Partly I think Blizzard has lost touch with its customers, partly they rely too much on the beta testers and blogosphere, and partly the developers are perhaps a bit more interested in cool and different than in what the customers want.

As a multi-product public company, the snowball effect works at least as fast the other way. If they forecast 12 million users and it drops to 10 million, then an executive during a budget meeting could say “hmm, the party is over, let’s no longer think of WoW as a Star brand to invest in, let’s think of it as a Cash Cow and reallocate development resources to Guitar Hero and SC2.” You put a lot less development resources into a cash cow – they are designed to be milked not grown. While Blizzard still will take your money for Diablo, how many developers do you think work on it?

There are a lot of people who prefer making WoW more like CS/Halo. I am not one of them. It seems like so much of WotLK is about making the game less appealing to a very large number of current and potential users.

If I were trying to find a way to grow from 11 million to 20 million I would think it would be easier to attract some of the non-traditional demographics (couples, parents, etc. see above ) rather than fight to attract a few more of the 12-20 year old male market. If I wanted more customers, I would not invest as much in Malygos, Heigen dances and affliction warlock rotations.

But WoW has such a huge advantage, it will be around for a long time. My opinion is when WoW is toppled, it will not be from a frontal assault of “our new game is the WoW killer” but rather what Christensen refers to as a disruptive technology. A company that takes some new innovation and really listens to their customers would be my bet.

OTOH, today the biggest competitor to WotLK is … Guitar Hero. Every developer that the company pays to work on WotLK is one more headcount that is not working on GH. And vice versa.

Once a lot of people try a very buggy game, they don’t really go back in a few months to see if it is “all fixed”.

(I find it interesting that this like all but one or two of the reasons you list are things where a competitor _could_ do as well as or better then Blizzard, but few if any seem to)

My husband and I were console gamers for years, we always had the new gen systems and TONS of games. My Husband had often told me that I might like EQ because of how social a person I tend to be online, but I was sort of afraid to play because I wouldn’t know what I was doing, nor would I know anyone who could help me learn. Plus I was concerned that my machine wouldn’t run it. Like you mentioned in your post, we initially got into WoW because all of our RL friends were playing it. A friend came over and helped us set it up, showed us the action-bar feature and pretty much we were hooked ever since.

Someone above mentioned the diversity of people he can interact with. I know so many Moms and Housewives (me being part of the latter group) who play this game. It gives them something to do aside from the stereotypical Peggy Bundy style soaps/chocolates scenario. Its really a game for anyone and everyone. For all the gripes about “casuals” those are the people who keep this game so popular imo and for that I’m glad.

WoW on the other had a number of innovations that really made playing as a casual player more enjoyable like Rest XP and the lack of hell levels. And for me as a former player of EQ when I started it was a more relaxed experience.

Of course ontop of all of this Blizzard has always done a good job on content. Sure there are tons of the standard “Kill this get that” quests, but their instances and injection of lore have always been top notch. I still enjoy running Dead Mines because of some of the bosses in there :)

I actually found the Daedalus website quite an interesting read. I guess I fit into the category of I play because my partner does, if he stopped, or I stopped, we would both stop. I love raiding, but I really do play for the social content.

But I recall when WoW was first released. Several of my friends got right into it, and their partners starting bitching about being warcrack widows and the amount of time they spent playing. Not wanting to be a warcrack widow myself, when my partner expressed interest, I said to him, oh, I checked out the specs, it wouldn’t run on your computer. Now I didn’t expect him to believe me and not do his own research. But it was another 6 to 9 months before he went out and checked himself and brought a copy.

I was playing myself 2 months later, he paid for the copy, paid for the upgrade to my computer, and pays the monthly fee to keep usplaying.

That said – I paid for both our copies of the most recent expansion :)

But yeah, WoW’s success just isn’t a surprise and its continued success is no more a surprise. The best candidate for WoW killer would be Blizzard’s not fully announced “next-gen MMO”, and that’s not likely to do the job.

There’s also the implicit (and frequently explicit) assumption that any new game has to kill WoW. WAR had to be a wowkiller. LOTRO had to be a wowkiller. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Guild Wars fans think that Guild Wars 2 will be a wowkiller. There’s so much emphasis on not just being successful, but being successful enough to tear WoW down from its pedestal that it’s simply not possible for any game to ever live up to that hype.

#5 Is pretty important too. Graphics are pretty average, but everyone can play it.

The content part of #2 is important. There is a lot to do in WoW.

WoW goes to show that having the most awesome graphics, or even the best gameplay, isn’t as important as good marketing to a wide player base and then giving them plenty to do.

Want FPS paced twitch play? Try arenas.

Want to do something cute? Go quest for the Big Tongues or the Puppymen. Get your Love Fool Achievement.

Wanna raid? Down Sarth with 3 Drakes up!

Wanna grind and chat? Get your explorer achievement.

Out of work Wall Street Executive? Wreck the server economy too!

A great feature in terms of accessibility has been old world dungeons. With a smattering of level 80 raiders, you can summon up a bunch of level 60+ casuals and get them totally hooked on killing huge monsters!