Should there be a WoW killer?

by Shawn Schuster on Aug 19th 2008 7:00PM

World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Age of Conan, Business models, Culture, MMO industry, Opinion

First off, this post is not part of giant campaign to promote World of Warcraft, Age of Conan or any other game. This post is based on two things: a recent opinion piece at MMOCrunch regarding AoC's "demise", and an eyebrow-lifting quote from Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime that says "40% of the World of Warcraft subscribers that left for Age of Conan have since returned."

The post at MMOCrunch points out a few interesting issues on both sides of the fence. First off, there's Morhaime's quote, coupled with recent AoC numbers that range from 1 million subscribers at launch to 700,000 on June 30th to the recent report of 400,000 subscribers remaining. On the WoW side, they point to another article claiming that Blizzard's recent Recruit-a-Friend campaign is a cry of desperation against falling subscriber numbers. Either way you look at it, and no matter what you actually believe, many are obsessed with WoW's success and every time it rises or falls, new speculations and theories arise. So will there ever really be a WoW killer, or should new developers just take the approach of Paul Barnett and aim more towards being the Led Zeppelin to their Beatles?

Source

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, blizzard, funcom, mmocrunch, opinion, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (21)

There will never be a WOW killer

What there will be, is an alternative which will cause WOW a slow painful death maybe over a few years

If I compare this new and as yet unreleased and unknown future MMO that will eventually have more subscribers than WOW, it will be a different 10m people to those who subscribe to WOW, it will simply be new people to the genre

WOW took the genre to a new level, maybe because of accessibility, maybe for other reasons.
Another game will do the same and maybe get 20m subscribers

A bit like the Wii, rather than compete head on for the same market as the 360 and the ps3 it actually created a new market, and in doing so became the most popular console.

All current MMO's are trying to take subscriber away from WOW

This is a mistake. Big mistake, as we just end up with lots of clones.

This future WOW killer can't be clone, cause whats the reason to switch and start over again,
The WOW killer will bring something new to the genre, something that probably hasn't been thought of yet, and it won't compete for WOW subscribers, it will create new ones maybe even 20m

Previous 20 Comments