I've heard this one before and I've even subscribed to it for awhile. But I'm thinking it's rubbish now.
For the simple fact that WOW (world of warcraft) 'out-wowed' other mmorpgs. It took components from all of them and 'out-wowed' or more technically apt 'out-mmorpg-ed' them.
But even there I don't think its subscription numbers are due to 'out-mmorpg-ing' other prior mmorpgs.
It just had a wicked hot advertising campaign! An advertising campaign that quite possibly started well before the idea of seriously making a mmorpg even occured to anyone at blizzard.
The warcraft RTS games - it's all advertising for wow. Years in advance. Every single session of play, millions of them - promoting that warcraft brand.
Then every single other company goes 'HAI I WANTS MONEY LIKE THAT 2!' and makes a mmorpg. They even make, arguably, better games/mmorpgs than wow. But they don't do as well.
They just lack years of indoctrination...sorry, I mean propaganda...sorry, I mean advertising!
The guys who made torchlight, they put it out as a single player, with plans for some sort of big multiplayer in future years...they've got the idea!
Literally years of advertising before the product even exists. Advertising that people paid to aquire - an advertising campaign that profited in itself, let alone in terms of the eventual product sales/subscriptions. Think about it.
Sorry, I don't really agree with this. Warcraft was "indoctrination"? That is called building a brand, which is the exact same thing that Torchlight, and every other game you enjoy is trying to do. Warcraft was a juggernaut of a brand even before WoW because it put RTS games on the map back in 1994. Before that, the only other modern RTS was Dune, and that had a very niche following. Blizzard was not a huge company back when Warcraft came out either. They were a second-rate developer at best with only the Lost Vikings and Rock'n'Roll Racing to boast. Warcraft was *not* advertising for WoW, as they had absolutely no plans to create a graphical MMORPG in 1994, considering that none existed at that time outside of rogue-likes.
ReplyDeleteIt is not much of a secret why WoW became so huge. They created the first casual-accessible MMORPG that *felt* like an MMORPG. Mind you, I don't think Wow is superior, and I actually do not like all of the single-player-style gameplay, as I enjoy grouping, but they struck gold by allowing the millions of players to play who were sitting on the sidelines wanting to play, but not wanting to invest 50+ hours a week to do it. It was not all advertising. It was a combination of innovative gameplay and a titan of a brand. Every game developer wants innovative gameplay and a strong, original IP.
I don't think anyone (anyone mature at least) is trying to argue that WoW is the best MMORPG ever because of its subscription base. But their success cannot simply be chalked up as "they paid for it by massive advertising". EQ2 actually had around $4M more in advertising before launch week, and see where that got it? WoW got where it is today because they broke the mold of the standard group-based MMORPg of the time.
-Jackolantern
Hi Jackolantern, welcome to my blog!
ReplyDeleteSorry, I don't really agree with this. Warcraft was "indoctrination"? That is called building a brand, which is the exact same thing that Torchlight, and every other game you enjoy is trying to do.
I wouldn't just say blizzard 'indoctrinates'. Check out this post
http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/well-brand-my-ass/
The button pushing is what I'm talking about. Basically I ascribe it to any big advertising scheme. If you think they care about you as a person, then they have pressed the right buttons.
With torchlight, I'd expect they are more about a love for the game and a community that would love the game rather than a cutthroat bottom line that makes them research buttons. But I could be wrong on that, I grant. Also I don't own torchlight currently, just know of it's situation.
Warcraft was *not* advertising for WoW, as they had absolutely no plans to create a graphical MMORPG in 1994, considering that none existed at that time outside of rogue-likes.
Yes it was advertising. I said you don't even need to concieve of a product to begin advertising for it's dominant intellectual property/fiction. Nike brings out new products every year which it didn't concieve of when it first started pushing the nike brand. Is that not advertising for those products yet unthought of?
It was a combination of innovative gameplay and a titan of a brand.
If blizzard had instead released a mmorpg, not under the blizzard banner and for some unknown IP but with it being 'accessable', it'd be interesting to see how well it would have gone as compared to WOW. Further it'd also be interesting to compare if they made an unaccessable mmorpg but with the wow branding, and compare it to the accessable, unknown IP games player accumulation.
Of course we can't do this, either of us, so neither of us really has a way of proving the other is wrong.
I don't think anyone (anyone mature at least) is trying to argue that WoW is the best MMORPG ever because of its subscription base. But their success cannot simply be chalked up as "they paid for it by massive advertising". EQ2 actually had around $4M more in advertising before launch week, and see where that got it?
I said they didn't pay for their advertising - their advertising paid them. They sold games.
Clothing companies, realised they didn't need to pay people to wear their advertising on their clothes, people would pay them for the privelidge of advertising for the company.
Here people payed to repeatedly expose themselves to the warcraft 'brand' over and over again. Isn't that what adverts on TV try to do - infact pay alot of money to do. And yet here are people paying money to bring home a program that will flash the advert at them over and over.
And in terms of grouping, when I played I was basically locked out of the interesting, engaging content unless I grouped. No dungeon finder back then. So what if they didn't lock you out entirely from playing unless you grouped? "If you don't group you do boring stuff rather than nothing at all" isn't really an innovation on that.
I'll pitch this to you - if you think you aren't influenced by WOW's prior advertising, how would we do a test to check whether you are or not?
Anyway, my main point is that you can out wow wow - but you need to out wow/out mmorpg it AND out advertise it. Out advertise it by years.
Finally, advertising doesn't always work the way you think it does - even for the people who make ads
http://www.geekologie.com/2009/08/31/tmnt-pizza.jpg