I think its a logical fallacy to assume a group of people will always choose the best product if presented with equal prices and accessability. It completely ignores what we know about human group dynamics(we are herd animals), and how effective marketing is and puts way to much weight into common sense.
If people where like that we wouldnt have warning labels on microwaves or coffee cups.
For example if you have a clearly recognizable product. Lets say you take a toothpaste that gets TV spots and stuff, and then put the exact same toothpaste but with a changed look and name against it(so ingredience list etc stays same). At the same price id bet the majority of people would choose the known brand.
In a market like MMOs where success is based on further developement which again is based on money available which in turn is based on current subscribers that is like a selffullfilling prophecy. For example many people criticize LotROs pvp, if they had a couple million subscribers they easily could hire a whole devteam to incorporate a pvp aspect deemed proper by the majority.
This is what WoW has been doing, they reacted to market demands. They added BGs before Warhammer came out(since it takes years of developement for MMO you can counterreact years before), they added an e-sport aspect before e-sport got big in their market. People complained about waiting times so they implemented cross server queues. People complained about trouble getting tanks and healers for their groups so they did dualspec and improved the hybrids roles.
The thing is, get enough subscribers and you get the money you need to retain your subscribers. WoW is only held back by two things. 1. Blizzards natural inclination to make as much profit as possible and 2. Making changes that would alienate large percentages of subscribers.
Edit: Imho its also a logical fallacy to assume a big IP translates into commercial success. It works at a glance in theory, however in practice i would go so far as to say it failed every single time. I cant think of a single big IP game that overshadowed small or no IP based competition. The few times the big IP games where successful it was usually due to lack of competition(i do not consider WoW to be based on a big IP, not compared to Star Wars, Star Trek or LotR).
If it failed a dozen times, why are people confused when it fails a 13th? Its pretty logical for me that if you get 200 mil from your publisher to develope a game, and spend 100 mil of that on the IP, and then get even restricted on what you can do, you would be worse of than someone just taking the 200mil and putting it all into the game.
I am not going to go through all these grand posts. Excellent article and pretty fair comparsions.
I have and do play both these games. I have been playing WoW since about a month or two after its release. Sadly not as long for LotR. I love each for different reasons but the community within WoW is there but I keep my trade chat off because it is abosllutely horrible for the most part. Yes LFG has been made simple but to be honest I believe this was done because the population even with the stated account owners of the game is not that high. This made it possible for those that play regular to have a better chance at groups which is needed to obtain better gear. Having a good guild is also needed to really obtain the end game content. It is easy to play more so than many of the games I have played and tried but after you have hit 80 it is boring. I have gotten to where I only log in for raids. Like many I have more than one level 80 and more than one account. So maybe that accounts for the high numbers of subscribers for WoW. I mean I know many that have two or more accounts and they boast full or almost full of level 80's.
LotR while not as high in subscribers and maybe with some drawbacks in comparsion to WoW is much more fun to play and the player base is absolutely great. The community is much more mature and helpful. Maybe the content is not as in depth in comparison to WoW but overall I am less stressed and enjoy my time in LoTR a great deal. Like WoW starting new characters is fun but both you are pretty much seeing the same thing once you have worked every class/race.
Cat may put WoW on the charts for a bit longer or like with EQ this could be the expansion that sends it on a spiral down. Time will tell. I really think LotR will be around for a while even it can't boast the millons of subscribers. My only fear is the F2P aspect and how it may affect the communtity and overall game.
So all in all they are both nice games but I think the graphics in LotR is much nicer overall. Maybe in some parts it could expand to feel a bit larger but if not it is still beautiful and real.
I think its a logical fallacy to assume a group of people will always choose the best product if presented with equal prices and accessability. It completely ignores what we know about human group dynamics(we are herd animals), and how effective marketing is and puts way to much weight into common sense.
At the same time that doesn't mean we can just assume anything popular isn't among the best of class. The details need to be looked at instead of dismissed behind generalized statements.
Sure it might be difficult for the average person to tell the difference between toothpastes effectiveness and an advertised brand might sell better as a result of that. However it isn't hard for players to see what works and what doesn't in a video game.
All the marketing in the world didn't save warhammer or age of conan and they certainly had their fair share of marketing and piles of money to work with. Nothing more than wow had. Collectively they sold millions of copies so the marketing was working, but look at both a few months later and you see a different story. A company cannot advertise away the problems of a game and make masses of people pay money for something they don't enjoy.
Listening to what players want and delivering a functional and enjoyable system is what made wow so different than the rest of the market at release and after. Blizzard wasn't reacting to warhammer when they created battlegrounds. Mythic acquired the warhammer license in May 18, 2005, blizzard released battlegrounds in June 7th, 2005. That is a 20 day difference and I think it is safe to assume blizzard was working on battlegrounds for much longer than that.
In the end, marketing will only get people to try a game, but it will not create quality and it won't deceive players into staying away from games they might find better and remaining customers for years and years.
Lotro is about the only game post 2004 that has done anything similar to that.
I think its a logical fallacy to assume a group of people will always choose the best product if presented with equal prices and accessability. It completely ignores what we know about human group dynamics(we are herd animals), and how effective marketing is and puts way to much weight into common sense.
At the same time that doesn't mean we can just assume anything popular isn't among the best of class. The details need to be looked at instead of dismissed behind generalized statements.
I agree. But my post was more about implying that if you are the top dog for a while, the money you earn will help you stay topdog if your clever. Rich and clever = successful game, poor and clever = poor game. You need that money or all the ideas in the world are not going to help you compete.
Sure it might be difficult for the average person to tell the difference between toothpastes effectiveness and an advertised brand might sell better as a result of that. However it isn't hard for players to see what works and what doesn't in a video game.
Incase of MMOs it actually is, because endgame usually is vastly different from leveling, and it can take you months to get there as a casual. Upon which point its no longer about best, its about investment and keeping contact with the people you have grown friends with.
All the marketing in the world didn't save warhammer or age of conan and they certainly had their fair share of marketing and piles of money to work with. Nothing more than wow had. Collectively they sold millions of copies so the marketing was working, but look at both a few months later and you see a different story. A company cannot advertise away the problems of a game and make masses of people pay money for something they don't enjoy.
Thats true again, but imagine how well that advertising would have worked out longterm if it hadnt been for these problems. Obviously you need marketing and a atleast working product. Also its always about competetion, the first TVs where utter crap, tiny black and white things at horrendous prices(my grandpa bought one for 3 monthly wages), but people bought them because there wasnt anything better so it looked like a good product. So its not quality alone, its quality compared to whats available.
Listening to what players want and delivering a functional and enjoyable system is what made wow so different than the rest of the market at release and after. Blizzard wasn't reacting to warhammer when they created battlegrounds. Mythic acquired the warhammer license in May 18, 2005, blizzard released battlegrounds in June 7th, 2005. That is a 20 day difference and I think it is safe to assume blizzard was working on battlegrounds for much longer than that.
Your probably right on that, wasnt checking the actual timeline. So lets change my argument into that they would have been able to react to warhammer if they hadnt already done so before(i think they actually added BG XP for kills later), the principle is the same. WoW is mobile for a lack of a better word, and they are mobile because they have the necessary money to implemented the things they need to stay top dog.
In the end, marketing will only get people to try a game, but it will not create quality and it won't deceive players into staying away from games they might find better and remaining customers for years and years.
Lotro is about the only game post 2004 that has done anything similar to that.
Eve actually illustrates it even better. Objectively looked at its not that good(compared to how we perceive good in fantasy MMOs, raids, instances, ranked pvp etc.), but it utterly lacks competition so it thrives like no MMO besides WoW in its glory time(the scifi market is alot smaller). WoW is to fantasy MMOs what EvE is to a lesser degree to Scifi MMOs. Its your competition that defines how good your product is, the customers only think they get to decide(check my TV analogy above, we dont even notice whe bought crap until we see something better).
And i reiterate my point. You need money to release a good product. But in the MMO market your products attractiveness steadily declines, you need liftings and lots of them, which require more money. Better pray you dinged in lots of subscription money or you will be in maintenance mode in no time.
If warhammer had released later, in a bugfree state and promises met, maybe the first expansion hadnt been a free content patch(Land of the Dead) but a full store expansion with lots of content. Maybe we would be nearing the release of its second expansion now to a successful game instead of the shadow of itself that we have now. We are talking about maybe a couple months difference granted by EA to mythic, about a devteam not shrunken and butchered and a core playerbase not disillusioned.
MMOs are like tomatoes. Sure some are just nasty, pestridden or foul, but others just got plucked while they where still green and unripe. Sure they taste nasty too, but unlike the former they had potential.
Warhammer has almost $100 million dollar budget and the worlds largest gaming software company behind it. We could speculate about many mmos doing better if they had less bugs and met more of their design promises, but that is precisely the point we are discussing and why I think that talking about analogies doesn't represent the situation at hand.
I think it is also worth mentioning that Eve did have competition back when it released, but it went out of business.
I like LOTRO a lot but the damn combat can be so slow and boring. Additionally grouping is mandatory to do any endgame stuff. Not that this is a bad thing, but it can be hard to find a good guild/group.
I like LOTRO a lot but the damn combat can be so slow and boring. Additionally grouping is mandatory to do any endgame stuff. Not that this is a bad thing, but it can be hard to find a good guild/group.
I haven't made it that far yet on LotR but I have in WoW and it is boring for the most part. WoW put in the dungeon finder and that was a great help in finding groups making it a bit easier, but if you are dps it takes a while to get a group still. I feel the Dungeon Finder was put in so that the lower amount of players on some of the servers made it very hard indeed to find groups. The DF is not limited to one server so has greatly improved that aspect. You still get people that have no clue what they are doing on their toon. You still deal with jerks and the like. The end game in WoW means raids/group as well. Unless you don't want better gear and see what the end game means and offers anyway. Oh there are plenty of pug raids you can get into so you can take your chances and hope for a good one. Finding a good guild has never been an easy task and right now in WoW with the awaiting for Cat to come out that has been reduced even more. So many peeps MIA from boredom until the xpansion rears its head then it will be slammed with peeps that haven't been playing for months and months. Then before you know poof they will be gone again.
As for the PvP in WoW I suppose it is better than some. I can't speak a whole lot for it as I really don't care much for that aspect at all. I have done some of the Battlegrounds and it is ok I suppose if you like that sort of thing. I am not good at it either so that takes away from it as well for me anyway.
I like a lot of things about LotR.. The player base/community is much better than any I have been in so far. Maybe there isn't as many kids or ignorant adults. You don't see a bunch of horrible chat like you do in many. WoW has some of the most foul mouthed people and general and trade chat are horrible. That is why I keep it off. Even the filters don't work on everything.
I played both these games for years, plenty of pluses and minuses for both. But even after all this time I still get a strong feeling of immersion in the beautifully-made world of LOTRO. I can't say this will always be my main game (especially with some of the strong-looking titles on the way), but I will probably maintain some presence LOTRO for a long time. I enjoyed much of my time with WoW too, but after leaving it I don't miss it at all. There was just no real immersion there for me. YMMV.
Lol after he said "Let's get ready to rumble"... I couldn't help but read the entire article in the fight announcer tone. Like when they read off the persons name, weight, K/O record. Always speaking upwards lawl.
quit both tired of the lame raiding. Lotro had raiding introduced in later years.
at some point, raiding its retarded, they might add new dungeons and
new encounters, but its just the same shit as usual.
Love both games, if i have to start again on one of these. it would have to be lotro..
but i wont, to many new games that needs my trying, leveling and comments.
------ Playing MMO's since my first which was Ultima online, then Anarchy online. and so on.. Now a days im very critical before i ewen bother downloading a Free to play mmo.
ur so wrong on new player experience. when i went with my hobbit to start the intro it was night and i saw a black rider passing by. That WoW just can't compare when it's about anything with lore.
That said, Lore has been left out of the comparison. And that makes all the difference.
You seem to not factor the out of game community, the artistic inspiration that the game can create. Simple tools like wowmodel viewer thanks to Darjk, there was a massive explosion of Machinima that had spawned forth. Creating an amazing sub community: Warcraftmovies. The community is the reason the game is so successful. With the help of warcraftmovies the community is able to raise the skill cap on the game, only to create the twitch reaction pvp that is known today.
Anyways it's 4am and I no longer have a clue what I'm rambling about anymore, but I do know that from Machinamist to Dataminers, the WoW community is far greater. After all judging a community by it's "Niceness" is hardly judging it at all.
As far as "Waiting around being the staple of most mmorpg", well a quaint way to put it is...
F THAT! Dare to expand, and dare to revolutionize. Personally I don't have fun watching paint dry.
@laxika91, Fixed RA farming is good pvp right? Dervishes are fine right? Yea...
You seem to not factor the out of game community, the artistic inspiration that the game can create. Simple tools like wowmodel viewer thanks to Darjk, there was a massive explosion of Machinima that had spawned forth. Creating an amazing sub community: Warcraftmovies. The community is the reason the game is so successful. With the help of warcraftmovies the community is able to raise the skill cap on the game, only to create the twitch reaction pvp that is known today.
Anyways it's 4am and I no longer have a clue what I'm rambling about anymore, but I do know that from Machinamist to Dataminers, the WoW community is far greater. After all judging a community by it's "Niceness" is hardly judging it at all.
As far as "Waiting around being the staple of most mmorpg", well a quaint way to put it is...
F THAT! Dare to expand, and dare to revolutionize. Personally I don't have fun watching paint dry.
@laxika91, Fixed RA farming is good pvp right? Dervishes are fine right? Yea...
Agreed
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
I dislike Lotro because even entering a building is like entering an instance, you just cant open a door and walk in everything has to load.And house ownership in Lotro sucks, Having played UO and SWG, the housing is lotro is worthless.I found this out after purchasing 1 .At least in UO or SWG you hve unlimited freedoms on how to decorate and can even have craft stations in your house, you dont have to pay for storage in your house in those 2 games either, in UO you can have carpenters make you chest which you can dye and stack and each chest holds 100 items in large houses you can store 2k of items, IN SWG you can have furniture you also put items in and having crafting stations in your house and being able to store items makes it easier to have supplies and craft at home.Im looking for a new game have been playing lotro for 4 months now and it's boring , I played UO for 10 years and may still go back to it
I dislike Lotro because even entering a building is like entering an instance, you just cant open a door and walk in everything has to load.And house ownership in Lotro sucks, Having played UO and SWG, the housing is lotro is worthless.I found this out after purchasing 1 .At least in UO or SWG you hve unlimited freedoms on how to decorate and can even have craft stations in your house, you dont have to pay for storage in your house in those 2 games either, in UO you can have carpenters make you chest which you can dye and stack and each chest holds 100 items in large houses you can store 2k of items, IN SWG you can have furniture you also put items in and having crafting stations in your house and being able to store items makes it easier to have supplies and craft at home.Im looking for a new game have been playing lotro for 4 months now and it's boring , I played UO for 10 years and may still go back to it
WoW have to say that is big difference in housing for sure. I have yet to gather enough to even purchase a house in LotR yet and my compariason would be none because EQ and WoW didn't/don't have housing. I like the idea of housing though. I will say that the housing areas are pretty nice in LotR but there is nothing special or different except in size because the least costly house in any area looks the same as the rest and so on. By that I mean floor plans are the same for certain priced homes. Be nice to be able to choose different but then two rooms really can't be put too many ways. lol
As for the zoning into building I guess it is more of prick than a major issure for me.
I have yet to play an MMO that I enjoyed as much as I did vanilla WOW. After BC the game changed but was still a fun game. By the time WOTLK released the game just wasnt the same. I played LOTRO off and on from release and it finally took the place of WOW for my MMO of choice. Then after MOM it became stagnant and finally died for me with the F2P move. Ive played other mmo's but few could hold my attention much longer than the first month. If I could pick any game to play right now it would be vanilla WOW. If they would offer a pre BC server with the original content I would reroll in a heartbeat.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
Every game changes when the first expansion releases. The original world is no longer the main focus of the game and players look elsewhere. I recall the same thing happening in everquest when kunark released. Some of the original magic was lost, because it just wasn't the same seeing the old areas decline and new areas being interesting, but not quite the same to explore and adventure in. I think this is true for every mmo or at least the ones I have experienced.
There is nothing better than the original release of an mmo and expansions alter that. I'm very interested to see how cataclysm may or may not alter that. Perhaps breathing new life into the old world and making it the primary focus again will bring back some of that old magic, but it is still going to be an expansion.
Every game changes when the first expansion releases. The original world is no longer the main focus of the game and players look elsewhere. I recall the same thing happening in everquest when kunark released. Some of the original magic was lost, because it just wasn't the same seeing the old areas decline and new areas being interesting, but not quite the same to explore and adventure in. I think this is true for every mmo or at least the ones I have experienced.
There is nothing better than the original release of an mmo and expansions alter that. I'm very interested to see how cataclysm may or may not alter that. Perhaps breathing new life into the old world and making it the primary focus again will bring back some of that old magic, but it is still going to be an expansion.
Well said. Tis true each expansion seems to take something away and the older zones become ghost towns.
Yes some of the old cities will be populated due to the AH and access to the new zones but each expansion takes something.
Played WoW for a long time, just taking up LotRO now that it's free (I've learned to hate paying box prices for MMOs, subs don't bother me, but the upfront cost for a game that might suck...)
WoW used to be a grand adventure, with a cool world to explore and interesting challenges to overcome. Now everything is linear as possible, PvP is monotonous, and only a few raid encounters present any kind of challenge (and only the heroic versions). WoW is a sad caricature of a formerly great game.
LotRO, on the other hand, is a new and delicious treat for me. In a market full of games trying to be like WoW, it's a very tight ship that feels distinctly different. The last year has been an MMO wasteland for me, and LotRO is looking like it will bring me back into the fold.
Classic WoW > LotRO > Current WoW
Important facts: 1. Free to Play games are poorly made. 2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals. 3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE. 4. Community is more important than you think.
Comments
Just send a mail to [email protected] and explain.
They probably thought you were calling him an idiot.
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
I think its a logical fallacy to assume a group of people will always choose the best product if presented with equal prices and accessability. It completely ignores what we know about human group dynamics(we are herd animals), and how effective marketing is and puts way to much weight into common sense.
If people where like that we wouldnt have warning labels on microwaves or coffee cups.
For example if you have a clearly recognizable product. Lets say you take a toothpaste that gets TV spots and stuff, and then put the exact same toothpaste but with a changed look and name against it(so ingredience list etc stays same). At the same price id bet the majority of people would choose the known brand.
In a market like MMOs where success is based on further developement which again is based on money available which in turn is based on current subscribers that is like a selffullfilling prophecy. For example many people criticize LotROs pvp, if they had a couple million subscribers they easily could hire a whole devteam to incorporate a pvp aspect deemed proper by the majority.
This is what WoW has been doing, they reacted to market demands. They added BGs before Warhammer came out(since it takes years of developement for MMO you can counterreact years before), they added an e-sport aspect before e-sport got big in their market. People complained about waiting times so they implemented cross server queues. People complained about trouble getting tanks and healers for their groups so they did dualspec and improved the hybrids roles.
The thing is, get enough subscribers and you get the money you need to retain your subscribers. WoW is only held back by two things. 1. Blizzards natural inclination to make as much profit as possible and 2. Making changes that would alienate large percentages of subscribers.
Edit: Imho its also a logical fallacy to assume a big IP translates into commercial success. It works at a glance in theory, however in practice i would go so far as to say it failed every single time. I cant think of a single big IP game that overshadowed small or no IP based competition. The few times the big IP games where successful it was usually due to lack of competition(i do not consider WoW to be based on a big IP, not compared to Star Wars, Star Trek or LotR).
If it failed a dozen times, why are people confused when it fails a 13th? Its pretty logical for me that if you get 200 mil from your publisher to develope a game, and spend 100 mil of that on the IP, and then get even restricted on what you can do, you would be worse of than someone just taking the 200mil and putting it all into the game.
I am not going to go through all these grand posts. Excellent article and pretty fair comparsions.
I have and do play both these games. I have been playing WoW since about a month or two after its release. Sadly not as long for LotR. I love each for different reasons but the community within WoW is there but I keep my trade chat off because it is abosllutely horrible for the most part. Yes LFG has been made simple but to be honest I believe this was done because the population even with the stated account owners of the game is not that high. This made it possible for those that play regular to have a better chance at groups which is needed to obtain better gear. Having a good guild is also needed to really obtain the end game content. It is easy to play more so than many of the games I have played and tried but after you have hit 80 it is boring. I have gotten to where I only log in for raids. Like many I have more than one level 80 and more than one account. So maybe that accounts for the high numbers of subscribers for WoW. I mean I know many that have two or more accounts and they boast full or almost full of level 80's.
LotR while not as high in subscribers and maybe with some drawbacks in comparsion to WoW is much more fun to play and the player base is absolutely great. The community is much more mature and helpful. Maybe the content is not as in depth in comparison to WoW but overall I am less stressed and enjoy my time in LoTR a great deal. Like WoW starting new characters is fun but both you are pretty much seeing the same thing once you have worked every class/race.
Cat may put WoW on the charts for a bit longer or like with EQ this could be the expansion that sends it on a spiral down. Time will tell. I really think LotR will be around for a while even it can't boast the millons of subscribers. My only fear is the F2P aspect and how it may affect the communtity and overall game.
So all in all they are both nice games but I think the graphics in LotR is much nicer overall. Maybe in some parts it could expand to feel a bit larger but if not it is still beautiful and real.
Gikku
At the same time that doesn't mean we can just assume anything popular isn't among the best of class. The details need to be looked at instead of dismissed behind generalized statements.
Sure it might be difficult for the average person to tell the difference between toothpastes effectiveness and an advertised brand might sell better as a result of that. However it isn't hard for players to see what works and what doesn't in a video game.
All the marketing in the world didn't save warhammer or age of conan and they certainly had their fair share of marketing and piles of money to work with. Nothing more than wow had. Collectively they sold millions of copies so the marketing was working, but look at both a few months later and you see a different story. A company cannot advertise away the problems of a game and make masses of people pay money for something they don't enjoy.
Listening to what players want and delivering a functional and enjoyable system is what made wow so different than the rest of the market at release and after. Blizzard wasn't reacting to warhammer when they created battlegrounds. Mythic acquired the warhammer license in May 18, 2005, blizzard released battlegrounds in June 7th, 2005. That is a 20 day difference and I think it is safe to assume blizzard was working on battlegrounds for much longer than that.
In the end, marketing will only get people to try a game, but it will not create quality and it won't deceive players into staying away from games they might find better and remaining customers for years and years.
Lotro is about the only game post 2004 that has done anything similar to that.
And i reiterate my point. You need money to release a good product. But in the MMO market your products attractiveness steadily declines, you need liftings and lots of them, which require more money. Better pray you dinged in lots of subscription money or you will be in maintenance mode in no time.
If warhammer had released later, in a bugfree state and promises met, maybe the first expansion hadnt been a free content patch(Land of the Dead) but a full store expansion with lots of content. Maybe we would be nearing the release of its second expansion now to a successful game instead of the shadow of itself that we have now. We are talking about maybe a couple months difference granted by EA to mythic, about a devteam not shrunken and butchered and a core playerbase not disillusioned.
MMOs are like tomatoes. Sure some are just nasty, pestridden or foul, but others just got plucked while they where still green and unripe. Sure they taste nasty too, but unlike the former they had potential.
Warhammer has almost $100 million dollar budget and the worlds largest gaming software company behind it. We could speculate about many mmos doing better if they had less bugs and met more of their design promises, but that is precisely the point we are discussing and why I think that talking about analogies doesn't represent the situation at hand.
I think it is also worth mentioning that Eve did have competition back when it released, but it went out of business.
I like LOTRO a lot but the damn combat can be so slow and boring. Additionally grouping is mandatory to do any endgame stuff. Not that this is a bad thing, but it can be hard to find a good guild/group.
I haven't made it that far yet on LotR but I have in WoW and it is boring for the most part. WoW put in the dungeon finder and that was a great help in finding groups making it a bit easier, but if you are dps it takes a while to get a group still. I feel the Dungeon Finder was put in so that the lower amount of players on some of the servers made it very hard indeed to find groups. The DF is not limited to one server so has greatly improved that aspect. You still get people that have no clue what they are doing on their toon. You still deal with jerks and the like. The end game in WoW means raids/group as well. Unless you don't want better gear and see what the end game means and offers anyway. Oh there are plenty of pug raids you can get into so you can take your chances and hope for a good one. Finding a good guild has never been an easy task and right now in WoW with the awaiting for Cat to come out that has been reduced even more. So many peeps MIA from boredom until the xpansion rears its head then it will be slammed with peeps that haven't been playing for months and months. Then before you know poof they will be gone again.
As for the PvP in WoW I suppose it is better than some. I can't speak a whole lot for it as I really don't care much for that aspect at all. I have done some of the Battlegrounds and it is ok I suppose if you like that sort of thing. I am not good at it either so that takes away from it as well for me anyway.
I like a lot of things about LotR.. The player base/community is much better than any I have been in so far. Maybe there isn't as many kids or ignorant adults. You don't see a bunch of horrible chat like you do in many. WoW has some of the most foul mouthed people and general and trade chat are horrible. That is why I keep it off. Even the filters don't work on everything.
Gikku
I played both these games for years, plenty of pluses and minuses for both. But even after all this time I still get a strong feeling of immersion in the beautifully-made world of LOTRO. I can't say this will always be my main game (especially with some of the strong-looking titles on the way), but I will probably maintain some presence LOTRO for a long time. I enjoyed much of my time with WoW too, but after leaving it I don't miss it at all. There was just no real immersion there for me. YMMV.
If that's how it works then why is Star Wars Galaxies still in existence? It should have died a loooong time ago from lack of subscribers.
By my estimation LOTRO would have won the match by a 2 to 1 margin.
Lol after he said "Let's get ready to rumble"... I couldn't help but read the entire article in the fight announcer tone. Like when they read off the persons name, weight, K/O record. Always speaking upwards lawl.
played both games to end game as possible..
quit both tired of the lame raiding. Lotro had raiding introduced in later years.
at some point, raiding its retarded, they might add new dungeons and
new encounters, but its just the same shit as usual.
Love both games, if i have to start again on one of these. it would have to be lotro..
but i wont, to many new games that needs my trying, leveling and comments.
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Playing MMO's since my first which was Ultima online, then Anarchy online. and so on..
Now a days im very critical before i ewen bother downloading a Free to play mmo.
ur so wrong on new player experience. when i went with my hobbit to start the intro it was night and i saw a black rider passing by. That WoW just can't compare when it's about anything with lore.
That said, Lore has been left out of the comparison. And that makes all the difference.
You seem to not factor the out of game community, the artistic inspiration that the game can create. Simple tools like wowmodel viewer thanks to Darjk, there was a massive explosion of Machinima that had spawned forth. Creating an amazing sub community: Warcraftmovies. The community is the reason the game is so successful. With the help of warcraftmovies the community is able to raise the skill cap on the game, only to create the twitch reaction pvp that is known today.
Anyways it's 4am and I no longer have a clue what I'm rambling about anymore, but I do know that from Machinamist to Dataminers, the WoW community is far greater. After all judging a community by it's "Niceness" is hardly judging it at all.
As far as "Waiting around being the staple of most mmorpg", well a quaint way to put it is...
F THAT! Dare to expand, and dare to revolutionize. Personally I don't have fun watching paint dry.
@laxika91, Fixed RA farming is good pvp right? Dervishes are fine right? Yea...
pvp: 9/10 (for wow)
quite funny if you think 10 is the max points you could achieve, loved quite a while seeing that "opinion"
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Agreed
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
Well said.
I dislike Lotro because even entering a building is like entering an instance, you just cant open a door and walk in everything has to load.And house ownership in Lotro sucks, Having played UO and SWG, the housing is lotro is worthless.I found this out after purchasing 1 .At least in UO or SWG you hve unlimited freedoms on how to decorate and can even have craft stations in your house, you dont have to pay for storage in your house in those 2 games either, in UO you can have carpenters make you chest which you can dye and stack and each chest holds 100 items in large houses you can store 2k of items, IN SWG you can have furniture you also put items in and having crafting stations in your house and being able to store items makes it easier to have supplies and craft at home.Im looking for a new game have been playing lotro for 4 months now and it's boring , I played UO for 10 years and may still go back to it
WoW have to say that is big difference in housing for sure. I have yet to gather enough to even purchase a house in LotR yet and my compariason would be none because EQ and WoW didn't/don't have housing. I like the idea of housing though. I will say that the housing areas are pretty nice in LotR but there is nothing special or different except in size because the least costly house in any area looks the same as the rest and so on. By that I mean floor plans are the same for certain priced homes. Be nice to be able to choose different but then two rooms really can't be put too many ways. lol
As for the zoning into building I guess it is more of prick than a major issure for me.
Gikku
I have yet to play an MMO that I enjoyed as much as I did vanilla WOW. After BC the game changed but was still a fun game. By the time WOTLK released the game just wasnt the same. I played LOTRO off and on from release and it finally took the place of WOW for my MMO of choice. Then after MOM it became stagnant and finally died for me with the F2P move. Ive played other mmo's but few could hold my attention much longer than the first month. If I could pick any game to play right now it would be vanilla WOW. If they would offer a pre BC server with the original content I would reroll in a heartbeat.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
Every game changes when the first expansion releases. The original world is no longer the main focus of the game and players look elsewhere. I recall the same thing happening in everquest when kunark released. Some of the original magic was lost, because it just wasn't the same seeing the old areas decline and new areas being interesting, but not quite the same to explore and adventure in. I think this is true for every mmo or at least the ones I have experienced.
There is nothing better than the original release of an mmo and expansions alter that. I'm very interested to see how cataclysm may or may not alter that. Perhaps breathing new life into the old world and making it the primary focus again will bring back some of that old magic, but it is still going to be an expansion.
Well said. Tis true each expansion seems to take something away and the older zones become ghost towns.
Yes some of the old cities will be populated due to the AH and access to the new zones but each expansion takes something.
Gikku
Played WoW for a long time, just taking up LotRO now that it's free (I've learned to hate paying box prices for MMOs, subs don't bother me, but the upfront cost for a game that might suck...)
WoW used to be a grand adventure, with a cool world to explore and interesting challenges to overcome. Now everything is linear as possible, PvP is monotonous, and only a few raid encounters present any kind of challenge (and only the heroic versions). WoW is a sad caricature of a formerly great game.
LotRO, on the other hand, is a new and delicious treat for me. In a market full of games trying to be like WoW, it's a very tight ship that feels distinctly different. The last year has been an MMO wasteland for me, and LotRO is looking like it will bring me back into the fold.
Classic WoW > LotRO > Current WoW
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
Solo play on WoW 10/10? You obviously have never played the game.
[Mod Edit]