History of MMO Games - Part III

History of MMO Games continue with part 3. In this part, we take a look at one of the giant MMO games: World of Warcraft. Millions of subscribers in 7 years since its release back in 2004, WoW continues to be the most played MMO game today.

“During a press conference today at the European Computer Trade Show, Blizzard Entertainment® unveiled World of Warcraft™, a massively multiplayer, online role-playing game set in the rich fiction of Blizzard's Warcraft universe. Featuring bold 3D graphics and deep, immersive gameplay, World of Warcraft will allow thousands of players to adventure together in this epic world and will provide them with a new, in-depth perspective on familiar lands, former battlefields, and heroes from the legendary universe. In addition, World of Warcraft will introduce new, uncharted territories and foes never before seen by followers of the series.

“World of Warcraft takes place four years following the aftermath of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos™, where a great tension has settled over the ravaged world of Azeroth. As the various races begin to rebuild their shattered kingdoms, new threats, both ancient and terrifying, have arisen to plague the world once again. Players must explore the lands of Azeroth, forge fellowships with other players, and build their strength in order to prevail.”

The above is an excerpt from the original World of Warcraft press release, posted out to press at the end of August 2001. This was after months of speculation on a product which Blizzard had told fans would be in an entirely new genre for the company, a statement which really had fans guessing.
The interesting thing about the press release is its focus on how the World of Warcraft title fits into the series as a whole. The PR people were focussing on their previous players, people who knew the history and the lore like the back of their hand; this was an issue that wouldn’t exist for long after release as more and more people joined.

Few people really saw the potential in an MMORPG based on the Warcraft world, putting their belief in Blizzard as a developer rather than in the product. The general consensus seemed to be that the announcement would be of Starcraft II, a game that they’d be waiting another nine years to see.
WoW was announced into a very competitive MMO market. We briefly mentioned Runescape in the last part and it remained, and remains, a major MMO player. In 2002 Final Fantasy XI reached the market. The first online outing for the popular RPG series, many long-time fans felt alienated by the sojourn online – for others it was an awakening, a realization as to what the genre held.

For others, perhaps, it was the call of a galaxy far, far away that brought them to the MMO. Released in 2003, Star Wars Galaxies offered players a brand new adventure within the timeline of the original movies, between Episodes IV and V. Naturally this was something of a big deal, with Gamespot asserting that it was the most highly anticipated MMO as of its release. But within the same review, they say that it shows no signs of offering anything new, Galaxies, at launch, did what so many other MMOs had done at that point and made the mistake of thinking that the Star Wars universe that it inhabited would be enough to make it stand out.

In all fairness, they were mostly right. Several reviews I’ve read from 2003 all read the same way: “there’s very little to do in Star Wars Galaxies, once you get past the fact its Star Wars, you’ll be bored. But, hey! It IS Star Wars.”

Meanwhile, Warcraft was coming along quite nicely. Blizzard had set goals right from the get go, Rob Pardo outlined the three major components to Azeroth in an interview with Gamespy.

“One, of course, was the adventuring aspect of the game, where you play against A.I.-controlled monsters and the environment with a group of friends. The second component is what we internally call the "World is Toy" aspect: making sure there are plenty of things to do in the world that are fun but that have nothing to do with character advancement. The third component is player-versus-player gameplay. All the games that Blizzard has released have always been competitive, and players look to us to provide that type of play. So we felt that had to be a core component of World of Warcraft.

With the released version of the game, I feel like the adventuring aspect is outstanding and the PvP aspect is already very fun. Once the battlegrounds and reward system are in, PvP will be great. Our "world as toy" goal will be accomplished mainly post-release through the addition of various world events.”
Blizzard were coming to the MMO party as a developer of largely single player adventures, and they were bringing with them a collective experience that could easily be applied to the multiplayer world. But it was something that hadn’t really happened before. While every MMO had quests and the like, World of Warcraft took that and ran with it.

It was at the end of 2004 that World of Warcraft was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. A year later it had totally revolutionized the way that people looked at the genre, with only a little shy of seven million subscribers to boot.

People took to the game so quickly that the game just couldn’t run as intended, as reported by gamesindustry.biz at the time:
“Massively multiplayer title World of Warcraft appears to have become a victim of its own success, with developer Blizzard forced to apologise as serious server problems continue to prevent many users from accessing the game.

As many as a quarter of the World of Warcraft servers for North America were reportedly down over the past weekend, following a day-long scheduled outage on Thursday which was meant to fix previous stability and overloading problems.

"Last Thursday they took down realm servers to 'fix' the problem," one angry player told GamesIndustry.biz. "I can say that this only made the game worse. Over the weekend the servers were crashing ever hour or so."

Many players also report being dropped out of games in progress - often wasting hours of time spent forming a party or accomplishing part of a quest - and long queues to actually join busy servers.”

But people kept coming back for more, Blizzard expanding their servers as quickly as they possibly could. World of Warcraft became perhaps the most influential MMO in history, far quicker than any other MMO had taken the mantle before it. But with that honour came both blessings for the industry, and curses.

Richard Garriot, creator of Ultima Online, put it better than anybody else while speaking with Next-gen.biz.
“World Of Warcraft has proven to be so powerful and dominant that people have just tried to replicate it, which I think is a mistake. You're never going to beat them, they're doing a fantastic job, they're well funded, they have great people and to just try to remake [WOW] in its own image but 'better' is a lost cause.”

World of Warcraft had succeeded in becoming a mass market MMO; kids on the street were playing it more than their console games, adults were skipping work in order to level and raid with their team. But with it any MMO that followed suffered, inevitably being compared to WoW or, worse, just being swallowed up in its shadow.

With more subscribers than ever before, the future of the MMO was bright – and WoW shaped. But it was just after the EU release of the game, in mid to late 2005,that the darker side of the genre would come out.

“A thirteen year-old Chinese boy jumped to his death last year from a 24 story building, allegedly after playing too much World of Warcraft. The parents of the boy are now suing game maker Blizzard with the help of lawyer and "internet game addiction researcher." The legal team also plans on filing class action suits against "the whole game industry on behalf of other parents."”

Continue in Part 4 here->

The History of MMO - Previous parts:

Part 1->

Part 2->