14 DAY TRIAL // The MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) market is a very tough one, dominated by Blizzard Entertainment's hugely popular World of Warcraft. This game holds over 65% of the market, and, although other titles have appeared, like Age of Conan or Warhammer Online, it still maintained its popularity level.
Blizzard recently announced that the game exceeded 11 million paying subscribers, which made the company extremely profitable. Even if other games that could threaten WoW are constantly released, the game has a lot of aces up its sleeve, in terms of gameplay experience (with a vast array of minigames for all types of gamers), popularity (being played in a lot of countries), and, most of all, compatibility (as it can be played on a wide variety of PCs and Macintosh configurations).
Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, revealed, in a recent statement regarding the profitability of the company, some very interesting statistics about players who had canceled their accounts for other MMORPGs but reactivated them in a very short time. This just goes to show that WoW is always the preferred experience in this genre of games.
"Age of Conan launched toward the end of the June quarter, and Warhammer Online came out in mid-September. To date, 68 percent of the players who listed Age of Conan as their reason for cancellation, and 46 percent of players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft."
A very interesting argument, which is sure to make a dent in the popularity of both Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. However, Morhaime does have a point, as WoW is extremely popular, and, with the upcoming expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, it is sure to get more players to reactivate their accounts and others to join in on the online game.
Let's just hope that Blizzard will continue to offer the same great experience with future games, such as Diablo III or Starcraft II.