WoW Relevancy Question

[zenga]

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?

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.

[Apps]

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.

[Tonuss]

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.