Recently Activision Blizzard (or just Blizzard if you so choose) has announced that its hit MMOG World of Warcraft has reached a record breaking eleven million and a half subscribers this holiday season. That’s more than Lineage I ever reached. As a matter of a fact, anything over a million is astounding for MMOGs. The question though is how did Blizzard get to where it’s at? There are nearly as many answers for subscribers, many of them subjective, but there are a few things no one can argue.

Rise to Fame

World of Warcraft’s rise to fame was quick and came out of nowhere. In 2004 MMOGs were on the decline. Lineage, the then reigning champ of the MMOG world had seen Lineage II as more of a population split than anything else (and prime example why Blizzard is not so quick to make a new MMOG). The highest population count was three million and some change for Lineage. Of course, this was all soon to change.

The landscape at the time had only a handful of MMOGs competing against each other. Everquest which had around 500,000 subscribers was the “flagship” game for the North American audience. Dark Age of Camelot had nearly 250,000 subscribers and was “that other game” at the time. Other games were around but their numbers were often below 100,000. These were considered successful games.

That was until World of Warcraft came into the market in November 23rd, 2004 after three years of waiting (it was originally announced in September of 2001). The hype machine was at full throttle and it was flying off the shelves. Players were seeing delays from shippers due to the amount of product being moved and Blizzard was failing to keep their servers up. Not because of buggy software (well not completely) but just because of load. Several hour queues were the norm on every server and other games were seeing a mass downturn as their playerbases fled to the new kid on the street.

This was the key point that inserted WoW as the dominating force. We all know the massive hype leading up to its launch was a key factor for the launch being successful (after all, if you’re on the Internet and play games then you’ve probably ran across one of their games throughout your gaming career) but a lot of things in the game were improvements on the standard MMOG formula.

The basic core of an online game was there. You had a world in which other players interacted with one another followed by multi-player combat. What wasn’t the standard at the time was fast regeneration, single player start quests in a multi-player atmosphere, easy to learn controls, a polished interface, and little to no downtime. Many of the things that scared other players away from games like Everquest and Dark Ages of Camelot were not seen. The things that kept people playing were like a competitive focus on loot and player vs. player combat.

With the servers stabilizing, positive reviews spamming up the media, and a massive fun to play game being very newbie friendly we saw a revolution in a stagnating genre. Fresh blood was pouring in and milestones were being set. Word of mouth surged through the Internet and soon even young children in schools were all forming guilds to play together. It was an amazing new dawn for MMOG gaming.

Much of WoW’s success can all be attributed to these key events. Even in a recent interview here at Ten Ton Hammer with Auto Assault’s Scott Brown we can tell that the launch and the weeks following are the key moments for a game:

In my opinion, if you launch dead, you're dead. You can always keep those few fans that you have, and there will always be a small percentage that is into what you built, but changing public perception is almost impossible. A great example of this is Windows Vista. People have decided that Vista is terrible, and it doesn't matter what Microsoft does: Vista will always be terrible to the people.

The Carrot on a Stick – Keeping Those That Joined

A solid launch may give you the initial millions but growth and stability cannot continue forever on that. That’s where Blizzard again deviated from the normal course. Content expansions delivered to players the added reason to continue to play. The competitive loot style system kept players always chasing after a carrot on a stick and never really biting down on it. By the time they were close the carrot was moved ahead just a little bit more with a new content patch. Many of these patches had nearly enough content in them to qualify as a full expansion except they costed the playerbase nothing at all!

As times went by and players continued to have a reason to play they in turn continued to invite their friends. Their friends would bring in more and you had a machine that would naturally bring in new people to replace any that left. When things seemed tired, encounters seemed to be moving too far back for newer players to even get a taste of newer gear, and the game started to suffer stagnation Blizzard released a full scale expansion pack again holding tightly to its fans.

So really, when it all boils down to WoW’s success is that it has a solid formula, a strong game, and a loyal fanbase that holds it together. All the other reasons out there (from the graphics being ageproof to the wacky ideas of subliminal TV advertising) often do contribute to the big picture but the very core of the subscriber base plays because it’s a game played by millions that’s fun, easy to get into, and has near limitless options on what you can do at any given time.

So whenever you’re sitting around thinking of the billion and one reasons why there are so many people playing WoW just think of the biggest one – you, the WoW fan. Think about the reasons you play. I bet you play because it’s fun, enjoyable, and doesn’t frustrate you unless you want it to. That’s the reason it’s so successful and you don’t need to look any further than that.

Like I said at the start though, it’s subjective. Disagree with me? Think that WoW is successful due to subliminal messaging? Well, you’re in the minority but our forums will still love your opinion no matter what it is. Come join us on our community forums and share the reasons you play and think that WoW is successful.