It’s a comparison I’ve made many times before, Second Life and World Of Warcraft both sit proudly at the top of their respective classes. Despite technologically superior newcomers arriving, they have both fought them off, they both contain the social ingredient that has allowed them to thrive and enjoy greater longevity than many believed they could. I made the following point in a post at SLUniverse regarding the hurdles a new venture faces :
Second Life has a lot of similarities to World Of Warcraft, right place, right time, and they bagged those interested and despite falling numbers continue to have more than enough to make other ventures jealous beyond belief, despite others offering more modern options.
Along came Bagman Linden, AKA Jeff Petersen, Vice President of Engineering at Linden Lab who on his arrival at Linden Lab introduced himself via a blog post :
For me, the challenges and the opportunities at the Lab are a perfect fit for my background. I come to the Lab with over 20 years of experience as a game developer and engineering lead, primarily in the MMO area. Prior to joining Linden Lab, I spent 10 years working for Sony Online Entertainment doing MMO RPG development (with a focus on the networking, servers, and core technologies), along with PS3 and PSP development. Some of the titles that I worked on include: Everquest, Everquest II, Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Untold Legends PS3, Field Commander PSP, FreeRealms, and CloneWars Adventures.
Bagman disagreed slightly with my comparison of Second Life and World of Warcraft, Bagman feels that virtual worlds haven’t reached the World of Warcraft stage and that Second Life is more akin to Everquest, as he explained in a reply :
It’s interesting that you compare Second Life to World of Warcraft, as I have made similar comparisons myself, but come to different conclusions.
Before I joined Linden Lab a little over 3 years ago, I was at Sony Online Entertainment for over 10 years. I was part of the EverQuest development team for years, and at the time, EverQuest was the biggest MMO RPG on the market by far, and with the revenue it was generating, it was the envy of the industry.
For years EverQuest had similar user engagement and revenue to what Second Life has. I remember well at the time the common belief at Sony and in the rest of the industry was that EverQuest was a smashing success and people would be thrilled to match it.
Then Blizzard came along and created World of Warcraft, a product that was ultimately over 30 times more successful than EverQuest. We can speculate why that is, but I personally believe it came down to the quality and polish of their product. Fundamentally, the game was very similar.
The comparison that resonates with me is between Second Life and EverQuest. Both are similarly aging products with similarly sized user bases. Both at the top of their market segment. Both had countless people trying to bump them off with little success. We know how the story ends with EverQuest.
I believe the virtual worlds market is ripe for their own ‘World of Warcraft’ to come along and show us just how much bigger this market could be. And I don’t think you need to leave behind anything (concept wise) that made Second Life successful in order to see that growth. But you do need to raise the bar, and that is exactly what we intend to do.
Interesting stuff. I haven’t played Everquest, but I can see where Bagman is coming from here. He’s basically making the point that the virtual world market is ready for something really big to catch people and that what’s happened before is impressive, but possibly way below potential.
It’s difficult to disagree with him. World of Warcraft has achieved massive success and even now with declining numbers it puts its major rivals in the shade. There have been many challengers but none of them have been able to knock World of Warcraft from its perch.
So the question is, can Linden Lab’s nextgen platform be the virtual world equivalent of World of Warcraft and really create an earthquake in the virtual world scene? First of all it will need to do to engage people and as I’ve said many times before, this is a much tougher proposition than it sounds.
People have invested time, money and effort in Second Life. Many won’t want to start again but to achieve really growth a new virtual world has to look to Second Life and beyond, it has to capture new and old people. The problem is that if people arrive and there’s not much to do, they won’t stay around, superior technology or not.
There is a space for a massive virtual world, I fully believe that and I do feel one will arrive one day. When that day is remains another matter. Linden Lab’s new world will need to provide a feature rich experience and almost certainly, a huge slice of luck in gaining traction. Patience will also be a key.
It’s far from impossible for a new world to really take off, but it’s certainly not going to be a walk in the park. As and when more details are revealed, then we’ll start to get a better idea of whether this new bigger and better world will also be able to add the social ingredient to its pie, because that’s the really important factor and it’s one that requires a top secret formula.
All of this is speculation based on the idea that there is a larger audience for VRs out there. As of now, that just isn’t the case.
Cloud Party was certainly easier. It began as a Facebook only type of world. No one on Facebook nibbled. Not even a bit. The people that were there were from SL and they didn’t stay.
Another difference between Wow and SL is that WoW allows a totally linear experience. It is like riding “Its a Small World” literally at times. VR will always ask the user to be self directed. It looks as if a great many people don’t want to make their own play activities they want the Love Boat cruise ship package with their own Julie and Gopher directing them.
Obviously trying to make a VR with the idea that the WOW moment is just around the corner is a gamble. Especially when it looks as if it already occurred.
I think the larger audience is there, but the experiences that would attract a larger audience are not.
A lot of people want the end experience, not the creator experience. That’s the area virtual worlds aren’t yet delivering enough of.
Do I want a virtual world in which I can slay dragons, one where I can fly a spaceship or do I want a virtual world in which I can slay dragons AND fly a spaceship and attend a class, and visit a doctor and meet people and go to a live concert and have a home and have sex and be an entrepreneur? Whatever comes after Second Life will be the latter and has the potential to make everything else obsolete, just like Facebook dwarfs all other Social Networks or Google all other Search Engines.
Jerry you summed up the magic of Second Life!!
Absolutely, as I stated above, people want experiences, they want a reason to come to a virtual world and the more experiences that exist, the wider the reach of a virtual world becomes.