About a month ago, I gave my thoughts on if WAR was the WoW killer… since then, in the back of my mind, I’ve been wondering a few things, a few aspects as to why no game in the near future is going to be a WoW killer.
The number one reason… Apple.
Face it. Â Apple is growing. Â I’m a diehard PC, and I’ll never switch to a Mac because, 1) I hate the desktop for the Mac OS, and 2) there are no Mac exclusive softwares that I desire. Â Of course, I could come to eat my words if somehow Mac manages to overtake the PC, but I really think that is unlikely. Â However, Mac computers are becoming increasingly popular in a number of areas, and one of those happens to be in people who like gaming. Â In fact, a number of people I’ve known through gaming over the years still have a PC they use for gaming, but they use a Mac for their day to day stuff. Â Mostly Macbooks. Â And the main reason is because they also have iPods and/or iPhones and those devices work more seemlessly with a Mac than with a PC. Â They aren’t incompatible with PCs, but there is no doubt that Apple designs for the Mac and then ports to the PC. Â Why wouldn’t they?
A set of data I would like to see are the sales figures and subscription numbers for people playing World of Warcraft on a Mac in the US and UK. Â The reason I’d like to see those numbers is that right there, immediately, you have a defined set of “MMO Players” who cannot play WAR, or AOC, or LotRO. Â They couldn’t play Vanguard or EverQuest II. Â They could play EverQuest, but the game only went up to the Planes of Power expansion and its only minimally supported, and its on its own servers so you can’t play with your EQ PC playing friends. (Arguably, this makes the Mac version of EQ better than the PC version, because they are frozen in time at the point when, in my opinion, the game was at its best before they mudflated the game into oblivion.) Â But Mac owners can play WoW, and they play on the same servers as everyone else and with all the same expansions and everything. Â And realistically, its the only “successful” fantasy MMO on the Mac.
So that, basically, in a nutshell, is why I think you can’t really kill WoW. Â At least, not until some other new fantasy MMO decides to support the Mac.
And yes, before anyone says anything, I realize you can dual boot the new Macs and play any MMO… but not everyone wants to dual boot, not everyone who buys a Mac wants to install Windows on their machine too. Â Many of them went Mac to get away from Windows, they want support, not work arounds.