Expansion Timing
Did you know that World of Warcraft has a new expansion out called Wrath of the Lich King? Were you aware that EverQuest II has one coming next week called The Shadow Odyssey? Did you know that there is also one coming out for The Lord of the Rings Online called Mines of Moria? If you answered “No” to any of those questions, you aren’t alone.
Expansion timing is a delicate matter. Unfortunately, you almost have to plan release dates to avoid a big WoW launch like its second expansion. If you launch your game or expansion at the same time as WoW launches an expansion, it just gets buried by the media into some indiscoverable void.
Expansions are great for the health of a massively multiplayer game. They tend to bring a lot new to the table, increasing the retention of existing players by giving them new variety, and increasing the appeal to non-players with new content and features.
But, if the media coverage of your game is lackluster on account of the sweeping behemoth that is WoW, how will people who used to play your game or have never tried it even hear about it?
It’s tough to figure out how to address this dilemma, though. Should you change your development schedules and pussyfoot around WoW launches, or should you forge ahead and not let the gorilla intimidate you? It seems that SOE and Turbine are not intimidated, and they’re forging ahead and releasing their expansions for the holiday season anyway.
What would I do? I’d probably try to launch at least 3 months after the most recent WoW expansion so people have time to do everything they need to do, then I’d try to capture their interest with my game or expansion as soon as the excitement over the latest World of Warcraft incarnation has died down.
But… that’s given infinite money and a completely flexible schedule, which nobody has. In reality, it’s probably best just to stick to your schedule and hope that you keep your current players by launching your expansion, then hope that people will try the new expansion out after they’ve tired of the novelty of WoW’s latest expansion.
EQ II has a pretty hardcore set of followers, they can release their expansion whenever they like and sales won’t be hurt much. However, I think Turbine was pretty stupid to not at least wait until December to launch MoM. This is the expansion they are hoping will expand the appeal of LoTRO past Tolkien nerds after all. I guess we’ll know in a week or so how that worked out.
I was going to say three months was a little generous since most people rip through WoW content in under a month, two if you’re casual (come on, it’s 10 levels…) but add in time for them to get tired of it or have the “Now what?” sink in… yeah, three might make sense.
And not to forget: CCP had release the latest EVE-extension on Tuesday. But as it is free, they don’t need to schedule around WoW.
Go Turbine!! They’re the Little Engine That Could. Taking on the bloated super heavy weight like that. Clearly, trying to beat WoW to the punch in order to lure bored WoW players into LotRO before WotLK comes out would have been the wrong move, because clearing out the bugs of your expansion for your core audience is far more important. At the same time, waiting around afterwards isn’t the right move either, especially with the holiday shopping season basically having arrived. They have their niche, it’s profitable for them, and they’re servicing their audience nicely. Plenty of room for that approach, notwithstanding WoW or anyone else. It’s a fine example of how to keep growing a franchise at a moderate pace with an eye toward the long haul. At some point WoW users will in fact get bored, and by then the LotRO franchise will be a vast, rich MMO to satisfy even the hardest core gamers. But even if those folks never migrate to Turbine’s game, they’ll do just fine without ‘em. Most of the new business over the next decade for MMOs will be non-hardcore gamers anyway.
Not everyone plays WoW or has any desire to buy the WoW expansion either. Just becuz WoW releases their expansion doens’t mean it sucks all the oxygen out of the room for those who play the other games.
It can be really tough to go up against the bull, that is for sure.
I think there is merit in the approach, however. An expansion will revitalize your already existent base. An EQ2 expansion might just keep current players from trying the new WoW expansion.
It may simply be a play to hold on to what you already have.
Can’t. Breath.
Norrathian. Oxygen. Sucked.
Not everyone is playing WoW or wants the WoW expansion, but it sure is gonna be hard to compete with it among those who do play/want it, whereas it is much easier to grab WoW players away (if only for a while) when there isn’t compelling new content to play.
Remember that you do expansion packs not just to appeal to your current core base but also to retain people who are on the verge of leaving, to reacquire players who have already left and (to a lesser extent) to acquire new players by getting your product back in the news and back on shelves. It’s hard or impossible to do those things when the 800 pound gorilla in the room is hogging news cycles and store space, retaining their own players very heavily and maybe even pulling some of your fringe players away.
I’m not saying your best bet is to schedule a launch around WoW – if you’ve got the resources to do that you’re probably successful enough to not much care anyway – but launching directly against it is a really unfortunate thing to have to do, even if the core of your current subscriber base is ignoring WotLK.
For games like LotRO or EQ2 to avoid a November release just because of WotLK would mean to give up the holiday market — probably a bigger loss than the WoW competition would cause.
If you look at the games that have enjoyed the most long term success in the last four years you’ll noticed that they are the ones that released about 3-4 months after World of Warcraft. There seems to be a weak spot in World of Warcraft between its actual game/expansion release and the first content patch.
Lord of the Rings took advantage of this in 2007 and Guild Wars took advantage of this in 2005. While neither have the same kind of success as WoW both have done better then other games who fought it head on. I wrote some speculation on this awhile ago. The theory isn’t perfect, but it does seem to have some truth to it.
http://relmstein.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-wow-causing-punctuated-equilibrium.html