Just curious to hear(read) people's thoughts on this. I realize this may derail into some fanboi-ism and I just want to clarify:
I AM NOT, IN ANY WAY, TALKING ABOUT THE MERITS OF THE GAMES THEMSELVES, I AM MERELY LOOKING AT THIS FROM AN MMO-MARKET PERSPECTIVE, IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT HOW ONE GAME IS BETTER THAN THE OTHER THIS IS PROBABLY NOT THE THREAD FOR YOU.
You've been warned!
With Star Wars going F2P, does this solidify WoW's position on top of the MMO heap? SWtOR was in development longer than World of Warcraft and Bioware/EA sank a fortune into cranking it out, now little more than a year later the game has dropped below a million subscribers. Obviously WoW has been losing subscribers at a greater speed than that but they have a lot more leftover to cushion the loss. SWtOR was the latest (and won't be the last) in the long string of expected "WoW killers" but it seems that Blizzard's model has insulated them well against MMO competition.
Personally, I feel it is a combination of WoW's lengthy tenure at the top and the impatience of most gamers when it comes to new games that protects WoW's subscriber base from getting bitten off by new games. They have found a model that seems to work, and most new games that come out seem to try to conform around it since it was so successful, however the players they get then end up comparing so many things to WoW and when the new game inevitably falls short (because it's new) the player becomes dissatisfied since the game is then "less polished". Obviously certain players will understand that as a new game it's still very unpolished compared to a game that's been out nearly a decade, and they will either be fine with it and continue to play or they'll still walk away.
It seems that the only way another MMO can really be successful is to offer an entirely different experience from WoW gameplay. Take, for example, EVE online. It is a fairly successful game with a fiercely loyal following, however the gameplay is nothing like WoW and (most likely due to the complexity) attracts less people.
My theory is that the only true WoW killer will be a game that offers an entirely new style of play that massive amounts of people enjoy more than WoW's gameplay, and that all game developers seeking to hit the subscriber numbers of WoW using the same style better be prepared to have all the features of WoW ready at launch (good luck with that) or be ready for a flop, as we have seen now time and time again.
Thoughts?
In b4 "zomg, GW2 is totally gonna kill WoW dude!!1!".
No, just no.