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World of Warcraft loses 1.1 million subscribers in a single quarter.

Holy crap.

Now, it’s not really surprising that they lost some. It’s the end of an expansion, people are bored, and a lot of people supposedly quit to play Diablo 3.

And you also have to pull out the usual caveats. For example, it would still have to lose at least seven million more before any other current MMO would have a serious chance of threatening it. It’s also interesting to note that Battle.net has actually gained nearly seven million users — likely because of Diablo.

Still, it’s hard to argue this isn’t a bit of a shocker. WoW may not be dying, but it’s not nearly as healthy as it used to be. This makes for about three million subscribers lost in total over Cataclysm’s lifespan, or a quarter of the game’s peak populace.

The Fall of the Republic…

I find it interesting that this news comes just a few days after the announcement that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be adopting a limited free to play model in November.

I doubt it surprises anyone that SW:TOR went free to play. For one thing, it seems like free to play is the inevitable fate of all online games these days — more on that in a minute.

For another, no one but the most ardent Star Wars fanboys would have claimed SW:TOR was a runaway hit. It had nice sales early on, but as always, it failed to come anywhere close to WoW. And there were a lot of indications that it was struggling — server merges and the like.

But I did not expect it to be free to play just a year after its release. Either it’s doing much more poorly than I thought, free to play isn’t the death knell people make it out to be, or perhaps a bit of both. But I don’t think anyone’s going to claim that this is what Bioware wanted all along, or that SW:TOR is doing as well as anyone could have hoped.

…And the rise of free to play:

Now comes the fun part: trying to identify a pattern where one may not exist based on a pathetically small amount of evidence.

Of course, we can’t prove anything based on these two largely unrelated incidents. But it does get one thinking. When it comes to WoW, people will undoubtedly use it to justify their particular narrative — the game is too easy, the game is too hard, there isn’t enough content, there’s too much content, X Game is killing it.

I’ll admit even I’ve caught myself wondering if the upcoming launch of Guild Wars 2 is playing a role. After playing the beta, even I’ve found myself questioning the traditional MMO paradigm. But as I’ve mentioned before, GW2 isn’t directly challenging subscription games with its business model, and the game isn’t even out yet, so that’s probably not a major factor.

I do have a pet narrative that I’m going to use this news to advance, though. I’ve recently come to the conclusion that subscription games are a dying business model. I don’t think all games will be free to play this time next year, or even the year after that, but I do believe the balance of power has irrevocably shifted towards free to play — or buy to play, in the case of GW2.

It’s no longer a question of if a new game will become F2P but when. Many of them grow much more successful once they lose their subscription, and at the very least, it allows a “dying” game to continue making money for its developer for much longer. Guild Wars 2 is one of the most hotly anticipated games in recent memory, and it’s skipping the subscription altogether.

Myself, I was never a big fan of the subscription model, and I’ve grown to dislike it more over time. Not that free to play doesn’t have its pitfalls as well, but subscriptions create a sense of restriction and obligation that is antithetical to what games should be. A colleague of mine summed this up very well when he described the phenomenon as “free to not play.”

I suspect many others feel the same, which is why free to play has gone from a shameful subsection of the industry to almost being the new normal.

So I don’t think WoW’s lost subscribers and SW:TOR’s lost business model are the dying gasp of pay to play MMOs, but I do think they’re the latest and most dramatic step in a long progression towards free to play — a progression that will probably take several more years to complete.

Voice acting in games:

World of Warcraft and other Blizzard games are famous — or perhaps infamous — for their hammy, over-the-top voice acting. Love it or hate it, you can’t forget it. We’ve all heard the memes: “THE WILL OF THE TEMPLAR IS STRONGER,” “BETRAAAAAAAAAAAAYS YOU,” and such.

Suffer, mortals, as your pathetic magic BETRAYS you! Many people criticize it, and sometimes, it can be pretty bad, but I believe there is method to Blizzard’s madness, and recent events have strengthened this belief.

I’ve swallowed my dislike for Bioware and picked up a copy of Mass Effect II — starting halfway through the trilogy because Bioware never bothered to make the original compatible with the most modern operating systems. I was tired of wondering what everyone was raving about. I plan a more detailed post on it once I finish the whole game, but for now, the voice acting is one issue that stands out to me.

Bioware’s voice acting is pretty much the opposite extreme from Blizzard’s. It’s down to earth and realistic to the point of bordering on the dull.

Some characters have memorable voices, but they’re the exception, and even the most passionate characters seem almost incapable of displaying emotion most of the time. I find it’s seriously hurting my ability to enjoy the game, and it shows me my hunch about video game voice acting was correct.

You see, the thing about video games is that most don’t have the graphical technology to show facial expressions, and even those that do generally can’t get it right. ME2 has the best graphics I’ve ever seen by a wide margin, but even so, I cringe at the uncanny valley rictus that is Miranda Lawson smiling.

So video games need to rely on other methods to convey emotion, and voice acting is by far the best way to do that.

But normal conversational tones don’t convey enough feeling on their own without expressions to back them up. Thus, you need to dial the emotion up to eleven to get the point across. I liken it to how stage actors have traditionally worn masks or makeup to exaggerate their expressions so that even those seated far away can see them.

And this is where Mass Effect’s voice acting tends to fall flat. By trying to make their dialogue realistic, Bioware is instead making it seem dull and lifeless. I want my Shepard to scream and rage at the Illusive Man, but all she does is sound kind of frustrated, at best.

And I know it’s not the actress’s fault, because Jennifer Hale also voiced Leah in Diablo III and did a stellar job, infusing each and every one of her lines with life and personality. It’s merely a directing issue. Bioware took the wrong path in its voice acting decisions.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the only characters in ME2 I find compelling right now are Mordin and Thane — both individuals with very unusual voices and/or speech patterns.

So I think Blizzard’s hammy, occasionally ridiculous voice acting is a lot closer to the ideal for a video game.

Not to say it’s perfect, of course. They do have a tendency to go overboard, and I certainly won’t defend “BETRAAAAAAAAAAAAYS YOU.” But certainly characters like Zanzil and Kormac would not be nearly so fun without their exaggerated voices. You can actually hear Kormac grin when he says, “I tried to count how many we’ve killed… but I’ve lost track.”

Take as an example one of the most popular WoW patch trailers, Gods of Zul’Aman. The universal love for this trailer basically comes to down to just one thing: the voice actor playing Zul’jin.

He obviously got into the role. Ten thousand years of inborn hatred seethes from every word he utters. I can just picture him spitting into the mic in the recording booth as he rants. It is, in a word, awesome.

Now, if they’d told him to be just a little more sedate, a bit more grounded and realistic in his voice acting, this would just be a generic trailer for an unremarkable raid from way back in Burning Crusade, instead of one of the most beloved WoW cinematics.

Blizzard games aren’t the only example of this, either. The Portal games were also a great illustration of how making your voice-overs a bit larger than life can improve a game.

And so if nothing else, Mass Effect has given me a key insight into what makes a good game. I now feel confident my hunch was correct and that voice acting in games needs to be a little flamboyant, a little ridiculous, to be effective.

…It occurs to me I just said WoW is better than Mass Effect in at least one area. I’m about to be lynched, aren’t I?

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My latest WhatMMO article is on MMO rites of passage. How was I supposed to know you don’t use arcane spells as a frost mage?

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: video games

WoW, SW:TOR, and the Rise of Free to Play

Voice Acting in Games: Why It’s Good to Be Bad

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