World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

In the scheme of Hollywood, the summer blockbuster has become a trend that won’t go away. Every year, the big studios erupt thousands of dollars into the marketing stratosphere, hoping that the audiences will fall out of the starry sky and into theaters to enjoy their films. These blockbusters continually draw in $100,000,000+ every year, and sometimes (like in 2008) multiple movies can break this mark in a single season.

But MMOs haven’t seen anything like this yet. While we do have the one major blockbuster that everyone is familiar with (Hello WoW), there hasn’t been the sort of multi-blockbuster era that so many gaming companies are looking for.

Looking at movies, I can’t help but ask myself, “Why not?” Besides a host of companies releasing shoddy games, there isn’t a single reason why more MMOs aren’t holding up million subscriber numbers. Both Age of Conan and Warhammer Online were primed for millions of subscribers, yet lackluster releases soured the experience – and stickiness – for many users.

Or maybe I’m just full of wishful thinking. Will the MMO industry ever have multiple blockbusters?

“I think so,” Peterscheck answered. “I don't really see why you won't see 50,000,000 actually. But then, that assumes that the way we measure subscribers and our billing models don't change. Consider the impact that TV had on movies, for example, or VCRs and later DVD players. Because you can't know which new technology is coming that will fundamentally change things, you can't predict how consumers will utilize and drive entertainment.”

“That's why it's important that as developers we keep looking ahead to see what kind of interesting experiences we can create instead of trying to try and guess and anticipate based on information we have today,” he continued. “Could you predict in 1994 that in 1998 the internet would revolutionize communication, business, commerce and just about everything else? Probably not. And just so, you can't really predict what will happen in 2014 that will revolutionize some other part of the world and the impact it will have.”

Our Hollywood informant, Steve Preeg, was a bit more hesitant in his answer. “It seems like it *should* be able to happen,” he said. “It’s a little bit harder because of the longevity of the game, where movies can have three blockbusters in three weeks. You just can’t do that with an MMO. However, the fact that World of Warcraft has been sitting at the top for four years seems like there’s now enough room for another good one to come up and split up the subscribers. That’d be like 6 million people that could go play another MMO.”

“I think if a new game came out with a similar sort of quality and effort of content, I know there are a number of people playing WoW right now that would be okay quitting and trying something new,” he concluded. “A good game in a different setting would do very, very well.”

But perhaps everyone is asking the wrong questions when it comes to MMOs being blockbusters. Craig Alexander brought up a truly pivotal point concerning MMO success, saying “Yes [there can be more MMO blockbusters], and the key is to make the console transition with our MMOs. Turbine’s working actively in this area. WoW has certainly been successful in the PC space, and I think you’ll see successes equally as large in the console side as well.  Hopefully that will be us.”