Was wow a fluke, or can blizzard do it again with Titan?

[Chickat]

Was the success of wow an accident mixed with timing, or can they replicate their success of wow with titan?

[wych]

WoW perfectly capitalised on a gap in the market.

They saw the MMO market expanding and growing without a market leader who made the game accessible for all players and casuals in particular.

Can they do it with Titan ? I don't know the MMO market appears to be declining or at least steadying off and there's lots of MMOs present in the world.

It's too soon to say anything really because we know literally nothing about it and with the latest set back it's years away and we know nothing of what the MMO market will be like at that time or what Titan can offer

[Chickat]

Let me expand on the question. Can anyone ever replicate the success of wow?

[klaps_05]

considering Titan will be an mmo, doubt it will trump wow's 12 million. then again, they just decided to start the whole project from scratch which means they are serious about it.

[serenka]

i think a lot of it was down to timing and being the best on the market, and it got in on the mmo market early just as it was really becoming popular.

i dont think we will see an mmo reach wows popularity at its height for a long time, i don't think blizzard would ever get titan up to 12m subs. i think theres too many mmos coming out trying to copy wows success, but its not going to happen.

[Lochton]

We can never know. There's no news of project: "Titan" anymore since the reboot of the process. So, all we know again is, it's an MMO.

[Deleted]

When WoW came out there was very little competition; today there are dosens of triple A MMORPGs that all have their niche for different peoples taste. So no I highly doubt they can bring in 12 million stable subscribers/players again but only time will tell

[MoanaLisa]

Well, in the history of MMO's there's not been anything like it as a cultural and game phenomenon before or since so fluke and unlikely to happen again. It was the right game at the right time with exactly the right conditions.

Titan will be interesting to see what it is when it comes out. Until then, it's pointless to speculate about it.

[Racthoh]

it was no fluke. the playerbase blew up for a reason. and they're not going to leave permanently for another game. not until wow closes down for good. players have played wow for too long and built up their accounts too much for that to happen. what i see happening is blizzard linking battlenet accounts like starcraft/wow/diablo/titan much how they did with account wide achievement progress in wow.

[serenka]

the thing that might give Titan a boost in subs at release at least will be just because its from Blizzard, but i don't see any mmo topping 5m subs anytime soon, there is just too many on the market.

[wych]

Let me expand on the question. Can anyone ever replicate the success of wow?

In the current market, no.

It doesn't matter how great it is, WoW probably has over a million "loyal" subscribers, and other MMOs have millions too.

I can't see anybody unifying the market for another few years.

Maybe that is the real reason Titan was pushed further back, let WoW make it's money and when they see the market crying out for a leader to unify it, bring it in.

[Chickat]

In the current market, no.

It doesn't matter how great it is, WoW probably has over a million "loyal" subscribers, and other MMOs have millions too.

I can't see anybody unifying the market for another few years.

Maybe that is the real reason Titan was pushed further back, let WoW make it's money and when they see the market crying out for a leader to unify it, bring it in.

Bring it in boys. Time for a new market leader.

[torterra275]

Let me expand on the question. Can anyone ever replicate the success of wow?

No, the MMO market is flooded with games and the size of the market has been decreasing in the past years.

[Elise the Seeker]

I don't feel like Titan even existed, just something they said to get us hype about. When they said they're revamping Titan, in my mind I felt they said "We just started working on it"

[Deleted]

No, the MMO market is flooded with games and the size of the market has been decreasing in the past years.

Hasn't it increased? Thought more people played than ever?

[OzoAndIndi]

Let me expand on the question. Can anyone ever replicate the success of wow?

If they do it right then maybe it would be popular for a time, but I'm not sure most newer MMOs, even if made by the same people, could quite have the lifespan now that WoW has enjoyed, not with how common they are at this point. A lot more options out there now pulling interests in different directions.

Look at these newer things in the last year or two, so much hype about them before release and then after a short time the "meh..." starts in.

[Every Pwny]

Doubt another MMO could do the same as wow, even Titan. They seemed to go in there at the right time as well as have a lot of support from their previous series. I just don't see people being as interested in mmos as they once were. Wow definitely seems like an anomaly.

[ComputerNerd]

Firstly there are too many unknowns about Titan to really say what part of the market it is trying to fill.
An MMO is likely, but given the reboot then I think we cannot assume anything anymore aside from likely not seeing anything significant for a considerable amount of time.
Given the competition that simply did not exist before, then there is no option any more for such a market leader nor really should there be one.
Competition can make for better games, because they adapt to that competition.
Competition can also make for horrible business models, as shown by many using the F2P label for what are gated or feature limited demo's unless coughing up cash.

[Kuthe]

Unlikely.

The MMO market is a dying genre.
Sure WoW has attracted a lot of people to it, as has the few other good MMO's around.
But they have also put alot of people off them.

The reason heaps of people won't move from WoW to other MMO's even if they see them as better is because of the time and effort put into their current accounts.
So I see nothing different if Titan is basically just flashier, and about something different.

The only way Blizzard could hope to come out on top with it in the long run is if it was revolutionary, and sure it's possible, but I'm not expecting much.

[Huehuecoyotl]

I have said before, in another thread, that i dont believe Blizzard have any magic formula for MMOs. they didnt somehow have the only people in the world that could work out how to build an MMO this massive, and this successful.

simply put; they got lucky. they built something, and it happened to be perfect in the sense of gameplay. it had bugs, of course, it had failings. but it had an indefinable magic something that got people playing, and kept them playing. but they didnt know what it was, and they didnt really know how they had managed to stumble on it.

as they moved through vanilla into BC and LK they built on the base of the game, and because they didnt try anything too radical, they didnt break anything and they didnt upset the balance of the game they had built. people still complained about the odd thing, of course, but they were basically happy.

then came Cata. they thought they knew best, they thought they could make massive changes. they didnt know best, and their changes broke the game. they dont know why, they still dont know why. because they never understood what it was that made it magic in the first place. everything since then has been Blizzard flailing around, trying desparately to get back what they created in the first place. and it almost seems like every attempt they make gets them further and further away from it.

they built WoW, and didnt know what made it great. they broke it, but couldnt work out how they broke it. they are trying to fix it, but they dont understand what they need to do.

its a damn shame.