WoW
Someone the other day wrote a question on Hacker News asking why World of Warcraft is so successful. The question, as posed, is”
“Why is world of warcraft so successful? What about it made it that it became the largest and most profitable MMO game of all time? Is it the first MMO that tried to appeal to non-hardcore gamers? Or a lot more than that?”
I think there are really two questions there. The first is “Why are massively multiplayer online (MMO) games successful?” The second is “Why is World of Warcraft (WoW) the most successful MMORPG?” (the RPG being “role playing game”, for non-techies in the audience) .
I think people in the comments gave a lot of good answers to the second question, better than I could since I don’t play it or any other MMO games (unless you count poker). But my answer to the first got downmodded quite a bit. Nonetheless, I’m pretty certain that the answer to it is that MMO games are a solid form of escapism.
When you play WoW, you aren’t thinking about your bills, or how much of a dick your boss was to you at work yesterday. You’re just thinking about how you’re going to slay the Evil Orc with the Dagger of Despair in the Crystal Cave.
Damn near everyone in our modern world engages in some form of escapism. For some people it’s sports (or fantasy sports). For some people it’s gambling. For tens or maybe even hundreds of millions it’s television. And like any other form of escapism, there’s a healthy amount, and a lot of people who cross that line (largely out of depression, I’d guess) to where it becomes an obsession.
So I think if you want to replicate the success of something like WoW, step one is to create something so engaging that people forget about the other things in their life while they’re using your product. If someone is playing your game and thinking about how he has to take out the garbage, you’ve failed. If someone is taking out the garbage and thinking about how he is going to play your game as soon as he’s done, you’ve succeeded.
WoW also has a strong social aspect, and it’s largely (but not exclusively) engaged in by people who generally aren’t the most social guys around in the real world. I remember listening to Opie and Anthony a long time ago, and one of them played. He got kicked out of a guild, only to find out later that the leader was some dorky 14 year old from New Jersey.
In WoW, nobody knows you’re a nerdy teenager. You’re just a level 82 paladin. So it’s yet another level of escapism. You’re not only escaping from your environment and responsibilities, but also from your own genetics and a world that often judges you based upon them. It’s a more meritocratic universe than the one we actually inhabit, so it appeals largely to people whose strengths are mental rather than physical.
So there’s that element as well. Of course, all of that wouldn’t matter if the product wasn’t just plain fun. But I think for something to be as successful as WoW is, it takes a lot more than being fun. You have to appeal to unsatisfied primary urges, like the desire to forget your troubles and be judged not on how you look, but by how you perform.
I’ve never played the game, though I’ve watched others play, for two main reasons. One is that I don’t think I’d enjoy it. I’m not into the Dungeons and Dragons theme (which is odd, since many of my closest friends are) and I like games that are more about solo competition. I’m more of a Guitar Hero, Mario Kart Wii kinda guy. I like to be able to compete against others and myself, by going for a higher score or a shorter time.
And the other reason is that I would be screwed if I did enjoy it. I tend to be overly competitive, and often obsessive, so when I take on a new game, I usually go all-out. I simply don’t have the time for that these days. I have a wife and a startup, and if any time is left over I spend it playing games I know I won’t think about when I’m done.
As someone in the gaming industry, it’s impossible not to admire what they’ve done. Of course, it’s been about 10 times more successful than they had even dreamed it would, and it’s good to see Blizzard (who has been making great games since I was in high school) hit a grand slam after years of home runs. Most of all, I think it’s an interesting case study, because the game has supplanted 100% of a lot of people’s free time activities, and if you’re in the industry, it’s worth delving into why.
June 25, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I'm not sure why you were downmodded, escapism nails it.
Diablo was designed as a series of clicks and rewards. When you clicked on an item in your inventory, a pleasant sound chimed. When you killed Diablo, you got a better series of sounds and more things to click in your inventory.
WoW is so successful because it provides such a compelling alternative to reality. In reality, there is risk, there is emotion, there is change. In WoW, you just have a steady stream of clicks, a steady stream of rewards, and a steady group of pseudo-friends that don't judge you. In some ways, it is better than reality. If nothing else, it is much easier. The only way to get better is to play more, and the more you play, the more fun you have.
June 25, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I loved the thread at Y!Hack. Much to learn about how the brain works watching the Warcraft crowd.
If it were just escapism, any game would work. Rarely do MMOs. There is some magic dust in Warcraft. If you've played it, you get it, but you are never exactly sure why.
BTW, the level cap is currently 70 in WoW if you want to be factually correct.
June 25, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Ha, thanks for setting me straight on the levels. Are there really Paladins? Or a Crystal Cave? I'm pretty sure I got those from a phone book commercial.
June 25, 2008 at 7:21 pm
One thing I've learned over the years (and Scott Adams talks about this a lot) is that mosy people disagree due more to poor reading comprehension skills. Which is not to say that someone couldn't possibly understand me and still disagree but the ratio of misreads to genuine disagreements is probably at least 5:1.
I would guess in this case that people took my comment to mean playing wow = depression. Just a guess.
You're right about the operant conditioning in Diablo. I never thought about that when I played it, but now in hindsight that makes much sense.
June 25, 2008 at 8:24 pm
There's alot more to WoW under the covers than just another graphic escapism dish. Blizzard carefully learned from their own fan base via Diablo, and Everquest. Improving on the concept they set out to design a game that rewarded both kinds of players, wildly addicted hard core raiders and the average joe that still needed to have a life.
I look at my online gaming experience as a kind of progression, and I think most players would probably agree to some extent, you play these worlds to DO, really.. thats it.. the minute the DO stops, ya get bored, and either make another toon to DO all over again or buy a new world and DO there.
Lots of people go on and on about how its bad, and life absorbing crack, and it is. If it gets away from ya, then yeah, break on the unemployment checks and kiss the wife goodbye cause you gotta raid ZA tonight. But if you keep your perspective, even if that means you plop down $$$ for some gold on ebay, you can keep on playing and let nothing stand in your way.
The biggest hook these games have isn't the social aspect, its the creation and status factor. Players constant trade one item for another, continually on a quest to upgrade, out with the old, in with the new– not just for items but new zones, monsters to battle, spells to cast, effects to see and so on. Its also a game that leverages the idea that you probably don't want to throw away something you plowed 134 played days into. Its easy to walk after character identities that never change, never level, never achieve rep or status, but walking away from hard earned time endured legacy characters that braved the battles of MC and beyond.. that, is really hard to walk away from.
June 25, 2008 at 9:41 pm
“since I don’t play it or any other MMO games”
Don't need to read any further. How can you honestly give a reason why WoW is so successful when you don't play it? There are several MMOs that have been completely unsuccessful. Your starting point should be: why does WoW succeed so well when so many others fail? I'd like to read an article on that.
June 26, 2008 at 12:06 am
That's like not using a particular psychologist because they aren't depressed. I might not play an mmorpg, but I know dozens who do, and am fairly interested in such things.
And why wow does so much better than others (there have been prior successes) is one of the two questions.
June 26, 2008 at 2:10 am
It's as much escapism as any other recreational thing one can do. I've heavily played wow for 1 year, and very casually for another 1 1/2 now. I played most when my real life was actually very well and fullfilling, but played a lot less when i didn't feel all that well (work is dull, etc)
Obviously i can only speak for myself, but i mostly play for 2 reasons.
1) The people i met.
2) The satisfaction of beating a large scale encounter.
Both might not be very obvious for someone who hasn't played. You can (and unless you intentionally try not to) will meet all sorts of people in an online game and i built very nice and strong relationships. It's a bit like forums, chats for others. Real people.
2) Beating encounters. That one is not that important really, but it gives you a nice feeling when you beat the game. Of course the reward (new items that make your ingame character stronger) is also nice but for me that was mostly a way to beat new, stronger encounters.
June 26, 2008 at 4:01 am
You said “I would argue that most people who engage in it (or any other form of escapism) for a large number of hours are depressed.”
June 26, 2008 at 7:19 am
Yes, there are Paladins. No Crystal Caves that I know of, but I don't know the whole world.
June 26, 2008 at 7:31 am
WoW does well because it has the Warcraft brand, which gave it the correct jumpstart (would you rather play a game from an unknow company or from a known one, specially if you like it?). Then, they made few mistakes. They got all that attracted people on all other mildly successful games and crammed it altogether with the Warcraft brand appealing a little to each kind of player out there. And since they made so few mistakes, people forgave the game for being not the perfect game for them, because it was still fun (albeit not perfect) and the best that was out there. Then it reached critical mass, and everyone started playing WoW because everyone was playing WoW. One of the most important aspect of the WoW success is the fact that it reached this 'critical mass'. You always had a few friends playing each game out there, but then suddenly all your friends were playing WoW, and it is much easier for you to move from the game you were playing alone to WoW than to move all your friends (and their friends, and their guildmates, etc etc) out of WoW to your game.
June 26, 2008 at 8:42 am
Calling an activity “escapism” presumes there's something more important that someone should be doing with their time. Otherwise the word is so vague as to be meaningless.
Where kids are involved, playing games is part of learning and growing up. Nearly all kids play games, and it's not called escapism. In that sense, games like WoW offer a chance to grow up in an accelerated world. This was apparent in EQ. If you looked at the language people used to describe their characters, they frequently equated level with age; and indeed higher level generally meant more experience and maturity within the gameworld.
June 26, 2008 at 8:14 pm
It's not the most successful; that would be Maple Story.
June 26, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Doesn't WoW make infinitely more money because it charges? It probably makes more every few months than Maple Story has made total. It has >10 million paying subscribers.