With World of Warcraft having more subscribers than ever before, one has to wonder what will happen to those 12 million-plus paying customers once Blizzard’s next MMO, Titan, is released. Titan is going to be something different, a “completely new and fresh” game that is not a “WoW sequel,” as CEO Mike Morhaime has claimed. But it’s not that particular Blizzard product the developer sees as the upcoming threat to WoW’s subscriber base — not that Blizzard is sweating it.
Frank Pearce, Blizzard executive VP of product development, spoke about what he thinks could eat into WoW more than Titan: “It’s hard to say,” he told Gamasutra. “I think even a shorter-term concern is whether or not we might see cannibalization of WoW players from Diablo III when we launch it, because it’s a similar type of experience. Not exactly similar, but it’s that RPG feel.”
That isn’t necessarily a proposition that frightens Blizzard; Pearce admits that a game eating into WoW’s subscribers is an inevitability and that, given the alternatives, this is the most attractive option. “For us, I think it’s really important that we recognize that somewhere, sometime it’s likely that someone is going to cannibalize World of Warcraft players,” he explained. “So it’s better we cannibalize them ourselves than let someone else do that, because if we cannibalize them ourselves, they’re still a Blizzard customer.”
