This question seems to have lost none of its fervor as a debate topic on a lot of the forums that I frequent. The question stems from a few impetus'. Sometimes it is from an inquisiteive person who has logged a good chunk of time on one console or another, but is unfamiliar with PC gaming. Having been exposed to the highly social nature of this generation of console platforms (whether that context is within the confines of their living room or in the online arenas), they catch wind of the game known for being on a cultural ramapage, World of Warcraft. They see themselves paying for an online service now (Xbox Live), or for access to certain services through an otherwise free portal (the Virtual Channel or the Playstation Network). They then want to know if we who are already immersed in PC gaming think that it makes sense to pay this monthly fee to only pay one game.

Now, let me go ahead and get out on the table right now that my own answer is "No!" At least, it is "no" for me. It makes no sense for me, based on my personal tastes and gaming style and my immersion in other forms of entertainment and creative projects to pay a monthly fee to play one title.

I have never personally grasped the allure of paying a monthly fee for a single online title. I can understand paying a monthly fee for access to an online gaming community and a platform as a portal to additional online services (like an XBox Live account). That being said, I think that it is awesome that there is a customer base for this market place that provides a different business model within which gaming can exist. The truth is, as much as I disagree with the constant "the sky is falling" fate prediction of the demise of PC gaming that recurs every three months or so, PC gaming is under constant threat from becoming extinct. The reality is that, sales of World of Warcraft are a bulwark against that imminent threat of PC gaming's possible future demise.

But I have determined that it is not for me. I spread my time over several titles and platforms. I typically play on three different platforms in the course of a week, so the thought of spending time on a PC for a predominant amount of that time to play one game has not appealed to me. My preferred platform is the PC, and I have tons of titles for it, of varying genres. And that is the rub. To play one game in one genre (RPG) for a set amount of time a month just does not fall within my schema.

Each time there comes a title that I think may be the one that brings me over, I wind up not taking the dive. City of Heroes came close. The concept of Champions Online and the Star Trek MMO may be the ones...I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Last year I wrote an article about a financial analysis that had been done indicating that the PC gaming industry was resurging. My counter to the article was that the figures that were used included WoW sales and recurring revenue as well as some other MMO's. My concern over us (PC gamers) taking too much heart in the sales statistics of PC gaming is that I think the sales of WoW are misleading.

I do not feel that WoW has been bad for PC Gaming. Let me say that up front so I don't get flame-sprayed (like I am not going to get flame-sprayed anyway). What I do think is that you can not make a one-for-one assessment that says that the PC Gaming industry is healthy based on sales and revenue numbers that are linked to one title, especially one that is based on a recurring sales model. It begs the question that if WoW goes away one day, does the PC industry remain healthy? I am not saying that it will not, I am saying that the numbers that were previously assembled did not establish this through deeper empirical analysis.

I don't think that the "lost customers" impact on PC Gaming is that significant due to WoW. This is the theoretical analysis as to whether or not the people now playing WoW would spend their money on other PC titles instead of constantly pumping it into their monthly subscriptions, thereby increasing the total unit sales per month of PC gaming titles. I think PC Gaming's biggest hits have come from encroachment driven by sales of consoles and their associated games. Getting rid of WoW as a competitor, for example, would do little to "win" back PC gamers if consoles were still around.

I agree that WoW players have heightened the awareness and interest in PC gaming, much as casual gamers have in the console gaming market. But I do not buy into this being of that much help. (Here starts a somewhat off-topic digression – feel free to skip to the next paragraph) Where casual gamers are concerned in the console market, they do not matter to me, I do not care that their numbers in our ranks mean that there are more total gamers, it has had no impact on me that is "helpful", and I would just as soon they went away because of some of the dynamics that they are causing on the gaming industry. Now, that is just my self-centered point of view in defense of my own personal, individual wants. I am not about to go out and start picketing in front of the local GameStop to boycott the sales of consoles and games to casual gamers. I am just saying that there are aspects of their participation in the gaming market that I do not like. In fact, I am perhaps even wrong to make comments at casual gamers (if this genre of gamer even exists) and say more so that it is the attention to the casual gaming market that console manufacturers are expending that is leading to some concern on my part. (end digression)

The same is true of WoW, from my perspective. As WoW has resurged, we (pc gamers) have not recaptured any more shelf-space at local retailers for our games. That is because it does not take more than one shelf to stock copies of WoW and its applicable expansions. So, in this vein, WoW has not been of any help. The relative success of Xbox Live has made multipalyer features in a console game of major import. Is the same true of WoW? Has the surge of WoW sales helped spur the added concern on PC games with regard to their multiplayer features at the expense of resources being expended in the game development cycle towards a robust single-player experience? But could we label WoW as the sole culprit of that dynamic, if it were true? Hasn't Battlefield had just as much of an impact in that vein?

So where can I give WoW some props in helping out the PC gaming industry? I consider the PCG industry to emcompass every revenue model that offers resources to its end-point sale of an individual title, so that must include hardware. Windows Vista (you can spit at its mention now if you so choose) has done a lot to drive the minimum bar for graphics performance upwards, particularly in laptop sales. WoW has done the same, I think. I can not count the number of times in a week that I get asked to validate whether or not a laptop someone is looking at will play WoW. And this is a good thing. If a laptop can play WoW, it can play some older PC games, and if I can get an entry level or mid-performance laptop that can handle a good chunk of games from the 2004 point rearward at historically cheaper prices, then that is good, as that represents the chunk of titles that I play on my laptops anyway.

In this vein, WoW has helped. I would contend that some people get (finally) interested in playing PC games when they find out that their laptop can handle some games. They have previously been barred from the market because they were not willing to pay the money required to play 3d accelerated games. So maybe, maybe, this is leading to some added interest in PC games. Maybe. Point is, it is getting harder and harder to buy a laptop on the market that can not play WoW at at least minimum settings (head over to LapTopmag.com's recent testing of an Acer Aspire ONE that is shown handling WoW), so more and more consumers are winding up with laptop's in their hands that can handle a game or two.

So, I do not think the gaming industry, specifically the PCG industry would have been better off with WoW out of the picture rather than in, despite the fact that it does not personally interest me. The other "finite resource" question that gets asked is if the human capital resources that are dedicated to cranking out and maintaining WoW were diverted elsewhere, would we have more quality titles released for the PC, and would we therefore have better games in the PC Gaming market, and would the market therefore be garnering more sales?

I do not necessarily think that we would have seen more titles if WoW had not been around. And you, know, we are just talking about the freeing up of human capital resources at Blizzard; admittedly I would have to add to that every developer out there who is trying to crank out a WoW copycat, as well. Where would those people have wound up or what else would Blizzard be cranking out if it was not heavily vested in WoW development and maintenance? I do not think I could say that those people would be out in the industry having a global impact on overall title development that would yield more other products that were not WoW. Maybe those people would be in the movie industry, or taking customer service calls at an AT&T center…who knows? I would say WoW has certainly helped a little, and that its negative impact is probably subjective conjecture at best. And even a little help for PC gaming is better than nothing.

That being said, I am not going to roll over and say that the potential negative impact of WoW is non-existent. I do not think that 15 bucks a month is cheap (the basic monthly fee for a WoW account). It's $180 a year, which is easily the cost of 4 to 6 brand new PC games a year. The way in which this has an impact is that not everyone is oblivious to entertainment expenses. I buy a lot of games. I buy games that I do not get around to playing in a reasonable amount of time. I did not buy fewer games because gas prices went up. But I am not the average consumer. The average person slide-rules their expenses, and as money is being expended in one direction, they curtail money expended in others. In other words, I would say that it is fair to suspect that if someone is spending $180 a year on WoW, they are not expending the same aount of money that they may have on other games.

But the real point here is not the money. It is time. People can do whatever they want with money. They have the ability to earn more, make less, save less, spend more, and so on. But they can not stick more than 24 hours into a day. Ok, admittedly, I have done with less sleep in order to game or do other activities and maintain my work schedule, but that is always a downward spiral if it is maintained. In most discussions with my gaming peers, it is not that they are unwilling to spend money on more games, it is about how they would fit in time to get their return on investment on those other titles.

A WoW account is a lot like my NetFlix account. I know that the more movies I watch, the more that $15 per month buys me. Plus, a MMORPG by its definition rewards the players who invest the most time (with due regard for a curve based on each player's skill…some needing more time than others). When I buy fewer games in a given time frame, it is not because I don't have the money, it is because I have had trouble finding the time to game. The guys who play WoW that I talk to about how great another title is, get concerned about time expended in another title that could be time spent levelling up the character they are paying $15 a month to play. Not saying that they claim they spend all of their time in WoW to the exclusion of any other gaming venue. The point is that they all indicate that there is a point in their mind where they would or could spend too much time in other games and decrease their ROI on their WoW account, and as they approach that barrier, they turn away from investing in other titles (either in time or in money) and get back to investing more time in WoW. For most of them, it is an elastic relationship, where winding up on either extreme end of the specturm results in a snap-back effect to get themselves back to balanced scales.

So, the question to ask yourself is "Will I be satisfied playing just one game?" If the answer is yes, or if you think it could be yes, the truth is likely that you are searching for something else in games rather than game design, or the variated experience to be had in playing multiple titles. You are likely in search of strong community bonds, the carmaraderie that springs from a steady group of people who are likely to stick with one title and therefore in one guild, and will participate in building a common story.

The thing that is interesting that I have observed from afar in MMORPGs is how everyone knows the events of their online world and therefore share that thread in common. If there is a major offensive launched by one faction or another, if one faction is wiped out by a powerful enemy, everyone knows. A wandering traveller may come to join your guild, and turn out to be one of the few survivors of a given event that you have only heard of third-hand.

Admittedly, I have chafed for more than brief moments at the migratory nature of the denizens of Xbox Live, and how they leap from one title to another in a few month's time. There are many times that I invest $60 in a game and three months later, none of my steady friends are playing it; they have moved on to something else.

Additionally, there are very few persistent experiences in the Xbox Live realm. If someone wins a race, or a guy jumps from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel in CoD 4, there is no story behind it to be shared. It just happens, someone may make a comment when you get together with that group of friends, but you quickly move on as if it is of no import.

There is a type or ****of gamer that the WoW model appeals to. A large chunk of the population sample of this customer base were not gamers when they first subscribed to WoW. The "core gamers" that make up the rest of the population have some inherent characteristics that allow the business model of WoW to appeal to them, and they in turn help keep it afloat. If you think some of those charactersitcs that have been discussed in this post define you well and close enough, then this venue may be one that is for you. As for me, I'll be on XBL, the PSN, and Xfire…playing one of a dozen titles that float my boat more so than the one. But there is room in the world for both types of gamers to exist. Until next time, take care…and game on.

- Vr/Zeux.>>