What’s wrong with a WoW clone?
I seem to be in the habit of eating crow lately and here’s another subject where my tune is changing pitch slightly.
I’m not exactly happy that the MMORPG genre is knee-deep in me-too design, but I’m starting to wear down on the alternatives. I don’t know what happened along the way, but somewhere the concept of creating a virtual world became lost on all of the big game houses. Oddly, WoW has been the closest approximation, although it’s been slowly sliding off the virtual world scale since release.
The clones? Most of them don’t measure up, that’s for sure. Some, like LOTRO for instance, are superior in a number of ways, but still stop short of the most important elements (for me at least) that keep me from feeling like I’m adventuring in a living and breathing world. Aside from a tiny few exceptions, they’re all online theme parks. Not enough open world space, too many intentional bottlenecks funnelling players into one locale, not much in the way of exploration and oh my look at all those linear goals.
Bring in the clones. That just might help. Look at Allods Online for instance, which I admit I’ve been completely dismissive of. By most accounts, it’s come the closest to a WoW-like experience and may even *gasp* surpass it (I shouldn’t start this hype machine tho, look how many games have disappointed after such rhetoric). The free-to-play moniker scares me tho.
Maybe even Blizzard can recapture WoW’s original magic and clone the pre-expansions version of the game with Cataclysm. Although I suspect they’re more likely to put it on rails.
I was hoping to move forward, to even better and bigger games, but now I’ve realized you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. I’d just like to have that thrill again, the one I enjoyed when I first explored Duskwood, The Loch, Desolace and all of those times in Blackrock, Stratholme and Scholomance. When WoW was less scripted but somehow felt richer.
If someone can clone that, I’ll happily play it.
Except I’m probably not teaming up with gerbils, especially three boxed-movement gerbils. That’s just creepy.
Bad launch? So what.
I’m sure that many will disagree with my title for this post, but I stick by it 98%. A poor launch has to be beyond abysmal to truly screw up an MMORPG. As long as the problems are fixed, the game will stand on the merits of its gameplay.
The 2% exception: Anarchy Online still holds the title for worst MMO launch because not only was it messy, it involved registration issues (and related credit card fears) that left some players allergic to MMOs altogether. Yet even though AO’s launch scared off customers in large volumes, it still survived and is running to this day.
Every major MMO has launched with problems, either technically on the launch itself or lacking significant content / features.
The real test is how the developers respond in the months that follow.
The WoW example
Blizzard’s launch for World of Warcraft was an epic mess. Game awards were retroactively revoked and servers commonly had downtimes measured in days. Blizzard’s immense and stubborn fanbase probably helped, but more importantly Blizzard stepped up and did what they had to do to recover from the failures. WoW still has the odd bad patch but they always rebound with the game stronger than before.
WoW launched with less pre-orders than Aion, Warhammer Online or Age of Conan. Astonishing when you think of how much (and how quickly) it grew once it stabilized.
WoW did have over 600,000 subscribers after the first month, but here’s something that’s rarely mentioned: Their subscriber base dipped before climbing again. Blizzard literally stopped selling the game until they could sort out the significant problems. Many players left during long queues, disconnects and all sorts of bugs and downtime, but when Blizzard consistently added fixes and content: New players flocked into the game in droves. It was later, months after launch that WoW hit critical mass into millions of subscribers. An even larger bulk of WoW players arrived in its second year.
Past Examples and the Present
Perseverance after launch pays off. EVE Online didn’t get over the hump until after CCP bought it back from their publishers. Dark Age of Camelot spiked its largest numbers after 2 years with its Trials of Atlantis expansion. City of Heroes has restored most of its population after 5 years. Notably, most of the rebound examples predate WoW.
Recent MMOs have tried to copy WoW’s success in a myriad of other ways, but they’ve unfortunately been slow to get their wheels moving after launch. New content and zones often get mentioned early but then pushed back, sometimes longer than a year, or in worse cases earmarked for an expansion. Big necessary changes don’t get made for fear of upsetting the playerbase. Server infrastructure is often skimped on, planning for population decreases instead of increases. Some notable games have been flat out shut down.
The MMO playerbase is incredibly resilient to changes as long as they’re necessary and well designed. More content is always welcomed. Many players wait until after launch just to see how the game pans out.
On the other hand players only tolerate broken for so long and once the smell of stagnation sets in, they’ll leave in bulk.
The months after release = more important than the launch week.
That’s difficult to master for most game studios. After a few years of development, I’m sure they just want to get the thing out the door and take a deep breath or even a (well deserved) vacation. Burnout at this point is probably the biggest risk at such a critical time.
Not every studio can afford to keep up development either, costs are soaring in the age of HD visuals. Betting on a big launch to restore dried up funds doesn’t usually work out. Running under big publishers has its risks too, they’re accustomed to games making or breaking on initial box sales and they’re not known for being patient if a game doesn’t score big right away. These are company health and business issues regardless of launch issues though.
Bad launches suck, but on their own they don’t break a game into failure.
IMHO, it’s all about ramping up the game after launch.
Cataclysm rumours
If the Cataclysm rumours are true, and they seem fairly logical, then I’m sure a lot of players will likely return to Azeroth, if only just to see what’s up. A nostalgic romp.
Basically what the rumours describe is a reimagining / remake of the original WoW content.
Maybe this is my current state of Diku-burnout talking, but there are sticky points for me:
- I liked WoW’s original design best. It peaked for me in late 2005 and since then it’s been downhill. Albiet a slow downhill, there’s no arguing against this: WoW is a great game. I just liked it better before. I know I can’t go back in time and I don’t think Blizzard can enter a magical time-warp either.
- WoW has moved further and further away from the game I enjoyed. I don’t see how a reboot will bring it back where I would have preferred. More likely that gap will just increase, with a final spike driven to the old areas.
- Blizzard has gutted the leveling experience so much, I can’t see how redoing continents will repair that. IE: Players able to accelerate to lvl 20, get a mount for a pittance, so swift travel will be everywhere. Or is the remixed Azeroth going to be promoted to Endgame content so this isn’t a concern?
There are other minor points as well: The lack of new classes, the fact that flying mounts in Azeroth is just overdue. The cynic in me also sees this as a way for Blizz to avoid creating as much new artwork as expansions usually consume.
It’d be nice to see the old areas get the upgrade treatment, but I would have preferred they hadn’t been virtually abandoned in the first place.
My status for WoW is mostly unchanged. I’m on a wait and see, but I’m not on the edge of my seat with it.
The Escalation of Convenience
Blizzard has changed initial mount prices to a mere 5 gold and dropped the level requirements down to lvl 20.
That fits in with their continual changes to reduce the curve for new players & alts. but I don’t think the timing on the change is pure coincidence: Champions Online is launching soon with travel powers available at level 5, which in overall level scale is comparable to WoW’s lvl 20.
Each new MMORPG seems to pick at least one feature where they add convenience and wave it about like a flag. It’s a short-term boost at most, it’s so easy for the grandfather games to follow suit. WoW started the trend when they launched WoW with no exp loss / debt. WAR tried with the “bears, bears, bears” concept but kill collectors mostly missed the mark (pretty much sums up that game IMHO). Next convenience on the horizon? Instant travel.
I’m not so convinced this is a good thing. Yeah, it’s easy to pick on a grind element or two, but in games where grind is a lot of the game: They will either end up removing all of the game’s hurdles, or more likely, just add more. It’s a neverending arms race.
As usual, it’s more fun to read about this on Penny Arcade. =)
Non-Persistent?
Call me picky, but I prefer MMORPG policy that ensures you keep your characters, complete with names, items, etc., even long after you’ve left the game. I realize this is a drain on resources, but data storage is cheap. When it comes to names I believe there are better solutions to name-squatting than recycling.
If my characters are not persistent while I’m gone, I feel less compelled to return.
I was a bit surprised to get a couple of emails from Blizzard earlier this week, changing some of my character names. They’re usually better at the persistence than other companies. There’s obviously been a mistake in sorting out which names were available first, because these characters were created ~2004-2005. So why am I getting “oops this name was taken” emails as if I’d just created the characters recently? What’s odd is I haven’t heard of anyone else having their character names recycled by Blizzard this way.
I filled out a gm-feedback email, but never got a response.
Plague hits IronForge!
At approx. 2:20am, the “Corrupted Blood” plague reached IronForge, spreading quickly. It was a minor annoyance for some and instant death for others. Somehow, this disease was brought back from Zul’Gurub, but after almost an hour of constant deaths in and around the bank and auction house, it finally subsided. Our sources say however, that it’s unlikely to have been completely eradicated.
Aftermath photos: Mailbox, Auction House & Bridge
Update (Sept 17, 2005): Blizzard is curing the plague by removing its existence from anywhere but the Zul’Gurub instance. A rolling restart of all servers is set for 4am. The Great Azeroth Plague of Sept ‘05 lasted approx 2 days.
Update (August 22, 2007): Corrupted Blood has resurfaced in the news.
Update (March 23, 2008): Corrupted Blood is back again.
