WoW Relevancy Question

How long do you guys think that WoW will be relevant and/or king of MMO's? Let's pretend, for arguments sake, that the next best thing launches next year (<insert new MMO>) - how long do you think it would take for WoW to really suffer in population numbers, etc?

I ask here since I think the multiboxing community is by far one of the more intelligent communities, and a lot of people on here I know have been playing MMO's since forever...

I am one of the slower boxers on here (I generally play in spurts of 2 months at a time, usually right after an expansion, etc). However, due to work, etc - I can never fully commit as much as I would love to. I envision in 10 more years, once mortgage is paid off, etc... I'll be able to truly play to my hearts content - but wonder if that will be WoW or some other MMO.

Thoughts? Anyone else think about this long-term stuff?

Well, considering the original King, EverQuest, is STILL alive and kicking, 12 years later (though granted not at nearly the population levels as at it's peak), I have no doubt that WoW will survive at least another 10 years from now. When will its population start to drop? I would estimate soon, because quite frankly, it is the same old thing, expansion after expansion, and people will just eventually tire of the formula, and I think we're seeing a very small sign of that with Cataclysm. They just recently announced that they had their first overall drop in subscription numbers (granted, again it was very small). I'd say starting about a year from now, with the release of The Old Republic and some other MMOs, that you'll start seeing a noticable population drop, but WoW will remain the "King" for at least another 2-3 years, minimum.

Thats just my opinion based on playing MMOs for 1/3 of my 35 years on this earth!

I think it will remain relevant for a bit longer. They lost some 600k subscribers over the past few months, and perhaps that is the start of a shrinking of the player base. It's hard to judge because their numbers are so large and have held up for a pretty long time. Many other MMORPGs have survived just fine on 50,000 to a few hundred thousand subscribers. WOW might settle into "old age" and still manage 500,000 to more than a million subs.

So the next 'relevant' MMORPG may need to hit the 2-3 million mark and stay there for a while, otherwise they'd just be in the shadow of a 'dying' game. Or maybe the next relevant MMO won't even be an MMO? WOW's fast expansion to such large subscriber numbers seems to have changed gaming. I wonder if they're actually signalling the end of the "massive persistent world" type of games. Or maybe it's just sword-and-sorcery games that are the problem, and players might be looking for something different (no idea what that might be, though).

To answer your specific question: if a new MMO launched and become the Next Big Thing, then I imagine WOW would fade away quickly to its 'maintenance levels.' I believe that if a game had the same impact as WOW, it would have the same effect. WOW pretty much trampled any existing MMOs within a year, and has trampled the ones that launched afterwards. To be the next WOW, I assume a game would have to trample WOW in a similar fashion.

And to piggyback on what Tonuss was saying, I don't think another subscription-based MMO will ever surpass the 12 million that WoW had at it's peak. If any game were to ever overtake it, it would be more because of WoW's dwindling population and not some other game just getting that high number of subs.

I think Rift was the first REAL contender, but will eventually go the way of a game like Aion. I think the next real challenger will be The Old Republic, but it probably won't ever have more than a million subs or so.

If you had asked this question prior to the Wow beta, I would have been inclined to say nothing would pull EQ down.
But take a look at Warcraft subscriptions vs Everquest subscriptions...

Nothing is forever, but even if its not a top game down the road, it will likely remain around for a long time.
It could be another game by another publisher, or even another MMO by Blizzard.

Take a look at AoC, Aion, DAoC, EQ1, EQ2, LotRO, Rift, Warhammer, etc... how many are still active in some form and how many are gone?
Aside from EQ1, none of the others were ever the "top" game.

Unless the KOTOR MMO knocks it out of the park I think WoW is on top until Blizz releases their next MMO.

I do hope, multiboxing will be a bigger part of the mmo world..
The next big thing for me, will be star wars, i never realy played any star wars game.. im more of a Daoc gamer, i like the Knight game style look.

More competition for WoW will be a good thing. It will force them to be at the top of their game.
I keep hoping some company will make an MMORPG as good as WoW, but so far.... nothing comes close. (for me at least)

You have to look at the simple economics of the situation. WoW has the most money coming in and thus can hire more artists, programers, etc. There is no reason to suspect that Activision will not reinvest in WoW.

Aion spends X bucks on its new game. WoW spends 10X bucks on its new expansion ..... duh.

Why don't do you ask "How long will Google be the top search engine".

The only possible way it will die is if the graphics engine cannot match new competition. But you saw with Cata they revamped the old part of the world to update that engine. They may have enough money to port over to a new engine or they made their engine modular enough so that they can update it as time goes on, something EQ1 did not do (maybe because at the time they could not).

Ya its the same old same old but so what why would change a formula that has clearly worked. Does Coke change? You will see real change if the subscriber base drops by a ton.

No MMO is going to beat wow for the forseeable future. It will take a new platform (i.e. 3D) or something we don't know about right now to take it away. It won't die by a "similar" competitor, it will take something like people going to farmville or just some entierly different thing to hurt it. Like the WWF. Had its time in the sun, it didn't die by another wrestling federation coming along, it just slowly lost viewers as time went on. So it will be with WoW.

Only sam can compare wow with wrestling ....

Technology changes, consumer attitudes change, etc. I mean, 10 years ago, the "profile" of the typical MMO player was 15-25 year old males that fell into the "geek, dweeb, nerd or loser" category. "Cool" people didn't play them, they played console or FPS games.

WoW really did change that dynamic, making MMOs much more socially acceptable in the American market. And with that came a whole new set of expectations from the consumer base. People expect a game to be something they can invest more than a few months in. They expect it to evolve. And they also expect it to be something they can go back to later. As long as WoW can maintain that, it will keep a good population.

I don't imagine that it will remain the reigning champ of MMOs forever, but it's still got some steady lifespan ahead of it. The number of MMOs out there just keep growing, so there's some inevitable splintering of the playerbase, but people are also hard pressed to let go of something they've invested a good amount of time in. Sure, a good chunk of people left after Cata launched, but I'm sure a fair number of them came back with 4.1 or will come back with 4.2.

I'm not really seeing a single game just coming in and decimating WoW. It'll take a combination of things to knock WoW off its throne, not the least of which is time, IMO.

Left shortly after gearing in heroics after release.

Came back for 4.1/4.2 been having a blast.


Until something offers the flexibility with a polished (...laughable at times) finish that WoW has more often then most games, it will be a contender.
Rift was fun for about 3 months but it's just that, how do you make a fun game that is similar in characteristics to WoW but not WoW? After 3 months I felt, "Well I have 5 years invested in the other game, I should just play that..." Even with all the little perks and extra's (Loved the ability to just run up and rift...)

The MMO style game may die, but how do you describe a persistent world that constantly evolves and never ends? In my opinion the next "ground breaking" game will be a polished, story driven, hunting style flexible game similar to WoW but without a holy trinity. Because inevitably no matter what you do with the current system it is just "Genre Style DPS/Tank/Heal Type"

With what they just released about talent trees, I see changes yet again in WoW to get more people back and interested for a couple months again. We'll see though, give it 15 years and we may just interface with our brains...

WoW toppled the other MMORPG's when it came because they offered a much different style of online roleplaying. When WoW was new Blizz was pushing the fact that you could actually play solo and do quests without a group which was a lot different than the other games at the time and has now become standard. That one change made the whole game more accessible and allowed people to play on a much more flexible basis. Also Blizz had the highly successful Warcraft world to draw people into. I also think that creating two player factions was a brilliant move. Think about how it unites people in PvP; you know who your friends are and who the enemy is. PvP in games like Conan are just a free for all, everybody is out to get you gank fest.

Any new game that wants to topple WoW now has to contend with WoW's 6 1/2 years of polish and find some way to attract people with either an already popular universe (Star Wars) and/or fix something that WoW doesn't do well that almost everyone who plays WoW wants fixed or offer something even more mainstream oriented to bring in completely new MMORPG players.

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In my opinion the next "ground breaking" game will be a polished, story driven, hunting style flexible game similar to WoW but without a holy trinity. Because inevitably no matter what you do with the current system it is just "Genre Style DPS/Tank/Heal Type"

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I don't think mechanics really matter though. WoW basically copied the classic fantasy RPG cliches, some that go as far back as Dungeons and Dragons 1st ed and Tolkien and made it work really well. Polish and flexibility are essential but what does WoW lack there? What does WoW do badly? Graphics? I don't think WoW's graphics have hurt it at all. I can still run Cataclysm on my Thinkpad with 16 megs of VRAM. I'm not kidding. It won't do any fancy DX9 stuff but it runs at 30+ fps. That allows a much larger number of people to play who may not want to spend a lot on or know how to buy/build a gaming computer. It brings WoW more into the mainstream. (Gaming computers are cheap to build now with awesome low-mid range cards out but few people seem to know what to get. I know a lot of people who buy a laptop to watch movies and then end up trying WoW).

So what is WoW doing badly that another company could capitalize on and is a franchise like Star Wars popular enough to pull people away from WoW?

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Originally Posted by thebucket

So what is WoW doing badly that another company could capitalize on and is a franchise like Star Wars popular enough to pull people away from WoW?

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I agree. Don't see myself playing any star war kind of game.

And then again I see possibilities for wow to evolve when the next generation of mmo's show up (whatever next gen might be). With new technologies they could merge certain realms into 1 big with 100k players per faction, which would add a whole new dimension to the game, definitely when they create a new world like outland/northrend.

Frankly I don't care if wow has 1m or 12m subscribers, as long as my realm/battlegroup remains populated enough. It will however affect development budget and information available on the web.

WoW is the rubber stamp for "how to make it work for everyone", kind of MMO.

Any other sucessful MMO is going to either be compaired as "a copycat" or "strayed too far from what works".

The only way WoW will be toppled, is going to be the chip away strategy. Once enough of the smaller client based MMO games have each pulled a little bit of the client base from WoW, only then will WoW be in a position where there isnt such a large gap between its own subscribers, and the rest of them in aggregate.

Games like LotRo, Aion, Warhammer, AoC, and yes, KotOR will have a bigger dent than the rest... but individually I dont see any of them taking the mass lead role anytime in the near future. Big dents, yes. Take overs... nah.

re: Graphics, a few years ago someone had posted a Youtube video showing the WOW models with high-res textures and lighting, and they looked amazing. I don't think it was a Blizzard rep doing it, but it did imply that there is room to improve the game's graphics as video technology improves. I think they do a good enough job with graphics that it would not hurt them going forward. And if they really CAN do what that video showed, they'll be just fine when we're using quad-SLI GeForce 9001 cards.