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If WoW Was To Release Today...
Skillzeroo
Member Posts: 96
So I've been sitting around watching Vanilla WoW PvP videos and thinking..
If WoW had just released for the first time, same condition it was in when it released in 2004 compared to the current lineup of games do you think it'd be able to build subscribers like it did so many years ago?
This includes being put up against today's CURRENT WoW clones and everything.
I find it hard imagining where 12 million (or however many people are playing now) would be without the game.
PLEASE Try to avoid a flamewar, Looking to get legitimate opinions / discussion going.
Comments
It would sell around a million box sales and fall to around 300-200k subs after six months just like every other mmorpg on the market.
The 2004 version of WoW was a fluke, its what happens when you release a game at the right time, have a pre-installed player base in the millions and introduce an incredibly addictive gameing genre to unsuspecting Console and Fps kiddies.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
How would it be put up against copies of it's yet unreleased self?
Really, think about it.
Well, time travel would be one option.
Oh wait, no it wouldn't.
Hmm...
That is an interesting thought....
First, I think without WoW, what would this industry have been like?
It means that EQ2 would have had the spotlight all to itself....but I seriously doubt EQ2 would have captured that WoW wave, i doubt they would have reached 500k subs....which means that businesses would not have started drooling over the potential profits to be made in mmos, which would mean that we would not have as many on the scene, which means our choices would still be limited and likely look more like EQ2 or EQ than WoW, which means WoW would release today in a much smaller market against a game they already have competed against and beat handily....
My guess is that WoW would still take the industry by storm and explode the market. Because I believe the explosion was a direct result of WoWs unbridled success, which was due to its combination of factors which make it easy to pick up and difficult to put down.
But if you are asking if WoW released today and all our current games were here.....well, I just don't see how all those other games every could have gotten funding without the existance of a WoW - but if so, I think it would probably still succeed.
Well WoW really came out of in the perfect storm, IT was the child that never should of been. At that time SOE had major empire in MMORPG games. Well EQ2 came out the same time as WoW, sadly a lot of fans of EQ, didnt like EverQuest 2. Also a year later when Star Wars galaxies, revamped the game with NGE. IT pissed a lot of players off, and probably lost half of their subscribers with in a couple months. Majority of which went to wow. IMO I doubt it will do the same, A lot of new players that started into MMORPGS with WoW are extremely ignorant to other games and believe WoW was shitted out by god himself and no game even compares. IF it wasnt WoW, those ignorant players would of found some other game to cling unto, and never bat an eye to any other game.
It sounds like you think no one quit their existing mmo to play WoW.
It wasn't just warcraft players who got into WoW, EQ lost 3/4 of their active players, not to mention the few other mmo's o the market becoming ghost towns. Not to mention the people who'd stopped DAoC, AC, EQ, UO etc, who started gaming again when WoW released. I personally know 5 different people who returned to the genre because of WoW.
WoW captured both the IPs millions but also remarkably about 90% of the existing mmo market and lured in those who had already quit back into the fold.
And also, if you remember, at the time, people thought that WoW's release was incredibly bad timing because it was released within months of EQ2, which had been tagged as the next big thing while people watched with trepidation to see whether Blizzard could make an mmo with only rpg strat under their belt.
Look at the SW:TOR forums, you will see a lot of people naysaying bioware's ability to make an mmo because they never have before, that's what people were saying about Blizzard at the time.
Of course all of this is speculation.
there would be no blizzard today if WoW wasnt released. Back in the day, they were going under with no money.
WoW saved blizzard and made them the power house they were.
WIth those graphics ??? The game would have to go free 2 play in order to survive, but the Blizzard name and Warcraft and Starcraft ip itself would probably be enough to sell that game, so maybe 1 million sells if not more.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
Pretty much this. I think people have forgotten how small the MMO player base was. It was really a niche market and most game developers had little interest as money was typically made through box sales at that point. No company would have dared to sink millions or tens of millions into putting out an MMO on the chance that they might get a piece of the tiny market share. Horrible business idea.
Blizzard, however, wasn't banking on the MMO concept. They were putting their faith in their extremely successful and proven IP known as Warcraft. They knew the players out their loved Blizzard games, and with good reason.
If WoW came out today, just like Zorgo says up there, it would change the face of the industry. And it certainly is for the better that WoW came out, plenty of people have found MMO's they love, and despite the constant WoW hate, it was a great game (I only use past tense there because Cataclysm basically was WoW's swan song for me, I'm done and not going back).
see highlighted text
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
We would of got Warcraft 4 to play to remind people of the IP, then WoW would of came out and it would have a similar impact it did in reality, but only if there wasn't some game like wow that came before it.
-I want a Platformer MMO
What I wonder is if WoW was never released. I wonder if the MMO community would still be divided as much as it was.
I completely agree with the people who believe it would still be a mega-success, for exactly the reasons they stated.
It sounds like you think no one quit their existing mmo to play WoW.
It wasn't just warcraft players who got into WoW, EQ lost 3/4 of their active players, not to mention the few other mmo's o the market becoming ghost towns. Not to mention the people who'd stopped DAoC, AC, EQ, UO etc, who started gaming again when WoW released. I personally know 5 different people who returned to the genre because of WoW.
WoW captured both the IPs millions but also remarkably about 90% of the existing mmo market and lured in those who had already quit back into the fold.
And also, if you remember, at the time, people thought that WoW's release was incredibly bad timing because it was released within months of EQ2, which had been tagged as the next big thing while people watched with trepidation to see whether Blizzard could make an mmo with only rpg strat under their belt.
Look at the SW:TOR forums, you will see a lot of people naysaying bioware's ability to make an mmo because they never have before, that's what people were saying about Blizzard at the time.
Of course all of this is speculation.
See highlighted text.
Very few games 6+ years old can stand up to this sort of question.
I mean part of the reason for WOW's success is it carried so many MMORPG mechanics out of the pre-existing "suck" into "less-suck" versions of those mechanics. So if Blizzard made WOW totally from scratch and released today they would've innovated on the currently-existing MMORPG mechanics and met with similar success. They would not have released 2004 Retail WOW in 2010. That's just not how that company works.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
World of Warcraft released today would have had visuals and gameplay that would top anything we would find in any other MMOs... though the prospect is still interesting. Doesn't seem like there's much of a point playing the "what if" game, it's honestly best for the industry that the game got released when it did.
Silly question to be honest. You are asking what if the entire industry had 6 years of watching what made wow succesful, but wow couldn't do what made it succesful.
I think most games would follow the EQ2 method of "release it now and finish it later" which is why games and the genre never really tapped into the massive playerbase waiting to play mmos.
I think blizzard would have done just what they did making wow the first time. Find out what works and what doesn't. Anything that isn't fun for players gets fixed or gets tossed out. Same results.
Every day is opposite day for you, isn't it?
How can you not look at the market, at what most people are buying and playing, and not realize that all of your ideas are completely contrary to reality? Or are you intentionally trolling?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
1) if wow had not come out in 2004/5, then the WESTERN MMO market would be very small, and probably dominated by EQ2 in PvE and WAR in PvP;
2) if wow had not come out in 2004/5 there wouldn't have been such a massive influx of MMO coming out IMHO;
3) If WoW didnt come out, most MMo that came out since 2005 would have lacked the key features that WoW made mandatory;
4) If wow came out today, 7 years after Warcraft 3, with its initial graphics [wich even for a fictional questioning is rather doubtful], reviews would be like "the game is well polished and packed with content and lore, but the graphics really takes the immersion down - PvP is an afterthought - the raids are really long and boring - 7/10".
My addiction History:
>> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore
>> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual
>> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
This is kinda like saying, if McDonalds came about in the 1960's instead of the 1940's, would it still be McDonalds?
I believe yes - WoW, and McDonalds fwiw, are both huge successes not because they are good, or because they are good for you, or because they offer anything innovative, or even because they were released at the right place and time. They are popular because they cater to the lowest common denominator, and they do it extraordinarily well.
This is why the WoW graphics are so lackluster compared to most other games - they cater to the lowest common system so they can get all those people with 10 year old machines running integrated graphics. The game play is simple. It's based on a proven IP, which is themed around a proven genre. The gameplay is watered down so that anyone can pick it up quickly, and the level/gear curves set so that if you play for an hour, or hours a day, you always feel like you've accomplished something.
Now, that being said, just because McDonalds is out there, doesn't mean you have to beat them in order to be successful. I think too many people get hung up on subscription numbers and server populations when it comes to deeming an MMO successful or not. Yes, you need a player base big enough to make the online world feel alive and give everyone stuff to do, but you don't need millions of players to do that (especially if you use the WoW server model, where you can only get about 10,000 players on a server at one time anyway).
Besides, there's no reason that a person can't subscribe, or play multiple MMOs (I confess I've even done this simultaneously during slow raids). There is no exclusivity contract. Just because a person eats lunch at McDonalds, doesn't mean they have to eat breakfast and dinner there as well. I think this is one of the reasons we see the F2P model starting to become so big - if you aren't paying a monthly subscription, you don't feel obligated to "get your money's worth" out of the game, and are more willing to experiment and spread your time over multiple titles.
WoW was a perfect storm when it released and just built upon that momentem. It would have no chance to replicate that right now.
nah, people would scream wow clone! and flame it to hell.
^
WoW proliferated the MMO, it really did, it is the first MMO that was played by todays "customer" most of us who played everquest, or SWG, are the older generation, not that a TON of us dont play or havent played wow at one time or another. I played all expansions except the most recent, and I probably will at SOME point, not sure when thou.
WoW is NOT the mmo norm, it is I believe an annomoly that will be VERY hard if not impossible to replcate in the near future.
Timing do matter. LOTROs timing sucked, if you would have moved place between it and Wow it could have been the large game now.
As for Wow today (with modern GFX I assume) it depends on what would be the big one today and how old it would be.
EQ was close to 6 years when Wow released so the takeover was easy.
Another question is if all the people Blizzard got into MMOs would have gotten in or not, many of the players actually started because Blizzard made a MMO.
It is hard hypotetical questions and we can't do anything better than guess.
WoW's success has been and will always be the gold farmers and account sellers. Blizzard has always supported and encouraged them closed door no matter what they claim publically,
Gold farmers have always accounted for more than 50% of Blizzards active accounts, add in that Blizzard has always been very deceptive about the size of its acutal subscriber base. Mix in that most WoW players have more than one account, I know many that have 6, 8, even 10 accounts. Why? Because there is still an incredibly large secondary market attached to WoW.
Now to be fair Blizzard has the best marketing team any dev studio has ever dreamed of, 90% of the success of the game is attributed to the marketing gurus they have on staff.
I remember WoW beta, and I remember the first month or two of release. The game was totally and completely unstable and loaded with game crashing bugs at release.
If WoW released today against RIFT, WoW would be dead in a month by state of game comparison
Wow hater.
1) give us a study/quote/article/reliable source prooving your point about gold sellers
2) i was there at wow european release. never crashed, never had bugs, played the game with intense pleasure. most polished MMO that was ever released at release.
If the game crashed during beta, big deal, that's what beta are for.
My addiction History:
>> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore
>> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual
>> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.