Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Blizzard killed off it's competitors by lucky coincidence.
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
First some back round (if not skip to bottom),
Lots of arguing about Blizzard, then I realized the argument is true, EVERYTHING is really about Blizzard. Have you ever noticed if a poster mentions World of Warcraft everyone jumps in and has something to say ?......Good bad or indifferent…. It's always the most Hot Topic. Theirs a reason for that.
Blizzard is in control !
Here's how everything mmoprg went down:
It didn't start with World of Warcraft, but Blizzard "completely" shaped the market into what it is today. Since 2004 every Western mmorpg is World of Warcraft being just shy of copyrights and trademarks.
Blizzard on it's own decided on Family friendly easy, cross realm everything, pretty cosmetic cash shop items the list goes on. They didn't invent everything, Asian developers did most of the work. Blizzard "forced it" to be the standard here in the west…. All followed.
It's a fact, as of late mmorpg's are not popular in gamming as they once were….It's Blizzards fault !!
Here is EXACTLY why:
mmorpg's by themselves are "Dull and Lifeless". Everyone of them from Ultima Online, EverQuest, Vanilla World of Warcraft, Vanguard, more recent Final Fantasy 14 and Elder Scrolls Online, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
But if you take the "Dull and Lifeless" game and add community it's 100% different, one hundred and eighty degrees different !!
Community was the hallmark in the very early days. It was the spark of something new, it was the twinkle in one's eye. Classic Vanilla World of Warcraft came along and totally enhanced the early version and became #1.
Ok so what happened ?
Blizzard CHANGED DIRECTION and all others followed down the rabbit hole. They invented the solo experience with easy family and extremely accessible Looking for group tool.
Important:
Being king, it was a mistake Blizzard could afford however they went from 11 million to 6 million. And they refuse to embrace the cause….. Others following their formula and brought mmorpg's to a "dull and Lifeless" state of solo. Do people still play mmorpg's ?.... Sure you'll have that when we have 7.5 Billion people on this planet.
By lucky coincidence, Blizzard was able to make unfortunate mistakes, cause it's competitors to follow, yet they them selfs were able to recover..... Blizzard is actually that strong !
and 6 others.
Comments
We had Empires run by Emperors, we had Kingdoms run by Kings, now we have Countries...
They didn't invent the MMO, but they made it far more accessible to the average player.
It wasn't luck at all. They looked at each genre and said "How do we take this style of game and make it so that everyone in the house will want to play it."
They did it exceptionally well. I know 60 year old people who play WoW, I know 12 year old people who play WoW. I know 60 year old people who play Diablo, I know 12 year old people who play Diablo. I even know 60 year old people who play Overwatch, using support classes, and I know 12 year old people who play Overwatch.
They worked diligently towards universal appeal and mostly succeeded in almost every genre they tried.
The community developed organically after the game showed appeal.
By universal everything to capture all ages..... They "lost" half the crowed to gain the other half.
In my opinion the other half that I talked about is not embracing the universal everything of OTHER mmorpg developers....... Hence, Blizzard killed off its competitors. This leaves us in a state of mmorpg's are at a low.
New players can get a welcome package and old/returning players can also get a welcome back package and 7 days free subscription time! Just click here to use my referral invitation
"This is ten percent luck
Twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure
Fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name"
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
20% Skill of marketing.
15% Knowing marketing is everything and it's power.
5% Profit each manager sticks in their pocket.
50% Pain, because they have massive lay offs.
100% everyone knows their name !
It's my decision that WoW is a bad game. I don't care about the facts, but I will now decide explanations for all of them so that the facts will support my decision.
But the "average player" it did appeal to was the solo RPG gamers and later just solo gamers. WoW was not about making a better game for MMO players, it was about creating a whole new audience that was not playing. If you were an EQ or DAOC player who played a quite different MMORPG who wanted to come along for the ride then fine, if not Blizzard looked forward to the much larger player base of solo gamers so did not need you.
What you call the community developing organically was more like a hostile takeover.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
huge difference.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
That veing said with Wow Blizzard added stuff to mmos like rest experience and clear quest icons. And when it came to graphics they started with detailed artwork, animated it and then applied a "big pixel" filter to make it less graphically intensive - so it ran on less powerful hardware without looking like Sam & Max say. They ran an open beta which generated - what for the time - was huge marketing.
With a room full of Blizzard devs saying "Please come back home". (Awesome song.)
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
I believe someone mention there are list of 600 mmorpg now. Even if you neglect wow. There are mmorpg like runescape which rumors have is doing really well.
I have a theory that Delete is something like that... And if I am correct, it still needs some tweaking I'd say.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0