WoW: a GOOD monopoly?

[EqualNOpposite]

Before I get to the main idea, I want to state my credentials as an MMO player.

I have played EVE, Planetside, Auto Assault, Guild Wars, City of Villains, a few others, and of course WoW. I am by no means well-traveled in the MMO experience, but I HAVE studied the market shares of the MMOG market. All that said, here are the basic assumptions that I make in this idea:

1. Monopolies are bad.
1a. Monopolies are bad because any monopoly loses the motivation to improve the quality of their product (that motivation being competition), and therefore stagnates in quality.
2. Blizzard's MMO, World of Warcraft, holds a monopoly on the MMO market.
3. Therefore, it is economically inevitable that WoW will eventually lose quality, be overtaken by a different MMO, or simply stop getting better, as Blizzard has no reason to make it better.

So...why isn't that happening? Why is Blizzard still improving WoW, even though they have no competitive reason to do so?

Sure, they have other reasons to work on it, but those are TINY. They get complaints from the user base, some people are dissatisfied with this little THING in the UI, or the way one raid boss is played, but these are small things. If a few hundred users find a problem to be a severe enough issue to consider leaving the game over it (and this is rarely the case), they are a drop in the bucket; a few among MILLIONS. So why does Blizzard bother to listen to them?

Blizzard has no reason to improve their game; it's already good. This isn't an opinion; just look at the statistics. They dominate the MMO market, and anyone who doesn't play WoW at this point is pretty unlikely to try it in the foreseeable future (feel free to object to that, by the way).

Usually, a monopoly has a detrimental effect on the quality of the product involved. While the domination of WoW does make it exceedingly difficult for other MMO's to get their foot in the door, I have NEVER heard anyone in the game industry (again, call me out on this) say WoW is losing or lacks quality and needs to be displaced as the chief MMO because of it.

Alright, I realize that this looks a lot like a fanboy rant, and I DO play the game, but this genuinely confuses me. Is it possible for what economics traditionally defines as a capitalist monopoly to be BENEFICIAL to the quality of the product involved, and if so, does WoW serve as a good example of that?

 

[Gxas]

So...why isn't that happening? Why is Blizzard still improving WoW, even though they have no competitive reason to do so?

Could it be that *gasp* Blizzard isn't as bad as the majority of people think they are and actually does care about their community?

No. Couldn't be. Blizzard is the Devil and Valve is god. (amidoinitrite?)[/heavy fucking sarcasm]

 

[Delusibeta]

So...why isn't that happening? Why is Blizzard still improving WoW, even though they have no competitive reason to do so?

Could it be that *gasp* Blizzard isn't as bad as the majority of people think they are and actually does care about their community?

No. Couldn't be. Blizzard is the Devil and Valve is god. (amidoinitrite?)[/heavy fucking sarcasm]

I hereby declare this thread is about DOTA 2. Converting in 3... 2... 1...

Seriously, the problem with that argument is that WoW isn't more of a monopoly than EVE is. Certainly, you can argue that it's the premier MMO of a certain type (WoW pay-for fantasy, EVE space single server) that has it's rivals (WoW has too many to count, EVE is getting one before the end of the year, Perpetuum), but you can't argue that WoW is completely dominating the MMO market so much that it's snuffing out the vast majority of new MMOs. Hell, we have two major new MMOs, Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 that are coming out in the next 12 months. If that is a sign of a monopoly, then I must be taking the wrong economics lessons.

 

[Jodah]

While your assumptions about Monopolies are generally accurate they do not take into account the type of media we are dealing with. Now, WoW's main competitors are other MMOs so you are correct on those points.

However, their secondary competitors are all other video games. Media such as video games are a type of entertainment and entertainment required time to enjoy. People have limited time so they must choose what to do with it. If Blizz stopped improving WoW most players would lose interest. They would stop playing due to boredom and pick up some other game. Thus it requires Blizz to continue improving it, even though they have a clear monopoly atm. They have to put as much, if not more, effort into maintaining their position on top as they did to achieve said position.

 

[Coasty4]

Your question is dumb because of a flawed assumption.

WOW dominates the market, but that does not mean they have a monopoly. A monopoly only occurs when there is NO other competition. In the MMO market there are at least dozens of other games vying for your 15 dollars a month. The reason wow is in such a position of success is because they continue to change and continue to improve.

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

Blizzard =/= Activision

They have merged through Vivendi, but Blizzard is still Blizzard and Activision is still Activision.

They're just closer than before.

Now that's out of the way, Blizzard are continuing to update and evolve their game and they're not exactly pushing other companies out of business, so it's okay.

 

[Zing]

Blizzard update and improve their game because they would lose those millions of subscribers quite quickly and lose their "monopoly". Also your whole post had nothing to do with your title, I can't find any correlation between a monopoly being good and your post.

 

[Danzaivar]

If Blizzard stopped improving WoW right now, in a few years time it would be painfully outdated. If they keep improving it, it's gonna be very hard for a game to come out and be better than it.

Of course the only way to prove that would be if people just stopped making MMORPG's to see if Blizzard start to let WoW slip.

 

[Richard Hannay]

What exactly are the numbers you have on MMOG market shares? And at what percentage does a product/company cease to be simply dominant and start being an all-out monopoly?

The fact is, there are other MMOs, and new ones every year it seems, and quitting WoW would be far less detrimental to one's life than, say, not buying into the sort of monopoly we saw with phones twenty years ago. In this sort of environment, is the desire to stay ahead a more prominent factor than you're giving it credit for?

 

[King Kupofried]

I wouldn't exactly call WoW a Monopoly considering there are plenty of other MMORPGs that thrive just fine.
WoW keeps adding because it needs to, which is also not to say that there aren't people working on it who genuinely care. Part of the thing that keeps people attracted to WoW is its constantly updating nature. It keeps the game from being stagnant(To a degree), if they stopped adding, many people would likely move on from it.

 

[Danny Ocean]

*snip*

Because it's not a monopoly. There is more than one maker of MMOs, and there are other MMOs out there, and others are being made all the time. If Blizzard doesn't innovate, they will lose customers.

Having the most popular product does not mean you have a monopoly. This is a flawed question.

 

[Altorin]

Nwabudike Morgan isn't right - Sometimes, Human Behavior is not Economic Behavior

 

[lacktheknack]

Because constantly improving the game nets them more subscriptions. It's good publicity.

 

[hawkeye52]

because they want to stay as the dominant mmo.

on top of that its not really a monopoly since other people still can and have made mmo's such as eve. a real monopoly is that of silk by the venetians in the 1600's i believe where they controlled the only route for silk from china thus no one else was physically able to get a large trade in silk.

so its not really aa monopoly more of a dominant product

 

[Pain Is Inevitable]

I think there will come a time where Blizzard will have to choose between either updating the current game engine of WoW quite a few notches, or make an whole new game from scratch in the MMORPG genre to be able to keep their market share from being stolen away by newer games that can offer more immersive experiences with better game engines and improved net code.

Either of these can be pretty difficult to do without being very costly or giving you a lot of backlash from your own fans, so I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard chooses to twiddle their thumbs as long as the cash keeps rolling in.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I could rant about WoW, but will opt to keep this objectively related instead.

Before I get to the main idea, I want to state my credentials as an MMO player.

Usually, a monopoly has a detrimental effect on the quality of the product involved. While the domination of WoW does make it exceedingly difficult for other MMO's to get their foot in the door, I have NEVER heard anyone in the game industry (again, call me out on this) say WoW is losing or lacks quality and needs to be displaced as the chief MMO because of it.

I did a case study of MMOs, and tried a variety of them to see how they worked, what sort of population the servers had, or what schemes the developer created to rope the player in.

As funny as this is going to sound, WoW was by far the most stable...and the most bland.
To claim that the game has "improved" upon itself even in recent history is laughable; a well-crafted facade. The game didn't really improve; it just expanded the level cap.

This isn't a bad thing for the game however; it's that sort of predictable stability combined with a sense of scope that makes it so addictive. If you were to change that, people would stop playing.

In fact, Cataclysm did just that to my friend (a very long-time player of the game).

WoW is successful because it is the least overwhelming, most newbie-friendly MMO out there.
It's the most accessible.

As a monopoly, well, you can't really fight it. The only thing that can kill WoW is Blizzard.
They aren't going to change that winning formula for accessibility, while at the same time they don't have to. Most other MMO developers out there make the mistake of trying to copy WoW without scaling their game to this sort of accessibility.

And when another MMO out there tries to add complicated depth to their game (which, despite the massive amount of stats and skills, WoW is actually fairly shallow) it comes back to bite them on the ass.

The only successful MMO I've seen out there that requires complicated player interactions is EVE Online.

TLDR: Other MMOs fail to break the monopoly because WoW is already established, and made so even a complete idiot can make it to end-game content with enough grind.

 

[King Kupofried]

To add to the discussion somewhat:
Speaking hypothetically, if WoW actually was a Monopoly, it would not be a good thing anymore than if Halo were to grab a monopoly on FPSs even if it began to come out with streams of new maps and weapons, it wouldn't be much consolation to people who prefer to play Half-Life or CoD.
WoW may continue to add or to update, but that means nothing to you if you don't like WoW to begin with. Despite what many people against the genre think, MMOs vary greatly from game to game, and this would mean you have no options. You couldn't just shrug and go play EVE or Aion or what have you, it would be WoW or nothing.
As a fan of MMORPGs, I would probably ditch the entire genre if WoW was my only real option, as would many people. While I don't think it is impossible for a Monopoly to be a good thing, this would certainly not be the case.

 

[John Funk]

I could rant about WoW, but will opt to keep this objectively related instead.

Before I get to the main idea, I want to state my credentials as an MMO player.

Usually, a monopoly has a detrimental effect on the quality of the product involved. While the domination of WoW does make it exceedingly difficult for other MMO's to get their foot in the door, I have NEVER heard anyone in the game industry (again, call me out on this) say WoW is losing or lacks quality and needs to be displaced as the chief MMO because of it.

I did a case study of MMOs, and tried a variety of them to see how they worked, what sort of population the servers had, or what schemes the developer created to rope the player in.

As funny as this is going to sound, WoW was by far the most stable...and the most bland.
To claim that the game has "improved" upon itself even in recent history is laughable; a well-crafted facade. The game didn't really improve; it just expanded the level cap.

This isn't a bad thing for the game however; it's that sort of predictable stability combined with a sense of scope that makes it so addictive. If you were to change that, people would stop playing.

In fact, Cataclysm did just that to my friend (a very long-time player of the game).

WoW is successful because it is the least overwhelming, most newbie-friendly MMO out there.
It's the most accessible.

As a monopoly, well, you can't really fight it. The only thing that can kill WoW is Blizzard.
They aren't going to change that winning formula for accessibility, while at the same time they don't have to. Most other MMO developers out there make the mistake of trying to copy WoW without scaling their game to this sort of accessibility.

And when another MMO out there tries to add complicated depth to their game (which, despite the massive amount of stats and skills, WoW is actually fairly shallow) it comes back to bite them on the ass.

The only successful MMO I've seen out there that requires complicated player interactions is EVE Online.

TLDR: Other MMOs fail to break the monopoly because WoW is already established, and made so even a complete idiot can make it to end-game content with enough grind.

How has the game *not* improved?

It's refined the stats and the gameplay to the point where it's much more engaging and fun than it ever was at launch. The quest lines are more streamlined, the addition of phasing makes a player feel like they actually have impact on a world (and in the EQ-style of games, this is HUGE), and you no longer need to sign your life away to play it.

There is no doubt in my mind that the game as it exists now is exponentially better than the game that first shipped.

 

[freedomweasel]

Your question is dumb because of a flawed assumption.

WOW dominates the market, but that does not mean they have a monopoly. A monopoly only occurs when there is NO other competition. In the MMO market there are at least dozens of other games vying for your 15 dollars a month. The reason wow is in such a position of success is because they continue to change and continue to improve.

Legally speaking, I believe a monopoly is based on percentages. (This excludes monopolies like the cable companies). Microsoft had a monopoly, despite there being competition.

Also, for a first post, saying someone asked a "dumb" question is a bold move.

 

[icame]

Its because activision failed to convert them to the dickish side of game development.