A few months ago, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said investing $500 million to a billion still wouldn’t be enough to compete with an MMORPG like World of Warcraft. The MMORPG space is a costly investment and you’d need to really burn a lot of money to start competing against the mega-giant, but Mythic VP and Warhammer Online lead designer Mark Jacobs disagrees with that quote.
Jacobs says $100-million dollars would be needed to start competing against the giant subscription generator that is World of Warcraft. Although few developers are sitting on $100-million USD, it’s a bit more realistic an investment for a studio to scrape up compared to a billion bucks! A billion dollars is a scary number when you consider that’s the start of an investment that may, or may not, pay off in the end.
Kotick may not be using complete scare tactics, he may be working off experience when dealing with MMORPG’s. A startup MMO isn’t a cookie cutter system, there is a lot of development efforts, $100-million dollars worth, but MMO developers slip dates many times. When you start slipping your dates you’ll start burning more money and, before you know it, you’re a billion in the hole. Jacobs thinks $100-million will cover development costs and messing up, so a billion is still way over budget.
Perhaps this is a bit of a scare tactic, assuming a developer will fail and slip their dates isn’t really a great way to start quoting prices. However, shooting too low isn’t always the best method of building your development assessments. The end result, scream ONE BILLION and you may scare off any potential startup MMO developers.
Warhammer Online lead designer did mention one big barrier to entry: the need for “at least half a million subscribers to be successful.”
(Thanks, 1up)
If I were a subscriber, I’d leap at the chance to be a Human Hunter, but … no. Just… no. Every time I get the urge to play World of Warcraft, I realize I’d be grinding again, trying to find parties, deal with 10 year olds, etc. and I’m instantly cured of the desire to play.
Previous expansions didn’t get me back into the game (and if anything, made the default game feel less worthwhile to me), so… no. This won’t win me over. (But in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never stayed with any one MMO long enough to run out of unfamiliar content, so the whole MMO expansion issue is a moot one for me personally.)
On an unrelated note, I believe it was called “fog of war,” not “cloud of war.”* (At least where Warcraft II was concerned. Also, disabling didn’t show you where the people were, it just stopped indicating [via shading or lack thereof] how far you could actively “see” at any given moment. [Unless you’re referring to the cheat that revealed the entire map. Which you couldn’t use during multiplayer anyway.])
(* – Though it should be noted that Warcraft III had a quest called “Cloud of War”, which is probably why it’s referred to as such in World of Warcraft, even though I don’t recall there being such an effect in the MMO. [This clarification add after some brief Googling…])
In Regards to the Question of the Week
I have a few friends that play WOW, but the question for me is: Is this enough to make you buy WOW?. Yeah =/ I missed the boat on that one. The Reason wasn’t that I dislike the game at all, I think blizzard is a awesome game developer, I just got caught up in another MMORPG which took a couple of years to get out of the addiction. The game was indeed runescape (pretty bad ay). Why I choose cutting wood and Crit for 41 instead for 4100 I don’t know. I guess the main factor was RS and WOW is a very time consuming game and I didn’t want to Start such a massive game from scratch so late. I’m a little hesitated to start another MMORPG cuz I don’t know if I have the time anymore and forever evolving game are hard to beat or be satisfied with your character. But then again is WOW better than playing Final fantasy/fall out for 100’s of hours by your self?
So my question to you is: Is WOW a experience that I should experience? and what are your Pros and Cons about the game? In the mean time I’ll will hold my decision and paly fire fight ={)
The difference between 100 hours of Fallout 3 vs. 100 hours of WoW is that you’ve got a very impressive character after 100 hours of Fallout 3. (WoW, not so much. Unless you’re a veteran of the game [in which case, include THOSE hours], or are helped out by someone else with a ton of hours logged.])