The gaming industry is no stranger to boom-and-bust cycles, in which dozens of opportunistic developers fall over themselves to release copycat competitors for the latest big hit, and most, if not all, fail. Perhaps the greatest example – and certainly the most embarrassing for almost everyone involved – was the race for the mythical ‘Wow killer”: a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that would dethrone Blizzard’s global megahit, World of Warcraftand earn its creators millions of dollars in monthly subscription revenue until the end of time.
It turned out to be an epic industry-wide failure – and I got a ringside seat to this unfortunate spectacle. My career in games journalism started in 2004, just a few months before Wow was released. My obsessive love of the game threatened to undermine that career before it had really begun, but instead I turned it to my advantage and specialized in covering a genre of gaming that was too arcane and time-consuming for most staff writers and editors to handle their to get an opinion. heads round. I traveled to numerous preview events for MMO hopefuls that PR reps would optimistically tout as “World of Warcraftbut for football,” or “World of Warcraftbut for vehicular combat.” In 2008, I was hired by Eurogamer as editor of its short-lived MMO section – let’s not pretend that we in the press were immune to the same wrongheaded thinking about the gold rush – and discovered first-hand why the whole endeavor was doomed to failure. .
One reason is that World of Warcraft – especially during its heyday from 2004 to 2010 – was simply too good to beat. But another is that chasing hits, not a great strategy at the best of times, is almost impossible in the world of social, online games. The hits attract an intensely loyal, invested audience who play them month in and month out and aren’t really looking for anything else to go on.
That audience is hermetically sealed within their own fandoms and cares far less about shiny graphics or other technical advancements, while the constantly updated games have plenty of room to innovate and evolve the genre within themselves. The age-old tactic of “just slap a big license (like Star Wars) on it” is also less effective in this area, because the appeal of famous characters and storylines doesn’t necessarily apply; the players invest more in their own game. communities.
Yet the industry continues to make this crucial mistake with online games. Just look at the spectacular crash and burn Treaty earlier this year, itself just the latest of countless attempts to unseat Overwatch from its hero-shooter throne. In the spirit of constructive learning, and only a little bit schadenfreudeLet’s take a look back at some of the games that failed to make a dent World of Warcraft‘s hegemony… and the few who did.
The Lord of the Rings Online (2007): This entry may be a little unfair, as several people were trying to make a Middle-earth MMO based on Tolkien’s works long before Blizzard had even thought about making Wow. The original developer, an MMO specialist called Turbine, probably thought it was just another niche online game before publisher WB Games got overly excited about its capabilities. The game was fine, but clearly a generation behind Wow in terms of design. But people still play it!
Age of Conan (2008): Oh Dear. The first and most instructive case of post-Wow hubris came from Funcom, a Norwegian specialist who went way out of their depth by packing cutting-edge graphics, bloodshed, sex and dynamic real-time swordplay into an MMO based on the lusty fantasy world of Robert E. Howard. Publisher Eidos put down all its chips; I remember attending an absurd press event staged in Oslo’s Winter Olympic Park in 1952, which had been transformed into a medieval setting with horse-riding barbarians and fireside feasts. (A PR rep I was with got very drunk and stole a sheepskin rug, bellowing incoherently into the Scandinavian night while carrying it around his shoulders.) The game was a mess at launch and tanked hard.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (2008): EA’s big play made sense on paper; the Warhammer license is probably as close as possible to the Warcraft setting and that of developer Mythic Dark Age of Camelot was loved by the MMO hardcore. The game was lavish and expensive, but limited in design while focusing too much on massive player-versus-player combat Wow excelled at embracing almost every possible playing style. Warhammer Online was closed in 2013.
APB: Bulletin with all the points (2010): A Grand Theft Auto-style massively multiplayer game, with intense levels of player customization, and created by GTA creator himself, David Jones? What can go wrong? Everything! APB was packed with ambitious features, but most importantly lacked gameplay. Also Jones’ company Realtime Worlds, which previously scored excellently Crackdown for Xbox, it was way too deep. A disastrous launch was followed within a few months by the developer’s bankruptcy APB be closed. Another company bought it and relaunched it, but failed to put a real game in it.
Gap (2011): The MMO gold rush wasn’t just about games; Entire companies sprang up, making huge investments in the promise of some revolutionary technology. Trion Worlds was an example that had some fancy server-side technology that was supposed to bring MMOs closer to the fully simulated cloud gaming dream. Unfortunately, this is the flagship fantasy MMO Gap was very boring.
Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011): Smarting from failure Warhammer OnlineNevertheless, EA was up for another breakout attempt Wowarmed with the Star Wars license, its own star developer BioWare and a seemingly unlimited budget. The hype was off the charts, but BioWare’s expertise was in single-player games. Everyone bought it, played through the story and moved on, which… isn’t the idea. However, BioWare didn’t give up and steadily built a true massively multiplayer game around the story campaigns. After a successful free relaunch, The old republic still has an audience.
Guild Wars 2 (2012): Guild Wars 2 is actually a fantastic game, easily the best on this list – I feel bad including it. It refined the combat and used several genre-defining ideas that were later copied Wow, Destinationand others. But the scope of this relatively streamlined game didn’t match publisher NCSoft’s hopes for it – and the ever-expanding Wow presented a moving target that could never be caught.
Wild Star (2014): NCSoft, a major player in Korea, made its most determined attempt to crack the West Wild Stara game from former Blizzard developers with a very Warcraft-y color palette and art style. It was cute, expensive, action-oriented, and had some fun ideas, but it was also very clearly a mish-mash that chased trends with no reason for existing other than trying to outdo. Wow. NCSoft shut it down and closed developer Carbine in 2018.
The game almost killed WoW
Final fantasy 14 (2013): The award for perseverance goes to Square Enix, which simply didn’t give up – and which, more importantly, had reasons other than competing with Blizzard to make an MMO. Final fantasy 11 was a pre-Wow affected in 2002; the first attempt to follow it up FF14 in 2010 was a disaster, but Square Enix bravely scrapped it and asked producer Naoki Yoshida for a complete makeover. In any case, it was a matter of honor. Yoshida’s reboot ruled, and Square Enix didn’t hesitate when it didn’t happen right away Wow figures, but continued to invest. FF14 was steadily getting bigger and better, and it was ready and waiting when a succession of PR disasters and lackluster Wow expansions in late 2010 and early 2020. Wow streamers and players leaving FF14 in droves, and Square Enix’s game is finally rivaling them Wow always deserved it.