The website is down for maintenance as is the game’s servers. As it turns out they awkwardly made their launch day the same as their maintenance day.
Oh NCSoft you so silly.
In other news Blizzard released an interview with… themselves. This one relates to questing in Cataclysm. As many of you know Blizzard re-did the entire 1-50 experience creating brand new quests for the whole 1-50 experience. This was on top of their 80-85 experience which was also really good. The experience was so good that I found myself re-doing all of the quests in the original vanilla game.
So in this interview… with themselves… they are buttering themselves up and talking about how great of a job they did.
When asking themselves the traditional dick move question “what is your greatest weakness” they dodge their own fricking question and answer this:
“We really spread ourselves thin and taxed the team. The original plan was to totally re-do a handful of high-priority zones, but to leave a lot of the zones that worked mostly alone. We categorized them into “red,” “yellow,” and “green” zones. The idea behind the green zones (for example, Loch Modan) was just to tweak the quest flow to be a little smoother, but not to make any major changes.”
Yes the answer to their own question is WE WORK TO HARD. So yeah another fluff piece from Blizzard. Not really worth the read but if you’re interested it is there.
So it was announced to investors that Blizzard’s World of Warcraft has lost another 100,000 subscribers.
In the past Blizzard has shrugged off these numbers as people trying other things and people who will come back.
That was true in the past, but not now. It is true when you lose a few thousand people, but when you lose 2M people… that’s something else.
So why is WoW losing subscribers. Well I have my theory and it is three fold
Reason #1: WoW is Old
The cool new thing is what people are going to buy. Because WoW is a subscription you are essentially paying for every second you play.
World of Warcraft is not exactly the new kid on the block. WoW has had three expansions over their 8 year life spam with a fourth in the works. Expansions are not new games. Expansions are expansions on an existing game. They are like the DLCs before DLCs existed.
But much like DLCs, you can only make so many before they stop selling. Eventually people are going to overplay your game and move on. Every game has a shelf life and you can’t just keep making DLCs for the same old game.
Blizzard thought my making expansions only a five level expansion they could try and milk their franchise longer, they were long.
Games have shelf lives and will eventually get replaced by the new shiny buck.
Now no game has fully replaced Counter Strike is the king of shooters. There are still more cash money tournaments for Counter-Strike than any other shooter in the world.
But it has definitely been phased out of popular media and is seeing far fewer people purchasing the game. Although it has retained a very large player base it hasn’t exactly grown. The young guns are all heading off to Battlefield 3, Halo 3, and Modern Warfare 3 which have flashier graphics, different game mechanics and a more satisfying experience.
A game can only get so old before you have to release something new, and WoW is there.
Reason #2: The Formula Has Changed
I have a series where I claim games have failed. But when you go to the dollars most of these games have actually done quite well. Age of Conan for example sold more than enough copies to cover their production costs and held on to enough subscribers to more than maintain their servers.
The same is true of Warhammer Online which didn’t do as well but did alright.
Even Rift which has 1/6 the player base of SWTOR is doing so well that it has expanded into Europe and Asia as well as started production on two different MMOs.
The formula for a successful game has in fact changed. The people at Blizzard saw the game market as being something of keeping people occupied. It didn’t have to be particularly fun. It didn’t have to be innovative. All it had to be was something to do.
But people don’t want to just do stuff anymore, they want to do something fun.
The reason why so many MMOs have made so much money is because people are always wanting to look for something fresh. So a person is willing to pay $59.99 for Star Wars: The Old Republic to play it. But that doesn’t mean after they’re done with SWTOR they’re going to go back to WoW anymore.
No as it turns out everyone is making the 2-month subscription MMO and they are releasing many of these a year. This means that a player can effectively jump in between games and only play them when they were updated.
In the past Blizzard could count on everyone to just sit around and wait for new content to come out. Now people just go to a different game… and stay there.
Success in the MMO world now doesn’t mean having a large player base but merely having high initial sales and slowly tapering off.
In 2002 when Lineage 2/Everquest 2 they failed because at the time the market stuck to their original game (Lineage/Everquest). Today people are more than willing to play different games and show no loyalty to just one (as if they were a football team [Go Pats]).
Reason #3: Market Competition
One of the simple factors involved deals with market competition. In 2004 when World of Warcraft came out its competition was Ultima Online, Ragnorak Online, and Everquest. Lineage was really only popular in Asia. With such a small group of MMOs it was no wonder WoW did so well. Released in the same year as WoW were Final Fantasy XI and Star Wars Galaxies.
Almost every year since WoW’s launch there have been at least two MMOs out.
Don’t believe me?
2004: City of Heroes, Dark and Light, Everquest 2, Lineage 2, Matrix Online
2005: World of Pirate and Guild Wars
2006: Dungeons and Dragons Online and Eudemon Online
2007: Lord of the Rings Online and Vanguard
2008: Age of Conan, Perfect World and Pirates of the Burning Sea, Warhammer Online
2009: Aion, Champions Online, Fallen Earth, Football Manager Live, Free Realms, and Jade Dynasty
2010: Final Fantasy XIV, Red Dead Redemption, Global Agenda, LEGO Universe, Star Trek Online
2011: Battlestar Galactica Online, Gods and Heroes, Hellgate Global, Rift, and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
And that’s not ALL of them that’s just significant ones. The market for games has grown but the suppliers are out pacing the demand.
We have seen the end of PC exclusive MMOs. We have seen the end of MMOs costing a subscription fee.
Blizzard is now in a market full of sharks and not even giving an unlimited trial helps them. The fact is the market is grown quite a bit, Blizzard is quite old and people have become content carnivours devouring everything a developer makes in days.
In court is a case between two giants of the industry.
The plaintiff (person pursuing action) is Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard is the cash cow of Activision representing 30% of the total revenue. Blizzard has very powerful brand recognition. Since Warcraft Blizzard has been producing blockbuster games that have had no chance of failure.
The Warcraft franchise was unique in RTS games because it came with a fully functional map editor that allowed a person to make their own maps to play.
The map editor was a shocking success and in each RTS game Blizzard would make it would not only have one of these but also an improved one.
When Blizzard released Starcraft it came with the most advanced custom building tool ever made. Blizzard also included a new special mode for online play called “Use Maps Settings” also known as simply UMS.
UMS allowed players to gain additional user created campaigns, mini games and missions that they would have not otherwise had. As a matter of fact it was only in Korea people were playing the actual game. The vast majority of people were playing these UMS maps.
A lesser known map was created involving using heroes with groups of invading armies to beat an enemy. This is the first known formation of DOTA.
When Warcraft 3 was released DOTA designers created a very new game involving heroes who could level up, have abilities, and now it was a player versus player map. Blizzard actually had 1 on 1s with many UMS developers trying to add more stuff to Warcraft 3 specifically for these game maps. But DOTA in particular was more popular.
A movement was made to create a single DOTA game. It would be called DOTA All Stars. After some years of shuffling IceFrog became the lead guy of this website. This website had the rules of DOTA and strictly forbid people from using old versions of the game or non-DOTA All Stars versions. A notorious black list was created as an addon you could download to only join official maps and add people to the blacklist who are caught using older or modified versions.
When Ice Frog took over DOTA All Stars he made sure to copyright the DOTA All Stars map for Warcraft 3. Blizzard was reluctant to allow someone to copyright a material in their game but they agreed to it on the condition that it would always remain free of charge.
Blizzard had created games beyond the value of their purchase and they wanted to protect this.
Roughly around the same time the defendant, Valve Software had successfully launched Half Life 2. Half Life 2 would become one of the most modded games of all time. Valve specifically recruited the developers of these mod creators to try and make some extra cash. The mod developers were hired, paid and supported by Valve to this day to create stand alone games from their mods including World at War, Counter-Strike:Source, Team Fortress, Team Fortress 2, and Left 4 Dead.
This represents one of the largest independent studio developments. Valve software had made their buck off of the innovations of others and now… they were turning to sources outside of their own products.
Fast forwarding today Ice Frog was recruited by Valve Software to develop a fantasy MOBA themed after DOTA. It was to be called “DOTA 2.” Simultaneously Blizzard was looking to make a stand alone DOTA game simply called “DOTA.”
DOTA All Stars LLC refiled the copyright in 2011 however it is suspended pending this hearing.
Valve argues that because the lead architect of DOTA All Stars was developing DOTA 2 the copyright for the game should go to Valve making Valve the soul creator of this addon.
Blizzard refutes this by stating that Ice Frog was one person in the development process of DOTA which has lineage as far back as Starcraft. Ice Frog was not the first developer nor is he the last. Ice Frog has however put up a website http://www.playdota.com/ to try and maintain his strength as developer for this mod.
League of Legends developers were once a part of the DOTA team as well. Their interest was in DOTA to remain freeware. If it was copyrighted they could be liable to whoever owns it since their game is essentially DOTA.
So with all that in mind can a person claim a right to own something that was collectively made and created as a public good?
NO!
My sneaking suspicion is that at the end of all of this it will be decided that Ice Frog is a developer of DOTA, not its creator. This argument is really coming down to Valve vs Everyone else. Valve sees League of Legends’ popularity and knows whoever makes the first DOTA stand alone game will be the most popular one. They also know that if Blizzard is working on their own DOTA that it will out sell their’s.
Valve has a lot of supporters and people I think of as “Valvites” but Blizzard has enough people to fill convention centres every year. When Blizzard put out Starcraft 2 it RUINED the RTS industry. No other RTS had a chance after Starcraft 2 came out.
My suspicion is even greater. I think that Blizzard did not initially sue Valve because they attempted to either recruit Ice Frog to their own project or ask Valve for a royalty fee. I suspect that when either Ice Frog or Valve turned them down they decided to move against Ice Frog or Valve.
There are no heroes here folks, just two industry giants vying for big bucks.
When World of Warcraft posted numbers exceeding 14M people everyone decided it was time to get into the online game. The gamer market is roughly 250,000,000 people. Out of that 250,000,000 about 80,000,000 play MMOs. Out of that 80,000,000 you have 14,000,000 people playing World of Warcraft.
That leaves sum total 66,000,000 gamers who could potentially be courted to play your game. Or you can choose to court the smaller player base, that is 14,000,000 people to try and get your slice of the World of Warcraft subscription monies.
World of Warcraft represents a very small and niche market, fantasy. If you look at the top 10 books of the last year (2010) you will find that only one of those is fantasy. And one is only slightly fantasy, it is more of a Christmas book than a fantasy elf type thing.
The problem with fantasy is that it is something that has been here for all time. Fantasy is the single most published fiction genre. it is a market designed to attract the attentions of young men who are rather uncertain with themselves (geeks) and young girls. I mean that’s all Twilight was about right? Girls wooing over two different gentlemen.
This literary tradition transitions over into the MMO market as well. People have been making fantasy games for all time. I can remember the first Windows 95 game I played, Baldur’s Gate. Here is a fantasy RPG that did well and since then the market has bloomed full of fantasy RPGs.
Fantasy RPGs do terrible in the gaming market. You need to have a massive blockbuster game to even make a dent. Elder Scrolls is a pretty big exception but for the most part people just dodge RPGs like there is no tomorrow.
So why is that exactly?
#1: WoW Did It
When you play a fantasy RPG it has a beginning and an end. It is a fairly short experience usually not exceeding 80 hours of play. It is a central focused story that you must follow along with. In this regard a standard RPG is going to have a chance in the market because it is telling a single narrative designed to interest a specific gamer type. The game is, targetted towards people who like these games.
This was the case with Final Fantasy 4 which offered you a rich narrative involving a radical group of individuals using the powers of some sort of magical being to beat back evil.
But when Final Fantasy 4 ended, that was it. That was the end of the game, you moved on to the next one.
With the MMORPG though you have a central focus and then you have an almost infinite number of sub-stories. Each fantasy MMO will have a central focus.
World of Warcraft had Illidan, Naxxramas, Arthas, and Deathwing as different central focused stories for each expansion. But with every single expansion came 20-30 sub-stories involving various factions having their own personal grief. I forget their names but there were these furblog people and these froggy people in the Basin. They were at war with each other and you chose a side. They redid this a couple of times and it got repetitive. They had stories of knights, undead knights, disease spreaders, ghouls, goblins, bears, tree people, night people, old people, ancient people, Egyptian people, spider people, and stone people. There are so many factions with their own stories in WoW that they have almost put themselves out of a job in writing lore.
WoW has even moved on to the panda people just because they’re running out of stuff to write about. On top of that they have had to rewrite tales and expand stories. I have two examples of this.
In Eastern Plaguelands there was a faction of people who wanted to cleanse Naxxramas and purify the land of undead influence. This had to be reinvisioned to create a combined faction of undead knights and knights of the light. This new faction would push into the frozen wastelands of Northrend to try and take out Arthas. They removed tones of quest lines involving the former faction trying to wipe out Naxxramas, moved Naxxramas to Northrend and reworked the story to make it more dynamic.
A second example is the Cenarion Circle factioned featured in the vanilla game. These were keepers of the woods who were interested in keeping the world in tact. They fought with you against the AQ dungeons and the various spider and gargoyle bosses that came out of it. This faction moved to Outlands and was given the name Cenarion Expedition where they were dedicated to stopping Lady Vashj from destroying the natural habitat of the marsh she was occupying. As you found out she was taking water from the lake and pumping it out for some reason no one really understood.
So then comes Northrend. Blizzard decides to re-imagine this faction of tree people fighting evil who were destroying this world as extremist environmental degredation protesters. They were given the name “P.E.T.A.” to explain this. You were given subtle hints that these druids were the same ones since you would get Cenarion rep for completing these quests.
The big problem is, WoW did it.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker ran into the same problem when they were having problems coming up with show ideas, because Simpsons Did It. it’s a problem when there is a king of a genre who does everything possible. It has come to the point where Simpsons is on and off with blandness because they are repeating themselves.
WoW has invested in damn near every single story line possible to the point where no matter what you do, it will look pretty similar to what WoW did.
#2: Fantasy is Limited
There are only so many types of stories a fantasy world can cover. For their second expansion World of Warcraft did the mixed fantasy-scifi theme that a lot of fantasy publishers are forced to do to keep alive. I mean look at Final Fantasy’s whole series, it is a fantasy game that involves guns and lasers.
Fantasy is a very limited genre and is best played in short RPGs. This is because the very beginning of the game is designed to limit the game so that you can make sequels involving more fantasy themes.
What does fantasy offer?
Vampires-werewolves
Elves-dwarves
Goblins-ghouls
And then… that’s pretty much it. Fantasy authors are always struggling to tell stories because they are entering a very limited realm.
I think I’ve said before in one of my blogs that I have watched a single Harry Potter movie and never read a single one of these books. The one movie I watched was Deathly Hollows Part 2. This is a great example of an authorship having nothing else to write about. From what I gather from the other books they introduce the school, the minor villains and it all leads up to this final vision.
SPOILER ALERT!
There is this dark haired school teacher who the whole time has been kind of a douche to Harry Potter. But in a sudden plot twist it turns out he was being a douche to be his friend. The author ran out of creative juices and decided to throw in this massive twist that absolutely made no sense and the story of the movies did not have anything to do with. And then it is suddenly forgotten almost instantly and does not matter.
Fantasy is really hard to write because you really only have so far to go with it. You run out of a lot of room to work with and you slowly write yourself out of content. You have to finish up the story and then write an expansion to try and tell another separate story of this adventurer. But that story is extremely limited too. The expansion is going to be themed and so everything should be expected to fit into those parameters. Rift for example is limited to these rift invasion creatures who you are preventing from destroying the world. Well that limits the sort of mobs, the sort of stories, and the sort of encounters. The game starts (as Defiant) at the end of the world where Regulos and Aselbeth have destroyed the world.
Once you have played one fantasy MMO it almost feels like you have played them all. You need the same sorts of classes and the same sorts of characters. If you show up in a fantasy MMO with something radically different it will not appeal to the limited fantasy MMO niche market you are attempting to get at.
#3: Nobody Likes Elves
Let’s get this out in the open… nobody actually ever likes elves… ever. Every single elf in every single book, movie, or feature are always assholes who think they are better than everything. They are always douchebags that emphasize how much better they are than everyone. Sometimes elves are spiritual in nature… but they still have that sense of being better than everyone.
Think of Lord of the Rings. The premise of the elves was that they thought of themselves as so high and mighty that they abandoned mankind to Sauron in favor of protecting their people in some distant land Sauron could not touch. Why not just take all of the humans and all of the land with them? Why fight at all? They thought themselves so high and mighty and so special.
Yet every single fantasy MMO out there features some sort of elf or elf-like race. They are tall. They are skanky. They are ‘clever.’ They think of themselves as being out of this world. And they were for some time, insanely popular. This popularity has dwindled over time and this is because we are over-exposed to elves now. It is no longer cool to be an elf, in fact people hate elves.
There is an odd popularity for elf-free games. Global Agenda advertised specifically on being elf-free:
The scifi-space genre has become more popular for story telling because it is elf free.
The main problem suffering from the fantasy genre is that of elves, the same stuff ad infinitum. The fantasy MMO genre really has nowhere to go, it is mostly capped in the number of people doing it right now. Yet more and more fantasy MMOs keep coming up every month to try and steal away some profits.
The World of Elfcraft is diluting me thinks it is time for developers to look elsewhere. Hopefully Ubisoft decides to go elsewhere for their upcoming unnamed MMO.
World of Warcraft selected to extend the free trial period from Level 10 to Level 20. This essentially doubles the free to play experience in World of Warcraft. Certain controls are still in place to slow down the crusade of gold spammers. This change has made moe people question, is WoW heading towards freemium?
What is Freemium?
Although I can’t be sure who coined the term freemium it has been around since at least DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online). Freemium offers an odd combination of free to play and subscription basis. Basically the game is offered to players for free. However premium services are offered to players. Premium services can include a subscription fee for ‘bonus content’ pay access to dungeons/raids, item shops, server transfers, class changes, and about 100 other possible options.
Freemiun service emerged as a transitional tool for companies to switch between Subscription service and free to play. Basically games with a subscription base have people who are willing to pay a monthly subscription fee for their product. By switching purely to a free to play model these companies would immediately lose money as their existing revenue stream would suddenly cease to exist. All the while they would be waiting for their cash shops to slowly pay off. On the other hand by not offering free service their only way of expanding their existing clientel was through advertising and expensive developments on expansions.
Instead the freemium model offered a way to keep existing subscriptions while providing a platform for new gamers to play their product and eventually get suckered into paying for the premium service.
So Why WoW?
WoW for many gamers represents the last bastion of the subscription video game. Before MMOs there really were no subscription games. There really never was a need. Much like Guild Wars people purchased a game played through it’s content and bought the impending expansions and sequels. A good example of the difference is Starcraft: Brood Wars vs Starcraft 2. The expansion provided extra content that you HAD to get in order to play the game while Starcraft 2 was stand alone from Starcraft 1.
World of Warcraft followed a pattern of MMOs that provided games for subscription fees. Most of the post WoW MMOs have gone free to play. Most of the MMOs before WoW are either free to play…. or dead. World of Warcraft is this interesting ‘pivot point’ in gaming where it has done insanely well with the subscription basis.
Blizzard Entertainment has not and cannot ignore the pattern of newly developed MMOs. Games like Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Star Trek Online, and Hellgate London which were all hyped up as WoW killers… failed. They failed all the while the games that had switched to the free to play model or came in as free to play were actually in competition with WoW.
When I walked into Walmart today I saw something that shocked me. While purchasing my items I looked at the giftcards and there it was…. a Perfect World Entertainment gift card. Worst yet… they were almost sold out and the cashier informed me that this was one of the most popular gift cards they were selling.
PWE is a company that is becoming more and more popular in North America. PWE provides the following title:
Perfect World
Forsaken World
Rusty Hearts
Jade Dynasty
Battle of the Immortals
Ether Saga Odyssey
Raiderz
Torchlight
Legend of Martial Arts
Heroes of Three Kingdoms
Blacklight
Star Trek Online*
Champions Online*
Neverwinter*
* Titles are offered through Cryptic Studios which is owned by PWE.
Perfect World Entertainment is doing better economically than Blizzard Entertainment and many of its games are out performing World of Warcraft. It’s a sort of revelation that very soon World of Warcraft will go in competition with Asian companies. There’s a historical short falling in America to buy from Asia because they are willing to work for less. I think MMOs is a very easy transfer to this historical truth. Literally American MMOs are going in competition with people who are giving it for free.
No doubt Blizzard adding on another free ten levels is an acknowledgement of who their real competition is.
We often look at games like…. Rift… and think this is the game that might some day replace WoW. In truth Rift is an example of why the fremium model is looking more appealing. When people saw Rift they thought it would be a game like Age of Conan or Warhammer Online which posted strong openings and diminished.
When launch day came for Rift sales were underwhelming. I don’t think anyone expected Rift to perform as poorly as it did. But as it eventually came to be known, Rift ended up being one of the worst selling games of the year. Fans of Rift HATE to hear this. I made a post stating that Rift had only sold 130,000 copies in it’s first month and it’s players simply would not accept that fact.
Compare that to say, Prius Online which is only six months old and celebrating it’s five millionth account. Prius Online isn’t nearly as good of a game as Rift. It is filled with awful translation errors, mass punctuation where grammar ought to be and a traditionally bad broken Engrish.
Freemium Isn’t for Baddies
Freemium service is not made for baddies. Freemium service is for great games that failed to attract an audience. Most recently Age of Conan and DC Universe Online have both converted to mixed freemium services. Each of these will let you know the benefits you would have gained had you premium service. For DC Universe the reminder is there every time you vendor stuff. It indicates to you how much extra money you would gain if you promoted yourself to premium. On top of that it will tell you that you can get all of this money if you only convert to premium service.
Age of Conan has an option called rested days. This will give you free levels for time spent offline. When you log on next it will tell you how much extra XP you would have gained from logging on or how many extra levels you would have gained. It’s very generous, 1 level per 2 days offline.
This model of business is more attractive to the casual gamer market. It is telling you that you can play this game for free and have less… or you can take it easy and pay some dough for more.
The other thing these games offer that is huge is DLCs. DLC stands for downloadable content. The concept is simple, you will gain access to large clusters of content if you either subscribe to the premium service or if you purchase this content separately. DLCs are generally fairly easy to make and will usually involve a few videos and a few levels or zones that are designed with a content customization model.
Many people feel that if Rift moved t o the freemium model they would have far more success. They are producing so much content and getting so little for it. They are sitting at a player base of 300,000 and producing content designed for a population of 2,000,000.
Will Rift feel the allure of freemium service?
Will WoW the last bastion of the subscription convert to freemium?
It’s doubtful. At best WoW will continue to offer more free stuff to lure people into paying for a full subscription fee.
Many people have indicated that Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to be the last game that will have a subscription fee. This is because freemium games are making too much money. SWTOR was made based on a time where people were willing to pay subscription fees. There are 80,000,000 people playing MMOs now. Only about 20,000,000 of those are playing games with subscription fees.
TheGameGuru.Me 