Sports gamers who have been keeping up with the rest of the video-game industry may have noticed that Blizzard Entertainment's flagship title, World of Warcraft, recently reached the impressive mark of 11 million subscribers, giving it the largest active player-base of any game to date.
While the '09 crop of sports games did make some efforts to bring elements of MMO gaming into the traditionally conservative sports genre, only EA Canada's NHL 09 really went all-out this year to deliver a true MMO experience. And even that game seemed like a title that was merely dipping its toe in the MMO waters, rather than truly taking advantage of everything that has made Warcraft such a long-standing success in the ever-changing waters of online multiplayer games.
This article discusses some MMO qualities that next year's sports games could borrow from Warcraft to increase the attractiveness of their own virtual worlds to gamers of all types.
