Originally posted by tatang Why is WOW so popular? Why do so many people listen to bad music like Lady gaga or Britney spears when there is so much GOOD music out there to listen to? Too many mindless drones and sheeple in this world.
Right clearly my taste in games, or for that matter music is superior to others, and therefor these Philistines are ruining our games.....and music. Honestly though, for a fair amount of people, World of Warcraft is enjoyable, and in their opinion, it is a good game. Just like I might not care for Depeche Mode and prefer Guns N' Roses or newer bands, or how I don't care for Community but like The Big Bang Theory. It is just different tastes. Maybe WoW came out at the perfect time, but regardless it still fulfills what several people want for entertainment. It doesn't fulfill yours, or mine for that matter, and so we're stuck waiting for something that meets our needs.
There are more reasons but these are the main ones in my opinion.
"More reasons" would include being the most fun MMORPG on the market, right?
The only one of your reasons that slightly matters to me is the known brand, because prior Warcraft games had been a ton of fun (although War3 was a bit shaky.)
But that reason wouldn't have stopped me fro moving on to another, superior MMORPG -- if such a game existed. I've tried an awful lot of MMORPGs at this point, and with rare exceptions like CoH and RIFT nobody really came close to the pure fun of playing that WOW offered (and still offers.)
I'm as fickle a gamer as any: the moment a superior game comes out, that's where I'll be. The problem has been that no MMORPGs have actually played as well as WOW.
fun to you, but how about the others?
What about the others? Obviously WOW is fun enough for many.
Of course. Gamers are fickle. If a game is more fun, they play it. Older games are less fun. Yet WOW persists at #1.
There are factors that make someone stick with a game, like investment into a character, but those are pretty minor: if you find a game you think is just outright more fun than your current game, you're going to play that better game. With WOW, most people seem to never find that better game, so they play WOW.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Hold on , im sorry but as a MMORPG player who NEVER played WoW, i have to interject , the game never appealed to me AT ALL, the reason no games are having success now is because the Market is FLOODED , back when WoW and EQ came out .....what else was there .....DAoC , Anarchy , Ultima .......was about it ......the market is flooded with games now this very site is the proof of that , you ever just click on the game list and go from top to bottom ?? its HUGE.
So when there are this many games out there in our present " i want it my way " society , no game is going to ever have Wow 's success again , cause as soon as a game doesnt give an overly spoiled player all that He /She wants ......its poof run off to another game . Most of the ppl i know who still play WoW dont do it cause the game is AWESOME, they do it cause its familiar and they have friends/guilds that they expect to be there everyday and carry on with them .
So in truth you will NEVER see WoW type success again and Blizzard knows it why do you think they keep expanding WoW as old as it is ....cause they know that when they release a new game and it doesnt have the success that WoW did thier executives and stock and share holders are going to eat thier lunch , i dont blame them
I somewhat agree with the OP but he forgets that WOW did not get all it's pieces until way after vanilla. Heck it did not even ship with a raid!!!
There are five other very important reasons why wow took off like a rock.
1) Blizzards reputation. Maker of Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo. Heck who would NOT buy from a company that produced those titles.
2) A fantasy world that LOOKED like a fantasy world. I do not know of a single mmo at the time (maybe FFVIII?) that had worlds that did not look like somewhere in medieval european times. Wow was a fantasy game that looked like a fantasy world.
3) Solo to max level. This more than anything. Every other aaa mmo at the time required grouping to get to max level. Yes it was easier than other mmos - and that was the point! No grinding for hour after hour after hour. Wow was casual fun. This site may consider "casual" a swear word but most of the mmo players that play do not.
4) PVE servers. Maybe there were some in other games but not in the mmos that I played at the time. Everything was macho open world pvp. With WOW you could be by yourself and others and not have to get worried about being ganked. A game for carebears? Yes. Surprising how many there are in the world.
5) Female friendly. I don't know why (simplicity, pve?) but I do know that with Wow the population of female mmo players exploded. I do not mean characters (as most female toons are run by males), I mean woman. Yes I am not scientific but in voice chat and guilds I meant many women those first years of WOW versus 1 or 2 I met in Lineage 2, EQ and others.
Actually there is a game coming out that I think comes close to vanilla wow - Wildstar
So when there are this many games out there in our present " i want it my way " society , no game is going to ever have Wow 's success again , cause as soon as a game doesnt give an overly spoiled player all that He /She wants ......its poof run off to another game . Most of the ppl i know who still play WoW dont do it cause the game is AWESOME, they do it cause its familiar and they have friends/guilds that they expect to be there everyday and carry on with them .
Let's speak plainly:
Without a doubt, many games in the next decade will enjoy WOW's level of success. Arguably LoL already has.
Without a doubt, many MMOswill achieve WOW's level of success in the future.
Quite likely, there will be at least one MMORPG to achieve WOW's level of success.
You're entirely right that gamers are fickle and demand the most fun-per-dollar or they leave. That's why WOW's persistence as leader is so significant: it's the fun that keeps players playing WOW instead of something else. All of the people I know who play WOW do so because they felt this recent expansion has been fun to play. I always advise everyone around me to stop playing a game the moment it stops being fun (I sure do; yet here I am back in WOW.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
People dont realize why WoW was such a success still it seems.
They spent about 25$ mil just for advertisement which at that time was far more then most games spent for development. On top of that they used the warcraft franchies which was booming and made the first true casual mmorpg.
Thats something you notice alot nowadays when the newer generation talks about vanilla WoW which at that time really was far easier then anything else on the market and pretty much still is.
They came at the right time with a capital that was far larger then its competitors. It was sheer genious. The game itself was quite poor contentwise and had cheap mechanics unlike the other ongoing MMORPGs at that time.
these companies are looking for a quick buck. dont care how the actualy product turns out as long as they make enough money on box sales.
and as for Wow is going to get better and older games has had more upgrades and wow has become so polished the gameplay and charcter movement is top of the line.
if newer games could have a good launch they could become polish as well.i think thes company could do better if they droped the sub fee to about 10 dollar a month thye could do alot better. even tho 15 isnt that much
company needs need to make the game and not rush it
I dont agree that WoW was successful because it had everything EQ had and more.
WoW was successful because it was hugely innovative in one way. It made MMOs casual so that every John Schmoe could play it with minimal effort. EQ had a huge grind and unforgiving death penalty system as well as heavy group dependency. WoW got rid of all that and allowed you to solo to max cap within a month of casual play.
That, together with the Warcraft IP, is what made WoW huge. And that is why MMOs after do not get the same success because they simply try to copy WoW and add their own spin of it.
GW 2 is not hugely innovative. The PvP is largely similar as other faction based MMOs and the PvE is also similar to games like Rift and WoW so it is not all that different.
TERA is basically WoW with action combat but with a lot less content and variety.
Basically all ThemeParks after WoW are not very innovative so they will never be as successful as WoW is/was. And what is needed is an MMO which is GROUNDBREAKING. Not just a little different in the combat or "dynamic" quests but it needs to present MMOs in a way which it has not been presented before, just like WoW did.
i wouldnt say that im a hardcore wow fan.i have played many mmo's and have not found one that even comes close. i have beomce boredof wow at times and leave to play somethign else but when i leave i try 23 mmos and none has caught my attention and always come back to wow
everythign looks sort of outdated.not really the grapchics but the mechanics are soooooo sloppy.
idk about the rest of you but if the mechanics are sloppy i want play it for five minutes without logging and uninstalling. im not sure if the game actualy sucks or my expectations are too high on newer mmo
So when there are this many games out there in our present " i want it my way " society , no game is going to ever have Wow 's success again , cause as soon as a game doesnt give an overly spoiled player all that He /She wants ......its poof run off to another game . Most of the ppl i know who still play WoW dont do it cause the game is AWESOME, they do it cause its familiar and they have friends/guilds that they expect to be there everyday and carry on with them .
Let's speak plainly:
Without a doubt, many games in the next decade will enjoy WOW's level of success. Arguably LoL already has.
Without a doubt, many MMOswill achieve WOW's level of success in the future.
Quite likely, there will be at least one MMORPG to achieve WOW's level of success.
You're entirely right that gamers are fickle and demand the most fun-per-dollar or they leave. That's why WOW's persistence as leader is so significant: it's the fun that keeps players playing WOW instead of something else. All of the people I know who play WOW do so because they felt this recent expansion has been fun to play. I always advise everyone around me to stop playing a game the moment it stops being fun (I sure do; yet here I am back in WOW.)
The subject of this message thread is specifically about MMOs, not just any game type.
A lot of people seem to think that WoW's success had to do with the timing of their release and the name Warcraft. The MMO having many different play options, features, functionality had nothing to do with it? What the player could do in the game had nothing to do with the success of it?
As I mentioned previously, if WoW had the features of Everquest and played like it and people called it an EQ-Clone because it had nothing new, but that EQII had all of the features that WOW has today, we'd be having this same discussion right now about EQII instead of WoW. I guarantee that. It has very little to do with the name "Warcraft" or that it was developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It has everything to do with how the game plays and what the player can do in the game more than anything else. WoW supports many different game play styles. Far more than Guild Wars 2 does. Guild Wars 2 provided something different, it didn't include everything WoW had then add more on top of that. Wow provided everything EQ had and more and many saw that and made the move. Sure there were a small few that went back to EQ because they had other reasons but more people are playing WoW today that used to play EQ than people playing another MMORPG (not all of MMORPG's combined, just another one) that used to play WoW.
WoW has smooth game play and features available to it more than any other MMORPG that I'm aware of. Can anyone name an MMORPG that has more game play options than WoW does? Having something different doesn't count because it doesn't include WoW's game play options. Remember, the entire point I'm making is that no MMORPG released since WoW has included all of the options that WoW has in terms of how the game can be played.
In my opinion WoW's sucess stems from the fact that you could play it in as larg or small of bites as you want too, it set a new standard and broke away from the need to have others around to explain gameplay mechanics, you never have to seek the help of another living soul too reach level cap. And that is where the next big game will find a nich, by encouraging social interaction not discouraging it. GW2 made a vailant attempt at this with abandoning the Trinity and the casual group mechanic. But in effect they made social interaction even less nessesary. I dont have an answer too what will make the next big game shine though
Originally posted by healboot In my opinion WoW's sucess stems from the fact that you could play it in as larg or small of bites as you want too, it set a new standard and broke away from the need to have others around to explain gameplay mechanics, you never have to seek the help of another living soul too reach level cap. And that is where the next big game will find a nich, by encouraging social interaction not discouraging it. GW2 made a vailant attempt at this with abandoning the Trinity and the casual group mechanic. But in effect they made social interaction even less nessesary. I dont have an answer too what will make the next big game shine though
I agree with everything else you said except for that part. Even when you try to encourage social interaction with benfits like more xp for killing mobs and/or turning in quests while grouped people still don't interact. yes they form groups but its more like a pug in WoW than it is social. It is something that needs to be done so people do it. That doesn't mean they are being social. In fact when we had grind groups in SWG the only talking that really got done was "pick up bol missions to the North."
If the community in your MMO wants to be social they will be. A game mechanic won't stop that. If they don't want to be they won't no matter how hard a developer tries to force that. Any game in the future that tries to force social interaction on it's player base is doomed to failure.
It's always funny to me how people want games with a great active community but when they are there no plays them. Ryzom had (don't know if it's even still running) probably the nicest, most social community I had ever seen in a game. Where the hell was everyone? The game wasn't awful. It didn't look bad at all for it's time. The world was incredible. To bad so few ever played it.
The bottom line here is the majority of MMO players must not want to be social. So whatever game it is that people are looking for will be very niche if it ever gets developed.
1.) Wow didn't have anything comparable competing with it.
2.) It took the better part of 6 months to a year to hit level 60 in Vanilla Wow and during that time you made friends and guildmates and invested a lot of time and energy into your toon. By the time you were level capped, you were emotionally invested in the people in the game and all that work you put into levelling a toon was precious to just toss away.
@OP Such bullshit... you really believe this is true? WoW has been out for years and has had expansions and expansions, you expect new mmos to cover that right from the start AND add more? lol.
1. Warcraft was one of the most succcessful RTSs of all time that had a massive fanbase to build on. And Blizzard had a fanbase above any other due to its Battle.net which was something no other company offered for its games.
2. Tera...seriously? Tera? Tera offered NOTHING other than a very large world. Its story is F2P quality and it took Vindictus's fighting style and made dodge, a hotkey making it LESS action combat than Vindictus which was "double tap" in the direction you wanted to dodge...and you could do it with ALL classes.
3. SWTOR is about as close as you can get with an MMO to match Warcraft yet Bioware didnt have the following size as Blizzard and KOTOR wasnt near as popular as Warcraft was.
All the cards was in place for WoW to become a massive success, something no other IP can hope to match outside of a Mario MMORPG made by Nintendo, for one of their consoles, and without a subscription.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Why newer MP3 players have not had the success IPod has had since IPod's release....
Why newer online music stores have not had the success that iTunes has had since ITunes release...
Why (insert product here)...
Notice a trend here? You are top dog when you come up with the really big idea before everyone else does. And no matter how clever your competitors are, you can never beat the original because that train has already gone and left.
By virtue of using WoW as a litmus for your argument, you are feeding the very thing that needs to be killed. They clone mentality. If you want WoW... play WoW. It's still there, albeit no where near what it used to be. If you think that model is so awesome, why do you keep looking for alternatives? And then when you can't find one, you return to the very game that you couldn't bare to spend another moment in just before. You are the reason there is no new ideas coming out... you feed the old ideas. You say to the developers, I would rather spend $15 a month playing a game that bores me than say not spend $15 a month to play a game that bores me. Developers are more than willing to give you more of the same.
The reality is, you get exactly what you ask for... because you keep going back to them no matter how tired they are. Eventually you will not go back... but right now there's far more people content with paying $15 to do dailies than there are those who are not. Until they get bored, nothing is going to change. Nothing. It's the genre that is tired. Time to move on to other things.
You didn't need that huge wall of text to convince us you knew nothing about why WoW was successful. All you had to do was make the incorrect statement that WoW offers more than other MMOs.
WoW has no unique features to call its own. When it launched, it barely had any of the features other MMOs did.
It offered NOTHING for hardcore gamers. Its raids were babytown frollics compared to other MMOs.
It was good for casuals, nothing more.
It became big because it was the first MMO made by a well known company, with a game IP that had millions of fans, and had MILLIONS in marketing behind it. From there, its all been pop culture momentum.
You didn't need that huge wall of text to convince us you knew nothing about why WoW was successful. All you had to do was make the incorrect statement that WoW offers more than other MMOs.
WoW has no unique features to call its own. When it launched, it barely had any of the features other MMOs did.
It offered NOTHING for hardcore gamers. Its raids were babytown frollics compared to other MMOs.
It was good for casuals, nothing more.
It became big because it was the first MMO made by a well known company, with a game IP that had millions of fans, and had MILLIONS in marketing behind it. From there, its all been pop culture momentum.
At the time WoW was released, it corrected the following issues that were in the top MMORPG at the time:
1. Training of an entire zone by one player. One player could wipe an entire raid force or any group of players just by pulling every mob in the zone. That couldn't be done with WoW. WoW had that fixed and was unique in this area.
2. Level up completely solo by any class/race combination in the game. This was also unique with WoW and made it so that anyone could level up to max level without caling in friends and they could do it with any character created.
3. One big world with only zones going to instances. The top MMORPG at the time had zones that took awhile to load each time you crossed them. WoW was unique in this manner where the entire game didn't have zones, it was all just one big area that you played in with the exception of instances or if you ported some place.
4. Simple race/class combinations. The top MMORPG and other MMORPGs at the time had complex combinations which in a lot of cases needed specific ones to get the top buffs together.
5. ... there are many others, but I'm sure most aren't interested ...
Concerning some of the other comments made...
Game developers should not give up in attempting to create the biggest MMORPG around. That would not be very smart. What would be smart is understand what happened. If you believe that the reason Blizzard is the top dog is because they had the backing of their name and their game franchise, you're seriously mistaken. That only causes people to pay attention to what you have. That's it! The game play must be there in order to continue to grow and gain popularity. If it's not there, it won't be happening.
The Star Wars franchise is much larger than Warcraft. More people in the world knew of Star Wars, yet the game play wasn't as in depth as WoW was. Could it have been? Of course, WoW made their game much more in depth than Everquest was at the time. How did they do it? By giving the player everything EQ had at the time and MORE!
By simply making the argument that Blizzard's success with WoW is the result of their company name and their RTS games Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III were the reason and every other gaming company should give up in attempting to create a bigger game is a huge cop-out. What you're saying to the community is that if you have a huge IP, you have a shot at creating the largest MMORPG around. That's not true by a LONG SHOT! You must have good game play and if you can't provide something more than what most people are playing, you're not going to do very well, that's the bottom line.
Some examples of how games released in recent years could have been the new king:
1. Guild Wars 2 - If it had the things it has in it now such as dynamic events, hearts (which are essentially quests where you don't have to go see someone (but you could if you wanted to get more information on the story involved with the heart) PLUS on top of the things it has now, it included a three faction system instead of a two faction system such as WoW, included the ability to attack any of the other factions cities by killing NPCs or any player that flagged for PvP, included the trinity system (tank, dps, heal) - because the non-trinity system doesn't work in a strategy-based raid encounter. In other words, if it had everything that WoW had, but additionally, it had dynamic events, theme set in Tyria with dragon bosses, and other things that it has plus it has no monthly subscription? It would have taken over the world (of warcraft). Instead, it had no duels, no faction based world pvp, no coordinated strategic raids, the list goes on...
If GW2 had all the crap you're talking about adding to it (or changing) it wouldn't be GW2, just WoW-Plus, and likely not nearly as successful as it is because of it. Six months out and log-ins are increasing, they're still hiring and the game continues to grow. I don't care if they take over WoW or not... it's a great game as it is and a reason I'll never play WoW again.
WoW-Plus will always fall second to the original. The road to success doesn't lead through Azeroth.
Because there is no wow killer, and only way you'll be that successful is to "steal sub" from other game.
As much denial many people on this forum like to be, wow killed a few mmorpg. Even the developer of those games said they are bleeding sub to wow.
The mmorpg market is never that big. There isn't even that many mmorpg player in the world. If wow didn't search for their asian market, it will still only have 3 million sub.
And it is not easy to get in the China market for foreign game studio because of their regulation. So many studio don't even try because of the risk.
WoW has no unique features to call its own. When it launched, it barely had any of the features other MMOs did.
Isn't LFR first on WOW?
It offered NOTHING for hardcore gamers. Its raids were babytown frollics compared to other MMOs.
Only 2% doing sunwell is not hardcore? If you don't think the 2% of the player base is hard core enough .. then good, WOW should ignore the ultra hard core. They are so niche it won't matter anyway.
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Right clearly my taste in games, or for that matter music is superior to others, and therefor these Philistines are ruining our games.....and music. Honestly though, for a fair amount of people, World of Warcraft is enjoyable, and in their opinion, it is a good game. Just like I might not care for Depeche Mode and prefer Guns N' Roses or newer bands, or how I don't care for Community but like The Big Bang Theory. It is just different tastes. Maybe WoW came out at the perfect time, but regardless it still fulfills what several people want for entertainment. It doesn't fulfill yours, or mine for that matter, and so we're stuck waiting for something that meets our needs.
What about the others? Obviously WOW is fun enough for many.
Of course. Gamers are fickle. If a game is more fun, they play it. Older games are less fun. Yet WOW persists at #1.
There are factors that make someone stick with a game, like investment into a character, but those are pretty minor: if you find a game you think is just outright more fun than your current game, you're going to play that better game. With WOW, most people seem to never find that better game, so they play WOW.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Hold on , im sorry but as a MMORPG player who NEVER played WoW, i have to interject , the game never appealed to me AT ALL, the reason no games are having success now is because the Market is FLOODED , back when WoW and EQ came out .....what else was there .....DAoC , Anarchy , Ultima .......was about it ......the market is flooded with games now this very site is the proof of that , you ever just click on the game list and go from top to bottom ?? its HUGE.
So when there are this many games out there in our present " i want it my way " society , no game is going to ever have Wow 's success again , cause as soon as a game doesnt give an overly spoiled player all that He /She wants ......its poof run off to another game . Most of the ppl i know who still play WoW dont do it cause the game is AWESOME, they do it cause its familiar and they have friends/guilds that they expect to be there everyday and carry on with them .
So in truth you will NEVER see WoW type success again and Blizzard knows it why do you think they keep expanding WoW as old as it is ....cause they know that when they release a new game and it doesnt have the success that WoW did thier executives and stock and share holders are going to eat thier lunch , i dont blame them
I somewhat agree with the OP but he forgets that WOW did not get all it's pieces until way after vanilla. Heck it did not even ship with a raid!!!
There are five other very important reasons why wow took off like a rock.
1) Blizzards reputation. Maker of Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo. Heck who would NOT buy from a company that produced those titles.
2) A fantasy world that LOOKED like a fantasy world. I do not know of a single mmo at the time (maybe FFVIII?) that had worlds that did not look like somewhere in medieval european times. Wow was a fantasy game that looked like a fantasy world.
3) Solo to max level. This more than anything. Every other aaa mmo at the time required grouping to get to max level. Yes it was easier than other mmos - and that was the point! No grinding for hour after hour after hour. Wow was casual fun. This site may consider "casual" a swear word but most of the mmo players that play do not.
4) PVE servers. Maybe there were some in other games but not in the mmos that I played at the time. Everything was macho open world pvp. With WOW you could be by yourself and others and not have to get worried about being ganked. A game for carebears? Yes. Surprising how many there are in the world.
5) Female friendly. I don't know why (simplicity, pve?) but I do know that with Wow the population of female mmo players exploded. I do not mean characters (as most female toons are run by males), I mean woman. Yes I am not scientific but in voice chat and guilds I meant many women those first years of WOW versus 1 or 2 I met in Lineage 2, EQ and others.
Actually there is a game coming out that I think comes close to vanilla wow - Wildstar
Let's speak plainly:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
They spent about 25$ mil just for advertisement which at that time was far more then most games spent for development. On top of that they used the warcraft franchies which was booming and made the first true casual mmorpg.
Thats something you notice alot nowadays when the newer generation talks about vanilla WoW which at that time really was far easier then anything else on the market and pretty much still is.
They came at the right time with a capital that was far larger then its competitors. It was sheer genious. The game itself was quite poor contentwise and had cheap mechanics unlike the other ongoing MMORPGs at that time.
Stopped reading after this
If WoW drains the idiot audience from my mmo, then I welcome WoW.
"Isn't a raid plundering villages in WoW or something like that?" - Robert Desable
these companies are looking for a quick buck. dont care how the actualy product turns out as long as they make enough money on box sales.
and as for Wow is going to get better and older games has had more upgrades and wow has become so polished the gameplay and charcter movement is top of the line.
if newer games could have a good launch they could become polish as well.i think thes company could do better if they droped the sub fee to about 10 dollar a month thye could do alot better. even tho 15 isnt that much
company needs need to make the game and not rush it
I dont agree that WoW was successful because it had everything EQ had and more.
WoW was successful because it was hugely innovative in one way. It made MMOs casual so that every John Schmoe could play it with minimal effort. EQ had a huge grind and unforgiving death penalty system as well as heavy group dependency. WoW got rid of all that and allowed you to solo to max cap within a month of casual play.
That, together with the Warcraft IP, is what made WoW huge. And that is why MMOs after do not get the same success because they simply try to copy WoW and add their own spin of it.
GW 2 is not hugely innovative. The PvP is largely similar as other faction based MMOs and the PvE is also similar to games like Rift and WoW so it is not all that different.
TERA is basically WoW with action combat but with a lot less content and variety.
Basically all ThemeParks after WoW are not very innovative so they will never be as successful as WoW is/was. And what is needed is an MMO which is GROUNDBREAKING. Not just a little different in the combat or "dynamic" quests but it needs to present MMOs in a way which it has not been presented before, just like WoW did.
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i wouldnt say that im a hardcore wow fan.i have played many mmo's and have not found one that even comes close. i have beomce boredof wow at times and leave to play somethign else but when i leave i try 23 mmos and none has caught my attention and always come back to wow
everythign looks sort of outdated.not really the grapchics but the mechanics are soooooo sloppy.
idk about the rest of you but if the mechanics are sloppy i want play it for five minutes without logging and uninstalling. im not sure if the game actualy sucks or my expectations are too high on newer mmo
The subject of this message thread is specifically about MMOs, not just any game type.
A lot of people seem to think that WoW's success had to do with the timing of their release and the name Warcraft. The MMO having many different play options, features, functionality had nothing to do with it? What the player could do in the game had nothing to do with the success of it?
As I mentioned previously, if WoW had the features of Everquest and played like it and people called it an EQ-Clone because it had nothing new, but that EQII had all of the features that WOW has today, we'd be having this same discussion right now about EQII instead of WoW. I guarantee that. It has very little to do with the name "Warcraft" or that it was developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It has everything to do with how the game plays and what the player can do in the game more than anything else. WoW supports many different game play styles. Far more than Guild Wars 2 does. Guild Wars 2 provided something different, it didn't include everything WoW had then add more on top of that. Wow provided everything EQ had and more and many saw that and made the move. Sure there were a small few that went back to EQ because they had other reasons but more people are playing WoW today that used to play EQ than people playing another MMORPG (not all of MMORPG's combined, just another one) that used to play WoW.
WoW has smooth game play and features available to it more than any other MMORPG that I'm aware of. Can anyone name an MMORPG that has more game play options than WoW does? Having something different doesn't count because it doesn't include WoW's game play options. Remember, the entire point I'm making is that no MMORPG released since WoW has included all of the options that WoW has in terms of how the game can be played.
I agree with everything else you said except for that part. Even when you try to encourage social interaction with benfits like more xp for killing mobs and/or turning in quests while grouped people still don't interact. yes they form groups but its more like a pug in WoW than it is social. It is something that needs to be done so people do it. That doesn't mean they are being social. In fact when we had grind groups in SWG the only talking that really got done was "pick up bol missions to the North."
If the community in your MMO wants to be social they will be. A game mechanic won't stop that. If they don't want to be they won't no matter how hard a developer tries to force that. Any game in the future that tries to force social interaction on it's player base is doomed to failure.
It's always funny to me how people want games with a great active community but when they are there no plays them. Ryzom had (don't know if it's even still running) probably the nicest, most social community I had ever seen in a game. Where the hell was everyone? The game wasn't awful. It didn't look bad at all for it's time. The world was incredible. To bad so few ever played it.
The bottom line here is the majority of MMO players must not want to be social. So whatever game it is that people are looking for will be very niche if it ever gets developed.
I think two major reasons:
1.) Wow didn't have anything comparable competing with it.
2.) It took the better part of 6 months to a year to hit level 60 in Vanilla Wow and during that time you made friends and guildmates and invested a lot of time and energy into your toon. By the time you were level capped, you were emotionally invested in the people in the game and all that work you put into levelling a toon was precious to just toss away.
No bitchers.
@OP Such bullshit... you really believe this is true? WoW has been out for years and has had expansions and expansions, you expect new mmos to cover that right from the start AND add more? lol.
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How many more times is this going to come up?!?
1. Warcraft was one of the most succcessful RTSs of all time that had a massive fanbase to build on. And Blizzard had a fanbase above any other due to its Battle.net which was something no other company offered for its games.
2. Tera...seriously? Tera? Tera offered NOTHING other than a very large world. Its story is F2P quality and it took Vindictus's fighting style and made dodge, a hotkey making it LESS action combat than Vindictus which was "double tap" in the direction you wanted to dodge...and you could do it with ALL classes.
3. SWTOR is about as close as you can get with an MMO to match Warcraft yet Bioware didnt have the following size as Blizzard and KOTOR wasnt near as popular as Warcraft was.
All the cards was in place for WoW to become a massive success, something no other IP can hope to match outside of a Mario MMORPG made by Nintendo, for one of their consoles, and without a subscription.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Why newer MP3 players have not had the success IPod has had since IPod's release....
Why newer online music stores have not had the success that iTunes has had since ITunes release...
Why (insert product here)...
Notice a trend here? You are top dog when you come up with the really big idea before everyone else does. And no matter how clever your competitors are, you can never beat the original because that train has already gone and left.
By virtue of using WoW as a litmus for your argument, you are feeding the very thing that needs to be killed. They clone mentality. If you want WoW... play WoW. It's still there, albeit no where near what it used to be. If you think that model is so awesome, why do you keep looking for alternatives? And then when you can't find one, you return to the very game that you couldn't bare to spend another moment in just before. You are the reason there is no new ideas coming out... you feed the old ideas. You say to the developers, I would rather spend $15 a month playing a game that bores me than say not spend $15 a month to play a game that bores me. Developers are more than willing to give you more of the same.
The reality is, you get exactly what you ask for... because you keep going back to them no matter how tired they are. Eventually you will not go back... but right now there's far more people content with paying $15 to do dailies than there are those who are not. Until they get bored, nothing is going to change. Nothing. It's the genre that is tired. Time to move on to other things.
You didn't need that huge wall of text to convince us you knew nothing about why WoW was successful. All you had to do was make the incorrect statement that WoW offers more than other MMOs.
WoW has no unique features to call its own. When it launched, it barely had any of the features other MMOs did.
It offered NOTHING for hardcore gamers. Its raids were babytown frollics compared to other MMOs.
It was good for casuals, nothing more.
It became big because it was the first MMO made by a well known company, with a game IP that had millions of fans, and had MILLIONS in marketing behind it. From there, its all been pop culture momentum.
At the time WoW was released, it corrected the following issues that were in the top MMORPG at the time:
1. Training of an entire zone by one player. One player could wipe an entire raid force or any group of players just by pulling every mob in the zone. That couldn't be done with WoW. WoW had that fixed and was unique in this area.
2. Level up completely solo by any class/race combination in the game. This was also unique with WoW and made it so that anyone could level up to max level without caling in friends and they could do it with any character created.
3. One big world with only zones going to instances. The top MMORPG at the time had zones that took awhile to load each time you crossed them. WoW was unique in this manner where the entire game didn't have zones, it was all just one big area that you played in with the exception of instances or if you ported some place.
4. Simple race/class combinations. The top MMORPG and other MMORPGs at the time had complex combinations which in a lot of cases needed specific ones to get the top buffs together.
5. ... there are many others, but I'm sure most aren't interested ...
Concerning some of the other comments made...
Game developers should not give up in attempting to create the biggest MMORPG around. That would not be very smart. What would be smart is understand what happened. If you believe that the reason Blizzard is the top dog is because they had the backing of their name and their game franchise, you're seriously mistaken. That only causes people to pay attention to what you have. That's it! The game play must be there in order to continue to grow and gain popularity. If it's not there, it won't be happening.
The Star Wars franchise is much larger than Warcraft. More people in the world knew of Star Wars, yet the game play wasn't as in depth as WoW was. Could it have been? Of course, WoW made their game much more in depth than Everquest was at the time. How did they do it? By giving the player everything EQ had at the time and MORE!
By simply making the argument that Blizzard's success with WoW is the result of their company name and their RTS games Warcraft, Warcraft II, Warcraft III were the reason and every other gaming company should give up in attempting to create a bigger game is a huge cop-out. What you're saying to the community is that if you have a huge IP, you have a shot at creating the largest MMORPG around. That's not true by a LONG SHOT! You must have good game play and if you can't provide something more than what most people are playing, you're not going to do very well, that's the bottom line.
If GW2 had all the crap you're talking about adding to it (or changing) it wouldn't be GW2, just WoW-Plus, and likely not nearly as successful as it is because of it. Six months out and log-ins are increasing, they're still hiring and the game continues to grow. I don't care if they take over WoW or not... it's a great game as it is and a reason I'll never play WoW again.
WoW-Plus will always fall second to the original. The road to success doesn't lead through Azeroth.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Because there is no wow killer, and only way you'll be that successful is to "steal sub" from other game.
As much denial many people on this forum like to be, wow killed a few mmorpg. Even the developer of those games said they are bleeding sub to wow.
The mmorpg market is never that big. There isn't even that many mmorpg player in the world. If wow didn't search for their asian market, it will still only have 3 million sub.
And it is not easy to get in the China market for foreign game studio because of their regulation. So many studio don't even try because of the risk.