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Brave New World

Mike Morhaime opens up about pushing the world's most successful developer into new territory

GamesIndustry.biz Sony Online Entertainment boss John Smedley recently said that he thought Star Wars: The Old Republic would be the last large-scale subscription-funded MMO. Do you agree with that analysis?
Mike Morhaime

I think it is a very difficult market to compete in, I think it's very expensive to make these games, especially if you're expecting people to pay a monthly fee just to play the game. And so there are very few companies that can compete at that high level with those types of budgets.

Definitely if you're not charging anybody, they're going to be a lot more forgiving about the experience they have. They haven't paid anything. So in terms of developers entering the market, I can understand why a lot of games might choose to go free-to-play.

For us, and even for EA with the Star Wars game, I think that the value that you get for the $15 a month is just unmatched. I don't think you can get that amount of entertainment value anywhere. I'd put the $15 up against anything.

GamesIndustry.biz The conversation surrounding free-to-play often begins and ends with the business implications of it.
Mike Morhaime

It absolutely does, yeah.

GamesIndustry.biz Do you think there's enough talk about it from a design perspective?
Mike Morhaime

I don't think that there is at all. I think that there's an underlying, a fundamental assumption right now, that the less you charge, the more money you make. Which isn't true. And it doesn't necessarily make for a better game. I mean, everybody likes free... I think that definitely, players have seen a lot of really great quality free-to-play experiences, but I'm not sure it's the best model for us right now.

I think that there's a fundamental assumption right now that the less you charge the more money you make. Which isn't true

GamesIndustry.biz As you sort of hinted in your opening address, one future competitor to World of Warcraft is Diablo 3, and you're worried that people are going to have to choose between them. So you made the offer of including it with a World of Warcraft annual subscription - which is a generous offer, but is it also a move to protect World of Warcraft subscriptions from Diablo?
Mike Morhaime

Well of course, I would be lying if I said that it wasn't. But I think from our perspective, we don't need people to buy everything. You know, if somebody is subscribing to World of Warcraft, we're totally happy, and I can sleep very well at night that they're playing Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft and that was just included as part of their subscription. I think it's a great deal.

GamesIndustry.biz Moving on to Battle.net, you recently announced the real-money auction house for Diablo 3 and you're talking about the Arcade for StarCraft 2. Do you see features like those as a necessary part of your game designs and your business model from now on?
Mike Morhaime

Yes, I do. We are really trying to integrate... Well, those are very different things, even though there's some technology we can share between the two. But when you look at Diablo 3, it's really all about what does this game need to achieve its potential? And a big part of Diablo 3 is item trading, finding valuable items and being able to trade them for items that are valuable to you... We'll see how it goes, it's definitely a new thing for us, I think a new thing that nobody's ever really done in this way before. But we're very excited about and we've received very positive feedback, by and large, from the players.

The Arcade really grew out of the idea that we have this awesome map and mod making community... The same tools that we use to create the campaign in the game, we put in the hands of our community, and they do some amazing stuff with these things. But imagine the kind of work they would do if there was a marketplace where they actually had the opportunity to sell their creation to other players. Imagine how that might incentivise them to do better things with that engine and devote additional resources...

We look at things like the iTunes App Store, and how that has just become so fundamental to changing the way we interact with this device, something that Apple could never have achieved on their own. And, you know, our vision is that we'd like to see that type of effort with StarCraft.

GamesIndustry.biz Do you see the Arcade ever moving beyond the confines of the StarCraft brand?
Mike Morhaime

Well, that's a great question. We don't have another platform right now with an engine and tools that are as polished and advanced as the tools that we create for StarCraft 2. So for instance, World of Warcraft, we have our own internal tools but they're not commercial-grade tools that we're comfortable putting in the hands of the public. Interesting question. No, hadn't thought of it. [Laughs]

GamesIndustry.biz At last year's BlizzCon, Rob Pardo told me that he was "confused" by Valve's move to trademark DOTA. You're continuing to promote Blizzard DOTA with that name. Are you in talks with Valve about it?
Mike Morhaime

We're very friendly with Valve. So yeah, we do talk to Valve. I can't really comment on that particular topic.

But I can share that our opinion about the situation is that the DOTA name really should belong to the community. I think that it's been part of the Warcraft 3 community for a very long time, and we would like to see the community continue being able to use that name, and having an exclusive mark owned by a competitor doesn't feel right to us.

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Oli Welsh

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Oli was Eurogamer's MMO Editor before a seven-year stint as Editor. He worked here for a colossal 14 years, shaping the website and leading it.

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