Originally posted by mmcguire2 If your looking for a challenge, try something else.
I wil be sure to remeber that while u play the ever so challenging game that is Vanguard,lol. Wow is not easy, that is the thing that most of you people without a single brain cell fail to realise. The game is very well designed, therefore it leads to very good gameplay which leads to ease of use and playablitly. This is the fact alot of people dont understand and fail to realise. Simple fact is why alot of other games fail, crap design poor layout poor game architecture, BUT EXCELLENT GRAPHICS etc etc etc, which leads to crap games.
Wow is not easy, it is extremely well designed, hence it leads user to able to pick the game up fast and is easy to play. This does not equate to the game is easy. If your 2 brain cell mind cannot grasp this fact, then you should stick with vanguard.
yeah I don't think anyone whose ever run any of the high level instances or raids can say that WoW is too "easy" because it takes a heck of a lot of coordination and communication to not F it up. the people who think WoW is too easy probably play mages or some other class that just button mashes all day... maybe the occassional polymorph!
try being the only tank in a 10-man group and holding agro on 6 mobs while the idiots in your group wail away on everything instead of focusing fire on 1 target at a time like you told them too.... Oi the life of a tank.. we are SO underappreciated.....
I think some of the WoW fans are missing the point that what WoW is sucessfully at came at a cost. Just one example is customization. Have you ever compared the customization in WoW, say compared to SWG. Its pathetic. All WoW characters are essentially clones of others in their race. Every female human has the same porportions for example.
Oh yeah sorry character creation, has given SWG its 8+ million plus scubscribers,lol. You can have all the fancy graphics,charcater custmamisation you want, IT DOES NOT MAKE UP FOR THE OTHER 99% OF THE GAME. By your reasoning such things as cut scenes would be considered great, let me tell you intros, charcter custmosation etc etc etc, make up probably 2% of the game. Fact that SWG has this uber charcater custamisation and wo does not, means what exactly? How many people are actually playing swg?
I mainly hate WoW because of it's community, I never liked the Horde, but I had to reroll because the community on alliance was unstandable.. Too many immature kiddies who love Elves and legolas (I was a hunter, so we had a bad reputation cause of them)
Another reason is the constant grinding for gear, and (before BC) having to depend on 40 men to get something, or be someone.
Last but not least, class balance, it's been like a year and they haven't nerfed Warlocks yet (Maybe a 5% nerf on corruption but that was it), you would be mounted, see a warlock, DoT, DoT, DC, shadowbolt.. you didn't even have time to get off your mount and you were already on your 400 hp with 3-4 DoT's on you.
Since WoW brought alot of new people into the MMORPG genre, those people are thrown anything at them, and they don't say anything or complain, that's why the game hasn't changed, and isn't going to change..
The main reason I quitted though, was the repetitive gameplay, and I'm told BC is more of that BS.. Thus I never bought the expansion.
WoW is a good game, period. Well designed, expanded content well done, and in in terms of game mechanics, overall, it was very well produced. It may not have flashy graphics but honestly, it's refreshing to see a company put more effort into gameplay rather than graphic appearance. The real turn off for some of the older MMO players is the WoW player base. Sure, they have over 8 million subscribers, but a good portion of those players are to put it simply, the most annoying people I have ever encountered. My guess is they have no success in a real life social situation, so they run around screaming about god damned Chuck Norris all day, while pulling when the tank is already trying to hold aggro from 4 other mobs that they accidentally added, and then running out of mana and screaming as they run for the instance zone, meanwhile adding about 13 other mobs to the already bollocksed situation. And after all that you get a message in group chat saying "wtf omg lol you guys suck, Chuck Norris would pwn you noobs." If WoW had a decent player base, it would have my subscription as well.
(side note: some of the posts on this board are further proof of the amazing player base of the beloved WoW)
Make your own choice. I'll make it simple
WoW = Good
WoW Player Base = Why did I pay a monthly subscription fee to babysit, I should be payed for dealing with these kids.
Ahiles u r an idiot, the way u r replyin to ppl is immature and u cant even compare wow to what swg was (pre cu). maybe now wow is slightly a better game swg but only because soe decided to try and copy wow. Fact wow is a rly shallow game, eve and swg have more depth in they're ui and options menu than the entire game of wow. Oh and b4 u accuse me of never palyin wow and not knowing what i talk about, i do play wow and have done for bout a year and a half.
Ever stop and think that is WHY Eve and SWG are no where close to as successful as WoW is that they were too complex and had too much of what you call depth? but it was empty depth, empty complexity, a lot to do and see but why waste the time if all of it isn't fun? just like vanguard...
Honestly, I tried Eve for about an hour before removing it from my hard drive. and I played SWG from day 1 up until just after Jump to Lightspeed expansion, which I beta tested. I loved old SWG. but it was doomed from the beginning with all the problems, bugs, undelivered (until much later anyway) content etc... I beta'd Vanguard for all of 3-4 days before going back to WoW. blood elf palidan saved my subscription, new race and zones kick ass
WoW takes the basic MMO formula and does it better, much, much, much better then everyone else. it's not that it is super simple and easy its that it is SO well designed it appears to be super simple and easy. there is a difference.
yeah, i'm looking for another MMO to devote my free time to, i'm a mmorpg addict, need a new fix, but for now yeah I'm still playing WoW because it's much better then anything else out there right now. and all my friends still play WoW so, that's what is really important to me is the community/social experience, and I happily play WoW with some of the coolest people I've ever met online, and some real life friends/family too
it doesn't matter that "eve and swg have more depth in they're ui and options menu" because the rest of the game sucked or was destroyed by the devs (swg)
tons of people out there saying "no you copied WoW" like if WoW had created mmos
i've even seen a post on IGN about some WoW players saying that DAOC copied WoW (yes, Dark Age of Camelot).
and i hate blizzard for many reasons, they refuse to implement true new content (oh great they implement new dungeons, wow!, but actually the only "major" thing they implemented was the battlegrounds)
and when they're adding true new content (new items, talents, etc) they just make it into an MUST expansion and sells it for 50$
making MUST xpacks is market strategy, i know, but changing level cap with a MUST xpack? that's just bullshit of their part
i betae'd it for some weeks and played it for 2 months after launch, and i gotta say i've never seen such a bad community in my whole life. i was just tired of hearing "dud you're a nub cuz i got from 20 to 60 in a day u just sux man get a life u fail at universe u cosmic trash" and shit like that. and seeing guilds full of gm dupers just annoyed the hell out of me.
i still don't know why people pay that much to buy a game and then quit 3 months later because only some people are "strong" enough mentally to do the same instace 10 times per day and still have fun.
Ultima Online 98~04 Dark Age of Camelot 03~07 Final Fantasy XI 04~06 Guild Wars 05~08 World of Warcraft 04~05 Unsuccessful Tries: DFO/EQ2/DRaja/Rag/Req/RYL/9D/Cabal/KO/PSU/RF/GE/TO/TR/DDO/EVE/LoTRO/L2/RZ/SWG/VG
worst community i've even seen in my entire life. tons of people out there saying "no you copied WoW" like if WoW had created mmos i've even seen a post on IGN about some WoW players saying that DAOC copied WoW (yes, Dark Age of Camelot).
and i hate blizzard for many reasons, they refuse to implement true new content (oh great they implement new dungeons, wow!, but actually the only "major" thing they implemented was the battlegrounds) and when they're adding true new content (new items, talents, etc) they just make it into an MUST expansion and sells it for 50$ making MUST xpacks is market strategy, i know, but changing level cap with a MUST xpack? that's just bullshit of their part i betae'd it for some weeks and played it for 2 months after launch, and i gotta say i've never seen such a bad community in my whole life. i was just tired of hearing "dud you're a nub cuz i got from 20 to 60 in a day u just sux man get a life u fail at universe u cosmic trash" and shit like that. and seeing guilds full of gm dupers just annoyed the hell out of me. i still don't know why people pay that much to buy a game and then quit 3 months later because only some people are "strong" enough mentally to do the same instace 10 times per day and still have fun.
people always complain about "the community this" and "the community that!"
put people you don't like on ignore. turn off general chat. transfer servers if you MUST.
idiots are only given power if you give it to them.
yeah i've seen some pretty stupid people, immaturity, etc etc but that is to be expected with 8+million people playing.
so what do I do? ignore the idiots, party up with like minded people (my guild is all 18+) and have a great time.
WoW has 8 million customers because people are more aware of MMORPGs these days and that any crappy computer can run the game.
If Everquest 1 came out along side WoW with the same compatibility, it would be the 8 million subscriber game as it was a far superior game. But since it came out 1999ish when you had to be able to install your own video card to play it, and MMORPGs weren't as big in the news, it wasn't as big.
Blizzard is an absolute genius for making WoW compatible with most every computer out there, but you know what? I'm betting a large portion of those 8 million subscribers are 13 year old children with Mommy's credit card number or drunken frat boys. Honestly if you enjoy yourself in that kind of community then great but personally, I don't.
I've got my eyes set on an MMORPG where the moment some idiot whines at me I can kill him on the spot and steal his loot.
Darkfall Online will put WoW to shame...(though Granado Espada has already done so a hundred times over).
8 Million? I doubt that number Blizzard touts about. You see they are only looking at how many accounts they have (both active and inactive) and say how many they have and go oh wow 8 Million. But how many of those 8 million are actually active?
I've got my eyes set on an MMORPG where the moment some idiot whines at me I can kill him on the spot and steal his loot.
Darkfall Online will put WoW to shame...(though Granado Espada has already done so a hundred times over).
Lol you people keep saying this game will do that and that game will do this. When all these so called games that are going to put wow to shame come out, what do they actually do?? They fail to be the wow killer that you keep predicting.
Darkfall been in prduction how long now? ever going to be released? You say Granadoa espando already has put wow to shame hundred times over. where has it put it to shame?? has it been relased? any subscribers yet?
Where do you even get your facts from that any of the above games has or are gouing to put wow to shame? Vnaguard forums were full of this ignorant rubbish for months, when relased nothing but pure flaming there about it.
Thats the point with you Wow haters, you make ssumptions without knowing any facts, please keep jumping from game to game!!.
Sadly for many people disrespect = hatred. I do not hate WoW, but I do consider it sub-par in its RPG elements and its world-usage. For me the excellent pacing and art direction do not make up for that. For others it does.
This is a fair summary. I think that the pacing issue – which is very important as you point out – has to be seen together with everything else: namely, the specific decision to make the game accessible to as many platforms as possible (and not just PC platforms), the design of an interface and camera that pretty much set industry standard for usabiloity and the like. WoW does lack complexity and depth, and whether one likes the game depends on the value one puts on these things – but it seems that many more people value the pacing and accesibility of WoW than not.
Fact wow is a rly shallow game, eve and swg have more depth in they're ui and options menu than the entire game of wow.
But this doesn’t make the games better, it just means they’re more complicated. Whether you like that or not is a value judgment, and it seems you’re outnumbered on that one to a substantial degree, which leads to my next point.
The key issue behind all of this is the changing economic landscape of MMOs. MMOs exist to make money, and at the same time with the upping of graphics and expectations, are very, very, very expensive to make as far as games go. Because these games are so expensive to make (well), they need to shoot for as many customers as possible in order to not only recooup the investment, but to hope to make money. It’s just very hard to make a game well, to take the time (and hence the money) to make it well, unless you can have a lot of people playing it. The market for really well-developed niche games is not really all that economically viable. Look at Vanguard. Sigil ran out of money and had to release the game unfinished. They admitted this. Undoubtedly their affiliation with SOE and inclusion of the game in the StationPass is another symptom of this because it allows the game to survive even with a lower level of standalone subscibers. It’s hard to imagine a niche-type MMO surviving if it’s designed with huge worlds, cutting edge graphics and the like – somewhere along the line, these things need to pencil economically, or they just get cancelled.
That’s where Blizzard comes in. Blizzard has the huge advantage of being already before WoW a hugely profitable division of an international conglomerate. There was plenty of money to make WoW, and that money was available within Vivendi, particularly given Blizzard’s profitable history. WoW releases and soon has subscription numbers that – apart from the Asian market – dwarf the entire rest of the NA/Euro MMO market taken together. Other developers are out there trying to make money, and know they need to get more subscribers to pencil their games – and Blizzard just demonstrated to the entire market how to get a lot of subscribers. So people take notice, they look and listen. They try to tinker with their own games to make them more like Blizzard’s and end up messing up their games because retrofitting like that is usually a recipe for disaster in any design. But the lesson to the industry remains, and remains even more loudly ringing in everyone’s ears after the release of TBC, namely: if you build a game that large numbers of people will find enjoyable, you can truly make a ton of money in this market.
Under those conditions, of course the market is going to listen to that message. These games exist to make money first and foremost. Some people think it’s cool to disdain companies who make games with a profit motive, but at the end of the day it’s the siren of the big bucks down the line that will get investors and publishers to invest in game development to begin with. It’s not like publishing poetry, where you want and expect a small audience and you subsidize the publication costs with other, more lucrative titles. Investors and publishers want their titles to make as much money as possible, and now that MMOs have become a mass market phenomenon, of course developers are out there trying to get a piece of that pie – it’s to be expected.
People will point to EVE and use it as an example of how things can be different. But EVE is an outlier in this case because EVE was relatively cheap to make due to the simplified graphics, and therefore doesn’t really offer a viable economic model for a land-based game that is more graphically heavy. And beyond that EVE had very patient investors who were Icelandic and supported CCP through the early rough goings of the game for reasons that were clearly more than economically based.
So the challenge for all the WoW bashers is this: convince developers either (1) that they do not need to make that much money and should see themselves as starving artists for the benefit of the gamer community or (2) that they should make more challenging, in-depth games that nevertheless appeal to a bigger market than the typical niche MMO. The days of EQ are gone. WoW changed the entire market dynamics for MMORPGs, and you won’t find nearly as many niche games being produced when there is so much money on the MMO table. Deal with that, adapt to it, and, most importantly, figure out how to position games that are more appealing while being more in-depth – in other words, more complicated without becoming tedious. WoW provides one answer to this question. The market is waiting for another one, and we haven’t seen it yet.
8 Million? I doubt that number Blizzard touts about. You see they are only looking at how many accounts they have (both active and inactive) and say how many they have and go oh wow 8 Million. But how many of those 8 million are actually active?
They are all active accounts, Blizzard’s press releases are clear on that. You can think what you want, but the likelihood that Blizzard is lying is very low because the statements they make in press releases, given that Vivendi is a publically-traded company, are subject to the securities laws, and if they are lying they can be sued by the SEC.
I'm glad someone notes the eras they came in. A Blizzard spokesperson himself stated the success beyond everyone's expectations was partially due to the availability of broadband now. Anyway, UO or EQ would never have attained 8m due to a multitude of reasons. Brandname, accessibility, specific area successes(Scandiavia and Asia), audiences, polish,marketing etc etc.
WoW isn't innovative at all in the technological sense,
It bloody well is.
The (working) Auction house. Been done before, bazaar in SWG for example.
The show item panel in the trade menu. Again, done before, cant remember which one I saw it in first but was long before WoW.
The GUI options. Been able to customise GUI layouts in many MMOs long before WoW came out.
The mod support. Ill give you this one, but its not a positive thing IMO, some could even be considered cheating.
The AI. Joking right? For the most part the AI is pretty poor, and scripted AI was in many MMOs long before WoW. Its not really AI anyway, just conditional scripting of the mobs behaviour.
The comedy names. How is that an innovation?
The seamless worlds/on the fly loading. Again, done before in DAoC and SWG, only reason they had zoning at all was because they needed to switch characters to different servers, but then so does WoW when you enter an instance or change continent.
The linking of items into the chat channel. Done before in several other MMOs.
The wardrobe function where you can see what an item will look like on you by simply clicking a hyper link. Wasnt in when I played so cant comment.
Bind on pick up. No drop/no trade items were in MUDs and many MMOs before WoW.
The warriors rage. Similar ideas been done before in single player RPGs, vaguely remember CoH having an idea similar to this on one of its classes as well.
The rogues stealth. Lol, I could hide in UO, let alone pretty much every MMO since.
The symbols for marking enemies. Not a patch on EVEs enemy flagging facilities.
The scaleability of the GFX engine. Eh? Just looked like bog standard DirectX to me. As for graphics options, take a look at EQ2, far more customisable and comprehensive.
Bosses with drops only placed in instances. And what about the world drop mobs like that dragon north of Jordhiem and the demon thing near the chaos portal, cant remember names as its been a while now. Instancing was in AO first I think.
The factional language filter. Not sure what you are getting at here, but on EQ1 roleplay servers you had to learn other races languages to be able to speak with or understand them.
Innovation after innovation. WHERE?
And yes they have also successfully copied and amalgamated a lot of great features from it's predesscors also.
It's just another RPG to be sure, but it is also a technical marvel.
I dont think WoW is a bad game either, PvE was fun until you out of content although I personally didnt find it very challenging. And the high level stuff was fine the first few times. PvP was fun before the BGs came along and made it just another grind.
Unfortunately, after you have ran all the high level content 10+ times it gets rather tedious. My idea of fun is not spending 4+ hours in the same instance every other night for week after week.
My biggest problems with WoW since quitting it are: -
- People claiming its not a grind when everyone who played/plays it knows full well that is all there is once the limited number of quests run out. Those that dont read the quests claim they are a grind as well.
- People claiming it was 'polished' or 'complete' when it was released. Absolute rubbish, the servers were buggy (Jordhiem crashing every evening, instance servers crashing midraid, not getting zoned when on a zepplin, etc), the classes werent balanced, there was missing content where they had failed to finish all the zones they planned for release (Dire Maul for example). It suffered from the same problems that most MMOs do at release.
- People claiming in chat channels of other MMOs that 'WoW is better'. If its so damn good why arent they playing it?
Popular != better. Everyone is different, the world would be a boring place if we were all the same, just as MMOs would be boring if they were all the same.
I must say that these complaints are probably the dumbest ever because they contradict themelves
"WoW has a bad community" - I've seen far worse in a single day of FF11, CoH or EQ2 than I have ever seen in WoW, especially FF11. ALL MMORPGs have a potentially terrible community. I tried several servers on EQ2 and some were just plain unbearable and others were very pleasant and helpful.
"The developers dont' listen" - I say "GOOD" to that. I'm glad that the developers don't listen to the people on the forums. The official forums for every single MMORPG ever made is just a whine fest of whiners whining because all they can do is whine whine whine.
"WoW is too easy" - as others have said it's because the gameplay and progression is so well programmed. But hey, if you want to spent 100 hours fighting the horrible UI trying to finish a single quest that will ultimately net you 23 experience points and an item you'll replace the next afternoon then go right ahead.
"WoWs end game is nothing but raiding" - this is perhaps the dumbest complaint of them all . Again, ALL MMORPGs end up having you run a certain dungeon or killing a certain boss a million times to get the best loot. And what do you need to complete this dungeon or kill this boss? A lot of people. Which is commonly referred to as a raid.
When these complainers actually have a real complaint against WoW that also doesn't also apply to their favorite MMO then they might have something.
I must say that these complaints are probably the dumbest ever because they contradict themelves "WoW has a bad community" - I've seen far worse in a single day of FF11, CoH or EQ2 than I have ever seen in WoW, especially FF11. ALL MMORPGs have a potentially terrible community. I tried several servers on EQ2 and some were just plain unbearable and others were very pleasant and helpful.
I´ve seens lot´s of good communities, but NOT in WoW ;(
"The developers dont' listen" - I say "GOOD" to that. I'm glad that the developers don't listen to the people on the forums. The official forums for every single MMORPG ever made is just a whine fest of whiners whining because all they can do is whine whine whine.
Well, developers SHOULD listen, but not to some whiny 13-year old. The ones playing probally know what needs to be fixed (I´m not refering to "imba" posts etc, mature post ppl) . Just look at Eve Online, Devs are one with the community, and it works great. Though, EVE´s community has an avarage age of 20-30 so that could be one reason.
"WoW is too easy" - as others have said it's because the gameplay and progression is so well programmed. But hey, if you want to spent 100 hours fighting the horrible UI trying to finish a single quest that will ultimately net you 23 experience points and an item you'll replace the next afternoon then go right ahead.
It is easy. You can´t say that the game is hard just beacause instances/mobs/raids are hard, or that the game is well designed. It takes about 1 hour to figure out how everything works, and by the time you hit lvl 60 (if you do) you should know how to play Good. Complexity is good, because you can learn new things even when you´ve played for 2+ years. I have played EVE for 4 years, and I still don´t know everything, not even half. And I haven´t grinded at all, still I´m a veteran.
"WoWs end game is nothing but raiding" - this is perhaps the dumbest complaint of them all . Again, ALL MMORPGs end up having you run a certain dungeon or killing a certain boss a million times to get the best loot. And what do you need to complete this dungeon or kill this boss? A lot of people. Which is commonly referred to as a raid. Eve, has no grind, no end game, no raids. No one telling you what to do , thousands of ways to make ISK and learn the game. Simply, there is no end-game.
When these complainers actually have a real complaint against WoW that also doesn't also apply to their favorite MMO then they might have something.
Though I might compare with EVE, wich is my favorite MMORPG, I still think I have valid ponts. WoW is a good game, I can´t ignore that. But it´s a grind, and with nothing new to add. No _real_ goal, wich MMO´s should have. WoW has one goal; lvl 70 and best gear.. now wait, that´s everyones goal, you´re just one just like the others.
WoW is a game that anyone can play and enjoy. That's simply rubs those that call themselves "hardcore" the wrong way. Who are these so called "hardcore" players? Simply those with an obsession to play constantly and level level level... provided that they can outpace normal players easily simply because of time, not necessarily skill.
On the other hand you have the truely skilled high end player (who will never call themselves hardcore) who love WoW becuase it's not full of artificial timesinks that hide poor and unavailable content.
What it boils down to is that WoW is the best mmo ever and sets a standard that will be nearly impossible to follow by others.
Probably what ticks off so many about WoW and creates this "passionate hostility" towards WoW is how Blizzard keeps shifting gears as it were as to their game.
WoW started off a casual friendly, easy learning curve game. A simple "let's just have fun for an hour" if you want style. However, the hardcore types hit 60, blitzed through Strath/Scholo/BRS and started whining that they are bored. They needed to be more "uber" and couldn't.
So WoW shifted gears and became World of Raidcraft. Now it was a grind-lovers paradise. Teir 1 leads to Tier 2 leads to AQ40 leads to Tier 3! Complete epic quests that require high rep with hard to gain rep factions and ridiculous amounts of quest items! If you can't pvp grind or raid 24/7 then you were S.O.L. at this point.
So WoW shifted gears again with The Burning Crusade. Now all that raiding & pvp grinding you did is completely trivialized and meaningless. Simple BoE greens are upgrades for many former "epic" items. Now anyone can get the (ex)Rank 14 pvp epic gear as honor points don't expire and act as cash now.
Not to mention there are probably a small but significant portion of the subscriber base that is still irked over horde pallies and alliance shamans. Made little sense lore-wise, was just Blizzard being lazy to add a "new" class without having to actually design one. Probably to shut up the Other Faction's Class is Overpowered complaints too.
The moment i saw the thread's name i knew i had to reply, you've made me laugh "dear boy".
I'll answer your mind boggling question : "Why does everyone hate WoW?" with another question, and excuse me for being blunt but you've had it coming - WHY DO YOU ASK STUPID QUESTIONS ? , hope it helped you a bit in your search for knowledge.
I hope to some day understand everyone that posts on MMORPG.COM forums, or at least their motives.
Never played it but it is way too cartoon for me looks like some thing kids play no thanks.
Plue i know two mates that play it and they did not really like it grind like a monky to get nowhere
lets play a really game thats not for kids
Lol this has to be the most idiotic reply to a "why i hate wow " thread ever. Lets all go play a game with so called next gen graphics, but we forgot to design the rest of the game. Oh wait tryed that , result failed. Cartoon graphics? M8 these are 3d models not meant to look like a real person its meant to be fantasy graphics. Only reason does not look photo realistic like some mmorpg is they use and have crated textures to give a totally different feel their models and 3d environments. D&D online has phot0 realistic water, and yet the game is very poorly designed. This is something that you eleitist so called hardcore gamers have yet to comprehend. Graphics do not make games. Wow has some of the most nicely modeled, animated models in an mmorpg. Character walk cycles are excellently done, along with body animation and rigging.
Classic expample of this is sould calibur 2 on the Dreamcast. Imo best fighting game ever made, stands up to any soul calibur on the ps2, xbox/2. Why?, simple it has nice grapahics, but the player movement and desgin is great. Somethig that later soul calibur games failed to recreate. Another reason why these so called wow killing games are failing or will fail.
Simply saying omg this game has SO CALLED cartoony graphics, thats why you wont play it, and look at me im soo cool for not playing wow, is just crazy.
Lol this has to be the most idiotic reply to a "why i hate wow " thread ever. Lets all go play a game with so called next gen graphics, but we forgot to design the rest of the game. Oh wait tryed that , result failed. Cartoon graphics? M8 these are 3d models not meant to look like a real person its meant to be fantasy graphics. Only reason does not look photo realistic like some mmorpg is they use and have crated textures to give a totally different feel their models and 3d environments. D&D online has phot0 realistic water, and yet the game is very poorly designed. This is something that you eleitist so called hardcore gamers have yet to comprehend. Graphics do not make games. Wow has some of the most nicely 3d modeled 3d animated models in an mmorpg. Character walk cycles are excellently done, along with body animation and rigging.
Classic expample of this is sould calibur 2 on the Dreamcast. Imo best fighting game ever made, stands up to any soul calibur on the ps2, xbox/2. Why?, simple it has nice grpahics, but the player movement and desgin is great. Somethif that later soul calibur games failed to recreate. Another reason why these so called wow killing games are failing or will fail.
Simply saying omg this game has SO CALLED cartoony graphics, thats why you wont play it, and look at me im soo coll for not playing wow, is just crazy.
Not really idiotic, not everyone has the same taste in graphics. For instance, take anime, not everyone is a fan of that kind of style either.
Oh yeah sorry character creation, has given SWG its 8+ million plus scubscribers,lol. You can have all the fancy graphics,charcater custmamisation you want, IT DOES NOT MAKE UP FOR THE OTHER 99% OF THE GAME. By your reasoning such things as cut scenes would be considered great, let me tell you intros, charcter custmosation etc etc etc, make up probably 2% of the game. Fact that SWG has this uber charcater custamisation and wo does not, means what exactly? How many people are actually playing swg?
Look I am not saying WoW is bad game. Obviously lots of people like it. Its just that I resent it for the direction it has taken the MMORPG market, namely toward less features. More game, less virtual world. Less diversity in just about everything. Blizzard was able to acheive the level of polish they did, because there is so little to the game compared to older MMOs. That being said, I don't begrudge Blizzard their profits or WoW players their fun. WoW has never pretended to be more than it is.
To answer your questions, at its peak, probably 400-450k, although it was more like 250k-300k for most of its . Of course that was before SOE/Lucas Arts gutted it to be more like WoW. I am sure it has less than 50k now and that is being quite generous.
Character customization is just one example. I will give you several others. Player housing and the ability to make a permanent impact on the game world. In WoW, Elywn Forest will always look the same, whether you have played or not. You kill a mob it respawns. Your character has no lasting effect on the game. Of course the benefit is that there is less lag. The game is easier on your machine, less database information to store, etc. In SWG, the plains north of Minning Outpost on Dantooine, might have a huge metropolis, a small village, or just a few scattered houses, based on what players have done.
Crafting in WoW is at best an after thought. The bronze sword you crafted is indentical to every other bronze sword crafted by every other player. You dont' have any ability to make it better or worse. Such a system is easier to balance and is less taxing from a database pov, but its not very interesting. The economy is driven mostly by loot, rather than the action of your fellow players.
Player Event Tools. Want to stage battle with specific objections and rewards? Tough your are limited to the ones Blizzard has created. In SWG you could place temporary NPCs to give directions, factional decorations. If you asked in advance, SOE would even give you live support for your event, spawning special mobs, perhaps even role playing a named character (ie Luke, Vader, etc. for a bit.).
Comments
I wil be sure to remeber that while u play the ever so challenging game that is Vanguard,lol. Wow is not easy, that is the thing that most of you people without a single brain cell fail to realise. The game is very well designed, therefore it leads to very good gameplay which leads to ease of use and playablitly. This is the fact alot of people dont understand and fail to realise. Simple fact is why alot of other games fail, crap design poor layout poor game architecture, BUT EXCELLENT GRAPHICS etc etc etc, which leads to crap games.
Wow is not easy, it is extremely well designed, hence it leads user to able to pick the game up fast and is easy to play. This does not equate to the game is easy. If your 2 brain cell mind cannot grasp this fact, then you should stick with vanguard.
yeah I don't think anyone whose ever run any of the high level instances or raids can say that WoW is too "easy" because it takes a heck of a lot of coordination and communication to not F it up. the people who think WoW is too easy probably play mages or some other class that just button mashes all day... maybe the occassional polymorph!
try being the only tank in a 10-man group and holding agro on 6 mobs while the idiots in your group wail away on everything instead of focusing fire on 1 target at a time like you told them too.... Oi the life of a tank.. we are SO underappreciated.....
Another reason is the constant grinding for gear, and (before BC) having to depend on 40 men to get something, or be someone.
Last but not least, class balance, it's been like a year and they haven't nerfed Warlocks yet (Maybe a 5% nerf on corruption but that was it), you would be mounted, see a warlock, DoT, DoT, DC, shadowbolt.. you didn't even have time to get off your mount and you were already on your 400 hp with 3-4 DoT's on you.
Since WoW brought alot of new people into the MMORPG genre, those people are thrown anything at them, and they don't say anything or complain, that's why the game hasn't changed, and isn't going to change..
The main reason I quitted though, was the repetitive gameplay, and I'm told BC is more of that BS.. Thus I never bought the expansion.
(side note: some of the posts on this board are further proof of the amazing player base of the beloved WoW)
Make your own choice. I'll make it simple
WoW = Good
WoW Player Base = Why did I pay a monthly subscription fee to babysit, I should be payed for dealing with these kids.
Ever stop and think that is WHY Eve and SWG are no where close to as successful as WoW is that they were too complex and had too much of what you call depth? but it was empty depth, empty complexity, a lot to do and see but why waste the time if all of it isn't fun? just like vanguard...
Honestly, I tried Eve for about an hour before removing it from my hard drive. and I played SWG from day 1 up until just after Jump to Lightspeed expansion, which I beta tested. I loved old SWG. but it was doomed from the beginning with all the problems, bugs, undelivered (until much later anyway) content etc... I beta'd Vanguard for all of 3-4 days before going back to WoW. blood elf palidan saved my subscription, new race and zones kick ass
WoW takes the basic MMO formula and does it better, much, much, much better then everyone else. it's not that it is super simple and easy its that it is SO well designed it appears to be super simple and easy. there is a difference.
yeah, i'm looking for another MMO to devote my free time to, i'm a mmorpg addict, need a new fix, but for now yeah I'm still playing WoW because it's much better then anything else out there right now. and all my friends still play WoW so, that's what is really important to me is the community/social experience, and I happily play WoW with some of the coolest people I've ever met online, and some real life friends/family too
it doesn't matter that "eve and swg have more depth in they're ui and options menu" because the rest of the game sucked or was destroyed by the devs (swg)
worst community i've even seen in my entire life.
tons of people out there saying "no you copied WoW" like if WoW had created mmos
i've even seen a post on IGN about some WoW players saying that DAOC copied WoW (yes, Dark Age of Camelot).
and i hate blizzard for many reasons, they refuse to implement true new content (oh great they implement new dungeons, wow!, but actually the only "major" thing they implemented was the battlegrounds)
and when they're adding true new content (new items, talents, etc) they just make it into an MUST expansion and sells it for 50$
making MUST xpacks is market strategy, i know, but changing level cap with a MUST xpack? that's just bullshit of their part
i betae'd it for some weeks and played it for 2 months after launch, and i gotta say i've never seen such a bad community in my whole life. i was just tired of hearing "dud you're a nub cuz i got from 20 to 60 in a day u just sux man get a life u fail at universe u cosmic trash" and shit like that. and seeing guilds full of gm dupers just annoyed the hell out of me.
i still don't know why people pay that much to buy a game and then quit 3 months later because only some people are "strong" enough mentally to do the same instace 10 times per day and still have fun.
Ultima Online 98~04
Dark Age of Camelot 03~07
Final Fantasy XI 04~06
Guild Wars 05~08
World of Warcraft 04~05
Unsuccessful Tries: DFO/EQ2/DRaja/Rag/Req/RYL/9D/Cabal/KO/PSU/RF/GE/TO/TR/DDO/EVE/LoTRO/L2/RZ/SWG/VG
people always complain about "the community this" and "the community that!"
put people you don't like on ignore. turn off general chat. transfer servers if you MUST.
idiots are only given power if you give it to them.
yeah i've seen some pretty stupid people, immaturity, etc etc but that is to be expected with 8+million people playing.
so what do I do? ignore the idiots, party up with like minded people (my guild is all 18+) and have a great time.
If Everquest 1 came out along side WoW with the same compatibility, it would be the 8 million subscriber game as it was a far superior game. But since it came out 1999ish when you had to be able to install your own video card to play it, and MMORPGs weren't as big in the news, it wasn't as big.
Blizzard is an absolute genius for making WoW compatible with most every computer out there, but you know what? I'm betting a large portion of those 8 million subscribers are 13 year old children with Mommy's credit card number or drunken frat boys. Honestly if you enjoy yourself in that kind of community then great but personally, I don't.
I've got my eyes set on an MMORPG where the moment some idiot whines at me I can kill him on the spot and steal his loot.
Darkfall Online will put WoW to shame...(though Granado Espada has already done so a hundred times over).
Lol you people keep saying this game will do that and that game will do this. When all these so called games that are going to put wow to shame come out, what do they actually do?? They fail to be the wow killer that you keep predicting.
Darkfall been in prduction how long now? ever going to be released? You say Granadoa espando already has put wow to shame hundred times over. where has it put it to shame?? has it been relased? any subscribers yet?
Where do you even get your facts from that any of the above games has or are gouing to put wow to shame? Vnaguard forums were full of this ignorant rubbish for months, when relased nothing but pure flaming there about it.
Thats the point with you Wow haters, you make ssumptions without knowing any facts, please keep jumping from game to game!!.
Sadly for many people disrespect = hatred. I do not hate WoW, but I do consider it sub-par in its RPG elements and its world-usage. For me the excellent pacing and art direction do not make up for that. For others it does.
This is a fair summary. I think that the pacing issue – which is very important as you point out – has to be seen together with everything else: namely, the specific decision to make the game accessible to as many platforms as possible (and not just PC platforms), the design of an interface and camera that pretty much set industry standard for usabiloity and the like. WoW does lack complexity and depth, and whether one likes the game depends on the value one puts on these things – but it seems that many more people value the pacing and accesibility of WoW than not.
Fact wow is a rly shallow game, eve and swg have more depth in they're ui and options menu than the entire game of wow.
But this doesn’t make the games better, it just means they’re more complicated. Whether you like that or not is a value judgment, and it seems you’re outnumbered on that one to a substantial degree, which leads to my next point.
The key issue behind all of this is the changing economic landscape of MMOs. MMOs exist to make money, and at the same time with the upping of graphics and expectations, are very, very, very expensive to make as far as games go. Because these games are so expensive to make (well), they need to shoot for as many customers as possible in order to not only recooup the investment, but to hope to make money. It’s just very hard to make a game well, to take the time (and hence the money) to make it well, unless you can have a lot of people playing it. The market for really well-developed niche games is not really all that economically viable. Look at Vanguard. Sigil ran out of money and had to release the game unfinished. They admitted this. Undoubtedly their affiliation with SOE and inclusion of the game in the Station Pass is another symptom of this because it allows the game to survive even with a lower level of standalone subscibers. It’s hard to imagine a niche-type MMO surviving if it’s designed with huge worlds, cutting edge graphics and the like – somewhere along the line, these things need to pencil economically, or they just get cancelled.
That’s where Blizzard comes in. Blizzard has the huge advantage of being already before WoW a hugely profitable division of an international conglomerate. There was plenty of money to make WoW, and that money was available within Vivendi, particularly given Blizzard’s profitable history. WoW releases and soon has subscription numbers that – apart from the Asian market – dwarf the entire rest of the NA/Euro MMO market taken together. Other developers are out there trying to make money, and know they need to get more subscribers to pencil their games – and Blizzard just demonstrated to the entire market how to get a lot of subscribers. So people take notice, they look and listen. They try to tinker with their own games to make them more like Blizzard’s and end up messing up their games because retrofitting like that is usually a recipe for disaster in any design. But the lesson to the industry remains, and remains even more loudly ringing in everyone’s ears after the release of TBC, namely: if you build a game that large numbers of people will find enjoyable, you can truly make a ton of money in this market.
Under those conditions, of course the market is going to listen to that message. These games exist to make money first and foremost. Some people think it’s cool to disdain companies who make games with a profit motive, but at the end of the day it’s the siren of the big bucks down the line that will get investors and publishers to invest in game development to begin with. It’s not like publishing poetry, where you want and expect a small audience and you subsidize the publication costs with other, more lucrative titles. Investors and publishers want their titles to make as much money as possible, and now that MMOs have become a mass market phenomenon, of course developers are out there trying to get a piece of that pie – it’s to be expected.
People will point to EVE and use it as an example of how things can be different. But EVE is an outlier in this case because EVE was relatively cheap to make due to the simplified graphics, and therefore doesn’t really offer a viable economic model for a land-based game that is more graphically heavy. And beyond that EVE had very patient investors who were Icelandic and supported CCP through the early rough goings of the game for reasons that were clearly more than economically based.
So the challenge for all the WoW bashers is this: convince developers either (1) that they do not need to make that much money and should see themselves as starving artists for the benefit of the gamer community or (2) that they should make more challenging, in-depth games that nevertheless appeal to a bigger market than the typical niche MMO. The days of EQ are gone. WoW changed the entire market dynamics for MMORPGs, and you won’t find nearly as many niche games being produced when there is so much money on the MMO table. Deal with that, adapt to it, and, most importantly, figure out how to position games that are more appealing while being more in-depth – in other words, more complicated without becoming tedious. WoW provides one answer to this question. The market is waiting for another one, and we haven’t seen it yet.
8 Million? I doubt that number Blizzard touts about. You see they are only looking at how many accounts they have (both active and inactive) and say how many they have and go oh wow 8 Million. But how many of those 8 million are actually active?
They are all active accounts, Blizzard’s press releases are clear on that. You can think what you want, but the likelihood that Blizzard is lying is very low because the statements they make in press releases, given that Vivendi is a publically-traded company, are subject to the securities laws, and if they are lying they can be sued by the SEC.
I'm glad someone notes the eras they came in. A Blizzard spokesperson himself stated the success beyond everyone's expectations was partially due to the availability of broadband now. Anyway, UO or EQ would never have attained 8m due to a multitude of reasons. Brandname, accessibility, specific area successes(Scandiavia and Asia), audiences, polish,marketing etc etc.
It bloody well is.
The (working) Auction house. Been done before, bazaar in SWG for example.
The show item panel in the trade menu. Again, done before, cant remember which one I saw it in first but was long before WoW.
The GUI options. Been able to customise GUI layouts in many MMOs long before WoW came out.
The mod support. Ill give you this one, but its not a positive thing IMO, some could even be considered cheating.
The AI. Joking right? For the most part the AI is pretty poor, and scripted AI was in many MMOs long before WoW. Its not really AI anyway, just conditional scripting of the mobs behaviour.
The comedy names. How is that an innovation?
The seamless worlds/on the fly loading. Again, done before in DAoC and SWG, only reason they had zoning at all was because they needed to switch characters to different servers, but then so does WoW when you enter an instance or change continent.
The linking of items into the chat channel. Done before in several other MMOs.
The wardrobe function where you can see what an item will look like on you by simply clicking a hyper link. Wasnt in when I played so cant comment.
Bind on pick up. No drop/no trade items were in MUDs and many MMOs before WoW.
The warriors rage. Similar ideas been done before in single player RPGs, vaguely remember CoH having an idea similar to this on one of its classes as well.
The rogues stealth. Lol, I could hide in UO, let alone pretty much every MMO since.
The symbols for marking enemies. Not a patch on EVEs enemy flagging facilities.
The scaleability of the GFX engine. Eh? Just looked like bog standard DirectX to me. As for graphics options, take a look at EQ2, far more customisable and comprehensive.
Bosses with drops only placed in instances. And what about the world drop mobs like that dragon north of Jordhiem and the demon thing near the chaos portal, cant remember names as its been a while now. Instancing was in AO first I think.
The factional language filter. Not sure what you are getting at here, but on EQ1 roleplay servers you had to learn other races languages to be able to speak with or understand them.
Innovation after innovation. WHERE?
And yes they have also successfully copied and amalgamated a lot of great features from it's predesscors also.
It's just another RPG to be sure, but it is also a technical marvel.
I dont think WoW is a bad game either, PvE was fun until you out of content although I personally didnt find it very challenging. And the high level stuff was fine the first few times. PvP was fun before the BGs came along and made it just another grind.
Unfortunately, after you have ran all the high level content 10+ times it gets rather tedious. My idea of fun is not spending 4+ hours in the same instance every other night for week after week.
My biggest problems with WoW since quitting it are: -
- People claiming its not a grind when everyone who played/plays it knows full well that is all there is once the limited number of quests run out. Those that dont read the quests claim they are a grind as well.
- People claiming it was 'polished' or 'complete' when it was released. Absolute rubbish, the servers were buggy (Jordhiem crashing every evening, instance servers crashing midraid, not getting zoned when on a zepplin, etc), the classes werent balanced, there was missing content where they had failed to finish all the zones they planned for release (Dire Maul for example). It suffered from the same problems that most MMOs do at release.
- People claiming in chat channels of other MMOs that 'WoW is better'. If its so damn good why arent they playing it?
Popular != better. Everyone is different, the world would be a boring place if we were all the same, just as MMOs would be boring if they were all the same.
I must say that these complaints are probably the dumbest ever because they contradict themelves
"WoW has a bad community" - I've seen far worse in a single day of FF11, CoH or EQ2 than I have ever seen in WoW, especially FF11. ALL MMORPGs have a potentially terrible community. I tried several servers on EQ2 and some were just plain unbearable and others were very pleasant and helpful.
"The developers dont' listen" - I say "GOOD" to that. I'm glad that the developers don't listen to the people on the forums. The official forums for every single MMORPG ever made is just a whine fest of whiners whining because all they can do is whine whine whine.
"WoW is too easy" - as others have said it's because the gameplay and progression is so well programmed. But hey, if you want to spent 100 hours fighting the horrible UI trying to finish a single quest that will ultimately net you 23 experience points and an item you'll replace the next afternoon then go right ahead.
"WoWs end game is nothing but raiding" - this is perhaps the dumbest complaint of them all . Again, ALL MMORPGs end up having you run a certain dungeon or killing a certain boss a million times to get the best loot. And what do you need to complete this dungeon or kill this boss? A lot of people. Which is commonly referred to as a raid.
When these complainers actually have a real complaint against WoW that also doesn't also apply to their favorite MMO then they might have something.
WoW is a game that anyone can play and enjoy. That's simply rubs those that call themselves "hardcore" the wrong way. Who are these so called "hardcore" players? Simply those with an obsession to play constantly and level level level... provided that they can outpace normal players easily simply because of time, not necessarily skill.
On the other hand you have the truely skilled high end player (who will never call themselves hardcore) who love WoW becuase it's not full of artificial timesinks that hide poor and unavailable content.
What it boils down to is that WoW is the best mmo ever and sets a standard that will be nearly impossible to follow by others.
Plue i know two mates that play it and they did not really like it grind like a monky to get nowhere
lets play a really game thats not for kids
BINGO!
Probably what ticks off so many about WoW and creates this "passionate hostility" towards WoW is how Blizzard keeps shifting gears as it were as to their game.
WoW started off a casual friendly, easy learning curve game. A simple "let's just have fun for an hour" if you want style. However, the hardcore types hit 60, blitzed through Strath/Scholo/BRS and started whining that they are bored. They needed to be more "uber" and couldn't.
So WoW shifted gears and became World of Raidcraft. Now it was a grind-lovers paradise. Teir 1 leads to Tier 2 leads to AQ40 leads to Tier 3! Complete epic quests that require high rep with hard to gain rep factions and ridiculous amounts of quest items! If you can't pvp grind or raid 24/7 then you were S.O.L. at this point.
So WoW shifted gears again with The Burning Crusade. Now all that raiding & pvp grinding you did is completely trivialized and meaningless. Simple BoE greens are upgrades for many former "epic" items. Now anyone can get the (ex)Rank 14 pvp epic gear as honor points don't expire and act as cash now.
Not to mention there are probably a small but significant portion of the subscriber base that is still irked over horde pallies and alliance shamans. Made little sense lore-wise, was just Blizzard being lazy to add a "new" class without having to actually design one. Probably to shut up the Other Faction's Class is Overpowered complaints too.
The moment i saw the thread's name i knew i had to reply, you've made me laugh "dear boy".
I'll answer your mind boggling question : "Why does everyone hate WoW?" with another question, and excuse me for being blunt but you've had it coming - WHY DO YOU ASK STUPID QUESTIONS ?
, hope it helped you a bit in your search for knowledge.
I hope to some day understand everyone that posts on MMORPG.COM forums, or at least their motives.
Lol this has to be the most idiotic reply to a "why i hate wow " thread ever. Lets all go play a game with so called next gen graphics, but we forgot to design the rest of the game. Oh wait tryed that , result failed. Cartoon graphics? M8 these are 3d models not meant to look like a real person its meant to be fantasy graphics. Only reason does not look photo realistic like some mmorpg is they use and have crated textures to give a totally different feel their models and 3d environments. D&D online has phot0 realistic water, and yet the game is very poorly designed. This is something that you eleitist so called hardcore gamers have yet to comprehend. Graphics do not make games. Wow has some of the most nicely modeled, animated models in an mmorpg. Character walk cycles are excellently done, along with body animation and rigging.
Classic expample of this is sould calibur 2 on the Dreamcast. Imo best fighting game ever made, stands up to any soul calibur on the ps2, xbox/2. Why?, simple it has nice grapahics, but the player movement and desgin is great. Somethig that later soul calibur games failed to recreate. Another reason why these so called wow killing games are failing or will fail.
Simply saying omg this game has SO CALLED cartoony graphics, thats why you wont play it, and look at me im soo cool for not playing wow, is just crazy.
Not really idiotic, not everyone has the same taste in graphics. For instance, take anime, not everyone is a fan of that kind of style either.
Look I am not saying WoW is bad game. Obviously lots of people like it. Its just that I resent it for the direction it has taken the MMORPG market, namely toward less features. More game, less virtual world. Less diversity in just about everything. Blizzard was able to acheive the level of polish they did, because there is so little to the game compared to older MMOs. That being said, I don't begrudge Blizzard their profits or WoW players their fun. WoW has never pretended to be more than it is.
To answer your questions, at its peak, probably 400-450k, although it was more like 250k-300k for most of its . Of course that was before SOE/Lucas Arts gutted it to be more like WoW. I am sure it has less than 50k now and that is being quite generous.
Character customization is just one example. I will give you several others. Player housing and the ability to make a permanent impact on the game world. In WoW, Elywn Forest will always look the same, whether you have played or not. You kill a mob it respawns. Your character has no lasting effect on the game. Of course the benefit is that there is less lag. The game is easier on your machine, less database information to store, etc. In SWG, the plains north of Minning Outpost on Dantooine, might have a huge metropolis, a small village, or just a few scattered houses, based on what players have done.
Crafting in WoW is at best an after thought. The bronze sword you crafted is indentical to every other bronze sword crafted by every other player. You dont' have any ability to make it better or worse. Such a system is easier to balance and is less taxing from a database pov, but its not very interesting. The economy is driven mostly by loot, rather than the action of your fellow players.
Player Event Tools. Want to stage battle with specific objections and rewards? Tough your are limited to the ones Blizzard has created. In SWG you could place temporary NPCs to give directions, factional decorations. If you asked in advance, SOE would even give you live support for your event, spawning special mobs, perhaps even role playing a named character (ie Luke, Vader, etc. for a bit.).