A few months ago the new World of Warcraft expansion was released and I have to say at first I was a true fan. Levelling was more fun than ever, the quests were superb and the new continent looked gorgeous.
But WoW being what it is, you reach end level pretty fast and then it's back to level 80 5-mans and raid dungeons. And that's where the honeymoon ended for me. The normal dungeons are incredibily easy, I did all of them on heroic first before I even touched the normal versions, mostly to help out guildies. The raid dungeons aren't particularly hard either, and the content is a little light to say the least. One recycled multi-boss raid instances and two single boss encounters is not enough for an expansion really. This all leaded to my guild clearing all content after little more than a month and now we're pretty much twiddling our thumbs. There are some achievements yet to do, but they aren't enough and really can't replace fresh new content.
With all the content being so easy and the extra polish for the levelling content over the end game content, it got me thinking that Blizzard is more and more aiming at the casual crowd over the more hardcore players. And I have to admit, it makes economic sense. The hardcore consume content a lot faster, while the casuals take a lot longer. Both pay the same amount per month to play, so the casuals are a lot more profitable.
Of course development for Wrath of the Lich King started way before there was even talk of the current economic crisis, so what's the connection? Well, it sets an example. Let's take a look at Activision Blizzard's biggest competitor, Electronic Arts. Yesterday, they posted their profits for the last quarter of 2008, which included the very profitable Christmas season. Well, a lot of bad news for them, as they posted a loss, worse than expected income and as a result more job cuts than they had previously announced which of course means less games being developed. They are also going to concentrate more on the Nintendo Wii console.
Now this is interesting. The Wii, while being the most popular console on the market, is also widely known as the console of choice for the casual player, as it's technical performance is inferior to the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3. Its game library also includes far more "casual" games such as games specifically aimed at small children, girls and older adults, groups that are traditionally not part of the hardcore crowd.
So it looks like that, with the economic recession in full swing now, the big gaming companies are now turning to this new group of casual players, groups of people that aren't part of the traditional target audience for games, to keep them afloat during these hard times. So personally, I expect to see more Mario Party and less Doom and Quake, more Zul'Aman and less Sunwell Plateau in the future.
Thursday 5 February 2009
Thursday 6 November 2008
WAR is not the WoW killer
Well, most of you will have known this already, but yesterday Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard Entertainment confirmed what we suspected: World of Warcraft lost a number of subscribers due to the launch of Warhammer Online, but already players who canceled their subscription are flocking back to WoW
"To date, 68% of the players who listed Age of Conan as their reason for cancellation and 46% of the players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft."(source)
Almost half of the players who left WoW, returned less than 1.5 months after Warhammer Online has been released. Quite interesting.
Now, apparently Warhammer is still doing well, with the one million active subscribers mark close on the horizon. This can only mean that Warhammer is either gaining a lot of subscribers from other games, or that it's actually expanding the market. But it's not the World of Warcraft killer some people thought or hoped it would be.
"To date, 68% of the players who listed Age of Conan as their reason for cancellation and 46% of the players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft."(source)
Almost half of the players who left WoW, returned less than 1.5 months after Warhammer Online has been released. Quite interesting.
Now, apparently Warhammer is still doing well, with the one million active subscribers mark close on the horizon. This can only mean that Warhammer is either gaining a lot of subscribers from other games, or that it's actually expanding the market. But it's not the World of Warcraft killer some people thought or hoped it would be.
Tuesday 21 October 2008
Warhammer Online redux
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was released last month and I feel I've now had a fair period of time to play the game. But to be fair, it seems that the game world itself is really empty. You very rarely meet people in the open, which makes it very hard to get a couple of people together for a Public Quest.
Apparently everyone is hiding in the so-called Scenarios, WAR's version of WoW battlegrounds. And it seems they are there for a reason: leveling in scenarios is a lot quicker than regular WoW-style questing. Which is a shame, because it's obvious that Mythic spent a lot of time polishing the outside world and dedicating a lot of time coming up with a good story for the many many quests, public and otherwise, in the game.
For the moment it seems I'm just playing a glorified version of Guild Wars. I'm sure most of you who actually play the game would excuse for thinking Tobold's post about WAR Light was real at first.
Anyway, the scenarios themselves are fun enough for a while. But unfortunately it seems that there's always one scenario at each tier that pops all the time, while the other two get played very rarely. So it does get boring after an hour or two.
I hope Mythic can address these issues, because there are a lot of nice features in the game and it shows a lot of promise. I'd hate for it to go down the same way as Age of Conan.
Apparently everyone is hiding in the so-called Scenarios, WAR's version of WoW battlegrounds. And it seems they are there for a reason: leveling in scenarios is a lot quicker than regular WoW-style questing. Which is a shame, because it's obvious that Mythic spent a lot of time polishing the outside world and dedicating a lot of time coming up with a good story for the many many quests, public and otherwise, in the game.
For the moment it seems I'm just playing a glorified version of Guild Wars. I'm sure most of you who actually play the game would excuse for thinking Tobold's post about WAR Light was real at first.
Anyway, the scenarios themselves are fun enough for a while. But unfortunately it seems that there's always one scenario at each tier that pops all the time, while the other two get played very rarely. So it does get boring after an hour or two.
I hope Mythic can address these issues, because there are a lot of nice features in the game and it shows a lot of promise. I'd hate for it to go down the same way as Age of Conan.
WoW patch 3.02 love
Preparation for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion has began for real now, with the arrival of patch 3.02 on the live servers. While I'm mostly joining my fellow warlocks in crying over the changes which hit the class quite hard, at least the patch brought something I really enjoy: achievements.
In an earlier post, I already commented that this new system would probably feed my OCD, and I was right. I especially enjoyed completing my "Classic Raider" achievement. Revisiting old instances is always nice, as long as it's a one-off. And for me personally, it was the first time I ever got past The Prophet Skeram in AQ40 and the first time I killed Nefarian. Nostalgia was never this good.
And of course completing achievements is a nice way of killing some time when you got nothing better to do. Obviously it's not going to last very long. I'm already running out of "easily achievable" achievements, but I'm having fun while it lasts.
In an earlier post, I already commented that this new system would probably feed my OCD, and I was right. I especially enjoyed completing my "Classic Raider" achievement. Revisiting old instances is always nice, as long as it's a one-off. And for me personally, it was the first time I ever got past The Prophet Skeram in AQ40 and the first time I killed Nefarian. Nostalgia was never this good.
And of course completing achievements is a nice way of killing some time when you got nothing better to do. Obviously it's not going to last very long. I'm already running out of "easily achievable" achievements, but I'm having fun while it lasts.
Wednesday 6 August 2008
Will Age of Conan's failure influence Warhammer Online sales?
Failure is relative of course, but according to Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, 40% of the people that left WoW for AoC, returned later on. As some people have remarked, if the president of Blizzard mentions it, it must have meant that they lost a significant amount of subscribers to Age of Conan. Which means there's a market out there for a good title. And Warhammer Online could fill that hole.
But, 40% of the leavers returned, which means those people gave something else a try, didn't like it and came back to WoW. Will this impact sales of the next new title to come along? After all, they're leaving a perfectly stable game without too many bugs, which, apparently, they still enjoy. Otherwise they wouldn't have come back. And chances are you won't really find what you're looking for in that new game either. Why take the risk, go through the whole "I'm a newbie" experience, waste time on the levelling grind again, and leave all your friends in WoW, if you already have a maxed out character and loads of friends in a game you still play with passion?
Well, some people enjoy levelling and exploring new stuff. My guess is those people would have tried Warhammer Online regardless, because it's new content. But end-game players that tried out AoC and came back, possibly won't be as inclined to give WAR a try after their AoC experience.
But, 40% of the leavers returned, which means those people gave something else a try, didn't like it and came back to WoW. Will this impact sales of the next new title to come along? After all, they're leaving a perfectly stable game without too many bugs, which, apparently, they still enjoy. Otherwise they wouldn't have come back. And chances are you won't really find what you're looking for in that new game either. Why take the risk, go through the whole "I'm a newbie" experience, waste time on the levelling grind again, and leave all your friends in WoW, if you already have a maxed out character and loads of friends in a game you still play with passion?
Well, some people enjoy levelling and exploring new stuff. My guess is those people would have tried Warhammer Online regardless, because it's new content. But end-game players that tried out AoC and came back, possibly won't be as inclined to give WAR a try after their AoC experience.
WoW Recruit a Friend program
Today's top headline on the World of Warcraft main page is their updated "Recruit a Friend" program. Previously, if you referred a friend, they started playing World of Warcraft and paid their first month's subscription fee, you would get 30 days free game time. The new program awards you with:
This new scheme limits the time you have to play apart from each other, and you can easily level up an alt in the process. If your friend gets ahead of your new alt, because you were raiding or whatever, he can easily allow you to catch up by awarding your character extra levels. Your friend will be level 70 in no time, at which point you can truely start playing together with your "mains". In the past, I've had a couple of friends who gave WoW a try. But the game was already mature at that point, I was max level and my friends got bored having to play alone most of the time and gave up. This is an excellent counter to that.
And of course the free zhevra mount will motivate existing players to actively start recruiting friends. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if a substantial number of these "friends who start playing" will be secondary accounts of existing players who are only after the exclusive mount. If people are willing to spend more than $200 on an in-game social pet, they won't think twice about shelling out for an extra account for two months so they can get their hands on a new mount.
- As it was previously, 30 days of free play time if your friend pays for 30 days game time.
- An exclusive zhevra in-game mount when your friend pays for 60 days of game time.
- If you and your friend are grouped together, you'll both earn triple experience.
- For every two levels your friend earns, he can grant one of your characters that's lower level than your friend's character, an extra level.
- You and your friend can summon each other once every hour.
This new scheme limits the time you have to play apart from each other, and you can easily level up an alt in the process. If your friend gets ahead of your new alt, because you were raiding or whatever, he can easily allow you to catch up by awarding your character extra levels. Your friend will be level 70 in no time, at which point you can truely start playing together with your "mains". In the past, I've had a couple of friends who gave WoW a try. But the game was already mature at that point, I was max level and my friends got bored having to play alone most of the time and gave up. This is an excellent counter to that.
And of course the free zhevra mount will motivate existing players to actively start recruiting friends. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if a substantial number of these "friends who start playing" will be secondary accounts of existing players who are only after the exclusive mount. If people are willing to spend more than $200 on an in-game social pet, they won't think twice about shelling out for an extra account for two months so they can get their hands on a new mount.
Sunday 3 August 2008
WotLK Beta - Built-in threat meters and more stable slots
This morning I had to download a new patch before I was able to log in to the beta. It wasn't too big, about 22.5MB in size, but it still contained a few things that'll make people excited.
The first highlight is the fact that stable masters now have an additional two slots, for a total of four slots for hunter pets. The first new slot costs 50 gold, the second 150g. I have a level 70 hunter myself, and personally, I think this is long overdue. I always suffered from not having enough pet storage room while levelling up, especially when training new pet skills. Currently you have to tame a certain beast in the wild before you can learn a spell. This means that you have to stable your regular pet if you want to get a new skill or the next rank of a skill for your companion.
Ironically enough, they're doing away with this system in the expansion, all skills are now learned via visiting an NPC trainer or via the new pet talent system. So I guess the extra stable room is actually a little less needed in the expansion than it is right now on live servers. Oh well… Better late than never I guess.
A second important addition in the patch was Blizzard's own "threat meters" system. There have been third party addons that measure the amount of threat you have on a mob for quite some time now, pretty much ever since certain bosses in Blackwing Lair, in pre-TBC WoW, made them a virtual necessity.
And now Blizzard is coming with their own implementation, but contrary to what they usually do when incorporating popular addon functionality, they went for a totally different approach. Instead of a separate window, showing a list of players with the most threat on a particular mob, they now only show each player how much threat only they themselves have, as a percentage. It's added to the combat text, so for each of the mobs you're fighting, you'll see these numbers popping up each time you do damage to them or if you heal someone or…
The problem with this is, it makes it very unreadable, and sometimes you don't know what your actual threat is, because the numbers keep popping up constantly. Especially when you have a lot of DoTs on the target, you see lots of numbers on screen at the same time (see screenshot). I don't know about the rest of you, but it sure confuses me.
A very different approach and certainly not what I was expecting. We'll see if it catches on, but for now I prefer the system the third party addons use.
The first highlight is the fact that stable masters now have an additional two slots, for a total of four slots for hunter pets. The first new slot costs 50 gold, the second 150g. I have a level 70 hunter myself, and personally, I think this is long overdue. I always suffered from not having enough pet storage room while levelling up, especially when training new pet skills. Currently you have to tame a certain beast in the wild before you can learn a spell. This means that you have to stable your regular pet if you want to get a new skill or the next rank of a skill for your companion.
Ironically enough, they're doing away with this system in the expansion, all skills are now learned via visiting an NPC trainer or via the new pet talent system. So I guess the extra stable room is actually a little less needed in the expansion than it is right now on live servers. Oh well… Better late than never I guess.
A second important addition in the patch was Blizzard's own "threat meters" system. There have been third party addons that measure the amount of threat you have on a mob for quite some time now, pretty much ever since certain bosses in Blackwing Lair, in pre-TBC WoW, made them a virtual necessity.
And now Blizzard is coming with their own implementation, but contrary to what they usually do when incorporating popular addon functionality, they went for a totally different approach. Instead of a separate window, showing a list of players with the most threat on a particular mob, they now only show each player how much threat only they themselves have, as a percentage. It's added to the combat text, so for each of the mobs you're fighting, you'll see these numbers popping up each time you do damage to them or if you heal someone or…
The problem with this is, it makes it very unreadable, and sometimes you don't know what your actual threat is, because the numbers keep popping up constantly. Especially when you have a lot of DoTs on the target, you see lots of numbers on screen at the same time (see screenshot). I don't know about the rest of you, but it sure confuses me.
A very different approach and certainly not what I was expecting. We'll see if it catches on, but for now I prefer the system the third party addons use.
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