Question Of The Week: World Of Warcraft Vs. Habbo?
The "Question Of The Week" feature, an industry-related question to beanswered by professional game developers reading this site, isfollowing up last week's Austin GDC event by asking what high-end MMO World Of Warcraft can learn from Web-based social world Habbo Coins, and vice versa.

Two of the major keynotes at the event this year were from verydifferent ends of the online game spectrum. On the one hand, Blizzard'spresident Mike Morhaime gave a speech discussing the immense success of the firm's World Of Warcraft, and commenting:

"Morhaime said Blizzard uses a model of the market of a donut, withcore gamers in the middle -- the opinion makers, and casual players asthe ring around. 'In order to be real successful we want to hit both ofthose markets,' he said, achievable by trying to build games 'deep andreplayable while being accessible to wide market,' through low systemrequirements, and the separate mantra, 'easy to learn, difficult tomaster.'"

On the other hand, designer Sulka Haro discussed his major Web-based online world Habbo Coins in his keynote, commenting in it:

"Is Habbo Coins Hotel a casual game? Haro isn't entirely sure that's thecase. 'If you want to do well you have to invest a heck of a lot oftime, and in that way you can't say it's casual.' He also rejects theWeb 2.0 and Game 3.0 labels -- if for no other reason than Habbo Coins Hotelhas been around since 2000. 'My personal favorite is 'gameless game','he remarked, and 'I'm very proud that we have this core gameplaywithout going out and killing monsters.'"

Thus, the question, which can be answered at the official Question Of The Week page until September 18th, is:

"Following the Austin Game Developers Conference last week, how important do you think online worlds such as Habbo Coins and web-based social gaming in general is to the future of online games, compared to existing game biz successes like World Of Warcraft? What can WoW learn from Habbo Coins, and vice versa?"

As with the previous questions, the best responses will be compiledinto an article to be published on the site, and users can eitherrespond publically, with their name and company specifically cited, oranonymize their answers if they wish.