First I have never heard of Trion, and second, both Kotick and Buttler are saying two different things.

Activision's Bobby Kotich is saying that in order to create a product that can compete with WoW you will have to spend up to $1billion dollars and I completely agree.

First you have to create a product that is exceptional in quality to take the spot light away from wow. This means you have to do some darn revolutionary and novel things, and that means spending a tremendous amount of money on great programmers and designers.

Second, you have to have a marketing force to equal your development. In the world stage no other company has dominated markets in places like China so well as Blizzard has. In order to take Blizzard out of those areas you have to build an extraordinary marketing team. Taking from Hollywood and how they market Blockbuster movies you're looking at spending probably about 10-25% of actual cost of the game itself.

Third, Support, when Blizzard came out and WoW was a big hit, they were completely unprepared with the technology and technical support in place. Since WoW's launch the support has grown extremely large to cover a support group that covers almost every big market around the globe.

Lastly, is sustainability. How do you sustain growth both within the game and for your company? How do you increase profits but keep the quality as high as possible? Blizzard has had enough experience to allow them to understand and maintain success.

Kotick is talking about what it takes to compete with WoW now, not how WoW is so dominate no one can ever beat it.

Buttler is saying WoW is beatable down the road and it wont be around forever, which he is right but Kotick never said WoW was gonna be dominate forever.

I call Buttler's bluff and say he's trying his best to get exposure for him and his company.

WoW is such an amazing game for anyone to even get within 20lightyears of the game the graphics have to be that of halo 3 but it also has to be skill integrated so that like everyone has a some what equal chance...but still i would say it would cost at least 750million for any company to get a game that is almost but a little worse then WoW....

I can see that it would require a huge investment of both time and money, but what WoW has is a cumulative combination of both. They do a great job with their servers and balancing things, and while people love to whinge and beat down on them when something does go wrong, the vast majority of the time there are no problems, and there are regular updates and content added in. Couple this with their dislike for micro-transactions and you have a great game that is well maintained and well balanced.

A company that would want to challenge WoW would have a big challenge up their sleeve because they arent just going up against people who like WoW, theyre going up against people who love Warcraft, Starcraft, Blizzard and all the related games and lore that make the games so exciting and make the online world such a fun and immersive place to be a part of.

If an MMO however could completely annihilate the inevitable grind process however, I think they would stand a much higher chance.

Interesting article though.

What makes WoW great:
1. Great solo line - all the way to 70. you can keep questing and soloing till 70 without entering any instance.
2. great graphics - it may not be realistic, but the graphics are great. Seeing sunsets or sunrise are definitely jaw dropping experiences.
3. you know what to do next - just look at your quest book, and you know there are 25 quests you have to do.
4. carrot on a stick - the non-assured drops from bosses makes it certain you can keep coming back for more.
5. a place for pve people - those who dont want to be ganked all the time can also play. not like other games where its pvp only.
6. you know its a vibrant world while questing - i played Guild Wars - its nice, but when you are questing solo - you are just that - alone. in WoW, you can quest solo, but still meet other people and interact with them.
7. high level of interaction with other people - instances, profession requirements etc. the most important part of an online game is the people interaction, and continuous improvements by blizzard means the interaction is improving everytime.
8. Easy to learn Hard to master - i have played with 14 year old kids and 70 year old granpas - that is the breadth of people this game appeals to. Its kind of a dumb game at the start - everyone can learn it. but at the top levels , you really need to learn your character well to be able to play well.
9. Great interaction with the net. even when i am not playing, i can check the forum and the armory profiles. that helps a lot in keeping hooked to the game.
10. Works on slow connections. I am in india, and broadband here is 256kbps - i can still 25man raid (been only to Gruul's so far).

The next in line MMO should learn from WoW. See the good things, and not change it. Make sure it runs on crappy hardware as well as the best in the class. Make sure people have things to do when they dont want to quest or pvp or instance.

Its a tough job, but i think its doable.

What he said.