Success: A Blizzard Entertainment Timeline
Why is World of Warcraft so successful?
Raptr, a social media networking tool for gamers has clocked 4,070,029 play hours in their database at an average of 35,000 players daily. These numbers are staggering when viewed in the realization that 35 thousand players (just in Raptr alone) have clocked 4 million hours of game time.
Now if we could see Blizzard’s database numbers for all 5 years the game has been out, multiply that by all the average 14.99 monthly subscription numbers and then the ‘additional’ services they offer at a highly over priced 25$ for realm, character, fraction, re-characterization options, I’m sure the numbers would make Bill Gates scratch his head in awe and wonder.
How many companies do you know of (or heard about) that have been as successful as Blizzard has been?
Let’s take a look at what Blizzard has had to offer to the gaming community.
Time Line of Blizzard Entertainment
Feb 1991- Silicon & Synapse was created by 3 UCLA students to concentrate on creating game ports
Nov 1991- S&S release ‘RPM Racing’ for SNES
1992- Interplay Entertainment develop and release ‘The Lost Vikings’ and then S&S develop ‘The Lost Vikings 2’ a puzzle/platform video game which released in 1994
June 1993- S&S created ‘Rock n’ Roll Racing’ for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and Super Nintendo
*this title was also released for the GBA in 2003.
1994 Silicon & Synapse change their name to Blizzard Entertainment and there shortly afterwards was acquired by distributor Davidson and Associates.
Nov 1994- ‘Warcraft: Orcs & Humans’ a Real-time strategy game (RTS) is released. Developed by Blizzard and published by Blizzard and Interplay Ent.
Dec 1995- ‘Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness’
April 1996- ‘Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal’ (Expansion Pack)
1996- Blizzard releases ‘Warcraft’ series for the Macintosh OS
Nov 1996- ‘Diablo’ is released
Nov 1997- ‘Diablo: Hellfire’ (Expansion Pack)
March 1998- ‘StarCraft’ is released
Nov 1998- ‘StarCraft: Brood War’ is released (Expansion Pack)
1999- ‘Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition’ is released
June 2000- ‘Diablo II’ hits the market
June 2001- ‘Diablo II: Lord of Destruction’ releases
July 2002- ‘Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos’
July 2003- ‘Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne’ releases to US
Nov 2004- ‘World of Warcraft’ a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Game) is thrust upon us
Jan 2007- ‘World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade’ (Expansion Pack)
Nov 2008-‘World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King’ (Expansion Pack)
2010-‘World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (Expansion Pack)
Man that’s a lot of time line, but the one repeating factor in this is dedication and persistence, along with a solid title. Warcraft like every other game was created; fabricated from the minds of individuals for the enjoyment of one’s time. The key to its success was and is a solid foundation to the core of ideas it was derived from. Lore and creativity begat more lore, a good story began to unfold, and you know what? Blizzard didn’t jump on high horse and grind it till it was dead. They fostered it, nurtured it, and marketed the crap out of it in a way that many other companies have not been successful in doing.
See from the release of Warcraft, Blizzard has done one thing and one thing only, and that is develop the idea WoW; luring you in with expansion after expansion, deepening the plot and creating memorable characters to pull you in.
It really is like a good book series, but in a video game. That is the reason why Wow is what it is today. It’s that great book you’ve read a hundred times over, and though sometimes you don’t finish it, you constantly go back to and start over or pick up from where you left off.
$$ And as a developer you couldn’t have asked for anything better. $$
Creativity + Original/ Sound Ideas = Success
*All dates are accurate as cited on Wikipedia to the best of my knowledge.*
Game On!
~Kaldeem
“Creativity + Original/ Sound Ideas = Success”
I disagree with this forumla for success. I think it’s more like:
Acessiblity + Good Execution = Success
I mean, there was nothing original about WoW when it came out and it didn’t do or offer anything other MMOs didn’t. I really believe the reason it was so successful was because it was very well exectued, implemented and polished and it was totally accessible. Blizzard managed to tap into the traditional non-gamer market and hook those players into their games. No thought had attempted to do that before. For instance, most of the people that I know who play WoW are not hardcore gamers or old school MMOers, they are just Dads and bosses.
I think your missing the whole point. Wow maybe or may have not been original when it released in 2004, but The Idea of taking an RTS as popular as ‘Warcraft’ had become and instead of creating a new RTS for the franchise, they took that next step and going forward to make/develop ‘World of Warcraft’ to which was, and is to this day “The Phenom” of MMORPGs. The history of Warcraft, with it’s fan’s and concrete Lore, is what brought in the mass of players when Blizzard decided to make it an MMORPG and there you have what is called “Success”.
All that is thrown to wind now, with the addition of WOTLK but meh, I digress.