ultima onlines been about for donkeys years . although even at its peak it never had as many player as wow has at present . lets face it cheap internet access was in its infancy a decade ago ( espeacially in europe ) .warcrafts subscriber base will obviously diminish . other games will come along that make it look outdated but i think if we look at what ultima is now we can get a sneak peak at what wow will be in 6-8 years time .(well thats a process thats really already started has nt it ) although wow does still look pretty good for an mmo even 4 years in . from what i hear ultima has a very friendly community so i think as warcraft becomes less and less popular you ll see it with a more mature user base of hardcore fans who ll be a lot more welcoming to new players . the servers will be less but they ll proberbly be pretty busy and full of people who actually know how to play . in fact the in game experiance will most likly be a lot better than it is now . its pretty likly that warcraft like ultima will get some sort of makeover and i m betting it wont have a bad subcription rate even then compared to the less popular mmos we see now like warhammer and age of conan . i actually dont think there will be a definative wowkiller game , there will be a number of games that chip away at its user base . the wowkiller will be time .
 

 I think you're looking the wrong way, you should look at EQ1 to see what WoW will likely become in the future. UO is very diffirent game, so that's not good direction to look at.

OP:

The business model of Wow is completely different than UO or EQ1.

Not only are the numbers bigger, the techniques behind the games are different.

UO and EQ1 were very much experiments with on line gameplay in a Fantasy setting. Wow anno 2009 is far from an experiment. It is a business model these days.

I said in another post that I see Wow integrated within a tree of three branches (coming from Blizzard).

- An intro "Wow" like mmo coming on the new XBox console (with fast short playing sessions and more "instanced" with BG's and very short instanced dungeons (15 minutes).

- Wow as an intermediate MMORPG that will evolve with each expansion (and perhaps redone with phasing to overhaul the content in time/space). Expect to have traditionnel expansions at least to lvl 100 and then have a "reset" with Wow2.

- The new secret hi end MMORPG with perhaps a science fiction theme (but that could be anything since it is a new IP).

These 3 could be the base for ONE combined  subscription model.

With probably another branche added in Blizznet in PvP for both SC (RTS) and D3 (hack/slah).

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So the future evolution of Wow is directly related to the roadmap Blizzard decided on.

That's the main difference with UO and EQ.

In this schedule it would be very surprising if the total number of players wouldn't be bigger thn the present day global mmorpg market of about 7 million western players (of which around 4-5 million play Wow).

Expect only the VERY big development houses to support MMORPG's in 3-4 years time.

In fact I only see 2 names: Blizzard and Bioware. The rest will be gone. But Blizzard wil certainly capitalize on its 2 billion $ head start to keep on top with their roadmap.

i m not saying that ultima and wow are similar because they are not . i used ultima because it was a inovative game at the time of its release . everquest broke the 2 d mold and offered something new . this is what will happen with whatever game takes the public imagination and starts to really chip away at wows market share . everquest is also a good example of what wow may become its just not as old as u;ltima . i think you ll find in a few years most of what i ve said will be accurate even if you may dispute it now .

Originally posted by Vrika

 I think you're looking the wrong way, you should look at EQ1 to see what WoW will likely become in the future. UO is very diffirent game, so that's not good direction to look at.

I agree. WoW in 5 years will look like EQ1 does today
 

While I will agree that Wow will look a bit dated in five years, it was a bit dated at release too. They settled for lower polygons and went with rich textures instead. This allowed them a very stylized look that, while not timeless, won't suffer from age like EQ1 did. EQ1 had low polygons also, but they were very generic in their textures as well. This really hit home for me when they came out with the Mac version of EQ1 and I tried their trial. I was amazed at how bad the textures were. Blizzard has always done a great job on their textures and since they are not trying for a realistic look, their superb artwork will allow their look to stand up for a quite a long time.

Originally posted by calmyron

Blizzard has always done a great job on their textures and since they are not trying for a realistic look, their superb artwork will allow their look to stand up for a quite a long time.

That' so true. Lower poly and awesome textures. Blizzard texturers are among the bests in the MMO industry.

I know others won't agree.  But to me, it's more about the animations then about the graphics.   In wow, the animations are dead on..  swings, reactions etc are all very well timed.   You can play your character by actually looking at it and reacting.  In other games, especially AOC, I felt like I was playing a turn-based game.. you just didn't move when you felt like you should.

I think WOW's graphics map be a hinderence to new players going forward, but I don't think any current players will stop playing because the graphics haven't kept up.

UO (and SWG) may be an indication of what will ultimately kill WOW (or finally cause it to start losing subscribers).   UO had two instances where the dev team completely changed the basic premise of the game.  The first was when they launched Trammel (no pvp).  While I personally felt this was a good change, and subscribers increased after it, it also alienated a lot of other older players.  The second one was the Age of Shadows expansion, which completely changed itemization, crafting and the loot system.  it was just a radical change to the basic gameplay.

People laugh at WOW becasue both expansions have been pretty much 'more of the same'.  They have added cool features like flying mounts and some other minor things, but so far, they haven't had an expansion that really 'gutted' basic gameplay.   As long as they keep doing 'more of the same' expansions, I can't see them losing a significant number of subscribers at one time.  UO lost about 50% of it's players in the 3 months after AOS launched and has been on life support ever since.

SWG obviously did the same thing with UO.. it had an expansion that drastically changed basic gameplay.

With even 500,000 subscribers, any game will have a really large dev team that can add new content at a fast pace.  When games fall to 100,000 is when they go on life support and barely put out any new content except for paid expansions.  WOW has a long way to go til it drops to 500,000.