People like to find something and blame it for anything that goes wrong, or that goes badly. If you do bad in school, you blame it on the teacher. If you forget something, you blame your parent's for not reminding you. And lately it seems that MMOG enthusiasts are the exact same way, blaming WoW on failures in the industry including dropped project. Recently the Marvel MMOG project was even shut down because they didn't think it would be successful with the P2P model they originally wanted it to have because of World of Warcraft, saying it dominated the industry and provided little room for other games in that model type. Now everyone is moving on to F2P models, trying to revolutionize those with new innovations. But has the vast success of World of Warcraft actually hurt the industry, or has it actually been a blessing in disguise?


    First off, most people are mis-led by the numbers. Having a friend who compiles MMOG information and analyzes it to see which models are most successful, and which games are most popular, I understand the numbers that are actually being compared. First off, most people gasp in amazement when they hear that WoW has a whopping 10 million subscribers. But unlike what you might think, that doesn't mean there's ten million players today. The game itself has been around since 2004, and has exploded ever since with millions of sales of the game. But that's what the 'subscriber' count is based on, the amount of people who have purchased the game. So if 5 million of those subscribers purchased the game, played for a month, hated it, and quit, they are still being counted as a subscriber today even if they haven't played since 2004.

    So despite the fact that you might think it's the most popular, games like Habbo Hotel also attract a number in the multi-millions. Runescape is also way up there, even though a lot of that is players with numerous characters on different accounts. Therefore, World of Warcraft may, or may not, have the most players on the game today. But whether that be true or not, it does still have the huge amount of sales/subscribers behind it. But does this success harm other games in the industry using the same model?

    I personally find it hard to believe that it harms the industry in that way. If you take a look at the figures, a lot of people will tell you that World of Warcraft contains such a huge population of gamers that the rest of the games in the industry can't possibly be as successful. But what they're forgetting is that the amount of people in the world that knew what a Massively Multiplayer Online Game was before 2004 was microscopic compared to the amount know, after the huge public achievements by World of Warcraft, including their numerous commercials and celebrity endorsements.

    So despite the fact that looking at the figures you would see that the majority of MMOG players from a couple years ago are around the amount of World of Warcraft players now, more then half of them are new to the industry. How can a game bringing in such huge amounts of gamers be bad to other games? If one booth at a convention is popular, it brings publicity to the convention, which in turn brings attention from the spectators to other booths, even if it's just briefly such as a glance. World of Warcraft has brought millions of people into the MMOG industry, and for the ones that broke away from the game, they've found a new home on the vast variety of other MMOGs out there to satisfy their need for online gaming.

    It's also sparked competition, causing other companies such as Nexon to get a piece of the action, releasing commercials to promote both Audition Online and Maplestory, bringing even more people to the industry. The success of WoW may have sucked-up the population in the industry at first, but the aftershock has given the industry a huge boost in population, causing every game to have more success then it would if World of Warcraft wasn't around. The thing is, numbers like 450,000 subscribers seem like a failure now-a-days, because of the huge amount World of Warcraft has. But in reality, compared to the figures back a phew years ago, that would have been the largest amount out of any MMOG, which probably would have been on Everquest 2.

    And today, 450,000 subscribers is low. Acclaim has several million between it's four titles, and Nexon has several million on Maplestory alone in North America. Comparing that to a phew years ago makes a huge difference then comparing it to other games now. It shows how much larger the industry actually is, so whether or not the success is as great as WoW's success, it's still a huge improvement over the past couple years.



    Alongside the growth of the industry caused by the World of Warcraft phenomenon, it  has also pushed other companies to fight back. This will actually favor gamers in the future. Instead of companies being able to release a clone of another game, or another typical Asian-import, they now release that these games don't stand a chance with games like World of Warcraft in the picture. They are starting to realize that in order to have more success, they need to be innovative and come up with new things, while improving on all the old stuff. Games like Age of Conan where the combat is completely revolutionized, and Darkfall where the entire world is your playground and you are free to do whatever you want, are perfect examples of companies that have caught on to this. They are striving to bring better products to the industry, to get more profit. This helps the gamers out because we no longer have to suffer with generic grindy games anymore.



    I don't see how World of Warcraft has hurt the industry at all. Any company that complains about the lack of room in the P2P model of MMOGs is just whining because they don't want to put in the work to give WoW a run for it's money, or in this case, subscribers. All they need to do is bring better quality products to the table. It shouldn't be all that hard considering WoW is starting to become more and more outdated, from graphics to gameplay. So perhaps these companies should stop whining and complaining, and actually do something more then creating a generic import game.

    World of Warcraft is the best thing that happened in the industry in a long time if you ask me!