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King of the World: Overthrowing the King

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Michael "Macstorm" Cunningham
STAFF EDITORIALIST

Last time we talked about the reign of World of Warcraft. It has been king of the MMORPG world since early 2005 and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. The success of WoW despite all of the negative features makes it clear that the game will not just fall apart. Yes, people might slowly start to lose interest, but with seven million people on board, it will take a while for that to make a dent. So what will it take to overthrow the king?

Having World of Warcraft completely fall apart is a very unlikely scenario, so in order for the king to fall, something else must happen. A game that features a huge world, easy to use gameplay, and massive amounts of content will not be enough. WoW has more than just its content to live off of; it has the past reputation of the Warcraft series and the grand name that it has built for itself. Final Fantasy XI seems to have peaked far short of a million. Dungeons & Dragons Online has barely made a dent. Everquest II has shown dismal numbers. These MMOs had the key ingredient of a popular series name, but still failed to reach WoW levels. They were not as easy to get into and enjoy. However, I would be willing to bet that some no-name series could copy the World of Warcraft interface and still fail due to lack of recognition. No MMORPG has had both of WoW's keys to success: being easy to play and having a popular series name.

The sad truth about the MMORPG genre is that quality is not always rewarded with popularity. There are many competitors to WoW that could easily be looked at as being more fun, but still cannot compete with WoW in terms of sheer numbers. With that in mind, what does the future hold? One of the most anticipated upcoming MMORPG is Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. While Warhammer is quite a popular series on its own, it's not necessarily a series closely identified with video games. I wish it the best and the experience that Warhammer Online produces could be quite amazing, but it will be fighting an uphill battle to dethrone the king.

One key to defeating World of Warcraft is for some big name series, not necessarily tied into the RPG realm, to create an easy to pick up MMO. The series needs to be something like Mario, Grand Theft Auto, or Halo. The name of the MMO itself needs to be its own advertising. The bigger the series, the better the chances. Also, Final Fantasy could take another shot at it. Having learned from Final Fantasy XI, Square Enix could eventually tack the Final Fantasy name onto another MMORPG. Considering that none of these things have currently been announced, it looks like WoW will reign supreme for a little while longer.