City of Heroes News & Events & Guides

Pardo's WOW being the elephant in the room, the lead designer said it was interesting to hear from publishers, "WOW has set the bar too high, so we don't even want to try." From a marketing perspective, he feels this is great. However, as a player, he wants to see competition. He also notes that if a developer is going to do a big-budget MMOG, it can't merely look to compete with the amount of content WOW launched with. Rather, a player sees the original WOW, as well as the Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and "whatever expansion we do next."

As for whether the industry is healthy? "Absolutely not," says Emmert, noting that Lord of the Rings Online is the only game to his knowledge that has launched post WOW and broken 100,000 users. Kim agrees, noting that if a developer is purely targeting WOW, "the future is bleak." Agreeing, Muzyka said that BioWare is approaching its first MMOG with both ambition and humility. He says his company doesn't assume it knows what it is doing in the online space, but as long as they learn from their mistakes, as well as make something brilliant, then they will find success.