World of Warcraft: it's basically synonymous with MMO. For the longest time, WoW has been the Coca Cola or McDonald's of MMOs. There are certainly a bunch of other MMos out there, but none seem to measure up to WoW.
So far anyway.
A lot of the current MMos eek out a living with a minimal customer base, and some have gone free to play (F2P) The idea behind F2P is the model now set forth by minigames such as Yoville or Farmville (or whatever crappy ville you play in your Facebook) The idea is you can play for free, and pay for premium content. It's genius, and when the market is basically cornered by a monopoly, it's a necessary move to keep afloat.
The tides, they are changing though. Coming up we have three pretty huge contenders: Guild Wars 2. I never played the first one, and never even heard OF it until I had been playing WoW for about 6 months. Apparently the draw here is that Guild Wars has no monthly premiums.The problem, as I could see it, was that it simply did not have the same appeal as WoW. But this game seems to be taking steps towards being more appealing. Apparently they're going the way of trying to reimagine MMOs (a path all three contenders seem to be taking...in one way or another) and make it feel more epic. I myself was not swayed by what I've seen regarding Guild Wars 2, but it does look pretty. Or prettier than WoW, which is not saying much.
Final Fantasy 14 is coming up soon. Final Fantasy has a huge following, even though the heydey of Squeenix as the paramount rpg machine is over, so this would be an MMO to look out for. It looks astonishing, and seems to provide a delectable gaming experience, which would provide what Aion tried and failed at: making an appealing game, both visually and in content. FF 14 will have a headstart on the fall season, which we all know is the blockbuster season for gaming. I'd say Squeenix could not have planned a better release date, in all earnest. My only concern, and this concerns me for all MMOs coming out in the next 12 months, is that the release go smoothly: if FF14 can keep bugs and server issues under control, they are positioned to take over the MMO market.
SWTOR...could be the end all Star Wars experience. First off, the call to two ravenous fanbases is incredible: the Star Wars fanbase (which admittedly is a batshit fanbase) and the Bioware fanbase (which is a pretty hardcore fanbase). If this game is remotely decent, they will come in droves. The game has an unique look. It looks animated, not as lush as say FF14, but it looks very stylized and very attractive. The atmosphere...well, come on, it's Star Wars. The lore is where SWTOR has every other MMO beat (save maybe LOTRO, but that's just comparing delicious apples and scrumtrulescent oranges) The Star Wars universe is, for better or worse, huge, and the lore involved, the Old Republic, is one of the more interesting chapters in the SW universe. Bioware has geared their gaming experience towards the story-telling experience, which, sad to say, is hard to find in MMos most of the time.
Wow on the other hand, has already peaked in consumer base, and is now shrinking in subscription numbers. It's going on to its third expansion, which poses a few problems too. The probability of new costumers catching on is not very good: if you show a consumer that is not on WoW already an advert for Cataclysm, this is what you're saying: Look! Our new expansion will enable you to play as a werewolf, and the world has changed greatly! You can fly your gryphon anywhere! And you can be level 85!!! BUT! You will have to buy the original game , The Burning Crusade, The Wrath of the Lich King AND Cataclysm. Cataclysm will go for $40, that's for certain. And Blizzard sells the game along with the Burning Crusade in a nifty package for $40. It can be found for $20-$35, if you look. AND The Wrath of the Lich King is another $40, but it can be found cheaper.
... so far, this werewolf party costs $100 AT THE CHEAPEST. And that's for the first month. I don't think a lot of new customers will run in packs to get into WoW because of this Cataclysm. It's to be expected, in all earnest, and Blizzard realizes this, so they basically cater to their established subscription base anyway. The only way I can see new business running in is if they included the original game and the two expansions already released in a $40-$50 package. And they're not gonna do that, I can guarantee it. Heck, I've seen Gamestop sell a prepared 14 day trial version of WoW for $2. It can be found for free online, but wow, Blizzard has balls.
As I said, Blizzard IS catering to their established costumers already, which are over 10 million people, so everything should be fine, right?
Maybe. Blizzard has been making mistakes, pronounced, glaring mistakes. The most obvious is the Real ID debacle. Basically, people do not want (DO NOT WAAANT!!!!) to lose their anonimity. Sorry so sorry. This trend, of putting your face EVERYWHERE on the internet, is a BAD one. People are dumb, but not so retarded that they can't see that they're turning the internet as a collective into a rampaging Big Brother (or are they? I dunno...)Blizzard lost some subscriptions with Real ID. And they backtracked on that one. Then there's a few issues here and there. First, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion has been around for what feels like an eternity. It took a year and a half to get to kill the titular antagonist..no wait, it took a year and a half to be able to set foot in his fucking castle. And then it took about 3 weeks to be able to get to his throne room. Yeah. Nice work, eh? And everyone expected that to be it for that expansion, and for Blizzard to move on.
In what I thought was a huge faux pas, and the beginning of the end for me and my romp through Azeroth, the latest content patch opened up the Ruby Sanctum.
Uhh, what? The Lich King is dead...next in line please? Why are we killing dragons now? buh, uh..hey, bu...why???
It reeked of stopgap, and I hate it when a company insults my intelligence as a customer. It's not like they could've given us a Culling of Strath Raid or SOMETHING that has to do with the Lich King. Someone could argue that Ruby Sanctum makes sense because it sets the theme for the new expansion. And yes, that's true. But I know full well that this was not the way it was intended. If that were the case, a lot more would've been done in the way of tying in Ruby Sanctum with the new expansion, not to mention...the new expansion would've been released by now.
So why hasn't the expansion been released? Not even the release date has been released. What's more, Blizzard kept the beta under wraps for the LONGEST time. And then they made *another* mistake. On the day the release date for FF14 was released, Blizzard made an announcement that they would draw random beta invites for Cataclysm. They might as well have said the world was ending, because the forums went wild. The announcement literally stated that the invites would go out in 24 hours. Except it took closer to 72 hours. Ouch. Credibility much?
To this day, they have not announced the release date for Cataclysm yet, and it's a problem. FF14 will release on Sept 30. They will have a nice headstart, and enough time to generate buzz before the Holidays. SWTOR is rumored to release sometime after March 30.
The buzz was that Cata would hit on October. It COULD still steal some FF14 thunder if they did, but then, by the time SWTOR comes out it would already have grown stale, and by then the content would be irrelevant (only 5 levels...should have been 10 Blizz...) But we don't know yet. It could release around Christmas....thus allowing FF14 a HUGE headstart....or it could release AFTER Christmas...allowing FF14 a BIGGER headstart...and missing out on the Holiday sales....
I believe I had already explained my take in this, that basically FF14 and SWTOR have WoW on a perfect pincer hold. It's just interesting to see the passing of time is proving me right, so far.
All empires must fall. I forget who said it first, I think it was a Roman. They would know.
To Blizzard, I will say this though....that'll do pig. That'll do.
Yeah, you can't exactly look down your nose at the fact that they dominated the growing MMO market for over 5 years and were responsible for making the MMO market as big as it is today. It's just that, they're basically putting brand new clothes on the equivalent of a 50 year old model. The clothes are nice, but the model is still older than the other ones out there, you dig? Flashy, shiny, new exciting models are hitting the market, and wow, even with its new clothes, is not going to be able to compete. That's why this expansion wasn't geared towards bringing in new people, like you said. Blizzard KNOWS they're on the way out, so they're basically trussing themselves up to keep their existing base around for as long as possible, at least as long as it take for their rumored mmo to hit next.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I'll go for a blizzard mmo again though. As a company, they have issues.