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The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of VGGEN.com as a whole or any of its affiliates. This is simply one writer's opinion, and should be accepted as such. Weekly World of Warcraft is usually updated each Tuesday.

Getting back to the point, the reason I was quick to dismiss Vivendi’s announcement going only on the word of Rob Pardo and a Blue poster at the World of Warcraft forums is because Vivendi and Blizzard have given me absolutely no reason to believe Vivendi has full control over the situation at Blizzard. To go further than boring corporate details, I have to examine the two franchises in question as possible MMORPGs.

Sure, the initial idea of a Starcraft or Diablo MMORPG sounds amazing. Yet, think about it a little more. The thing about Warcraft is you are dealing with an extensive universe with numerous histories and enough lore to build upon. Sure, you could easily retcon some story for Starcraft and Diablo to flesh out the universes, but it would fall short on several levels. Starting with Starcraft, my first and biggest question is, “How do you make the Zerg a playable race?” The Zerg are essentially caught up in a hive mind mentality, so how would they be able to pass off the Zerg as a controllable race? Even if you put them off-limits, you’re limiting yourself to the Protoss and Human forces. That just seems too limited, especially considering that World of Warcraft seems short even with eight races (ten with the expansion). This brings up yet another question for Starcraft: what kind of game would this be? Starcraft doesn’t seem like it would adapt well to a traditional MMORPG setting. If anything, I could easily see Starcraft take an approach similar to Planetside. As a twitch game that encompasses FPS and flight-sim elements (again, think Planetside or the Battlefield series), Starcraft could slay as an MMO game. However, games like that can easily wear thin, and I think they’d ultimately have a hard time imitating World of Warcraft’s success with Starcraft.

Diablo presents an interesting situation. Many lump Diablo II in as a MMORPG already, even though it lacks numerous elements typical of the genre. Guild Wars has already shown that the Diablo style of game could easily work in a MMO situation (Guild Wars has about 2 million players). However, Vivendi seems to be looking at the MMO model as one that charges and brings in a profit. The question gamers would have to ask is if they are willing to pay money for a game that would likely be in the same vein as Guild Wars, which does not charge a monthly fee. Even if Blizzard completely reinvented Diablo’s online image, they run into another problem. If they release it while World of Warcraft is alive and thriving, they’ll ultimately be killing their own subscription base. The same goes for a Starcraft MMORPG. While Schild took his info from a Q&A session with a Vivendi rep at a stockholders meeting, I don’t think that Vivendi truly understands the scope of how much gamers are willing to pay. Sure, you have six million people paying $15/month for World of Warcraft, but would they also be willing to drop another $30/month to play a Starcraft and Diablo game at the same time? Even then, how would anyone have the time available to play all three titles? Sure, it’s being a bit unreasonable to think they’d push both new titles while World of Warcraft is thriving, but is it unreasonable to think that people would subscribe to both World of Warcraft and an additional Blizzard universe at the same time? I think so. World of Warcraft was unique in the sense that they learned from the mistakes of past MMORPG developers. By incorporating the best features of other games like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot while improving upon weaker areas, Blizzard gave gamers an MMORPG that could appeal to a wide audience that encompassed both the hardcore raiders and the casual one hour a night crowd.

What exactly could Diablo or Starcraft offer that’s different from everything else? Sure, Diablo could be used to revolutionize PvP in MMORPGs, but it risks isolating players who fill up the numerous PvE servers on World of Warcraft and others. For as little as it offers in terms of choices, Starcraft provides a chance for a developer to do a sci-fi MMORPG correctly. Star Wars Galaxies, The Matrix Online, and even Planetside all showed great potential, but fell flat. The biggest question is if the Starcraft universe has enough depth to not only create enough character classes, but also provide a large enough backdrop to further push a plot.

Leaving the speculation (for now), why would anyone even want Blizzard to launch another MMORPG? World of Warcraft’s cycle has proven that Blizzard cannot even handle supporting one MMORPG. They’ll finally finish up class reviews roughly a full two years after the initial release of the game, and the classes will likely still not be balanced in PvP or PvE encounters. They have massive problems keeping the servers up and stable, and couldn’t even get a patch to users on patch day without tragedy. Blizzard admittedly has their hands full with World of Warcraft, and I’m not sure they would even have the time to create another MMORPG even with Vivendi’s support.

This is not to say that more MMORPGs aren’t in Blizzard’s future. When in doubt, checking a company’s hiring page can say more about their future plans than rumors and corporate stone-walling. For months, Blizzard has been hiring people to work with their Diablo team, indicating that the Diablo universe will soon be revisited. Why not? A few months ago, Starcraft was to be revisited in the form of Starcraft: Ghost and Diablo II’s popularity has finally started to wane. Diablo III remains my top pick for Blizzard’s next title, and I’ll continue to believe this until I am proven otherwise. However, it is worth noting that Blizzard also has a job posting for an Exterior Level Designer to work on “landscapes similar to those in World of Warcraft.” Could this be a posting for a future MMORPG or just for a position for World of Warcraft? It really isn’t clear, but many of the other game designing positions seem to be asking for designers with backgrounds in more traditional games.

In the end, Schild is dead on when he says: “Blizzard is a company that has shown time and time again that they'll just flat out deny anything as long as it keeps people interested in what sneaky business they might be up to.” I understand that and I fully agree with his statement. I just think they’re up to a different sneaky business, and not World of Diablo or World of Starcraft.

EA buys Mythic Entertainment

If you’re asking yourself why Mythic Entertainment sounds familiar, they’re the studio that self-financed the development of Dark Age of Camelot and are currently working on Warhammer Online. EA’s purchase of Mythic certainly guarantees that they noticed Vivendi’s massive success with World of Warcraft, and hopes to cut into their market. However, EA’s track record in the MMORPG world borders on average to piss-poor. While Ultima Online did actually surpass Everquest at one point, it experienced one of the sharpest declines and crashes in the genre’s history. The Sims Online debacle was, well, a debacle. EA essentially pushed out a game and didn’t bother to police it. Player run mafias and brothels littered the servers, and griefing to the extreme drove off the extremely casual Sims fan base. I for one used to view Warhammer Online with optimism. After the buyout, I have to change my outlook to cautiously optimistic. Warhammer Online shows enough promise to revolutionize the way MMORPGs play, but a bottom-line company with a track record for rushing products out the door could spell disaster. Wait and see almost certainly applies to this development.

Anything else?

That’s it for this week’s installment. As a close, I would like to say thank you to all of my readers, and any site that has linked to this series, for helping us get to the 10^th issue of Weekly World of Warcraft.  Keep spreading the word and sending the emails, and I’ll keep providing the words for you all to love, hate, flame, or praise.

Be sure to send any thoughts, comments, opinions, or flames to the World of Warcraft Mailbag: Weeklywow@vggen.com

Posted: 06/22/2006

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