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Why is WoW so popular?
PkGhost
Member Posts: 23
Hi guys....
World of Warcraft isn't even ranked in the top 10 for MMO's on this site, yet they have 52% market share. I played it myself for about a month and it didn't seem to have much to offer one such as myself, seeking mostly just PvP. It seemed as if it had much to offer to the many people who have never played an MMO before, mimicing many single-player RPG aspects. Perhaps that is what they did, just pulled in a bunch of new players to the genre of MMO's. Either way, I can understand why it is popular, but 52% market share just blows my mind. I would like to get some input from those who play it now or have played it in the past as to why you believe it has gained such popularity in the past years. Please try and refrain from posting reasons why you think it is a horrible game. I've seen enough of those posts and could write a fair number of them myself. The fact is, WoW has over 7 million active subscribers while the #2 MMO, Lineage, peaked at only 3.5 million. If you have any input as to what sets this MMO apart from others, be it gameplay, content, or just old fashioned marketing, do me a favor and post it.
Comments
why it's popular? It's simple:
- It was made by Blizzard.. they made one of the most succesfull games in the gaming history so there was A LOT of hype about WoW. Most ppl propably bought it only b/c it was made by Blizzard.
- It's polished game without many bugs. You can run it on almost every pc.
- you can buy WoW almost EVERYWHERE. I live in Poland and amoung mmos only WoW, FF XI and GW I can buy at store. Add to that game cards (there are propably more ppl paying with game cards then with credid cards)
- commercials etc.
It doesn't matter if the game is good or bad when it comes to sales. WoW will go bigger now simply b/c of the playerbase e.g. new player is looking for a new game.. he sees eq2 and wow.. He loks at the boxes and see; WoW: 7.5 mil players.. guess which game he will buy.
Well some belive that this site is taken over by EVE fanboi's... personally I belive EVE-Online is on top because it just is a great game (soon 3 years in the game for me).
But WoW is not a BAD game, I have tried it and I liked parts of the game.. it got some strongpoints and the second time I tried it I actually met nice people on the server in 95% of the time, even on the enemy side...
BUT WoW do lack some fundamental things that I would miss in any game really... I like the market in EVE, I like how you are not really safe in any place, and that you actually loose something when you die.
If WoW had something of this maybe these huge servers where 30 000 people could play on and the market and some form of deathpenalty then yeah it probably would be my main game!!!
I have discovered that the "leet" people in WoW where gone or atleast not on the server I played and that made me change the view, also the npc/Quest is quite good but in the long run it becomes very boring but so do missionrunning in EVE-Online do too... both are grinding and quite boring.
And no, im not new to mmos. I have been playing mmos for roughly 7 yrs. I have played AO, RO, EQ2, Lineage 2, Flyff, WoW, etc etc. This is not a game for just newbies. It is a game that does not dervive its "fun" from being like a job. It seems to be a game where you can just log in and have fun (though i know it changes at top end where the raiding really starts, bvut most games have a pretty boring top end anyways where you either just raid or pvp)
Sure some people like huge death penalties, and losing all your loot when you die, and having to grind for months to get a highend level, but in the gaming world i think this is a SMALL portion, hence the reason for 7 million subscribers in WoW.
And like one of the previous posters said, it is VERY polished. They have thought of almost everything, from special loot circumstances, to quest sharing. It seems to have very little bugs (I have not encountered one yet). And the lag (on my server) is not even noticable.
My god has horns.... nah, I don't think he is real either.
Word of mouth. Lot of my friends played it so i picked it up.
Before i was a SWG pre cu player. and my friends sucked me into wow for a lil while. I finally quit when i saw how dull it can get.
but i can see y its so popular.
Word of mouth is the most common way of people starting to play WoW.
I know i started playing because a couple of my friend's played that after Diablo 2 and FFXI.
There are also commercials on TV For WoW
Heres the commercial
And there is also one Here
As you can see they advertise by Word of mouth,Television and even on the internet by having free Trial events
Take FFXI for example.. By level 10, your gonna have to start
getting into parties to level up, it's virtually impossible to level up
solo from this point on. The hardest part is finding a
group now. You sit around for hours trying to get a group going!
Even back in it's hay day, you would stand around waiting.
WoW is very friendly to new comers, as it's easy to solo grind all the
way up to level 60! Dungeons in the game are easy to get to and a
lot easier to find a party for a dungeon at ANY level!
Yes, the pvp system sucked, but any pvp is better than no pvp
right? and I can think of atleast a half dozen games with even
worse pvp.
Honestly I think the killer for WoW (from personal experience) Is
end game raiding. You get burned out on the game from all the
work and time you spend to accomplish these raid dungeons.
Word of mouth made it even more popular.
1-60 in just a month or less depending how often you played.
Easy to learn if you never played a MMO before.
Widely distributed in many stores including time cards for those who don't have a cc.
pvp (lotta folks love to pvp)
Here are some reasons why I think its not #1 here anymore:
People got tired of it.
Complained it was too easy.
Hated the raiding at lvl 60.
Looking for something different instead of kill x mob, loot Y item x times ect..
Can't think of any more reasons why its not 1 anymore other than probably the fanboys of Eve and GW voting it down.
The release was so horrible, lag, and downtime wise if a no name company was releasing it, it would have crashed and burnnred. Change the game name to "World of Warriors" and the comany to "gameperks" and you would have had a failure.
But blizz had time to fix it up and get it stable. After that word of mouth and review took the world be storm.
It was tailor-made to attact the largest population and it was made by a historically amazing company. Also, it is one of the few games that doesn't really have a broken system.
I think Blizzard probably paid highly to know what the average gamer wanted, what were the desires and needs of those, and boom, they made their game that way.
Very nicely made game. It was made to be the cup of tea for the most people.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.