A presentation that is intended to impress shareholders can often spark a tremendous uproar. When Vivendi Universal announced
during such an event that "all Blizzard franchises would become MMOGs", the Net's response was extremely diversified. Many suspected capitalist intentions, others feared that single player would be left out and a large amount saw competitive gaming endangered. The rumours were debunked, however the fact remains that Blizzard has been one of the biggest contributors to the esports community, developing games which could hardly be any more balanced and cause more exciting matches. StarCraft Broodwar was in fact the first game that managed to become a part of a country's every day life, albeit only in Korea. WarCraft 3 is still huge all over the world, being featured by every large tournament. So why would Blizzard even think about giving up on that type of video game?
There have been MMORPGs before, name Ultima Online, Everquest or Asheron's Call. None of these though has managed to catch the public's attention like World Of WarCraft did. Without stating the obvious, let's just say that WoW has posed quite a threat to all the popular esports titles, drawing the player's attention away from the game they were used to play - a thing that has been written about quite enough (for example by Carmac on Clanbase,Link ).
It's fun, it's interactive, it rarely gets boring and the constant development keeps players going. The addon will bring a lot of new features.
So what have Blizzard gained that makes them consider to create a StarCraft or Diablo MMOG?
From a publisher's perspective, WoW and the likes are gold mines. With more than 6 million players all over the world, the game itself has reached sales figures that many companies can only dream of. The bonus that WoW has though is the fact that all those who bought the game and are still playing keep paying - month after month, year after year. Now while WoW needs much more care than any trivial single player or multi player game, with all the server hosting to be paid, payments to be dealt with, cheaters to be hunted down and bugs to be fixed, Blizzard has hit the Bull's Eye - they have an astonishing amount of players who have a subscription, and if you're living in a crowded neighbourhood and hear the bell ringing several times a day, you know that subscriptions are what they're all after.
Now you would basically think that this does not affect the shooter genre. And well, it didn't hit the FPS scene that hard, but Blizzard still has the larger piece of the cake. Why is that? If you look at the popular shooter games at the moment, you won't find many. Quake 4 might be an interesting game for the audience, but the sales have been one large disappointment because the number of players just isn't high enough - which of course has been caused by the fact that Q4 is not the game many expected and was treated rather stepmotherly by id. Counter-Strike is old, not much money to be made anymore with that, HL2DM and CS:S have failed - which is why Valve have announced that they would start charging for tournaments where one of their games is being featured. Battlefield 2 is dieing because it's creators are just extremely smart when it comes to pissing off the entire community. Call Of Duty 2 is slowly starting to become more active after it lacked a proper anti-cheat tool for a very long time. Still, all these games are one time investments and if there is no addon, the company will never get any more money than what they've got when the player bought the game.
Sin with its episodes that can be bought online, Oblivion with the extra content you have to pay for - it's everyhwere. So what can be done to prevent that the future belongs solely to MMOGs, games which are a lot of fun for the player but are neither suitable for competition nor for public viewing at large events?
I think there are several things we can learn from MMOGs, World Of Warcraft specificially, that might help to keep competitive gaming alive.
Most importantly, WoW is fun for everyone - whether you've just started or whether you've got four level 60 heroes, you will always have fun. So why is there such a lack of leagues and cups that are aimed at players of lower skill? Even if you find Quake 4 interesting and thrilling and want to get started, in most of the tournaments you will meet the likes of fooki or winz, and I am quite sure that your motivation will go down rapidly after you've been raged several times in such a cup. So what I think should be done is to take care of the the new or not so ambitious players as well, by giving them a league that is specificially NOT for the professional players - as it is the case with every other major sport.
Secondly, Blizzard cares about its games. They improve, they patch, they change, they listen to the community. True, there are lags on the servers and some debatable changes. But in general they are considered a very dedicated company that really cares about its games. Hell, even StarCraft is still being worked on. Can we say the same about id? No, it's a joke how long it took them to include the autodownload. Can we say the same about Infinity Ward? Hell no, finally they have included PB, but there is still no windowed mode, making it a pain in the ass for every shoutcaster. We can maybe say the same about Valve, only for CS 1.6 though, CS:S is still considered to be a beta version by many and it doesn't look as if they're going to change that any time soon. So I think it's pretty clear that many competitive games have died or are not as active as they could be because they have not been paid enough attention by their developers. And it's not like they're doing that without getting any reward, because having a game that is constantly improving will encourage more and more players to buy the game.
There is no definite solution to the monetary problem though. Many MMOGs will die because players can't afford to play more than one. Is there a definite competitive scene that will always stick to their guns? Will players get bored of MMOGs and start playing competitively? While the answers to these questions are tricky, one thing is sure: Competitive gaming needs dedication, and if you got that, the rest will work out.
during such an event that "all Blizzard franchises would become MMOGs", the Net's response was extremely diversified. Many suspected capitalist intentions, others feared that single player would be left out and a large amount saw competitive gaming endangered. The rumours were debunked, however the fact remains that Blizzard has been one of the biggest contributors to the esports community, developing games which could hardly be any more balanced and cause more exciting matches. StarCraft Broodwar was in fact the first game that managed to become a part of a country's every day life, albeit only in Korea. WarCraft 3 is still huge all over the world, being featured by every large tournament. So why would Blizzard even think about giving up on that type of video game?
There have been MMORPGs before, name Ultima Online, Everquest or Asheron's Call. None of these though has managed to catch the public's attention like World Of WarCraft did. Without stating the obvious, let's just say that WoW has posed quite a threat to all the popular esports titles, drawing the player's attention away from the game they were used to play - a thing that has been written about quite enough (for example by Carmac on Clanbase,Link ).
It's fun, it's interactive, it rarely gets boring and the constant development keeps players going. The addon will bring a lot of new features.
So what have Blizzard gained that makes them consider to create a StarCraft or Diablo MMOG?
From a publisher's perspective, WoW and the likes are gold mines. With more than 6 million players all over the world, the game itself has reached sales figures that many companies can only dream of. The bonus that WoW has though is the fact that all those who bought the game and are still playing keep paying - month after month, year after year. Now while WoW needs much more care than any trivial single player or multi player game, with all the server hosting to be paid, payments to be dealt with, cheaters to be hunted down and bugs to be fixed, Blizzard has hit the Bull's Eye - they have an astonishing amount of players who have a subscription, and if you're living in a crowded neighbourhood and hear the bell ringing several times a day, you know that subscriptions are what they're all after.
Now you would basically think that this does not affect the shooter genre. And well, it didn't hit the FPS scene that hard, but Blizzard still has the larger piece of the cake. Why is that? If you look at the popular shooter games at the moment, you won't find many. Quake 4 might be an interesting game for the audience, but the sales have been one large disappointment because the number of players just isn't high enough - which of course has been caused by the fact that Q4 is not the game many expected and was treated rather stepmotherly by id. Counter-Strike is old, not much money to be made anymore with that, HL2DM and CS:S have failed - which is why Valve have announced that they would start charging for tournaments where one of their games is being featured. Battlefield 2 is dieing because it's creators are just extremely smart when it comes to pissing off the entire community. Call Of Duty 2 is slowly starting to become more active after it lacked a proper anti-cheat tool for a very long time. Still, all these games are one time investments and if there is no addon, the company will never get any more money than what they've got when the player bought the game.
Sin with its episodes that can be bought online, Oblivion with the extra content you have to pay for - it's everyhwere. So what can be done to prevent that the future belongs solely to MMOGs, games which are a lot of fun for the player but are neither suitable for competition nor for public viewing at large events?
I think there are several things we can learn from MMOGs, World Of Warcraft specificially, that might help to keep competitive gaming alive.
Most importantly, WoW is fun for everyone - whether you've just started or whether you've got four level 60 heroes, you will always have fun. So why is there such a lack of leagues and cups that are aimed at players of lower skill? Even if you find Quake 4 interesting and thrilling and want to get started, in most of the tournaments you will meet the likes of fooki or winz, and I am quite sure that your motivation will go down rapidly after you've been raged several times in such a cup. So what I think should be done is to take care of the the new or not so ambitious players as well, by giving them a league that is specificially NOT for the professional players - as it is the case with every other major sport.
Secondly, Blizzard cares about its games. They improve, they patch, they change, they listen to the community. True, there are lags on the servers and some debatable changes. But in general they are considered a very dedicated company that really cares about its games. Hell, even StarCraft is still being worked on. Can we say the same about id? No, it's a joke how long it took them to include the autodownload. Can we say the same about Infinity Ward? Hell no, finally they have included PB, but there is still no windowed mode, making it a pain in the ass for every shoutcaster. We can maybe say the same about Valve, only for CS 1.6 though, CS:S is still considered to be a beta version by many and it doesn't look as if they're going to change that any time soon. So I think it's pretty clear that many competitive games have died or are not as active as they could be because they have not been paid enough attention by their developers. And it's not like they're doing that without getting any reward, because having a game that is constantly improving will encourage more and more players to buy the game.
There is no definite solution to the monetary problem though. Many MMOGs will die because players can't afford to play more than one. Is there a definite competitive scene that will always stick to their guns? Will players get bored of MMOGs and start playing competitively? While the answers to these questions are tricky, one thing is sure: Competitive gaming needs dedication, and if you got that, the rest will work out.
