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Predictions - When and who could bring the next "WOW"
Kopogero
Member UncommonPosts: 1,685
From design ideas to budget power as well as experience in development who has the best chance? I know many think Bioware at the moment with its enormous budget, but as I mentioned above and the community knows that Bioware has 0 experience with MMORPG's.
I know WOW has many flaws like lack of content updates, undated graphics and not many endgame features other than raiding and instanced, isolated PvP. The game first was brought as "World of WARCRAFT" yet I know there is no WAR going on that decides the future of your realm and faction.
I mentioned some of its flaws, but no game has no flaws, and I know many companies are either worried or afraid to take risks to compete with such successful company as Blizzard, but on the other side they should look on the positive aspect and copy some of the best features from WOW and other successful MMORPG's. I know WOW started like that itself so...
WOW obviously has way more awesome features than flaws. I can name some like distinctive and well polished classes that make many players roll alts when they got nothing to do. The combat and skill mechanics are great. The user interface is great and supports mods that are also what makes WOW so attractive. Being able to know who does what and how well is vital to finding the right players to team up with as well as be easily noticed as a "top" player among the raid. Customer support is another of Blizzard many great things. It may be slow ingame, but it's INSTANT when you are in serious trouble like for example having your account hacked. Blizzard will always take care of your account and protect all your items, which I doubt most of the other companies could.
So that being said I would love to hear from the community which company you think has the strenght to bring the next "WOW" as well as estimate when we gonna see that. Personally, I would love to see the "NEXT WOW" even though it would hurt current WOW, which of course matters to me like millions others. I would also like to see Blizzard if not someone else to be more innovative and invest the income it generates toward WOW itself in more endgame features, bigger and complex worlds with other features like player housing, updated graphics and so on, but yea...
P.S: Bioware Good Luck and my hope is with you even though my hype is so slim now. I mean Star Wars is a completly different setting than WOW. The Bounty Class for example. It's intended to "hunt" players with bounty, but how can that work if the PvP will be instanced? SWG had that right. SWG also had the JEDI concept right. It's not something for every level one character created. I went through so many holocrons, professions as well as trials to unlock and train it.
Comments
To be honest you can't really predict the next big thing in any area very well otherwise people would be making the next big thing a lot more often. Any of the current games in production are not likely to make any serious dent in the WoW machinery even though they may quite well end up fairly successful. No one predicted the success of WoW especially compared to the effort SoE put into EQ2.
The successor to WoW will be something no one expects.
I just see 2 possibilities. It's either Guild Wars 2 or the next Blizzard MMO. Most of the other developers either don't have the skills or the money.
I could be wrong but I think that if Vanguard had 50mil thrown into it to completely fix all the bugs, add a whole lot more content , improved characters/weapon models and animations, dynamic content, regular story related live events, sparkling with polish, it could be a real wower.
a game that can successfully be called a MMO RPG RTS and not in a fantasy setting
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Just WoW, nothing is going to wreck it but itself. Maybe time? Kotick is our best chance as it stands now though, eventually the game will compound boneheaded moves or get too greedy and the breaking point will release a flood of nerd rage then we'll all forget and play something else.
No, the game would still have the stench of failure on it. Not that the game is bad, it's just been cast aside already.
So in trying to answer your question I have an idea of who might be bringing the next WOW game to us. Before I say who I have some points:
1- I am not saying this company will get 8 million subs. This was a perfect storm for Blizzard and I believe that time has passed for any Fantasy based MMO. Of course, the original EQ had a few hundred thousand and was considered a success so I believe this game can get a 200k - 300k + subs.
2- I am thinking of what WOW brought. Blizzard took the standards, polished them up and introduced some new mechanics around familar gameplay methods to for a winning combo. They also made sure the barrier of entry was not TOO high while still making the game visually appealing and with some graphical staying power without a massive overhall.
3- It was, at its launch, the next generation of the tried and true methodolgy within the industry.
4-Developed by a well funded western-based company that knows the North American and European Audience. Blizzard brought a polished ( though not trouble free) game to the market.
NOW- taking those things as the basis for the next WOW game (improving on standards but keeping the familiar genre methodology, giving great gameplay that is easy to access, and keeping the requirements reasonable) I think that RIFT will be that game. Trion is a well funded western based company out of the Bay area that understands the audience and is striving to deliver a complete and polished game.
Of course, this is just my opinion but we shall see when it gets into open beta, with no NDA and preview/ reviews starting. I am looking forward to hearing from those that are actually playing it. From everything I have seen this may fit the bill of the OPs post.
So your reason why bioware will not bring it down is because it has 0 experience with mmorpg? The colossal that doesn't go down was done from a company that had 0 experience with mmos too.
TOR isn't going to do as well as it should, it practically brings nothing new to the table. It also doesn't seem to polish anything in the market either, aside from a huge budget for voice acting.
GuildWars 2 has more potential than TOR, imo. The dynamic event system might be fresh enough to be a shot in the arm to content delivery in mmos. However, the game is Buy 2 Play and there are rumors of DLC, which could turn away their potential customer base.
I see Telara being a bit of a darkhorse, with a blend of WoW and GW2 (randomly generated Rifts). The class system is one of the more original systems to date. However, the combat we've seen in some of the videos hasn't been all that impressive. The animations look...wrong.
Let's not forget the next mmo in development by Blizzard. They have done of fine job of retaining their customer base, and could tap their own market for a new mmo.Blizzard has made comments that the game might be more universally appealing. If it was any other company than Blizzard I would say lightning won't strike twice, but considering all of their PC games have been tremendous hits, I have learned to not doubt Blizzard.
Bottom line is...it doesn't matter if there is another giant mmo like WoW, because we should all be playing what we enjoy.
If you are looking at total subs it will have to be someone who can get into China. If you are just talking about NA and EU numbers there could be a case made that someone will come close.
Now if you are talking about bringing people to the genere and shedding light on MMOs; well that has already been done and we cannot go back to a time before it was done for another game to do it again.
--John Ruskin
My own personal opinions aside, I do not think any of the games on the market or any games in the making will match WoW. TOR and GW2 will do well. I think for longevities sake TOR will have more content and replayability pound for pound then any other game currently coming out. I think GW2 will introduce a very interesting system that will deliver a content system that will appeal to a good number of gamers albeit for a shorter period of time. There is no point in getting into my reasoning as it would go way off topic, but even with as well as both of these games do simultaneously, I just don't see them amassing the amount of players WoW has.
Not for lack of fun, or lack of polish, or lack of content. Just because, SWTOR will not be WoW. GW2 will not be WoW. A lot of people like to stick with what they know.
I think those that play SWTOR will love SWTOR and play it like those who like WoW. Likewise with GW2. (and both for me as TOR and GW2 will most likely always be installed on my PC.) but even in the best case situation and BioWare pulls in the entire PC BioWare demographic (which is much larger then Arenanets) its doubtful they would sustain anywhere close to current WoW numbers.
Blizzard Entertainment. 201X, when their next MMO launches.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
There have been plenty of "next WoW"s, however they all pretty much fail due to being too WoW-like.
The next real major success will be the anti-WoW that people didn't realize they were waiting for until they try it.
Oderint, dum metuant.
If you would force me to make a bet... I think Guild Wars 2 will be the next big thing. My guess is that they will reach at least 4 million subscribers...
It is a no brainer that Guild Wars 2 will be the next popular and most successful mmo.
Thats funny because I can Guarantee you they won't have a single subscriber at all.
TOR can only be the next biggest game if 1) it comes out befor GW2, and 2) it successfully hypes itself back into the good graces of a lot of non-core starwars fans. Starwars is a great IP, but I think that its been rehashed in game after game so many times that the IP aspect of it is not going to be as big a pull as it could be.
A Harry Potter MMO would most likely be horrible. So, say a HP MMO got developed. I can see a lot of potential in a faction based game archetecture (the different academies of magic, different nations, being good or evil) but the end goals of the character (and no aimless wandering in this day and age of game making) would be entirely unrelated to the main focus of HP, which was the school and voldemort. Are we supposed to have a player driven struggle for control over the world? What would the story be? In the end 10 developers could make any game they wanted, make the setting be that of the books, and end end up with 10 very distinct games. There is just not enough cause to base a game off an IP if the only thing it adds to the game is consumer recognition. It still has to be a good game and I am of the opinion that a good game is going to be successful even if it didn't pay big bucks to use a rediculously well known IP.
@OP --> Lastly, I don't believe that another WoW would be another WoW. WoW ended up being huge because of the environment that it was released in. If WoW had been released a few years later (with better graphics and a better initial release) it would probably not have done as well as it did. I think that there are a lot of games that could have been made and been successful if they were actually trying to design a good game instead of leeching off of the success of WoW, and in fact I think that they may have failed for reasons that are 2 fold. First they market for such a game was already devoted to playing the massively addicting WoW and second, the flaws of WoW were being replicated too. Think about the reasons people leave WoW. Do they want to play a game that is exactly the same but a different IP? no. I think the success of WoW can't be replicated without replicating the external factors that allowed WoW to become as big as it is today.
Anyways, the question of the next big game is still unanswered in my eyes, but I can only see myself playing GW2 in the future. I am not really interested in SWTOR, TERA, Rift (unless it goes F2P but I would be waiting for a while), or any number of other good games that are due in the near future. I hope that everyone realizes that the next big game WON'T have the same effect on the gaming community as WoW did when it came out (my whole reason for my rant on WoW is to explain this statement).
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
no one and nothing. look up "fad" in the dictionary. the whole point of a phenomenon like wow is it's unique.
if you want a better example, ask everyone that's been waiting for "the next EQ" or "the next SWG" or "the next UO".
Obviously when Blizzard makes their next MMO - whether it's Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo - that'll be a massive commercial success.
there will probably be another fad in the mmo industry at some point, but much like WoW itself, it can come from anywhere.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Damn, you are right. So I was actually referring to "active accounts / players".
So those that do not log into the game for more than one month don't count as "active player" anymore.
The next "Wow" will have to include much more casual elements.
Chat sessions, role playing, dating, mini games, web browsing, checkers, facebook links, farmville grinding, heroic Dragon fights and poker play.
Tor and GW2 only focus on 10% of WOW's playing public. I think 50% of WOW players never entered a Battleground or a high end Raid. Wow is still too hardcore in too many ways for most.
Blizzard next MMO will address these needs. Like Kaplan said: it will include everything you can think of in an online game for everyone.
ToR and GW2 are not designed for everyone so they already have a too limited audiance.
I don't think the features a game has, the mechanics it uses, or the audience it targets (casual vs hardcore, PvP vs PvE, etc) play as large a role as utilizing an existing and popular IP in the quest to become the "next WoW". WoW had a sizable portion of its population as Warcraft or Blizzard fans that simply picked the title up to try it out. Of course, it helped the game's success that it was easy to grasp and had plenty to see, but that's not what originally drew people to it; it was just what kept them playing.
Examining it from that perspective and I would hazard a guess that SWOTR probably has the best chance to be the next mega hit. Maybe WH40k on the horizon or Fallout Online. It certainly won't be a game that has a completely original IP or an IP only known to an existing MMO fanbase (such as an MMO sequel). Lesser known or original IP's can gain fame by simply being a good game, over a long timeline such as Eve has, but they won't hit the market and suddenly explode into a juggernaut like WoW did.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
Considering the huge size of consoles at the moment: A cross-platform zombie MMO/MMORPG? Yes please
That'll surely make WoW a zombie! (HAHAHAHA).
-StapledPuppet
I think WoWs eaten enough brains already, thank you.
I think GW2's success, as far as longevity, will show after the first expansion comes out and you get a better idea of who are going to continue supporting GW2. GW2 may get a lot of sales from the initial game but not for each expansion after that.