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World of Warcraft really killed everything
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
Here is what happened,
Lets go Way back. MMOs were still new and not completely refined. We had UO and EQ1 but they were rough drafts in a time where Dialup was the best we could use.
Around 2003 Blizzard developed World of Warcraft in with competition of Everquest 2 by Sony to be the next generation MMO. Everquest 2 lost with it's poor graphics engine and just plain ugly world and zoning.
This left us with only World of Warcraft, with perfect timing of EVERYTHING.
- Faster internet with DSL and Cable modem.
- Non instanced game world.
- Community based tools and quest hubs.
- Slow leveling, allowing everyone to stay that level for longer periods to make friends with a mutual goal.
- Cartoon, but stable for lower end computers.
- Quick fixes to bugs.
- Non-Zoned Areas to play, with a theme for each one along with music to set the mood.
- 6 starting areas for freedom and replay.
- PvP that worked.
- Low competition
- No costly expansion's for years, adding they were not needed for years
The list could go on and on. EverQuest 2 fans could argue forever but WoW was it, hands down. The money was rolling in. Marketing was not structured enough to interfere yet, not that it had to !......Millions of people were rolling in, kids in school had a major fade. " if you don't play WoW your behind ".
OK, now that I set the stage, I'll go into the downhill slide :
Around the EXACT SAME TIME maybe 2008 or so ( don't hold me to that ) three things happened.
1) Developers began mass producing mmos to hop on the action
2) Marketing took over.
3) World of Warcraft developed the dungeon finder. The beginning of Lobby game. This idea was met with mixed reactions. I could safely say 50/50. This killed the community. You no longer needed that guild, or a friends list THIS WAS THE REAL BOTTOM LINE OF THE END OF DEEP FRIENDSHIP.
Deep friendship is what makes you log in day after day for months or years. It's why people don't stop playing after they learn all them cool abilities and have seen all the world has to offer.
Marketing departments began studying Blizzards World of Warcraft. They took it upon themselves to copy the Dungeon Finder not knowing it was a downfall, thinking Bilzzard was still making millions. They in braced this extremely new feature without the understanding that it will destroy long term gameplay that only World of Warcraft could overcome with its monopoly............This is when the 30 day non-social mmo came to life.
Other factors that killed the mmo experience were Dynamic events, personal story lines and instanced zones. This turned mmos into just games.
Not many players play games longer than 30 days, but mmos they will !
Comments
FF14 is the perfect example of the mmo killer.
- Dungeon finder
- Extremely small zones, even split cities.
- 250 part solo quest line.
- 45 min times dungeons.
Elders Scrolls Online makes a good second example with
- Mega servers
- No name plates.
- Instanced zones
- Solo easy
- Dungeon finder
Modern my butt !!!!!!!...............This is why ArcheAge is so controversial right now. Its community based. But the Cash shop is causing panic. Lots of miss trust !.....Yet, its what players are looking for !
ArcheAge is as wowish as every other traditional mmo out there.
The only difference is the crafting and trading in AA is based on a sandbox idea.
Dont type huge walls of texts blaming old mmos for the demise of new ones and then use AA as the one making the difference and causing controversy.
MMOS that live under WoWs shadow saw it coming. You cant beat WoW at its own game, they will beat themselves in time. AA made something diffrerent (craftin/trading) but the majority of the game is traditional mmorpg
EDIT: AA started on the right path to break the wow cycle, but then they became another wow like game with generic features.
This is quite amusing I happen to play FFXIV ARR. I group daily in it and the game is very,very crowded. People are enjoying playing it and best of all the dungeons have a good set up where they get harder with time and good skill at tanking ,healing and even DPS comes to bear in the harder content. The game is challenging and very enjoyable. You actually have to play well and know your class and skills to do well.
FFXIV ARR is doing well so you are barking up the wrong tree. I also think you have not seen a lot of the zones in FFXIV ARR because they have little nooks and crannies jammed with stuff and some just take my breath away and I love some of the caves they manage to hide and open up to whole new vistas. Their weather system rocks and I think the game is especially successful because it encourages people to group for dungeons while allowing you to advance on quest hubs and personal story and class quests alone.
May be you're trying too hard to find fault where there is none. You just have not learned to let it go yet and enjoy the games that are currently available. If you just go on tilting at windmills you end up wasting your time and energy .
One other thing I almost forgot WoW was like a perfect storm in vanilla and TBC .It is far from the genre destroyer you will have us believe it also exploded the popularity of MMORPGs and we would not have the huge variety and number of MMOs if not for it because people do not invest in niche. The reason this genre is anywhere it is now is because of WoW. You see it as the reason for the killing everything I see it as the game that has allowed investment in the genre to grow tenfold and a lot of the games now available would never even have seen the light of day if not for the success that WoW was. Money only comes in from investors when an investment might be profitable. When Everquest was the fattest cat in town we were looking 450k max . Do you really believe the genre would have grown with those figures ? Before you demonize WoW think again why a company like Trion would even be here to buy the rights to AA if not for WoW.
It's not entirely based on PVP, there is dungeons and raids, and my friend who usually dislike PVE, he loves the PVE in AA. The PVP function is the PK system in general, to give more sense of freedom to people being able to attack anyone, while at the sametime they will have consequences by doing so. It's really about if you're too afraid of people going to attack you while you're just strolling around, then its best to move on and find another game.
It's like this :
It's the early 1900. Automobiles are newly invented and only manufactured for a few years.
You come along with a great automobile that blows away the competition in every way possible. Engines that last for years, good suspension, and body design, everything. You basically capture the market.
However years later your still doing great, You decide to do something stupid. You add a device to limit the speed to 35 mph. Yet the computation is still crap, so people continue to buy your car.
IMPORTANT :
Now other manufactures are finally getting better, they stole many of your ideas to make their vehicles better along with the 35 mph device.......Somehow this device begins to be the normal even if it needlessly needs to be installed. Buyers are saying......... " I really don't like any Automobiles "......There scratching their heads in wonder, something is wrong with all of them.
This is the dungeon finder !!
You may say " I like dungeon finders "
Well then you like Lobby games........Understand that lobby games don't last long, and we have 200 mmo flops to prove it
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Once I discovered this really cool thing called "outside" and these things called "wife" and "children" I've found that dungeon finders are quite helpful now that I don't play games 9 hours per day.
The only thing WoW killed was the necessity to spend 40 hours a week playing a freaking video game. Good riddance.
Op got most of it right except the thought that WOW won over EQ2 for those reasons which is far from the truth because i was there in both games and heard all the chit chat.
YES wow's success was nothing more than timing and there already rabid fan following however EQ2's faults were not an ugly world or instancing because BOTH games have instances but when you start both games they are not instancing,matter of fact Wow starts you in the middle of nowhere in an UGLY world.I would most certainly rather start in a huge city full of exploration rather than the wilderness with nothing but a grass texture and a few trees dotted around.
However i have most certainly seen almost every game copy that EQ2/Wow design and with VERY little variance.
It is sad to see even my beloved Square Enix move towards an EQ2/Wowish design first around the Abyssea FFXI era and then with FFXIV.This is the sad reality of business it NEVER gives a true indication of what a developer is capable of ,only design decisions based on what they believe is the largest market to cater to.
Both EQ2 and Wow were completely solo single player game designs with ONLY instance or dungeons as the reason to socialize with anyone else.I was MUCH more satisfied playing FFXI at the time and i even felt that with FFXI's low poly graphics they looked better than WOW,the textures were better and detail was better however no way were either close to EQ2 which looked much better with better lighting.
Wow's success is the reason we see no other design it is because no other game had even a REMOTE chance at the same numbers as WOW because the very few games before that time could only muster around 300k players as the market was puny back then.SO if a business/investor looks ONLY at numbers which imo is a poor quality investor they will ONLY see a WOW design as the best one to follow.
Then we got Farmville a solo game,Moba's again solo games,the industry seems to have a ton of single minded players all wanting to play in a MMO atmosphere it really is mind boggling.The ONLY answer that makes sense is they want to be solo but want others around to BRAG,show-off to.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Well said! Especially with the boom of - "Faster internet with DSL and Cable modem" it was the thing who allowed to be WoW so successfully and most played MMO for years.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.? -Albert Einstein
"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent" - Qui-gon Jinn. After many years of reading Internet forums, there's no doubt that neither does the ability to write.
So if you notice that I'm no longer answering your nonsense, stop trying... because you just joined my block list.
I agree with everything OP said, but when he mentioned Archeage I stoppped reading him.
AA = generic themepark with some farmville elements and no raiding. Its poor man's WoW.
I agree OP I also dont have a ton of time but I too do not need a LFD tool because its not needed never will be needed. If players play MMO properly and make friends and create a network of friends they will almost never need to find a random person. The problem is the people who feel its needed come up with 50 million excuses, however the fact still remains. They dont want to play an MMO and they would be better off in a single player game.
It far and away attracted the largest audience ever seen in MMO space, and regardless of why it managed to do so it was inevitable that most game developers would look to it for design inspiration, especially with the ever increasing amounts of money these games take to design.
Probably should not use FFXIV as an example of market failure, by all accounts it may very well be the second most successful subscription based MMO currently out there, if it's managed to surpass Lineage 1 yet. If this successful, you can't point towards its designs and say don't do this, because apparently many people are quite happy with it.
Same goes for SWTOR, ESO, along with FFXIV and WOW, they dominate the MMO space outside of MOBAs and their ilk.
Now I'm not happy this is how it turned out, I'm fortunate I have EVE to play during this MMORPG "dark age" I feel we've been in, and there has been some signs of new life with titles such as AA, BD, SC, to name a few.
But we really need to stop calling modern theme park design a failure, it brought in hordes of new players and cash, which is the primary goal of the people who fund and create these games.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
You have been here since 2007 and are just now realizing this?
No seriously, the majority of people have known WoW destroyed this genre with its "revolutionary-ness". Brought MMOs to the masses and took away everything the niche crowd of us loved about them in one fell swoop. Good for gaming companies, bad for the minority of MMOers who loved the old way.
Oh...and you forgot Daoc.
You are talking from a business standpoint, we are gamers here dude in case you didn't notice. No one would be stupid enough to say WoW was a business failure, the fact you think this is what the topic is baffles me.
Nowhere in the OP did he claim modern themeparks are a failure. He only says they set a poor standards for the whole genre, which i can agree with.
SWTOR, ESO, FFXIV and WOW are basically the same game with different graphics. Everyone of them has linear, story-driven questing experience, that holds your hand throughout the game. Every single one of them has a finder-tool, that allows you to join an instanced zone with some other players and come back to where you left when the ride is over. Also, every one of them ends in multiplayer experience you're suppose to repeat endlessly as long as you want to continue your subscription.
Of course these games dominate the MMO space, since we don't have options really. We have many indie games with great ideas, but their technical quality is not acceptable for having a sub fee these days.
The reality is exactly how the OP describes it: There was a succesfull product, which was changed to worse, and its competitors copied the changed version and didn't realise the original product was better, by far.
Some of us who like the genre simply don't know any better, so they won't miss it. They keep telling how MMOs are the best thing ever happened, and are upset if someone dares to criticise their favorite game.
I kinda doubt that it is the dungeon finders fault, dungeon finders are good for small guilds that need 1 more player and so on.
The problem with the dungeon finder is more the fact that the dungeons now are generally so easy that the lousiest PUG can complete them with little problems so there is no need to bother finding good players. Without the dungeon finder people just spam LFGs in the main city anyways and that is exactly the same thing but with slightly more work. A dungeon finder would have helped or hurt very little in EQ or similar games because the dungeons were harder so PUGing was often really tough since a group that has played together for a while are way better than a PUG.
But there are plenty of other things that hurt the social part of the games as well. Like using an auction house instead of player owned stores, the today diminishing open world group content, the ninja friendly need or greed loot system, locking combat encounters and a whole lot more things.
And while Wow did invent some of these things others are actually earlier.
MMOs needs to reward social interaction better instead of punish you for it, while not forcing you to play a certain way. The problem is all over the game and just blaming a dungeon finder is to simplify things.
Well said, Sir.
You're absolutely right.
There was a period of time in World of Warcraft, when we had 'LFG-tool' or something like that..
The tool gave you a list of players willing to participate a certain dungeon, and you could then pick them up from the list and even ask before adding then to your group. That kind of tool was enough and it didn't change the MMO to a lobby game, like the current DF-tool does.
This tool maintained the social aspect very well. You couldn't be a dick or ninja if you wanted to run dungeons, but you didn't have to spam LFG-channel for finding a group. Unfortunately, they ditched the tool and replaced it with something that changed the MMO to a lobby game.
I see only one real flaw in this...
WoW did not kill anything... "WE" did. You see we wanted all our friends to play this really cool game that we enjoyed. This incidently went hand in hand with Blizzards desire to make money. But both EQ1 and UO had a rather massive entry barrier. Both where complex and in UO´s case down right unforgiving.
So Blizzard listend to us, they put in a lower barrier and we dragged out friends in... And they dragged their friends in... And for each wave there was more non-gamers and less gamers. So Blizzard adapted their product to what their customers wanted and since this was a majority rule and us gamers where now a minority... Well there you go.
So... Blizzard only did what "WE" wanted...
To bad for us that "we" quickly was outnumberd but a different "WE" with other needs. And in design you always have to go with what makes most people happy.
This have been a good conversation
I don't know why the long posts on LFG/LFD tools and why people don't need them. That battle has been fought and the people against them lost. When a new AAA MMO launches without one it is criticised for launching without it. The fanboys rush to defend and those just against them quickly join in, but a few months later when subs begin to decline the game adds them.
I would disagree LFG tool killed MMOs
I have tried most AAA MMOs to date. Mostly for 30 days and thats it.
Why 30 days and thats it you might ask ? Lack of content or end game if you will,
One might argue WOW had less when it launched, I might argue Ford Model T had no power steering or ABS when it came out, whats your point ?
Age of Conan - 38-45 zone had 3 ( three ) quests. They simply did not finish the zone. When you got to max level there was ... nothing. One dungeon and thats it. No dungeon, no raids, nothing.
Aion - 35+ and you get no quests for some 10 levels. Because thats how Asian players prefered and developers saw no problem there.
Dungeons - boss would normaly drop no loot. You had some 5% chance to get 1 blue item in 5 man team. Joy.
PVP map was size of Alterac Valley in WOW. Thats it, thats all PVP. Did I mention it on floating islands. Since you are Deva, you have wings ( for a limited time ). Ranged DPS slaughtered and rained supreme over melee.
SWTOR - Again, no end game. They simply decided we would be mezmerized by amazing story that we would all just reroll an alt to see how other classes have stories.
Space combat on rails
Did I mention lack of content yet ?
Hero engine, my God. Who decided to use. It simply did not work. Even today I have trouble running the game ( i7, GTX770, 24 Gb RAM ).
The game is a sucses today, but only because it went F2P. If it was game it is today when it launched it would have been amazing.
WAR - game with so much potential. You take Warhammer IP and then decide to stomp it to ground, urinate on i and set it on fire.
PVP was good, apart for the fact Chaos had more playes 5-1 compare to Order. But that just ment more fun.
However you simply could not level normaly in PVE. Unless you are masochist that is. In order to level at a normal pace ( not 20-21 in 6 days for 8 hours ) you had to do PVP. PVE was mostly public quests that were close to impossible to do solo. So if you happened to be awake at akward time, go play Solitaire.
Once the stars aligned and you would attack enemy capital the lag was so amazing you really needed iron will to play though it.
____________________
So, no. WOW did not kill MMOs, LFG tool did not kill MMOs.
Players on the other hand became jaded, putrid and festering with bile they spit on every game that comes out.
It is hard to comprehend why would you spit som much hate for any game you play, MMO or otherwise. If you do not liek the game, simply say so. Display your case, explain why on forums and leave. But no, there are people who pay subscription only so they can bash the game on ofical forums. Look at youtube reviews, its not just displaying why you think game is no good, you must spit and curse the game.
It is us that kill the gaming experience. Developers kill games, we as audience kill our own pleasure by going out of our way to insult, as hard as we can, game we play.
In such an enviorement it is impossible to make friends. Strong bonds with people you run a dungeon. Not when you are busy yelling ( after a wipe or what ever happened you disliked ) YOU F****G MOTHER****R, HOW THE... and so on. Well you get the picture. Its not LFG tool, its YOU.