The gaming industry is no stranger to boom-and-bust cycles, in which numerous opportunistic developers rush to release copycat competitors to the latest smash hit, and most, if not all, fail. Perhaps the greatest example – and certainly the most embarrassing for almost everyone involved – was the race to publish the mythical “Wow Killer: a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that would unseat Blizzard's global megahit, World of Warcraftand bring its creators millions of dollars in monthly subscription revenue until the end of time.
It turned out to be an epic failure across the industry – and I had a ringside seat at the ill-fated spectacle. My career in games journalism began in 2004, just a few months earlier Wow was released. My obsessive love of gaming threatened to destroy that career before it even began, but instead I used it to my advantage and specialized in covering a gaming genre that was too arcane and time-consuming for most writers and editors to handle to understand it heads around. I traveled to numerous preview events for MMO contenders that PR reps would optimistically call “.”World of Warcraftbut for football” or “World of Warcraftbut for vehicular combat.” In 2008, I was hired by Eurogamer as editor of the short-lived MMO section – let's not pretend we're immune to the same false gold-rush mentality in the press – and learned first-hand why the whole venture was doomed to failure.
One reason is that World of Warcraft – especially during its peak from 2004 to 2010 – was just too good to beat. Another reason is that pursuit of hits, not a good strategy even at the best of times, is almost impossible in the world of online social gaming. The hits attract an extremely loyal, interested audience who play them month after month and aren't really looking for anything else to move on to.
This audience is hermetically sealed within their own fandoms and cares much less about shiny graphics or other technical advancements, while the constantly updated games have plenty of room for innovation and evolution of the genre within them. The time-honored tactic of “just slapping a big license (like Star Wars) on it” is also less effective in this area because the appeal of famous characters and storylines doesn't necessarily apply – players are more invested in communities.
Yet the online gaming industry continues to make this critical mistake. Just look at the spectacular crash and burn Concord Earlier this year, it was just the latest in countless attempts to knock Overwatch from its hero shooter throne. In the spirit of constructive learning, just a little SchadenfreudeLet's take a look back at some of the games that failed to remedy the situation World of Warcraft's hegemony… and the few who did.
The Lord of the Rings online (2007): This entry is perhaps a bit unfair, as various people had been trying to create a Middle-earth MMO based on Tolkien's works long before Blizzard had even thought of it Wow. The original developer, an MMO specialist called Turbine, probably thought it was just making another niche online game before publisher WB Games became overly excited about its potential. The game was fine, but clearly a generation behind Wow regarding its design. People still play it though!
Age of Conan (2008): Oh Darling. The first and most instructive case of postalWow “hybris” comes from Funcom, a Norwegian specialist who has gone above and beyond and tried to integrate cutting-edge graphics, gore, sex and dynamic real-time sword fighting into an MMO based on Robert E. Howard's lusty fantasy world. The publisher Eidos has demonstrated all his skills; I remember attending an absurd press event in Oslo's Olympic Park in 1952, which had been transformed into a medieval setting with barbarians on horseback and fireside feasts. (A PR rep I was with was very drunk, stole a sheepskin rug and shouted incoherently into the Scandinavian night while carrying it around his shoulders.) The game was a mess at the start and broke down hard.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (2008): EA's big game made sense on paper; The Warhammer license is probably as close as possible to the Warcraft setting and that of developer Mythic Dark Age of Camelot was loved by hardcore MMOs. The game was elaborate and expensive, but had limited design and was too focused on massive player-versus-player combat Wow distinguished itself by covering almost every possible play style. Warhammer Online was closed in 2013.
APB: All Points Bulletin (2010): A massively multiplayer Grand Theft Auto-style game featuring intense player customization and developed by David Jones, the creator of GTA himself? What could go wrong? Everything! APB was packed with ambitious features, but was notably lacking in gameplay. Also Jones' company Realtime Worlds, which had previously done the excellent thing Crackdown It was way too deep for Xbox. After a disastrous launch, the developer went bankrupt within months APB be switched off. Another company bought it and relaunched it, but failed to incorporate a real game into it.
crack (2011): The MMO gold rush wasn't just about games; Entire companies sprung up, attracting huge investments on the promise of one revolutionary technology or another. Trion Worlds was one example, which featured some fancy server-side technology designed to bring MMOs closer to the fully simulated cloud gaming dream. Unfortunately, it is the flagship fantasy MMO crack was very boring.
Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011): Grief over the failure of Warhammer OnlineEA was still ready for another breakthrough Wowarmed with the Star Wars license, its in-house star developer BioWare and a seemingly unlimited budget. The hype was overblown, but BioWare's expertise lay in single-player games. Everyone bought it, played through the story and moved on, which is…not the idea. However, BioWare didn't give up and gradually developed a proper massively multiplayer game around the story campaigns. After a successful free-to-play relaunch The Old Republic still has an audience.
Guild Wars 2 (2012): Guild Wars 2 is actually a fantastic game, easily the best on this list – I feel bad including it. It refined the combat and used several genre-defining ideas that were later copied from Wow, Determinationand other. But the scope of this relatively slim game didn't live up to the hopes that publisher NCSoft had for it – and which kept growing Wow represented a moving target that could never be caught.
WildStar (2014): NCSoft, a big player in Korea, made its most determined attempt to crack the West WildStara game from former Blizzard developers with a very Warcraft-like color palette and art style. It was cute, expensive, action-oriented, and had some fun ideas, but it was also clearly a trend-chasing mishmash with no reason to exist other than trying to outdo it Wow. NCSoft discontinued it in 2018 and closed developer Carbine.
The game almost killed WoW
Final Fantasy 14 (2013): The prize for persistence goes to Square Enix, which simply didn't give up – and which had reasons other than competing with Blizzard to develop an MMO. Final Fantasy 11 was a pre-Wow hit in 2002; the first attempt to pursue it further FF14 in 2010 was a disaster, but Square Enix bravely scrapped it and asked producer Naoki Yoshida for a complete overhaul. It was more of a question of honor. Yoshida's reboot made the difference, and Square Enix didn't falter when it didn't happen right away Wow Pay, but continued to invest. FF14 kept getting bigger and better, and it was ready and waiting as Blizzard stumbled through a series of PR disasters and lackluster Wow Expansions in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Wow Streamers and players begin to depart FF14 in droves, and Square Enix's game is finally the contender Wow always deserved it.
