When considering the insane success of WoW we shouldn’t forget that the game isn’t stopping from LAUNCHING. Everywhere.

We do not know if the game is hemorrhaging subscribers in the USA or maintaining a good retention, we just have the evidence that there is an insane growth due to the game “conquering spaces”. End of Novermber it launched in the USA, in January it launched in Korea, February was the time of Europe and now we have the China which will flood all the useful statistics you can pull from all this.

I mean, the geographical space on the earth isn’t infinite. There’s only so much you can conquer and I’m not sure how many people can be interested in the game in Africa. At least if Blizzard isn’t planning to sell the game to the aliens.

So remember that we do not have any evidence of the lasting appeal of the game. Which is the sole thing that matters in this genre.

The other consideration I find interesting is how much is irrelevant in this case the problem of the localization. It is surely important to localize and adapt the practical aspect, the costs, the distribution but the fact that the game is able to “win” the players everywhere in the world is always a demonstration of an undeniable quality.

But this could be a discussion about the culture that would require a deep analysis instead of a superficial glance.

In the meantime Grimwell has a thread to doubt of the game again:

Blizzard has a long history of taking existing game concepts, and simplifying them to a point where they are accessible to a much larger public. WoW is to MMORPG what Diablo is to CRPG and Warcraft to strategy games: The most successful title, but not very deep. And in all previous cases the Blizzard titles had some bad effects on their respective genres.

And that is the big danger. The MMORPG genre is wide, even wider than other video game genres. It is possible that a good developer could make a MMORPG which sells as well as WoW, but is based on a completely different approach. There could be good world-like MMORPG, good games which aren’t based on levels, good games which are based on a lot more social interaction. But the blinding success of World of Warcraft risks to get the concepts of these games stamped as “not like WoW” and thrown into the bin before they ever got a chance to prove their worth.

With Geldon going straight to the point this time:

While it’s true that World of Warcraft’s outstanding success will influence MMORPGs of the future, the fact of the matter is that most people aren’t going to interpret why WoW was a success correctly.

This thread is all about the fact that people will try to emulate World of Warcraft because of it’s success. The entire point of my message here is this: most designers either can’t identify or can’t emulate what World of Warcraft did well. So they’ll emulate other parts of World of Warcraft that they liked: The graphical styling, the battlegrounds, the casual friendliness, ect.

A concept somewhat backed up even by Anyuzer:

The problem with the term is that it’s a derogatory term. When a developer tells its fan base, that its upcoming game: “isn’t going to be an EQ clone” the term is used in an attempt to express that: “if you didn’t like EverQuest, you’re going to like our game!”

What baffles me about that is simply the short sightedness of every designer/developer who has claimed that, because it automatically suggests to me that they never took a close look at what made EQ tick.

These are all points I’ve discussed extensively in the past. While I strongly criticize some of the aspects of the game, in particular when it comes to PvP, I do not dismiss the quality that is surely there.

And I definitely agree with Geldon, it’s obvious that WoW will trigger a process of emulation everywhere, inesorably. It’s already happening, all the mmorpgs out there are ripping features constantly and systematically. But the point is again about delving deeper than a superficial level that won’t bring to any decent result.

I did already my homework (and in many other comments I wrote) and offer my own point of view on “what made the game tick” as Anyuzer would say. I’m not sure how many others arrived to the same conclusions without dismissing and trivializing the argument on the way.

So yes, it will be systematically cloned and I expect all these clones to fail miserably.