WOW: hated for being on the top and the reason most MMORPGS even existed. Crazy looking back at it all...remembering every games goal was to "kill wow" when in reality each games failure to go its own unique route ended up killing the mmorpg genre instead.
How much of WoWs success spurred the f2p movement? Since many games couldn't compete with WoW in a P2P format, they had to turn to f2p and microtransactions.
This is an exercise much like, what if Germany won WW2. Our mmorpg life would be totally different from what it is now, that's for sure.
-Would First generation morpg's still be the norm ? -Would EverQuest 2 be king ? -Things like group finders my not have been invented ? -mmorpgs may have died off ?
So many directions, so many what if's
My take, Everquest 2 would still start the second generation, It would have kicked started a less serious lighter style of play that would be more excepted by players. However it would only be "King for a day" unless they quickly did necessary coding for it to play better. Everything else would be based from EQ2 and much would follow same as it is now without a dungeon finder or cross realm Mega world.
Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of The Rings Online wouldn't have been phased at all. It would still release exactly as it was.... With this Lotro would become the new King, and D&D Online style would be popular too. From here, business as usual.
I like World of Warcraft, well only Vanilla.... BUT the world would have been a better place without it. They did major damage to the industry in later years.
This is a really good question.
One I can't really answer, because, around the time of WoW's launch, I became burned out on EQ, I moved to DAoC and CoH, and was not impressed, I quit MMO's.. got married, focused on my job.. bought a house.. did the whole "real life thing" and it was years before I started playing MMO's again, and everything had changed, but, even then, when I returned to MMO's I still never played WoW, so I have no frame to understand how it changed the market.
What could have been.. well.. I am not sure what the other shooting stars were, that would have filled the void, or been the trend setters.
I would wager games like DDO would have been bigger hits than they were, but again, what hurt DDO was IP disputes, which may not have happened if they had been more successful from launch, so that kind of Instance based game play could have been the next huge market trend.
I guess in the end, I don't really know how things could have been that different, because I am not sure what exactly WoW did.
But I wager that MMO never would have launched to the big budget games they became today, I imagine they would still remain very niche' market games where having 200K - 400K subs would be considered a smashing success, as opposed to the 10 Million Subs that ever game publisher dreams of getting.
So perhaps we would have more niche' focused MMO's, maybe ones that tried to be more true to their IP, for focus on fan service as opposed to just money and numbers.
But how that would translate to game play, and world interaction, I am not sure.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
This is an exercise much like, what if Germany won WW2. Our mmorpg life would be totally different from what it is now, that's for sure.
-Would First generation morpg's still be the norm ? -Would EverQuest 2 be king ? -Things like group finders my not have been invented ? -mmorpgs may have died off ?
So many directions, so many what if's
My take, Everquest 2 would still start the second generation, It would have kicked started a less serious lighter style of play that would be more excepted by players. However it would only be "King for a day" unless they quickly did necessary coding for it to play better. Everything else would be based from EQ2 and much would follow same as it is now without a dungeon finder or cross realm Mega world.
Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of The Rings Online wouldn't have been phased at all. It would still release exactly as it was.... With this Lotro would become the new King, and D&D Online style would be popular too. From here, business as usual.
I like World of Warcraft, well only Vanilla.... BUT the world would have been a better place without it. They did major damage to the industry in later years.
This is a really good question.
One I can't really answer, because, around the time of WoW's launch, I became burned out on EQ, I moved to DAoC and CoH, and was not impressed, I quit MMO's.. got married, focused on my job.. bought a house.. did the whole "real life thing" and it was years before I started playing MMO's again, and everything had changed, but, even then, when I returned to MMO's I still never played WoW, so I have no frame to understand how it changed the market.
What could have been.. well.. I am not sure what the other shooting stars were, that would have filled the void, or been the trend setters.
I would wager games like DDO would have been bigger hits than they were, but again, what hurt DDO was IP disputes, which may not have happened if they had been more successful from launch, so that kind of Instance based game play could have been the next huge market trend.
I guess in the end, I don't really know how things could have been that different, because I am not sure what exactly WoW did.
But I wager that MMO never would have launched to the big budget games they became today, I imagine they would still remain very niche' market games where having 200K - 400K subs would be considered a smashing success, as opposed to the 10 Million Subs that ever game publisher dreams of getting.
So perhaps we would have more niche' focused MMO's, maybe ones that tried to be more true to their IP, for focus on fan service as opposed to just money and numbers.
But how that would translate to game play, and world interaction, I am not sure.
I think it would have gone from niche to mainstream anyway.
We would have EQ2 and Lotro as the Hero's instead. However EQ2 would NOT have been the one to kick off the market because of it's perpetual broken state, but Lotro would have done it.
All it would take is one big money maker to attract Triple A greed, and Lotro would have been that one.
The whole genre would have died ten years earlier, and this website with it probably. Bash WoW all you want, its what has kept money and interest flowing into this genre.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
As great as WOW was (& in its day it was pretty great) I think it came along at the right time. The early part of that decade (2001-2005) was really when the internet started to go mainstream. Before the 2k decade no one used the internet other than the tech savy, for the most part. WOW wasn't the first MMO it was just the newest one to come along at the right time when the internet and the idea of connecting,talking & playing with others online was about to explode.
Had WOW not existed i think something else would have swept up the market in its place . Asking this question is like asking if the Beatles or Rolling stones didn't exist would we have rock n roll today ? Wait nvm..... Now I'm confused
And and and .. What if Pigs had Wings , and were very elusive , what would we use for Breakfast meats , would chicken/fish/and steak be in a much better place in the breakfast food world .. WOuld pigs rule the skys? ... How much would Bacon cost ? and what happens when the Pigs defecate ?
And and and .. What if Pigs had Wings , and were very elusive , what would we use for Breakfast meats , would chicken/fish/and steak be in a much better place in the breakfast food world .. WOuld pigs rule the skys? ... How much would Bacon cost ? and what happens when the Pigs defecate ?
And and and .. What if Pigs had Wings , and were very elusive , what would we use for Breakfast meats , would chicken/fish/and steak be in a much better place in the breakfast food world .. WOuld pigs rule the skys? ... How much would Bacon cost ? and what happens when the Pigs defecate ?
I won't postulate on what you'd be eating for breakfast...
But you'd better be eating your meals indoors, 'cause that reality sounds like a real shit-storm
World of Warcraft got their spotlight because at the time of it's arrival on the scene no other MMORPG would allow us to mod/addon. Then WoW made the new never-been-done-before rule for letting us alter only the UI not the game itself. We were coming from Final Fantasy 11 or Everquest or Linage II who were(are) control freaks. And we were looking for a casual game; not heavy hours intensive that took us away from school, work, raising Jr. {Memories of crying with guildmates saying goodbye to those who joined military or professional college and had to leave us for real life}.
So to answer the question about if there was never WoW. Obviously, someone else would have stepped up to the plate. History was ready for the modders to join the mmorpg scene and it would have found someone else if WoW wasn't there. History was ready for a mmo that didn't lag. History was ready for a less grindy, less commitment, easy fast level.
Like saying if there was never a Bill Gates born. History was ready for Windows; someone else would have made it.
WoW introduced a graphic art style that did not lagg our PC's. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was such a heart break. It had everything we were looking for but lag! WoW's cartoony art didn't overload our graphic cards. Hated seeing bulk elves but at least it was something to play that wouldn't crash. Elves also don't have beards; if they have a beard they are human/dwarf mix descendant.
World of Warcraft got their spotlight because at the time of it's arrival on the scene no other MMORPG would allow us to mod/addon. Then WoW made the new never-been-done-before rule for letting us alter only the UI not the game itself. We were coming from Final Fantasy 11 or Everquest or Linage II who were(are) control freaks. And we were looking for a casual game; not heavy hours intensive that took us away from school, work, raising Jr. {Memories of crying with guildmates saying goodbye to those who joined military or professional college and had to leave us for real life}.
So to answer the question about if there was never WoW. Obviously, someone else would have stepped up to the plate. History was ready for the modders to join the mmorpg scene and it would have found someone else if WoW wasn't there. History was ready for a mmo that didn't lag. History was ready for a less grindy, less commitment, easy fast level.
Like saying if there was never a Bill Gates born. History was ready for Windows; someone else would have made it.
WoW introduced a graphic art style that did not lagg our PC's. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was such a heart break. It had everything we were looking for but lag! WoW's cartoony art didn't overload our graphic cards. Hated seeing bulk elves but at least it was something to play that wouldn't crash. Elves also don't have beards; if they have a beard they are human/dwarf mix descendant.
Great post, nicely worded... I would even say you nailed it.
SOE was a big contributor pre-wow and during. Problem was, it was all bad coding from the same guys from EverQuest to Vanguard. Someone would have stepped up to the plate.
Because of this I'm highly concerned with Pantheon.
I think that LOTRO would have happened anyways, and I think it would have been what WoW became. Especially off of the back of the huge success of the movies. They still would have wanted to capitalize on that.
LOTRO is the MMO with the largest standing IP attached to it, that wasn't already heavily associated with video games. Part of WoW's success is that it had an established, huge for the time, fan base built right in to it's launch. Had it never happened, then LOTRO would have taken over the scene because it has an even larger built-in fanbase too, but unfortunately not the video game lineage to back it up.
Its easy to forget that EQ2 at its release was in many wars more hardcore than EQ1. Almost every new zone needed a key quest. If somebody in your group died you got an xp penalty too.
It was the appearance of wow that made them change many of those elements.
Yes EQ2 definitely wowified itself after the initial success of WoW....Wow's influence on the industry is undeniable, I am just not sure it was for the better.
I would hypothesize that games would try more new things than follow what 'works'.
Unfortunately what works, only really works with WoW.
Part of what works for WoW and becomes a problem for new theme park MMOs is the amount of content that is 'filler' content in MMOs like side questing. So WoW being older has a lot of filler content other than their more polished end game.
The reason why it works with WoW is that they have a few other things that they did right, while being a popular IP. The things they did right was low requirments MMO, good art design, good combat, different ways to play - pvp, pve, raids, mini games etc
So if other mmos tried something else, they might have made for example a single player game with 'online end game'.
So its a game that delivers their story in the quality of a single player that can also be co-op. However there is no side questing, may be some open world events. This would allow the game to feel more alive by 1. trying to make the world feel alive without filling it side questing (day/night cycle, NPC movement, events etc) but also by having content that is repeatable and fun for end game.
Since part of the problem with any new themepark mmo is the lack of end game content.
If any MMO focused more on making end game more fun, then I personally beleive they would be more successful than having more side questing.
Also I beleive if they tried to make the game more alive without resorting to side quesing but using 'events', then there would be more development towards actual AI in video games or MMOs.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
if WoW was never invented, we'd still play our mmos on a base of 1k players per server, AT ALL. we had like 40 people online per night, was fun (well unless there was a relic raid going ofc *G*)
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Comments
One I can't really answer, because, around the time of WoW's launch, I became burned out on EQ, I moved to DAoC and CoH, and was not impressed, I quit MMO's.. got married, focused on my job.. bought a house.. did the whole "real life thing" and it was years before I started playing MMO's again, and everything had changed, but, even then, when I returned to MMO's I still never played WoW, so I have no frame to understand how it changed the market.
What could have been.. well.. I am not sure what the other shooting stars were, that would have filled the void, or been the trend setters.
I would wager games like DDO would have been bigger hits than they were, but again, what hurt DDO was IP disputes, which may not have happened if they had been more successful from launch, so that kind of Instance based game play could have been the next huge market trend.
I guess in the end, I don't really know how things could have been that different, because I am not sure what exactly WoW did.
But I wager that MMO never would have launched to the big budget games they became today, I imagine they would still remain very niche' market games where having 200K - 400K subs would be considered a smashing success, as opposed to the 10 Million Subs that ever game publisher dreams of getting.
So perhaps we would have more niche' focused MMO's, maybe ones that tried to be more true to their IP, for focus on fan service as opposed to just money and numbers.
But how that would translate to game play, and world interaction, I am not sure.
We would have EQ2 and Lotro as the Hero's instead. However EQ2 would NOT have been the one to kick off the market because of it's perpetual broken state, but Lotro would have done it.
All it would take is one big money maker to attract Triple A greed, and Lotro would have been that one.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Had WOW not existed i think something else would have swept up the market in its place . Asking this question is like asking if the Beatles or Rolling stones didn't exist would we have rock n roll today ? Wait nvm..... Now I'm confused
Aloha Mr Hand !
Nevermind...this shits hard
Aloha Mr Hand !
SOE was a big contributor pre-wow and during. Problem was, it was all bad coding from the same guys from EverQuest to Vanguard. Someone would have stepped up to the plate.
Because of this I'm highly concerned with Pantheon.
LOTRO is the MMO with the largest standing IP attached to it, that wasn't already heavily associated with video games. Part of WoW's success is that it had an established, huge for the time, fan base built right in to it's launch. Had it never happened, then LOTRO would have taken over the scene because it has an even larger built-in fanbase too, but unfortunately not the video game lineage to back it up.
Unfortunately what works, only really works with WoW.
Part of what works for WoW and becomes a problem for new theme park MMOs is the amount of content that is 'filler' content in MMOs like side questing. So WoW being older has a lot of filler content other than their more polished end game.
The reason why it works with WoW is that they have a few other things that they did right, while being a popular IP. The things they did right was low requirments MMO, good art design, good combat, different ways to play - pvp, pve, raids, mini games etc
So if other mmos tried something else, they might have made for example a single player game with 'online end game'.
So its a game that delivers their story in the quality of a single player that can also be co-op. However there is no side questing, may be some open world events. This would allow the game to feel more alive by 1. trying to make the world feel alive without filling it side questing (day/night cycle, NPC movement, events etc) but also by having content that is repeatable and fun for end game.
Since part of the problem with any new themepark mmo is the lack of end game content.
If any MMO focused more on making end game more fun, then I personally beleive they would be more successful than having more side questing.
Also I beleive if they tried to make the game more alive without resorting to side quesing but using 'events', then there would be more development towards actual AI in video games or MMOs.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
we had like 40 people online per night, was fun (well unless there was a relic raid going ofc *G*)
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"