The iPhone of MMOs.
For it to keep climbing over the course of 4 years till it reached its 12 million peak, and then sustain that peak for 2 more years after, that’s extremely impressive. That’s not mere hype over the Warcraft IP. We could attribute some of the initial vanilla numbers to hype, but not 12 million 4 years later. It’s the gameplay that, over the years, made players come in, enjoy, bring their friends, and just keep playing getting a consistent flow of rising subs.
No. The MMO industry is built on the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons, published in 1974.
The first Wizardry, written in Apple Pascal, came out in 1981. The first Ultima also came out in 1981. Might and Magic came out in 1986 and was ported to NES in 1990 in Japan and North America in 92.
The original Bard’s Tale was released in 1985 on Apple II and the Commodore 64.
The first Final Fantasy game was released in 1987.
Dungeons and Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun was released on Sega Geneis in 1992 but wasn’t considered real competition for other existing RPGs.
The RTS Warcraft Orcs and Humans came out in 1994. Command and Conquer was released in 1995.
Ultima Online, the first true MMORPG came out in 1997. The first Everquest came out in 1999. Star Wars Galaxies came out in 2003. And World of Warcraft was in 2004.
Blizzard built on years worth of console RPGs and the notorious Sony Online Entertainment’s habit of making changes to games (EQ, SWG) that drove players away. Final Fantasy games finally caught up in 2017, with Square Enix’s announcment that “…the launch of new expansion Stormblood had helped drive Final Fantasy XIV’s player base to over 10m, encompassing both free users and subscribers…”.
Overall I’d say Blizzard should thank Sony’s incompetence, which continues to this day with the Spider Man controversy, and Final Fantasy taking their time developing a MMO and instead cranking out an endless stream of console RPGs, for their MMO’s success.
MMO’s have a certain momentum that carry them forward a lot longer than you might think. WoW’s momentum came from it’s community, not the game play, and 12 million people build up a lot of momentum.
So I think we will just have to agree to disagree.
WoW did not “carry the industry on its shoulders”. It mercilessly curb-stomped any competitor that tried to be the “Next WoW-killer”.
It did that by having generally reliable servers and content, generally seamless gameplay (no zoning), and constant content updates. And a story you could get into.
Things may have changed now, but back then, it was top of the game because of reliabilty, in many aspects.
Any chance you also remember RDI and Star’s end bar free form role playing?
Sony/Verant of Everquest was nice enough to give us a cheap monthly subscription. Even if they under bided themselves not realizing people would pay more.
Better than the previous decades hourly rates.
edit. I know Ultima Online had similar sub price. I just started with EQ.
They sound familar, though I don’t remember having any experience with them. Options for internet and games were limited where I lived back then.
You probably also think that Apple invented the smartphone.
Here’s my take on how WoW became The Rolling Stones of MMORPGs:
TL;DR: wow had a couple things going for it, most importantly:
- Warcraft franchise
- MMORPGs were growing
- Great marketing
The problem is that wow isn’t really a rpg right now. It’s more like a mmo action game. Legion had way more character lore and rpg elements compared to any other expansion.
Wildstar’s failure has basically nothing to do with expectations being set too high.
It’s failing was that it was trying to cater to a more “hardcore” audience, playing off the way many people feel WoW has shifted to cater to the lowest common denominator of the unwashed masses.
Turns out, most gamers aren’t “hardcore”. Wildstar had nothing meaningful to do at endgame for the majority of the MMO market. You couldn’t even run proper dungeons because of the medal system. Elitists ruled it and casuals quit a couple months in.
They made a lot of good changes to help the casual crowd, but all of them came far too late, the damage was already done, and so the game slowly died.
It was also competing with WoW for the raiding market, and Raiding is the one thing WoW always does well, despite being an otherwise very casual-friendly game. Even in BfA, it’s not the raids themselves that have issues.