$1 Billion Couldn't Overthrow WoW, Activision CEO Says

Junaid Alam

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$1 Billion Couldn't Overthrow WoW, Activision CEO Says


Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said he doubted that even a one-billion-dollar investment would be enough to take on the immensely popular MMOG World of Warcraft.


"We don't think that even if we made the $500 million or $1 billion investment to get a product out [to compete with WOW] that we would even be successful doing it," he said at an investor meeting.

The assessment is a bit of a moot point for Activision itself, which merged with Vivendi late last year to form Activision Blizzard.

Pointing to other industry giants like EA, Microsoft and Sony, he said none of them have managed to take the throne despite considerable capital investments.

"Look at all the money that's already gone to these businesses that have failed, there didn't seem a likelihood that even a well managed company like Activision would have the prospect for profit any time soon in this category."

Source: Gamesindustry.biz [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=33609]


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grumptonium

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It's a little silly to say that. Yes, if we're talking big companies, throwing money at developers does not a good MMO make, however a couple thousand and a team of masochists with a dream could pop the WoW bubble, provided they don't do it themselves first.
 

Kukakkau

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i used to play and have to say theyre beginning to pop their own bubble with all the incescant we cant leave the good things alone we have to "improve the experience"

also no wonder £1 billion isnt enough. consider this £9 a month for the game and (last i heard) 8 million players in europe. so lets calculate thats £72 million a month and £864 million a year. now this excludes aermica i believe so yea no wonder a billions not enough.

and final point if there making THAT much why dont they at least lower the monthly cost to bring in more players?
 

grumptonium

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Tinq said:
Good argument, but a labor of love rarely means to cash in on the current fads like I was pointing out. I sincerely hope the WoW bubble is busted by somebody who isn't really trying to.
Who what where? Ah. Was more babbling on about the 'Haha, throw all the money you want, you couldn't beat us with a billion dollars' thing. It's really just asking for a budget MMO to come in and break their shins.
 

Zertel

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I believe Warhammer is going to take quite more than half of WoW's population, that's why this new expansion is coming. It's a desperate attempt to keep up with what Warhammer will have
 

NickCaligo42

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Believe what you want to, Zert. Warhammer just doesn't have the environment for an MMO that WoW does. Look at the facts.

Warhammer's got like five or six warring factions, including the crusaders, necroids or whatever they're called, chaos, tau, eldar, the list goes on. Warcraft's got two. A more stable world = a more fun world for players to explore because they won't be afraid of being blown to bits around the next corner or having their city demolished each day. Proof: Tabula Rasa. World of Warcraft wins.

Warcraft's cartoonish, stylized look has broader appeal than Warhammer's gritty, filthy, war-torn universe. They manage to not put off people while at the same time looking fairly cool and having some sweet duds to put on your character. Furthermore, the humorous realtime strategy game of old has a much, much broader audience than the classic tabletop turn-based strategy game, even if most WoW players haven't even heard of Warcraft. Warcraft wins.

Warcraft's world is just better suited to the elements that make an MMORPG addictive. You can believe that this fantasy world can have hundreds of unique magical weapons and artifacts for players to collect and equip. Warhammer's got highly regimented science fiction arms and equipment that translate badly into similar terms. Warcraft wins yet again, and that's not even mentioning the other elements that make it a good place for an MMO world; chiefly, a wide variety of monsters to kill, environments to explore, and quests to go on. Warhammer, meanwhile, is dominated almost completely by a gritty multi-way war and doesn't offer a great breadth of anything, most particularly quests. If you want to be something other than a soldier fighting the chaos, you're almost certainly going to be screwed. Massively PvP games are known for their lack of success; Guild Wars and Rising Force Online are both examples of games with such heavy emphasis on PVP that it puts off most gamers and seems to come off as an excuse for a lack of content.

It goes on and on. The nail in the coffin is that THQ's making it; a company with little to no experience producing games for online consumption--or even DECENT games--as opposed to Blizzard, who DEFINED the conventions for online play that we still use today with landmarks like Diablo and StarCraft. You're looking at the same company that spits out a SpongeBob or Bratz game every few months to make money off six year olds with no sense of taste or quality. And you're expecting this to take more than 5,million active players away from World of Warcraft? I'm sorry, but even if Blizzard were doing it THEMSELVES Warhammer's still way too much of a niche market to be enough of a power hitter to even stand up to World of Warcraft. The fact that it's being done by a company that deals almost exclusively in bad licensed titles shows that they're counting on Warhammer fans blowing money on it as they do so liberally for pewter figurines more than they're counting on the game just being good. WoW could stand on its own apart from the rest of the Warcraft series at least.
 

timetuner

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I think that the only wat that anyone could topple wow is to invest in it to the point where they have a say in the expansions and keep coming out with expansions until one just fails.
 

Sib

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*sigh* i wish star wars galaxies hadnt been killed by its own devs, it may have stood a chance against WoW, it was certainly more fun a few hideous nerfs ago.
it even has more lore to draw from than WoW but ah well im going to go whimper over here about how it failed, just if you need me
 

Jindrak

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Your best bet to compete with the titan that is World of Warcraft is to, well, not try. Go in a completely different direction than whatever you've done before. Look at Call of Duty 4, this is the game that basically dethroned Halo, and it came from a series that was residing in World War II. They go in a brand new direction, and now it's a monster.
 

Sarrazon

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I just have to say NickCaligo42, that you are talking about Warhammer40k. The MMO being made is the fantasy version, not 40k. Not that this invalidates all of your points, but it shows that you haven't even looked at the game. Also, I believe that no one game is going to kill WoW. It will die slowly, with multiple MMOs chipping away at it.
 

sammyfreak

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Wow will only die when people get bored of MMOs in general, there wont ever be a mass exodus to another game (excpet SC2).

I also admit to having a relapse this week and renewing my acount after a year of silence.
 

Dark Wingstalker

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yeah,i reactivated too.

the reason so many people are reluctant to move to LOTR online, and Tabula rasa, and all the other games like that, is frankly.. everyone already has a WoW character. joining a new Game is tedious, you go from being a big fish in a big pond, to a small fish in a big pond. Just like that.

People like power, so as long as everyone keeps trying to replicate WoW, everyone will stay on WoW, its easier. and everyone knows WoW
 

Cyce

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Feb 29, 2008
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NickCaligo... you can not be anymore ill informed then you already are. So allow me to enlighten you on a few key points.

Warhammer did not invent Orcs, elves, dorfs, etc., those go way way back in time to pen and paper days. However Warhammer has been around alot longer then Wow AND Warhammer had DEFINED the very races that Blizzard used to depict in all their Craft games, including starcraft (Warhammer 40k). Anyone who thinks that Blizz didn't steal some if not most of the ideas from Warhammer needs to look at similarities and then realize that Warhammer has been around for 25 years.

THQ???? THQ is not making Warhammer Age of Reckoning. THQ has done an excellent job with doing the Dawn of War (Warhammer 40k) RTS games, but that is about as far as it goes. EA Mythic, the company who made Dark Age of Camelot (MMO), the game that DEFINED RvR, is making Warhammer Age of Reckoning.

Your right when you say WoW is humorous, it was... for the first few hours. After you've seen the same old stupid emotes and holiday events you would rather back hand every dancer and burn down your own starting city. Myself and many others like the idea of a world a little more harsh and real when it comes to the lore.

"Six warring factions" ?? Alliance and Horde for WoW / Order and Destruction for WAR. I personally would have liked a Dark Age 3 faction type war, but I believe this was a move to make things more simple for the WoW kiddies that you mentioned. The Factions your describing are basically just races Order = humans/High Elves/Dwarves Destruction = Mutated humans/Dark Elves/orcs.

"A more stable world = a more fun world for players to explore because they won't be afraid of being blown to bits around the next corner or having their city demolished each day" Go take a look at the most populated servers in WoW and then come back and tell me that they are mostly PvP servers. That tells me that people like the danger of fighting enemy players during exploration. Also in WAR you can't have your capital city sacked everyday, game mechanics in place to stop it.

WAR is going to have everything Wow has and more (Minus 50 different dungeons to raid with mob AI's that never change in your constant struggle to get better and better gear that never ends) including: Public quests, guild customization that Wow can't shake a stick at, class versatility between factions, and most importantly RVR!

RvR, for those poor unfortunate MMO guys who didn't get to play Dark Age of Camelot, is basically PvP with a purpose. Faction wide goals that bring factions/guilds together against the other faction/guild for some spectacular end game fun.

600k Warhammer Beta sign ups qualifies as a chunk to me :). But I agree with you to a point, WAR will not kill WoW. Take a chunk yes, but kill no.
 

Arktis

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Sib said:
*sigh* i wish star wars galaxies hadnt been killed by its own devs, it may have stood a chance against WoW, it was certainly more fun a few hideous nerfs ago.
it even has more lore to draw from than WoW but ah well im going to go whimper over here about how it failed, just if you need me
Reminds me of another game that could've toppled WoW before the devs killed it.

Anyone remember Planetside?
 

firemonk3y

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Oct 9, 2007
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now, I've played WoW, and I did quite avidly, until I got to Outlands, which left me with a sensation of "wait...I've been grinding my way through 60 levels, 40 of which were tedious just to do that all over again?"

At this point my dedication to the game dwindled, and I can honestly say the drug just stopped being appealing, I havn't really had cravings for it at all since I quit a couple of months ago. To appease my friends I say that "well, I might pick it up again at some point" with the level 64 warlock I've got patiently waiting in a frozen state, but to be honest, I don't think I will. And if I do it won't be for the game's sake.

I think that WoW is going to kill itself with expansions. Fine, you've got your hardcore players that are just going to think "sweet! more killer content!" with each iteration, despite the fact that the quests are fundamentally the same, and they don't even bother to make new models for more than 50% of the content. On the other hand though, many players will be annoyed by this futility. Additionally, new players are going to look at the level cap rising steadily, and not be willing to go through 20 days of gruelling gameplay to get to the content that actually interested them.

So just wait a few years, WoW will be senile just in time for blizzard's next MMO project, which it appears they are just starting work on.

oh, and you people ought to check out the indie project 'love', no more "fetch me 10 goblin head" quests.
 

Arbre

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Tinq said:
It's my understanding that, most often, when a game company tries to compete with a behemoth, they try to replicate and improve upon the other game so that when word of mouth advertising kicks in gamers can remark to their friends "It's like Halo except you can slow down time." However, with the MMOG scene, replication is horrible because if you were to say "It's like WoW, but you can ####" (Where #### is any innovative feature) your audience is likely to say "But, I already have WoW." Meaning that they don't need a game that is 'like' it.
... and wouldn't want to play a game that is different...