Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Thx Blizzard...
Kopogero
Member UncommonPosts: 1,685
For giving the community one great MMORPG over the last decade. Blizzard is the best evidence that MMORPGs can break records and last for a decade and still go stronger than anything else out there.
When World of Warcraft launched it sure had competition. Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, then Guild Wars 1 and the list goes on. If you look at the state of all those MMORPG's and many other that came afterwards none showed the same care for their current products as Blizzard did with WOW. If profits go down it's cuz your doing something wrong with your MMORPG, not because there is something better out there. That's how you lose playerbase and future customers.
And how these companies handled that? By giving up on their players, products and just focused on hype, box sales and future sequels or other MMORPG projects rather than improving their current.
What Blizzard understood better than all these other companies is that it's about taking care of your playerbase and focusing 100% on a single MMORPG and making it right. I know if I play World of Warcraft today 3-5 years from now it will still be in the top 3 out there. I know that cuz the philosophy of Blizzard compared to the philosophy of most other companies out there is different when it comes to MMORPG's.
World of Warcraft is a great investment, not just a MMORPG to pass the time until the next MMORPG. Thx Blizzard for not turning your back on me and helping me save a lot of $ on hardware that I would probably be forced to buy if I decided to play any of these new MMORPG's today to enjoy smooth gameplay.
Comments
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
/agree
I hope we get some more Steak vs. McDonalds analogies. Those are the best!
/popcorn
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
So someone has to point out it really hasn't been a decade yet, still 2 more years left
Lets just hope some MMO out there has a smoother launch, so far there hasn't really been one...
I will give you they have a winning formula and have made a metric S**T tone of cash off of it. But i think even the most die hard fan would have to admit its showing its age.
I will also say I agree that WoW will be running for many years to come just due to the fanbase it has. Cut the subscribers by 80% and it would still be profitable for them to keep open.
I am glad you have enjoyed WoW for so many years and still can for years to come. I wish a game would hold me like that. WoW was very short lived in my MMO career.
I like how you corrected 'decades' and then made that launch comment.
EDIT: And yeah, ain't gonna slight WoW for it's success. Just have my gripes with it that I've already talked a ton about in the last eight years.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Actually, he does kind of have a valid point.
How many companies have changed their game causing friction in the community, yet they shun the players off. Its the players that make the game, losing those will lose the game eventually. If a company does this several times then players both current and future will start to avoid their games because of the bad feedback they have gained for themselves.
So far Blizzard has seen off every wannabe that has come out, unfortunatly other companies try to copy their formula instead of making one from start with alot of features that currently are not out.
what i would liek to see in a future MMO release -
Guilds - start off small, level up allows a couple more players in the guild. Not only this but guild can build up a village, starting small and build it up themselves. Via gathering the resources themselves or purchasing from markets. Guild buildings can be built at certain levels that teh guild reach's, and buildings can also be leveled up. Training rooms, crafting house's, barracks-allows more people to be recruited into a guild). Guilds can build on 1 area not have buildings scattered all over the place.
Wars - If a guild builds somewhere the community does not like (trying to take and hold an entrance) they can be attacked by 1 or a contingent of guilds banded together, where buildings can be razzed and whole villages wiped out.
full FFA pvp - But should have dire consequences if one goes down that path.
Crafting - 1 craft only, but able to gather all resources. Lumber must be turned into planks/sheets etc by woodcrafters (who can make wooden shields, bows, staves and other stuff), blacksmiths make armours, nails, sheets etc. Other crafts also. Main thing is that the craft should be user interacted not gather have in inventory click make 99 and then leave to watch TV or something else.
Dungeons, castes, towers, caves and mines as some of the places to hunt through.
Torch's need to be carried (or certain magic users can cast a light spell) which will uncover a bit in dungeons and caves etc, you carnt see whats in front all the time like you can thesedays. wheres the eeriness and creepiness gone.
Many other things can be done, especially with todays systems and internet capabilities, yet were still 7-10yrs back.
I would gladly pay a monthly subscription for a game thats done right and well. Todays games are dull, boring and same old same old (just rehashed). A company comes up with something like that and i do think it will be a hit.
I agree that Blizz did very well with wow and I also agree to a point with some of the things you were saying but I have to add this caveat, The people who had this kind of approach and vision for wow was, and is, a different animal from the current powers-that-be at Blizzard nowadays. They are no longer their own company and it is a question mark wether those running things now will or would use this approach going forward. Time, of course, will tell.
I like steak...... and bacon!
Happy to see a positive thread regarding Blizzard, finally.
OP has a very valid point about expanding your game instead of churning out MMO after MMO like some companies do.
How can you get invested in an MMO world and it's lore when in the back of your mind you know it won't last?
They just make me hungry...so does /popcorn for that matter...lol
Point 1 - I believe this was done in a number of MMOs and failed as a model. Mainly do the issue of people being restricted with who they are allow to associate with. People do not like to be restricted.
Point 2 - This sounds like Darkfall, Age of Conan, Shadowbane, etc... again not a bad idea but the formula just doesn't seem to work. If you think small villages or towns should be availble to be raised or taken over, I suggest you try out GW2. They have a very good WvWvW system, as does DAoC.
Point 3 - FFA PvP is seen in almost all MMOs and none of them survive. FFA PvP is awesome for the hardcore PvP player. But the majority of players are not intersted in being Ganked or anything of the sort, whether or not there are major consequences.
Point 4 - Not sure what you mean by 1 Crafting, but as for gathering, that is exactly how it works in GW2 and other games. WoW is fairly unique in thier restriction of crafting.
Point 5 - This one is all over the place in MMO's to include WoW. Shoot all of EQ's dungeons were "open" explorable areas (meaning they were not instanced to a party of players).
Point 6 - EQ, DAoC, and many other games incorporate this feature. Sadly it is not a popular demand or we would see it all over the place.
I would say that all of the things you are looking for have been done and most of them are not popular. A successful game is not about what we think would be cool to have. It is what the majority of the player base can agree that is cool.
If I could choose to add a feature to a game it would be truly dynamic culture and world. A place where the eco-system can be effected by the players. For example; a group of players destroy a camp of raging goblins. The came is actually destroyed and no longer spawns there. However, that effects another group which allows them to build up and army and attack on a near by village. This village then has to be protected by the players or be raised and removed from the game, unless it is rebuilt by the players.
The closest thing I have seen to a dynamic world is Rift, but UO allowed for the destruction of an entire area, where Rift does not.
We do have the server tech and ability to make a dynamic and ever changing world, to include NPC, not just what the players do. But this tech and activity takes a lot of money and time just to make sure it doesn't get out of hand.
So far the MMO industry has taken large leaps in player run and dynamic economies. Now we need to apply those concepts to the rest of the MMO world.
- Sigreth
To be fair... they had the large advantage of no competition. If they launched WoW today as it was in vanilla, it would be quickly considered a flop and would fail. WoW's success has to deal with its timing more then anything. Its extremely easy to get high numbers when your one of the few big name MMos out there with no F2P options around. Everquest was getting old (which btw, it was the big MMO before WoW and before that was Ultima Online) and WoW filled in at just the right time when online gaming was growing. It really had a lot less competition then you make it out to have (many of those games being older and before graphics were a bit 'cleaner') and wow had the benefit of coming out just at the right time to make itself look appealing and keep that appealing look without needing to change its graphics engine, in part due to its art style.
I know, discrediting wow but its the truth. I enjoyed Vanilla and BC a lot, Wotlk... eh... it started going down hill quickly (though still managing to have my favorite dps class of all time in any game). Its been over-all going in the wrong direction (thus the decline in player base with each step up) which is in part since nostolgia only carries you so far before you get tired of a game, particularly when its been going down hill.
I have to disagree with many of your other points though. Other companies focus on their MMos solely with their MMo team. Blizzard is no different from any other company. MMos today really aren't that heavy in resource demands as you seem to think. I have an $800 system I bought about last year and it can play rift smoothly on High settings (does have issues with some componenents mostly due to ram, which can easily be remedied by spending $80 to get a 2nd graphics card) but over-all mmos are designed to run on all sorts of systems for the most part and computers are so cheap now a days you can buy a $400 computer that can likely run virtually any MMO out there without much trouble at all.
WoW WAS a good game, but its biggest reason for success was it came out at a time where people's expectations were not insane. Its glory chain exists solely due to its good timing and the fact the few competitors it did have managed to not pull in enough people due to their focus on the very hardcore crowd. Its biggest benefit was that it had so much to copy from (EQ1 being a massive part in WoW being built the way it was) and it was able to easily take in ideas from newer games that never got as much of a chance it got. WoW is far from original with a large portion of its content, but at the very least they knew what to add and did add elements in a way that worked relatively smoothly for those components such as LFG.