Perfect World Entertainment made news this week when they said that their plan with Neverwinter is not to compete with World of Warcraft. In an interview with Red Bull UK, Craig Zinkievich said that the goal was to “operate a fun game people like to play and want to come back to.” The developer believes that the box price and subscription model are no longer valid in most places, with the vast majority (86%) of gamers subscribing to only one MMO at a time, and fewer willing to subscribe to two. You can read the entire article here, where they talk about the free to play model and a couple other topics.
I almost feel bad for assuming that World of Warcraft’s consistently falling subscriber numbers would mark the end of developers trying to compete with it, but I suppose that years from now when World of Warcraft is a shadow of its former glory that the new benchmark for success will be the twelve million subscribers that the game peaked at. That said, I can’t help but give points to any developer willing to state that they are not looking to beat/compete with World of Warcraft. Why? Because at least I don’t have to worry about Neverwinter shutting down because it couldn’t meet the developer’s unrealistic expectations. Or Perfect World Entertainment labeling the game a failure, firing all of its developers, and stripping its funding to fix launch issues, subtle reference to Warhammer Online and several coughs.
The only thing that such a business model tells me as a video game writer is how willing the company is to cripple its own product during development and then shoot it in the head when it doesn’t pop out of the womb as an already accomplished millionaire. What better way to instill confidence in the press and your potential community than picking a goal that not a single other developer has managed to achieve, and measuring anything less as abject, irreconcilable failure? One can only sit and wonder why consumers don’t flock to spend sixty bucks and fifteen dollars a month on what is almost guaranteed to be a mediocre attempt at recreating a game they got sick of three years ago, launched with all of the grind and bugs of said product and no understanding of why it became so popular to begin with.
As a writer, I encourage developers to try and compete with World of Warcraft because the ensuing train wreck attracts leaves a lot of onlookers and that means more views for websites like MMO Fallout. As a gamer, however, I keep my money out of anything that so much as mentions competing with World of Warcraft, unless of course it is preceded by ‘we are not.’ So while Neverwinter may not be the perfect game, I have to give extra kudos to Perfect World for seeing World of Warcraft as a product to live with, not having the same reaction my dog has when he sees the vacuum cleaner running.
Also why is Red Bull better at getting MMO interviews than I am?
(Source: Red Bull UK)
MMO Fallout 
They are better at getting interviews because the next item shop whale food will be a prestige class, the Red Bull Disciple.