Is Blizzard going after Pokemon?

The ‘hardcore’ WoW players (which is a contradiction since WoW, by definition, has never sold itself as a ‘hardcore experience’) are still spitting mad about the upcoming WoW expansion called Mists of Pandaria. Most of the rage swirls around ‘dah pandas’. But the other hot point is the pet battles. “It’s Pokemon in WoW!” they cry.

First of all, let me point something out. Good entertainment revolves around passion. People passionately hating something is actually a good thing. It means there is a flip side where people passionately love it. Every single entertainment out there that has been successful has a huge legion of haters around it. Grand Theft Auto 3 was a huge success, but it had a ton of haters in it. The NES and Gameboy had its haters when they came out. Of course, we all know how despised the Wii was before and after it was released. There is no entertainment out there that is universally loved. The hit pop singers of the year are viciously despised by other people. The hit movie of the year is despised by many other people. It isn’t so much that people hate what is popular but that good entertainment stirs up passion. Passionate hatred is just as indicative of success as passionate love.

The failing entertainment products stir up no passion. It is like listening to cooking recipes on the radio. Boring. Lifeless. No passionate hatred but no passionate love either. This is also why, young man, the Nice Guy always loses with the ladies. The Bad Boy, whatever his faults, stirs up passion. But who can become passionate about the Nice Guy? If you cannot passionately hate something, you cannot passionately love something. This is why people go from passionate love about someone to passionate hate in a second. The passionate hate is actually good… it shows they are still passionate. The death knell is when there is no passion at all. That is boredom.

So all this passion, for and against, the pandas and pet battles tells me there is some entertainment gold that might come out of them. The lack of passion for the PvE Scenarios and Challenge Dungeons indicates to me that these may become flops.

If Blizzard is, indeed, copying Pokemon, that would be a smart thing to do. Pokemon is an extremely successful series that has withstood the test of time. However, I think the actual reason why Blizzard is incorporating pet battles is because it is easy to implement. All it requires is some User Interface editing and tweaking. It is so simple that even I could program it into the game.

So no, I do not think Blizzard is going after Pokemon or this is some conspiracy marketing scheme to attract younger viewers. I think it is being implemented because it is so easy to implement. Blizzard operates on a ‘bang-for-the-buck’ concept regarding game design as does any other game company. Pet Battles is extremely cheap to implement and may have long term pay-offs. Consider that there requires no raids or dungeons or monsters for pet battles to be implemented unlike the rest of WoW’s content.

I suspect much of the ‘rage’ from WoW players about the pet battle system revolves around the fact that these players don’t have any pets. They were ‘hardcore’ and all the ‘pet collecting’ was for ‘idiots’. So when an expansion feature revolves around pets, suddenly the pet collectors are already WAY AHEAD of these ‘hardcore’ players which rapes their ego. Emotionally, they can’t handle it.

I never really played Pokemon, but I think this looks fun. It is far more interesting than adding yet another profession.

The question is not what Blizzard thinks of all this but what Nintendo thinks of all this. Nintendo is angling to get into the Internet process of gaming. Pokemon would have been a natural candidate for a longterm Internet venture. But Blizzard will get there first.

“But WoW’s way is crappy compared to whatever Nintendo implements.”

Maybe. But ‘good enough’ is enough as we’ve seen. If a Pokemon Online game came out now, WoW players wouldn’t leave for it. They can get a ‘good enough’ experience of that with their current game.

Nintendo must be livid about this. Not because of ‘copying’ or anything like that. It is because Nintendo wants to enter Internet gaming in a serious way and this undercuts them majorly.