The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [106]
The year 1999 saw the release of a three-dimensional MMORPG, EverQuest. EverQuest attracted a lot of attention; Newsweek took notice. Players sold virtual items for real cash. Compared to Ultima Online, it was less about innovation and more about translating the MUD medium to a threedimensional graphic engine. At one point EverQuest’s growth seemed unstoppable. It peaked at 460,000 subscribers. By 2007, EverQuest’s subscriptions dropped to 175,000.
Soon after, Asheron’s Call was released by Microsoft in 1999. Asheron’s Call made an effort to shake itself free from The Lord of the Rings roots, exchanging elves for Olthoi (cat people) and Sclavus (lizard men). At its peak, Asheron’s Call had 120,000 subscribers. The expansion pack Dark Majesty boosted its numbers, but they declined after that. As of 2007, subscribers were at 15,000. (Barton 2008:408).
In the late 1990s, the MMORPG genre expanded to settings other than fantasy, and by 2001 MMORPGs seemed tapped out. Anarchy Online, a sciMMORPG, stumbled when it launched. Ultima Online 2 was canceled in development. This was the Age of Transition, as dubbed by Bruce Sterling Woodcock (2010). The growth rates of Asheron’s Call and EverQuest slowed, and Ultima Online’s player base began to shrink. Customers of Ultima Online who had anticipated joining the Ultima Online 2 beta quit the game entirely when the cancellation was announced. With Anarchy Online and Dark Age of Camelot on the horizon in beta test form, both games began to cannibalize the Big Three’s player bases. Although the monthly fee commitment was certainly a factor in determining how many games a player could commit to, available free time was likely the biggest drain.
Dark Age of Camelot in 2001 returned to the fantasy roots and was a critical success; it launched without major bugs, had better integrated player killing, and required less time to level. Dark Age of Camelot was likely responsible for much of the player drain from the other three games. According to Woodcock, EverQuest and Ultima Online lost nearly 200,000 subscribers, subscribers he believes went to Dark Age of Camelot. Dark Age of Camelot reached 250,000 subscribers at its peak. Woodcock estimates the number of subscribers as of 2008 as low as 45,000. The market was becoming saturated. The average yearly growth for MMORPGs during this time was 55 percent.
Beginning in May 2002, dubbed the Age of Competition by Woodcock, competition got ugly. Many fledgling MMORPGs were canceled before they were released. Player bases shrunk. The average yearly growth in subscriptions was just 37 percent. Then World of Warcraft showed up and everything changed.
In 2004, World of Warcraft exploded onto the scene. It didn’t just outperform the other MMORPGs, it created new records around the globe, becoming the market share leader in North America, Europe, and China. Just as Ultima Online built on its franchise, World of Warcraft built on the Warcraft brand and launched with far fewer bugs and hiccups than its predecessors. The polish was rewarded with unparalleled subscriptions, easily surpassing its nearest rival, EverQuest II. As a result of this eight-hundred-pound gorilla, other MMORPGs diminished, growing just 17 percent subscriptions on average.
World of Warcraft perfected what the other MMORPGs struggled to achieve and, at the time of this writing, continues to dominate the MMORPG field. As of 2010, it has over eleven million players and the majority share of the massive multiplayer subscription market.
On August 4, 2005, the Chinese government announced a ban on all “violent” gameplay for minors under 18. Chinese officials declared violent any game that involves player vs. player combat, a common feature among MMORPGs. Later in August the same year, the Chinese government imposed online gaming curbs so players could not play more than three consecutive