Selling WAR to WoW Players - What’s Your Pitch?

Today, our office landlord dropped by, as he tends to do every few months, to collect the rent and catch up on what else we broke down. So we do a bit of talking, one thing leads to another and then he asks if we’re into online games. We say we are indeed so he nods, grins and mentions playing WoW.

“Oh, WoW, huh? Oww, we kinda gave up on that“, me and my coworker go. “We’re playing WAR now…”

To which he throws us an ironic smile. “Oh, WAR? Yeah, I heard about that. They say it’s not as good as WoW is…”

At this point, I had to decide between going into full geek mode and holding a 20 minutes speech about the perks and flaws of each game or just dropping a quick “Well, if you’re into PvP, then WAR is awesome.”

I went with the latter. He smirks a bit,my coworker pitches in with a vague “yeah I mean, WAR …PvP..you know?” and I decide I might as well show him the damn game, as I have it on my laptop.

*clickety-click* Goodbye Microsoft Powerpoint, hello Warhammer Online. “Oh, you’re an orc, huh?”

“Damn right I am. Green, mean bastard! I’m like a protection warrior, only without the suck.”

“I play a protection warrior.”

“Oh…our rent just went up, didn’t it?”

I login and go into full this-would-be-easier-if-I-stopped-talking-and-let-you-at-the-controls mode.

Well this is the city…pretty empty right now, here, let me fly some place. Hey look, instant flying. So now I’m in a warcamp, let’s just ride to this keep right here, why don’t I also queue up for 6 unique ‘battlegrounds’ in the mean time. Oops, no one at the keep - well you can siege these things man, you totally can…with cannons, baby! Right so, did I tell you about open parties and public quests? Yeah, let me just show you. Here…I click on this little button aaaaand…if there was anyone around with an open party going, I could join it. But apparently there isn’t anyone at this public quest or in this entire zone. Well it’s 2 PM, people are at work, whaddya want?. Hence why no scenarios popped up either in the 20 minutes since I queued up. So yeah, I guess…umm…you gotta try it. It’s great fun, it’s very PvP-focused, you can get some action as soon as you create your character, it has a much more open approach to grouping and it’s lacking that grindy feel so far! It’s not WoW but it doesn’t try to be either! Give it a try, I think they do free trials now?”

The man showed some interest towards the guild leveling system, as well as the part where I told him about the lack of grinding (I lied - people who love you often do). Otherwise though, he just nodded politely and topped it off with a “Well, they’re adding alot of that stuff in WoW and it’s Blizzard, man. They’re gonna do it better.”

Well yes, they’re Blizzard indeed. And as much as I love WAR, I’d be silly trying to deny the fact that Blizz is indeed effing awesome.  Even so though, it’s not a matter of who does it “better”. For me at least, it’s about who does it differently. And yet, I realized I really had no arguments to sell WAR to a Wowhead. Especially one who’s not that hot on PvP, mind you. Of course, no demo will ever beat having them sit down, create a character and have some fun in a scenario before they’re level 2 but how do you get past their initial refusal to try anything not coming from Blizzard? How do you defeat the whole “Well, I’m sure it’s a great game and I’m glad you’re having fun, but I play WoW cause they do it better, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself, to justify all those nights of grinding rep with yet another bloody faction.”

In the end, no single carrot is likely to convert a non-believer, except perhaps keep sieges. And yet, word of mouth is tons more efficient than for example banners or tv commercials. Which basically means that we’re more likely to try a product if a friend or someone we trust/look up to recommends it, than if we see an ad where some strangers smile sheepishly cause the product touched them down there (in a questionable way). Which in turn means that WAR’s success also depends on our evengelical skills. And man, my skills were rusty today! (Unlike the open beta, when I got a few people who had never even heard of WAR to check their email every five minutes and go “Arrrgh, still no confirmation, damn it! I wanna play, what’s this French company I never heard of before doing?!”

No big conclusion here, just a question, as food for thought. How would you sell WAR? To either someone who plays another MMO (everyone you know, except for your mom) or someone who never played an MMO (your mom). To keep things simple, imagine it’s an elevator pitch. (”You have until we get to the first floor to tell me about your idea, cause I’m very busy. SSC starting soon.“) Let’s hear it!

Tags: random thoughts