Soap bubbles in the mmog world

World of Warcraft once changed the PC gaming landscape. Several developers have now plunged into the mmog market to get their share, but those projects are usually not successful.

2008 was a good gaming year, but according to some, 2009 is still over. It won’t be the offer of titles – the games will tumble over each other again – but the question is of course which games will actually come out this year and which will ‘slip’ into 2010. A developer that releases games that you never know is Blizzard. Some game media are reporting ‘up to two top titles in 2009 from Blizzard’, referring to StarCraft II and Diablo III. Whoever believes that I will help this one out of the dream. Diablo III is definitely not coming out this year and the release of StarCraft II is anything but certain. As long as the public beta of that title has still not started, I don’t dare to put my hands in the fire. And why would Blizzard rush its games? World of WarCraft brings in a ridiculous amount of money every month.

Yes, there we have it again; World of War Craft. This magnum opus from Blizzard has drastically changed the PC gaming landscape. Mmogs would become the new pot of gold and developers poured themselves into the new genre en masse. Many studios thought they could get their share. Everyone wanted to piggyback on the success of mmo games, but now there are few titles that can keep their heads above water. One after the other sinks through the ice. Games with a lot of potential, but no one playing them, games that are too buggy for words, games that fail to deliver on their promises, games without endgame content and games with a dramatic combination of all these factors together. And meanwhile, the number of WoW players is steadily growing.

Let’s take a look at some titles. Take Warhammer Online. Introduced with great fanfare, but before launch the developer had to take back many promises. The number of cities was drastically reduced, while Sieges had to become the showpiece of the game. Leveling was quite boring and the game had too little end-game content. The game is still played by a few hundred thousand people, but this had to be the new Dark Age of Camelot and the game didn’t become that.

Age of Conan then. The game was simply unfinished when it was released. The game was very buggy, the classes were not well balanced and instances were not finished. There are too few quests and the announced Xbox 360 version will never come again. What a disappointment!

Hellgate London? The great Bill Roper – ex-Blizzard – fell through the ice because the game didn’t quite know what it wanted to be. A fantasy shooter? An RPG with mmog influences? An mmo title with shooter aspects? The technical problems and problems with servers didn’t do the game any good. Developer Flagship Studios has since closed its doors.

The biggest turd in mmog, however, came from the great Richard ‘Ultima Online’ Garriot. The man had six years, $100 million in budget, and yet he delivered a stripped-down mmog that changed course about ten times during development. The promised ‘revolutionary’ shooter controls eventually felt way too stiff, Garriot stepped up and the rest is history.

For 2009 and 2010 there are again a lot of mmog’s in the pipeline. From a Star Trek mmog to Jumpgate Evolution, from Darkfall to Guild Wars 2. I wonder how many of those titles go down again. And meanwhile, Blizzard is quietly working on its third add-on for WoW…