Trion’s CEO: There’s Life After Warcraft
By Shawn on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 4:45 PM PST In Activision, Blizzard, Computer, Game Companies, Game Platforms, Games, Games Industry, World of Warcraft
Trion World Network CEO Dr. Lars Buttler has responded to Activision’s Bobby Kotick who recently claimed a company would have to invest USD 500 million to USD 1 billion to compete with blizzard’s World of Warcraft. Buttler is calling Koticks bluff claiming that WoW isn’t the be all end all.
Buttler says that the reason no other MMO has been able to go toe to toe with WoW is because there haven’t been any quality releases in the genre.
I think it’s because no one has really launched a great product in the online gaming space yet other than WOW.
Look at all the stuff that has been launched and apply one simple bar – could you sell this at retail if you stripped out all the online components? In other words, is it a good game? I don’t think that any other MMO could then stand…Or very few exceptions.
WOW is a good game. It has ramped up the last ten years of the MMO category and polished it really well and presented it as almost the closing chapter on those last ten years. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t another ten years or another twenty years to come.
Saying WOW is the end of all things would be like saying Mario or The Sims or Madden or any other great franchise are the end of all things in their particular categories. There will always be new and great developments. In the games world, that’s particularly true because technology evolves so much.
Butler expects that one day there will be a game that will topple WoW because part of the problem with success is that it can often curtail future success. Trion plans to compete by offering something different.
I think what the future will hold, and what we are trying to enable, are dynamic game worlds that can always improve and that really use the full capability of server-based architecture that can learn from success and failure after you launch. In other words, we try to entirely step out of the box that has restricted innovation.
I think it is really important to point out that we are not trying to compete with WOW or clone it – in my mind that would be boring and it would be creatively constraining, and I also think it would be massively limiting the amount of risk and innovation we are willing to introduce.
We don’t see this as a zero-sum game where you can only have WOW and nothing else.
Catch the whole Lars Buttler on GamesIndustry.biz.
“We don’t see this as a zero-sum game where you can only have WOW and nothing else.”
Amen to that!
I agree with his statements.
WoW was fun for a while, but I personally lost interest at the end-game stage. Other than massive server problems at launch, it was a very polished game as far as MMOG’s go. That, along with clear and concise gameplay mechanics, I think is what made it a hit title.
Here’s hoping that Warhammer and/or Age of Conan turn out to be polished titles from the get-go. Been waiting for a reason to get back into MMO’s.
Personally I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Warhammer will bring back and improve upon Dark Age of Camelot style RvR. DAoC held my interest the longest of all the MMORPG’s(3 years) simply because the RvR was a ton of fun for me.
You’ve gotta remember though that they’re not only contending with a game, but the 10 million strong that play it. They’re the audience they need, so I think for any MMORPG to really take swing, there would only have to be one big on the market; ie. there can only be one big MMORPG at once.
Woah… That is so kool. I feel the same about WoW, WoW isn’t the only good MMO out there… There are some free ones I play that are kool too
Don’t forget, WoW continues to shine because the game continues to produce new content and is always upgrading/adding new features. It’s like we’re (the players) are playing a video game as it’s in development. Each patch (and there have been many) contains new content, class changes, etc. It shouldn’t even be called a patch but perhaps ‘extra/continued content’ as most patches are normally released as just game fixes, WoW patches though are released as much more, with new content and changes always added to each patch. Some are bigger than others adding new raid instances, gear, items, etc, like the upcoming 2.4 patch which is almost like a mini expansion.
These patches fill the gap that is normally created between expansions. Instead of just beating the game 100% and then waiting for an expansion (which normally leads to moving on to other games), the new content helps fill the gaps and adds new things to do/accomplish, keeping you playing and enjoying the game, trying to fulfill all these new achievements for your character/guild/whatever, all the while the larger expansions are being worked on and then released.
In WoW the continued addons never end. I think this is a major part in WoW’s fame.