The question of “how do you kill World of Warcraft” continues to be asked by companies and players alike, yet it is a question that has already been answered. As Blizzard themselves have admitted, World of Warcraft cannot be killed by imitating it:
“Players that have invested time in WOW don’t just want to do the same thing in other game – they want to try something completely new and different,”
-Shane Dabiri, Blizzard, on WoW Clones
Rather, World of Warcraft can only be killed by Blizzard, and it appears that will be as simple as players completing the content and leaving. World of Warcraft’s subscribers peak when an expansion releases and gradually fall as players finish or become bored with the new content. Back in May, Blizzard announced in a conference call that they intend to release expansion packs on a more regular basis to combat this post-release drop in subscriptions, which I theorized could actually lead to players feeling over-charged and have a negative effect (read: Death by Expansions).
Over the past few months, Blizzard has introduced a series of updates to bring new players into the game, including updating the free trial to allow players access to content up to level 20 for absolutely free, with no time limit, and the recent release of World of Warcraft in Portuguese with a new client and servers for Brazil. That being said, this isn’t a doom-saying for World of Warcraft. In fact, despite this drop in subscribers, World of Warcraft’s profit margin continues to grow, $313 million as opposed to $299 million this time last year.
Not that anything I say will stem the “Blizzard will go bankrupt by the end of the year!” posters.
Lods of emone! When Blizzard releases a new pet on the cash shop, you can bet that the GDP of a small island nation will find its way into the World of Warcraft coffers by the end of the month. Even better so, when 100% of the cost is for charity, at least you’ll have a good cause to attach to your new pet.
Blizzard announced that over $1.9 million has been donated to the Red Cross to assist in the Japan relief aid, in the form of a Cenarion Hatchling pet. This figure is a big notch in the increasing amount of charity donations over the past few years by developers and players, and as the MMO Fallout mantra has remained: If you’re going to compete, why not compete over who can donate more?
Under the risk of a new “spam Omali’s website with expletives and win a free iPad,” contest, I must push on. This story was tipped to me by Vetarnias on the MMORPG.com forums. gPotato isn’t the first developer to have a “review our game and have a chance at winning a prize” contest, but considering the number of deleted topics at MMORPG.com’s Uncharted Waters Online forums, I’m guessing they didn’t consult their target before running said competition.
Back in June, Uncharted Waters launched a two-tier contest. The first, create a new character and hit level 80 and the top three achievers will win iPad 2’s. It’s important to note that use of cash shop items to speed leveling is completely within the rules. The second? Spam MMORPG.com and win a 3DS.
Yes, write a review (read: a positive review) or helpful commentary and win either a Nintendo 3DS or a cash shop ticket. The contest page even provides a handy link to the MMORPG.com UWO forums for maximum efficiency. And if you don’t have an MMORPG account, well you can sign up for one just as easy as pie. The promotion is over, the contest ended on the 30th of July, and if you look on the forums the posts have been removed by moderators.
It is unclear if NetMarble and gPotato are going to still be giving out the 3DS given all of the candidates have had their reviews scrubbed. I scoured the forums for any posts between June 20th and now (not a difficult feat as the forums see only a handful of posts each day), and couldn’t find any mention of the contest anywhere, or anyone actually being awarded the prize. Perhaps this whole ordeal is being quietly swept under the rug.
I think a better question to raise here would be if this falls under the jurisdiction of the blogger disclosure laws by the Federal Trade Commission. If it does, and the users who won either of the prizes were in the United States, that person could fall under some heavy penalties for not disclosing in his endorsement that the article was written in return for a gift.
With the impending (read: yet to be revealed) release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I’m finding gamers can be grouped into two categories. There is the group that can’t get enough Republic news, and the group that believes the game is being far over-hyped. For the former, The Escapist has run a story today that there is still big news to come regarding the upcoming MMO, on the scale of space battles and warzones.
Director James Ohlen would love to tell you what the feature is, but apparently Bioware’s PR department only budgets for allowing talk about what he wishes they would allow him to talk about.
Ohlen also said that players didn’t quite know about everything that The Old Republic had to offer yet. He said that while most of the game’s really big components – things like the space battles or the warzones – had been revealed, there was at least one more announcement to come on that scale. There would be a steady stream on information right up until launch, he added, but he could say any more without getting in trouble with the game’s PR department.
You can read the whole interview this article was derived from, an interview with Newsarama, at their website. The actual quote by Ohlen is:
We have some pretty exciting announcements that will be coming. I don’t think there’s anything on the level of PvP, Warzones, space battles or anything like that. Well, there’s one thing that might be at that level. Depends on what you like about the game, but it’s pretty exciting. Obviously I can’t go more into that, PR will kill me.
The latest trailer for Transformers Universe doesn’t reveal anything about the game (unless you weren’t aware that the game followed the Transformers line), but it has cryptic text, and a Transformer, so…who wants lunch?
Free to play may be coming to Gods & Heroes at some unknown point in the unknown future, but why let that stop you from trying the game now? Launched today by Heatwave Interactive, players can get into the mythological MMO for three days absolutely free of charge. All you have to do is enter your name and email address in this page right here, to be sent your key, and create a Heatwave account to gain access. Simple as counting your bacon before you eat it.
For those of you who go through content like tissue paper on a bad cold, you’ll have access to all content (that is to say, as much as you can get through) in those three days.
For more information on Gods & Heroes, click on the link on the right hand side.
I really need to start writing the Week in Review articles on an earlier day of the week. The problem I have each week with writing the article on Sunday is that I risk what happened this week, suddenly being called in for a long shift with plans afterward, and losing those couple hours of opportunity. On the other hand, writing the Week in Review on Monday, albeit late, allows me to keep up the factor of not writing out the article and then having something more interesting pop up at the last minute.
1. The Guy That Fills Up On Free Bread
I oft find myself in arguments with people on this website and others over the concept of free to play games, with an added focus on what should be available for free. More often than not, the people I deal with are similar to the majority of the “I demand an open beta” crowd, a group of people who have no interest in paying any money, but would like an opportunity to play as much of a game for free and will set up the facade of a potential customer in order to achieve that.
In previous posts, I’ve referred to these people as “perpetual freeloaders,” but have pointed out that they are more of a nuisance than an actual problem. A perpetual freeloader will complain that a game isn’t really free to play because you don’t have access to all classes, or the developer doesn’t make 100% of the content (including everything in the cash shop) available in-game. I’ve noticed they are also in the group that believes buy-to-play (see: Guild Wars) should be the only business model for an MMO, despite their only example (Guild Wars) not being a true MMO and their other example (Guild Wars 2) being a cash shop game rather than a buy-to-play.
That being said, I want to remind you again that I have no problem with people who play through these games for free, rather when the person hits an unacceptable level of entitlement is where I start getting annoyed. I had a conversation with a player in Hellgate Global this past week about the Act 3 ticket, when he types in chat “The act 3 ticket is a scam.” A scam? How so? Because you have to pay a one time fee of $5 for content, or grind palladium to get it for completely free?
2. Value Vs Cost: Cash Shops Vs Subscription Vs Free
Even long before Ultima Online came out, the idea of a subscription game was dividing. Opponents asked “why should I pay a subscription when any other game is free, and many include online components?” The answer, of course, is for maintaining the servers and regular content updates. Now that the business has grown to include microtransactions, the subscription method has become the “norm,” with people asking “why should I pay more than $15 a month when I can access the full game for that much?” Many companies like Turbine agree, and offer premium subscriptions that either make aspects of the cash shop free, or offer free cash shop points each month.
But is $15 a month the cap where costs become too much? Again, this is dividing and there is no real “right” answer. Rather, the question should be “which is a viable business method,” and the answer is both. In some games, players can easily blow through fifteen bucks, whereas other games might take longer to go through the same sum of cash. It all depends on the taste and wallet of the consumer.
3. Compensation, Developers, and Exclusivity
I’m one of the few that purchased a Nintendo 3DS around the time of launch, yet I don’t regret my purchase, even with the upcoming price drop. What caught my eye about the price drop, aside from the fact that Nintendo is offering 10 free NES games and 10 free Gameboy Advance games, is the fact that the 10 GBA games will not be available for purchase. If you don’t have a 3DS before the price drops and become part of the ambassador program, you are not going to get these games, free or otherwise. Most surprisingly are that the games aren’t exactly low-key titles. Mario Kart, Metroid Fusion, and more titles to be released, these are games that many players would love to get their hands on.
Still, on the MMO front, I can’t count how many free months of City of Heroes I’ve had because of an NCsoft game I owned shutting down. NCsoft has always been good about compensating their players when a game closes doors, generally offering free keys to Lineage II, Guild Wars, City of Heroes, and free game time in each title. Sony Online Entertainment is offering the last few months for free for Galaxies players, and will probably have some other form of appreciation to show further along the line.
4. For All Those Developers You’ve Never Heard Of
There are over one thousand MMOs released each year, and probably 990 of them you will never hear of/from, especially not on this website. Most of these MMOs are released in Asia and never make it over to the West, but those that do tend to be met with little to no fanfare from the American/European audiences. A majority of those titles will not be released because they place their lore in obscure mythology that would bore the average western gamer. From a gameplay point of view, many will never be brought over simply because they are mere clones of existing MMOs.
I get a lot of people asking why I refrain from using the term “wow clone,” and how although I publicly acknowledge the existence of such titles, I’ve never named a game as such. This is because the titles you see on the market (Rift, Warhammer, etc) are not clones of World of Warcraft. Yes, they share similarities in mechanics, but they are not clones. Until you venture through Ogarmir on a Griffon to meet Threll, the leader of the Orcan, you haven’t seen a true WoW clone.
The rest, I call dime-store MMOs, as they literally offer little more than grinding mobs to end-game, and pvp, with little if anything in crafting or instancing. On regular occasion, these games do find a publisher in the west (I call them dime-stores) that quietly launch and just as quietly shutter them. An example of such a dime store is Gamepot USA and GameKiss, who have somehow managed to stay in business despite the fact that the games these companies host last between one and two years before kicking the bucket.
5. Making a profit? Hello Diablo 3
I like to think of myself as, not an expert, but well trained in the art of cash shops and microtransactions. So when Diablo 3 comes out, I plan to put that knowledge in full force as a salesman of in-game items. Blizzard today announced that players will be able to sell items to other players using a global auction house, for real cash. Players will have the opportunity to turn that cash into World of Warcraft time, or even turn it in for real money (minus fees by Blizzard).
Now, I won’t talk about my plans on here (can’t give away too much), but I’m already working on what I will be gearing up with and selling on the in-game marketplace. Who knows, if all goes well I might just buy you that mink coat of +5 marksmanship you wanted. Or I won’t, whichever comes first.
With all the hussle and bussle of MMO Fallout, it’s easy for announcements of announcements to be buried under the tussle and forgotten forever. Luckily for me, I couldn’t forget about the Warhammer Online announcement announced by a blogger very early this month, offering no details other than, “it isn’t what you think,” leading myself to assume that the announcement is probably not free to play, nor is it Warhammer shutting down, and certainly not the reintroduction of Taco Tuesday at the Mythic offices.
It is substantial news. However, it is probably not what you’re thinking it is. I was quite surprised when they told us about it. Is that cryptic enough? Don’t worry about it too much though, as we may see an official announcement in a few weeks.
Take it how you will, the War On The Road article was released last week, and contains one cryptic clue:
The end of August will also see an announcement about our future plans for Warhammer Online.
About a week ago I did a quick look at the Fall of the Ourobani comic from DC Comics and Quest Online. I pointed out that, although short and the dialogue leaves much to be desired, it does its job of setting up the plot for the upcoming expansion and introduction of who the Ourobani are and what they are doing in Alganon.
The comic has been released digitally (sooner than expected), and the whole thing can be viewed here: http://www.myalganon.com/comic.
I want you to think back to when you were a kid. If you grew up in a neighborhood like mine, you will be plenty familiar with that one kid who owned “the ball.” The ball was great for any activity; dodgeball, kickball, etc, but instead of being content with the games everyone wanted to play, this kid also happened to try and propose the most inane rules and games, the kind that could only be thought up in the mind of a child with a thirst for power, and of course when his ideas were shot down as “stupid,” he would pick up his ball and go home in a huff, ruining the game for everyone.
THQ has stated that there isn’t much of a future to the Red Faction franchise thanks to the poor sales of recently released sequel, Armageddon. All of this occurred while myself and the rest of the core Red Faction fans have been screaming from behind the fence: “That’s because you gutted the core gameplay!” I don’t know what THQ was thinking, but somewhere along the line of development they said “let’s take this sandbox-style, open world destruction-oriented shooter and turn it into a linear, underground shooter with destruction merely being a gimmick.” Red Faction: Armageddon wasn’t a terrible game, it was just a mediocre third person shooter with destructible environments. I understand the cost in developing games, but it takes a special kind of company to gut the core features of its game, and then throw a temper tantrum when the community doesn’t respond positively.
And this exists in the MMO realm, to bring full circle. Cities XL is a great example of a service I suggested should have been provided for free, as any other company would have been able to set up. Instead, Monte Crisco set up the multiplayer so that when a very low number of buyers subscribed, they picked up their ball, gave the players a big middle finger, and waltzed home. Of course, like their childhood pissant equivalent, Monte Crisco walked right into traffic, being hit by a fast moving automobile, and went out of business just a couple months after to the sympathy of probably very few.
And since I’m already gaining the ire of the Mortal Online group, I’ll add that to the list as well. In an earlier article, I talked about how Henrik Nystrom is not against selling the game if it doesn’t start pulling in more customers, but he added in an almost taunting fashion the “well when we do sell it, the company we sell it to will probably gut most of the hardcore features.” That goes even further, rather than just picking up the ball and leaving, it turns Star Vault into the guy standing in the middle of a public library with a can of kerosene and a pack of matches shouting “you cheap bastards better start donating more or I’m going to burn this goddamn building to the ground!” Throwing your company’s lack of success out into the open does not lead to its intended outcome, in this case being more people purchasing. Rather, in the case of the library, less people are going to walk in as the librarian starts soaking the carpet, for fear of getting caught at the wrong time, and burned to death inside the building.
“Well a lot of the MMO market is this very test and react place, where for better or worst many people throw as much rough but playable content at their customers to see what they will respond to – then just give them more of what they seem to like.”
-Stephen Calender
Stephen Calender is correct. Not all decisions a company makes will be winners, but as I’ve said in the past, their response is what will ensure the company’s viability in the years to come.
Back in June, Uncharted Waters launched a two-tier contest. The first, create a new character and hit level 80 and the top three achievers will win iPad 2’s. It’s important to note that use of cash shop items to speed leveling is completely within the rules. The second? 
MMO Fallout 