Ten Things that will make a WoW Killer.

Just recently Activision boss Bobby Kotick gave a speech that basically warned any investor away from investing in MMO development because of the success of World of Warcraft. He cited recent failures in the MMO market and claims that even a 500 million to 1 billion dollar budget might not guarantee the same success that Blizzard has experienced. This is pure hyperbole but highlights a point that has become very apparent in MMO development. Investors are starting to back away from funding projects because of World of Warcraft.

Originally the super-MMO was a boon to the industry since it proved that the customer base could be grown. But now after so many new games failing to drawn even a fraction of World of Warcraft’s numbers we are starting to see venture capital withdraw from the market. No one really understood what made the game such a success and it looks like no one is going to be able to repeat it. Microsoft recently withdrew from the Marvel MMO quoting that Blizzard's dominance in the market prevents any definition of what they would call success. Other studios have had a string of poorly performing MMOs and are starting to restrict funding for new projects.

However, it’s not like World of Warcraft's secret to success is a big mystery. A large part of its success was that it was different from every other MMO on the market at the time. It was the only casual MMO in a sea of harsh death penalties and time intensive grinds. Now after the market has been copying the leader for four years being casual is no longer something special or different. Also a lot of new MMO's made the mistake that being casual meant there didn't need to be any depth to the game. Playing loose and fast with the item progression in a DIKU based game is just a bad idea. So far only Lord of the Rings has managed to be casual without sacrificing depth but they ran into some other problems which nipped their subscriber growth in the bud.

1) Unique Art Style
A lot of people like the cartoony art style of World of Warcraft and a lot of people hate it. One thing both these people agree on is that it’s easy to tell a screenshot is from the game compared to any other MMO. A WoW killer will have a unique art style which doesn't necessarily have to be cartoony. I personally like the cell shading from Champions.

2) Gentle Leveling Curve that can be done Solo
Games with a lot of levels but with a gentle curve are the best bet since item and ability rewards can be spaced out to give a sense of progression over a longer time. Games like D&D and Guild Wars can have problems keeping up a sense of progression.

3) Clear Benefits to Grouping
Almost all games stick with item rewards from instances as the main benefit for grouping. But as the player base moves to the higher levels the item rewards become less beneficial since they're less people available for grouping. Groups should actually see an individual increase in +XP per mob as they add more people to their group. Casual based games already allow constant killing of weaker mobs when soloing and grouping doesn't increase that rate very much.

4) Good quests, not an over abundance of crappy ones
This is one of the worst things I've seen in almost every MMO released since World of Warcraft. Lord of the Rings was especially bad since they had these amazing and interesting Chapter Quests then a million kill twenty of this mob type quests. What I like to see are automatic experience rewards and titles given out for killing large amounts of the same type of mob similar to LOTR. That way gamers never have to read bad fiction trying to explain why there is a quest to exterminate 100 rats.

5) Actual Dungeons and not just Quest Instances
There needs to be something that teaches players how to work together as a team for endgame PvE and PvP. I would suggest instances that range from standard dungeon encounters to ones that use teamwork in a PvP environment. For example you could have an instance that would require a group to guard several objectives from waves of NPCs that would try to capture them. The mistake a lot of games have made recently is to make every quest go into a generic instance which looks crappy and computer generated. I'm looking at you City of Heroes and Lord of the Rings.

6) Gear progression but with some Permanence
Just because your playerbase likes getting new items doesn't mean they need a new one every 5 minutes. Tabula Rasa is horrible this way since gear has no value when every slot gets replaced 3 times per level. Also there needs to be a balance between bind on equip, bind on pickup, and items with no binding. World of Warcraft actually has too many bind on pickup items which can sometimes result in an instance run benefitting no one in the group. Tabula Rasa is going to implode on epics soon since there is no binding on any items, not even ones from quests.

7) Separate ability effects in PvP and PvE
It’s a pain in the neck to code but every ability should have one effect on mobs and one effect on other players. Warhammer has some great ideas with about making healing and tanking classes effective in PvP without forcing them to change their class role in PvE as well. World of Warcraft accidentally opened the doors on making PvP popular and any future game which ignores this side of the game isn't going to gain a lot of subscribers.

8) Consensual PvP systems with balanced rewards
There's no reason to have PvP unless some good rewards are also offered. In general the more organization involved in the activity the better the rewards. Guilds should be able to organize a raid to either take down a large PvP objective or a raid instance and get the same quality rewards. Groups should be able to get these same rewards but at a much slower pace. Solo players should even be able to get the same quality rewards but it should take 5-10x longer then the raider.

9) Gentle Introduction to Raiding
If your end game is raiding oriented then you should make the first raid instance easy and not require a key or attunement quest. If you want content that gets used by both the hardcore and casual players then have a normal and heroic mode for the raid instance. What not to do for end game raiding can pretty much be covered by looking at aspects of Karazhan.

10) Use a combination of a Class and Skill system
Games need to have systems that allow players to differentiate their characters in ways that affect game play and not just appearance rewards like titles. The talent system from World of Warcraft is a good example but unfortunately allowed too much specialization and basically created all new classes. Lord of the Rings also ran into problems by having no customization options for classes resulting in an unchanging and boring play style once you mastered the basic mechanics.

I don't really believe gamers are fickle though I do believe the law of gravity effects virtual worlds. Basically the larger a MMO population, the more gamers feel attracted to the game. If you want to beat World of Warcraft then you need to make a list a hell of a lot longer than the one I made. The most important thing is not just to list what Blizzard did right did so you can copy it. Designers especially need to point out features which they think can be improved. This post ran a little long and if you’re still with me I thank you. Feel free to leave a comment about a feature you think needs to be in the WoW Killer.