Always think it's interesting when I hear developers talk about how World of Warcraft opened up the MMOG market for new entrants. We have all these new and exciting games coming out: Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, The Chronicles of Spellborn, and plenty more. However, the overwhelming response that I get from WoW players when I talk about these games is a blank stare and something along the lines of, "Okay, that sounds all right...
but why would I ever want to leave WoW?" I think that developers tend to underestimate how attached people get to their MMOG of choice. There are now over 10 million World of Warcraft players. The question is, do they even want something different?
I've read a number of bloggers in the past few months and talked to a number of players who claim that they're only playing WoW right now because "it's
the best thing out there." They're yearning for something else. Not something totally different, mind you, since they obviously have a blast in Azeroth. But something fresh enough to be new and exciting without bastardizing the game style they know and love. However, I've noticed something interesting. This breed of player tends to overwhelmingly be comprised of people for whom World of Warcraft was not their first MMOG. Otherwise, people just want WoW
to put more content in and are willing to make do with what they have until then. I think there's an intriguing bit of psychology there that's worth examining.
Your first MMOG is kind of like your first love. You never really forget it, even if you move on. Furthermore, that first experience often defines your expectations and preconceptions about how things are supposed to be. For me, the first MMOG I ever really got into was EverQuest. I could ramble on for hours, recounting the fun times and the good memories I have from that game. It felt so real, so interesting, and it was the coolest game I had ever played. Often, when I'm talking about something I think a game should or could be doing better, it's something EverQuest did in one way or another. I played it for four years on and off before
I left it, and I still go back from time to time and play it for a few months. What did I leave it for? Take a guess.
Here's the kicker: This game that I loved so much? That I speak so fondly of? That I think did so much so well? It's the same EverQuest known for it's laughably bad quest system, insane grinds, ridiculously long camps, crappy interface, extreme difficulty to solo, broken mechanics, enormous raid sizes, XP loss on death, naked corpse runs, and a whole host of other complaints. And I still play it from time to time. If I'm that attached to my first MMOG, even with all of those negative aspects, how do you think people whose first game was World of Warcraft are going to feel about it in years to come? WoW took the EQ formula and fixed everything that sucked. There are lots of things that suck about WoW, but honestly, other than the familiarity, it's as much fun to pick up and play today as it was during my first day of beta. That's not the case for EverQuest. WoW did so much right that it's hard to significantly improve on the formula, as many studios are discovering--- see Scott Hartsman's comments on that topic in this interview, for example.
So
what does all of this mean? Well, getting back to the original point I was making, I'm not convinced that any game will persuade first time MMOG players who enjoy WoW to leave it. Those people who are hunting for new games, who are tired of the old, who want something new... they tend to be people who already have hopped games once or more. When players find a game they like, a game
that really grabs them, a game that defines the MMO genre in their minds and lays out what an MMOG should be for them, it's going to take either a serious blow to their game (Blizzard announces that they're done making expansions) or a serious improvement to the game style (on the EverQuest -- WoW level) to lure them away. I don't think that even Blizzard has really realized how powerful people's conn
