I would consider World of Warcraft a trully MASSIVE breathrough. It changed the MMO industry from a 400k subsciribers was Uber to one where 10 million subscribers is now the benchmark. Even if one does not like the game personally, WoW launched MMORPG into mainstream gaming.
Yea, I hope they can produce another WoW soon. I don't think AoC will be as high as WoW since most people play on crappy systems (of the 10 mil).. maybe once on XBox it will have a hope to push over few mil. WAR looks like the graphics are for those people on slow computers.
Ok I had to put in my 2 cents after I saw these 2 posts... I know I am going to come off as hating WOW but that is not true. So here we go...
WOW was not a trully MASSIVE breakthrough in MMO's, WOW is actually a baby game by comparasons to MMORPG's as a whole. I think WOW has taken us a step back not forward in MMO's when it comes to the game as a playable entity. It has however taken us forward by introducing so many millions of people to a gaming system that exists that everyone can have fun playing. Now what do I mean by this, its simple, nothing in WOW hasn't being done before, lets face it? Don't tell me something has when you know games like EQ, AC, UO, DAOC, AO all have done this crap before, all Blizard did was put it to an already very successful franchise.
The graphics are ok but history has shown graphics do not make the game, a friend of mine said once, "I would rather play a game with an excelent short story and crappy graphics, then a game with a crappy long story and the best graphics out at the time." The same goes for MMO's, people who know the MMO type of games would agree graphics don't make the game. Do I have to mention the MUD's of old? Now look at these graphics in WOW are they revolutionary? No again they have being done before, a few notes on who did this high of graphics before, SWG, AC2 just to name 2 of them.
Gameplay, PVE to start, quest to kill x creatures and return, or get x and return...etc. Instances that tell you to kill something...etc. Don't tell me wow revolutionized this, lets go back again, UO, EQ, AC, SWG..etc. How about PvP, is that revolutionary? I think not, alot of people have conceded that PvP in WoW is infintile, honestly I can only say one game that destroys when it comes to PvP, AC, but if you must get into what other games have games like EVE, DAOC and a buch of others do PvP alot better then WOW. So did WOW revolutionize PvP? No.
The world is open and you can run anywhere in WOW, maybe that is the revolution you speak of? No seamless world running has being around for years, AC just to name one.
So I am interested to know what you think makes WOW so revolutionary other then the fact they have 9Million subscibers? Yes they have set records with this but it is hardly revolutionary.
Revolutionary is taking a chance not going with the norm, and WOW is just a standard cookie cutter MMORPG with more polish to mask it.
Now just so you know I respect WOW for what it is, and praise Blizzard for introducing a world of people to MMO's. I hope they continue to have success, but I haven't seen anything in WOW to make me reactivate my account.
Okay so WoW didn't do anything new?
Three words for you: Customizable interface modifications. Otherwise known as Mods.
No other game has put the sort of tools to edit the UI in the users hands that WoW did. And I'm not talking hugely abusable macros, I'm talking the ability to customize how the player interacted with the gameworld into anything they wanted. Want to see every bit of information possible? Could be done. Want to see the entire game world as nothing more than a HUD, with your health and mana bars as two curved bars around your target, his health bar as a curved bar on the right side, and a small circle of buttons that disappeared when you weren't in combat? Could be done.
WoW really did something unique, and in my opinion it was an amazing innovation that every game should embrace. To this day it pisses me off when I can't set things up how I want them to be set up by browsing Curse for 20 minutes.
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
sick of these threads. you failed to enjoy those games. why even post something like this. im so over the negative opinions on this site. its like youd rather no one like video games.
I would consider World of Warcraft a trully MASSIVE breathrough. It changed the MMO industry from a 400k subsciribers was Uber to one where 10 million subscribers is now the benchmark. Even if one does not like the game personally, WoW launched MMORPG into mainstream gaming.
Yea, I hope they can produce another WoW soon. I don't think AoC will be as high as WoW since most people play on crappy systems (of the 10 mil).. maybe once on XBox it will have a hope to push over few mil. WAR looks like the graphics are for those people on slow computers.
Ok I had to put in my 2 cents after I saw these 2 posts... I know I am going to come off as hating WOW but that is not true. So here we go...
WOW was not a trully MASSIVE breakthrough in MMO's, WOW is actually a baby game by comparasons to MMORPG's as a whole. I think WOW has taken us a step back not forward in MMO's when it comes to the game as a playable entity. It has however taken us forward by introducing so many millions of people to a gaming system that exists that everyone can have fun playing. Now what do I mean by this, its simple, nothing in WOW hasn't being done before, lets face it? Don't tell me something has when you know games like EQ, AC, UO, DAOC, AO all have done this crap before, all Blizard did was put it to an already very successful franchise.
The graphics are ok but history has shown graphics do not make the game, a friend of mine said once, "I would rather play a game with an excelent short story and crappy graphics, then a game with a crappy long story and the best graphics out at the time." The same goes for MMO's, people who know the MMO type of games would agree graphics don't make the game. Do I have to mention the MUD's of old? Now look at these graphics in WOW are they revolutionary? No again they have being done before, a few notes on who did this high of graphics before, SWG, AC2 just to name 2 of them.
Gameplay, PVE to start, quest to kill x creatures and return, or get x and return...etc. Instances that tell you to kill something...etc. Don't tell me wow revolutionized this, lets go back again, UO, EQ, AC, SWG..etc. How about PvP, is that revolutionary? I think not, alot of people have conceded that PvP in WoW is infintile, honestly I can only say one game that destroys when it comes to PvP, AC, but if you must get into what other games have games like EVE, DAOC and a buch of others do PvP alot better then WOW. So did WOW revolutionize PvP? No.
The world is open and you can run anywhere in WOW, maybe that is the revolution you speak of? No seamless world running has being around for years, AC just to name one.
So I am interested to know what you think makes WOW so revolutionary other then the fact they have 9Million subscibers? Yes they have set records with this but it is hardly revolutionary.
Revolutionary is taking a chance not going with the norm, and WOW is just a standard cookie cutter MMORPG with more polish to mask it.
Now just so you know I respect WOW for what it is, and praise Blizzard for introducing a world of people to MMO's. I hope they continue to have success, but I haven't seen anything in WOW to make me reactivate my account.
WoW raised the bar in terms of polish. WoW had a lot of server problems at release, but the game itself was very polished indeed, and in fact no MMO released since WoW (3+ years now) has been close to as polished as WoW was at its release, despite the crazy server problems the game had for a while.
It also raised the bar in terms of getting rid of the bullshit in games, at least in terms of the initial design of it (they added bullshit later). Don't have bullshit interfaces that are not customizable and make learning your stupid interface a kind of mini-game. Instead have a very intuitive interface that anyone can pick up and play in 20 minutes, and then on top of that let the players freely modify it.
WoW was in no way "revolutionary". But what made WoW special was the fact that it was an extremely polished, accessible game. MMOs had been avoided like the plague even by many advanced gamers pre-WoW because they were notoriously nerdy, time crunchy, inaccessible niche games -- WoW changed all of that by making the gameplay accessible as hell and aiming it at non-MMO players. Sure Blizzard got a boost from its fanboys in terms of the game's release, but that's not how it got the number of subs it did. It reached that number simply because it is by far the most user friendly, casual friendly MMO ever made.
Recreating WoW's success will be virtually impossible, I think. It's become a genre of its own in a way. But other game developers can take some lessons from WoW about not making basic stuff stupidly hard to learn or inflexible -- make the game accessible in terms of its interface and basic style (even if you want to make it a hell of a lot harder than WoW), and don't make the game so that you have to have a tippity top computer to run it well (a mistake often made by developers) and you will find a larger playerbase right off the bat.
I would consider World of Warcraft a trully MASSIVE breathrough. It changed the MMO industry from a 400k subsciribers was Uber to one where 10 million subscribers is now the benchmark. Even if one does not like the game personally, WoW launched MMORPG into mainstream gaming.
Yea, I hope they can produce another WoW soon. I don't think AoC will be as high as WoW since most people play on crappy systems (of the 10 mil).. maybe once on XBox it will have a hope to push over few mil. WAR looks like the graphics are for those people on slow computers.
Ok I had to put in my 2 cents after I saw these 2 posts... I know I am going to come off as hating WOW but that is not true. So here we go...
WOW was not a trully MASSIVE breakthrough in MMO's, WOW is actually a baby game by comparasons to MMORPG's as a whole. I think WOW has taken us a step back not forward in MMO's when it comes to the game as a playable entity. It has however taken us forward by introducing so many millions of people to a gaming system that exists that everyone can have fun playing. Now what do I mean by this, its simple, nothing in WOW hasn't being done before, lets face it? Don't tell me something has when you know games like EQ, AC, UO, DAOC, AO all have done this crap before, all Blizard did was put it to an already very successful franchise.
The graphics are ok but history has shown graphics do not make the game, a friend of mine said once, "I would rather play a game with an excelent short story and crappy graphics, then a game with a crappy long story and the best graphics out at the time." The same goes for MMO's, people who know the MMO type of games would agree graphics don't make the game. Do I have to mention the MUD's of old? Now look at these graphics in WOW are they revolutionary? No again they have being done before, a few notes on who did this high of graphics before, SWG, AC2 just to name 2 of them.
Gameplay, PVE to start, quest to kill x creatures and return, or get x and return...etc. Instances that tell you to kill something...etc. Don't tell me wow revolutionized this, lets go back again, UO, EQ, AC, SWG..etc. How about PvP, is that revolutionary? I think not, alot of people have conceded that PvP in WoW is infintile, honestly I can only say one game that destroys when it comes to PvP, AC, but if you must get into what other games have games like EVE, DAOC and a buch of others do PvP alot better then WOW. So did WOW revolutionize PvP? No.
The world is open and you can run anywhere in WOW, maybe that is the revolution you speak of? No seamless world running has being around for years, AC just to name one.
So I am interested to know what you think makes WOW so revolutionary other then the fact they have 9Million subscibers? Yes they have set records with this but it is hardly revolutionary.
Revolutionary is taking a chance not going with the norm, and WOW is just a standard cookie cutter MMORPG with more polish to mask it.
Now just so you know I respect WOW for what it is, and praise Blizzard for introducing a world of people to MMO's. I hope they continue to have success, but I haven't seen anything in WOW to make me reactivate my account.
Okay so WoW didn't do anything new?
Three words for you: Customizable interface modifications. Otherwise known as Mods.
No other game has put the sort of tools to edit the UI in the users hands that WoW did. And I'm not talking hugely abusable macros, I'm talking the ability to customize how the player interacted with the gameworld into anything they wanted. Want to see every bit of information possible? Could be done. Want to see the entire game world as nothing more than a HUD, with your health and mana bars as two curved bars around your target, his health bar as a curved bar on the right side, and a small circle of buttons that disappeared when you weren't in combat? Could be done.
WoW really did something unique, and in my opinion it was an amazing innovation that every game should embrace. To this day it pisses me off when I can't set things up how I want them to be set up by browsing Curse for 20 minutes.
So in others words you are saying you havnt played shadowbane then? cuz SB done everyhing you just said and im sure SB came out long before WoW did.
So in others words you are saying you havnt played shadowbane then? cuz SB done everyhing you just said and im sure SB came out long before WoW did.
have fun
Pretty sure you're wrong.
Anytime! And have fun yourself!
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
I would consider World of Warcraft a trully MASSIVE breathrough. It changed the MMO industry from a 400k subsciribers was Uber to one where 10 million subscribers is now the benchmark. Even if one does not like the game personally, WoW launched MMORPG into mainstream gaming.
And since that point we have not gotten a good game. All we get are games made by people trying to copy WoW so they can get WoW numbers, and failing miserably.
WoW getting millions of subscribers and making MMORPGs mainstream was not a good thing for MMORPG players, it was just good for the companies trying to get rich.
it was just good for the companies trying to get rich.
No, it wasn't even good for them either, as the topic states there haven't been many good games released since that time. If anything WoW has been the bane of new MMO's especially the ones that try to copy its formula.
No one is "getting rich" in the MMO business right now except for Blizzard. (oh and Asian games, especially the F2P, but thats another story no one likes to talk about here)
DDO is as much a succes as GW and CoX. I would put that game in succes list tbh.
There is no way you can say DDO was as much of a success as GW. Maybe if it was F2P, but its not and it's not that great of a game.
Meanwhile I diagree, played GW from launch until 1st expansion came out, bored. Been playing DDO since pre-launch still play 4-6 hours a day. Youre opinion DDO's not that great of a game, my opinion GW's not that great of a game....
it was just good for the companies trying to get rich.
No, it wasn't even good for them either, as the topic states there haven't been many good games released since that time. If anything WoW has been the bane of new MMO's especially the ones that try to copy its formula.
No one is "getting rich" in the MMO business right now except for Blizzard. (oh and Asian games, especially the F2P, but thats another story no one likes to talk about here)
I stand corrected. You are quite right and i agree with you.
And this is why i believe developers need to give up the idea of the next great WoW and getting 10 Gabillion subscribers and go back to making games that fill a niche. Make a good PVP game, make a good early EQ like game, make a good SciFi game (Shadowrun is my vote), etc etc. These games will not get the millions of subscibers but they will get a healthy player base and will make money.
They will still get rich, they just wont get the obscene WoW numbers rich.
it was just good for the companies trying to get rich.
No, it wasn't even good for them either, as the topic states there haven't been many good games released since that time. If anything WoW has been the bane of new MMO's especially the ones that try to copy its formula.
No one is "getting rich" in the MMO business right now except for Blizzard. (oh and Asian games, especially the F2P, but thats another story no one likes to talk about here)
I stand corrected. You are quite right and i agree with you.
And this is why i believe developers need to give up the idea of the next great WoW and getting 10 Gabillion subscribers and go back to making games that fill a niche. Make a good PVP game, make a good early EQ like game, make a good SciFi game (Shadowrun is my vote), etc etc. These games will not get the millions of subscibers but they will get a healthy player base and will make money.
They will still get rich, they just wont get the obscene WoW numbers rich.
I agree that it is very unlikely that anyone will be able to duplicate WoW's success -- it's kind of become its own thing apart from the rest of the genre.
But, having said that, it's human nature that game publishers and other people who finance game development, who are in this to make money, are going to be trying their damndest to make something that has a similar appeal to WoW. I doubt any of them will succeed at this, but many will try, and I don't think we're finished with that period yet. Competitive market players are not just going to concede Blizzard that kind of market share indefinitely -- they want a piece of the action, and so they will try to get that.
Lets not forget Shadowbane on the failure list, Earth and Beyond, of course Horizons,
There is no question in my mind that POTBS will fail horribly (have you seen what they released over there--mind boggling really).
UO/AO/AC/EQ/DAOC (no question the success list-i suspect some people/companies made quite a bit of money on those cash machines-they have staying power and a loyal, paying, customer base).
for me the interesting releases have been WOW, Lotro, EVE, they each do what they do pretty damn well.
I am fearful for the 2008-the WoW-effect and the obession with a multi million user player base is running strong out there now. Expect more "I will be all things to all people" releases to fail miserably in 2008.
I really like everyone’s failure list. But I think most if not all have not really gotten the point. What is a failure? To a business, not making money, to the consumer, its not fun. But if the game is making money, and there is a player base, and it is running, then it isn’t a failure. Just because you guys don’t like it, really doesn’t matter. I hate WOW, I really hate that game. But it isn’t a failure. I do like City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, and EQ2, and Eve. They each get a share of my cash (different months). They don’t have the player base, like WOW, but I like the games.
So guys you might want to rethink what is a failure and a success. Because if Tabula Rasa or Everquest 2 are failures, why are they still running?
Well first off I have to partially agree with everyone here...Wow was polished, the UI customization was also polished right from day one. However were they revolutionary? I still don't think so, again though this is not a downfall of the game the game itself apealed to a broader audience ranging from Hardcore gamers to kiddies. Honestly before WOW you were hard pressed someone who didn't know someone who played Warcraft, and that is the attraction for everyone. I will admit that is the biggest reason I played, I used to play Warcraft and it seemed like a good continuation of the game.
As Sharajat stated above Shadowbane had a fully custimizable interface as well? I am not sure about this fact because I never did play it but I did some checking and Shadowbane has being out longer then WOW. So if the above is true this is another thing that WOW can't take the credit for, but they can as stated above take the credit for making everything so polished.
I stick with my original comment, "WOW is not a MASSIVE breakthrough in MMORPGS", it is just a game that everyone can relate to, and has being designed around such a simplistic model any kiddie can play it and enjoy themselves.
If you define success as having WoW like subs then everything will fail no matter what. Even the upcoming AoC and WAR will be failures using that definition because no other game ever will have 9 million Players. Never ever. Not even Blizzard will be able to do that again.
It has not failed, it is just different then what we normally get out of MMO companys.
I think PoTBS is a good thing for the MMO industry because it shows that a small niche game can be successful. If Pre order is any indication of the population levels then PoTBS will be fine.
On Rackham we have a good solid populations and it is the 2 week pre order period.
If you define success as having WoW like subs then everything will fail no matter what. Even the upcoming AoC and WAR will be failures using that definition because no other game ever will have 9 million Players. Never ever. Not even Blizzard will be able to do that again.
Never say Never. With more and more people playing MMOs 9 million is going to be beat sooner rather then later.
mxo is still goin storiong with about 40 thousind playas.
Hail Neo, full of pwnage, Morpheus is with thee Blessed art thou among Zion, and blessed is the roundhouse against Smith. Holy Neo, pray for us now, and at the hour of Victory, Amen.
I would consider World of Warcraft a trully MASSIVE breathrough. It changed the MMO industry from a 400k subsciribers was Uber to one where 10 million subscribers is now the benchmark. Even if one does not like the game personally, WoW launched MMORPG into mainstream gaming.
Yea, I hope they can produce another WoW soon. I don't think AoC will be as high as WoW since most people play on crappy systems (of the 10 mil).. maybe once on XBox it will have a hope to push over few mil. WAR looks like the graphics are for those people on slow computers.
Ok I had to put in my 2 cents after I saw these 2 posts... I know I am going to come off as hating WOW but that is not true. So here we go...
WOW was not a trully MASSIVE breakthrough in MMO's, WOW is actually a baby game by comparasons to MMORPG's as a whole. I think WOW has taken us a step back not forward in MMO's when it comes to the game as a playable entity. It has however taken us forward by introducing so many millions of people to a gaming system that exists that everyone can have fun playing. Now what do I mean by this, its simple, nothing in WOW hasn't being done before, lets face it? Don't tell me something has when you know games like EQ, AC, UO, DAOC, AO all have done this crap before, all Blizard did was put it to an already very successful franchise.
The graphics are ok but history has shown graphics do not make the game, a friend of mine said once, "I would rather play a game with an excelent short story and crappy graphics, then a game with a crappy long story and the best graphics out at the time." The same goes for MMO's, people who know the MMO type of games would agree graphics don't make the game. Do I have to mention the MUD's of old? Now look at these graphics in WOW are they revolutionary? No again they have being done before, a few notes on who did this high of graphics before, SWG, AC2 just to name 2 of them.
Gameplay, PVE to start, quest to kill x creatures and return, or get x and return...etc. Instances that tell you to kill something...etc. Don't tell me wow revolutionized this, lets go back again, UO, EQ, AC, SWG..etc. How about PvP, is that revolutionary? I think not, alot of people have conceded that PvP in WoW is infintile, honestly I can only say one game that destroys when it comes to PvP, AC, but if you must get into what other games have games like EVE, DAOC and a buch of others do PvP alot better then WOW. So did WOW revolutionize PvP? No.
The world is open and you can run anywhere in WOW, maybe that is the revolution you speak of? No seamless world running has being around for years, AC just to name one.
So I am interested to know what you think makes WOW so revolutionary other then the fact they have 9Million subscibers? Yes they have set records with this but it is hardly revolutionary.
Revolutionary is taking a chance not going with the norm, and WOW is just a standard cookie cutter MMORPG with more polish to mask it.
Now just so you know I respect WOW for what it is, and praise Blizzard for introducing a world of people to MMO's. I hope they continue to have success, but I haven't seen anything in WOW to make me reactivate my account.
Okay so WoW didn't do anything new?
Three words for you: Customizable interface modifications. Otherwise known as Mods.
No other game has put the sort of tools to edit the UI in the users hands that WoW did. And I'm not talking hugely abusable macros, I'm talking the ability to customize how the player interacted with the gameworld into anything they wanted. Want to see every bit of information possible? Could be done. Want to see the entire game world as nothing more than a HUD, with your health and mana bars as two curved bars around your target, his health bar as a curved bar on the right side, and a small circle of buttons that disappeared when you weren't in combat? Could be done.
WoW really did something unique, and in my opinion it was an amazing innovation that every game should embrace. To this day it pisses me off when I can't set things up how I want them to be set up by browsing Curse for 20 minutes.
you could do that in eq1....and it came out in 1999
For a developing or publishing company, whether a game has succeeded or failed rely on one thing: whether they're making a profit. If an MMOG is developed with a budget balanced at 50k players, reaching 70k is a success. That those other 20 million MMOG players didn't like it, or like something else better, is completely irrelevant.
Some games can of course be a success even when having a loss, e.g. if they gather a sizeable following and thus make a name for the developer for future titles.
As for WoW, since it's the inevitable measuring stock for games after 2004, I think it's generally accepted that they didn't invent much, they just did it right. Now it's up to everybody else to do something else, because I really doubt anybody will do it better any time soon.
Originally posted by Housam you could do that in eq1....and it came out in 1999
Yes but it's really beside the point. WoW is not revolutionary, that is clear. But what it set out to do (create an easy, accessible mass market MMO that your grandma can play) it did spectacularly well.
For a developing or publishing company, whether a game has succeeded or failed rely on one thing: whether they're making a profit. If an MMOG is developed with a budget balanced at 50k players, reaching 70k is a success. That those other 20 million MMOG players didn't like it, or like something else better, is completely irrelevant. Some games can of course be a success even when having a loss, e.g. if they gather a sizeable following and thus make a name for the developer for future titles.
Pretty much exactly right, which is one of the main reasons why EVE has persisted the way it has. If EVE had a production budget like WoW, or a shareholder/publisher that demanded ROI like EA Games, it would never have lasted. As it turns out, it was relatively cheap to make, on the one hand, so its break even was much lower than average for an MMO, and its main investor, the Icelandic Telecoms group, was pretty patient capital for a home-grown Icelandic project. They didn't have Blackstone breathing down their necks, for example, on their initially sluggish ROI.
So, yes, it all depends on how expensive it is for your game to make -- if it's expensive to make, your break even point is higher, which puts pressure on getting more subs. Having said that, I think even the most expensively made games are in the black at a few hundred thousand consistent subs. Even WoW was aiming for the 500k-1m mark -- they would have been very happy with WoW had it gotten 1m subs, they never in their wildest dreams thought it would become what it has become.
The problem with MMORPGs over the last few years has been a total lack of innovation. We have seen the same regurgitated crap re-released over and over again with only minor changes. Without anything new to capture our interest, it is not surprising that most of these games have failed to succeed. How many times can a person play the same game with different models before they are completely fed up with the whole genre? For me, it didn't take many.
For obvious economic reasons, most game developers choose not to take chances on new concepts when they can use old ones that have been tried and true. They know that a game has less chance of failing if it is almost exactly like games that have already succeeded. This is why we get the same boring fantasy MMORPG re-released over and over again.
The fault is ours as consumers as well. Why should developers spend the extra time and money to come up with new concepts when they know that we will still spend our hard earned money on the same old crap. EA re-releases the same games over and over again with only minor changes each year and yet these games continue to sell extremely well with each rendition. This same trend is playing out with MMORPGs, which results in the same boring cookie-cutter fantasy crap being released over and over again.
The moment we consumers start demanding better games, the industry will provide.
The problem with MMORPGs over the last few years has been a total lack of innovation. We have seen the same regurgitated crap re-released over and over again with only minor changes. Without anything new to capture our interest, it is not surprising that most of these games have failed to succeed. How many times can a person play the same game with different models before they are completely fed up with the whole genre? For me, it didn't take many. For obvious economic reasons, most game developers choose not to take chances on new concepts when they can use old ones that have been tried and true. They know that a game has less chance of failing if it is almost exactly like games that have already succeeded. This is why we get the same boring fantasy MMORPG re-released over and over again. The fault is ours as consumers as well. Why should developers spend the extra time and money to come up with new concepts when they know that we will still spend our hard earned money on the same old crap. EA re-releases the same games over and over again with only minor changes each year and yet these games continue to sell extremely well with each rendition. This same trend is playing out with MMORPGs, which results in the same boring cookie-cutter fantasy crap being released over and over again. The moment we consumers start demanding better games, the industry will provide.
I don't blame the consumer at all in this case. The problem is yours in that what you want the market to be isn't what the market is today. It has changed and this industry is growing under this situation.
Comments
Yea, I hope they can produce another WoW soon. I don't think AoC will be as high as WoW since most people play on crappy systems (of the 10 mil).. maybe once on XBox it will have a hope to push over few mil. WAR looks like the graphics are for those people on slow computers.
Ok I had to put in my 2 cents after I saw these 2 posts... I know I am going to come off as hating WOW but that is not true. So here we go...
WOW was not a trully MASSIVE breakthrough in MMO's, WOW is actually a baby game by comparasons to MMORPG's as a whole. I think WOW has taken us a step back not forward in MMO's when it comes to the game as a playable entity. It has however taken us forward by introducing so many millions of people to a gaming system that exists that everyone can have fun playing. Now what do I mean by this, its simple, nothing in WOW hasn't being done before, lets face it? Don't tell me something has when you know games like EQ, AC, UO, DAOC, AO all have done this crap before, all Blizard did was put it to an already very successful franchise.
The graphics are ok but history has shown graphics do not make the game, a friend of mine said once, "I would rather play a game with an excelent short story and crappy graphics, then a game with a crappy long story and the best graphics out at the time." The same goes for MMO's, people who know the MMO type of games would agree graphics don't make the game. Do I have to mention the MUD's of old? Now look at these graphics in WOW are they revolutionary? No again they have being done before, a few notes on who did this high of graphics before, SWG, AC2 just to name 2 of them.
Gameplay, PVE to start, quest to kill x creatures and return, or get x and return...etc. Instances that tell you to kill something...etc. Don't tell me wow revolutionized this, lets go back again, UO, EQ, AC, SWG..etc. How about PvP, is that revolutionary? I think not, alot of people have conceded that PvP in WoW is infintile, honestly I can only say one game that destroys when it comes to PvP, AC, but if you must get into what other games have games like EVE, DAOC and a buch of others do PvP alot better then WOW. So did WOW revolutionize PvP? No.
The world is open and you can run anywhere in WOW, maybe that is the revolution you speak of? No seamless world running has being around for years, AC just to name one.
So I am interested to know what you think makes WOW so revolutionary other then the fact they have 9Million subscibers? Yes they have set records with this but it is hardly revolutionary.
Revolutionary is taking a chance not going with the norm, and WOW is just a standard cookie cutter MMORPG with more polish to mask it.
Now just so you know I respect WOW for what it is, and praise Blizzard for introducing a world of people to MMO's. I hope they continue to have success, but I haven't seen anything in WOW to make me reactivate my account.
Okay so WoW didn't do anything new?Three words for you: Customizable interface modifications. Otherwise known as Mods.
No other game has put the sort of tools to edit the UI in the users hands that WoW did. And I'm not talking hugely abusable macros, I'm talking the ability to customize how the player interacted with the gameworld into anything they wanted. Want to see every bit of information possible? Could be done. Want to see the entire game world as nothing more than a HUD, with your health and mana bars as two curved bars around your target, his health bar as a curved bar on the right side, and a small circle of buttons that disappeared when you weren't in combat? Could be done.
WoW really did something unique, and in my opinion it was an amazing innovation that every game should embrace. To this day it pisses me off when I can't set things up how I want them to be set up by browsing Curse for 20 minutes.
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson
sick of these threads. you failed to enjoy those games. why even post something like this. im so over the negative opinions on this site. its like youd rather no one like video games.
Yea, I hope they can produce another WoW soon. I don't think AoC will be as high as WoW since most people play on crappy systems (of the 10 mil).. maybe once on XBox it will have a hope to push over few mil. WAR looks like the graphics are for those people on slow computers.
Ok I had to put in my 2 cents after I saw these 2 posts... I know I am going to come off as hating WOW but that is not true. So here we go...
WOW was not a trully MASSIVE breakthrough in MMO's, WOW is actually a baby game by comparasons to MMORPG's as a whole. I think WOW has taken us a step back not forward in MMO's when it comes to the game as a playable entity. It has however taken us forward by introducing so many millions of people to a gaming system that exists that everyone can have fun playing. Now what do I mean by this, its simple, nothing in WOW hasn't being done before, lets face it? Don't tell me something has when you know games like EQ, AC, UO, DAOC, AO all have done this crap before, all Blizard did was put it to an already very successful franchise.
The graphics are ok but history has shown graphics do not make the game, a friend of mine said once, "I would rather play a game with an excelent short story and crappy graphics, then a game with a crappy long story and the best graphics out at the time." The same goes for MMO's, people who know the MMO type of games would agree graphics don't make the game. Do I have to mention the MUD's of old? Now look at these graphics in WOW are they revolutionary? No again they have being done before, a few notes on who did this high of graphics before, SWG, AC2 just to name 2 of them.
Gameplay, PVE to start, quest to kill x creatures and return, or get x and return...etc. Instances that tell you to kill something...etc. Don't tell me wow revolutionized this, lets go back again, UO, EQ, AC, SWG..etc. How about PvP, is that revolutionary? I think not, alot of people have conceded that PvP in WoW is infintile, honestly I can only say one game that destroys when it comes to PvP, AC, but if you must get into what other games have games like EVE, DAOC and a buch of others do PvP alot better then WOW. So did WOW revolutionize PvP? No.
The world is open and you can run anywhere in WOW, maybe that is the revolution you speak of? No seamless world running has being around for years, AC just to name one.
So I am interested to know what you think makes WOW so revolutionary other then the fact they have 9Million subscibers? Yes they have set records with this but it is hardly revolutionary.
Revolutionary is taking a chance not going with the norm, and WOW is just a standard cookie cutter MMORPG with more polish to mask it.
Now just so you know I respect WOW for what it is, and praise Blizzard for introducing a world of people to MMO's. I hope they continue to have success, but I haven't seen anything in WOW to make me reactivate my account.
WoW raised the bar in terms of polish. WoW had a lot of server problems at release, but the game itself was very polished indeed, and in fact no MMO released since WoW (3+ years now) has been close to as polished as WoW was at its release, despite the crazy server problems the game had for a while.
It also raised the bar in terms of getting rid of the bullshit in games, at least in terms of the initial design of it (they added bullshit later). Don't have bullshit interfaces that are not customizable and make learning your stupid interface a kind of mini-game. Instead have a very intuitive interface that anyone can pick up and play in 20 minutes, and then on top of that let the players freely modify it.
WoW was in no way "revolutionary". But what made WoW special was the fact that it was an extremely polished, accessible game. MMOs had been avoided like the plague even by many advanced gamers pre-WoW because they were notoriously nerdy, time crunchy, inaccessible niche games -- WoW changed all of that by making the gameplay accessible as hell and aiming it at non-MMO players. Sure Blizzard got a boost from its fanboys in terms of the game's release, but that's not how it got the number of subs it did. It reached that number simply because it is by far the most user friendly, casual friendly MMO ever made.
Recreating WoW's success will be virtually impossible, I think. It's become a genre of its own in a way. But other game developers can take some lessons from WoW about not making basic stuff stupidly hard to learn or inflexible -- make the game accessible in terms of its interface and basic style (even if you want to make it a hell of a lot harder than WoW), and don't make the game so that you have to have a tippity top computer to run it well (a mistake often made by developers) and you will find a larger playerbase right off the bat.
There is no way you can say DDO was as much of a success as GW. Maybe if it was F2P, but its not and it's not that great of a game.
Do you know for certain?
Yea, I hope they can produce another WoW soon. I don't think AoC will be as high as WoW since most people play on crappy systems (of the 10 mil).. maybe once on XBox it will have a hope to push over few mil. WAR looks like the graphics are for those people on slow computers.
Ok I had to put in my 2 cents after I saw these 2 posts... I know I am going to come off as hating WOW but that is not true. So here we go...
WOW was not a trully MASSIVE breakthrough in MMO's, WOW is actually a baby game by comparasons to MMORPG's as a whole. I think WOW has taken us a step back not forward in MMO's when it comes to the game as a playable entity. It has however taken us forward by introducing so many millions of people to a gaming system that exists that everyone can have fun playing. Now what do I mean by this, its simple, nothing in WOW hasn't being done before, lets face it? Don't tell me something has when you know games like EQ, AC, UO, DAOC, AO all have done this crap before, all Blizard did was put it to an already very successful franchise.
The graphics are ok but history has shown graphics do not make the game, a friend of mine said once, "I would rather play a game with an excelent short story and crappy graphics, then a game with a crappy long story and the best graphics out at the time." The same goes for MMO's, people who know the MMO type of games would agree graphics don't make the game. Do I have to mention the MUD's of old? Now look at these graphics in WOW are they revolutionary? No again they have being done before, a few notes on who did this high of graphics before, SWG, AC2 just to name 2 of them.
Gameplay, PVE to start, quest to kill x creatures and return, or get x and return...etc. Instances that tell you to kill something...etc. Don't tell me wow revolutionized this, lets go back again, UO, EQ, AC, SWG..etc. How about PvP, is that revolutionary? I think not, alot of people have conceded that PvP in WoW is infintile, honestly I can only say one game that destroys when it comes to PvP, AC, but if you must get into what other games have games like EVE, DAOC and a buch of others do PvP alot better then WOW. So did WOW revolutionize PvP? No.
The world is open and you can run anywhere in WOW, maybe that is the revolution you speak of? No seamless world running has being around for years, AC just to name one.
So I am interested to know what you think makes WOW so revolutionary other then the fact they have 9Million subscibers? Yes they have set records with this but it is hardly revolutionary.
Revolutionary is taking a chance not going with the norm, and WOW is just a standard cookie cutter MMORPG with more polish to mask it.
Now just so you know I respect WOW for what it is, and praise Blizzard for introducing a world of people to MMO's. I hope they continue to have success, but I haven't seen anything in WOW to make me reactivate my account.
Okay so WoW didn't do anything new?Three words for you: Customizable interface modifications. Otherwise known as Mods.
No other game has put the sort of tools to edit the UI in the users hands that WoW did. And I'm not talking hugely abusable macros, I'm talking the ability to customize how the player interacted with the gameworld into anything they wanted. Want to see every bit of information possible? Could be done. Want to see the entire game world as nothing more than a HUD, with your health and mana bars as two curved bars around your target, his health bar as a curved bar on the right side, and a small circle of buttons that disappeared when you weren't in combat? Could be done.
WoW really did something unique, and in my opinion it was an amazing innovation that every game should embrace. To this day it pisses me off when I can't set things up how I want them to be set up by browsing Curse for 20 minutes.
So in others words you are saying you havnt played shadowbane then? cuz SB done everyhing you just said and im sure SB came out long before WoW did.have fun
Anytime! And have fun yourself!
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson
WoW getting millions of subscribers and making MMORPGs mainstream was not a good thing for MMORPG players, it was just good for the companies trying to get rich.
No, it wasn't even good for them either, as the topic states there haven't been many good games released since that time. If anything WoW has been the bane of new MMO's especially the ones that try to copy its formula.
No one is "getting rich" in the MMO business right now except for Blizzard. (oh and Asian games, especially the F2P, but thats another story no one likes to talk about here)
There is no way you can say DDO was as much of a success as GW. Maybe if it was F2P, but its not and it's not that great of a game.
Meanwhile I diagree, played GW from launch until 1st expansion came out, bored. Been playing DDO since pre-launch still play 4-6 hours a day. Youre opinion DDO's not that great of a game, my opinion GW's not that great of a game....
No, it wasn't even good for them either, as the topic states there haven't been many good games released since that time. If anything WoW has been the bane of new MMO's especially the ones that try to copy its formula.
No one is "getting rich" in the MMO business right now except for Blizzard. (oh and Asian games, especially the F2P, but thats another story no one likes to talk about here)
I stand corrected. You are quite right and i agree with you.And this is why i believe developers need to give up the idea of the next great WoW and getting 10 Gabillion subscribers and go back to making games that fill a niche. Make a good PVP game, make a good early EQ like game, make a good SciFi game (Shadowrun is my vote), etc etc. These games will not get the millions of subscibers but they will get a healthy player base and will make money.
They will still get rich, they just wont get the obscene WoW numbers rich.
No, it wasn't even good for them either, as the topic states there haven't been many good games released since that time. If anything WoW has been the bane of new MMO's especially the ones that try to copy its formula.
No one is "getting rich" in the MMO business right now except for Blizzard. (oh and Asian games, especially the F2P, but thats another story no one likes to talk about here)
I stand corrected. You are quite right and i agree with you.And this is why i believe developers need to give up the idea of the next great WoW and getting 10 Gabillion subscribers and go back to making games that fill a niche. Make a good PVP game, make a good early EQ like game, make a good SciFi game (Shadowrun is my vote), etc etc. These games will not get the millions of subscibers but they will get a healthy player base and will make money.
They will still get rich, they just wont get the obscene WoW numbers rich.
I agree that it is very unlikely that anyone will be able to duplicate WoW's success -- it's kind of become its own thing apart from the rest of the genre.
But, having said that, it's human nature that game publishers and other people who finance game development, who are in this to make money, are going to be trying their damndest to make something that has a similar appeal to WoW. I doubt any of them will succeed at this, but many will try, and I don't think we're finished with that period yet. Competitive market players are not just going to concede Blizzard that kind of market share indefinitely -- they want a piece of the action, and so they will try to get that.
Lets not forget Shadowbane on the failure list, Earth and Beyond, of course Horizons,
There is no question in my mind that POTBS will fail horribly (have you seen what they released over there--mind boggling really).
UO/AO/AC/EQ/DAOC (no question the success list-i suspect some people/companies made quite a bit of money on those cash machines-they have staying power and a loyal, paying, customer base).
for me the interesting releases have been WOW, Lotro, EVE, they each do what they do pretty damn well.
I am fearful for the 2008-the WoW-effect and the obession with a multi million user player base is running strong out there now. Expect more "I will be all things to all people" releases to fail miserably in 2008.
Though like most gamers-hope springs eternal!
I really like everyone’s failure list. But I think most if not all have not really gotten the point. What is a failure? To a business, not making money, to the consumer, its not fun. But if the game is making money, and there is a player base, and it is running, then it isn’t a failure. Just because you guys don’t like it, really doesn’t matter. I hate WOW, I really hate that game. But it isn’t a failure. I do like City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, and EQ2, and Eve. They each get a share of my cash (different months). They don’t have the player base, like WOW, but I like the games.
So guys you might want to rethink what is a failure and a success. Because if Tabula Rasa or Everquest 2 are failures, why are they still running?
Well first off I have to partially agree with everyone here...Wow was polished, the UI customization was also polished right from day one. However were they revolutionary? I still don't think so, again though this is not a downfall of the game the game itself apealed to a broader audience ranging from Hardcore gamers to kiddies. Honestly before WOW you were hard pressed someone who didn't know someone who played Warcraft, and that is the attraction for everyone. I will admit that is the biggest reason I played, I used to play Warcraft and it seemed like a good continuation of the game.
As Sharajat stated above Shadowbane had a fully custimizable interface as well? I am not sure about this fact because I never did play it but I did some checking and Shadowbane has being out longer then WOW. So if the above is true this is another thing that WOW can't take the credit for, but they can as stated above take the credit for making everything so polished.
I stick with my original comment, "WOW is not a MASSIVE breakthrough in MMORPGS", it is just a game that everyone can relate to, and has being designed around such a simplistic model any kiddie can play it and enjoy themselves.
If you define success as having WoW like subs then everything will fail no matter what. Even the upcoming AoC and WAR will be failures using that definition because no other game ever will have 9 million Players. Never ever. Not even Blizzard will be able to do that again.
PoTBS belongs in the Successful.
It has not failed, it is just different then what we normally get out of MMO companys.
I think PoTBS is a good thing for the MMO industry because it shows that a small niche game can be successful. If Pre order is any indication of the population levels then PoTBS will be fine.
On Rackham we have a good solid populations and it is the 2 week pre order period.
Sooner or Later
Never say Never. With more and more people playing MMOs 9 million is going to be beat sooner rather then later.
Sooner or Later
mxo is still goin storiong with about 40 thousind playas.
Hail Neo, full of pwnage, Morpheus is with thee
Blessed art thou among Zion, and blessed is the roundhouse against Smith.
Holy Neo, pray for us now, and at the hour of Victory, Amen.
Yea, I hope they can produce another WoW soon. I don't think AoC will be as high as WoW since most people play on crappy systems (of the 10 mil).. maybe once on XBox it will have a hope to push over few mil. WAR looks like the graphics are for those people on slow computers.
Ok I had to put in my 2 cents after I saw these 2 posts... I know I am going to come off as hating WOW but that is not true. So here we go...
WOW was not a trully MASSIVE breakthrough in MMO's, WOW is actually a baby game by comparasons to MMORPG's as a whole. I think WOW has taken us a step back not forward in MMO's when it comes to the game as a playable entity. It has however taken us forward by introducing so many millions of people to a gaming system that exists that everyone can have fun playing. Now what do I mean by this, its simple, nothing in WOW hasn't being done before, lets face it? Don't tell me something has when you know games like EQ, AC, UO, DAOC, AO all have done this crap before, all Blizard did was put it to an already very successful franchise.
The graphics are ok but history has shown graphics do not make the game, a friend of mine said once, "I would rather play a game with an excelent short story and crappy graphics, then a game with a crappy long story and the best graphics out at the time." The same goes for MMO's, people who know the MMO type of games would agree graphics don't make the game. Do I have to mention the MUD's of old? Now look at these graphics in WOW are they revolutionary? No again they have being done before, a few notes on who did this high of graphics before, SWG, AC2 just to name 2 of them.
Gameplay, PVE to start, quest to kill x creatures and return, or get x and return...etc. Instances that tell you to kill something...etc. Don't tell me wow revolutionized this, lets go back again, UO, EQ, AC, SWG..etc. How about PvP, is that revolutionary? I think not, alot of people have conceded that PvP in WoW is infintile, honestly I can only say one game that destroys when it comes to PvP, AC, but if you must get into what other games have games like EVE, DAOC and a buch of others do PvP alot better then WOW. So did WOW revolutionize PvP? No.
The world is open and you can run anywhere in WOW, maybe that is the revolution you speak of? No seamless world running has being around for years, AC just to name one.
So I am interested to know what you think makes WOW so revolutionary other then the fact they have 9Million subscibers? Yes they have set records with this but it is hardly revolutionary.
Revolutionary is taking a chance not going with the norm, and WOW is just a standard cookie cutter MMORPG with more polish to mask it.
Now just so you know I respect WOW for what it is, and praise Blizzard for introducing a world of people to MMO's. I hope they continue to have success, but I haven't seen anything in WOW to make me reactivate my account.
Okay so WoW didn't do anything new?Three words for you: Customizable interface modifications. Otherwise known as Mods.
No other game has put the sort of tools to edit the UI in the users hands that WoW did. And I'm not talking hugely abusable macros, I'm talking the ability to customize how the player interacted with the gameworld into anything they wanted. Want to see every bit of information possible? Could be done. Want to see the entire game world as nothing more than a HUD, with your health and mana bars as two curved bars around your target, his health bar as a curved bar on the right side, and a small circle of buttons that disappeared when you weren't in combat? Could be done.
WoW really did something unique, and in my opinion it was an amazing innovation that every game should embrace. To this day it pisses me off when I can't set things up how I want them to be set up by browsing Curse for 20 minutes.
you could do that in eq1....and it came out in 1999
I believe the companies have no motivation to create better games when they can keep the same game running by creating new content.
For a developing or publishing company, whether a game has succeeded or failed rely on one thing: whether they're making a profit. If an MMOG is developed with a budget balanced at 50k players, reaching 70k is a success. That those other 20 million MMOG players didn't like it, or like something else better, is completely irrelevant.
Some games can of course be a success even when having a loss, e.g. if they gather a sizeable following and thus make a name for the developer for future titles.
As for WoW, since it's the inevitable measuring stock for games after 2004, I think it's generally accepted that they didn't invent much, they just did it right. Now it's up to everybody else to do something else, because I really doubt anybody will do it better any time soon.
Yes but it's really beside the point. WoW is not revolutionary, that is clear. But what it set out to do (create an easy, accessible mass market MMO that your grandma can play) it did spectacularly well.
Pretty much exactly right, which is one of the main reasons why EVE has persisted the way it has. If EVE had a production budget like WoW, or a shareholder/publisher that demanded ROI like EA Games, it would never have lasted. As it turns out, it was relatively cheap to make, on the one hand, so its break even was much lower than average for an MMO, and its main investor, the Icelandic Telecoms group, was pretty patient capital for a home-grown Icelandic project. They didn't have Blackstone breathing down their necks, for example, on their initially sluggish ROI.
So, yes, it all depends on how expensive it is for your game to make -- if it's expensive to make, your break even point is higher, which puts pressure on getting more subs. Having said that, I think even the most expensively made games are in the black at a few hundred thousand consistent subs. Even WoW was aiming for the 500k-1m mark -- they would have been very happy with WoW had it gotten 1m subs, they never in their wildest dreams thought it would become what it has become.
The problem with MMORPGs over the last few years has been a total lack of innovation. We have seen the same regurgitated crap re-released over and over again with only minor changes. Without anything new to capture our interest, it is not surprising that most of these games have failed to succeed. How many times can a person play the same game with different models before they are completely fed up with the whole genre? For me, it didn't take many.
For obvious economic reasons, most game developers choose not to take chances on new concepts when they can use old ones that have been tried and true. They know that a game has less chance of failing if it is almost exactly like games that have already succeeded. This is why we get the same boring fantasy MMORPG re-released over and over again.
The fault is ours as consumers as well. Why should developers spend the extra time and money to come up with new concepts when they know that we will still spend our hard earned money on the same old crap. EA re-releases the same games over and over again with only minor changes each year and yet these games continue to sell extremely well with each rendition. This same trend is playing out with MMORPGs, which results in the same boring cookie-cutter fantasy crap being released over and over again.
The moment we consumers start demanding better games, the industry will provide.
I don't blame the consumer at all in this case. The problem is yours in that what you want the market to be isn't what the market is today. It has changed and this industry is growing under this situation.