Yes, I am going to play jumping jacks out on a limb and say that a MMO bubble is in the works. Also, I’m going to blame it on World of Warcraft. Er… sort of. Well, perhaps not really..

The situation that we see in the MMO genre is one of every development studio attempting to copy WoW. They do this by copying WoW’s style of game play, and they succeed by lesser or greater amounts. Depending on the individual game, of course.

So you have all of these games trying desperately to be World of Warcraft, yet of course those who are playing WoW will continue to do so. After all, why are they going to leave WoW when those other games offer game play so similar to what they already receive? With their accomplished characters, on game servers with friends that they have known for quite some time…

…I’m going to assume that you see my point there: Generally speaking, people are not going to leave World of Warcraft for any other MMO because other games provide such a similar experience, because they have established characters, and because they have established friendships & guilds.

A development studio’s only hope, then, would be to offer something unique. Only they’re blind to this and typically refuse to do so. Some games, such as EVE Online, break the mold… well actually that’s the only one that comes to mind off hand.

The “MMO bubble” is going to burst when these WoW subscribers become bored with their game. They’re going to leave and they’re going to look for something different. Some will certainly stick in new games, but the majority of WoW gamers are not core gamers. I suggest that such a huge number of people play WoW for social reasons, not necessarily because the game is so great (though it’s certainly fun for awhile).

My theory is that upon discovering that these other games are little more (in some cases, nothing more) than copycats of World of Warcraft they will simply abandon the MMORPG genre; that’s what MSN/Yahoo is for after all. Though many will stay in various MMOs, many more will simply vanish from the genre because the other games offer nothing.

Why does this cause a “bubble” effect? Because many of these other MMOs are hoping that they’ll scoop up these people once they become bored of WoW. I propose that - though there will be some exceptions - this is not going to happen.

These dev studios are not ever going to see the subscriptions materialize that they expect/hope to see. A number of games will fold because of this, which will lead to investment groups being just that much more uncertain about investing money in the MMO genre.

Am I proposing that it will it be a complete collapse of the genre? No, but it sure is going to be painful.

Just the .02 of a long-time MMORPG player / gamer.

~Steph

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