World of Warcraft: The Savior or Destroyer of the MMO?

It is hard to argue that World of Warcraft is one of the most popular games of all time, let alone the most popular MMORPG in history. It has reached past the typical playerbase and brought in more people than any MMO before it. Students, Doctors, Teachers, Parents, Celebrities and Geeks all play this record breaking game. It has taken a very diverse genre and boiled it down to a concentrated experience, all while making it accessible and fun. Though WoW might have broadened the MMO's audience, will it also hurt the market in the long run?

With the high profile MMO Star Trek Online going into open beta recently, it's been open season for everyone with an internet connection and a pre-order key. The message boards and blogs have been filled with professional, and sometimes less than professional, first impressions of the game. One thing that is a common point in a lot of these previews is a comparison to World of Warcraft. While not everyone does it, it's hard not to. Even though these two games have very different dynamics and subject content, there is always a giant WoW shaped shadow hanging over the game. For better or worse, WoW has become a standard by which all other MMO games are measured. But is this truly a fair practice?

The World of Warcraft that people play today is a far cry from the game that was launched back in November 2004. Beyond the technical problems that plagued the game early on, the game itself is different. This is to be expected from an online game that has been going strong for over five years and having released two expansion packs. The original WoW was a large concept game. It has introduced some ideas that have made the genre, as whole, better. Things such as smaller penalties for death and less downtime after combat are things that many games have adopted. What people fail to remember though is the title as it was launched, not as it is today.

Structured Player vs. Player was not introduced to Azeroth until nearly six months after the game's launched. Racial traits and certain class talents were not even enabled till the first patch of the game. WoW, like many other MMOs, was not something that many people would consider a complete game. Over the first few months after launch, content was slowly added or completed. There was much rejoicing and the game flourished.

One of the best examples of a Massively Multiplayer Online game fine tuning itself after launch is Dark Age of Camelot. One of the largest selling points for DAoC was it's large scale Realm vs. Realm, or RvR, combat system. In this system, all players were from one of three countries. These countries would all compete in a frontier area that had castles you could capture and defend. At launch, this system was heralded as being the most innovative way ever to do player vs. player, but many eventually lost interest in the RvR system.

Almost three years later, developers Mythic released a free expansion titled New Frontiers. This new expansion completely overhauled the Realm vs Realm system. Breathing new life to the series, creating what many MMO fans have described as one of the best and most rewarding player vs. player systems ever in a game. A gameplay system that shared very little from the original release of the game, but was a huge reward to those that saw the potential of the title and hung around for a few years.

Now let us return to 2010 and more specifically Star Trek Online. Many people are saying that it is an incomplete game or that the game may have less content than other games on the market. Server issues and other problems have arisen during the recent open beta testing. Problems that are very similar to those Blizzard had with overloaded servers during the launch of World of Warcraft. These issue are common place and are the very reason that companies use open beta as a stress test for their servers.

In the end, will Star Trek Online be a game that grows up into a "WoW killer" if it gets the support it needs? Not likely. Frankly there isn't any one that can "kill" WoW other than Blizzard at this point. Would a game like Tabula Rasa had done better if it wasn't in many player's nature to compare a launch game to a long established game? Maybe. The only thing that's clear is development of MMO games in general will eventually be forced into longer and longer cycles. Longer development cycles that many smaller companies just simply can't afford. Sure the future of the game will require less faith on the part of players, but the ability for game makers to take risks will be greatly reduced as well. Gone are the days that a game can come out with a solid gameplay engine, a few novel ideas and the promise of content down the road.

Maybe there will be something that changes it all. Maybe when Bioware's Old Republic comes out, there will be some strange shifting of the moon and planets, allowing people to have multiple MMOs to compare to with a variety of features and gameplay styles. Maybe there will be some way of billing or production that will allow for games to compete against World of Warcraft. But until that day, I think it's safe to say that WoW is the greatest and worst thing to happen to MMORPGs.