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Rob Pardo gave an interesting interview in WarCry last week. If you missed it, you can read the full interview here. One portion in particular that caught my eye discussed Blizzard’s view of other MMOs and specifically the idea of a WoW Killer.

Media outlets often report on Blizzard’s long development cycle in reference to Diablo III, Starcraft II and even WoW expansions. The mantra is they’ll release it when its ready and it’s this in house iteration that is often credited as the key to Blizzard’s continued success. For Vanilla WoW, the core game released five years ago, it took Blizzard a full five years to get it ready. What that means is that new competitors coming into the field, whether its Warhammer Online or Aion, are facing a competitor that has been working and iterating on the same game for ten years (five years in internal development and five years in live development).

Does that mean that new MMOs are doomed to fail right out of the gate? Not necessarily but it puts them at a tremendous disadvantage. Think of the amount of time and money it took for Blizzard to hire the best talent in the gaming industry and multiply all those salaries by five. Then imagine releasing very little if anything for five years. Blizzard could swing this model because of their successful and very profitable stable of games released previous to WoW. Many other companies don’t have the necessary money or investor patience to buy the same window of time.

Wait, we aren’t done yet. Now imagine that the same team who developed the original game has had five years of limitless resources and scarce competition to iterate on old material and release new content. This is the competitor that other developers are facing. This is the world’s best gaming company operating outside of the realm of investor pressure and market trends, learning and refining the same game for a decade.

This is not a case of David vs. Goliath for new developers entering the MMO field. This is a case of David vs. the collective might of the Stormwind, Onyxia, the Deadmines and Deathwing, all playing on the same team together for ten years. It looks like the only WoW killer on the horizon is the one that Blizzard is already developing.