Massively Sequential
What happens when a sequel to a massive, live game makes the original go away? Should it ever do that?
Launching a numbered successor to a big, flagship MMO (EverQuest 1 to 2) after working on both games, with the new game similar in form but very different in feel from the original, is the kind of thing that really keeps you up at night.
As opposed to a large update, a full blown sequel usually represents a massive, years-long investment in development time and cost, on par with the budget of the entire original game. Usually more. Where an update or expansion generally contains a knowable quantity of game evolution, a sequel is usually much, much more.
Keeping both an original persistent game and its sequel running in parallel has a real risk of potentially splitting the audience in half, breaking up friend groups, and leaving someone disappointed while almost certainly close to doubling the cost of keeping both games active and the content flowing at the rate and quality players deserve.
To be clear, we made the right call for the games we had, but I was always curious what the alternatives would look like in practice.
The idea of taking one game away while only providing the sequel always felt even riskier. When two other games announced they were doing exactly that, I was very interested to pay attention and see how it turned out.
In recent years, both the beloved Overwatch and Path of Exile franchises announced their intentions of launching in-place sequels that would replace the originals. Enter, Overwatch 2 and Path of Exile 2.
It’s a huge bet that the community’s going to come along for that kind of ride. That’s a direction you can only take if you have ultra-high confidence that what you’re delivering is going to live up to the expectation of your loyal fans and their groups of friends.
For Overwatch 2, I’m not sure that they had a choice but to make that bet.
For starters, Blizzard built their name on not just meeting, but surpassing audience expectation in virtually everything they touched. Who better to take on the challenge? That was my first thought when I first heard them announce this strategy years ago.
Had they kept the games separate, for a PvP game that involves significant matchmaking, anything that would shrink the number of people in the queues would be a high risk to the experience of both. Any smaller number of overall players risks the smoothness of the experience that’s all-important to PvP games. Ask anyone who’s launched a matchmade PvP game — The speed of well-enough-balanced queueing ends up being just as important as the actual gameplay.
Then, they’d be adding to the already significant challenges of having esports leagues. Run them for both games? Pick the one that’s “legitimate?” Think through this for more than a few minutes and it becomes obvious there are no shortage of problems with no easy solution.
In the time since launch, they’ve faced many challenges but they weren’t a result of the sequel strategy. Given the amount of coverage, I don’t feel like I’m talking out of turn by saying this — Their challenges stemmed more from the scope of the game and misalignment with community expectation given what had been announced previously.
Namely, PvE and story, which is an area that many Overwatch fans as far back as the earliest days really wanted to see developed more. Add a business model swap (B2P to Free to Play) on top of that, and you’re absolutely cranking up the difficulty of a success.
All in all, for Overwatch 2 I do think the in-place sequel could have been proven out to be the right call, had the significant hurdle of audience expectation been cleared. The problems they had didn’t stem from the strategy itself. Had the individual elements met player expectation, I suspect the conversation would be very different.
In all of this, I empathize greatly with the developers — It’s important to remember that the people who pour their hearts into creating games for years aren’t the ones with the final say on the strategy or even how it rolls out. It’s universally heartbreaking to feel you’ve ever disappointed anyone.
Path of Exile just announced today that they decided not to go forward with the announced in-place sequel strategy for Path of Exile 2, surprising their audience. I think in a good way.
The more I thought about this over the past couple years, the more I thought a change in course might be the right call for their game and audience after all. Even more so than it was for us in classic MMOs.
First, their gameplay is largely cooperative with zero matchmaking. Even in the terrible, worst case where a new game’s launch doesn’t grow the audience for them at all (which won’t happen), or if it fails to at least double their audience leaving them with two games of approximately the size of the one they have today, both games remain perfectly playable.
Second, the fact that their game is structured into 3–4 month seasonal complete-resets in a way that their community understands much more natively than the Diablo 4 audience appears to have, with much meatier amounts of seasonal content, is another huge point in their favor.
In this structure, compared to other massive games they get to care primarily about season-over-season retention while every other type of game has to care about what players are doing day over day or week over week.
That frequently leads to game content that looks like daily and weekly quests or tasks, for which there’s no shortage of fatigue across massive games.
Further, despite a notably obsessive audience, it also creates the potential for healthier relationships between players and the games they enjoy: It’s perfectly normal and expected that a dedicated fan would see a league launch, get excited, play for a few weeks, then call it good to return a league or two in the future, and repeat as they like.
Having two games simply gives them another touch point for people who really enjoy the franchise. The hardcore can play through both. Others can play through one or the other. It ends up being one more way to customize the amount of time a fan chooses to invest in a franchise, while giving them opportunities to walk away feeling like it was a satisfying experience.
In live games, that’s the most important thing of all: Keeping people willing to try whatever it is you’re doing next, happily. Ideally when they stop playing they’re thinking fondly about your game, so when nostalgia kicks in they’re happy to come back and see what’s new.
In the end I think Path of Exile changing direction at the last minute was almost certainly the best call.
While I’m sad to lose 50% of my data points in this observation, and quietly end it without seeing what happens a second time, I am happy that their players will no doubt get the best result for them.
What’s the conclusion in all of this?
An in-place sequel might still work for some future games, and is worth considering. The hurdle to clear in a way that yields both an audience perception and financial success is higher than I think any of us imagined.
It’s incredibly content dependent, audience dependent, friend group dependent, and business model dependent. If you can nail all four in a way that makes your players feel like you get it, and that you respect their time, accomplishments, and expectations, it might just be worth it.
If you can’t, it’s almost certainly not the right call.
