Hey Rawrcast Fans,
For all of our complaints against Blizzard it has to be said that they really do a fine job with WoW, and I’m sure the 14 million or so subscribers would agree with that.
However, there are some areas where Blizzard could do with a kick up the arse so here’s your chance to share what you would do if you were in charge of the WoW franchise. I’ll post my thoughts here and I encourage you to post up yours on the discussion forums.
Make the game free to play
Wow has been running for over four years now with a steady rise in subscribers that must finally be seeing a plateau reached. What better way to stimulate further sales of the game and push your subscriber base that little further than by offering a subscription free service? Would it be wise though to seriously consider slaying the cash cow… 
I’m sure Blizzard would argue that they spend millions of dollars every month maintaining their servers and generally managing their game and their staff but there are plenty of examples of free to play MMOs that yield great success. Guild Wars stands out as just one example of a model Blizzard could look to adopt as WoW moves into its golden age.
Box sales of expansion packs keeps GW in business and there’s no reason to think Blizzard couldn’t reap the same success, especially if they took up my next suggestion.
Offer their code to the community
Ok this might not be as easy as I’m about to imagine it is but for the sake of discussion lets run with this.
Look at the recent success of Little Big Planet on the PS3, where players create their own levels and share them with the world. Imagine if something similar was done with WoW where the community could contribute their own quest lines and if they had the skills perhaps present their own little piece of Azeroth. No doubt lore fanatics would wince at the idea of some plebian messing with the sacred continent of Azeroth, but that’s fine, these additions aren’t going to be for everyone.
In fact if we consider LBP the suggestion there is that 90% of the content is rubbish and a tiny fraction of the maps are actually any good. For this to work then a system would need to be implemented that allowed the community to rate the Modders and their work. Just like you see on youtube, the good stuff rises to the top whilst the tripe sinks out of sight.
Whatever the case there is so much potential for the community to express itself and have some fun in WoW. Be it creating a new land mass to explore, populated with the bizarre and weird creatures of your imagination, or a simple quest line for family and friends to jump into. The opportunity for parody would be awesome and we’d see an endless stream of new content to delve into.
Personally I’d develop a quest line titled ’80 days around the world’ which would see quests appearing on a daily basis that demands you visit each of the zones and photograph land marks in the area, encouraging players to explore the many nooks and crannies in Azeroth and see the awesome artwork that Blizzard have produced over the last four years. What would you do with your own piece of Azeroth…
Give us Classic Realms
Personally this isn’t something I particularly care for but I recognise that a number of people really do want to see Classic realms implemented so why not give it to them.
‘It’s too niche’ says Blizzard.
Fair enough, but think about the math here, even if just 1% of your total audience actually took up the opportunity to roll on a classic realm that would equal approx. 140,000 people – is that really such a poor number to serve? Even if you were to halve that number I’m certain you’d have enough players to populate at least one server, if not exceed the population cap.
It seems silly to me to not at least experiment with this idea and throw up a single server and see how it got on. If it flopped, well no harm done Blizzard could say ‘we told you so’ and close down a single server. If it took off then it would be just one server out of hundreds, surely not that big a cost and it serves a niche of the population with what they want.
I could be completely wrong here and perhaps this is far more effort than I think it is. Or maybe Blizzard are wary of giving in to such demands as it could set a precedent that don’t want to be ransomed to in the future…whatever their causes I still think this is worth further consideration.
Look after your customers, especially when you have the money to play with these experiments.
This wraps up my thoughts on what I’d do if I was in charge at Blizzard HQ. Share your thoughts here and have some fun with what you would do.
Emeny.
Where ever this word came from I have absolutely no idea how it got into the MMO community and why it was so quickly adopted to describe an overpowered, low level player.
