The next time someone says LOTRO is a WoW-clone, I'm gonna go on a murder spree and I won't be able to stop myself.
You see, Lord of the Rings Online is based on this set of fantasy books called "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit." They were written about 40-50 years ago.
Then this game called "Warcraft" came out 16 years ago, and it was based quite heavily on these books known as "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit." Eventually, Warcraft spawned two sequels and an MMO known as World of Warcraft, all still based quite heavily on this "Lord of the Rings" novel.
The dwarves from LoTRO, they look and act almost exactly like the dwarves from WoW!! They even have huge cavernous cities under mountains just like in WoW! That "Moria" place? What a rip-off of Ironforge! WRONG! The dwarves from WoW are lifted almost completely from Lord of the Rings! You know that stuff "mithril?" You have that stuff in WoW right? LoTRO has it too, so they must have ripped off WoW! WRONG! Mithril was invented by Tolkien and is found first in Lord of the Rings.
If anything, the game style that LoTRO uses is based on games like Everquest (oh yeah, the halflings from Everquest/Everquest II? Taken directly from Lord of the Rings. That's why they're nearly identical to hobbits in LoTRO.)
WoW is actually the LoTRO clone. I wish people would stop showing that they no nothing about anything when they say crap like "LoTRO is a WoW clone!"
All fantasy lore is based off of the Lord of the Rings in some way, I think what this guy was getting at was gameplay. Lotro's gameplay is almost identicle to wow, sure there are conjuntions but besides that it's the same auto attack combined with skills on cool down with a mana cost...
Well we can definately see where all the EQ1 players went to. i find it ironic how just 6 months after the release of WoW that EQ1's subs drop drastically.
Nice to see Eve doing well, got to love it when something that is truely original makes headway.
Not really that ironic.
People liked original EQ, not the EQ that existed at the time WoW was released.
Sony did EQ in, not WoW.
Expansions that would have features to dumb down the game, and then the rest of the expansion would be unfinished. Zones with no loot or anything. They forced expansions on people by including one feature that would put your character at a disadvantage in every expansion pack.
LoY expansion zones didn't even have loot for a year or 2. SOE are a bunch of idiots, basically.
Thats what cracks me up about so many people. Ive seen it a bunch of times, WoW fanboy hops on a new game, then bitches about it being a WoWclone /ragequit. A month or 2 later, another new game comes along and same WoW fanboy tries it out, bitches that its nothing like WoW and WoW is 50x better because it has/doesnt have this and this and this, /ragequit again.
Honestly i think we would all be much better off if all the WoW fans could make up their mind exactly what they want in a new game, or just declare theyre staying on WoW for the next 5 years regardless of what new games come along (unless its WoW2: World of Sequelcraft), so devs will stop trying to copy WoW. Unfortunately the masses on WoW are stuck in this weird "we want a game just like WoW, but completely unlike WoW" limbo.
Anyway, along with the things i mentioned above and in my other post, is theres this sort of plague of spoiled childishness amongst the MMO players. Personally, a new game comes out, i expect its going to have a pretty large number of issues, regardless of how much testing it goes through. I work in IT and i know how unexpectedly things can go no matter how much QA you put things through. I still give the game a shot, and try to see its value behind the bugs, lag issues, balance issues, etc and assume that they will be fixed over time, and if the game is poorly managed and those fixees dont seem to ever be coming, then i move on. I know there are plenty of others who go into ne wgames with such understandings too. The issue is that the majority of the WoW genre go into a newly launched game expecting it to have everything WoW has to offer (as far as polish, content, lack of game breaking bugs, etc) + a lot more, but when its not ther ethey immediately leave saying the game sucked.
What they dont realize if they werent there at the begging, or maybe have forgotten over the years of being spoiled, is that WoW was nowhere near perfect at launch either, and even this many years later they still need to work on bugs and stuff through patches. Is it fair to judge a brand new game that is just getting its legs under it against a game that not only has had massive funding behind it from the start, but also many years to get the issues that harm other games worked out?
Seriously think about it. If some of these games had launched at the same time as WoW, and all you had to compare these games against was old EQ, UO, and WoW the first month it launched would you still be saying the same things about them, or would you maybe realize "hey this game has x problem, and this game has x problem, and this other one over here called WoW has both of those". The biggest difference was that back then WoW didnt have nearly as much competetion as newer MMOs have, and so you didnt see the issues as easily because you didnt have much to compare it to. Now we have hundreds of games that you can compare eachother to, and we are all more knowledgable than sa 5 years ago about these things, so it simply looks worse because of the perspective youre looking at it from. If some of those games had been given the oppurtunity that WoW was, they would have fared much betetr. Im not saying they would have done better than WoW in anyway, but they would have been judged much mor elieniently, and would have had time to get their act together and remained much more succesful.
All fantasy lore is based off of the Lord of the Rings in some way, I think what this guy was getting at was gameplay. Lotro's gameplay is almost identicle to wow, sure there are conjuntions but besides that it's the same auto attack combined with skills on cool down with a mana cost...
and yet, oddly, LOTRO doesn't make me want to vomit glass.
Also, In LOTRO, one doesn't keep getting upgrades of the same damn abilities....you actually get new abilities every couple levels.
No mandatory "talent" specs.
No mandatory gear in order to be considered for groups.
The world doesn't look like a cartoon shat on my monitor.
Immersive use of blus shaders and Dx10.
IMO, LOTRO does the PVE game RIGHT. It's everything WoW isn't.
And before I forget....it's not populated with 12 million pre-pube idiots.
Anyway, along with the things i mentioned above and in my other post, is theres this sort of plague of spoiled childishness amongst the MMO players. Personally, a new game comes out, i expect its going to have a pretty large number of issues, regardless of how much testing it goes through. I work in IT and i know how unexpectedly things can go no matter how much QA you put things through. I still give the game a shot, and try to see its value behind the bugs, lag issues, balance issues, etc and assume that they will be fixed over time, and if the game is poorly managed and those fixees dont seem to ever be coming, then i move on. I know there are plenty of others who go into ne wgames with such understandings too. The issue is that the majority of the WoW genre go into a newly launched game expecting it to have everything WoW has to offer (as far as polish, content, lack of game breaking bugs, etc) + a lot more, but when its not ther ethey immediately leave saying the game sucked.
What they dont realize if they werent there at the begging, or maybe have forgotten over the years of being spoiled, is that WoW was nowhere near perfect at launch either, and even this many years later they still need to work on bugs and stuff through patches. Is it fair to judge a brand new game that is just getting its legs under it against a game that not only has had massive funding behind it from the start, but also many years to get the issues that harm other games worked out?
Seriously think about it. If some of these games had launched at the same time as WoW, and all you had to compare these games against was old EQ, UO, and WoW the first month it launched would you still be saying the same things about them, or would you maybe realize "hey this game has x problem, and this game has x problem, and this other one over here called WoW has both of those". The biggest difference was that back then WoW didnt have nearly as much competetion as newer MMOs have, and so you didnt see the issues as easily because you didnt have much to compare it to. Now we have hundreds of games that you can compare eachother to, and we are all more knowledgable than sa 5 years ago about these things, so it simply looks worse because of the perspective youre looking at it from. If some of those games had been given the oppurtunity that WoW was, they would have fared much betetr. Im not saying they would have done better than WoW in anyway, but they would have been judged much mor elieniently, and would have had time to get their act together and remained much more succesful.
I have always found this stance really saddening, and its a new topic in itself really. While people still have the attitude that a game at release can be quite crap and we should be really forgiving and give them all some more time, we will continue to have games released that are crap and terribly unfinished.
Yes the community has changed. WoW has given the standard a new level of polish that new games have to use as a benchmark for release, not as a pie-in-the-sky dream for 12 months after release.
We all understand that MMOs are different and that they can, and should, evolve over time but just because they have this ability and expectation does not mean that we should not expect them to be pretty much finished at release time. You would not put up with your brand new car being unfinished, or your new house being unfinished when you moved in. Sure there might be some teething problems with a few things but you don't expect a wheel to be missing from your car or all the windows missing from your house, with a promise to have them added in a few months.
WAR really is a classic example. They had many things that WoW has - mail system, auction house, chat function, bank (guild bank). None of these worked at release (and for months after). They were all horribly broken. These should be standard functions that work in open beta. To not have chat working at release is unbelievable in a social game such as MMOs are supposed to be. If you are going to have these things in your game you have to have them working to at least as well as current games.
I think pretty much everyone is willing to put up with some server crashes, some bugs, some glitches with skills etc. This is understandable. But the games released in recent years have not only had these but had them in abundance.
Yes WoW also had them at release, but not the community has grown and expects a higher level of quality. Society in general expects this from all manner of products.
WAR really is a classic example. They had many things that WoW has - mail system, auction house, chat function, bank (guild bank). None of these worked at release (and for months after). They were all horribly broken. These should be standard functions that work in open beta. To not have chat working at release is unbelievable in a social game such as MMOs are supposed to be. If you are going to have these things in your game you have to have them working to at least as well as current games.
Hmm thats odd, I remember quite well that all of those things were working at launch. There wasn't any Global Chat at launch which I'm not a big fan of global chat anyways. The game had some problems like this one special ability wouldn't work half the time and there was some lag but I never experienced any of this brokeness you speak of.
Yes the numbers are estimates but they are the most accurate available. Chart from mmodata.net.
Edit: Yes I am referring to the sharp spike and fall of AOC/ WAR and the consistency of other mmos. Full size version of the chart here http://i41.tinypic.com/2ep7nrq.jpg
As far as I remember was it only Mythic that said they were trying to get the Wow players to come over.
But the problem anyways is that those games all released crappy and broken. WAR and AoC migh have cost 80 million bucks to make like Wow but Blizzard had a better crew (heck, they first had Strain and then Kaplan) and released their game when they thought it was done. It still had it's share of bugs but the competition of the time was EQ, Wow had over 10 times EQs budget and more experienced programmers. The game needs enough content and that costs money, and polishing isn't free either.
lots of Cash + good devs + releasing when the game is finished = success. 1 out of 3 is not enough.
Few companies have someone like Strain or Kaplan. fewer of those have the budget for a full blown MMO, that is why Strain released Guildwars as his next game, he just couldn't get those sums of money and did as good game as he could for the money (it sold 7 million copies or so). GW2 will be on full budget and might actually compete more fairly with Wow even though that is not it's real goal.
Bioware is putting a lot of money in TOR and they have some really good people too. If they release a well polished product they might actually make a huge hit. But if they release early they will tank.
There are some indy producers that are able to make a good game with a relatively low budget, like CCP but they so far never been close to the magical one million players limit, maybe half. But it is possible that they or a similar company can pull of a huge game as long as they can afford to not release it before it is done but it is more likely that someone with more cash will make the next huge game. You need to have a really brilliant game with a different feeling to pull that off.
Some of the Wow players are huge Blizzard fans. They will probably stay at Blizzard games as long as Blizzard still makes and run them. The other kind will move on when they find something they think is better.
Hmm thats odd, I remember quite well that all of those things were working at launch. There wasn't any Global Chat at launch which IMO I'm not a big fan of global chat anyways. The game had some problems like this one special ability wouldn't work half the time and there was some lag but I never experienced any of this brokeness you speak of.
The guild bank was pretty much useless for the first few months - you put items in only to have them disappear or locked in place and that square never to be usable again.
Chat did not work for a lot of people - full stop (two people in my guild tried changing their chat settings in game and this broke all chat for them - they had to reinstall to get it back, thanks CS!). For those that it did you were moved into a new chat channel every three steps as this was the way Mythic thought it would be good for people to get together for PQs. Alliance chat was a secret that a lot of people stumbled upon, was extremely clunky to setup and often prevented a number of guilds in each alliance from being allowed access to alliance chat at all. Guild chat and whispers did work fine though.
Auction house was the most clumsy interface I had ever seen. Put auctions up - they disappear! Anyone wonder why there were hardly any auctions, people stopped adding stuff pretty quick.
The mail system was broken badly - Mythic even admitted this and just said that it wasn't a real important part of the game anyway and they would fix it sometime.
All these were fixed by the time I left the game but to not have them working at release is pretty bad. They just ran out of time to implement a lot of stuff - they cut 4 classes and 4 capital cities after all. But chat! Not to be able to actually socialise in a Massively Multiplayer Online game should be a failure by anyone's standards. I would have thought chat was one of the fundamental things added into the game at an alpha stage at least.
These things hurt a game more than some people realise. When all these little frustrations mount up, it really does become the straw that broke the camels back, rather than some massive game design reason for why people often leave these games soon after release.
I don't understand all these people that defend the failed themepark mmo's released since WoW, the hard fact is that Blizzard has created a game with a level of polish and gameplay unmatched in its sub-genre. Only games designed from the ground up to be a different experience like Eve online, city of hero's or final fantasy with its heavy emphasis on team play have really been able to keep their heads above water.
But it all goes back to the same old thing, its always cool to hate whats popular I suppose. Maybe one day another themepark will come along and save me, but for now i'm trapped in the work of art that is WoW, vomiting into a golden toilet and doing like alot of other people...putting all my hopes into Bioware and Square Enix for a salvation that might not come.
in the end it's all about fun. Some have fun seeing their accomplishments measured by the gear they have, some like raiding and doing dungeons more, some like to explore the world do quests or have fun with their guild. I guess many crave for another MMO to be a great gameplay experience as for many WoW was, because I don't think there are many people who don't fall into being bored after playing the same game for years. People like variety and diversity, at least many do. I don't agree with that only a few MMO's can manage to keep their head above water, many manage to do that else they would be cancelled if they kept losing money. But WoW's major success has screwed many people's thinking in such a way that a MMO is a failure if it has 'only' a few 100,000s of subs, or that they must be flawed games if their subs run into the 50,000 - 500,000 range.
But, to use an example, the fact that the majority of the world uses Internet Explorer as a browser doesn't mean Firefox that I use is a bad browser, or Google Chrome or Safari. And neither does the fact that you see MacDonald's or Pizza Hut everywhere you go, show that it's the best food around. Its popularity only shows that it manages to satisfy a hunger that a very large group of people have. I'm not saying that WoW is a cheap or bad game, just that sub numbers aren't the be all end all as a measure of quality.
I don't think LotrO or DDO are cheap WoW clones, they provide huge fun in their own ways, and have immensive lore. That games like those, or a AoC or Aion or EVE Online, aren't the taste of every MMO player, well, that's why it's a good thing that the MMO market is bursting with all kinds of MMO's these days. But I do genuinely feel sorry for people who can only enjoy one (MMO) game, because that sounds as a recipe for discouragement and dissatisfaction to me, as soon as the pleasure in that one game wears off.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I don't think LotrO or DDO are cheap WoW clones, they provide huge fun in their own ways, and have immensive lore.
Good because DDO follows Dungeons and Dragons rules straight off. And didn't it relase a year before Wow?
Anyways is it EQ and Wow who took a lot of things from D&D and not the other way around. Levels or hitpoints anyone?
Lotro is a different matter, you can see it has ben influenced by Wow but you can say the same thing about Wow have been influenced by EQ.
Clones is usually not the right word here but there is not enough new thinking in the MMO genre. Someone should go back to the beginning and instead of making a D&D based MMO make one based on Runequest, that would give a very different experience and the game should easily be able to find it's own fans.
Mythic really upset me and millions of other GW fans when they based the mechanics on Wow instead of the brilliant warhammer RPG system.
lots of Cash + good devs + releasing when the game is finished = success. 1 out of 3 is not enough.
There are some indy producers that are able to make a good game with a relatively low budget, like CCP but they so far never been close to the magical one million players limit, maybe half. But it is possible that they or a similar company can pull of a huge game as long as they can afford to not release it before it is done but it is more likely that someone with more cash will make the next huge game. You need to have a really brilliant game with a different feeling to pull that off.
Some of the Wow players are huge Blizzard fans. They will probably stay at Blizzard games as long as Blizzard still makes and run them. The other kind will move on when they find something they think is better.
This.
I believe too that too many MMO's have made the mistake - or had the bad luck because of not enough money available to delay - to release their game too early. Looking back at a number of these games, a year or two after their launch they actually are pretty good and enjoyable. People in the business forget that one of the main causes of WoW's or Blizzard's success in general is the smoothness of the gameplay in their games.
i think that EVE online will hit the 1million mark when their two next expansions will go live this year, when their planet exploitation and industrialisation and the walking around in spacestations will be implemented.
And even if I suspect that current Blizzard top creative talent isn't on the same quality level as the teams 5-10 years back (I was underwhelmed by the last WoW expansion and by what I saw from D3 and SC2), or maybe their top talent has been dedicated to their new MMO. But despite that I think they will hit the 15mil subs and more if CATA goes live. True competition will hit next year with some pretty big titles coming up. Better for us, more to choose from.
@Loke666: yeah, you're right, but by many people who came into the MMO genre with WoW or later, all the MMO's that have gameplay or looks as WoW are perceived as WoW clones, no matter if they were released earlier or at the same time. I just went with the flow on that one
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Yes because someone who wants to make a lot of money is going to say, "HEY, let's not make a game for the million something people playing WoW, let's make a game for those 100-150k gamers who like playing the hardcore stuff."
I feel WAR and AOC are fun, but to difficult for WoW players and that's why the failed, also, WAR is PvP, and WoW is PvE. The similarities didn't hurt them, what hurt them was the difficulty, the need for a higher end machine, and in AOC's case, the rating.
Oh, and believe it or not, AOC and WAR are both harder than WoW.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
to speak on comments about WoW ripping off LOTR lore...
Tolkien got most of his ideas from existing mythology.
many of his names, terms, and ideas can be found in Persian, Celtic, and Norse lore. so to act like anyone has committed a great wrong by continuing to do what Tolkien did, needs to look deeper into the truth of the matter and realize that all modern fantasy can be traced back to the ancient myths of our own world.
Tolkien did the same thing that most fantasy writers do. he took what was already around and put his own twist to it. and if anyone has been 'ripped-off' it is the centuries-dead shamans and mystics that first told the ancient tales to their tribes or clans.
that said, i think Warcraft has good lore, but please understand that I don't consider anything WoW has done as a continuation of that lore. more than anything WoW is just a huge simulated world with representations of the lore you learn about in the rts games. most main heros are raidable bosses and you cannot convince me that a group of teenagers killed Illidan.
idc what pathetic attempts they try with lore in-game. its all a joke and only a humorous parody compared to the actual history of Azeroth. i might add i have played WoW for almost 4 years now and only started because of my love for the RTS games. i take months off at a time and don't get very serious about it, even when i'm on a binge.
P.S.- this is the worst excuse for a anti-WoW thread that i have ever seen on this site.
To a degree you're right with Tolkien, but it's the amount of copying what it's about, you can be inspired by other lore, writers or themes, or innovate on existing themes and tropes or plain copy elements. Tolkien revamped how elves, dwarves and orcs were looked upon, and the differences between the worlds and races of a Middle Earth, Azeroth, D&D and Warhammer are far smaller than between Tolkien's middle earth and the folklore that was Tolkien's inspiration.
It's not for nothing that Dungeons & Dragons and Tolkien's Middle Earth are seen as the foundation of much of contemporary fantasy genre, and that not older folklore tales are seen as its foundation.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
to speak on comments about WoW ripping off LOTR lore...
Tolkien got most of his ideas from existing mythology.
many of his names, terms, and ideas can be found in Persian, Celtic, and Norse lore. so to act like anyone has committed a great wrong by continuing to do what Tolkien did, needs to look deeper into the truth of the matter and realize that all modern fantasy can be traced back to the ancient myths of our own world.
Tolkien did the same thing that most fantasy writers do. he took what was already around and put his own twist to it. and if anyone has been 'ripped-off' it is the centuries-dead shamans and mystics that first told the ancient tales to their tribes or clans.
that said, i think Warcraft has good lore, but please understand that I don't consider anything WoW has done as a continuation of that lore. more than anything WoW is just a huge simulated world with representations of the lore you learn about in the rts games. most main heros are raidable bosses and you cannot convince me that a group of teenagers killed Illidan.
idc what pathetic attempts they try with lore in-game. its all a joke and only a humorous parody compared to the actual history of Azeroth. i might add i have played WoW for almost 4 years now and only started because of my love for the RTS games. i take months off at a time and don't get very serious about it, even when i'm on a binge.
P.S.- this is the worst excuse for a anti-WoW thread that i have ever seen on this site.
Sums up this thread and most other threads this community creates since hating WoW and relating that hate to every concivable topic under the sun seems to be the plague resembling the drunk chick at the party who just wont go away. With all the S**t talking about a game that is supposedly so "f**king terrible", it seems to be only haters who even continue to never let the f**king thing die when it seems to be the most logical step for them.
The next time someone says LOTRO is a WoW-clone, I'm gonna go on a murder spree and I won't be able to stop myself.
You see, Lord of the Rings Online is based on this set of fantasy books called "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit." They were written about 40-50 years ago.
Then this game called "Warcraft" came out 16 years ago, and it was based quite heavily on these books known as "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit." Eventually, Warcraft spawned two sequels and an MMO known as World of Warcraft, all still based quite heavily on this "Lord of the Rings" novel.
The dwarves from LoTRO, they look and act almost exactly like the dwarves from WoW!! They even have huge cavernous cities under mountains just like in WoW! That "Moria" place? What a rip-off of Ironforge! WRONG! The dwarves from WoW are lifted almost completely from Lord of the Rings! You know that stuff "mithril?" You have that stuff in WoW right? LoTRO has it too, so they must have ripped off WoW! WRONG! Mithril was invented by Tolkien and is found first in Lord of the Rings.
If anything, the game style that LoTRO uses is based on games like Everquest (oh yeah, the halflings from Everquest/Everquest II? Taken directly from Lord of the Rings. That's why they're nearly identical to hobbits in LoTRO.)
WoW is actually the LoTRO clone. I wish people would stop showing that they no nothing about anything when they say crap like "LoTRO is a WoW clone!"
All fantasy lore is based off of the Lord of the Rings in some way, I think what this guy was getting at was gameplay. Lotro's gameplay is almost identicle to wow, sure there are conjuntions but besides that it's the same auto attack combined with skills on cool down with a mana cost...
The next time someone says LOTRO is a WoW-clone, I'm gonna go on a murder spree and I won't be able to stop myself.
You see, Lord of the Rings Online is based on this set of fantasy books called "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit." They were written about 40-50 years ago.
Then this game called "Warcraft" came out 16 years ago, and it was based quite heavily on these books known as "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit." Eventually, Warcraft spawned two sequels and an MMO known as World of Warcraft, all still based quite heavily on this "Lord of the Rings" novel.
The dwarves from LoTRO, they look and act almost exactly like the dwarves from WoW!! They even have huge cavernous cities under mountains just like in WoW! That "Moria" place? What a rip-off of Ironforge! WRONG! The dwarves from WoW are lifted almost completely from Lord of the Rings! You know that stuff "mithril?" You have that stuff in WoW right? LoTRO has it too, so they must have ripped off WoW! WRONG! Mithril was invented by Tolkien and is found first in Lord of the Rings.
If anything, the game style that LoTRO uses is based on games like Everquest (oh yeah, the halflings from Everquest/Everquest II? Taken directly from Lord of the Rings. That's why they're nearly identical to hobbits in LoTRO.)
WoW is actually the LoTRO clone. I wish people would stop showing that they no nothing about anything when they say crap like "LoTRO is a WoW clone!"
All fantasy lore is based off of the Lord of the Rings in some way, I think what this guy was getting at was gameplay. Lotro's gameplay is almost identicle to wow, sure there are conjuntions but besides that it's the same auto attack combined with skills on cool down with a mana cost...
They stole the gameplay from wow and did a crappy job with it too. Which is why lord of the rings is a crappy game. You can either decide to do the click to walk ( which is crap) or you can do the strafe mode ( which is crappy made) I wish they would hire some other company to do lord of the rings and maybe then it wouldnt look like hello kitty grafix with a twist. And the instruments ok I remember that from Acherons call. Bought the game on release and was deeply dissapointed.
P.S.- this is the worst excuse for a anti-WoW thread that i have ever seen on this site.
Sums up this thread and most other threads this community creates since hating WoW and relating that hate to every concivable topic under the sun seems to be the plague resembling the drunk chick at the party who just wont go away. With all the S**t talking about a game that is supposedly so "f**king terrible", it seems to be only haters who even continue to never let the f**king thing die when it seems to be the most logical step for them.
I could say the same of all WoW lovers/fanbois.
And no, I'm on neither side of the argument. I just think that people should grow up, and skip the WoW flaming, hating and worshiping, and just talk about the games or MMO gaming in general, because that's what I expect from a general MMO site, just as I expect that not half of the forumthreads on a gaming site is about Modern Warfare 2.
@patrickd23: Eh... they were talking about Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings books, not the MMO LotrO.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I've been wondering if AOC and WAR failed because of production values, or if they failed due to lack of time sinks that keep people playing.
Sure they both had horrible launches, that's not when they lost most players though. It was when those players were at max level that they started their exodus,which saw them heading back to games with large amounts of time sinks.
Even LOTRO has what I'm referring to, multiple paths of advancement and reward. Itemization is another big factor that keeps players playing as well. Both AOC and WAR were severly lacking in this department.
Why is AOC gaining more interest today than they were last year? IMO it's because they've been focusing on aspects that keep players busy and giving them goals within the game. WAR not so much, they've been removing things and mainly focusing on their BG system. They just can't seem to hit a sweet spot for their customers.
I'm only guessing of course, it makes a lot of sense to me though.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I just couldnt take it seriously, no offense to those who enjoy it more power to you.
Hahaha, its funny, you trust a review from a person who seems to hate all mmorpg's and actively avoids the main content of eve by avoiding joining player corporations?
Eve is an MMO and therefore a lot of the fun is in the societies of people in the game, by actively avoiding it he lost the point of being in an mmo and would be better off in fps or solo rpg.
Besides, he's become efamous for hating almost everything he reviews, why change what for him is a winning formula, would reduce his ecelebrity status.
I just couldnt take it seriously, no offense to those who enjoy it more power to you.
Hahaha, its funny, you trust a review from a person who seems to hate all mmorpg's and actively avoids the main content of eve by avoiding joining player corporations?
Eve is an MMO and therefore a lot of the fun is in the societies of people in the game, by actively avoiding it he lost the point of being in an mmo and would be better off in fps or solo rpg.
Besides, he's become efamous for hating almost everything he reviews, why change what for him is a winning formula, would reduce his ecelebrity status.
lol I completely understand what your saying but the game just wasnt for me...your right the people do make the game much more enjoyable but it just never appealed to me gameplay wise. I dont really take his reviews seriously because your right again...think he has only reviewed like 2 games that he actually liked and to change his style would be bad for his winning formula..but none the less the review touched on things I myself felt and it just made concrete what I was thinking.
Comments
All fantasy lore is based off of the Lord of the Rings in some way, I think what this guy was getting at was gameplay. Lotro's gameplay is almost identicle to wow, sure there are conjuntions but besides that it's the same auto attack combined with skills on cool down with a mana cost...
Make it so...
Not really that ironic.
People liked original EQ, not the EQ that existed at the time WoW was released.
Sony did EQ in, not WoW.
Expansions that would have features to dumb down the game, and then the rest of the expansion would be unfinished. Zones with no loot or anything. They forced expansions on people by including one feature that would put your character at a disadvantage in every expansion pack.
LoY expansion zones didn't even have loot for a year or 2. SOE are a bunch of idiots, basically.
Thats what cracks me up about so many people. Ive seen it a bunch of times, WoW fanboy hops on a new game, then bitches about it being a WoWclone /ragequit. A month or 2 later, another new game comes along and same WoW fanboy tries it out, bitches that its nothing like WoW and WoW is 50x better because it has/doesnt have this and this and this, /ragequit again.
Honestly i think we would all be much better off if all the WoW fans could make up their mind exactly what they want in a new game, or just declare theyre staying on WoW for the next 5 years regardless of what new games come along (unless its WoW2: World of Sequelcraft), so devs will stop trying to copy WoW. Unfortunately the masses on WoW are stuck in this weird "we want a game just like WoW, but completely unlike WoW" limbo.
Anyway, along with the things i mentioned above and in my other post, is theres this sort of plague of spoiled childishness amongst the MMO players. Personally, a new game comes out, i expect its going to have a pretty large number of issues, regardless of how much testing it goes through. I work in IT and i know how unexpectedly things can go no matter how much QA you put things through. I still give the game a shot, and try to see its value behind the bugs, lag issues, balance issues, etc and assume that they will be fixed over time, and if the game is poorly managed and those fixees dont seem to ever be coming, then i move on. I know there are plenty of others who go into ne wgames with such understandings too. The issue is that the majority of the WoW genre go into a newly launched game expecting it to have everything WoW has to offer (as far as polish, content, lack of game breaking bugs, etc) + a lot more, but when its not ther ethey immediately leave saying the game sucked.
What they dont realize if they werent there at the begging, or maybe have forgotten over the years of being spoiled, is that WoW was nowhere near perfect at launch either, and even this many years later they still need to work on bugs and stuff through patches. Is it fair to judge a brand new game that is just getting its legs under it against a game that not only has had massive funding behind it from the start, but also many years to get the issues that harm other games worked out?
Seriously think about it. If some of these games had launched at the same time as WoW, and all you had to compare these games against was old EQ, UO, and WoW the first month it launched would you still be saying the same things about them, or would you maybe realize "hey this game has x problem, and this game has x problem, and this other one over here called WoW has both of those". The biggest difference was that back then WoW didnt have nearly as much competetion as newer MMOs have, and so you didnt see the issues as easily because you didnt have much to compare it to. Now we have hundreds of games that you can compare eachother to, and we are all more knowledgable than sa 5 years ago about these things, so it simply looks worse because of the perspective youre looking at it from. If some of those games had been given the oppurtunity that WoW was, they would have fared much betetr. Im not saying they would have done better than WoW in anyway, but they would have been judged much mor elieniently, and would have had time to get their act together and remained much more succesful.
and yet, oddly, LOTRO doesn't make me want to vomit glass.
Also, In LOTRO, one doesn't keep getting upgrades of the same damn abilities....you actually get new abilities every couple levels.
No mandatory "talent" specs.
No mandatory gear in order to be considered for groups.
The world doesn't look like a cartoon shat on my monitor.
Immersive use of blus shaders and Dx10.
IMO, LOTRO does the PVE game RIGHT. It's everything WoW isn't.
And before I forget....it's not populated with 12 million pre-pube idiots.
I have always found this stance really saddening, and its a new topic in itself really. While people still have the attitude that a game at release can be quite crap and we should be really forgiving and give them all some more time, we will continue to have games released that are crap and terribly unfinished.
Yes the community has changed. WoW has given the standard a new level of polish that new games have to use as a benchmark for release, not as a pie-in-the-sky dream for 12 months after release.
We all understand that MMOs are different and that they can, and should, evolve over time but just because they have this ability and expectation does not mean that we should not expect them to be pretty much finished at release time. You would not put up with your brand new car being unfinished, or your new house being unfinished when you moved in. Sure there might be some teething problems with a few things but you don't expect a wheel to be missing from your car or all the windows missing from your house, with a promise to have them added in a few months.
WAR really is a classic example. They had many things that WoW has - mail system, auction house, chat function, bank (guild bank). None of these worked at release (and for months after). They were all horribly broken. These should be standard functions that work in open beta. To not have chat working at release is unbelievable in a social game such as MMOs are supposed to be. If you are going to have these things in your game you have to have them working to at least as well as current games.
I think pretty much everyone is willing to put up with some server crashes, some bugs, some glitches with skills etc. This is understandable. But the games released in recent years have not only had these but had them in abundance.
Yes WoW also had them at release, but not the community has grown and expects a higher level of quality. Society in general expects this from all manner of products.
Hmm thats odd, I remember quite well that all of those things were working at launch. There wasn't any Global Chat at launch which I'm not a big fan of global chat anyways. The game had some problems like this one special ability wouldn't work half the time and there was some lag but I never experienced any of this brokeness you speak of.
As far as I remember was it only Mythic that said they were trying to get the Wow players to come over.
But the problem anyways is that those games all released crappy and broken. WAR and AoC migh have cost 80 million bucks to make like Wow but Blizzard had a better crew (heck, they first had Strain and then Kaplan) and released their game when they thought it was done. It still had it's share of bugs but the competition of the time was EQ, Wow had over 10 times EQs budget and more experienced programmers. The game needs enough content and that costs money, and polishing isn't free either.
lots of Cash + good devs + releasing when the game is finished = success. 1 out of 3 is not enough.
Few companies have someone like Strain or Kaplan. fewer of those have the budget for a full blown MMO, that is why Strain released Guildwars as his next game, he just couldn't get those sums of money and did as good game as he could for the money (it sold 7 million copies or so). GW2 will be on full budget and might actually compete more fairly with Wow even though that is not it's real goal.
Bioware is putting a lot of money in TOR and they have some really good people too. If they release a well polished product they might actually make a huge hit. But if they release early they will tank.
There are some indy producers that are able to make a good game with a relatively low budget, like CCP but they so far never been close to the magical one million players limit, maybe half. But it is possible that they or a similar company can pull of a huge game as long as they can afford to not release it before it is done but it is more likely that someone with more cash will make the next huge game. You need to have a really brilliant game with a different feeling to pull that off.
Some of the Wow players are huge Blizzard fans. They will probably stay at Blizzard games as long as Blizzard still makes and run them. The other kind will move on when they find something they think is better.
The guild bank was pretty much useless for the first few months - you put items in only to have them disappear or locked in place and that square never to be usable again.
Chat did not work for a lot of people - full stop (two people in my guild tried changing their chat settings in game and this broke all chat for them - they had to reinstall to get it back, thanks CS!). For those that it did you were moved into a new chat channel every three steps as this was the way Mythic thought it would be good for people to get together for PQs. Alliance chat was a secret that a lot of people stumbled upon, was extremely clunky to setup and often prevented a number of guilds in each alliance from being allowed access to alliance chat at all. Guild chat and whispers did work fine though.
Auction house was the most clumsy interface I had ever seen. Put auctions up - they disappear! Anyone wonder why there were hardly any auctions, people stopped adding stuff pretty quick.
The mail system was broken badly - Mythic even admitted this and just said that it wasn't a real important part of the game anyway and they would fix it sometime.
All these were fixed by the time I left the game but to not have them working at release is pretty bad. They just ran out of time to implement a lot of stuff - they cut 4 classes and 4 capital cities after all. But chat! Not to be able to actually socialise in a Massively Multiplayer Online game should be a failure by anyone's standards. I would have thought chat was one of the fundamental things added into the game at an alpha stage at least.
These things hurt a game more than some people realise. When all these little frustrations mount up, it really does become the straw that broke the camels back, rather than some massive game design reason for why people often leave these games soon after release.
in the end it's all about fun. Some have fun seeing their accomplishments measured by the gear they have, some like raiding and doing dungeons more, some like to explore the world do quests or have fun with their guild. I guess many crave for another MMO to be a great gameplay experience as for many WoW was, because I don't think there are many people who don't fall into being bored after playing the same game for years. People like variety and diversity, at least many do. I don't agree with that only a few MMO's can manage to keep their head above water, many manage to do that else they would be cancelled if they kept losing money. But WoW's major success has screwed many people's thinking in such a way that a MMO is a failure if it has 'only' a few 100,000s of subs, or that they must be flawed games if their subs run into the 50,000 - 500,000 range.
But, to use an example, the fact that the majority of the world uses Internet Explorer as a browser doesn't mean Firefox that I use is a bad browser, or Google Chrome or Safari. And neither does the fact that you see MacDonald's or Pizza Hut everywhere you go, show that it's the best food around. Its popularity only shows that it manages to satisfy a hunger that a very large group of people have. I'm not saying that WoW is a cheap or bad game, just that sub numbers aren't the be all end all as a measure of quality.
I don't think LotrO or DDO are cheap WoW clones, they provide huge fun in their own ways, and have immensive lore. That games like those, or a AoC or Aion or EVE Online, aren't the taste of every MMO player, well, that's why it's a good thing that the MMO market is bursting with all kinds of MMO's these days. But I do genuinely feel sorry for people who can only enjoy one (MMO) game, because that sounds as a recipe for discouragement and dissatisfaction to me, as soon as the pleasure in that one game wears off.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Good because DDO follows Dungeons and Dragons rules straight off. And didn't it relase a year before Wow?
Anyways is it EQ and Wow who took a lot of things from D&D and not the other way around. Levels or hitpoints anyone?
Lotro is a different matter, you can see it has ben influenced by Wow but you can say the same thing about Wow have been influenced by EQ.
Clones is usually not the right word here but there is not enough new thinking in the MMO genre. Someone should go back to the beginning and instead of making a D&D based MMO make one based on Runequest, that would give a very different experience and the game should easily be able to find it's own fans.
Mythic really upset me and millions of other GW fans when they based the mechanics on Wow instead of the brilliant warhammer RPG system.
This.
I believe too that too many MMO's have made the mistake - or had the bad luck because of not enough money available to delay - to release their game too early. Looking back at a number of these games, a year or two after their launch they actually are pretty good and enjoyable. People in the business forget that one of the main causes of WoW's or Blizzard's success in general is the smoothness of the gameplay in their games.
i think that EVE online will hit the 1million mark when their two next expansions will go live this year, when their planet exploitation and industrialisation and the walking around in spacestations will be implemented.
And even if I suspect that current Blizzard top creative talent isn't on the same quality level as the teams 5-10 years back (I was underwhelmed by the last WoW expansion and by what I saw from D3 and SC2), or maybe their top talent has been dedicated to their new MMO. But despite that I think they will hit the 15mil subs and more if CATA goes live. True competition will hit next year with some pretty big titles coming up. Better for us, more to choose from.
@Loke666: yeah, you're right, but by many people who came into the MMO genre with WoW or later, all the MMO's that have gameplay or looks as WoW are perceived as WoW clones, no matter if they were released earlier or at the same time. I just went with the flow on that one
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Yes because someone who wants to make a lot of money is going to say, "HEY, let's not make a game for the million something people playing WoW, let's make a game for those 100-150k gamers who like playing the hardcore stuff."
I feel WAR and AOC are fun, but to difficult for WoW players and that's why the failed, also, WAR is PvP, and WoW is PvE. The similarities didn't hurt them, what hurt them was the difficulty, the need for a higher end machine, and in AOC's case, the rating.
Oh, and believe it or not, AOC and WAR are both harder than WoW.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
to speak on comments about WoW ripping off LOTR lore...
Tolkien got most of his ideas from existing mythology.
many of his names, terms, and ideas can be found in Persian, Celtic, and Norse lore. so to act like anyone has committed a great wrong by continuing to do what Tolkien did, needs to look deeper into the truth of the matter and realize that all modern fantasy can be traced back to the ancient myths of our own world.
Tolkien did the same thing that most fantasy writers do. he took what was already around and put his own twist to it. and if anyone has been 'ripped-off' it is the centuries-dead shamans and mystics that first told the ancient tales to their tribes or clans.
that said, i think Warcraft has good lore, but please understand that I don't consider anything WoW has done as a continuation of that lore. more than anything WoW is just a huge simulated world with representations of the lore you learn about in the rts games. most main heros are raidable bosses and you cannot convince me that a group of teenagers killed Illidan.
idc what pathetic attempts they try with lore in-game. its all a joke and only a humorous parody compared to the actual history of Azeroth. i might add i have played WoW for almost 4 years now and only started because of my love for the RTS games. i take months off at a time and don't get very serious about it, even when i'm on a binge.
P.S.- this is the worst excuse for a anti-WoW thread that i have ever seen on this site.
To a degree you're right with Tolkien, but it's the amount of copying what it's about, you can be inspired by other lore, writers or themes, or innovate on existing themes and tropes or plain copy elements. Tolkien revamped how elves, dwarves and orcs were looked upon, and the differences between the worlds and races of a Middle Earth, Azeroth, D&D and Warhammer are far smaller than between Tolkien's middle earth and the folklore that was Tolkien's inspiration.
It's not for nothing that Dungeons & Dragons and Tolkien's Middle Earth are seen as the foundation of much of contemporary fantasy genre, and that not older folklore tales are seen as its foundation.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Posted by Zairu on 3/31/10 at 1:58:17 AM
to speak on comments about WoW ripping off LOTR lore...
Tolkien got most of his ideas from existing mythology.
many of his names, terms, and ideas can be found in Persian, Celtic, and Norse lore. so to act like anyone has committed a great wrong by continuing to do what Tolkien did, needs to look deeper into the truth of the matter and realize that all modern fantasy can be traced back to the ancient myths of our own world.
Tolkien did the same thing that most fantasy writers do. he took what was already around and put his own twist to it. and if anyone has been 'ripped-off' it is the centuries-dead shamans and mystics that first told the ancient tales to their tribes or clans.
that said, i think Warcraft has good lore, but please understand that I don't consider anything WoW has done as a continuation of that lore. more than anything WoW is just a huge simulated world with representations of the lore you learn about in the rts games. most main heros are raidable bosses and you cannot convince me that a group of teenagers killed Illidan.
idc what pathetic attempts they try with lore in-game. its all a joke and only a humorous parody compared to the actual history of Azeroth. i might add i have played WoW for almost 4 years now and only started because of my love for the RTS games. i take months off at a time and don't get very serious about it, even when i'm on a binge.
P.S.- this is the worst excuse for a anti-WoW thread that i have ever seen on this site.
Sums up this thread and most other threads this community creates since hating WoW and relating that hate to every concivable topic under the sun seems to be the plague resembling the drunk chick at the party who just wont go away. With all the S**t talking about a game that is supposedly so "f**king terrible", it seems to be only haters who even continue to never let the f**king thing die when it seems to be the most logical step for them.
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because Lords of the ring didn't steal from anything before it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien's_influences
They stole the gameplay from wow and did a crappy job with it too. Which is why lord of the rings is a crappy game. You can either decide to do the click to walk ( which is crap) or you can do the strafe mode ( which is crappy made) I wish they would hire some other company to do lord of the rings and maybe then it wouldnt look like hello kitty grafix with a twist. And the instruments ok I remember that from Acherons call. Bought the game on release and was deeply dissapointed.
I could say the same of all WoW lovers/fanbois.
And no, I'm on neither side of the argument. I just think that people should grow up, and skip the WoW flaming, hating and worshiping, and just talk about the games or MMO gaming in general, because that's what I expect from a general MMO site, just as I expect that not half of the forumthreads on a gaming site is about Modern Warfare 2.
@patrickd23: Eh... they were talking about Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings books, not the MMO LotrO.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I've been wondering if AOC and WAR failed because of production values, or if they failed due to lack of time sinks that keep people playing.
Sure they both had horrible launches, that's not when they lost most players though. It was when those players were at max level that they started their exodus,which saw them heading back to games with large amounts of time sinks.
Even LOTRO has what I'm referring to, multiple paths of advancement and reward. Itemization is another big factor that keeps players playing as well. Both AOC and WAR were severly lacking in this department.
Why is AOC gaining more interest today than they were last year? IMO it's because they've been focusing on aspects that keep players busy and giving them goals within the game. WAR not so much, they've been removing things and mainly focusing on their BG system. They just can't seem to hit a sweet spot for their customers.
I'm only guessing of course, it makes a lot of sense to me though.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Every MMO launched in the past 4 years was really a free publicity to play WOW.
Synthesis of the graph.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
ffxi and eve are gaining steam well ffxi is nearing the point subs mite start droping again its just a very old game
*sigh* And another one of the troll crowd making an appearance again. Got your gloating fix already today or need some more?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Posted by downtoearth on 3/31/10 at 5:05:41 AM
ffxi and eve are gaining steam well ffxi is nearing the point subs mite start droping again its just a very old game
EvE online never ceases to amaze me...I have nothing against it but after watching this review of it http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online
I just couldnt take it seriously, no offense to those who enjoy it
more power to you.
HEAVEN OR HELL
Duel 1
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Hahaha, its funny, you trust a review from a person who seems to hate all mmorpg's and actively avoids the main content of eve by avoiding joining player corporations?
Eve is an MMO and therefore a lot of the fun is in the societies of people in the game, by actively avoiding it he lost the point of being in an mmo and would be better off in fps or solo rpg.
Besides, he's become efamous for hating almost everything he reviews, why change what for him is a winning formula, would reduce his ecelebrity status.
F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html
Posted by Codenak on 3/31/10 at 5:38:30 AM
Hahaha, its funny, you trust a review from a person who seems to hate all mmorpg's and actively avoids the main content of eve by avoiding joining player corporations?
Eve is an MMO and therefore a lot of the fun is in the societies of people in the game, by actively avoiding it he lost the point of being in an mmo and would be better off in fps or solo rpg.
Besides, he's become efamous for hating almost everything he reviews, why change what for him is a winning formula, would reduce his ecelebrity status.
lol I completely understand what your saying but the game just wasnt for me...your right the people do make the game much more enjoyable but it just never appealed to me gameplay wise. I dont really take his reviews seriously because your right again...think he has only reviewed like 2 games that he actually liked and to change his style would be bad for his winning formula..but none the less the review touched on things I myself felt and it just made concrete what I was thinking.
HEAVEN OR HELL
Duel 1
Lets ROCK!