Blizzard isn’t getting nervous

World of Warcraft is going to have to start taking anxiety pills, rumor has it the behemoth is going through a rough time with eMiddle Earth™ live and scowling in its direction. The free TBC trial is a clear-cut sign all the shirts working at Blizzard are getting more sweaty armpit stains and if you stroll through the dev basement you will tread through a lot more empty Haagen Daz ice-cream containers.

Offering a free trial is a smart and expected marketing move, Blizzard could shed a few hundred thousand subscribers it wouldn’t even phase them. There has been over 20 million boxes pre-TBC sold, at the last count there were 8.5 million subs - that doesn’t include trial disks, the market penetration for this game is phenomenal so give or take a few hundred subs it doesn’t matter to more than a few greedy number-crunchers, that’s what they’re paid to do. There are two new races with enough content to support twenty levels which has that Blizzard shine - it makes perfect sense, why wouldn’t Blizzard offer a free trial given the first was so successful? Even Wallmart sold em like dollar hotcakes, of course Blizzard wants to continue that trend with TBC; Wallmart is key in helping penetrate and hooking new players - it’s the best advertising and product placement any game could ask for in North America.

Players will shortly be hitting max level in LotRo from obsessive playing and all the same bitching will ignite, players will threaten to quit and others will keep their accounts active until free content upgrades and consume those voraciously and then repeat the same doom and gloom just like every other mmog. When Age of Conan hits desktops we can wax poetic about it being the LotRo and WoW killer or how it can’t beat either one in subs! Perhaps Blizzard should rush out two expansions a year so everyone can complain about mudflation or the grind because there is too much content. (I can’t finish all these quests with the same character!) The same not enough content problem would occur with the end game if it was made accessible to everyone and all the time sinks were removed and tuned for the masses. The majority stuck at the leveling wall would plow through and become bored and bitch about not being able to get all the loot within the first five runs - subscription over, but at least more players would experience it. I guess.

One expansion per year would be a good start, (a goal that likely won’t be accomplished unless they halt free content upgrades) but players will rapidly consume it unless the devs give it stretch marks, making it even more grind heavy, at their current pace and resources they can’t create enough meaningful content to support a meatier time investment. Blizzard could have two different teams working on one expansion at a time, something EQ2 did, but I don’t see that happening since they already have other games in development and WoW’s team isn’t spawning more overlords, they’ve reached their limit in developers and it makes sense because the lead devs have always preferred a smaller team, now massive, over the constant growing pains, whatever works.

.