, and they, along with a whole host of others will take their best shot at improving on what Blizzard has done. Many will fail. If Blizzard loses that fire and drive they had in the beginning though, then someone else will eventually get it right, and then Blizzard will be playing catch-up. If they truly are using WoW money to fund other projects, then that is a double danger to them, because it threatens not just a game, but the kingdom.
An Emperor should always be watching his rivals closely, and sniffing out any hint of discontent. Otherwise he can find himself becoming a spectacular and bloody story in a history book somewhere.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I should add, Tipa, that I know Blizzard isn’t stupid… but they also probably don’t have free reign with their cash flows, and what’s good for long-term WoW isn’t necessarily what’s good for short-term parent company goals.
So I guess really I should direct my ire towards Vivendi… but I guess we really have no idea who’s calling the shots or what their strategy is.
It would be great if they would actually talk to their players sometimes instead of sending their sacrificial forum CMs out with scraps of info once in a great while.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Blizzard is about as smart a game dev company as their is, so i’m going to have to disagree on some points.
Money runs the world. Blizzard can’t be expected to pump a large chunk of their WoW profits back into WoW, it’s just not feasable or smart for a business to put all their eggs in one basket. in the gaming world, you take one success and you create several failures with that money until your next success.
Warcraft demolished the competition when it was released, as did WC2 and then WC3. That didn’t stop them from creating Diablo or StarCraft and we’re better off for it.
And as to your comment to Tipa, business apps are _far_ more sustaining than any game every will hope to be. There are applications right now that are in place that haven’t been updated for years and still work on code from 15 years ago. you’ll never see that level of retention in games.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
They shouldn’t have to invest a large portion of their profits to dwarf the efforts even ambitious and large development teams. They have an existing game with framework already in place for all kinds of improvements. They have ridiculously many more subscribers than any other traditional MMOG. And as Von Biram pointed out, other companies are willing and able to do more with less (see Turbine).
It’s not worth a little effort to keep their monstrosity spinning that much more quickly and brightly? Writing a game off because “people will get bored” seems silly. People clearly love WoW. If you give them stuff to do and work on improving the game, there’s no reason why 10 million needs to be the peak.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
It’s also possible that was a bit of a personal rant spurred in part because I still want to be able to have a vanity tab that lets me pick my character’s look.
But I think it’s a valid complaint, overall.
Lich King had better be incredible. I hope they have a few more rabbits in that hat.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
@Jonathan — well, I’m talking from a developer’s standpoint. You design your products with a five year lifespan to not only reduce increasing customer support costs, but to allow major changes to the code base that would be too risky for an update — for instance, a major engine overhaul, or a change in business model, or a reboot of the game.
Sure, you can keep running — I can’t remember the last time EQ1 had a major revision. 2002? 2003? They are doing amazing things with the engine they have, but I’m sure they’d love to have EQ2-level graphics. Similarly, after two-three more years, WoW’s cartoony, low-tech visuals may look quaint compared to the state of the art of, say, 2010.
I fully expect they are writing the new WoW *right now*, no matter what it’s called. All they need to do is keep doing maintenance releases and expansions until the new thing is ready. There is zero incentive to spend one more penny than they need to in order to give people content they would likely rarely use.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Well, you have to remember that blizzard doesn’t release a game unless it’s going to be a bad ass game. Look at how many times a starcraft sequeal was scrapped. We know they are working on another MMOG which in all likelyhood is based on either SC or diablo, both enormous franchises. If they released another MMOG and it was even half as good as WoW was, they’d have WoW players playing it AND WoW. Now the 10 million who love WoW become 10 million on WoW and 5 million on World of Starcraft.
I’m not saying neglect or write off WoW, i’m saying spend enough to get expansions out like people expect and demand, and take the rest of that money and build more games!
April 9th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
@Tipa - I was agreeing with you =P I’m saying that a lot of times old apps have huge retention rates, even though the apps suck visually and often times functionally, but still persist because businesses don’t want to move such a major system.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Even if those expansions are nothing more than a re-skinned BC? Another ten levels, another 15-odd new zones, another gear wipe, and a new raid game that’s remarkably similar to the old, while invalidating all the previous content.
I’ll buy it… but, ugh.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
This sounded more like a rant than an article.
Last time i got bored with WoW, i quit for 4 months and now i just pick what parts of the game i want to enjoy. It’s not the only game on the market. The charm of Blizz games is that you can jump back into them any time you feel like it and feel like you never stopped playing.
I think someone at Blizzard was laughing when they heard that WAR is being to delayed till autumn, because that is probably the date where WLK will get all hype built up or will be nearing it’s release, which should be fun for whole internet.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I think that these MMOGs are a different animal though. I have only to look back at previous games I have played (of the single player variety) and then I look at WoW and think, “My God, have I really been playing the same game and same character for years? Uninterrupted?” There is an important element to MMOGs and that is personal history with it. You have time and history invested in them that can go well beyond the life span of a typical game. Keeping that history moving forward seems like a worthy use of development time and money. What “moving forward” means is complicated and its own thing.
I think part of why people stick with WoW far longer than they would a console game or another stand alone piece is that they truly love the game and their characters. It is the same reason why Hollywood will keep pumping out sequels, and writers will keep on pumping out novels in the same world. People want to stay there, they don’t want it to end. You practically have to shut the lights off on them…
or you screw it up to the point that they stop caring and finally move on to something else.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Well, I can say from the viewpoint of a ‘newcomer’ (played about a year now) that I feel cheated and restricted on the content that is void at the moment. There is no way to attract a party to enter any instance after Sunken Temple, and the way it seems to me this will happen to the BC instances as we at the moment that WotLK launches.
Void content.
In this sense EQ2 at least has the upper edge, as the content seems alive with all levels of toons all around.
Too bad I’m in the same boat with Cameron, because I love the looks, the playablity and the lore of Warcraft. But the ‘forever lost’ content and the same of more thinking behind the design has taken the fun out of the game for me.
I believe that WoW has peaked, but the only hope is that the decline isn’t too steep.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Since Cam mentioned Turbine, the newest interview about LOTRO he was asked about keeping previous and/or low-level content valid as new content is added and the level cap is raised.
Turbine seems to be committed to keeping a progression going, and maintaining an interest and a relevancy to prior content, not *click* obsoleting content like Blizzard continues to do.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:18 am
You will see if Blizzard “cares” (you know what I mean) about WoW not now, but a year from whenever WotLK goes live and they announce the next expansion.
WotLK will be the last expansion in which Blizzard can afford it to themselves to do “business as usual”, and the next one after WotLK is going to have to be more revolutionary than evolutionary almost by necessity.
WotLK looks to be BC 2.0 (with the exception of a couple of bulletpoints they had to add). And that’s fine. So wait for the next one after WotLK, see how it looks like. If it looks like BC 3.0, well yeah, at that point you can reasonably say they don’t “care” anymore and be reasonably correct, because by that point WoW is gonna be…what… 5? 6 years old? And 6 years is a lifetime in this industry. 6 years without a major revamp, a major engine update, a major and relevant improvement in mechanics or functionality across the board, yeah that would show WoW is “done and done” and no further -anything- out of the ordinary is ever going to happen. Ever. Until it dies (and it will die).
April 10th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I still think WoW is too huge to make any dramatic changes in the game play. TBC brought nothing new to the table other than 10 more levels of the same thing, and a bazillion more reputation to grind. The only argument for “new” that TBC brought was a change to group size and dynamics.
Other than shouting “me too!” over so-called world pvp to divert attention from WAR, WotLK will be more of the same for the simple reason it can’t afford not to be and keep the majority of their customers happy. You know… the majority who has no idea there are forums, etc. to whine on because they’re perfectly content with the status quo?
Yes, WoW will die as all games, MMO or not, will. There will be a “new shiny” MMO that will be the “new WoW” (however, will it get 10 million+ subscribers or will it simply have to beat whatever WoW has at the time?) but that does not guarantee that any of the WoW audience will convert. I knew so many people (I suppose they’d be “casuals”) who as far as they were concerned, the game was over when they hit 60. It was all about the xp bar and the number over their head. Once that stopped, they’d “beaten” the game, left WoW, and never went to another MMO. They’d been there, done that with MMO’s why do it again?
We who flit from game to game on a whim, always looking for the next big thing even though we claim we’re happy with whatever we have? We’re the strange ones… You’d think we were meth addicts…
April 10th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
The main thing I’ve gotten from this discussion is to change my opinion on the “What game would you un-make” question from a few weeks (or months?) ago. I think at this point I’d un-make WoW. It’s 800lb gorilla-ness has stifled competition, making companies unwilling to invest in the development of MMOs for fear of having to compete with WoW. Yet WoW itself has failed to continue any innovation in the MMO gamespace. The result? WoW is forcing stagnation on the genre by making competitors unwilling to compete and refusing to innovate on it’s own.
Look at the upcoming MMOs. For the most part they fall into two categories — big budget fantasy games aimed at cashing in on the PvP boat WoW missed (Age of Conan, Warhammer Online) or Asian imports that require little investment by North American publishers. The big budget games aren’t pushing the envelope either, they’re refining WoW just like WoW refined EQ. Where’s the innovation? Where’s the risky, off-kilter scifi MMO that just MIGHT capture the imagination?
I’m tired of the same old crap, but any MMO game proposal currently has to pass a test of ‘is it enough like WoW to appeal to WoW players, but with some feature or gimmick to make them play it instead of WoW (or in addition to).’
Go away WoW, I want diversity back.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Where’s the risky, off-kilter scifi MMO that just MIGHT capture the imagination?
Allow me to introduce you to Earthrise!
I just hope 1) they can pull off what they’re trying (mix of old-school SWG and EVE brought into this generation) while 2) not being a teen-laden gankfest.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:09 am
I’m not sure that WoW has peaked, I’d expect a surge of resubscriptions after the next expansion, just like we had a subscriptions peak just after TBC came out. Don’t forget that the famous 10 million WoW players aren’t a static group, there is about 5% churn every month. WoW is still a best-selling top ten game in PC game sales charts, which as the total number of players remains pretty much constant suggests that there are millions of ex-WoW players, who could well come back for an expansion. WoW suffers more from cycles of people quitting and resubscribing due to their long delays between expansions.
The reason why I don’t see WoW living forever is that I don’t have the impression that Blizzard is anywhere close to the solution of how to keep players interested in the game forever. I’m sorry, but diluting the game by adding another 10 levels and another continent in every expansion is not going to work forever. Already now low-level WoW is considerable less fun than low-level WoW was three years ago, because it more and more resembles a single-player game. And who pays $15 per month for a single-player game?
So at some point it becomes a question of diminishing returns, do you spend money on a new game, or to extend an old game which has less and less subscribers? Maybe WoW isn’t quite there yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion that people will be disappointed by Wrath of the Lich King, which will then much lessen the interest in the third expansion.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Where’s the risky, off-kilter scifi MMO that just MIGHT capture the imagination?
It’s right here.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:43 am
WoW is a great game, and I appreciate the Bliz commitment to write games for the Mac. However, I was flying from Booty Bay to Everlook the other day, and realized that I had been over every square inch of the territory many, many times. I also realized that I was sick to death of the game, just playing out of habit.
I suspect that millions of former players feel the same way. It is hard for me to believe that the game hasn’t peaked.