What can topple World of Warcraft?
Rivals and analysts answer.
Dofus, a French-made MMO of similar credentials - F2P, browser-based - has had similar success, attracting 25 million people to date with its attractive cartoon appearance. "It's difficult to foresee what could knock World of Warcraft down from the top of the MMO heap," Dofus community manager 'Izmar' tells me. "Given Blizzard's indefatigable production schedule, it seems like the most likely possibility would be the death of the traditional MMO platform itself!
"A complete re-imagining of the collective persistent user experience, like the jump from MUDs to MMOs, could shake the industry enough to rattle WOW's supremacy."
Such a cataclysmic event (ahem) may not be so farfetched - not when you consider Zynga's FarmVille, a Facebook game that at one point had over 80 million people playing each month. Look at the evidence on those terms and FarmVille didn't so much topple World of Warcraft as roll it down the hill. A slice of the FarmVille success pie is what everyone today wants, because it looks easy and appetising. Blizzard's World of Warcraft pie, by comparison, appears tough - with a near impenetrable crust hardened over six years.
Could Glitch, the promising game by Flickr creator Stewart Butterfield, be the next FarmVille? It's got the potential.
Blizzard proved that MMOs could be wildly successful and profitable and then capitalised on it. He who dared, won. And no one - not Blizzard, not Activision - is about to throw that away, which is why a fourth, post-Cataclysm World of Warcraft expansion is already planned. Judging by Blizzard's past development cycles, we may not see that until Christmas 2012.
Blizzard is also making another MMO. But we won't hear more about that until 2012 at the earliest. This won't be a sequel to World of Warcraft.
"We're not trying to replace World of Warcraft," Blizzard's Mike Morhaime revealed earlier this year. "We think that World of Warcraft can continue co-existing with our new MMO and some people might prefer the new one, some people might still prefer to play World of Warcraft."
What does Blizzard believe can topple WOW?
"Um, hopefully the next Blizzard game!" lead systems designer Greg Street laughs. "It's a phenomenon, I mean when the game started, I know that the development team at the time - I wasn't a part of it then - they had no idea it was going to be like this. They were hoping for a few hundred thousand subscribers and maybe the game would last a couple of years.
"And here it's going strong six years later and shows no sign of stopping. So," he adds, "I think it's going to be around for a while."
Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian shares his faith, and when I ask him the question he responds: "Blizzard."
"[World of Warcraft] has remained so strong in the face of competition from other paid MMOs, free MMOs and the rise of Facebook and other social networking sites, that we think mis-execution on the part of Blizzard would be the most likely catalyst for a drop-off in WOW usage."
His fellow analyst, Jesse Divinch from EEDAR, agrees: "Over the next five years, the only game that could topple World of Warcraft would be another Blizzard product. What made World of Warcraft one of the most popular games in history has a lot to do with the brand equity Blizzard has built with consumers. Brand equity doesn't build over night. It takes years of delivering high-quality products to earn the loyalty of consumers. With Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo and the annual BlizzCon event, Blizzard has built a strong fortitude around its brands.
"There is simply no other competitor in the foreseeable future that could topple World of Warcraft," he says, "besides, of course, another Blizzard product."