What can topple World of Warcraft?
Rivals and analysts answer.
Another Korean developer, Phantagram - maker of MMO Kingdom Under Fire II - knows a thing or two about an Asian audience. Studio head Sang Youn-Lee believes it's there the greatest opportunity for online games lies.
"If you're just talking about how much money a game can bring: considering how fast online gaming is growing here in Asia, there's a high chance we will see a game in Asia in a few years that will exceed World of Warcraft's revenue," Sang-Youn Lee forecasts. "However, I don't think there are any MMO games currently being developed that can topple WOW, unless Blizzard is making a MMORPG that will offer a whole new gaming experience to the players."
Could one of those new games be another of NCsoft's flock, Guild Wars 2? Guild Wars 1 had the audacity to receive 9/10 on Eurogamer from the same reviewer who scored WOW one point lower mere months beforehand. And now ArenaNet is better staffed, better funded and more experienced. All signs point to Guild Wars 2 being great.
Jeff Strain helped found ArenaNet and was executive producer of Guild Wars 1. He was also lead programmer of World of Warcraft. He's now making a zombie MMO at Undead Labs, his newly established port of call.
"Unask the question," he quips when asked what can topple World of Warcraft. "Developers should not be trying to topple World of Warcraft. They should instead be striving to achieve the same level of success with their own game ideas. I've said it many times, and I'll say it again: targeting WOW is a losing strategy. The only team poised to create World of Warcraft 2.0 is the World of Warcraft team. If your goal is to topple a competitor, rather than making a game you are truly passionate about, you'll lose."
NCsoft won't comment on competitor's games, and studios at EA won't do that either, so neither was available to speak to us for this feature (we did ask). And it's with EA that the next, and perhaps the strongest ever contender, resides - Star Wars: The Old Republic. That licence, BioWare, that budget - the ingredients are all there. Has it really cost $300 million? We don't know. Is it EA's biggest ever project? Yes. Will it attract two million subscribers? EA thinks so.
"We're not worried about the competition because we're striving to make the very best games of their type when they come out," BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka told Eurogamer last month on a related note. "We have a great licence, a great partnership with LucasArts. Star Wars: it's pretty popular. A lot of people like that. We're embracing that licence fully. We love it. And we know millions and millions of people out there love this universe, and we're delivering a great game experience in that universe.
"And it's a great BioWare-type experience in a massively-multiplayer space in a Star Wars setting," he added. "Those seem to be some pretty good factors that have set us up for massive success. Beyond that, we just build the best game we can."
Yet by pinning all our hopes on Star Wars: The Old Republic, are we setting another MMO up for a fall? The pressure we - the pundits and the community - heap upon 'the next big thing' is immense. To emulate anything like the success of World of Warcraft would take years, as it has taken Blizzard.
But perhaps we're looking at the wrong type of game.
RuneScape, a browser-based and free-to-play MMO, has been around for nearly a decade and counts 10 million active accounts. Maker Jagex believes Blizzard not only notes RuneScape as competition but also looked to it for inspiration when building World of Warcraft.