This morning, Activision Blizzard announced that its immensely popular MMO World of Warcraft had lost 600,000 subscribers in three months, bringing the number of people playing the game to its lowest figure since 2007. A cursory glance at our (vastly improved) comments reveals what you may expect; for the vast majority of people, this is the death knell of the subscription MMO. At long last Goliath has been brought to his knees, and it’s only a matter of time before he collapses completely.
Personally, I’m not sure this is the case. World of Warcraft remains the most successful MMO in existence and Blizzard is already rolling with the punches when it comes to figuring out how to make up the difference in lost revenue. As for the genre itself? Well, it’s never looked healthier. A whole host of next-gen titles, from Ubisoft’s The Division to Bungie’s Destiny, look set to heavily incorporate MMO aspects, even if they shy away from standing up and being counted as MMOs. But in the more immediate future, there’s one title that looks set to make a play for many of those who’ve fallen out of love with Azeroth.
Enter WildStar. It’s no secret that Carbine’s upcoming MMO shares a lot of traits with the World of Warcraft of our rose-tinted rememberance, like 40-man raids, a comfortably familiar cartoonish aesthetic and a safe respect for the holy trinity of tank, healer and damage dealer. When I recently sat down with MMO veteran and executive producer Jeremy Gaffney, he spoke to me at length about why he’s confident that MMOs still have great things ahead of them, and why the continuing decline in Warcraft’s subscriber numbers is nothing more than anecdotal evidence of a genre in trouble.
There’s something like 10 million people who have played WoW in the past, and in the Western market there’s 2 or 3 million that are currently playing it. The genre is far from dead just based on that one game alone.
“I think it has everything necessary to be succeeding right now and I think it’s not succeeding right now," he says of WoW. "The reason I say that is this: you look at the games that have come out in the last three years, and there’s a high amount of interest. Even some games that I would argue were kinda incomplete coming out the door sold a million, a million and a half boxes. Some have sold three and a half million boxes, but they’ve had a hard time with retention. What this means is that interest in the genre is high – people want to play another MMO.
“Every month WoW churns out somewhere between 5% and 7% of their subscribers and they reacquire or acquire another 4% to 8%. So that’s why the numbers have been sort of steady or occasionally a bit of decline for a while. What that means is that the market is seeded with people who’ve played MMOs before. There’s something like 10 million people who have played WoW in the past, and in the Western market there’s 2 or 3 million that are currently playing it. The genre is far from dead just based on that one game alone.”
So are WildStar's skin-deep similarities to WoW an attempt to secure victory over the likes of Final Fantasy XIV and The Elder Scrolls Online by coaxing in Blizzard’s nostalgia-addled cast-offs? According to Gaffney, this isn’t the plan at all. In fact, it’s Carbine’s attempt to insure that the genre is moved forward while having a healthy respect for its heritage.
“We’re not trying to copy vanilla WoW, but I do think there are elements in a newly launched title that are a lot different than they ought to be in an 'everybody’s got max level characters, all about convenience' game,” he asserts. “We’re not trying to be crafty in terms of trying to hit all the disillusioned people from the past on that one. But, there’s an arc that games take; the things that you want to do in a game that’s brand fresh and new are very different from those in a game that’s ten years old. Some of that is exploration; there aren’t many aspects of exploration in a game that you’ve been playing for a long, long time, but there are in a new one. So maybe it makes sense to go find all the dungeon entrances for the first time and have to explore the world to find them all before you get into the ease of a straight-up group finder situation.
If our game has a good engine of taking casual players and converting them into hardcore players over time, then we win. So if you can do that arc well, and you know WoW did a very decent job of that arc back in the day, then I think you can win.
“Over time, what happens is you round off the rough edges and you add in convenience. But some babies get left in the bath water with that convenience – sometimes it shaves off actual fun gameplay. So in a vanilla game that’s launching for the first time, you want more of those rough edges and exploration. Over time, you carve it out and make it easier. I think there are a lot of people who want a challenging experience actually and I think that does get sacrificed at the altar of convenience.”
As he rightly surmises, the idea of pitching a new MMO at disenfranchised-WoW players is unlikely to end well. Most recovering MMO addicts (myself included) have a certain degree of resentment towards the genre that stole so many of our formative gaming hours, so are understandably cautious about buying into the hype and picking up the next one. But this is exactly the market that so many of the recent sub-turned-F2P titles have unsuccessfully tried to mine; what WildStar is keen to do, therefore, is be welcoming to genre-newcomers and train them about what makes an MMO done right so special.
“One thing we want to do is make sure levelling is fun and easy, but then the Elder Game is fricking hard,” he shares. “It’s for the elite and not every person should be able to do it. If our game has a good engine of taking casual players and converting them into hardcore players over time, then we win. So if you can do that arc well, and you know WoW did a very decent job of that arc back in the day, then I think you can win.
“Our trick for that is to add telegraphs to combat. Raid bosses in many other games will mark a circle on the ground to show where bad things will happen, and you have to move before it’s cast. Well, we introduce that at level three, then we just build on it. People will argue that telegraphs are easy-mode or we’re showing too much. No! It gives you a language, a visual language that you can use to make your combat all the more complex. Once you’ve established that, then you can have things like knockbacks and huge walls of fire you need to avoid. And it’s communication; if you’re communicating on the ground with what spell you want to cast, it unlocks a wealth of combos for me.
“Normally that’s high-level sh** in past games, but because we made it visually easy to understand, people new to the genre will get it fast and people who are familiar with the genre will now have a load of building blocks to build on really quickly.”
It’s kinda about listening. It’s kinda tough to screw it up if you listen to what people want.
The name of the game here, once again, is retention. Getting people through the door is easy enough, but if you can train them to feel empowered through your MMO then you’ve got that much more of a chance of succeeding in the long-run. But to keep people playing your game, you need more than just a great design philosophy, you need content. Lots of it, regularly updated. Too many developers underestimate the locust-like potential of freshly-formed MMO communities in the weeks after a game’s launch. Has Carbine learnt from others’ mistakes?
“We don’t just have our first month, but something like our first year laid out in terms of schedule,” Gaffney admits. “But some of that’s reserved for what the players want. We may even let them vote on it too. Do you want a new raid, a new dungeon, or a new solo area? Because it’s kinda about listening. It’s kinda tough to screw it up if you listen to what people want, and you run the data to make sure what they say they want is actually what they’re doing in the game as well!”
It’s been a trying time for many of us MMO fans lately, and this morning’s news can certainly be viewed as the herald of doom and gloom. Personally, though, I think this is an opportunity for the genre to pick itself and move forwards, and it seems that Carbine shares this view. With the pricing model for WildStar still not announced, it’s clear the team isn’t about to squander this moment.
One thing’s for certain though; there are a lot of lost MMO souls out there, still actively looking for a place to call home. With a whole host of options on the horizon, it’s entirely possible that there’ll be something for even the most niche of tastes before too long. As Winston Churchill once said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Fingers crossed.
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor and longtime MMO player. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.
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