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REZZED: The Most Important MMOs Of The First Modern Decade - The List - MMORPG.com

13

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  • CelciusCelcius Member RarePosts: 1,865
    WoW was never and has never been F2P in China. The monetization was different, sure, but not free. They had to pay over there in time factors of stuff like 1 day, 7 days, 3 days,ect. That is the primary difference between WoW China and the rest of the world. They absolutely had 12 million subs, obviously some of those subs were the shorter days from China, but it is still 12 million subs. 
  • dotdotdashdotdotdash Member UncommonPosts: 485
    "WoW was able to reach the heights that it did because it was the right game at the right time. The MMOG category was growing and maturing, but the “standard” gameplay of the time was relatively hardcore, even for a fair portion of the serious gamer segment. This meant there was still room (in retrospect, a gigantic amount of it) for a title with, among other differences, a gentler learning curve and overall lower barriers to entry."

    This is an assessment that really baffles me.

    Prior to the release of TBC in January 2007, World of Warcraft had close to (if not) 7 million subscribers. TBC wasn't a "casual friendly" expansion, it merely retooled the numbers involved in high-end content to give access to smaller communities of the same sort of players that had been playing WoW through vanilla, and even went so far as to add more "hardcore" content into the mix. Under TBC, it hit 10 million subscribers. Wrath stepped in the direction of more causal game systems, but it wasn't until Cata that Blizzard moved the game categorically in the direction of catering almost purely to casual gaming, and it was with Cata that subscription numbers began to fall precipitously from 12 million to the estimated 5 million today. Based on the figures, player retention was highest under the two more hardcore offerings of WoW; player retention is the most important measure of success for a title built to retain players.

    The figures do not correlate with the idea that there was room for WoW to grow by moving to a gentler learning curve and lower barriers to entry. In fact, quite the opposite is true; as WoW moved further and further towards gentler learning curves and lower barriers to entry, the subscription numbers have declined dramatically. Blizzard are quite clearly aware of this, as their content pipeline has moved back in the direction of designing content top down (rather than bottom up, which seemed to be their approach through some of Wrath, and all of Cata, MoP and WoD). In addition, they've added some of the social challenges back into the game through the Mythic system.

    What will make of break this discussion is the eventual release of Classic servers. If Classic servers bump sub numbers up over an extended period, then Blizzard (and the wider WoW community) will have some soul-searching to do. If Classic has no meaningful impact, then we can put WoWs ongoing decline down to the natural decline of a game this old. Before you jump on the latter idea however, just go and take a look at EQ and RS; both games released classic servers, both games quickly found that those services were more popular than their most recent offerings. OSRS is a really good example of this.
  • dotdotdashdotdotdash Member UncommonPosts: 485
    edited February 2018
    "Now sure, they have a lot of gamer's...but cmon people...the amount of poor folks far, far, outnumber the people there that have computers or are able to play games."

    58 out of every 100 households have access to a computer in China/ over 50% of the population has access to the Internet. A far cry from the 70-90% seen in the US and Europe, but certainly not as bad as you seem to be suggesting. To put things in perspective: those figures amount to around 700 million Internet users in China, around 700 million in the EU, versus around 300 million in the US. Also, how are we defining poor people here? If we're defining it based on poverty lines, between 2% and 6.5% of the population are in poverty. Income inequality is high, but it's high everywhere (especially in the US, where 4 families control the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50% of the population). Add all of this to the fact that China has some of the highest growing wages in the world, coupled with the fact that China has one of the highest growing Internet-penetration rates in the world... and... yeah... making sweeping statements about a highly nuanced subject matter is a bit of a silly thing to do.
  • dotdotdashdotdotdash Member UncommonPosts: 485

    Wizardry said:

    Being that i have been an active gamer,chat room person for as long as anyone,i have seen all the phases over time in the gaming industry.



    Even when i resided for example in Quake and Unreal Tournament,i talked to a lot of different people about different games because unlike many hanging out in a greedy battle.net,the real gamers hung out in heat.net and multi game multi supported business that allowed gamer's to witness and play all sorts of games and not just Blizz games.T.E.N was another.



    Anyhow to my point,when i was listening and talking about other games,one game came up often outside of the FPS genre and that was Ultima and EQ.I would say Ultima a bit more as EQ was strictly online and Ultima had several single player games.

    NOBODY talked about Blizzard,yeah yeah believe it or not ,i am not making this up and have mentioned many timers,i didn't even know a single thing about Blizzard prior to Wow.



    So the industry and chat rooms were talking Ultima/EQ UT99and Quake and that was the big games.Then of course we had the first rendition of EA sports games like NHLPA 93 and then basketball and Football and golf games.



    The FF franchise was very popular,mostly the FFVII game,for me it was earlier,the FF3 game was amazing and when a friend said FFXI was coming and similar to FF3 i was ready and willing to jump in.



    So there is the timeline and guess what,up until FFXI,nobody cared about Blizzard,it was SOE and SE dominating with soem good games from the Might N Magic series as well Duke Nukem,Baldur's Gate and of course Zenimax/Bethesda



    Yes Wow in 2005 was it,created a stir among kids and a wave of "follow the leader",hes buying so im buying and shes buying,nobody really knowing anything other than they are buying.So i feel unlike the previous era of old school games,i felt Wow was way more a "on a whim purchase" than any of the other games prior.






    I'm sorry, but wat?

    Prior to FFXI, Blizzard had released major titles in the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo franchises. Warcraft 3 (which released 2 months after FFXI) and Diablo 2 (which released 2 years before FFXI) are two of the best selling PC games of all time, and were critically acclaimed on their release. StarCraft (which released in 1998) is one of the most critically acclaimed RTS games of all time, and became a huge pro-sport in South Korea.

    In short, Blizzard has been a well-known and highly lauded game developer since the late 90s, arguably earlier (long before FFXI came out). Whatever chat rooms you were frequenting, they were probably delusions of some form.
  • Revy106Revy106 Member UncommonPosts: 47
    no SWG oO??
  • ChicagoCubChicagoCub Member UncommonPosts: 381
    Not mentioning EverQuest = The difference between gaming during the rise of MMO's and reading about gaming during the rise of MMO's.
  • josko9josko9 Member RarePosts: 577
    edited February 2018
    Celcius said:
    WoW was never and has never been F2P in China. The monetization was different, sure, but not free. They had to pay over there in time factors of stuff like 1 day, 7 days, 3 days,ect. That is the primary difference between WoW China and the rest of the world. They absolutely had 12 million subs, obviously some of those subs were the shorter days from China, but it is still 12 million subs. 
    Expansions have been always free for them. As for the subscription itself, there is a difference between maintaining a subscription for 90 days or for 7 days. Imagine if you'd spend 1$ in a 3-month period (a quarter) and Blizzard would count you as a subscriber. And make no mistake, chinese playerbase was always in the majority, especially after the whole debacle with Pandaria, which was obviously not meant for the western market, but they forced it on us anyway. 

    How is it not misleading to count ~7mil of chinese players as subscribers if they'd on average spend less than ~5$ in a whole quarter? Isn't it enough misleading to even count subscribers based on a 3-month period? What's next, subscribers based on all 12 months in a year? Perhaps then they could brag that they hit 12mil "subscribers" again.

    Personally I find monthly active players stat the most fair, sadly Blizzard never used it. 
  • AvanahAvanah Member RarePosts: 1,615
    Sorry, but the most Important 3 should be in this order:

    1996: Meridian 59
    1997: UO
    1999: Everquest

    "My Fantasy is having two men at once...

    One Cooking and One Cleaning!"

    ---------------------------

    "A good man can make you feel sexy,

    strong and able to take on the whole world...

    oh sorry...that's wine...wine does that..."





  • klash2defklash2def Member EpicPosts: 1,949
    haha one of these things pops up every 3 weeks or so and it always makes people SO UPSET that their game didn't make the list of some random person on the internet. never change. 
    "Beliefs don't change facts. Facts, if you're reasonable, should change your beliefs."


    "The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."



     
    Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear. 


  • SubilacSubilac Member UncommonPosts: 49
    Everquest and Runescape back in "99" were pure magic. That's where my addiction began. 18 years later, I still play both.
  • ChildoftheShadowsChildoftheShadows Member EpicPosts: 2,193
    Evercrack or bust. I come back to this site less and less and things like this sure don't help.
  • AriesTigerAriesTiger Member UncommonPosts: 444
    I was hoping to see my two favorite MMOs :( lol. Warhammer Online and COV/H.
  • LackingMMOLackingMMO Member RarePosts: 664
    EQ, UO, AC, DAoC, SB, Lineage, SWG, FF11.

    Without these games you wouldn't have this site. Most credit should go to EQ and UO though as they were more staples then the others. I don't even know if I would consider ff11 first gen either as that came out well after eq, uo and ac (about 4 years). But I do feel it was ahead of its time honestly, same for EQOA.

    WoW I don't like and I'm not fond of the direction its popularity took the genre which caused imo lazy developers to stop being original and start going full on cookie cutter mode BUT it is undeniably the sole reason why mmos are so popular right now. Still not a first gen though, it should hold the #1 spot if they did a list for gen 2. WoW is to gen 2 what eq was to gen 1.
  • chukekle1chukekle1 Member UncommonPosts: 33
    WoW turned social MMOs into easy mode non social gaming, not only can a 5 year old raid in WoW but someone doesnt even have to talk to ppl to join a random dungeon or raid, reputation use to mean something in mmos, if you were an asshole you didnt get groups, but WoW threw that out the window. There is a reason WoW is so popular, it is an EZ game that gives instant gratification and your shitty attitude cause you dont have any social skills to make real friends goes unpunished cause you can just randomly join dungeons, hell with the right add-ons WoW practically plays the game for you, the add-ons tell you what to do, basically all you do in WoW is do what the add-ons tell you and collect the instant gratification loot, EZ mode gaming (aka WoW) is what ruined the MMO genre. Everyone just wants to get to end game in a week then bitch about there being not enough content.
  • WallisHallWallisHall Member UncommonPosts: 15
    lol funny article

    So Richard (new troll to the MMO scene) Aihoshi, interesting opinion, but really not accurate.

    Thanks for your different (revisionist) opinion piece.

    Like many of the people who posted before me, I lived through it and ummm it was definitely more interesting than described here.
  • GruugGruug Member RarePosts: 1,789
    Star Wars Galaxies

    World War 2 Online

    Eve Online

    Planetside (1)

    WoW

    Let's party like it is 1863!

  • lahnmirlahnmir Member LegendaryPosts: 5,041
    edited February 2018
    lol funny article

    So Richard (new troll to the MMO scene) Aihoshi, interesting opinion, but really not accurate.

    Thanks for your different (revisionist) opinion piece.

    Like many of the people who posted before me, I lived through it and ummm it was definitely more interesting than described here.
    So he has an opinion but you have the facts? I just want that to be clear, so your snarky attitude isn't based on some childish 'my opinion is better then yours' notion. Because that would be rather silly now wouldn't it?

    /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

  • GanellonGanellon Member UncommonPosts: 3
    Where is EvE Online?! Someone here forgot one of the most important MMO's out there!, sad... :(

    FYI Mr: EvE made history at the beginning of the MMO's era.
  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441
    Ganellon said:
    Where is EvE Online?! Someone here forgot one of the most important MMO's out there!, sad... :(

    FYI Mr: EvE made history at the beginning of the MMO's era.
    The thing is that Eve just like SWG did not have a huge impact on the genre as such, it certainly was an amazing game but few of it's features have been implemented in many other games.

    Then again, the same could be said about UO. Everquest influenced the genre far more then UO. Heck, later games got far more from Meridian 59 then UO as well. Sure, we seen a few games that tried to use UOs legacy, like Mortal online for instance but at best they have been small niche games.

    Wow and Lineage are certainly important. I guess FF XI was as well since it really got Japanese into the genre as well.

    Everquest belongs as much on that list as any of the other games, more then most of them, Without EQ there would be no Wow (heck, Kaplan got hired after Morhaime got to know him from the same EQ raiding guild). The western MMOs would have moved in a very different direction without it, we might very well have the popular western games based on UO or Lineage instead then.

     What was OP thinking? Just put EQ on the bleeding list.
  • GanellonGanellon Member UncommonPosts: 3
    Loke666 said:

    The thing is that Eve just like SWG did not have a huge impact on the genre as such, it certainly was an amazing game but few of it's features have been implemented in many other games.
    ...
    This is correct but today we know what an important role EvE had/has, today we know that EvE changed the MMO genre in many ways and this List was written today and not back in 2003.
    If someone wants to make a list today about *important* things of the past he has to use the knowledge of today and not the criteria of the past.

    EvE became a legend and wrote a 15 years MMO history with success, this is what we know today.
  • ScorchienScorchien Member LegendaryPosts: 8,914
    Loke666 said:
    Ganellon said:
    Where is EvE Online?! Someone here forgot one of the most important MMO's out there!, sad... :(

    FYI Mr: EvE made history at the beginning of the MMO's era.
    The thing is that Eve just like SWG did not have a huge impact on the genre as such, it certainly was an amazing game but few of it's features have been implemented in many other games.

    Then again, the same could be said about UO. Everquest influenced the genre far more then UO. Heck, later games got far more from Meridian 59 then UO as well. Sure, we seen a few games that tried to use UOs legacy, like Mortal online for instance but at best they have been small niche games.

    Wow and Lineage are certainly important. I guess FF XI was as well since it really got Japanese into the genre as well.

    Everquest belongs as much on that list as any of the other games, more then most of them, Without EQ there would be no Wow (heck, Kaplan got hired after Morhaime got to know him from the same EQ raiding guild). The western MMOs would have moved in a very different direction without it, we might very well have the popular western games based on UO or Lineage instead then.

     What was OP thinking? Just put EQ on the bleeding list.
    UO has more in game activities for a player than any other game made to date , and Many of those activities have been borrowed by other games ... Far more than any other game ..
  • GanellonGanellon Member UncommonPosts: 3
    You know what people? i personally don't need a list from an amateur. There are so many other serious lists from other sources (like "The most important MMOs" and "The Best Games ever" from PC-Gamer) which EvE and EQ was always in.
    We have so many other "top 10" lists the past 15 years with EvE and EQ always in, i'm good with it, we dont have to proove anything. :)
  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,737
    Amathe said:
    There is no justification for leaving out Everquest.
    RIght..>thats like saying Michael Jordan isn't one of the top 15 basketball players ever....EQ has to be number 1.
  • feztoniofeztonio Member UncommonPosts: 60
    No EQ. No SWG. ?????
  • OzmodanOzmodan Member EpicPosts: 9,726
    Torval said:
    Albatroes said:
    EQ honestly was the foundation for most mmorpgs so....Its like naming presidents but forgetting Benjamin Franklin. Also no mention of RO....and if you dont think seeing thousands of people in Prontera doesn't count as a MMO, you got issues...
    No. DIKU is the foundation for most MMOs. EQ was just a blip in that chain. Everything they tried to do WoW did better. Most MMOs did better. EQ doesn't really own much of anything original and they didn't really do it better.

    They get some credit for putting out a 3D version in the west before most others, but they didn't invent 3D in gaming, they just applied it to an MMO. The transition from sprite based to 3D modeling was an imminent eventuality across the genre. Also the massive enduring popularity of Lineage (a 2.5d sprite based game) over the last 18 years has shown that 3D isn't necessarily a defining factor in popularity of a game.
    DIKU?  It was a MUD, NOT a MMO.  I completely disagree with you about EQ, it set the stage for all MMO's including WOW.  The Wow team was made up of EQ players dissatisfied with the game.  Putting the Chinese game on here was a complete joke!!!  Next time use a little common sense!
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