Marketing: WAR vs. WoW
February 1, 2008 – 8:52 pm
It seems as if today is “Inspired by Tobold Day” over here. I can’t believe he finds so much time to write such lengthy and interesting articles while working, spending time with his wife, and playing WoW/PotBS. His time management skills far surpass mine! So, let’s get into it then…
For reference, here are the Wikipedia definitions of a couple marketing terms I’ll be using… so we’re on the same page.
- Advertising - a communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers about products and services and how to use and obtain them. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages, including: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, video games, the Internet
- Public Relations - the art or science of establishing and promoting a favorable relationship with the public
It should be stated up front that, obviously, both games are in different stages of development. WAR is still in closed beta, while WoW has been active since 2004.
Way back in the early days of DAOC, Mythic established a pretty good reputation for themselves by focusing on community communications, led by Sanya Weathers (formerly Thomas). They branded an entire site dedicated to it called the Camelot Herald, where rabid fans could provide feedback, ask questions, seek answers, track their personal, guild, and realm stats, and many other things. One could argue that they didn’t always listen to our feedback or respond to the difficult questions, but that’s beside the point. Overall, they made the best public relations effort of any MMORPG developer at the time.
Even after merging with EA, a company some would call corrupt, stifling, and monopolistic (but not me, ‘cuz I wants in beta!), Mythc continued a feverish PR campaign with their new project, Warhammer Online. At present day, they keep on making strong efforts towards fan communications. Two perfect examples are how they promote their fan site communities by now hosting part of the monthly Grab Bag feature on sites like WAR-RvR and Warhammer Vault (technically, both sites are sponsored by IGN… conspiracy!? :P) and writing about community contests like the MMO Calendar and 2007 Greeny Awards (hosted by yours truly).
If you look back throughout Blizzard’s history, you’ll find that they have embraced a completely different PR philosophy. Silence, secrecy, and a general lack of back and forth communications with their fan base has been Blizzard’s game ever since I’ve followed WoW. It doesn’t appear as if much has changed with their marketing effort for Wrath of the Lich King. How many months has it been since they released that newsletter with almost zero details?
One can argue the pros and cons of both philosophies and a commenter on Tobold’s blog addresses this. He says that Blizzard is too “street smart” to make any promises they can’t back up. Why would they release details about PvP or the Death Knight class when the final version will be much different than the original concept? Personally, I think a simple disclaimer would suffice. “This is how we see FeatureX today! No guarantees that it will launch in this state!” I think it’s less important to be 100% accurate (or at least cover your ass from committing to 100% accuracy) than it is to appear as though you’re engaging your audience.
MMO fans are rabid for any scrap of detail you can give them and EA Mythic realizes this. Overall, the January 2008 newsletter for WAR isn’t revealing much of what we didn’t already know. In the numerous interviews with WAR devs, they leak a few minor details here and there, but overall, they’re pretty hush hush about the burning questions on everyone’s mind, and for the most part, we accept this. We still don’t know about crafting or the final High Elf class, but I’m sure those bombs will be dropping soon enough.
Tobold mentions advertising for new-to-the-genre MMO players and hardcore MMO gamers and makes some valid points. You really want to target both audiences to have a comprehensively successful campaign. I think he was right on that, but…
The intention of the WAR videos of the month, diaries, beta journals, and podcasts isn’t to advertise to a wider gaming audience. These are newsletter features accessible to subscribers and forum readers and are targeted towards the hardcore fans of the game. Spending a lot of money on print, radio, and television for a product in closed beta seems a bit wasted to me. Even the articles EA Mythic has in the UK PC Gamer and the upcoming White Dwarf piece are intended to generate interest in the beta, not the finished product. You can’t really compare that to TV ads with Mr. T and Captain Kirk. Once the game is ready, I have no doubt WAR will be advertised more heavily to broader audiences than any previous MMO at launch with the powerhouse of EA behind them.
Plus, to my knowledge, there weren’t any North American TV commercials about WoW until very recently, so you can’t say that their newbie-targeted advertising really grew them to what they are today. I do recall an early Asian Coca Cola commercial with a tyrant male boss (orc) and his three female employees (dark elves). For simplicity sake, let’s keep this targeted to NA.
WoW’s biggest subscription generator was and still is “word of mouth” because the game is designed to be newbie and casual friendly (until you hit 70). Eventually, it became so popular through word of mouth that it became a part of NA pop culture. Heck, even South Park created a season premiere episode dedicated to WoW. You can’t BUY that kind of advertising (unless they did?)! 
Word of mouth spreading like wildfire isn’t an uncommon occurrence. Look at social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook. They don’t spend a lot of money advertising (if any) in the traditional sense, but they sure blew up around the same time as WoW did. And what is and MMORPG if not a social-networking-video-game hybrid?
Tobold’s final statement that Blizzard really needs to start marketing WotLK as heavily as they can is true or else they will lose players to WAR. When you have a company that is throwing information at their audience (Mythic) and another that is keeping everything close at hand (Blizzard), the outcome seems pretty obvious to me. Assuming you’ll sell a copy of WotLK to every single one of your subscribers, without generating a sufficient buzz about it first, can become a costly mistake when you’re talking about 10M accounts. As Tobold says, even a 0.1% loss of players to your competitor is giving up big dollars when you consider the loss of monthly subscriptions ($15/m) AND an expansion box sale ($50).
