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[Column] World of Warcraft: 5 Reasons People Love to Hate WoW

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  • CanisLupusXCanisLupusX Member UncommonPosts: 14

    I only have one problem with WoW -  and that is the "WoW was the first MMO" trolls in OTHER games.

    Hell.

    Could anyone hammer to their mind that WoW NEVER was the first one?

    It only was and still is the topseller. And has its fanbase. I don't care about WoW.

    But the first ones are UO, EQ1, was Lineage1 released short b4 or after  WoW Vanilla release? But that are all games closed by now.

    Lets search for one not closed yet.... OH YES! Anarchy Online had its 3rd birthday and gone F2P two months before WoW came out.

  • FishmittsFishmitts Member CommonPosts: 227
    Originally posted by Konfess
    Originally posted by Lugors

    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.

    Verily, I couldn't have said it better.  Bravo.

    #2 An MMO sandbox space sim called Star Citizen just hit 16 MILLION AND GROWING in crowd funding. It's the short sighted investers and people like you that keep this genre so stale.

  • djazzydjazzy Member Posts: 3,578

    I don't love it or hate it.

    I just don't care about it. Haven't played it since Wrath of the Lich King. Just grew tired of it but I have no ill feelings towards it.

  • meadmoonmeadmoon Member UncommonPosts: 1,344
    Originally posted by Icewhite
    Originally posted by neosparkk
    And they have yet to offer balanced pvp.
    I don't believe this fabled chimera has ever walked the Earth.

    Balanced and unbalanced PvP is a figment of everyone's imagination. It's as simple as this:

    Ganker: The PvP is balanced.

    Gankee: The PvP is unbalanced.

    la fine

     

  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,739
    Originally posted by Asamof
    People always clamor for vanilla WoW and spit at any dumbing down of the game, but they forget that vanilla WoW was the ultimate dumbing down of the MMO genre AT THE TIME.  Vanilla WoW was considered  the super easy 'babbys first MMO', tailor made for players who couldn't cut it in the 'real' MMO's at the time. Just remember where you came from, vanilla WoW players.

     For those whose first MMO was wow it was probably somewhat challenging...For those of us that had experience it was quite easy...The hardest part about playing vanilla WoW was dealing with all the noobs that literally had no clue how to play..... I dont really hate WoW but I dont like what happened to the genre as a result of WoW.......

  • mhexmhex Member Posts: 29

    People hate Wow.. because other gaming companies coming out with MMOs aren't even able to emulate 1/10th of the superb qualities that Wow has. They all suck and are basic as hell.

    Therefore people hate Wow for setting the bar so high.

  • ganntakganntak Member UncommonPosts: 19
    Played wow since BC and it was a good game, just after 6/7 years people get bored and move on no matter how big the game is. Stayed until just before the Kung Fu Panda came out and like many others in our Guild moved on, it just wasn't the wow we knew anymore. The community had also become so toxic with all the cross realm stuff that people didn't even bother to communicate in dungeons/raids except to abuse others. With so many excellent F2P games out I don't see why I should pay £8.99 a month its just greed. As pointed out Blizzard does not have 7.7 million customers paying $15 a month its only 3-4 million. The Asian market pays a minimal very little by the hour fee. They also get free server/faction changes not being charged obscene amounts like the EU players. I moved over to Rift and Guild Wars2 which are both excellent games, Rift being 100% free is very much like the old wow I remember and I'm having a blast.GW2 is also another excellent game and free once you've bought the box with dare I say it a very nice decent community shock! I think a lot of wow players have forgotten why they started all those years ago which was to have fun and enjoy the game, they seem to now just use it as a glorified chat room terrified to move on our try something new despite continuously moaning about the game and saying how bored they are of it. Maybe one day I'll try wow again but I've moved on like a lot of my friends and it's just not the same game, it does however still have that special place in my heart as my first ever mmo and for that I say thank you Blizzard.
  • ShodanasShodanas Member RarePosts: 1,933

    I still pay for a WoW sub along with SW TOR although i play quite casually now. In my humble opinion these two are by far the best theme park MMO's out there and yes, i like theme parks and frown right back at you. The only sandbox i endured more than 30 days was EVE (six months) which is indeed a top quality game. 

    An interesting thing i noticed about the self called "true" or "pro" players who claim that they played WoW and found it too easy is this: i ask them how much of the heroic raid content they've cleared and how fast and the answer is usually "0". Did they ever participate in high rating (above 2K) arena PvP? No, they did not. Yeah, because real MMO players run around in sand box settings building houses and growing crops.

  • SpiiderSpiider Member RarePosts: 1,135

    Reason 1: Its a bad game

    Reason 2: Its a bad game

    Reason 3: Its a bad game

    Reason 4: ...

    You get my drift. And stop cheering for it, its going down and let it slide. It has its birth, peak, old age, let it go with some dignity. The only good thing from WOW is that Blizzard made crapload of money and I hope they will spend it in making a game I will actually like.

    No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.

  • MysteryBMysteryB Member UncommonPosts: 355
    I hate WoW because I got hacked and my 80 Warlock and 80 warrior hot deleted....didn't get them back so never playing again

    Mystery Bounty

  • DavisFlightDavisFlight Member CommonPosts: 2,556
    Originally posted by mhex

    People hate Wow.. because other gaming companies coming out with MMOs aren't even able to emulate 1/10th of the superb qualities that Wow has. They all suck and are basic as hell.

    Therefore people hate Wow for setting the bar so high.

    10/10, good solid troll post.

    If it's NOT a troll post, I weep for you.

  • twruletwrule Member Posts: 1,251

    The point about grinding dailies was the only one that even attempted to touch upon why those who take issue with this game might have a reasonable position. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

    How about:

    -Miserable community with often condescending treatment of the players by the devs.

    -The latest expansion completely jumped the shark and lore has been gradually replaced entirely with internet meme culture references.

    -After all this time, PvP still has a massive, unreasonable barrier to entry because of how resilience works.

    -PvE is more of the same, not helped by the non-sensical/uninteresting lore.

    -The whole cash shop thing; just the latest in an on-going relationship of condescension and wallet-gouging that has been going on for some time between devs and players.

    In sum, the game has little substance but to be a skinner box/treadmill, the devs know it and make their knowledge apparent by conditioning their customers to expect less from them while paying them more. The players themselves realize they are being exploited, but often won't admit it, turning on each other instead of quitting or doing something about it, leaving the community in shambles.
  • twruletwrule Member Posts: 1,251

    The rest of my post isn't showing up for some reason, so here it is:

    In sum, the game has little substance but to be a skinner box/treadmill, the devs know it and make their knowledge apparent by conditioning their customers to expect less from them while paying them more. The players themselves realize they are being exploited, but often won't admit it, turning on each other instead of quitting or doing something about it, leaving the community in shambles.

  • lordoffilinglordoffiling Member Posts: 37

    This article is completely wrong. Those are *not* the reasons. The real reasons are as follows:

    1) Every Quest In The Game Is Boring

    Probably the most glaring problem with WoW is its boring quest structure. Thousands of quests to do, and every single one is some variation on "Go here, kill 10, come back, claim reward". Even a few of those types of quests are inexcusable. Filling your *entire game* with them is preposterous. They worked at the time for one reason: Because before WoW, there were no such thing as quests. No such thing as a quest journal, no such thing as goals. You had Ultima Online, you had EverQuest, you had Dark Age of Camelot, none of them really gave you much more to do than wander out into the middle no nowhere and kill stuff for no reason other than there was *nothing else to do*. WoW's quest system gave some structure to the mindliess killing grind. While that was an improvement at the time it was still nowhere near what it needed to be.

    2) Push Button Combat is Boring

    Pressing keys one through six on your keyboard in a repetitive twist of abilities is not fun gameplay. In addition, because maximum damage output relies on firing the abilities the moment their cooldowns end, the tendency is to stare at the buttons and play the UI, rather than observe the center of the screen, where all the quote-cool stuff-unquote stuff is happening. Combine boring combat with boring quests and what you've got is a game that is quite simply boring, all the way around.

    3) It has set the MMO industry back a full decade

    MMOs could and should be much more than they are. This genre of game still has vast and deep reserves of undiscovered potential. However, because WoW came along and dominated in what can only be the biggest case of "right place, right time" success since the discovery of crude oil, we had to suffer through no fewer than six years of every MMO that came out attempting to beat Blizzard at their own game and topple WoW by copying its boring combat and quest systems. This led to an overbloat of mediocre rip-offs and the coining of the term WoW clone. It's not a sour grapes term. If you play the UI rather than playing the game and every single quest involves going to a place, killing a set number of monsters, then returning to the quest giver to claim your reward, you're playing a WoW clone.

    4) No Reinvestment

    WoW brings in hundreds of millions of dollars per year. It reinvests a tiny, tiny fraction of those funds back into the game. Blizzard have more money than they know what to do with as a result of WoW, but when compared to how much it brings in versus how much and how often it expands, the impression one gets is that they're laughing all the way to the bank. Coasting is not impressive. The list of features that other, lesser games have that WoW doesn't is extensive, and when they are taxed with this observation at panels and interviews, the excuse given is that to add the requested feature would be too expensive. Would it really be so much to cut into their 3000% profit margin to add, say, player housing for example?

    5) Did I mention it's holding back the industry?

    There are other, better games out there that should be doing far better than they are, but they're not because WoW is still there, hoarding the would-be paying subscribers for themselves. People are either unwilling to pay another sub fee, or unwilling to leave WoW for all the hours they've invested in it. Like a giant tree in the woods that blots out the sun, killing smaller but superior trees before they can grow and improve the forest, WoW destroys potentially superior titles that have features and ideas that the industry needs, simply by being.

    There you have it. The real list of reasons why people hate WoW, may it one day melt in a barrel of acid.

  • Stuka1000Stuka1000 Member UncommonPosts: 955

    You missed the main one for me.  The destruction of decent and helpful communities.  WoW removed all the major barriers to entry that used to exist, the main one being complexity.  No doubt that it was a sound business decision that brought millions of new players into the MMO space and millions of dollars into the Blizzard coffers.  From a puritan point of view though it was a decision that tore apart the heart and soul of what MMO's used to be.  To put it another way; An art critic knows the difference between the monalisa and a paint by numbers kit, WoW is the latter.

     

    I don't mean to sound elitist but the lack of complexity coupled with mass marketing left the door open and the world poured in.  Again, a sound business decision but the term WoW kiddies sprouted very soon after the game's release.  Far from pointing to the age of the various players collectively dumped in that group, it pointed to their behaviour which to many veterans of the pre-WoW games appeared completely unacceptable.  Now, as a direct result of WoW we no longer have MMORPG's.  Instead we have a ton of single player experiences that just happen to be played online and that other people play as well.  Even the major AAA titles of late ( I'm looking at you GW2 ) Can be sailed through solo without ever needing to even speak to another player, and that for me isn't what the MMO experience should be.  But it is what WoW created.

  • HurricanePipHurricanePip Member Posts: 167

    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.

     

    The two sentences above don't make sense together.  Are the Asian players not part of the 7m player base?

    It's not going to change, but articles really should've done a better job of making accurate statements to support editorial opinions..  7m, 10m, 11m are a lot of players, but they're not all created equal, which has always lead to misleading and incorrect statements. 

    The game's also not nine years old in all markets.  Expansions are especially late in arriving in some regions.

    I'm not sure if this was a serious article or was meant to be funny.  If it was serious, it reads more like a fanboy forum post.

     

    If you don't worry about it, it's not a problem.

  • LungingWolfLungingWolf Member Posts: 73


    Originally Posted by Suzie Ford

    1) Utter & Complete Jealousy

    Still, as said in the intro, World of Warcraft is the top dog, the game to beat, the standard against which every other MMO measures itself. Don't try to deny it. MMO developers are constantly looking for ways to 'think outside the box' in order to take down WoW. After so many years of attempting (and failing) to clone WoW, developers are now pushing the envelope and becoming more and more innovative in the process. This is only a good thing for the industry.

    Until the time, however, that a game comes along that truly improves all that World of Warcraft is, it will remain on top. There never has been a more popular game than WoW and for good reason: It set the standard. For my money, it will take a long, long time for any other game to become what WoW has been to so many people. It is truly something special.



    "It set the standard"? Standard for what? The kind of revenue which each MMO company should lust after? The level of timesinking which each MMO company should put in their game?

    Here are the real reasons why WoW has remained the so-called “top dog” of the MMO industry:

    • Nostalgia: As WoW opened up the MMO market to a broader audience, a significant number of MMO players got their first MMO experience through playing WoW. Because of this, WoW wields the potent power of nostalgia over these MMO players and, thus, many of these players cannot walk away from WoW.
    • Player Investment: Maxing out a character’s level, skills, and gear in WoW requires a great deal of personal investment, especially if you do it for many alternate characters and over the course of many expansions. Many MMO players refuse to walk away from that kind of investiment in WoW.
    • Social Circles: WoW’s audience includes many families and circles of friends. Quite obviously, people don’t like to leave such connections behind.
    • WoW’s Longevity: Because WoW’s reign at the top has been long and stable, many view WoW as a safe, quality choice for their “MMO home,” even if they play other MMOs.
    • WoW Pride: Yes, WoW does have many legions of fanboys loyal to it. But, while this fanboyism is originally rooted in other factors, it ultimately has a life of its own.
    • Inflated Subscription Numbers: Yes, many WoW players have more than one account, gold seller agents have many accounts besides the ones which they hijack, and Blizzard’s very own definition of a “subscriber” is not very clear. What a mess.

    WoW is not the industry standard for anything. WoW simply came along at the right time, used new ways to entangle people into its game, and now rides its own coattails. But, since people have caught on to WoW’s tricks, no other MMO company has been able to replicate WoW’s success in entangling people. But, even so, the damage is done and many people remain entangled in WoW.

    Waiting for: Citadel of Sorcery. Along the way, The Elder Scrolls Online (when it is F2P).

    Keeping an eye on: www.play2crush.com (whatever is going on here).

  • WhynoRMAHWhynoRMAH Member Posts: 7

    I think WoW is a great game. I loved making gold and doing dailies to collect all pets and mounts between doing PvP and PvE.

     

    In the end the pandas got to me. They don't fit in with the rest of the world and the story is some teen angst stuff. Fighting embodied emotions is so meh. Why is this new-age panda telling me to keep my emotions in check? Give me an out of control warlock or mage on a powertrip raising demons, the dead or making constructs. Sha energy. Huh? What? Couldn't it be a regular powertrip instead of sha energy turning some Horde or Ally leader? Powerful artifact in the hands of the orc chief and such?

     

    I saw the D3 expansion video from gamescon when some guy explained the steps they went through in developing the new Crusader class. Does it fit in to the lore of the Diablo world? I thought to myself  "I wish that guy had been on the WoW team".

  • VoqarVoqar Member UncommonPosts: 510

    WoW is still a decent game, as dumbed down and gutted as it has become.  How many WoW clones have their been now...and how do they constantly fail to nail the formula enough such that WoW isn't affected at all by them?  When so many WoW clones are just weak not so close copies, why not just play the still better original?

     

    I can't stomach WoW anymore myself but 6.5 years of fun til cata came along isn't too shabby.  I'll always respect WoW and have tons of great memories from it.  I do feel like WoW has evolved TOO far towards dumbing down and casual, and don't think their management or design team are worth a crap anymore.

     

    Oddly the entire genre is shifting more towards ultra dumbed down and the games just get worse and worse, have no chance of being sub-based, and play more like weak single player games for the brain dead.

     

    "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"

     

    Doubt it.  I doubt any MMORPG ever boasts WoW's peak numbers.  There are too many MMORPGs now and too many online games.  The landscape of online gaming has changed a lot since WoW first released.  Bliz hooked a lot of first time players and people that don't play many other games - nobody else really has that kind of firepower.  WoW will lose more players over time but it's not like their loss is noticeably boosting any other particular game.

     

    Plus, MMORPG devs are almost as dumb as the players the try to cater too.  As long as they keep making solo ez-mode games that try to be everything to everybody while being strong at nothing, they will just continue to be mediocre and wallow in the F2P cesspool.  F2P for MMORPGs is a model of churn (and a steaming pile of dook), and it's unlikely that any F2P will ever boast anything close to WoW's numbers.

     

    I have no idea why people hate WoW.  I can only say that most MMORPG players aren't all that bright.  It's like something that's illogical but trendy amongst the less intelligent.  It's extra comical when players in the latest WoW clone are saying their game is the best thing ever and WoW sucks...when their game is completely derivative of and a weak copy of WoW's formula.  In almost every MMORPG out since WoW saying WoW sucks is like saying the MMORPG you're currently playing sucks.

     

    Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.

  • WraithoneWraithone Member RarePosts: 3,806

    You had to know, that this column would attract the worst of the anti WoW trolls and haters... Shame on you... ^^  I started in late beta. I have two 90's an 87 and six 85's.  But right now, I'm taking a vacation from WoW. Why? Largely boredom. That coupled with the fact that I hate the GOGOGO! crowd, and their buddies the GearScore snobs. 

    If you aren't dripping in the highest tier purples, you can pretty much forget seeing much of the new content.  For that, I blame Ghostcrawler and his excessive focus on spread sheets and data mining, rather than on what makes the game, or a given class fun to play.  I may go back for the next expansion, but I doubt I'll stay for very long.  Unless things turn around, I'm pretty much done with WoW.

    "If you can't kill it, don't make it mad."
  • mhoward48mhoward48 Member UncommonPosts: 99
    They forgot the dumb looking cartoony look. That is why I quit playing it after two weeks. I could not stand looking at the cartoon characters.
  • LostarLostar Member UncommonPosts: 891
    [quote=mhoward48]They forgot the dumb looking cartoony look. That is why I quit playing it after two weeks. I could not stand looking at the cartoon characters.[/quote]

    And it is uninformed opinions like these that causes me to see every "wow hater" as a simple minded dolt. The article clearly made reference to World of Warcraft's stylized graphics. Did you even read this article?
  • someforumguysomeforumguy Member RarePosts: 4,088

    While I don't hate WoW (I actually think it is a very good game), I don't like to play it though. Point 2 is one of the more important reasons why. The setting and artstyle doesn't help either.

    Somehow WoW managed to implement features in a way that I just don't like. A list of not so important details which were on their own certainly not gamebreaking. But as a whole made this game not very interesting to me. I can list them all, but they would all come down to personal preference, so meh.

  • StefacleStefacle Member UncommonPosts: 5

    I don't hate WoW, I hate what WoW did to the MMO industry.

    Luckily the MMO industry seems to be waking up from its slumber. We have some very promising MMO titles coming up, and most of them have their own style and doesn't look like the typical WoW clones that we have grown so used to. Even WoW is finally dwindling, and it is a question of time before we will have a new game on the MMO throne.

    I have high hopes that the future of MMO's is bright, yet again.

  • MukeMuke Member RarePosts: 2,614
    Originally posted by Lugors

    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.

    it's a public forum, not just a fanboi 24/7 WOW Appreciation Day here. People who do not like WOW don't get shot over here like on that MMO-Champ site where 1 word of criticism ends up in 100x hatereplies and a instaban from the moderators.

    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. There is, but it is easier to give players who do not like to think for themselves a dangling carrot instead of letting  them making their own content.  Themepark players also do not notice the fact that they are doing the same thing over and over again and thus are easily satisfied with simple content.

    Sandbox players -usually- are more adult too, exceptions are there ofc, and that market is smaller then the teenage generation who haven't got work/family to take care of and play 23/7.

    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.

    There is no depth, you said it yourself, it is as basic as it gets, it's a themepark (your quote), it's just dps-tank-healer spank the boss fights (which are all scripted to the very split second) from level 1 to max level, jumping questhubs all the way, the difference is that there is a lot of content for this template in this game. But fact is that it's all the same, just the boss has a new skin, the zone has a different theme, and you are doing the same scripted event over and over again.

    But depth? What is there more to do then the standard cookie cutter raids/arenas?  mindless reputation grinds? Farmville? or those tamagotchi fights?  This game is as shallow as it gets, it just appeals as it is a very easy to get into MMO for beginners and they got many players hooked onto this game with their gear grind mechanic, which was a brilliant strategy by Blizzard.

    But if that target group likes it: fine, they are right by playing it then.

    "going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"

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