Blizz: room at the top for Conan and WAR

By Oli Welsh Published 16 May, 2008

But a WOW-beater will need to be great.

Speaking to Eurogamer, World of Warcraft producer J. Allen Brack - currently working on second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King - has said that there's no reason this year's competing launches, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, can't succeed alongside it.

In an interview published today, Brack said, "I think there's room for all three of those games to be successful".

He revealed that Blizzard wasn't gunning for its rivals to fall at the first hurdle. "The worst thing for our industry is for online games to come out and fail. They cost so much money to develop, and it's so difficult, and it's such a huge labour of love to launch an online game, for it to fail is sad for everybody."

Brack and lead designers Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton all agreed that WOW's success would be good for the MMO industry in the long run - expanding the market, and promoting quality - and felt that it would be superseded one day, just as it superseded EverQuest before it.

But, said Kaplan, the game that eventually replaces WOW at the top of the MMO tree would have to be of a very high quality.

"What I think WOW has done, is that when that game comes out, it's going to be really, really good," he said. "No hard feelings when a game comes out and beats WOW, it's going to have to be a great game."

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • muscleblade #1 4 years ago

    I really hope Age of Conan can be that game.

  • Krusty #2 4 years ago

    Meh, AoC will be filled of kids running around looking for breasts and shouting about it.

  • Wash #3 4 years ago

    Meh, WoW sucks anyway. Full of e-tards.

  • Darkjinxter #4 4 years ago

    Another industry pundit stating the bleedin' obvious. When will it end?
    I doubt AoC will be a WoW beater from what I've experienced, but it will grab my attention for a while to come. Mainly because I'm a lifelong (RE Howard's) Conan fan.

  • UncleLou #5 4 years ago

    Another industry pundit stating the bleedin' obvious. When will it end?


    When they stop being asked?

  • Zander #6 4 years ago

    Everyone here seems to be gay for AoC. What about warhammer? Is that going to be any good?

  • Erinan #7 4 years ago

    Maybe if the WoW creators themselves state that WoW is not a game to beat but to coexist with, developers/publishers will start making good games instead of (supposedly) WoW-killers.

    And why is the AoC NDA still running one day away from the early start? Very worrying.

    The problem with Warhammer is that it wants to be WoW and DAoC at the same time, and is constantly being delayed.
    Edited by 1 at 16/05/08 @ 14:55

  • Gurgeh #8 4 years ago

    "But, said Kaplan, the game that eventually replaces WOW at the top of the MMO tree would have to be of a very high quality"

    That rules out Age of Conan. AoC has seen a frenzy of patches just before the game goes live so what state it ships in not even the developers will know, as there has been no time to extensively test them. In the last three patches the framerate has gone from below 5 to above 40 and then back down to 15. At one point there was unintended cell shading. So I think it fails the "quality" test.

    I do think they will generate hundreds of thousands of sales, but whether the game will survive launch is anyone's guess.

  • Hamflank #9 4 years ago

    "But, said Kaplan, the game that eventually replaces WOW at the top of the MMO tree would have to be of a very high quality."

    I.E. Blizzard's next MMO.

    Or perhaps Bioware's.

  • Krelle #10 4 years ago

    Animal Crossing Online

  • Bleh #11 4 years ago

    War and AoC might take a portion from WoW but I don't think they really going to beat it.
    Conan's 18+ and high system req will be the bottle neck for Age of Conan. From War I just haven't seen enough. But I hear it's concept is like DaoC only with a Warhammer sauce over it.

    So I agree with Hamflank, properly Blizzard's next mmo will replace WoW.
    If we should be happy about that's just the question.

  • louyfitz #12 4 years ago

    APB!

    thats a defo WOW beater for me, none of this geeky shit, taking MMOs to the streets.

    I'd rather play with someone smoking a blunt then someone wanking over an elf.

  • Katsumoto #13 4 years ago

    Who wouldn't, homie?

    /caps some bitches

  • ZeroAX #14 4 years ago

    i think war will survive cause it's a pvp orriented wow and if you are a pvp wow player like me you know it sucks in wow. at least pre tbc they added battlegrounds but since tbc only 1 battleground and that sucked. also arena system sucks imo.

  • BaggyAnt #15 4 years ago

    Warhammer has the potential to be huge, anyone who has played Dark of Age Camelot knows that these guys are the kings of R vs R. Public quests are also a potentially genre changing twist in that anyone from Soloers to hard core guilds can contribute to taking the other city. If they get it right don't be surprised if it takes a large chunk of the western market from WOW.
    Edited by 1 at 16/05/08 @ 23:47

  • davisorle #16 4 years ago

    @Wash

    If you have any idea about good MMO specially when it comes to end gamer WoW gives you thinkgs you can't fid elsewhere in the genre. I guess you are the L2 kind of guy. If WoW is full of e-tards noone asked you to be one of those by acting just like them. It's really up to each of you to avoid them. If too hard for you then don't even try the game ever again. Your problem.

    @muscleblade I hope so too man :S

    What i love about Conan is that it's different. i was in the beta and the more you played it the more it felt good and like something new to move to from WoW. great graphs and amazingly intresting. You ust have to be open minded and get adjusted to the new gameplay.

    @Zander

    Well, I hoped warhammer would be good but from what I think now more is that it will suck. Rather than it's siege the rest seems too stupid :S

    So yeah for a game to be better than WoW will have to be a great game. Let's hope the time has come cause I'm tired of playing WoW!

  • lordvitriol #17 4 years ago

    I've watched AoC gameplay and it looked like it was for 39 yo EQ2 fans to me, I have hope in Warhammer Online but it will probably suck just because, I want an free roam SP game like Oblivion anyway the most, no e-tards there.

  • craziii #18 4 years ago

    meh, I for one dislikes AOC. yes yes, I have read alot of info on it already. I like the conan universe, but I hate the combat, and the lack of variety in character classes. archer? warrior? healer? mage?

    warhammer got 1 thing going for it, RvR, I can't wait for that. sieging important cities of opposing factions will 100% create loads of drama across all servers, will be sweet.

  • Wash #19 4 years ago

    @davisorle

    Sorry I have to disagree, whilst it is well rounded, and realtively stable i've found it falls into many trappings that mmo's fall into - and until something different comes along that changes that i wont be re-joining WoW. LOTR is pretty much a case of "Take everything wow did well" with pretty graphics.

    Least conan tries a different path, but then i wouldnt say by a long shot it has the pulling power to topple WoW. I doubt anything has for a while. If i'd continued my monthly subscrip i wouldnt want to throw that away.

    Something better has to come along for me personally, and whilst i found some decent folk in both Wow And LOTR it still inevitably has the same troubles every major online game has had with its massive community. See CS, or Halo.

    Something unavoidable.

    Someone needs to do this right, WoW i would agree set standards for the genre, but thats been out a while now and surely somewhere someone can do better.