Mythic Entertainment published Dark Age of Camelot, which originally released in the fall of 2001. Mythic continually has to fight off the popularity of newer MMOGs, to keep DAoC subscribers. Jacob says, “New games will always cannibalize the subscriptions of existing online games to some extent. However, we have seen that players are willing to maintain accounts with multiple games for as long as they still enjoy both the older and newer games.”
Keeping an MMOG account active requires more than money. It also requires a lot of time. Online Gamer Kris Heireth explains, “I wouldn’t normally have more than one account due to the sheer amount of time you need to invest on some of these online games.” Heireth also goes by the name of “Falkeids”, the level 60 Night Elf Hunter in World of Warcraft. He adds, “You need to spend time developing a character and that keeps you in check.”
Heireth dropped all of his other MMOG subscriptions, opting to play World of Warcraft. He is not alone in his choice. Blizzard Entertainment’s first MMOG has been tremendously successful, reaching 1.5 million subscribers worldwide. “We thought World of Warcraft would do well, but we had no idea it would be so extremely successful at launch,” says Paul Sams, Blizzard Entertainment’s Senior Vice President of Business Operations. Sams adds, “MMOs are constantly evolving, and the true measure of success is whether we can retain all the initial players in the months and years ahead.”
Not all game developers believe in the subscription business model. Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet and former lead programmer for World of Warcraft explains, “We think that many gamers prefer the freedom to play a lot of different games, and don’t want to feel pressure to ‘justify’ a monthly expenditure. Even hardcore gamers who are willing to pay a monthly subscription fee are unlikely to do so for more than one game at a time, which ultimately means that they will play fewer online games. That’s not good for gamers, and that’s not good for the industry.”