What's gone wrong with marketing?

Dr. Pepper has given us the definitive answer to this question:  Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper.

The absurdity of this drink should be obvious.  My question to the Dr. Pepper company is, What flavor is Dr. Pepper?  You see, when you keep messing with your soda brand by bringing out new versions, you erode the meaning of the brand.  Coke and Pepsi are even worse off.  Crystal Pepsi, Berry Pepsi, and all of the many flavors of Coke (Vanilla, Lemon, Cherry, Lime), have done nothing for each company's bottom-line, but they have sent us the message these soda brands are still searching for a winning flavor.  Remember Coke's slogan, "Coke is it"?  Well, which flavor, exactly, is it?  Now Coke is using the slogan, "Real."  Will the real Coke please stand up?  With all of these different flavors, the Coke brand is now the equivalent of Shasta, coming in a long list of flavors.  Anyone count the number of flavors of Sprite or Mountain Dew lately?  Isn't it even crazy to have to talk about different flavors of Sprite, or Coke, or Dr. Pepper?!  I can only imagine that next we'll see a new flavor spin-off of root beer?

RC, a perennial third place in the cola wars, has a sparkling opportunity to capitalize on the self-destructive habits of their competition.  Here's what RC should do:

o Drop RC and go back to using Royal Crown.  Initials cheapen a brand and make it less memorable.

o Use real sugar cane, and promote how bad high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is -- and it's really unhealthy vs. sucrose, a.k.a. cane sugar.  Also promote that sugar cane was how sodas were originally made and why they use to taste so good.  Dipping a hand in pure white sugar vs a hand in goopy HFCS would offer a stark contrast, with the question:  "Which do you prefer?"

o Only have one version of Royal Crown, the true blue non-diet version.  When you do just one thing, you tend to do it best.  Promote the idea that Royal Crown doesn't need to experiment with new flavors every month -- "we found the best one and we're sticking with it."

o Mock the fact that no one knows what flavor a Coke or a Pepsi is anymore -- vanilla, lemon, lime, crystal, cherry, berry?!

o Promote Royal Crown as the premium cola brand, not the value brand.  And the reasons above support this premium positioning.  And this is another reason to use Royal Crown rather than RC, as "Royal Crown" sounds like the king of colas.

Bingo, Royal Crown's market share quadruples in the first year.  Coke and Pepsi are too big and stuck in their ways to counter effectively.

What does any of this have to do with the gaming world?

Plenty.

Brand management is one of the most important duties of a company that generates revenues through IP (intellectual property).  And the game industry is just as foolish as soda companies when it comes to creating and maintaining their brands.  But I'll save this for my next update.

Comments

[crowdpleazr]

Quite honestly, consdering all the different "flavors" of Duke Nukem out there, are you sure you should be preaching this point? Not saying I disagree with you, but have you met the kettle? In my mind, I haven't seen a real Duke game in a decade, but I know there have been others, and each one dilutes the flavor of your brand, particularly when they are third person games.

[Anon]

"Use real sugar cane, and promote how bad high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is "

Man I hope someone does that HFCS is the devil...

Maybe more companies will catch on and stop using as much partially hyrdrogenated oils and HFCS

[Anon]

"Quite honestly, consdering all the different "flavors" of Duke Nukem out there, are you sure you should be preaching this point? Not saying I disagree with you, but have you met the kettle? In my mind, I haven't seen a real Duke game in a decade, but I know there have been others, and each one dilutes the flavor of your brand, particularly when they are third person games"

Maybe you've forgotten Duke Nukem's roots...

it's the First Person Duke Nukems that are diluting the brand more than anything considering the series started as a side scroller =P.

[Michael P.]

Can't say I'm knowledgeable about the soda industry, but analogies between marketing games and soft drinks only seem to work at a very superficial level. I'd argue that soda sub-brands (Cherry Coke) are only meant to attract niche markets that might be interested in sweeter or more varied flavors of Coke. The main Coke brand will continue to be consumed by the mainstream audience. Video game sub-brands on the other hand (such as James Bond 007: Goldeneye 2: Rogue Agent or Duke Nukem: Forever or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords [holy shit]) should be treated differently than soda because their market presence is independent of the original game that started the brand. For example, KOTOR 2 is not competing with KOTOR 1 because they are released several years apart. To treat games under the Star Wars: KOTOR sub-brand as akin to soda sub-brands is I think ignoring the fact that consumers see these products as entirely new games. Cherry Coke is still Coke, but KOTOR 2 is not KOTOR 1, nor is it Tie Fighter or Galaxies or any other game under the Star Wars brand name.

But even more than that, video games are highly complex entertainment products, subject to many decisions through their development that can diminish the quality of the game. Soda--and I may be making some horribly simplified statement on account of my ignorance--is a fucking beverage. It will probably taste nice to nearly everyone who tries it, but they may not make it their beverage of choice because a beverage is a beverage, not a highly stimulating piece of interactive entertainment that video games can be. Consumers will likely spend more time discerning the quality of a $50 product than a 50 cent one and will voice their discontent to everyone they know when a game proves to be a pile.

So it certainly may be the nonsensical marketing that's destroying video game brands, but I'd wager that it's the quality of the games that is turning off consumers rather than how many syllables their title contains.

[Robert Howarth]

As far as Coke or Pepsi goes, they could have a line of sneakers and I don't think there would be any product confusion about its flagship line of beverages. The little offshoots like Vanilla or Cherry are just ideas from old timer execs who fondly remember the days of going into a Drug Store, buying a Coke and having their favorite syrups put in. Not that Drug stores do that now, it shows you how things change over the years.

Cola companies would be better served to just release a line of syrups and they could let consumers flavor it the way they like. ;)

RC is more of a regional brand, you don't even see it in stores in some states.

[Tadhg]

Scott, excellent lesson.

Michael,

There are some similarities and differences, but what Scott is pointing out is the subconscious value that a brand can create in the mind (to the point that it becomes ubiquitous), and how then subsequently trying to build on that through diversification can ultimately tarnish the brand and render it less than successful. This is because brands can and do come to mean something to people in an emotional way. It's a complicated relationship, but the upshot of it is that we grow to love them. Coke's brand love was such that it inspired demonstrations in the street when they wanted to change the flavour. Would that happen now?

The question is how much the damage of the brand extension can cause to the original, or whether the two can successfully co-exist. I don't fully agree with Scott that ALL extension is immutably bad, as extension can cause new markets to appear, and a new generation to like what the new brand comes to represent more than the old. An example that Scott used previously is the case of Heinz ketchup, and the way that they lost the soup market in the process of becoming the king of ketchup manufacturers. So they lose one brand and they gain another, but the ketchup thing has been a wild success for them in the long term, so maybe it's not so bad.

The problem for game marketing is not that the brands change. They do. The Mario brand now means something a little different to its original incarnation, because of Mario 64, a radical departure in many ways from Mario World. However, in Nintendo's case this was a good move to make because the old 2D brand was not as strong as it had been, and they recognised that there was a growing retro-looking market for something that appeared childish but was actually quite complicated.

Grand Theft Auto has likewise made a successful transition from its roots. It has lost its original brand meaning, more or less, but managed to regenerate itself from a reputation of frivolous top-down 2D gaming to a massive sprawling hiphop culture game with stories and stuff.

These transitions or extensions can be successful, but they invariably involve a trade-off rather than a doubling up.

This is where colonitis is a bad move, and where trying to overreach is also a bad move. Star Wars, for example, is a truly giant brand. But does it have the same resonance that it once did. Lucasarts' Star Wars game used to have a reputation for excellence, as did the Star Wars films. Both are now irrevocably dashed. So what, you might say, as it has generated billions of dollars. True, but will it still generate billions of dollars in ten years time, or will it go to seed as Star Trek has? It's increasingly likely that Star Wars will drop off the radar within a decade because the brand has become increasingly worthless through bad management and bad associated products (KOTOR not withstanding). You won't see it for now, but eventually it will decline in an unrecoverable sort of way.

Maybe that happens, though. There are few (if any) entertainment brands that do ultimately persist forever.

[Bjorn Larsson/IRIDON]

I suspect that we might be missing a major point here, the fact that we should discern hardcore gamers from the mainstream buyers. Gamers are probably less likely to be affected by brand extension (at least in the short term), as they base their purchases on product content/quality rather than brand/packaging/polish/title.

To make a simple comparison, Star Wars has a lot of product out there that don’t seem to differ from one another that much by looking at it quickly (packaging/screens/title) as opposed to for example Mario Tennis vs. Mario Golf, whose suffixes clearly communicates their difference, and consequently what you get for your money. Average Joe walking into a store today and seeing a multitude of different SW products (add to that the fact that there are also a multitude of SW SKUs for various platforms), will just be confused and perhaps he’ll buy a more focused brand.

In addition, the sheer number of gaming platforms and formats available and about to be released seem to me to be something of an industry Achilles heal, it serves to further – albeit indirect - brand extension of the entire industry (imagine store shelves next year: PS2/PS3/PSP, Xbox/Xenon, GC/GBA/DS/maybe that N64 add-on for GC, PC, Phantom, Gizmondo, Mac --- and probably some more we don’t know about yet). Sure, there will be some offload in backwards compatibility, but the number of SKUs will surely increase.

For what it’s worth, the whole industry may just collapse one day just like it did in the 80’s. Looking at the decline of the Japanese game industry, I’m not sure the future is as bright as your friendly marketing analyst wants you to believe. History has a tendency to repeat itself.

[Adam Vandenberg]

While Boylan does have a wide range of sodas, their "Sugar Cane Cola" rules. If you can find it.

There's also a burrito shop around here that has imported, bottled Coke and Pepsi from Mexico, which list actual sugar as an ingredient.

[Scott Miller]

Well, I might need to turn this subject into a 10-parter, because there are a lot of holes in the dam springing leaks. ;-)

First off, my discussion on brands was going to focus on labels, such as Rockstar, Activision, EA Sports, Ubisoft, and Atari. And even on developer brands. Company names can themselves become brands, like Id Software and Blizzard. Obviously, game brands should be part of the discussion, too, but that's a HUGE topic in its own right.

Another point worth noting is that it's often fine to transition a brand, to keep up with technology, for example. Hence, it's fine to transition Duke Nukem or GTA from the 2D world of sprites to the 3D world of polygons. (In the case of Heinz, they transitioned from pickles to ketchup -- although their strategy was to be the leader of both, something that's practically impossible for a brand to do, which is why it's foolishly self-destructive to broaden the meaning of a brand. Heinz would have been better off creating a new brand for the ketchup category, and that way they could have been the leader in both.)

Sequels are not line extensions, another key point that's often confusing. I think of sequels as further episodes. Each James Bond movie is merely another exciting episode in this character's life. (Character-based IPs are the best adapted to this sort of episodic exploitation, which is a key reason our IPs are 100% character focused.)

Brands are hurt when their core meaning is diluted, or when they fail to develop a core meaning. This will be the focus of my next blog.

[Anon]

Scott - we mentioned this in the other Heinz discussion, but I guess we can mention it again :). Maybe in the U.S. Heinz only wins ketchup, but in the U.K. it's the brand leader for both tinned soup and ketchup (chased by HP in ketchup and Campbells along with a few others in soup). I'm not quite sure why it doesn't do soup in America, or doesn't appear to - it's not like it tries and loses, I've never seen a can of Heinz soup here in North America. It's a pity, as they do make really *good* soup, much nicer than Campbells.

[Anon]

Oh, and BTW, I don't necessarily agree with the character-works-best-for-sequels idea; a good comparison is the science fiction / fantasy arena. Yes, there are many successful sf / fantasy character-based franchises, but there are others that don't rely on character continuation, too. Take Iain M. Banks' 'Culture' novels, or Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' novels (before J.K. Rowling appeared, Pratchett was the U.K.'s most successful living author).

[Anon]

One more interesting example from that arena - Elizabeth Moon's Serrano series. It's not the most popular sf series ever, but it did get a reasonable following, and it changed protagonists half-way through the series (book 4, IIRC) for no real reason other than (I guess) the author got bored of writing her first character. Didn't seem to hurt the series at all.

[Eric Lulie]

Scott, do sports games count as line extensions? Those seem like one of the easier way to damage a label's rep., especially if you release a bad or lackluster title in a given season.

[Anon]

You might recall "Tab", which was Coca-Cola's attempt to sell a differently-branded diet cola. It did fairly well -- until they introduced Diet Coke, which *steamrollered* Tab.

This is in opposition to Scott's oft-repeated theory that line extension is universally bad, and that the creation of a new, separate brand is universally superior.

Now, if Scott could ever manage to speak on this subject in terms of good ideas, guidelines, and general trends, then it would be par for the course to encounter a few instances where things went differently than he predicts. But such is not Scott's way. Every time he addresses the topic of branding & line extension, it's in rigid, absolute, unyielding terms.

Thus a single counterexample knocks down the whole thing.

[Robert Howarth]

As far as games go, right now the biggest topic which relates to this discussion is Blizzard's World of WarCraft. When people think of WarCraft, the image of a real-time-strategy games pops into mind - Not a massively multiplayer role playing game - Will this hurt the brand or Blizzard in any way?

No. The brand may change, but World of WarCraft is going to give Blizzard a steady monthly revenue for years to come not to mention make back the initial investment of developing the game just by selling a certain number of retail copies.

With WarCraft tied into massively multiplayer RPGs, they can now be free to make StarCraft its premier real-time-strategy lable.

[crowdpleazr]

Game brands like GTA can make the jump from 2D to 3D just fine, but it's problems where you start to dilute the brand with many types of games that's the problem. Duke right now is a third person action platformer AND a 3D FPS. Thus the brand is diluted. Now, if DNF never comes out, then maybe it successfully transitioned, but when you start coming out with games in multiple genres using the same brand, you have problems. Witness how the Crash Bandicoot IP tore itself apart in attempting to go in many directions at once. Hell, you can't even define what the hell a Mario game is at all anymore. He's mostly just a rubber stamp character onto (usually) good gameplay elements, but even now it's tiring to have a new MarioKart, Mario3D, MarioRetro, MarioParty, MarioWhatever every year. I stopped caring a loooong time ago.

However, and just to knock down the "sequals are bad" idea, I'm more than interested in picking up the new GTA, the new Splinter Cell, and the new Final Fantasy. I know what I'm getting every single time, and I like what I buy.

[Scott Miller]

Robert, Sims Online was thought to be a guaranteed monthly extension of the all-powerful The Sims brand. Didn't happen, though. Wouldn't surprise me to see WoW also under-perform.

Remember C&C Renegade? I was telling Westwood developers before that game came out that it was a brand dilution mistake, and most likely wouldn't do well, despite the fact that the C&C brand was, at that time, one of the industry's most successful. When a brand steps outside it's core meaning, it typically has a very tough time.

As for Tab, it's an interesting story of self-sacrifice by the Coke Company. Pepsi came out first with their line extension brand of Cola, cleverly named Diet Pepsi. Tab, though, receiving hardly any support from the Coke Company, continued to outsell Diet Pepsi (which had a massive marketing budget for their new diet drink) by 32 percent, up until the day Diet Coke was released. At that point, the Coke Company stopped all marketing on Tab (actually, they had nearly stopped it long before, knowing their new diet soda was in the wings), and pushed Diet Coke like a madman. Why did the Coke Company abandon the clear category leader, Tab, in favor of Diet Coke? Because they're knuckleheads.

To think how absurd it is to come out with Diet Coke, think how absurd it'd be to go the other way, and make a non-diet Tab. Most people can grasp how silly that would be, yet a diet version of Coke seems somehow okay. But for the health of the brand, it's not. Tab, with proper support, could still be the clear leader of the diet cola category, and Coke could still be the real thing. Instead, now Coke is everything.

And it's no wonder that both Pepsi and Coke has less market today than they did before they ever started down the road of killing the core meaning of their brands.

[Scott Miller]

-- "Duke right now is a third person action platformer AND a 3D FPS."

Fortunately, and predictably, the platformer didn't perform well, and so didn't do much damage to the brand. Hardly anyone really knows about it or played it, so it's negative effect is minimal. And one of the reasons it was a flop is because it was a horribly misguided line extension. Lesson learned.

[Robert Howarth]

>>Robert, Sims Online was thought to be a guaranteed monthly extension of the all-powerful The Sims brand. Didn't happen, though. Wouldn't surprise me to see WoW also under-perform.<<

The demographic for people who play The Sims, and who would play a massively multiplayer game are just so much different that it was doomed to fail from the start. I've never played it myself, so I can't comment on the quality of the title.

World of WarCraft is in a similar situation - RTS gamers don't go for MMORG's - but the attraction to World of WarCraft is that it appeals to a huge pool of gamers who are indeed willing to shell out a monthly fee to pay for a game of this sort. Early feedback and the popularity of the beta indicates that the game is going to do very well.

>>Remember C&C Renegade? I was telling Westwood developers before that game came out that it was a brand dilution mistake, and most likely wouldn't do well, despite the fact that the C&C brand was, at that time, one of the industry's most successful. When a brand steps outside it's core meaning, it typically has a very tough time.<<

Renegade was a fun game at its core, but it suffered from having dated graphics, a slow engine and lots of bugs. It could've done very well if they didn't base their game on old buggy technology and shipped in a better state.

EA pretty much killed the C&C brand off, so it's a bit of a moot point regardless.

[Walter]

I think I agree with Michael P. in that the dynamics and semiotics of games don't work in the same way as soft drinks and similar non-creative goods do, meaning that the line extension theory doesn't apply in the same way.

The reason why The Sims Online failed was because it turned out to invoke few of the pleasures that had made The Sims so popular, when the reason why the whole idea was attractive was because it was thought that a MMO Sims would expand on those pleasures. I think Robert MAY have a point about the demographics, but The Sims defied the demographics to begin with, and I think few people who would join The Sims Online would consider themselves an "MMORPGer". Similarly, I don't think the popularity of Toon Town or the upcoming Hello Kitty MMORPG is dependent on their target market being "MMORPGers".

I think World of WarCraft is going to be a big success. Or, at any rate, even if it's not, I don't think that's because it's a line extension of the WarCraft brand. Games like WarCraft have multiple axes on which to appeal to gamers, the dominant ones being (1) RTS gameplay, and (2) the WarCraft world. Most WarCraft fans (of which there are many) are fairly enamoured of the WarCraft world, and when it comes to worlds, players often appreciate having another mode of access to them. The fiction is strong enough that it appeals in a way that transcends genre, and even medium (hence WarCraft, Halo, Warhammer, and D&D books).

With characters, on the other hand, it wouldn't make much sense to make an RPG with Duke Nukem or Max Payne. Players identify the character, and hence the games named after them, as giving a specific kind of access to the world which they are a part of.

Finally, no matter how much you say it (sorry, Scott :), I don't buy the idea that consumers have trouble knowing what flavor Coke is. All of Coke's line extensions pretty clearly follow the logic of "this is a variation on the Coke formula: we either added something to it or took something away." Coke is just Coke, and all the line extensions are [something] Coke.

Pepsi, on the other hand, was doing some funky junk with Crystal Pepsi...it's really hard to tell if that has any relation to the regular Pepsi formula or not.

[Mark Asher]

Tab used saccharin and there was controversy about that for awhile. Killed lab rats, etc. The brand was somewhat tarnished. It wasn't a bad idea for Coke to develop a new brand.

WoW will do very well. It will attract the MMO players, Blizzard fans, and even casual gamers. I expect it to be the leading MMO in N. America.

[PaG]

"the dynamics and semiotics of games don't work in the same way as soft drinks and similar non-creative goods do, meaning that the line extension theory doesn't apply in the same way."

I always have a hard time with arguments like this. You seem to be saying "Our industry is so unique that what we learned from other ones don't apply here", which is hardly ever true. It's tempting to believe the creativity of the game industry makes it unique, but the psychology of people buying games is the exact same as the psychology of people buying cola. If you're going to convince me that this is different for games, you'll have to explain in more details what "the dynamics and semiotics of games" have to do with it.

In the end, marketing (positioning and branding in particular) is a way to communicate effectively with people in an over-communicated society. Marketing has to explain very quickly why you should be interested in a product (be it a soda or a game) because the person reading probably has better things to do than reading ads.

Branding is a big aspect of this. If the consumer sees a brand and recognizes it as something he wants, there's more chance he'll pick up that product rather than a competitor's (all else being equal, you're more likely to pick up products you know about than those you don't). Line extension has a short term effect on "recognizes it" and a long term effect on "as something he wants".

When you do line extensions, you gain the benefit of the original brand's popularity at first. People notice your product more because it has a name they know and like: "Hey, Diet Coke! I know that!" or "World of Warcraft! A new Warcraft game!" This effect is pretty short-lived because even with a new brand people eventually become familiar with it and it gains similar status as more established brands. So line extension definitely gives a short popularity boost to a product.

The long term effect of line extension, however, is that it reduces the focus of the brand. The meaning of the brand loses strength as it becomes more general. If a new Warcraft game came out, you used to say "Wow, that's going to be a great RTS!" but because of World of Warcraft now it will be "Cool, a new game set in the Warcraft universe". Taking me as an example, I like RTS games but I don't care for MMORPGs. My level of interest when I see the word "Warcraft" in a news item on a website (or on a game box) dropped: it used to be 100% sure to interest me, but now I don't know if it's going to be about something I care about or not.

That's the problem with line extension: in the long term it makes the brand lose focus and it starts meaning less in people's mind. "Warcraft" went from meaning "great RTS" to "good game in a medieval fantasy setting", Coke went from "great tasting cola" to "usually good tasting bunch of soft drinks".

Line extension can be good in the short-term, but is bad in the long-term. If you don't think that your game is going to be there 10 years from now, then extending on its current popularity can be a good move (but then you'll also help making sure it won't have a long life). If you do have great plans for your game and hope to see reach the ranks of Mario or Final Fantasy, then choosing a strong focus and keeping to it is the way to go. You won't have the sudden burst of income line extension can give, but in the long-term you'll have the strongest brand if you play your cards right.

[Patrick Sullivan]

Whether the normal standards of line extension would normally come into play here, Blizzard, being who they are, get an automatic bye. If for no other reason then they own the Korean market outright. If they have fewer then 500k subscribtions I will be shocked, to be honest. They could easily become the 3rd largest player based MMO out (behind a pair of Korean ones, I might add).

WoW will not fail. Might not do as well as expected in the United States, but overall it simply cannot fail. Blizzard simply has too big a mind share that gives them automatic sales/buy ins.

[Scott Miller]

PaG said it better than I could.

WoW may very well succeed, but in the long term, it dilutes the brand. A brand is strongest when someone can ask, "What is Warcraft?" and the answer is both simple and not too broad. Currently, for Warcraft, the answer is, "An RTS game." Short and focused. But soon the answer will have to be either, [1] "An RTS and a MMOG" or [2] "A fantasy game world." The first answer is complicated, and the second answer is broad.

Here's what Blizzard should have done instead: Created an entirely new brand for their MMOG. Leave the Warcraft brand laser focused as an RTS leader, and invent a new IP for their foray into the MMOG category. Some of us remember that Blizzard tried to dilute the Warcraft brand before by making an adventure game spin-off. Luckily for them, they decided to cancel it. But now they're trying once again to broaden the meaning of Warcraft -- an entirely unnecessary risk for this brand. The smart move when you're jumping into a new category is to invent a new brand. In the end, it creates more value for your company to own several successful brands, rather than one successful brand. Plus, by keeping each brand focused, it makes them harder to topple by competitors.

I think this last point is absolutely critical. Regardless of what you think about the merits of line extension, it's always better to create a new brand if the product has a new focus. Does anyone doubt that Blizzard couldn't create a new brand for their MMOG that wouldn't be just as well anticipated? And for those people who disagree, would Diablo had been more popular as a Warcraft line-extension, perhaps Warcraft Underworlds?

But companies are too often afraid to take a risk creating a new brand, ignorant of the fact that a line extension is even riskier because it could crash the appeal of a once popular brand by spreading its meaning too thin.

-- "Tab used saccharin and there was controversy about that for awhile. Killed lab rats, etc. The brand was somewhat tarnished. It wasn't a bad idea for Coke to develop a new brand."

This is a very good point, because at the time saccharin was under attack for possibly being unhealthy. Coke could have responded by coming out with a newly branded diet cola using Nutrasweet. It wasn't necessary to drag the Coke name into this, just as they didn't use the Coke name when inventing Tab. Imagine if they had named Tab as Diet Coke, and then with the saccharin scare the Coke name might have been also tarnished. The funny thing is that nowadays it's Nutrasweet that's recognized as the very unhealthy sweetener, and this reflects poorly on Coke. Saccharin has been redeemed and is now seen as the safest of man-made sweeteners, even ahead of sucralose (Splenda).

BTW, what ever happened to C2? Silly, silly soda companies.

[Patrick Sullivan]

Remember, they were already tieing in role playing elements as of WarCraft 3 to the series, with how heros were leveled up and such. Perhaps they are transplanting the brand purely to RPGs and WC3 was a stepping stone, while Starcraft will be their RTS bread and butter.