Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What innovation did WoW bring at launch?
mmoguy43
Member UncommonPosts: 2,770
Its a simple question that long time WoW vets may know. What innovation did WoW bring at launch? What new things did it bring to MMOs in its first few months of being released?
Not looking for flames, "nothing" comments, or a list of what it clonned.
Comments
I know where do you want to get with this... I will not join
"It has potential"
-Second most used phrase on existence
"It sucks"
-Most used phrase on existence
Isn't it WoW that brought up the "!" quests treadmill? I guess that was an innovation for the majority of casual gamers.
Idk, back then I was playing L2 and some F2P MMOs that were much different. WoW was the first game I played with the two distinct Horde vs Alliance, where you are on either side. It was also the first game I played with instances. The first game with such cartoony graphics as well as the movement style of jumping around, etc. But that was for me so I'm not sure if that's correct.
That's really all I remember from launch. Again, this is all subjective. So I expect flames that are like '(some other MMO) did this first.' But my only experiences had been like L2 and a couple of F2Ps.
flame bait thread.
Simple answer though, is thus: it didn't innovate much but brought features that worked okay-ish in other games, and brought them together (and improved them) as one package where it all supported each other well. As such wow was a very well designed game that ended up with it's hordes of clones and huge playerbase.
WoW brought something to MMO's that has not been seen since... polish. It didn't innovate, or invent. It took what was working in other games and made it better. What's funny is that after that, many company's tried to literally clone WoW's systems (the same ones they had borrowed elsewhere) but forgot to clone the one thing that made WoW the fiscal king of the castle... polish.
I'm not at all downplaying WoW's lack of new gameplay by any stretch.
This.
Currently Playing: DAOC Uthgard
Previously Played: UO, DAOC, Shadowbane, AC2, SWG, Horizons, COX, WOW, EQ2, LOTRO, AOC, WAR, Vanguard, Rift, SWTOR, ESO, GW2.
Ah yes the art style. Why didn't I think of that. With the stylized 'timeless' art it is able to age and not look quite as bad as a realistic art style would.
The ! Quest markers over NPCs... It is possible that WoW did it first but I can't remember.
Allowing everyone to abuse channels in a P2P mmo and automatic answers instead of GMs is the sole innovation I can think of right now.
I'm not kidding actually they really didn't care about on-line chatting and anything goes like on a playground of retarded teens. As if they hadn't the means to police chat rooms by hiring GMs or filtering and muting/banning people.
Another innovation of WoW is they created customers and playerbase instead of a community and they care only for money, as long as you pay they don't care what's going on and they will answer your tickets after 4 hours by an automated on-line mail (this must be considered immersion *lol*).
Another innovation is the battlegrounds where you had half of the team taken up by bots joining automatically and not playing (for *months*) or the 150 battles I had in Alterac where we were maximum 15 and other team had 40 and we won 15 times or so.
Innovation and Blizzard in the same sentence hm... *scratches head*
Not sure what innovations it had, but innovation is not necessarily important to the quality or success of a game.
Plenty of "innovative" games are released that die on the vine, and others do nothing more than take the best of what came
before and offer those things up in a nice tidy package that's accessible and fun.
I disagree that polish was what it brought. Like many mmos, it took a while to get a full shine...granted it had more than most, to me it wasn't innovative polish by any stretch (granted 'polish' could have lofty definitions).
To me its Accessibility coupled with breadth of content*. Wow is the easiest game to start up, learn, get immersed and then be able to at least 'try' any piece of content in the game. Over the years it has gotten easier and more accessible (to the point of madness for the 'hardcore' raiders and the like). When you can hear 8 year olds talking about taking down the lich king at a retail store - it just reinforces the fact (and sadness). On the same vein, they've put in enough content to keep older folks focused on the standard grind mmos have gotten them accustomed to. In no game that I know of is it as easy to get a group of people together planning, questing, grouping flawlessly from differing backgrounds (including those who are not gamers or may not even like games much). They've maximized possible people who would enjoy the game and have reaped the benefits.
* - for the intended market. Meaning family friendly / casual mmos could also say the same thing, though usually don't flex nearly the same amount of content.
Thats true, WoW wasn't polished right out the gate. How long did it take before it was considered polished?
Accessibility. Did that start early in the begining or did it happen after it was polished?
It was the first mmo i played where the combat felt more like an arcade game rather than a turn based rpg.
Are you asking us or telling us it wasn't polished from launch???
From a personal perspective the polish was there from launch, but as with any good polish it needs to be buffed to shine at it' very best and that is what Blizzard did from the off.
The accessibility was also there from the launch too, the learning curve was by far one of the best out there, although some would argue that the hand holding was a step too far from L1-10 maybe. The introduction of new abilities was well spaced and it gave you time to adapt and learn your characters playing style as you levelled. That has been diluted to a large degree now as you level far, far faster than you did at launch, but i still think that WoW has some of the best starting areas around.
I think that the other thing WoW did from the off was introduce a feeling that you were part of a huge community, the cities were always buzzing, all zones had large numbers of people running around, alliance vs horde open PvP raids brought people together in large groups and i would say that if there is one thing i miss from the lauch times it would have to be that.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I think the bigest thing is that you didnt need to wait on loading when going from zone to zone.
Innovation that WoW brought to the genre:
Faster leveling. Took much, much faster to hit cap in this game compared to EQ, DAoC etc
Quest based leveling. No need to grind mobs, you grind quests instead
Very lenient death penalties.
Linear, themepark gameplay. EQ had kinda linear advancement but WoW took it to a new level
Personally for me these are not innovations as I dont see them as improvments but apparently alot of gamers did, and still do.
My gaming blog
By that I mean, true it wasn't polished, based on what I've heard from other players and maybe articles too. First hand, I don't know. As far as I know it was just as rough as other launches around its time.
WOW was pretty polished at release. The majority of problems that WOW had at release were server stability issues. The servers couldn't handle the amount of players trying to play on them. Blizzard never expected for WOW to sell as well as it did and didn't have enough servers available at launch.
Currently Playing: DAOC Uthgard
Previously Played: UO, DAOC, Shadowbane, AC2, SWG, Horizons, COX, WOW, EQ2, LOTRO, AOC, WAR, Vanguard, Rift, SWTOR, ESO, GW2.
What i mean is that it was far more polished than any other game at that time, right down to simple things like not getting your character stuck in silly places or MOB's glitching left, right and centre, you could get on with your game without running into an issue every five minutes. I played Earth & Beyond for example from launch and even though it was a great game (one of the MMO genre' saddest days when it closed) it still had these little glitches months after launch as i have seen with other games too, AO probably another prime example.
Was it 100% bug free and clean as a whistle, well no of course it wasn't and i can't think of any piece of software that ever is, but it was head and shoulders above the competition on this front. Blizzard just bought to the table the fact that a game can be done well and if it does take a little more time to drop in a patch or an expansion, well it is worth that time to make sure things are as right as they can be before launching it.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
lolz.....the same is sayd about rift right now
What Blizzard brought to the forefront may have been done in other games, but WoW was the first game I experienced these in. They are:
1) Lax death penalty
2) Heavily instanced dungeons and raids, though in vanilla there were openworld areas with mobs that dropped epic loot, and world raid bosses that dropped loot equivalent to an instanced endboss of a raid
3)Flawless transition of zone to zone (Okay, I did see this in Lineage 2, but WoW was a much larger game world at launch separated only by the two continents - that and loading dungeons were the only loading screens I remember seeing when I started playing, outside of the initial loading the game up)
4) The ! over the head of quest givers - I never saw it in any mmo I'd played before WoW, but I can't say they introduced it with any certainty
--
These are the only features I know of that WoW may have innovated. Everything else, from what I understand, was existent in other mmo's and games prior to it.
Innovation? ... Let's get something clear , I'm not a huge fan of WoW , heck I've barely played WoW , but knowing Blizzard , I'm pretty sure their WoW is a kick ass game. In short , Chuck Norris might have invented a 3rd fist under his beard , but Blizzard doesn't know the meaning of innovation , they just deliver where everyone else seems to fail.
Magic word for today is : Blizzard
Flameeee baitt.
I'll nibble a little. WoW came out with LOTS of bugs and problems that would make the current MMO population cringe and flame. However, since WoW had such a recognizable IP people were simply blown away and excited to see the very game they had played for years in RTS in a virtual world that they were actually part of.
That was really their only innovation. Bringing a highly recognizable IP that attracted more than just MMO fans.
Blizzard really didn't do anything new or innovative
Blizzard had millions of fans that it introduced to MMOs by releasing WoW and main reason these millions went for WoW was because it was Warcraft.
You could do perfect copy of WoW with improvements all around and make it look like Jesus's second coming but 90% of these WoW fans wont play it because it isn't Warcraft.
Innovating does not always mean you create something new. What WoW did innovating was that they took a lot of good thing from other games and implemented them into one. There still doing that
STO, SWG and DCUO. All these IP are older and I believe more popular then the Warcraft IP is even now! I doubt any of them will reach the 10 million subs! True some of the subscription they have is because it is WoW and blizzard, but you do not keep people entertained for so many years just on that.
It all can be synthesised by one general remark.
Blizzard brought in the video game technology.
Both in the engine as in the design, Blizzard made a video game first and a mmorpg second.
Up until 2004, MMORPG's never recognized the power AND the limits of video games. Sitting 10 hours in front of your screen to wait for a group to form is not good. Not awarding people constantly and even punishing them is not good; Having terrible unresponsive controls of the avatars is not good, etc....
Blizzard adapted the MMORPG genre to be a video game genre: meaning fun within the constraints of video gaming.
---
1. Cutting a lot of the unnecessary elements that simply are not entertaining enough for a video game. (design)
2. They were smart enough though to supplement it with an extremely polished world that used background loading, and this all gives the impression of having a real seamless world behind it and responsive avatars that actually do what you want them to do (engine).
3. The booming hi speed internet connections blended perfectly with the initial 2004 launch (new infrastructure).
Go check out: Blizzard was the first BIG PC game developper that actually made an mmorpg. The rest of the bunch were not even AAA PC game makers.