Eve is my primary game, has been for quite a while now, but i do play WoW, maybe not every day like some, but a couple of times a week, and its fun, its casual friendly... as for SW:tor and FFXIV etc, i just dont see them as being interesting enough, even from the available information on the games - video trailers etc, i can see that neither one are games that are all that appealing - just because a game is expensive to make (SW:TOR) doesnt mean its going to be successful because of it, the only other game that looks even half decent - maybe not as a replacement for WoW, but as something to do when im a bit burned on Eve, is APB.. it offers something a lot different from other games - SW:tor doesnt bring anything new, its just more olds, we have storylined games already, lots of them in fact... more of the same isnt really all that original...
WoW won for many reasons. And like other things, the product is greater than the sum of its parts.
WoW has:
Never before seen levels of polish from the start
Very regular updates
In-depth lore and history
Ease of accessiblility
Plenty of in-game and out-of-game information
Intuitive and unobtrusive gameplay
Thats to name a handful. There are more.
Also, people poke fun at Fireball 1, 2, 3... 47, 48...
But it serves a purpose. To the gamer its boring. To the non-gamer it makes sense. There are lots of little things that make the game easier to understand and play. My wife doesn't play video games but she would play WoW with me because she can understand WoW to the point she can enjoy it. Even though she has zero interest in video games in general.
The "WoW Killers" only seem to take a few items from the list and focus on that but never really pay attention to the market.
Great article, Jaime. It was well-written, had wonderful word pictures, was creative and interesting. Thanks!
The following games, to me, are beginning to show some potential "in the shadow of the elephant:"
RIFT
GW2
..................I am honestly thinking these first two are going to be big delightful surprises.
SW:ToR
TSW
TERA (although I'm a bit suspicious that underneath it all...this might end up being a fancy looking Asian grinder)
WoD (if we ever get to see it manifest)
FFXIV
To me....those seven games....have the most chance of drawing the spotlight away from center ring of the MMO circus. Of course, only time will tell. And I certainly do not believe that WoW will "go away" any more than UO, EQ, DAoC, or AO (among others) "went away." If games like those that drew considerably fewer subs when the genre was not well known, are still around....then the behemoth called WoW....will certainly continue to bring a nice paycheck to Blizzard for many years to come.
I'm just grateful that there are big AAA titles out there that do sound.....INTERESTING.
Why WoW is still the elephant in the room is very, very simple. Every new MMO since has been a big pile of crap. Now why would anyone leave WoW to go play a broken half assed copy of it.
If WoW players would be honest with you I would estimate 60% and probably more are bored with the game.
Most of those would play another MMO if one came out that did not suck and here is the key ready for it, it something that developers can not seem to comprehend at all.......the elusive secret.....DIFFERENT than WoW but with the same polish.
SW:OR is going to be WoW with talking Wookies that is it. Quest level train track treadmill to max mostly solo with end game raiding.
One day my hope is the developers will realize you are not going to kill the elephant in the room with its "special needs" cousin.
Hmm an article about WoW and how we shouldnt keep focusing on Wow which has resulted in another thread where everyone talks about WoW and the effect WoW has had on everything else.
The elephant grows stronger.
lol
talk about Battle of the Immortals now it is an awesome f2p game
I just had a look at some video footage of that game. It does look quite impressive. Its good to see decent quality F2P games like this coming out as well as other games like Guildwars 2 that have a single purchase price with no monthly subscription.
Paying £10 a month to play a game you already paid for is a complete ripoff. Its sad to see that it has become accepted as the norm.
That underlined bit up there .....
How so?
If you were playing a single player RPG that has a definitive length of play time to it, a beginning and END of the game...I would agree with you. I wouldn't pay a monthly fee for a game that is essentially something you play through once. It is a complete work when it's released (for the most part).
However....MMOs charge a monthly fee for logical reasons. They are constantly developing new content. They have to pay artists and programmers for this work. They have server upkeep and tech upgrades to their servers, they have electricity bills, they have maintenance, they have customer service employees, they have long term advertising because the game isn't released as a "completed game," it is a persistent and continually growing world. It's an entirely different animal from a single player adventure game or rpg. THOSE things don't require maintaining a staff or facilities or servers or content creators, etc.
We don't really know how MUCH GW2 is going to cost, and while they are saying it will be, as GW, "without a monthly fee," that doesn't mean that they won't be getting those maintenance fees for an MMO elsewhere. No one really knows EXACTLY how it's going to be done yet. The original GW, according to the developers, was not an MMO, perse, so....GW2 is going to be inherently different since they ARE calling it an MMO. I am wondering how, exactly, they will make this game pay the bills for itself. I wonder if the box price is just going to be much much higher than that of GW or....what. I guess we'll eventually know.
Lol comming from you saying "i dont realy hating wow" or first try excusing yourself why you again (as always ) talking about wow its sad real sad:(
You play it everyday and then say you try avoid talk about it or maybe hate it dont fool yourself your fanboi and you also love promote and talk about your beloved wow, when i see your name i see wow lol.
Im still amazed how people can play wow is beyond me:P
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Great article, Jaime. It was well-written, had wonderful word pictures, was creative and interesting. Thanks!
The following games, to me, are beginning to show some potential "in the shadow of the elephant:"
RIFT
GW2
..................I am honestly thinking these first two are going to be big delightful surprises.
SW:ToR
TSW
TERA (although I'm a bit suspicious that underneath it all...this might end up being a fancy looking Asian grinder)
WoD (if we ever get to see it manifest)
FFXIV
To me....those seven games....have the most chance of drawing the spotlight away from center ring of the MMO circus. Of course, only time will tell. And I certainly do not believe that WoW will "go away" any more than UO, EQ, DAoC, or AO (among others) "went away." If games like those that drew considerably fewer subs when the genre was not well known, are still around....then the behemoth called WoW....will certainly continue to bring a nice paycheck to Blizzard for many years to come.
I'm just grateful that there are big AAA titles out there that do sound.....INTERESTING.
Agreed.
WoW will be around forever and will probably have the large amount of players for years to come.
But thankfully these newer games are aiming more at select groups of players who want something different and new rather than the 'WoW in a different skin' games we have seen over the last few years.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Here is my spin on what is wrong with all MMOs. The fun of MMO's to me is the questing and leveling and once you get to the end game and keep doing the same thing over and over again, the game really gets stale. So what do you do you start a new character and go through all the same quests you did the first time. This isn’t so bad because it has been a while since you did these quests.
So the routine has now started. New character to end game, new character to end game. Now after you have done this a few times, not only is the end game really getting stale so is the process of getting there.
What would keep the game interesting, at least for me, I suggest this. Instead of adding more and more and more content to the game, change the process of leveling from 1 to 80 by changing the path/branch of quests you do to get from 1 to 80. This way each time you go through the leveling process it is fresh and new, making the journey interesting once again. Doing the same quests and doing the same dungeons killing the same mobs over and over again gets old fast. The unexpected in MMOs is what fun is. Once it becomes predictable it is no longer fun.
1. WoW has alot more than just one aspect that makes it what it is. Its not just gameplay or support - or updates and new content or ... mods. Its ALL those things and alot more and no other game will be able to gain that momentum on all these fronts any time soon.
2. Why are other games looking for new buisness models ? This one is extra simple. Because WOW controlls 90% of the P2P market and no game in its current form can push WOW as first choise sub game for those that are playing it.
But.. that doesn't mean that the games offering diffrent buisness models are actually worth the "buisness" they are pushing for. They just dont have any other alternitives than to try to get money any way they can.
Here is my spin on what is wrong with all MMOs. The fun of MMO's to me is the questing and leveling and once you get to the end game and keep doing the same thing over and over again, the game really gets stale. So what do you do you start a new character and go through all the same quests you did the first time. This isn’t so bad because it has been a while since you did these quests.
So the routine has now started. New character to end game, new character to end game. Now after you have done this a few times, not only is the end game really getting stale so is the process of getting there.
What would keep the game interesting, at least for me, I suggest this. Instead of adding more and more and more content to the game, change the process of leveling from 1 to 80 by changing the path/branch of quests you do to get from 1 to 80. This way each time you go through the leveling process it is fresh and new, making the journey interesting once again. Doing the same quests and doing the same dungeons killing the same mobs over and over again gets old fast. The unexpected in MMOs is what fun is. Once it becomes predictable it is no longer fun.
True for me as well. This is really brilliant and insightful, and I soooooo wish that some developer would get a real strong understanding of where it is that their games "go stale." I really think you hit the nail on the head here.
Here is my spin on what is wrong with all MMOs. The fun of MMO's to me is the questing and leveling and once you get to the end game and keep doing the same thing over and over again, the game really gets stale. So what do you do you start a new character and go through all the same quests you did the first time. This isn’t so bad because it has been a while since you did these quests.
So the routine has now started. New character to end game, new character to end game. Now after you have done this a few times, not only is the end game really getting stale so is the process of getting there.
What would keep the game interesting, at least for me, I suggest this. Instead of adding more and more and more content to the game, change the process of leveling from 1 to 80 by changing the path/branch of quests you do to get from 1 to 80. This way each time you go through the leveling process it is fresh and new, making the journey interesting once again. Doing the same quests and doing the same dungeons killing the same mobs over and over again gets old fast. The unexpected in MMOs is what fun is. Once it becomes predictable it is no longer fun.
Adding to this, the worst part is that even if you move to another game once youre sick of alting, theres a very high chance that the game you move to features practically the same old quests with the same old skills and very similar content. Developers seem to be narrowing the innovation box as the years go by. The only other choices are repetitive games like Darkfall or horrible asian grinders.
I predict WoW will see a big drop in players within 4-6 months of the release of Cat, and a steady decline after that. However, it will always be successful, there will always be people that play, because, just like the rest of them, there will always be players who refuse to give up their old toons and the familiar.
EQ2 is proof that older games can have new life - but EQ2 is a new version of an old game. Cataclysm is not. Blizz devs are still tinkering with a system in relatively small ways that in the end make little difference, just like they always have, and the game will be just like it always has been, but with a fresh coat of paint.
Almost none of the stuff we players have been asking for since day 1 will be in Cataclysm. Where is the housing? Where is the customizable armor? WoW has the ugliest 2D armor out there. Yes, they've done a good job of updating the game's graphics in many ways, and I'm grateful for what they've done. The artist's renditions of the T10 armor looks good but the in-game implementation is a sad shadow of it.
The game could be vastly superior to what it is now. We could have really customizable player toons, not just the barely adequate choices we have now. We SHOULD have it, there's not a reason in the world that Blizzard can't take some of the money they've made off of WoW and make a vastly superior game, in every way, from combat to graphics to customizations to freedom of play (I don't mean free to play, I mean freedom to play how we want to w/o having to grind instances daily, weekly, monthly, grrrr!).
Maybe it's coming in Cat, and they just haven't announced it. I'd love to be wrong.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Here is my spin on what is wrong with all MMOs. The fun of MMO's to me is the questing and leveling and once you get to the end game and keep doing the same thing over and over again, the game really gets stale. So what do you do you start a new character and go through all the same quests you did the first time. This isn’t so bad because it has been a while since you did these quests.
So the routine has now started. New character to end game, new character to end game. Now after you have done this a few times, not only is the end game really getting stale so is the process of getting there.
What would keep the game interesting, at least for me, I suggest this. Instead of adding more and more and more content to the game, change the process of leveling from 1 to 80 by changing the path/branch of quests you do to get from 1 to 80. This way each time you go through the leveling process it is fresh and new, making the journey interesting once again. Doing the same quests and doing the same dungeons killing the same mobs over and over again gets old fast. The unexpected in MMOs is what fun is. Once it becomes predictable it is no longer fun.
Adding to this, the worst part is that even if you move to another game once youre sick of alting, theres a very high chance that the game you move to features practically the same old quests with the same old skills and very similar content. Developers seem to be narrowing the innovation box as the years go by. The only other choices are repetitive games like Darkfall or horrible asian grinders.
Because developers are really only focusing on the 'what works' now part and are afraid to try newer things because there is a higher chance of failure than there is sticking with the tried and true. They look at the history of the genre where EQ was big and attracted a lot of people (about half a mil at peak) and then at WoW who really just took EQ and streamlined it and got around 10mil just for doing so.
Until another company can make something different and show that different is viable, other companies will just keep pumping out the standard. And sadly if that game does come about and proves that different is infact viable, we will just be stuck in another slump because the other companies will just start copying that just to get a pice of the pie....
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Ah, it won't be one beast lurking in the shadows that will nip WoW in the butt. It'll be a pack of wolves, tigers and an additional rhino that will hunt it from all sides and make the hunting fields that much intenser.
I'm gonna name SW ToR, FFXIV, The Secret World (1st real horror/urban fantasy MMO I think and 1 of my favorites), Guild Wars 2 (potentially the most successfully innovative), and World of Darkness as the ones to keep an eye on. MMO gaming will see an interesting year 2011 ahead.
I keep reading more and more about Rift and TERA. Are they really that good? Hmm, I'll check out some trailers and articles I guess.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
MMORPG = WOW for the vast majority of casual, young, old, male, female players.
I think the article is again a sum of elements which talks besides the core point of this industry.
No way is Kotor pushing anything out of the room. The elephant stays ...
... you only have to look for another room, because this room is simply taken.
Franchizes also have no physycal life cycle like a mammal.
People waited for 20 years a "Windows killer", but like Microsft, Blizzard simply has 90% of the market in its hands (P2P model market) and will act accordingly.
In 1995 you still could gain respect by talking about a WIndows killer, these days you are the fool of the village.
Besides, after CATA the dominant market position will be even more tight in the hands of Blizzard. And a game with voice overs and video clips will not make any impact over 6 months time what so ever.
The cemetary of WOW killers is looking mighty big already. It is time to expand the territory for more graves.
*yawn* It looks like you're almost getting off on WoW being the head honcho and other MMO's not being that successful.
Me, I like a little diversity in my gaming, and WoW is just starting to look OLD.
I guess we'll just see how it is a year from now. And while people like you are cheering and dancing and pissing on graves (metaphorically, not literally ofc) and leghugging the elephant, I'm gonna have a lot of fun playing a diverse number of new MMO's with a refreshingly different take on MMO gaming
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Meanwhile, new development teams are coming up with brand new game mechanics unexpected in the MMO industry
I never saw you reply to your articles even I would be interested in knowing what teams and game mechanics you are thinking about with your above quote.
Now as a reply to some posts here, there's something that always amazes me with WoW: most of the players I know of feels they have invested too much time in that game to ever play anything else. Their brain knows it's just a MMO among others but it's like narcotics they can't stop even if they know...
op!i got to say the next expension (or wow2 as some like to call it)will probably be the one that sell the least compared to their other expension even with all the publicity blizzard shoved down the gamers troat !why!
lets face it!there are better game coming up a lot more fun and a lot more adictive
dont know if its a mistake or volontary omission on your part but the biggest challenger to cataclysm at lunch will be only one title
all the others like gw2.sw.tor,etc they are all down the road way after cataclysm .but its direct nemesis will be
forsaken world.it might be the worst translation in the world but the fact is everything in the game is top quality and perfect world(the company)will have a lot of data from battle of immortal .sound silly?dont think so!not long ago people complained
about various issue in boi from wasd to tab target etc!guess what?its all in boi!so you can bet forsaken world team is taking note about what is being asked in boi.
when forsaken world lunch global(yes i hear this will be a global game(one the the very select and rare one to do so)
so just this alone will bring million of player easy compared to wow witch is a localised game.
so all those fact put together make forsaken world a direct competitor to wow2(cataclysm)
we ll never know if they have same number of player or not since perfect world doesnt check how many player they have (too time consuming)
instead they check their revenue.so nothing can compare .everybody wish the f2p industry kept a record or such like wow do
but like i say it aint gona happen the f2p market doesnt work like the p2p never did.
so who win who lose even after lunch nobody will truely know since f2p market dont bother checking how many player
You know, ever time the topic WOW comes up I feel like in Grimm's fairytale "The Emperor's new clothes". It goes like this. An emperor wanted new clothing every day, but some day his desperate tailors get out of ideas. So they say, there is a new clothing, but only the good person can see it. Of course its humbug, but the emperor and everyone else does not want to be a dork, so they all aww and ooh. Until one child yells, the emperor is naked!
I always feel like that child when it comes to wow. I recall I looked at WOW when it was new, I was enjoying EQ2 back then, and I found WOW butt ugly. I could not imagine how anyone would EVERY play a game looking like THAT. And thats what I think still. I tried out WOW a short time, and I found it very average. There was nothing which made it outstanding in any way. I mean, I dont hate WOW either. I always saw WOW as one incredible mediocre game and the reason why so many play WOW is, I admit, totally and entirely beyond me. Its as if the world suddenly all began to eat paper. So I don't see an elephant. I just see a way too normal game who everyone claims to see as elephant. And I look at it time and again and wonder, wtf is so special that you guys keep playing it? Why does the OP, for instance?
I have many friends who play WOW, and EVERY time ask them they tell me some horror stories what sucks and what infuriates them about WOW, and like lemmings they keep playing it. Maybe that thing about addiction really HAS something to do with it. And besides, what do subscriber numbers have to do for ME as customer for the fun? I mean ok if a game has few there wont be the money for much new stuff. But given the billions Blizzard prolly MADE with WOW I am surprised how little the did with it. Given the riches they made WOW should be 10 times the world size it has, and every time my friends showed me the new expansions it was just more of the same. Nothing new at all. I really would like to understand whats to great about WOW that people play it all these years. It should by all reason have died years ago, but as I said, maybe that about evil addiction through WOW is more true than we all care to admit.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Maybe it's a side note, but I always find it funny how people say things like "Wow leaves me burned out" or, "it's boring," and "it's not the most fun game out there," then say about how they have several 80s and a bunch of alts.
Clearly it must be fun/enjoyable enough to keep you playing. Maybe you're tired of it now, but if you don't get tired of something after - gee, I don't know, years of playing? - then there must be something wrong with you. I can only think of a few things I never tire of, and let me tell you, MMOs aint one of them.
This article could of been written about everquest 5 years ago.. no one thought that elephant was gonna go, no its wow's turn, something will come laong in the next 6-24 months that will take the majority out of it. Just like WoW did to EQ, we are also at another turning point in technology for simultaneous connections 4-5k per server does not cut it.
One of the best articles around here! Just want to tell my opinion - it was told that elephants sooner or later die. Everything dies sooner or later, but the life span of the elephants is pretty long as their pregnancy. Blizzard's elephant will give a life to one of its children - Cataclysm. Well the little elephant will grow old, give a life to it's "little" elephant and so on. The circle is being closed. Just my theory.
... I think instead of looking at WoW as something huge and intimidating, companies should be looking at it as inspiration. Showing that this genre can really blow up with more elephants in the room if focus, time and polish as well as quality designing is allowed to flourish.
Devs have been looking on Wow for inspirations a long time now. Games like LOTRO and WAR was very inspired by Wow, a little bit too much actually.
Wow did many things right and that should be inspiring but the basic mechanics of the game (who is mostly taken from EQ) have been done too many times now.
Be inspired by the polish and how Blizzard always been good with their fans, do not try to rip the game off.
Ah, it won't be one beast lurking in the shadows that will nip WoW in the butt. It'll be a pack of wolves, tigers and an additional rhino that will hunt it from all sides and make the hunting fields that much intenser.
I'm gonna name SW ToR, FFXIV, The Secret World (1st real horror/urban fantasy MMO I think and 1 of my favorites), Guild Wars 2 (potentially the most successfully innovative), and World of Darkness as the ones to keep an eye on. MMO gaming will see an interesting year 2011 ahead.
I keep reading more and more about Rift and TERA. Are they really that good? Hmm, I'll check out some trailers and articles I guess.
^^ This.
I don't think any one game will ever topple the elephant (another thing about elephants, they live a long long time), but if the games slated for next year live up to their promise, the elephant of the genre may feel the pinch as people try something different. Who knows, people may discover they like rhinos more than elephants, but I reckon cyphers is right, a splintering off of the share they enjoy is more likely.
Great article Jaime, beautifully written as always. I like your articles, they make me think : )
Comments
Good article, I like it a lot, and really hits the nail on the head.
Eve is my primary game, has been for quite a while now, but i do play WoW, maybe not every day like some, but a couple of times a week, and its fun, its casual friendly... as for SW:tor and FFXIV etc, i just dont see them as being interesting enough, even from the available information on the games - video trailers etc, i can see that neither one are games that are all that appealing - just because a game is expensive to make (SW:TOR) doesnt mean its going to be successful because of it, the only other game that looks even half decent - maybe not as a replacement for WoW, but as something to do when im a bit burned on Eve, is APB.. it offers something a lot different from other games - SW:tor doesnt bring anything new, its just more olds, we have storylined games already, lots of them in fact... more of the same isnt really all that original...
Meh...
WoW won for many reasons. And like other things, the product is greater than the sum of its parts.
WoW has:
Never before seen levels of polish from the start
Very regular updates
In-depth lore and history
Ease of accessiblility
Plenty of in-game and out-of-game information
Intuitive and unobtrusive gameplay
Thats to name a handful. There are more.
Also, people poke fun at Fireball 1, 2, 3... 47, 48...
But it serves a purpose. To the gamer its boring. To the non-gamer it makes sense. There are lots of little things that make the game easier to understand and play. My wife doesn't play video games but she would play WoW with me because she can understand WoW to the point she can enjoy it. Even though she has zero interest in video games in general.
The "WoW Killers" only seem to take a few items from the list and focus on that but never really pay attention to the market.
Great article, Jaime. It was well-written, had wonderful word pictures, was creative and interesting. Thanks!
The following games, to me, are beginning to show some potential "in the shadow of the elephant:"
RIFT
GW2
..................I am honestly thinking these first two are going to be big delightful surprises.
SW:ToR
TSW
TERA (although I'm a bit suspicious that underneath it all...this might end up being a fancy looking Asian grinder)
WoD (if we ever get to see it manifest)
FFXIV
To me....those seven games....have the most chance of drawing the spotlight away from center ring of the MMO circus. Of course, only time will tell. And I certainly do not believe that WoW will "go away" any more than UO, EQ, DAoC, or AO (among others) "went away." If games like those that drew considerably fewer subs when the genre was not well known, are still around....then the behemoth called WoW....will certainly continue to bring a nice paycheck to Blizzard for many years to come.
I'm just grateful that there are big AAA titles out there that do sound.....INTERESTING.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Why WoW is still the elephant in the room is very, very simple. Every new MMO since has been a big pile of crap. Now why would anyone leave WoW to go play a broken half assed copy of it.
If WoW players would be honest with you I would estimate 60% and probably more are bored with the game.
Most of those would play another MMO if one came out that did not suck and here is the key ready for it, it something that developers can not seem to comprehend at all.......the elusive secret.....DIFFERENT than WoW but with the same polish.
SW:OR is going to be WoW with talking Wookies that is it. Quest level train track treadmill to max mostly solo with end game raiding.
One day my hope is the developers will realize you are not going to kill the elephant in the room with its "special needs" cousin.
That underlined bit up there .....
How so?
If you were playing a single player RPG that has a definitive length of play time to it, a beginning and END of the game...I would agree with you. I wouldn't pay a monthly fee for a game that is essentially something you play through once. It is a complete work when it's released (for the most part).
However....MMOs charge a monthly fee for logical reasons. They are constantly developing new content. They have to pay artists and programmers for this work. They have server upkeep and tech upgrades to their servers, they have electricity bills, they have maintenance, they have customer service employees, they have long term advertising because the game isn't released as a "completed game," it is a persistent and continually growing world. It's an entirely different animal from a single player adventure game or rpg. THOSE things don't require maintaining a staff or facilities or servers or content creators, etc.
We don't really know how MUCH GW2 is going to cost, and while they are saying it will be, as GW, "without a monthly fee," that doesn't mean that they won't be getting those maintenance fees for an MMO elsewhere. No one really knows EXACTLY how it's going to be done yet. The original GW, according to the developers, was not an MMO, perse, so....GW2 is going to be inherently different since they ARE calling it an MMO. I am wondering how, exactly, they will make this game pay the bills for itself. I wonder if the box price is just going to be much much higher than that of GW or....what. I guess we'll eventually know.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Lol comming from you saying "i dont realy hating wow" or first try excusing yourself why you again (as always ) talking about wow its sad real sad:(
You play it everyday and then say you try avoid talk about it or maybe hate it dont fool yourself your fanboi and you also love promote and talk about your beloved wow, when i see your name i see wow lol.
Im still amazed how people can play wow is beyond me:P
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Agreed.
WoW will be around forever and will probably have the large amount of players for years to come.
But thankfully these newer games are aiming more at select groups of players who want something different and new rather than the 'WoW in a different skin' games we have seen over the last few years.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Here is my spin on what is wrong with all MMOs. The fun of MMO's to me is the questing and leveling and once you get to the end game and keep doing the same thing over and over again, the game really gets stale. So what do you do you start a new character and go through all the same quests you did the first time. This isn’t so bad because it has been a while since you did these quests.
So the routine has now started. New character to end game, new character to end game. Now after you have done this a few times, not only is the end game really getting stale so is the process of getting there.
What would keep the game interesting, at least for me, I suggest this. Instead of adding more and more and more content to the game, change the process of leveling from 1 to 80 by changing the path/branch of quests you do to get from 1 to 80. This way each time you go through the leveling process it is fresh and new, making the journey interesting once again. Doing the same quests and doing the same dungeons killing the same mobs over and over again gets old fast. The unexpected in MMOs is what fun is. Once it becomes predictable it is no longer fun.
I have to agree with two diffrent posters here.
1. WoW has alot more than just one aspect that makes it what it is. Its not just gameplay or support - or updates and new content or ... mods. Its ALL those things and alot more and no other game will be able to gain that momentum on all these fronts any time soon.
2. Why are other games looking for new buisness models ? This one is extra simple. Because WOW controlls 90% of the P2P market and no game in its current form can push WOW as first choise sub game for those that are playing it.
But.. that doesn't mean that the games offering diffrent buisness models are actually worth the "buisness" they are pushing for. They just dont have any other alternitives than to try to get money any way they can.
True for me as well. This is really brilliant and insightful, and I soooooo wish that some developer would get a real strong understanding of where it is that their games "go stale." I really think you hit the nail on the head here.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Adding to this, the worst part is that even if you move to another game once youre sick of alting, theres a very high chance that the game you move to features practically the same old quests with the same old skills and very similar content. Developers seem to be narrowing the innovation box as the years go by. The only other choices are repetitive games like Darkfall or horrible asian grinders.
I predict WoW will see a big drop in players within 4-6 months of the release of Cat, and a steady decline after that. However, it will always be successful, there will always be people that play, because, just like the rest of them, there will always be players who refuse to give up their old toons and the familiar.
EQ2 is proof that older games can have new life - but EQ2 is a new version of an old game. Cataclysm is not. Blizz devs are still tinkering with a system in relatively small ways that in the end make little difference, just like they always have, and the game will be just like it always has been, but with a fresh coat of paint.
Almost none of the stuff we players have been asking for since day 1 will be in Cataclysm. Where is the housing? Where is the customizable armor? WoW has the ugliest 2D armor out there. Yes, they've done a good job of updating the game's graphics in many ways, and I'm grateful for what they've done. The artist's renditions of the T10 armor looks good but the in-game implementation is a sad shadow of it.
The game could be vastly superior to what it is now. We could have really customizable player toons, not just the barely adequate choices we have now. We SHOULD have it, there's not a reason in the world that Blizzard can't take some of the money they've made off of WoW and make a vastly superior game, in every way, from combat to graphics to customizations to freedom of play (I don't mean free to play, I mean freedom to play how we want to w/o having to grind instances daily, weekly, monthly, grrrr!).
Maybe it's coming in Cat, and they just haven't announced it. I'd love to be wrong.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Because developers are really only focusing on the 'what works' now part and are afraid to try newer things because there is a higher chance of failure than there is sticking with the tried and true. They look at the history of the genre where EQ was big and attracted a lot of people (about half a mil at peak) and then at WoW who really just took EQ and streamlined it and got around 10mil just for doing so.
Until another company can make something different and show that different is viable, other companies will just keep pumping out the standard. And sadly if that game does come about and proves that different is infact viable, we will just be stuck in another slump because the other companies will just start copying that just to get a pice of the pie....
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Ah, it won't be one beast lurking in the shadows that will nip WoW in the butt. It'll be a pack of wolves, tigers and an additional rhino that will hunt it from all sides and make the hunting fields that much intenser.
I'm gonna name SW ToR, FFXIV, The Secret World (1st real horror/urban fantasy MMO I think and 1 of my favorites), Guild Wars 2 (potentially the most successfully innovative), and World of Darkness as the ones to keep an eye on. MMO gaming will see an interesting year 2011 ahead.
I keep reading more and more about Rift and TERA. Are they really that good? Hmm, I'll check out some trailers and articles I guess.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
*yawn* It looks like you're almost getting off on WoW being the head honcho and other MMO's not being that successful.
Me, I like a little diversity in my gaming, and WoW is just starting to look OLD.
I guess we'll just see how it is a year from now. And while people like you are cheering and dancing and pissing on graves (metaphorically, not literally ofc) and leghugging the elephant, I'm gonna have a lot of fun playing a diverse number of new MMO's with a refreshingly different take on MMO gaming
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I never saw you reply to your articles even I would be interested in knowing what teams and game mechanics you are thinking about with your above quote.
Now as a reply to some posts here, there's something that always amazes me with WoW: most of the players I know of feels they have invested too much time in that game to ever play anything else. Their brain knows it's just a MMO among others but it's like narcotics they can't stop even if they know...
op!i got to say the next expension (or wow2 as some like to call it)will probably be the one that sell the least compared to their other expension even with all the publicity blizzard shoved down the gamers troat !why!
lets face it!there are better game coming up a lot more fun and a lot more adictive
dont know if its a mistake or volontary omission on your part but the biggest challenger to cataclysm at lunch will be only one title
all the others like gw2.sw.tor,etc they are all down the road way after cataclysm .but its direct nemesis will be
forsaken world.it might be the worst translation in the world but the fact is everything in the game is top quality and perfect world(the company)will have a lot of data from battle of immortal .sound silly?dont think so!not long ago people complained
about various issue in boi from wasd to tab target etc!guess what?its all in boi!so you can bet forsaken world team is taking note about what is being asked in boi.
when forsaken world lunch global(yes i hear this will be a global game(one the the very select and rare one to do so)
so just this alone will bring million of player easy compared to wow witch is a localised game.
so all those fact put together make forsaken world a direct competitor to wow2(cataclysm)
we ll never know if they have same number of player or not since perfect world doesnt check how many player they have (too time consuming)
instead they check their revenue.so nothing can compare .everybody wish the f2p industry kept a record or such like wow do
but like i say it aint gona happen the f2p market doesnt work like the p2p never did.
so who win who lose even after lunch nobody will truely know since f2p market dont bother checking how many player
they had this month etc
but one thing is sure
cataclysm nemesis will be FORSAKEN WORLD!
You know, ever time the topic WOW comes up I feel like in Grimm's fairytale "The Emperor's new clothes". It goes like this. An emperor wanted new clothing every day, but some day his desperate tailors get out of ideas. So they say, there is a new clothing, but only the good person can see it. Of course its humbug, but the emperor and everyone else does not want to be a dork, so they all aww and ooh. Until one child yells, the emperor is naked!
I always feel like that child when it comes to wow. I recall I looked at WOW when it was new, I was enjoying EQ2 back then, and I found WOW butt ugly. I could not imagine how anyone would EVERY play a game looking like THAT. And thats what I think still. I tried out WOW a short time, and I found it very average. There was nothing which made it outstanding in any way. I mean, I dont hate WOW either. I always saw WOW as one incredible mediocre game and the reason why so many play WOW is, I admit, totally and entirely beyond me. Its as if the world suddenly all began to eat paper. So I don't see an elephant. I just see a way too normal game who everyone claims to see as elephant. And I look at it time and again and wonder, wtf is so special that you guys keep playing it? Why does the OP, for instance?
I have many friends who play WOW, and EVERY time ask them they tell me some horror stories what sucks and what infuriates them about WOW, and like lemmings they keep playing it. Maybe that thing about addiction really HAS something to do with it. And besides, what do subscriber numbers have to do for ME as customer for the fun? I mean ok if a game has few there wont be the money for much new stuff. But given the billions Blizzard prolly MADE with WOW I am surprised how little the did with it. Given the riches they made WOW should be 10 times the world size it has, and every time my friends showed me the new expansions it was just more of the same. Nothing new at all. I really would like to understand whats to great about WOW that people play it all these years. It should by all reason have died years ago, but as I said, maybe that about evil addiction through WOW is more true than we all care to admit.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Maybe it's a side note, but I always find it funny how people say things like "Wow leaves me burned out" or, "it's boring," and "it's not the most fun game out there," then say about how they have several 80s and a bunch of alts.
Clearly it must be fun/enjoyable enough to keep you playing. Maybe you're tired of it now, but if you don't get tired of something after - gee, I don't know, years of playing? - then there must be something wrong with you. I can only think of a few things I never tire of, and let me tell you, MMOs aint one of them.
This article could of been written about everquest 5 years ago.. no one thought that elephant was gonna go, no its wow's turn, something will come laong in the next 6-24 months that will take the majority out of it. Just like WoW did to EQ, we are also at another turning point in technology for simultaneous connections 4-5k per server does not cut it.
One of the best articles around here! Just want to tell my opinion - it was told that elephants sooner or later die. Everything dies sooner or later, but the life span of the elephants is pretty long as their pregnancy. Blizzard's elephant will give a life to one of its children - Cataclysm. Well the little elephant will grow old, give a life to it's "little" elephant and so on. The circle is being closed. Just my theory.
Devs have been looking on Wow for inspirations a long time now. Games like LOTRO and WAR was very inspired by Wow, a little bit too much actually.
Wow did many things right and that should be inspiring but the basic mechanics of the game (who is mostly taken from EQ) have been done too many times now.
Be inspired by the polish and how Blizzard always been good with their fans, do not try to rip the game off.
^^ This.
I don't think any one game will ever topple the elephant (another thing about elephants, they live a long long time), but if the games slated for next year live up to their promise, the elephant of the genre may feel the pinch as people try something different. Who knows, people may discover they like rhinos more than elephants, but I reckon cyphers is right, a splintering off of the share they enjoy is more likely.
Great article Jaime, beautifully written as always. I like your articles, they make me think : )
When WoW first came out, I, like everyone else, had to "go see the elephant", playing a new mmo for the first time!
Very well written article!
Thanks