Blizzard might do well with their next MMO, but a lot of WoW's success was due to bringing out the right product at the right time.
/history lesson on
During WoW beta your D2 and Starcraft players were joined by fugitives for EverQuest, one of the grandaddys of MMOs. Many of these players were already turned on by Warcraft themed MMO and this coincided with a string of awful games changes that was driving the majority of EQ's large player base away from the game.
Many of this *****d players entered WoW beta and were extremely prolific in blogging their beta experiences. They did a butt tonne of word of mouth promotion (viral marketing wasn't a phrase at that time
). The initial WoW player base at release was almost entirely made up of experienced players from other MMO's.
The only way to describe the anticipation of WoW among the MMO community is to compare it to the media's frenzy over Apple's jesus-phone-tablet.
Some of the most vocal support came from EQ's most notorious high end raiding guild, who had, for better or worse, had a strong voice in shaping both MMO's and some went on to become blizzard game designers. Much of WoW's original game design was a direct response to EQ's punitive and harsh game style.
By release all this positive buzz surrounding WoW snowballed, helped by how easy it was to pick up the game and start playing. No MMO previously sought to entice new players or had much of an introduction beyond 'You are an elf, you're weak, here is a dagger, go kill rats until you are stronger'. Some of the early press adverts were very simple: "Bored of killing rats?, play WoW and be a real hero" - EQ newbies had to kill rats for 5 levels before any interesting content became viable.
WoW was also helped by it's low system requirements. You didn't need a high spec machine to enjoy the game. Released at the same time as WoW, EverQuest 2 is arguably a better game now, but gameplay was a mess at launch and crucially ran like a dog's breakfast on low spec machines.
WoW had a clear lead in gameplay, reputation and ease of entry at the time home internet gaming was really taking a firm hold in the mass market.
And don't even get me started in WoW's success amongst Chinese university students. Those kids have all night internet café's where with 100's of high specced pcs, comfy chairs and waiters who will bring you beer, cigarettes and preheats pot noodle type food straight to you while you are mid raid...
