The sport {industry} is not any stranger to boom-and-bust cycles, wherein scores of opportunistic builders fall over themselves to launch copycat rivals to the most recent large hit, and most, if not all, fail. Maybe the largest occasion — and definitely essentially the most embarrassing for nearly everybody involved — was the race to launch the legendary “WoW killer”: a massively multiplayer on-line role-playing recreation that might unseat Blizzard’s international megahit, World of Warcraft, and earn its makers hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in month-to-month subscription income till the top of time.
It turned out to be an industry-wide epic fail — and I had a ringside seat to this unlucky spectacle. My profession in video games journalism started in 2004, just some months earlier than WoW was launched. My obsessive love of the sport threatened to tank that profession earlier than it had actually begun, however as an alternative I turned it to my benefit, specializing in overlaying a style of recreation that was too arcane and time-consuming for many workers writers and editors to get their heads round. I traveled to scores of preview occasions for MMO hopefuls that public relations reps would optimistically tout as “World of Warcraft, however for soccer,” or “World of Warcraft, however for vehicular fight.” In 2008, I used to be employed by Eurogamer because the editor of its short-lived MMO part — let’s not fake that we within the press had been resistant to the identical wrongheaded gold-rush pondering — and found firsthand precisely why the entire enterprise was doomed to fail.
One purpose is that World of Warcraft — particularly throughout its 2004-to-2010 heyday — was just too good to beat. However one other is that hit-chasing, not an awesome technique at one of the best of occasions, is nearly unimaginable to drag off on the planet of social, on-line video games. The hits garner intensely loyal, invested audiences who play them month in, month out, and who aren’t actually in search of one thing else to maneuver on to.
These audiences are hermetically sealed inside their very own fandoms and care a lot much less about shiny graphics or different technical developments, whereas the continually up to date video games have loads of room to innovate and evolve the style inside themselves. The time-honored tactic of “simply slap a giant license (like Star Wars) on it” is much less efficient on this sphere, too, as a result of the enchantment of well-known characters and storylines doesn’t essentially apply — the gamers are extra invested of their communities.
But the {industry} continues to make this crucial error with on-line video games. Simply take a look at the spectacular crash and burn of Harmony earlier this yr, itself simply the most recent of numerous makes an attempt to elbow Overwatch off its hero-shooter throne. Within the spirit of constructive studying, and solely a bit little bit of schadenfreude, let’s look again at among the video games that did not put a dent in World of Warcraft’s hegemony… and the few that did.
The Lord of the Rings On-line (2007): This entry is maybe a bit unfair, since varied individuals had been making an attempt to make a Center-earth MMO based mostly on Tolkien’s works lengthy earlier than Blizzard had even considered WoW. The unique developer, an MMO specialist referred to as Turbine, most likely thought it was simply making one other area of interest on-line recreation earlier than writer WB Video games obtained unduly enthusiastic about its potential. The sport was tremendous, however clearly a era behind WoW by way of its design. Folks nonetheless play it, although!
Age of Conan (2008): Oh pricey. The primary and most instructive case of post-WoW hubris got here from Funcom, a Norwegian specialist that obtained method out of its depth making an attempt to push cutting-edge graphics, gore, intercourse, and dynamic real-time swordfighting into an MMO based mostly on Robert E. Howard’s lusty fantasy world. Writer Eidos put all its chips down; I bear in mind attending an absurd press occasion staged in Oslo’s 1952 Winter Olympic park, which had been remodeled right into a medieval setting with horse-riding barbarians and hearth feasting. (A PR rep I used to be with obtained very drunk and stole a sheepskin rug, roaring incoherently into the Scandinavian night time whereas sporting it round his shoulders.) The sport was a multitude at launch, and tanked onerous.
Warhammer On-line: Age of Reckoning (2008): EA’s massive play made sense on paper; the Warhammer license might be as shut as you’ll be able to legally get to the Warcraft setting, and developer Mythic’s Darkish Age of Camelot was beloved by the MMO hardcore. The sport was lavish and costly however restricted in design, too targeted on large player-versus-player fight whereas WoW excelled at embracing nearly each attainable play type. Warhammer On-line was shut down in 2013.
APB: All Factors Bulletin (2010): A Grand Theft Auto-style massively multiplayer recreation boasting intense ranges of participant customization, and masterminded by GTA’s creator himself, David Jones? What may go improper? Every thing! APB was stacked with bold options however notably lacked, you understand, gameplay. Additionally, Jones’ firm Realtime Worlds, which had beforehand made the superb Crackdown for Xbox, was in far too deep. A disastrous launch was adopted inside a few months by the developer going bankrupt and APB getting shut down. One other firm purchased and relaunched it, however didn’t achieve placing an precise recreation in there.
Rift (2011): The MMO gold rush wasn’t nearly video games; whole corporations sprang up, drawing large funding on the promise of some revolutionary expertise or different. Trion Worlds was one instance that boasted fancy server-side tech that was speculated to take MMOs nearer to the absolutely simulated cloud-gaming dream. Sadly, its flagship fantasy MMO Rift was very boring.
Star Wars: The Outdated Republic (2011): Smarting from the failure of Warhammer On-line, EA was nonetheless up for an additional crack at smashing WoW, armed with the Star Wars license, its star in-house developer BioWare, and an apparently limitless funds. The hype was off the charts, however BioWare’s experience was in single-player video games. All people purchased it, performed the story by means of, and moved on, which is… not the thought. BioWare didn’t hand over, although, and steadily constructed out a correct massively multiplayer recreation across the story campaigns. After a profitable free-to-play relaunch, The Outdated Republic nonetheless has an viewers.
Guild Wars 2 (2012): Guild Wars 2 is definitely a unbelievable recreation, simply one of the best on this listing — I really feel unhealthy together with it. It has refined fight and employed a number of genre-defining concepts that had been later copied by WoW, Future, and others. However the scope of this comparatively streamlined recreation was not equal to the hopes writer NCSoft loaded on it — and the ever-expanding WoW offered a shifting goal that would by no means be caught.
WildStar (2014): NCSoft, a giant participant in Korea, made its most decided try and crack the West with WildStar, a recreation by former Blizzard devs with a really Warcraft-y shade palette and artwork type. It was cute, costly, action-forward, and had some enjoyable concepts, nevertheless it was additionally very clearly a trend-chasing mishmash with no purpose to exist past making an attempt to high WoW. NCSoft shut it down and closed developer Carbine in 2018.
The sport nearly did kill WoW
Last Fantasy 14 (2013): The prize for perseverance goes to Sq. Enix, which merely didn’t hand over — and which, importantly, had causes apart from competing with Blizzard to be making an MMO. Last Fantasy 11 had been a pre-WoW hit in 2002; the primary try and observe it up with FF14 in 2010 was a catastrophe, however Sq. Enix bravely scrapped it and requested producer Naoki Yoshida for an entire do-over. It was a query of honor, if something. Yoshida’s reboot dominated, and Sq. Enix didn’t falter when it didn’t instantly do WoW numbers, however continued to speculate. FF14 steadily obtained greater and higher, and it was prepared and ready when Blizzard stumbled by means of a succession of PR disasters and lackluster WoW expansions within the late 2010s and early 2020s. WoW streamers and gamers beginning leaving for FF14 in droves, and Sq. Enix’s recreation is, eventually, the competitor that WoW has all the time deserved.