There is no denying the impact of the success of World of Warcraft to the gaming industry. It brings MMORPG to the mainstream audience (no longer a niche in geekdom) and it's the first mmo that many younger players have played.
Unfortunately bringing many 'younger' members into MMORPGS, has not only destroyed community feelings in WoW, but the effect has spread to many other MMORPGS where the feeling of community and belonging has disappeared to be replace with continual spam and flame fests on general/world chat, combined with never ending beggars and people who want to be powered leveled all the time. (What really is the point of paying to play a MMORPG then expecting other people to get you to Max level as quick as possible ?)
Add in the affect its having on WoW which did have promise at launch (even tho it was a MMO lite), which is now more and more headed to be a poor MMOFPS that concentrates on instanced PvP, and includes updates/expansions that have content that most will never see. Wow is sadly lacking in the RPG side of the game, no housing,poor customization options, very basic crafting unless you are in a raiding guild to get the very rare required drops/recipes.
For These and many more reasons I voted that WoW has harmed the MMORPG genre.
The fact that so many people from asia are playing, as well as america, england, australia, etc... is a testament to its wide appeal.
Like how the shrek series (shrek 1 more than 2 or 3 though) appeals to both kids and adults... and i'm not calling anyone race childish here, but it appeals to groups with different tastes.
Thats true, it definitely opened up the market to new demos. However, I don't want to be in that theater with all those children for more than an hour. I'm starting to worry now that these kids will just flock to the next MMO with the most hype swirling around it. I'm worried for the maturity of WAR and AoC's community. I'm worried that WoW did some irreparable damage to the overall MMO community.
I hoped I'm proved wrong when these games launch.
WoW is like McDonalds; Fast and cheap, but of poor overall quality. And just like McDonalds, many people are eating it up under the impression that this is the best of the best and refuse to try other things.
I voted yes, but my mouse hovered over "no" for a while. I want to explain why a bit.
I think WOW has been good in the following sense: as someone above said, it opened up the MMORPG genre to a wider audience. That audience is not tolerant of a lot of the annoying things that, previously, were considered "standard MMO fare" -- long boring grinds, games being work instead of fun, etc. WOW was designed mostly to "just be fun to play," rather than work, and although the hardcore people here decry that, most of the world (including me) plays games for fun, not to engage in work (we already work hard enough in real life, thank you very much). That's the good part.
The bad part is that WOW is in a sense too successful... it's such a huge mammoth success, and such a massive money-maker, that all the other game companies just drool over it. This means they end up, instead of taking the basic lesson of WOW and trying to make their own game, but make it fun instead of work, instead making the same work/crap game they always did, but making it "play like WOW" in some significant way (icons, UI, etc). The copy-cat mentality is severely hurting the market at this point, where so many games try to be "WOW with another skin" (like SWG, which tried to be "WOW with a SW skin").
In a real sense this is not Blizzard or WOW's fault -- it's the fault of all the creativity-deprived, brain-dead development houses who just see $$$ signs whenever they look at WOW's sub numbers. If they would stop trying to copy it and just make their own game be as fun as possible, how much better off we would be.
The one thing that WoW has definately done is brought attention to the MMORPG genre not only from gamers but from non-gamers as well. I know of a couple people who never played video games until WoW and really had no desire to start. I know some gamers who really probably would have never played an MMORPG if it were not for WoW. More players means more attention from the game designers. More attention from the game designers should lead to more/better games. Regardless of what you personally think of WoW, I don't think you can say that's a bad thing. Now you may say that because of WoW's popularity that game designers are taking Blizzard's approach and putting it in there games so you end up with a bunch of clones which is bad for the genre, but there are also some designers that are trying to go away from what Blizzard has done, so eventually it's gonna be good. Maybe we do have a bunch of clones today, but the good news is that we have a bunch of them. They're clones today, but in the future I think we'll start to see developers go away from what Blizzard is doing and you'll see fewer clones and more innovation. That's good for the genre. Remember that the MMORPG genre is fairly new. It's gonna see some growing pains, but growing it is. Would you rather see it be a niche market like it was at one time? I wouldn't.
*Introducing more people to mmorpgs Very true yes.
*Having more of an emphasis on casual play Casuall as in repetative grinds but its not hard to learn i guess
*Upping the quality of mmorpgs Sorry it didnt do that at the time of release and after that it was average and uninovative in every way.
*Upping the number of abilities in mmos by a lot, hard to explain but past mmos had effects that were maybe more technologically restricted. Err i think this needs more explaining?
*Mods If you refer to mods for games made by players this is not true they were out long before WoW Its been bad in:
*people forgetting every other mmo which had good qualities.
*Its introduced a big chunk of younger players to the genre(battle.net)
*Its made the game almost scared to make changes because of how well it is doing
*Its neglected 'mmo' aspects in favour of making the mmo more of a game(if that makes sense)
*Its inherited the bad things from other mmos-taking raiding with it.
*It has made gold-selling even more of a ludicrous industry.
*Its introduction to a lot of new players has earned it alot of praise and awards in a genre which I think can be considerably bettered than it is.
Wow has been and always is a 'average joe game'. Meaning it works ok but it doesant exell in any area. Also its not a origanal idea considering that Blizzard like they DiD for starcraft copyed the game from a Games Workshop tabletop game. This was resolved largly tho because Games Workshop sued Blizzard and Blizzard decided to settle out of court and then made some changes to WoW and warhammer 3 to satisfy Games Workshop.
So no apart from introducing a lot of fresh new players to MMO's WoW did nothing majour to the industry.
People do enjoy spreading rumors.. please supply 1 single bit of evidence that GW ever sued Blizzard or that Blizzard ever approched GW with WC and SC and where turned down... until you can do this stop spreading rumors.. just makes you look dumb.
As to WoW doing nothing to the industry its set the bar for polish and quality, before WoW buggy and unfinsished MMO's were accepted.. take a look at VG they are no longer accepted... and thats a good thing.
While I don't believe that GW ever sued Blizzard, I believe it's true that Blizzard did approach GW about making a Human Vs Orks fantasy game ala the Warhammer universe and was turned down. That game turned out to be Warcraft. Here's a link to a post by someone who claims to be a former GW employee and if you read a few of his posts you'll agree that he has enough background information to make that claim plausible. In the below link RembrandtX mentions he was a former GW employee and asks GW a question and refers to the fact that GW turned down Blizzard. They actually decided to give the rights to another game company that totally blew it, forget the name of the game ATM, but that's not relevant anyway. Do a search for "Blizzard" within that link to find it.
It's not proof, but as close as I've come to proof. Personally I believe the guy.
Edit: Found the other link which mentions that the company they gave the rights to was Mindscape who made "Shadown of the Horned Rat" in 1995 which is the right time frame. It's all very plausible. Now before you go bashing GW for giving the rights to Mindscape instead of Blizzard, remember that Blizzard was nobody at the time.
Any video game with the success of WoW will open investors eyes to the possibility of a financially viable video games. For that reason alone you will see video games with bigger budgets and longer development times. I predict in the next 15 years we will see games reaching the 100million dollars in development costs. The industry will move towards less games being produced at higher budget.
*Introducing more people to mmorpgs Very true yes.
*Having more of an emphasis on casual play Casuall as in repetative grinds but its not hard to learn i guess
*Upping the quality of mmorpgs Sorry it didnt do that at the time of release and after that it was average and uninovative in every way.
*Upping the number of abilities in mmos by a lot, hard to explain but past mmos had effects that were maybe more technologically restricted. Err i think this needs more explaining?
*Mods If you refer to mods for games made by players this is not true they were out long before WoW Its been bad in:
*people forgetting every other mmo which had good qualities.
*Its introduced a big chunk of younger players to the genre(battle.net)
*Its made the game almost scared to make changes because of how well it is doing
*Its neglected 'mmo' aspects in favour of making the mmo more of a game(if that makes sense)
*Its inherited the bad things from other mmos-taking raiding with it.
*It has made gold-selling even more of a ludicrous industry.
*Its introduction to a lot of new players has earned it alot of praise and awards in a genre which I think can be considerably bettered than it is.
Wow has been and always is a 'average joe game'. Meaning it works ok but it doesant exell in any area. Also its not a origanal idea considering that Blizzard like they DiD for starcraft copyed the game from a Games Workshop tabletop game. This was resolved largly tho because Games Workshop sued Blizzard and Blizzard decided to settle out of court and then made some changes to WoW and warhammer 3 to satisfy Games Workshop.
So no apart from introducing a lot of fresh new players to MMO's WoW did nothing majour to the industry.
People do enjoy spreading rumors.. please supply 1 single bit of evidence that GW ever sued Blizzard or that Blizzard ever approched GW with WC and SC and where turned down... until you can do this stop spreading rumors.. just makes you look dumb.
As to WoW doing nothing to the industry its set the bar for polish and quality, before WoW buggy and unfinsished MMO's were accepted.. take a look at VG they are no longer accepted... and thats a good thing.
While I don't believe that GW ever sued Blizzard, I believe it's true that Blizzard did approach GW about making a Human Vs Orks fantasy game ala the Warhammer universe and was turned down. That game turned out to be Warcraft. Here's a link to a post by someone who claims to be a former GW employee and if you read a few of his posts you'll agree that he has enough background information to make that claim plausible. In the below link RembrandtX mentions he was a former GW employee and asks GW a question and refers to the fact that GW turned down Blizzard. They actually decided to give the rights to another game company that totally blew it, forget the name of the game ATM, but that's not relevant anyway. Do a search for "Blizzard" within that link to find it.
It's not proof, but as close as I've come to proof. Personally I believe the guy.
Edit: Found the other link which mentions that the company they gave the rights to was Mindscape who made "Shadown of the Horned Rat" in 1995 which is the right time frame. It's all very plausible. Now before you go bashing GW for giving the rights to Mindscape instead of Blizzard, remember that Blizzard was nobody at the time.
I used to work for Mindscape/SSI/Broderbund. Horned rat was before my time. Yes we did have a number of Warhammer games that were published. I know nothing of the Blizzard/Games Workshop thing other than Games workshop always picked the wrong developers. They never seemed to get any good developers until Mythic and THQ/Vigil.
If you don't know, there are more Warhammer based PC games made than titles Blizzard has released. We do not know about many of the Warhammer titles because most of them are garbage by garbage developers.
In one way or another every MMOG makes a good contribution to the market, even those now gone and the ones never released. Examples in brackets. I'm sure there's quite a few mistakes, but I'm just trying to make a point. Please be kind to my failings.
Some open doors (M59, UO), some show how to bring in the masses (EQ, WoW), some show how to carve a niche for the specially interested and make a good run with that (EVE). Some teach developers important lessons (AO - launch, SWG - changing the game, LII - bots, several games - how to get canned before release).
Some create a new sub-genre, like MMOFPS (PS) or MMORTS (not bothering to look up names now ), some introduce genres aside from high fantasy (WWII - modern war, AO - sci-fi, CoH - superhero, AoC - sword & sorcery). Some show what works (most that are still running), some show what doesn't (AA, several attempts at MMORTS) - the latter also being dependant on region.
Some paved the way into new markets (Legend of Mir II - I believe started the current payment system used in China, DAoC - opened up Europe to MMOGs), some simply just added more variety (most fantasy games after UO, EQ and AC).
WoW itself contributed with showing how to reach the masses (strong brand, low beginner threshold, aggressive marketing, etc) and through that brought vast investments into the genre. EQII, VG and LotRO have contributed with showing other developers where to put their expectations and priorities when going up against WoW. Of those three I'd say LotRO have had the best aim, scaling according to expected player numbers and making sure to release a polished game.
Sure, some games may have contributed badly to their investors, developers and publishers, and maybe especially to their fans. To the MMOG market as a whole, I think we can find positive contribution in every game.
Interesting that many people say WoW is a beginers MMORPG or a "low int required" to master it, however this hasnt stoped many people with brains going over to play WoW.
When i used to play (for 6 months of so) i met a variety of people... little kiddies who were mature, little kiddies who were immature, i met mums and dads, highly intelligent people, foreign people, those from all walks.
It had a wide appeal, and seemed to give many people of many avenues what they wanted.
I think it's done more good than harm, as now MMORPG's have to strive to get their game out with as few bugs as possible among other things.
I dont really see how WoW set the MMO genre backwords really. They didnt bring anything new to the table, all they did was make the game more user friendly, which isnt a bad thing. My first MMO was SWG and I didnt know what the hell was going on, I was ready to quit after playing for 4 days because I didnt know what to do (gotta figure all i had was single player game experience). I was than roaming around Talus and flew into a city where someone helped me and explained to me how the game worked, gave me a house armor and weapons than i was addicted like a hoe to the crack pipe. In wow you could be a total noob and you can learn how to play, the game is simple.
All the companies have to do to beat WoW is bring something new to the table, not the same old fantasy stuff, I think AoC is taking a good step towards bringing something new but really we need some sci-fi, action. How cool would a grand theft auto mmo be, gang wars, you could join the law or be an outlaw. Common developers stop making more and more fantasy MMOs we are sick and tired of them, we want modern stuff and sci fi stuff.
Really I think that WoW helped the MMORPG genre because now theres alot more people who are exposed to the genre and companies have to aim higher to satisfy us. One thing that can be bad is devs copying wow I guess and that has nothing to do with wow but with the developer.
A man dies daily, only to be reborn in the morning, bigger, better and wiser.
-Playing AoC -Playing WoW -Retired- SWG -Retired- EVE -Retired- LotR
Computer (- Phenom 9600 Black Edition @ 2.81 Ghz (Quad Core CPU)- Gigabyte MA790FX-DS5 - 4 Gigs of PC 8500 ram (1066)- EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS PCI Express 2.0 - WD 500GB 7500RPM - Zalman CPU cooler (air cooled) - 24" Widescreen 1080P HD display).
I voted yes. Because not only it open up the mmo market and let more ppl know of such game exist, but it also intorduce the "fun" into mmo. Taking away the old school of grinding, corspe run, etc... and forcing more dev to come up with new and innovative ideas if they want a pie of that market share.
I had to vote yes, if only on the premis that it expanded the MMO world.
I was a late bloomer with WoW (about 6 months before BC went live), and didn't stay long (LOTRO now), but SWG was my first love and first MMO. The gameplay style that WoW offered opened up the MMO world to a wider audience (for good or bad).
While WoW may not be the most innovative MMO, but what it has is simply done better than anything else ever has. Yes, it took ideas from other games.. and then implemented them far better than the original.
There is no game that can match the polish of WoW. There is no game that can appeal to as diverse an audience as WoW.
WoW showed that games which are designed to be fun, instead of time consuming will do very well in this market.
WoW not only set the MMO world backwards , i feel it made ireversible damage to MMO genre. Not only that it influenced games to come , but it also forced changes to some great MMO concepts that could have flowered
=> SWG => WOW succes => SWG NGE WOW is/was a very good game, no question But was and always will be MMO geared towards singleplayer PC gamer , and not towards MMO gamer.
Unfortunately with its massive succes it has set the standards for the future.
Anyone who answers anything except "yes" is only fooling themselves. There is hardly a member of the MMORPG developers out there that will not admit to WoW bringing attention to the genre as a whole. Several developers have credited Blizzard for their steadily increasing subscriber numbers.
As people get tired of wow, they are heading elsewhere and trying other MMORPGs.
1.) Blizzard raised the bar in terms of production values of MMO's. WoW proved that players want games that aren't broken, buggy, and missing content unlike previous games put out by previous MMO industry leaders. The quality of a product is more important to players then quantity of half-baked MMO's and expansion packs you can push out onto players.
So if you are putting out a MMO and you better make sure it's not a mess at launch. For the most part industry leaders like Turbine and Mythic have picked up on this message and are shifting gears. I don't know about SOE yet because they have yet to put out a game ( VG is still a Sigil created turd ) of their own that was developed by them that is highly polished. Hopefully they'll demonstrate what they've learned from Blizzard's and Turbine's success with their highly polished MMOs at launch.
2.) Blizzard demonstrated with WoW that the majority of players think a story/quest driven MMO is actually more fun to play then a grind driven, corpse running one.
3.) Blizzard demonstrated that the casual and core player market is unimaginably huge in comparison to the "I grind for 6+ hours a day and quit my day job" market of "hardcore" MMO players.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Anyone who answers anything except "yes" is only fooling themselves. There is hardly a member of the MMORPG developers out there that will not admit to WoW bringing attention to the genre as a whole. Several developers have credited Blizzard for their steadily increasing subscriber numbers.
As people get tired of wow, they are heading elsewhere and trying other MMORPGs.
WoW was good for the developers, not so much for the players.
As people get tired of wow, they are heading elsewhere and trying other MMORPGs.
I did just that and found no other mmo that grabs my interest cause of WoW -_-. Im really waiting for september releases of games. September is a big time for PC gamers ^_^
My thoughts? I played WoW and wasted 1 year and a half of my life to just pvp... thats all that game was to me. Quick fast insane pvp, I loved WoWs pvp combat speed. At least IMO.
Anyone who answers anything except "yes" is only fooling themselves. There is hardly a member of the MMORPG developers out there that will not admit to WoW bringing attention to the genre as a whole. Several developers have credited Blizzard for their steadily increasing subscriber numbers.
As people get tired of wow, they are heading elsewhere and trying other MMORPGs.
I'm not saying WoW didn't increase the number of players into the MMORPG genre, but I am saying that the trend set by WoW isn't healthy for the MMORPG genre in the long run.
So does good out-weight the bad? I don't think so, but you can certainly believe so. Some focus on the long-term effect, others see the short term success and think it is a good thing. Again, this is just personal opinion, and it may or may not be right. But I'm sure I am not "fooling myself" when I see the trend that WoW brought into MMORPG is all good and nothing bad.
I personally think that WoW has made the overall MMO community worse. Its the "gate-way" MMO to better, more in depth MMO's. And I would hate to have WoW's community migrate onto other anticipated, more complex mmorpgs.
Don't get me wrong, WoW is a great game, its just not a lasting title, and it has a poor community.
As much as I don't really care for this game, you have to give it some credit. It did bring alot of new players to the MMO scene and it found 7 million plus players that enjoyed it at one time.
i think it changed what mmorpgs are.. it dumbed them down, and made it a more commercialized product, instead of what most of us on here are fans of. A huge step in taking the "rpg" out of MMORPG. less effort, less story.. the reason it appeals to so many people is because there is such little mental effort involved. I do think its great if it attracts people who end up wanting more from their games and migrate to the more substantial games.. but not if it makes the mmorpg devs start "dumbing down" the new games that come out.
I am also worried that development costs are going to go through the roof, to the point where it costs more to make a game than they can realistically make off them.
I'd say it was still hard to tell at this point in time. Sure, there's more attention on the genre, but only time will tell if that means all games from now on will aim at the same market as WoW. Hopefully, a barrage of flops will make developers and investors think again.
I'm really not sure that taking MMORPGs away from the geek market will be beneficial for those of us that actually enjoyed the challenges in the kind of games which required a high IQ, had steep learning curves and that everyone else saw as major geekdom.
Anyone who answers anything except "yes" is only fooling themselves. There is hardly a member of the MMORPG developers out there that will not admit to WoW bringing attention to the genre as a whole. Several developers have credited Blizzard for their steadily increasing subscriber numbers.
As people get tired of wow, they are heading elsewhere and trying other MMORPGs.
It's a matter of opinion tbh, so ppl can damn right answer what they want. WoW has for sure made alot of things better.
But as others have pointed out, opening up MMO to a much larger public brings "teh kids" and as you say yourself: as they get tired of WoW they are heading elsewhere... maybe ruining WAR for me aswell. Not looking forward to that tbh
Comments
Unfortunately bringing many 'younger' members into MMORPGS, has not only destroyed community feelings in WoW, but the effect has spread to many other MMORPGS where the feeling of community and belonging has disappeared to be replace with continual spam and flame fests on general/world chat, combined with never ending beggars and people who want to be powered leveled all the time. (What really is the point of paying to play a MMORPG then expecting other people to get you to Max level as quick as possible ?)
Add in the affect its having on WoW which did have promise at launch (even tho it was a MMO lite), which is now more and more headed to be a poor MMOFPS that concentrates on instanced PvP, and includes updates/expansions that have content that most will never see. Wow is sadly lacking in the RPG side of the game, no housing,poor customization options, very basic crafting unless you are in a raiding guild to get the very rare required drops/recipes.
For These and many more reasons I voted that WoW has harmed the MMORPG genre.
Thats true, it definitely opened up the market to new demos. However, I don't want to be in that theater with all those children for more than an hour. I'm starting to worry now that these kids will just flock to the next MMO with the most hype swirling around it. I'm worried for the maturity of WAR and AoC's community. I'm worried that WoW did some irreparable damage to the overall MMO community.
I hoped I'm proved wrong when these games launch.
WoW is like McDonalds; Fast and cheap, but of poor overall quality. And just like McDonalds, many people are eating it up under the impression that this is the best of the best and refuse to try other things.
WoW:
+ increase the number of MMO players (Community increase)
- decrease the feeling of Community while promote the "me, me, me" mindset (Community degraded)
+ simple, easy to play game play (Casual fun - in the beginning)
- until the instance runs, raids, arenas, BG takes over in the "end-game" , gear dependents design(Hardcore fun - in the higher lvl)
+ interesting character/classes (Some diversity)
- many "useless" specs in classes in the general population's eyes (Limitation based off on Min/Max, Peer pressure)
In the end, I must say that WoW isn't good for MMORPG genre in the long run...
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
I voted yes, but my mouse hovered over "no" for a while. I want to explain why a bit.
I think WOW has been good in the following sense: as someone above said, it opened up the MMORPG genre to a wider audience. That audience is not tolerant of a lot of the annoying things that, previously, were considered "standard MMO fare" -- long boring grinds, games being work instead of fun, etc. WOW was designed mostly to "just be fun to play," rather than work, and although the hardcore people here decry that, most of the world (including me) plays games for fun, not to engage in work (we already work hard enough in real life, thank you very much). That's the good part.
The bad part is that WOW is in a sense too successful... it's such a huge mammoth success, and such a massive money-maker, that all the other game companies just drool over it. This means they end up, instead of taking the basic lesson of WOW and trying to make their own game, but make it fun instead of work, instead making the same work/crap game they always did, but making it "play like WOW" in some significant way (icons, UI, etc). The copy-cat mentality is severely hurting the market at this point, where so many games try to be "WOW with another skin" (like SWG, which tried to be "WOW with a SW skin").
In a real sense this is not Blizzard or WOW's fault -- it's the fault of all the creativity-deprived, brain-dead development houses who just see $$$ signs whenever they look at WOW's sub numbers. If they would stop trying to copy it and just make their own game be as fun as possible, how much better off we would be.
C
The one thing that WoW has definately done is brought attention to the MMORPG genre not only from gamers but from non-gamers as well. I know of a couple people who never played video games until WoW and really had no desire to start. I know some gamers who really probably would have never played an MMORPG if it were not for WoW. More players means more attention from the game designers. More attention from the game designers should lead to more/better games. Regardless of what you personally think of WoW, I don't think you can say that's a bad thing. Now you may say that because of WoW's popularity that game designers are taking Blizzard's approach and putting it in there games so you end up with a bunch of clones which is bad for the genre, but there are also some designers that are trying to go away from what Blizzard has done, so eventually it's gonna be good. Maybe we do have a bunch of clones today, but the good news is that we have a bunch of them. They're clones today, but in the future I think we'll start to see developers go away from what Blizzard is doing and you'll see fewer clones and more innovation. That's good for the genre. Remember that the MMORPG genre is fairly new. It's gonna see some growing pains, but growing it is. Would you rather see it be a niche market like it was at one time? I wouldn't.
Wow has been and always is a 'average joe game'. Meaning it works ok but it doesant exell in any area. Also its not a origanal idea considering that Blizzard like they DiD for starcraft copyed the game from a Games Workshop tabletop game. This was resolved largly tho because Games Workshop sued Blizzard and Blizzard decided to settle out of court and then made some changes to WoW and warhammer 3 to satisfy Games Workshop.So no apart from introducing a lot of fresh new players to MMO's WoW did nothing majour to the industry.
People do enjoy spreading rumors.. please supply 1 single bit of evidence that GW ever sued Blizzard or that Blizzard ever approched GW with WC and SC and where turned down... until you can do this stop spreading rumors.. just makes you look dumb.As to WoW doing nothing to the industry its set the bar for polish and quality, before WoW buggy and unfinsished MMO's were accepted.. take a look at VG they are no longer accepted... and thats a good thing.
While I don't believe that GW ever sued Blizzard, I believe it's true that Blizzard did approach GW about making a Human Vs Orks fantasy game ala the Warhammer universe and was turned down. That game turned out to be Warcraft. Here's a link to a post by someone who claims to be a former GW employee and if you read a few of his posts you'll agree that he has enough background information to make that claim plausible. In the below link RembrandtX mentions he was a former GW employee and asks GW a question and refers to the fact that GW turned down Blizzard. They actually decided to give the rights to another game company that totally blew it, forget the name of the game ATM, but that's not relevant anyway. Do a search for "Blizzard" within that link to find it.
It's not proof, but as close as I've come to proof. Personally I believe the guy.
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/17/1420214&from=rss
Edit: Found the other link which mentions that the company they gave the rights to was Mindscape who made "Shadown of the Horned Rat" in 1995 which is the right time frame. It's all very plausible. Now before you go bashing GW for giving the rights to Mindscape instead of Blizzard, remember that Blizzard was nobody at the time.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/24/1213229
Any video game with the success of WoW will open investors eyes to the possibility of a financially viable video games. For that reason alone you will see video games with bigger budgets and longer development times. I predict in the next 15 years we will see games reaching the 100million dollars in development costs. The industry will move towards less games being produced at higher budget.
Wow has been and always is a 'average joe game'. Meaning it works ok but it doesant exell in any area. Also its not a origanal idea considering that Blizzard like they DiD for starcraft copyed the game from a Games Workshop tabletop game. This was resolved largly tho because Games Workshop sued Blizzard and Blizzard decided to settle out of court and then made some changes to WoW and warhammer 3 to satisfy Games Workshop.So no apart from introducing a lot of fresh new players to MMO's WoW did nothing majour to the industry.
People do enjoy spreading rumors.. please supply 1 single bit of evidence that GW ever sued Blizzard or that Blizzard ever approched GW with WC and SC and where turned down... until you can do this stop spreading rumors.. just makes you look dumb.As to WoW doing nothing to the industry its set the bar for polish and quality, before WoW buggy and unfinsished MMO's were accepted.. take a look at VG they are no longer accepted... and thats a good thing.
While I don't believe that GW ever sued Blizzard, I believe it's true that Blizzard did approach GW about making a Human Vs Orks fantasy game ala the Warhammer universe and was turned down. That game turned out to be Warcraft. Here's a link to a post by someone who claims to be a former GW employee and if you read a few of his posts you'll agree that he has enough background information to make that claim plausible. In the below link RembrandtX mentions he was a former GW employee and asks GW a question and refers to the fact that GW turned down Blizzard. They actually decided to give the rights to another game company that totally blew it, forget the name of the game ATM, but that's not relevant anyway. Do a search for "Blizzard" within that link to find it.
It's not proof, but as close as I've come to proof. Personally I believe the guy.
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/17/1420214&from=rss
Edit: Found the other link which mentions that the company they gave the rights to was Mindscape who made "Shadown of the Horned Rat" in 1995 which is the right time frame. It's all very plausible. Now before you go bashing GW for giving the rights to Mindscape instead of Blizzard, remember that Blizzard was nobody at the time.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/24/1213229
I used to work for Mindscape/SSI/Broderbund. Horned rat was before my time. Yes we did have a number of Warhammer games that were published. I know nothing of the Blizzard/Games Workshop thing other than Games workshop always picked the wrong developers. They never seemed to get any good developers until Mythic and THQ/Vigil.
If you don't know, there are more Warhammer based PC games made than titles Blizzard has released. We do not know about many of the Warhammer titles because most of them are garbage by garbage developers.
In one way or another every MMOG makes a good contribution to the market, even those now gone and the ones never released. Examples in brackets. I'm sure there's quite a few mistakes, but I'm just trying to make a point. Please be kind to my failings.
Some open doors (M59, UO), some show how to bring in the masses (EQ, WoW), some show how to carve a niche for the specially interested and make a good run with that (EVE). Some teach developers important lessons (AO - launch, SWG - changing the game, LII - bots, several games - how to get canned before release).
Some create a new sub-genre, like MMOFPS (PS) or MMORTS (not bothering to look up names now
), some introduce genres aside from high fantasy (WWII - modern war, AO - sci-fi, CoH - superhero, AoC - sword & sorcery). Some show what works (most that are still running), some show what doesn't (AA, several attempts at MMORTS) - the latter also being dependant on region.
Some paved the way into new markets (Legend of Mir II - I believe started the current payment system used in China, DAoC - opened up Europe to MMOGs), some simply just added more variety (most fantasy games after UO, EQ and AC).
WoW itself contributed with showing how to reach the masses (strong brand, low beginner threshold, aggressive marketing, etc) and through that brought vast investments into the genre. EQII, VG and LotRO have contributed with showing other developers where to put their expectations and priorities when going up against WoW. Of those three I'd say LotRO have had the best aim, scaling according to expected player numbers and making sure to release a polished game.
Sure, some games may have contributed badly to their investors, developers and publishers, and maybe especially to their fans. To the MMOG market as a whole, I think we can find positive contribution in every game.
Interesting that many people say WoW is a beginers MMORPG or a "low int required" to master it, however this hasnt stoped many people with brains going over to play WoW.
When i used to play (for 6 months of so) i met a variety of people... little kiddies who were mature, little kiddies who were immature, i met mums and dads, highly intelligent people, foreign people, those from all walks.
It had a wide appeal, and seemed to give many people of many avenues what they wanted.
I think it's done more good than harm, as now MMORPG's have to strive to get their game out with as few bugs as possible among other things.
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MMORPG's I've Played: World of Warcraft: 10/10 - Rappelz: 7/10 - Ragnarok Online: 8/10 - DnD Online: 2/10 - Runescape: 6/10 - LotR Online: 5/10 - Anarchy Online: 7/10 - CoV: 8/10 - Rohan Online: 8/10 - Guild Wars: 7/10 - Flyff: 8/10 - Warhammer Online: 8/10
My HARDCORE Story
I dont really see how WoW set the MMO genre backwords really. They didnt bring anything new to the table, all they did was make the game more user friendly, which isnt a bad thing. My first MMO was SWG and I didnt know what the hell was going on, I was ready to quit after playing for 4 days because I didnt know what to do (gotta figure all i had was single player game experience). I was than roaming around Talus and flew into a city where someone helped me and explained to me how the game worked, gave me a house armor and weapons than i was addicted like a hoe to the crack pipe. In wow you could be a total noob and you can learn how to play, the game is simple.
All the companies have to do to beat WoW is bring something new to the table, not the same old fantasy stuff, I think AoC is taking a good step towards bringing something new but really we need some sci-fi, action. How cool would a grand theft auto mmo be, gang wars, you could join the law or be an outlaw. Common developers stop making more and more fantasy MMOs we are sick and tired of them, we want modern stuff and sci fi stuff.
Really I think that WoW helped the MMORPG genre because now theres alot more people who are exposed to the genre and companies have to aim higher to satisfy us. One thing that can be bad is devs copying wow I guess and that has nothing to do with wow but with the developer.
A man dies daily, only to be reborn in the morning, bigger, better and wiser.
-Playing AoC
-Playing WoW
-Retired- SWG
-Retired- EVE
-Retired- LotR
Computer (- Phenom 9600 Black Edition @ 2.81 Ghz (Quad Core CPU)- Gigabyte MA790FX-DS5 - 4 Gigs of PC 8500 ram (1066)- EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS PCI Express 2.0 - WD 500GB 7500RPM - Zalman CPU cooler (air cooled)
- 24" Widescreen 1080P HD display).
QFT
I had to vote yes, if only on the premis that it expanded the MMO world.
I was a late bloomer with WoW (about 6 months before BC went live), and didn't stay long (LOTRO now), but SWG was my first love and first MMO. The gameplay style that WoW offered opened up the MMO world to a wider audience (for good or bad).
While WoW may not be the most innovative MMO, but what it has is simply done better than anything else ever has. Yes, it took ideas from other games.. and then implemented them far better than the original.
There is no game that can match the polish of WoW. There is no game that can appeal to as diverse an audience as WoW.
WoW showed that games which are designed to be fun, instead of time consuming will do very well in this market.
Voted for backwards for this reason.
Anyone who answers anything except "yes" is only fooling themselves. There is hardly a member of the MMORPG developers out there that will not admit to WoW bringing attention to the genre as a whole. Several developers have credited Blizzard for their steadily increasing subscriber numbers.
As people get tired of wow, they are heading elsewhere and trying other MMORPGs.
I said yes for the most part....
1.) Blizzard raised the bar in terms of production values of MMO's. WoW proved that players want games that aren't broken, buggy, and missing content unlike previous games put out by previous MMO industry leaders. The quality of a product is more important to players then quantity of half-baked MMO's and expansion packs you can push out onto players.
So if you are putting out a MMO and you better make sure it's not a mess at launch. For the most part industry leaders like Turbine and Mythic have picked up on this message and are shifting gears. I don't know about SOE yet because they have yet to put out a game ( VG is still a Sigil created turd ) of their own that was developed by them that is highly polished. Hopefully they'll demonstrate what they've learned from Blizzard's and Turbine's success with their highly polished MMOs at launch.
2.) Blizzard demonstrated with WoW that the majority of players think a story/quest driven MMO is actually more fun to play then a grind driven, corpse running one.
3.) Blizzard demonstrated that the casual and core player market is unimaginably huge in comparison to the "I grind for 6+ hours a day and quit my day job" market of "hardcore" MMO players.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
WoW was good for the developers, not so much for the players.
I did just that and found no other mmo that grabs my interest cause of WoW -_-. Im really waiting for september releases of games. September is a big time for PC gamers ^_^
My thoughts? I played WoW and wasted 1 year and a half of my life to just pvp... thats all that game was to me. Quick fast insane pvp, I loved WoWs pvp combat speed. At least IMO.
So does good out-weight the bad? I don't think so, but you can certainly believe so. Some focus on the long-term effect, others see the short term success and think it is a good thing. Again, this is just personal opinion, and it may or may not be right. But I'm sure I am not "fooling myself" when I see the trend that WoW brought into MMORPG is all good and nothing bad.
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
I personally think that WoW has made the overall MMO community worse. Its the "gate-way" MMO to better, more in depth MMO's. And I would hate to have WoW's community migrate onto other anticipated, more complex mmorpgs.
Don't get me wrong, WoW is a great game, its just not a lasting title, and it has a poor community.
As much as I don't really care for this game, you have to give it some credit. It did bring alot of new players to the MMO scene and it found 7 million plus players that enjoyed it at one time.
i think it changed what mmorpgs are.. it dumbed them down, and made it a more commercialized product, instead of what most of us on here are fans of. A huge step in taking the "rpg" out of MMORPG. less effort, less story.. the reason it appeals to so many people is because there is such little mental effort involved. I do think its great if it attracts people who end up wanting more from their games and migrate to the more substantial games.. but not if it makes the mmorpg devs start "dumbing down" the new games that come out.
I am also worried that development costs are going to go through the roof, to the point where it costs more to make a game than they can realistically make off them.
I'd say it was still hard to tell at this point in time. Sure, there's more attention on the genre, but only time will tell if that means all games from now on will aim at the same market as WoW. Hopefully, a barrage of flops will make developers and investors think again.
I'm really not sure that taking MMORPGs away from the geek market will be beneficial for those of us that actually enjoyed the challenges in the kind of games which required a high IQ, had steep learning curves and that everyone else saw as major geekdom.
But as others have pointed out, opening up MMO to a much larger public brings "teh kids" and as you say yourself: as they get tired of WoW they are heading elsewhere... maybe ruining WAR for me aswell. Not looking forward to that tbh