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Summary: Over the years that WoW has
had it's mega-success very few people have stopped to look at
the pieces that have been left in the games wake.
The Article is from
Over the years that WoW has had it's mega-success very few
people have stopped to look at the pieces that have been left in
the games wake. It's very easy to look at the numbers of
subscribers and amount of profits they rake in each quarter and
claim that the industry as a whole is growing and is very
healthy, but is it really? In all of WoW's success have they
almost single handedly killed the industry?
Just to clear things up before I continue, I like WoW. To me,
it is a very polished game that was loads of fun. While I don't
currently retain my subscription to it I did play for about 2
years. . . I even had a druid at level 70. Please refrain from
calling me a WoW-hating fanboy of another game. All around I am
a huge fan of Blizzard. I had to get that out of the way, sorry.
Anyways, back on topic, I am sure if you were to ask a number
of developers the primary reason for their games floundering or
not acheiving the same level of success as WoW they would blame
it on the extraordinary success of the World of Warcraft. So,
are these developers just bitter and envious of success, or do
they actually hold some merit of truth? Look at it this way:
Lord of the Rings Online is often touted as a very successful
MMORPG. However, that said, if you look at the recently updated
MMOGChart.com website you notice that LoTRO still only has
around 300,000 subscribers. This is a far cry from the
10,000,000 that WoW boasts in it's ever increasing fold. How is
a game that is called a ??break-out?? hit in 2007 only account
for 3% of what WoW has?
This, of course, isn't to say that all industry flops are
WoW's fault. There have been plenty of stinkers released that
failed on their own accord. Vanguard launched way to early and
as such became known as one of the biggest flops in the history
of MMORPGs. WoW had nothing to do with that. However, for games
such as Tabula Rasa, and Pirates of the Burning Sea, both decent
games that are inherently different from WoW, is the success of
the World of Warcraft causing shortages of subscriptions for
these games? Probably, both of these games were funded heavily,
and launched with hopes to gain a sizable subscriber base to
make the games profitable. Unfortunately, I doubt either one is
profitable right now, and that only spells out one thing: less
investor interest.
My entire point with this article is basically to look at the
success of WoW, and the flops of almost every other MMORPG in
comparison, with the eyes of an investor. If you had money to
sink into an MMORPG property would you, honestly, be willing to
take such a gamble? Afterall, the chances are extremely high at
this point that the game will not achieve the same level of
success as WoW, and as such will never gain the same amount of
money. In fact, you probably will never see a return on that
investment ever again. . . Is that something you really want to
invest money into? Probably not, and I am sure this has turned
away at least one investor prior to my writing of this. I guess
the only thing we can truly hope for in the de-thronement of WoW
into a more stabilized MMO economy by the likes of Warhammer
Online and Age of Conan.
Thanks for reading.!
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