OSCAR COOPER
"An online experience can be a daunting thing to some people. We want to break the ice, give you grounding, and let you know where you are at all times, and we've incorporated a lot of easy to understand features in our interface to allow you to do this." - Mark Kern,
This article is an overview of the success and history of Blizzard entertainment, and it also takes a closer look at Blizzard’s cash cow- World of Warcraft. This piece largely addresses the evolution of the game and why it is still the most dominant and successful MMORPG to date.Blizzard Entertainment has come a long way from its humble beginnings in California. The company, originally called Silicon and Synapse, was founded by Allen Adham, Frank Pearce, and Mike Morhaime. The first title which the company released was a game developed for the Super Nintendo back in 1992 called RPM racing, short for “radical psycho machine racing”. The production of two other games Rock & Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings followed in the next year.In I994, after going through a name revamp, the old Silicon and Synapse finally settled on Blizzard, a name that now carries an impeccable reputation. This was also the year that Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans, a game that was starting to gain recognition. Though, it was really the award winning success of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness that gained the company quite a cult following. Blizzard later attained another level of success with the release of Diablo and Starcraft. This innovative, relatively new company brought an edge to their games by bringing them online using third party clients (soon to be known as Battle.net), having this online aspect extended the “shelf life” of their products.Despite their successes, Blizzard had a few projects that never made it to completion such as the adventure/point and click game Warcraft Adventures, and StarCraft: Ghost- a stealth-action shooter intended to be released on consoles . Unfortunately, both games were plagued by bugs and delays, and had become outdated as the games approached their release dates.The incomplete projects ended up being scrapped last minute by the company so that they could focus their energy elsewhere. This is ultimately a testament of blizzard’s desire to achieve a high standard of quality from their products.
In 2001 Blizzard revealed that they were going to do something a little different to that of their previous games, Blizzard was going to try their hand in the MMORPG market, which the game EverQuest had been currently dominating.After a four year delay, World of Warcraft was released in 2004 and got a very positive reaction, it was a huge hit! Through word of mouth, game copies were flying off the shelves, prompting the need to open up more servers in order to handle the influx of new players. For its time, the game wasn’t necessarily innovative, but it definitely brought something new to the table. The questing and leveling was short and sweet, and the penalty of death wasn’t as harsh compared to other MMOs on the market. These key elements are what gave WoW more mainstream appeal. While still having content to satisfy the hardcore gamer, wow made it possible for the casual player to still feel like they too could accomplish things in the game without having to invest too many hours."An online experience can be a daunting thing to some people. We want to break the ice, give you grounding, and let you know where you are at all times, and we've incorporated a lot of easy to understand features in our interface to allow you to do this." - Mark Kern, Producer.Blizzard like any online game took basic ideas from other mmos, but there were many things that set it apart from the rest.Other than just producing a pleasant and easy- to -play -game, WoW gave players a feeling of immersion into a real online world. Even back in vanilla the world of Azeroth was huge! With two huge continents to explore, the places characters could level felt endless, it also gave players of the previous warcraft games a chance to explore and relive the lore and places they had already seen in the previous games. Its vast open world and minimal loading screens gave players a sense of discovery as they wandered about the world.If players ever got bored with end game it didn’t seem as tedious to start a second character. Due to the freedom of choosing from both Alliance and horde, leveling a second character gave players the chance to level in areas they didn’t manage to visit the first time round.While the game certainly wasn’t bug free, there was no denying that Blizzard Entertainment presented a rather polished game upon release, and continued to provide more content shortly after- such as WoW’s first raid: Molten Core, which was then followed by Blackwing Lair and Temple of Ahn'Qiraj.
WoW uses game mechanics known as the “holy trinity” which revolves around a Healer, Tank, and DPS working together to accomplish a goal set in the game. This gives the player a sense of importance; that their team needs them and the role they play.There are many new mmorpgs out there that have tried to take a different route from the holy trinity, and have done so relatively successfully; games such as Guild Wars 2. Although, it is arguable that the holy trinity still seems to be the most favored game model among most mmorpg players.The graphics of the game are cartoony which has let it age gracefully through the years. Whether or not this was the intention of Blizzard, it ended up allowing gamers with even the most outdated computers run the game smoothly, resulting in it reaching a much wider audience than higher graphic games.WoW didn’t just feed a small niche of the gaming market like most MMOs do; it converted people who didn’t necessarily even know what a mmo was into die hard addicts.WoW has evolved tremendously since Vanilla, aside from all the expansions giving players higher level caps and more continents/terrain to explore The Burning crusade expansion brought two new races and the ability to fly using flying mounts. Wrath of the Lich King gave us the death knight class and in Cataclysim two more races joined the game. The Azeroth of old was no more due to a dragon destroying the lands we once knew so well, giving players a new world to level in once again. With the most recent expansion, Mists of Pandaria, players were finally given their beloved panda race and the new monk class that can perform all three roles, tank/dps/healer, through spec’ing.The class system also has another feature that has changed throughout the expansions, pre Mists of Pandaria players had to choose going down three different talent trees which allowed classes to specialize into something like tanking, healing, or dps - And in certain cases, such as the warlock, three different dps trees. This allowed players to experiment with different builds, even creating hybrids by investing points in two different trees! While this was awesome, it did cause some issues balancing classes in pvp.With the release of Mists of Pandaria “talent trees” were no more. There are still specializations for example, if you choose the priest you can still specialize into Shadow, discipline, or holy. Players of the same specialization all have the same set of core abilities, but no matter what specialization is chosen for a class, each specialization from that class get to pick and choose six talents from a shared list 18 different abilities at level 90, which allows the player to make their specs a little more unique.Even if players cancel their subscriptions, the expansions have always brought something juicy enough to make “ex” players come back for more, or at least check the game out “one last time.”One thing that can also make players feel obligated to keep coming back to their online world is the social psychology behind online games. Guilds work like an online family, players are expected to be online at certain times to raid/pvp with their guild mates, and if they don’t show up, it can seem like they are letting the team down. While it is not the case for everyone, true friendships really can be developed over games (let’s hope not only in games), and it holds even truer in online games where social skills are required.Raiding in WoW also has its charms, players work with their guild/pugs (pick up group) to complete raid dungeons, since it’s not a single player game people don’t withhold secrets, to withhold tips and information could ultimately be your teams downfall in a game where communication is key. Strategies are discovered and fine-tuned as the raid team progresses weekly, till ultimately the raid dungeon is on farm mode.PVP (player versus player) in wow is another source of endless entertainment, who doesn’t like “ganking” lowbies in Stranglethorn? If that isn’t your cup of tea, there is a huge choice of different strategy battlegrounds/rated battlegrounds, 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 arenas, and other world pvp.
Though PVP in wow isn’t always considered the most balanced, there are constant changes to classes in new expansions, as well as frequent patches. Some classes get buffed/nerfed for pve but then it doesn’t correlate well in pvp and ends up being unbalanced, which is why wow suffers from “flavor of the month” syndrome with each major patch.Despite this arguable issue, PVP is still really fun, classes feel unique and have individual ways of surviving and using crowd control, thus having more diversity in play style compared to some other games. Throughout the years, the people of Azeroth have seen some iconic events, from the Horde and Alliance working together (most of the time) to open the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, to the deadly virus that escaped from Zul'Gurub in 2005. There was even a super killer virus which affected player’s characters, which was believed to be the work of hackers who had the intent of playing a prank- the hack went viral causing server-wide deaths on the 7th of October 2012. Whether these events were intentional or not they are just little moments in time that players can look back on and reminisce about, ‘the good old days’.Despite what I personally like or dislike about World of Warcraft I will always have fond memories of the game, like in Molten Core (Vanilla) on the Baron Geddon boss fight where he would turn members of the raid into human bombs. It was one of the first boss fights in the game where players were required to use their brains, and as you can imagine in a 40 man raid not everyone is doing so. Ill also never forget how Goldshire on my server had become known as the local brothel for creepos and teenage adolescents, these are memories that I wont forget.Some MMO fans claim that the game has been “dumbed down”/simplified over the years, whether or not this is true it still hasn’t affected Blizzard’s hold on the market even today. It still appeals to many different types of players, from the solo guy that likes to do his own thing, to the daily raider or casual pvp’er; there is still something to satisfy everyone.People are always going to compare WoW to new games, because that’s what people do, we nag about greener pastures. What keeps Warcraft still thriving among newer games is content. Some games will look prettier but Wow has incomparable hours of content and entertainment that will always give it an edge in the market today.Though ultimately one day WoW will be dethroned, there is no doubt of that, but when is uncertain. The question is: do people want something different than the old school model which warcraft and most MMOs use? Or do people need familiarity? There have been a few new games as of late that have used a similar model to that of wow, but don’t even come close to comparing in success. What are other games lacking? I don’t think it will take an extremely different or innovative game to rise to the status of WoW, I generally don’t think the majority of MMOers want different game mechanics to be the future of MMORPGS. People like what they already know, and as they say ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.’ As cliché as it sounds one thing a new MMO needs to bring to the table upon release is an extremely well thought out and intricate storyline, one that really gets the player hooked like a good book.Obviously storyline alone will not make a mmo a successful game, since I personally don’t think WoW has one of the most creative storylines out there but there it is at number one. I think this is one element that is usually overlooked or something that comes secondary when developing a MMO, as I have witnessed too many games that clearly underestimated the importance of story. The second important aspect which comes after a storyline is content upon release. Players in today’s world want instant gratification; we expect the utmost level of perfection because any new online game will always be compared to WoW. Even if wow didn’t have a fully complete game on its release, people were less spoilt because there was less competition in the market. These conditions could have led to Warcraft’s success, but it was most likely a number of key factors that ultimately put Blizzard in the position they are today, and since then the bar has been set.
Carla