WoW Classic: A lesson for the gaming industry at large
Millions of people are paying $15 a month for a game developed 15 years ago with old game play & graphics. Let’s explore why:
On August 26th, Activision Blizzard released World of Warcraft Classic, a re-release of the popular stand-alone MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) that has dominated the gaming industry for more than a decade. The 15 year old quote on quote “throwback” promises a gaming experience that mirrors the original look and feel of WoW when it first hit store shelves back in 2004.
Upon release, WoW Classic did not disappoint with millions of new and returning users subscribing to Blizzards $15 per month game pass . The game has been so successful that early reports estimate the game should account for 50% of Activision Blizzard segment growth this year.
While most may view WoW Classic’s resurgence as the typical case of consumer nostalgia, I believe there is a larger lesson to be learned here. For the most part, the success of WoW Classic lies very much in Blizzard’s pragmatic approach to game development. In stark contrast to fellow industry behemoth Electronic Arts, Blizzard’s development and community team has proven how much the gaming industry undervalues the importance of developing a game alongside a community and not just for it.
...the success of WoW classic shows how much the gaming industry has undervalued the importance of developing a game alongside the community and not just for it.
Much has changed since 2004. Not only has popular gaming gone through various iterations but the internet as a whole has completely adjusted to the Mooreian surge and transfer of information exchange. When the original version of WoW was first released, one could only learn about the game by playing. There was no YouTube, no Twitch, no Twitter. If you wanted to know more about the game, you had to play it yourself. All you needed was the CD box set, a computer and an active internet connection.
Enter 2019: gamers have unprecedented levels of knowledge about almost any game, WoW being no exception. Streamers now dominate the gaming industry with platforms like Twitch bringing in millions of viewers. Content creators across YouTube can review, analyse and judge any game before it is even released. On top of this, an increase in exposure has created a more vocal audience. The average internet user today has 8.5 social media accounts and a larger propensity to share their thoughts & opinions across social channels.
For most game development companies, this digitally voracious environment is a double-edged sword with good news spreading like butter but bad news spreading like wildfire. Indeed, you only have to look at the notorious and premature release of No Man's Sky as a prime example (although to be fair, they have recently made good on their promise to fix the game). For Blizzard however, re-releasing WoW Classic was a golden opportunity to show a declining player base that the company still listens to their community.
As stated earlier, for many years, player communities have begged Blizzard to release legacy servers for the original vanilla World of Warcraft. The downfall of game content from Wrath of the Lich King saw the thriving player base slowly decrease by half in just a few expansions.
One source for this loss were privately held games that ran the games source code but hosted their own servers. These servers are also known as private servers and still exist to this day. It’s important to note that Blizzard executives have been long aware of the prevalence of these vanilla legacy private servers, and so the idea of a reboot official version of vanilla World of Warcraft was never too much a stretch of the imagination.
Development strategy: keeping tabs on the community
To my knowledge, Blizzard’s development/marketing strategy involved two key factors:
- Access to the community via dedicated forums and channels
- A beta program reserved for high profile streamers and early adopters
Access to the community via dedicated forums and channels
This is Blizzard’s oldest community strategy as dedicated game forums are nothing new and have been managed by Blizzard since their first release in 2004. Players frequently use Blizzard dedicated forums to voice their judgement on matters ranging from expansions, patches and the overall direction of the game. By scanning these highly engaged forums, Blizzard developers were able to spot community- led debates such as “no changes” , graphics optimisation, and the controversial “layering” decision, thus allowing for a more informed decision-making environment.
Moreover, the forums were also a key medium for the WoW classic dev team to voice their development progress to the rest of the community. Also known as “dev posts”, these posts detailed key areas of development, any potential issues and the successful solutions. In doing so, Blizzard essentially struck two birds with one stone by both engaging with the community on its progress and safeguarding the spread of false information.
A beta program reserved for high profile streamers and early adopters
As with any software release, releasing a Beta version helps developers test their product and identify important bugs before an official release. Yet, what made the WoW classic beta program so important for its success was the level of hype it found on the streaming platform Twitch.
When most games release, or a beta is being played, a title will see strong viewership on Twitch for the first week. This can be compared to a new movie hitting the box office. When a new movie comes out, tons of people go to see it as soon as its out, but significantly fewer tickets are sold to see the same movie in the following weeks.
However, with the Beta having run its course, viewership of the game has yet to show signs of truly slowing down. Even though much of the content in the game had been capped, top WoW streamers such as Chance “Sodapoppin” Morris and “Asmongold” have been able to continually play the game in such a way that they can find ways to engage an audience.
Prior to the release of the Classic beta, Morris averaged 25K concurrent viewers and Asmongold averaged 19K CCV. They had 16.7M hours watched and 5.7M hours watched, respectively. From May 15–30, they’ve averaged 40K CCV and 50K CCV, respectively, with 6.5M and 5.2M hours watched. Only Turner “Tfue” Tenney has managed to produce more hours watched than Asmongold, and Morris has been the most-watched personality on Twitch.
The success of WoW’s top two streamers has helped the game across the board. Before the beta released, WoW wasn’t even one of the top 10 most-watched forms of content on Twitch, but from May 15–30, it has catapulted to the fourth most-watched game.
Conclusions
By engaging with the community across forums and beta programs, Blizzard successfully maintained hype for a game they themselves announced almost two years ago. I recommend game developers looking to mirror Blizzard’s success take a more introspective approach in their development. How can they engage more with the community? What dedicated channels exist to create the best decision-making environment? How can I make the best out of the increasingly vocal and exposed streaming platforms available today?
Speaking of streaming platforms, it is important to take into account how platforms like Twitch have radically shifted the way people discover and consume gaming entertainment.Although the decision to release the official game at the end of the summer was initially met with disappointment (players were hoping to play during the holidays), this gave more exposure for the Beta which was released with restricted access from early May to late July.
I believe that by using these two strategies, Blizzard showed the gaming world once again how important it is to develop a game alongside the community. Although forums and streaming services are themselves products of their own age, both mediums proved incredibly successful for creating the hype, exposure and success for the 15 year old re-release.
For years, fans and players of the game have spoken out about the ever-changing nature of WoW and begged for there to be servers dedicated to people who want to play the game in its purest vanilla form. On August 26th, that day finally came.
For more information on the game, visit https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/wowclassic
