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[Column] World of Warcraft: 5 Reasons People Love to Hate WoW
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
One of the most common complaints about any MMO for the last nine or so years has been that it's a "WoW clone", said in a snarky tone of voice to boot. In The List today, we look at five reasons why people like to pile the hate on World of Warcraft. See what we think before adding your thoughts to the comments.
World of Warcraft is still the top dog in the MMO space today. Even with subscription numbers slipping dramatically over the past two years or so, WoW still boasts "only" seven million subscribers. That's right: Seven million people paying $15.00 a month to play a nine year old game. Even in Asia where game time is purchased by the hour, the amount of income generated by WoW is staggering and could probably outpace the GNP of many small nations. There's not a publisher or developer in the business that wouldn't want to be the one to topple the Blizzard juggernaut and, while inevitably that time will come, WoW remains the most popular MMO on the planet.
Read more of Suzie Ford's The List: 5 Reasons People Love to Hate WoW.
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"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
Couple of additional points to ponder.
1. WoW has it's own dedicated and fairly popular fansite in MMO-Champ. No other site for any other game comes close for up to date news on a game. This website is focused on everything else besides WoW, so it's a good place for the WoW haters to vent.
2. Don't give the sandbox vocal minority that much credit. If there were a market for that sort of game, developers would be making them. There is a huge gulf between what shows up on an internet forum, and what people open their wallets for.
3. WoW clones keep showing up because that's where the market is, and no theme park type game has close to the content and depth of WoW. When gameplay is the end all be all of the genre, it's hard to compete with 9 years of iteration that WoW has.
Don't agree with the #1 jealousy but overall surprisingly agree and feel the same with everything else except the lemming one.
I would add Ghostcrawler to the reasons though. For me what drove me over was the neglect of the Warriors as tanks in Wrath. It was proven by numbers that warriors were behind everyone else by a significant margarine with the exception of DKs but they refused to do anything and were essentially told "STFU" since top guilds can complete the top raids even though they were at a disadvantage.
Maybe it's not the case anymore but am not buying xpacs and paying subs to find out.
I just hope they keep Ghostcrawler away from Titan, let him further degenerate WoW and keep him there.
I still enjoy WoW.
Playing now, enjoying Raid Finder, kind of enjoying the Thunder Isles quests and little weekly events etc.
Going to be tough to put FFXIV:ARR down to do my weekly and raid finders...
It's funny how people have to counter the WoW haters. So people don't like your game, a lot of people don't like Vanguard either. Just post news and real stuff and don't go oh you must either be 1 of 5 types of people or a combi of them.
I don't like WoW, I played it, I know what I want from a game and I don't want WoW. I hate the copies, I hate the dumping down that seems to be in every game.
#0 -- WOW expansion Cataclysm
a bore fest that players are stuck trudging through to reach 85
EQ2 fan sites
threat everywhere
I still enjoy WoW to a degree. Although, number 2 on this list is a legitimate gripe, IMO and is one reason I stopped playing recently. I personally miss the days of BC and WoTLK when builds mattered and were interesting and CC was actually used in PVE in order to progress through dungeons. Now everything feels like a zerg, daily grind and the community is one of the elitist I've ever seen and makes me shy away from any kind of raiding or partying, which is a shame because that's all there is to the endgame in a nutshell.
Someone above me said WoW has depth, I have to wonder what he considers deep. When I think of depth I think of FFXI and now FFXIV, which I'll be playing come tomorrow. I still have a love for WoW, but I would never consider it "deep". Ever.
lol @ 1 and 5,i guess some doesn't hate wow when they something is "wow clone" they just mean when wow is available it is a waste of time to play something else like that.not that i agree or disagree.i played and enjoyed SWTOR for example cause i like bioware's stories too.also many that don't like it either tried wow too late or not familiar with the lore or don't like mmorpg itself.
as for me i still like wow but not as i used to mostly because of repetitive contents and the grind(reason #2) so i decided to start subbing again either near the end of MoP last patch or the beginning of next expansion cause if it at least focus on Kiljaeden or Sargeras idc what else they add or not to the game...last time i played it was at the beginning of MoP and after i hit 90 and leveled a panda i just lost interest and quit.(also as expected monks were OP like hell there was this healing bubble thingy spell that healed like 40% of my hp easily i could hardly die they probably fixed it soon after)although i am sure till now they added new things that weren't in the game before but it is still the same thing at core probably.still any of these doesn't mean wow deserve the hate it gets at all but actually the opposite.the fact that it could entertain me since 2004 till MoP shows how epic it was.but hating is normal on the internet for many reasons(sadly many are jealous too although i hope its not really the number 1 reason cause its just sad while funny at the same time)so we shouldn't be surprised anymore.
my top MMOs: UO,DAOC,WoW,GW2
most of my posts are just my opinions they are not facts,it is the same for you too.
Have you never heard of Zam ? Started out as a dedicated Everquest site waaaay back. Now its expanded but its still the best place to go for eq, eq2, rift...etc. WoW isn't the only one with a good fan-site to siphon off the fan boys.
As for the "sandbox minority" ..you're talking about the first people to ever play an MMO. These are people that played UO...don't disrespect the origins of the genre.
Everquest, Everquest 2 both have comparable or more content then WoW and are both theme parks. Both vastly preferrable imo too (I played WoW for several years as well) The problem is new games aren't given a chance. WoW was the last game to be given the benefit of the doubt from the start. Everquest was already five years old when WoW came out and had five years of content( and it was a TON of content). New games are expected to compete with WoW out of the box, its just silly. You're asking for all that time and money to go into a game before its even been released.
Its this syndrome of people seeing a 9 year product and comparing a 2 month product to it and wondering why it doesn't measure up.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
There is in general usually some truth to stereo types which is pretty much what this article is listing...
My "issue" with WoW atm is more due to personal experience than the list. I like to waste time in low level bg's and I see the same thing I saw in DAoC... speed hacks etc (its not hard to spot a guy out running 100% mounts full time for example).
Game is end game heavy and that is where they focus but that is the problem.... Any possible new players you can get come in and experience all the love you find in low levels and leave. Thus new growth drops...
That's not specific to wow but its why it and many other MMO's leave a bad taste and the impression of a brain dead developer. Especially after you come up with 9 billion dollars (or w/e it was) to buy it back ...
WoW in it's current state is not bad, however a lot has changed since the beginning days. There was no quest helper, you had to read the quest text to figure out where to go and eventually if you could not figure it out you went to thottbot or wowhead. Also there was no XP boost except resting from Inns. So leveling to 60 took a lot of time, even for the elitist ones. You invested in your character, crunching numbers from gear to talents, and getting to end game meant raiding for epics. Dungeons didn't have any epic gear you had to raid for those. So showing off your epic gear was epic in itself to show how hard or focused you were (or lucky) at gaining epics. People used to truly show off their gear and mounts.
Now I will say WoW for vets is easy and fast to get to end game with little to no number crunching and Epics handed out at every corner. For new players it still is a great experience, however I feel like they will never get to truly be attached to their character and have that feeling of showing off that special mount that dropped, which only had a 1% drop rate, or the gear to show off your hard work.
Seems like with each expansion Blizzard makes it easier and faster to get to that expansion level for new players and alts so they can focus on the expansion instead of what all of what Azeroth had to offer.
I don't hate WoW.
I hate certain features Blizzard introduced that make me not want to play it any more.
Yes, one of them is the ridiculously over-used Daily mechanic, where you have to grind for weeks, and in some cases months, at a time in order to progress. Dammit, I already have a job, I don't want to pay for a second one!
Another is the streamlining of the already very theme-park-ey content in such a way that the last vestiges of non-linearity pretty much died with Cataclysm and their remains were salted over and burnt with Pandaria.
A third is the much-bashed Dungeon Finder. I would have loved to find a few gaming buddies since my old WoW acquaintances all quit. But how to find people with which you click? The open world is pretty much useless, and "doing a dungeon together" has been replaced by "run through it as fast as possible with as little regard to fellow players as possible so I can do it again for maximum profit!".
Oh, and CRZ. Nice idea, horribly executed. They do not promote playing together in any way (since there are only three or four group quests in the open world, out of approximately 4,000+ quests). Their only effect on me as a player is 'resource rivalry', and that I can do without.
Still, I become nostalgic from time to time and want to visit my old and well-loved Draenei priest (and yes, I switched from Human with BC, sue me. Or better, don't :-P). And every time I regret re-subbing at most two weeks into the game because of aforementioned points.
Hopefully this time my brain will finally accept that the WoW I dearly love (yes, i DO love it - well, its olden form) isI forevermore only available on private servers, which I won't frequent because.. ick.
WoW has many things to dislike about it, and the major one for me are the fans of the game who cannot pull their head out of Blizzard's backside long enough to look at the game they are playing objectively.
I read this so called 'article' and I see those WoW-colored glasses tinting the bias of the author and, at this point, I just shake my head.
Don't get me wrong, I played WoW from Vanilla to MoP and while I enjoyed many elements along the way, I've always disliked many as well. I don't feel making a list would do any good, they are PERSONAL feelings and have nothing to do with how others perceive the game.
WoW is not a bad game. WoW is not a great game. I, personally, have outgrown it. I've outgrown associating with people who will defend WoW tooth and nail without logic. I get it, you like it - all the power to you.
However, I am really surprised by MMORPG.com lately allowing extremely bias 'opinion' pieces to be published as if it is 'news'.
World of Warcraft: the most popular and successful MMO in history.
Hey look, its a fact. So happens to be true too.
Yet for some reason that argument doesn't do anything when you are talking to someone who doesn't like the game. I wonder why that is? Not every game will appeal to everyone. I know plenty of non-wow players who would react very negatively if you tossed that stupid line in their face.
I take that last one, "Jealousy", as the reason many haters pop up for Guild Wars 2 (the 2nd best Western MMORPG at the moment, and yet only in it's 1st year). The game has done so much better than others in the genre over the past 3-5 years that people are angry that their favorite game hasn't had the same pizazz.
I'll admit that WoW 'was' a good game for it's time and very enjoyable. But, I'll also say that -not hating it- the age is showing and makes it passable. MMORPGs are evolving beyond that older model that WoW was founded upon (EQ clone, most say). Maybe Blizzard will make Titan an evolution like the others coming down the pipe, because they will fall flat on their face if they emulate WoW's systems that are well over a decade old....