That’s a good point, it would make sense that the League MMO would be very PVP orientated.
Yeah, even Blizzard had one fall over for them.
Thanks for the info, and I’ll definately watch the news on it with interest.
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I think Blizzard (probably Activision) is actually super clever to work this hard on a online survival game, there’s a big market for it, and lots of games, but they’re not up to Blizzard quality, just in case Riot decides to blow up the traditional MMO market then Blizzard has a different avenue for potential revenue.
Instead of dumping millions and millions in resources and industry heavyweights on good old World of Warcraft to try and pump it up in a bloody high risk battle with Riot, rather just sidestep a massive confrontation and expand to slightly different online gaming markets with new tech and fresh ideas from your top people.
From what I glance their focus have shifted to mobile games.
They’re not chasing innovation anymore, just easy money.
Wouldn’t hurt it at all. The more players an MMO draws to the genre the better. When one does well, the others learn from it. So tbh it’s the best thing that could happen to WoW.
Maybe, but they’ve got a lot of seriously high qualified people grinding away on that survival title, believe me.
Not sure if it’s too far out but I think I read somewhere Riot would be aiming at 2026, and Blizzard would likely want to target a launch of the survival game at the same time or extremely close to at least marginally disrupt (Not really the same genre but distributive regardless) and alleviate pressure from WOW.
That can really backfire on them though. PVP focused RPG style MMOs don’t tend to do that well. It usually ends up like PVP servers did here with one side/class/etc dominating and the game just fizzles out.
Plus afaik we still don’t know if it will even be based on League, or some new IP.
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You make a good point, I mean, their big success is an existing online PVP game, why would they launch something competing for their own space. I kinda buy your idea that it might not even be LOL related, maybe loosely tied to the universe, as they seem to want to grow it with shows etc.
My takeaway is, Blizzard is 100% capable of taking on Riot in a fight to the death, they’d have to freeze any side projects, onboard literally everyone to WOW, and cancel weekends for the next three years, but the cost and risk involved would be too enormous to really justify.
It’s more comfortable for them to just keep expanding markets instead of going all-in in an MMO market that honestly isn’t as crazy hot as it used to be.
Of course, if (?!) Microsoft takes over Activision, things could get really hilarious really fast, there’s always a bigger fish than Riot. You can bet the guys up in Microsoft loooove Warcraft and Starcraft, I’ve seen them talk, they completely nerd out over Blizzard’s old PC IPs, so there might be a situation where someone straps a nuclear powered resource rocket pack to Blizzard’s back and says “Go get em, son!”. Then the tables suddenly turn completely and Riot are the ones who will question competing for marketshare.
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Near two decades of people proclaiming something will kill WoW.
You can’t help yourselves huh?
If you think about it, it’s amazing how that Microsoft deal could turn this entire conversation on its head, a real wildcard. Mike Ybarra (Blizzard CEO) is an oldschool ex-Microsoft guy, I’m sure he’s waiting in anticipation for this thing to go through, I’m sure they’ve got some crazy exciting plans.
It’s either the best time to be a Blizzard fan or the worst, depending certain outcomes.
He gets a lot of typical CEO flak but Blizzard is in very good hands, he just needs Microsoft’s funny money, the only CEO I know (in this space) you could talk to RIGHT NOW about issues etc. Guy is amazing and he really freaking loves Warcraft.
Not anymore since Ghostcrawler just left
I think it’ll be the game that makes blizzard open a new mmo ip. Not a killer, but it’ll hurt.
That’s the thing, I don’t think we can really look at the MMO market the same way that we used to. Over the last decade the definition of what an MMO is has drastically changed. Destiny 2 is considered an MMO but to think that Destiny 2 and WoW compete in the same market or apeal to the same people is silly.
Eve is another example it’s an MMO but I’d classify it more as an MMO Sim, than an MMO RPG. The people who hardcore play it would likely laugh at you if you said WoW was a threat to Eve.
There’s no reason to think that Blizz and Riot will even be competing in the same space depending on what sort of direction Riot goes in.
Pkus like I said earlier, the bulk of WoW’s playerbase is people who play WoW because it’s what they play. Their invested abd it’s what is familiar. Riot could come out with a very similar playing MMO RPG and be extremely successful, growing to 10 times the size if WoW but I doubt it would have much of an impact on WoW’s numbers. It would be a bigger draw for new MMO players and old WoW pkayers that moved on from WoW.
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Is Warhammer Online a threat to WoW?
Is Rift a threat to WoW?
Is SWTOR a threat to WoW?
Is Hellgate London a threat to WoW?
Is FF14 a threat to WoW?
And now today in 2023, we have the OP unironically asking “Is <insert new MMO here> a threat to WoW?”
You’re right, the MMO sphere seems “settled in”, like no more insane explosions, perhaps Riot could explode an MMO upon the market, maaaaaybe.
If Microsoft’s deal goes through and Blizzard gets infinite funding I’d have less of an apatite to compete for the share, especially if my expectations is to make Billions each year, that’ll be hard, even for Riot.
Ironically, all of those titles added something to WOW. They were not a threat to WOW but thanks to them We had new/improved features copied/inspired added to WOW. In a sense, they were good for WOW playerbase. That is why competition good for.
Also, if anyone truly thinks that some other MMOs did not steal some subs from WOW would be kidding themselves.
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Sure they stole some subs, but not a single MMO in all of WoW’s lifespan has been a threat to WoW itself.
The only MMO that’s been a threat to WoW is WoW.
Yeah, Blizzard absolutely competes in the market, very much, you see it all the time when they take inspiration where others are successful, like you say, it’s a cool thing for players too because it’s all good ideas added to the game while keeping the game competitive in a pretty competitive market.
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To be fair, pretty much all of WoWs success was based on being the right game at the right time. If they released today it would be a hard flop lol.
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Well if they released it today it wouldn’t look anything like WOW, they’d adapt to the market, the fact that they could even stay this agile on a platform this old is a testament to the talent Blizzard has. That’s why I’m excited about the survival game, I want to see them do something from scratch, it’ll be interesting.