The Next WoW: Searching for the MMOHG (Massively Multiplayer Online Holy Grail)

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on November 10, 2006 - 9:30am.

[Coverage from the 2006 LA Games Conference]
Blizzard Entertainment's "World of Warcraft" (WoW) massively multiplayer online PC game is not just a hit, it's a certifiable phenomenon, in the opinion of Don Daglow, the president and CEO of developer Stormfront Studios. The game has skyrocketed to an unprecedented nearly six million subscribers. (Update: Blizzard announced on Nov. 9 that WoW subscriptions have now topped 7.5 million.) WoW is the fastest-growing business at Vivendi, Blizzard's parent company, and bolstered profits 24.4% for Vivendi Games to $376.4 million in the first half of 2006.

The MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) panel at Digital Media Wire's LA Games Conference concurred with the opinion of Stormfront's CEO. It's impossible not to come to the same conclusion. WoW is by far the most successful MMOG in the history of the genre. The panel, which included representatives from game purveyors Trion World Network, Sony Online Entertainment, Disney's Virtual Reality Studio and Stormfront Studios, along with GameDAILY CEO Mark Friedler, was universal in its praise of Blizzard's creation.

"It's the most fun MMOG I've played," said Chris Cao, the Studio Creative Director at EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies developer Sony Online Entertainment. "There's refinement on every level, production value beyond what had been seen previously – refined past the point where people were expecting – and consistent."

"WoW set the bar pretty high," noted Mike Goslin, Vice President at Walt Disney Internet Group's Virtual Reality Studio, developer of Toontown Online, which right now is working on an MMOG based on Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. "The production value is great. They took great pains to make it work on a lower-end PC, went after a bigger market. They invested lots in the art, created lots of different versions of graphics for different quality PCs, and it all looks good."

Stormfront's Daglow also admired WoW's craftsmanship, and how the company added more PC/console game-quality graphics and artwork to a previously less visually-advanced genre. "Because of financing from prior successes, [Blizzard] was able to do a game that was high-risk/high-reward, to work on each element until it was ready for release."

Looking beyond the WoW phenomenon, moderator Joseph Olin, the president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, noted that several other MMOG titles currently have one million or more players (e.g. Lineage I & II), and over a dozen count more than 120,000 subscribers. Eight of the top twenty PC games right now are MMOGs.

Olin estimated there are around 4 million paying multiplayer online game subscribers in the U.S., generating $550 million in revenues. With the advent of broadband-connected game consoles, it's also notable that most of the top 20 console game titles right now are online-enabled.

"Right now, online games are in the same state as early cable TV, when producers tried to recreate the network formula in the cable medium," remarked Jon Van Canegham, Co-Founder, President and Chief Creative Officer at broadband game publisher Trion World Network. "Now, publishers are porting their regular games to online platforms. We're only starting to see the potential of the platform."

When the topic turned to speculation on what will be the next WoW, nominees included WoW itself.

"Everything will be compared to WoW," said Disney's Goslin. "It brought new interest to the genre, and people are jumping on the bandwagon. It has opened up opportunities for smaller developers, due to demand from publishers who want to tap in on the business model…The next WoW should be more accessible, use some other themes."

"The next Wow will be really obvious, right in front of our noses. It could be something that targets females. I'd like to see something more engaging, without dungeons, that has solid community," suggested GameDAILY's Mark Friedler, adding, "The biggest ‘online game’ right now I'd say is eBay. It needs to be just as pervasive."

"We'll still see a first pioneer in other spaces, but fantasy MMOG is a tight space right now," said Sony's Cao. "You wouldn't want to do a ‘me-too’ with WoW. Lots of people want to explore with 'organism' games," which allow players to change the code and with it the way the game is played, "and let it mutate like [Linden Lab’s] Second Life."

"WoW will probably be the next WoW," Cao postulated. "We haven't seen its full market share. There will be new versions coming out. It will likely be popular for multiple years."

"At one point in the past, I was talking to someone who wanted to find the next Myst," said Daglow, referring to the stylized puzzle game that was itself at one point also a phenomenon. "I said if you can have 50% of the success of the first version with the second version, that should be good – because it's a phenomenon."

Blizzard's first expansion of the game, "Word of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade," is slated for release in mid-January.

Mark Hefflinger