I don't get why people even argue the fact that WoW is one of the highest quality mmo's out there. There's something for just about everyone in the game and that's just one of the reasons it got 11+ mil subscribers
Originally posted by Tincanalley While in isolation I can see how they might seem minor to you, but the fact that they are all mixed together make them and the others mentioned (presentation, doing more things right at the time) quite major in helping explain WoW's popularity. You obviously disagree but don't offer any other explanation besides suggesting that there's "far more." Right...
The game runs like a dream, where other games lag and chug along where they shouldn't
The game begins at level 1. It isn't like many other games where you have to gind 900 levels to get to the end game where the game finally becomes entertaining. Listen to how many people enjoyed the journey of leveling
WoW removed many of the bad qualities found in many other MMOs. Needless timesinks, kill stealing, training, etc etc. Every step of the way the developers asked themselves, is this fun. If it wasn't they changed it.
The art direction and style is wonderful. Low poly count, doesn't cater to realism, but it is a great look all put together.
A wider variety of options for players to engage in. Not just some additional systems tacked on hastily like other games do just so they can say they have some element. Each is done in a very hand crafted way. It all took time to get together, but the game has great PvE, PvP, group, solo, raid content in many different fashions.
Polish. That was not a term you ever heard used to describe another MMO until WoW. Players standards were so low that is was common practice to assume a game would be fubar for at least a year while it fixed things up. WoW was fun from the start, so much so that people chose to wait in line just to log in as opposed to playing another game with no waiting line.
People don't have to sit around waiting for the next patch speculating how it will resolve the fundemantal issues in the game
The devs are very interactive in the community. Open test servers, forum discussion with reasons why they make their decisions, admitting when they make mistake.
Great customer service. The few times I have seen a ticket put in the wait time can be measured in minutes using both hands.
I could go on with many subjective and factual reasons, but what is the point. The end result is that in an even field with its competition, WoW kicked so many asses it isn't funny. There is no reason this game should be as dominating as it is except for one thing. Most other games lack quality to compete on the same level.
Several games have low system specs, are "easy" to use and cheap. Most have not done so well, because after the intial ease of entry they just aren't as fun for most people.
To many times people just shoot out a list of reasons why they think WoW is popular and they are right. Those reasons allowed a large number of people to try the game and not hit a major barrier like poor performance. However none of the reasons address why WoW retains so many players and has such good word of mouth referals.
The game is well made and fun. Many other MMOs miss that basic design and just push a product out to market and hope for the best. There is an eqaully long list of why other games have done so poorly simply because of their own mismanagement and bad design choices.
One game should not dominate this much, but developers have not gotten the message yet.
Advertising is a big factor. The only mmorpg I see ads for is WoW. Paying people like Mr. T, William Shatner and Ozzy Osbourne to do adds isn't cheap either. And I see WoW everywhere when browsing. With Blizzard paying so much more for advertising they would make less profit per $15 than every other mmorpg out there. But when you have 11 million subscribers it doesnt matter. If you look at all forms of entertainment quantity =/= quality. Britney Spears sells truckloads of records. The new Indiana Jones movie made $600 million worldwide. The [country] Idol format has been a massive success worldwide. The different between AoC and WAR is that they haven't crossed into mainstream popular culture like WoW has and until another game does (sims, HALO, super mario etc) then WoW will reign. Its got nothing to do with quality. How many new WoW players read reviews of WoW and rival mmog's? How many new WoW players actually look at the mmog market before starting WoW? Very few. Which gets back to the point that everyone else is doing it. There is no bigger reinforcement of "everyone else is doing it" than advertising.
There's just one problem with your argument. How do you get to be #1 in the FIRST place? You seem to think it just happens by mere accident. You're wrong. It's no accident that WoW is #1. No, it didn't have 12 million subscribers from day 1, but it had around a million or so and at the time that was huge. Then they continued to add subscriptions at an equally astonishing rate to where they had around 4 million by about the 6 month mark. You think that was some kind of accident? You're fooling yourself. They had a great product and it got around and people joined in because it was great fun, not because of advertising or anything else. In the first couple months of WoW, there wasn't any more advertising for WoW than any other MMO, it was only after it became a smash hit did Blizzard start advertising the game big time when Blizzard knew they had a hit on their hands.
It's fine and dandy to say, well everyone else is doing it, but you can only say that after everyone else IS doing it.
You want to know what it's even better than advertising? Word of mouth and having a great product. I have a group of friends that I have been playing video games with for several years now. A few months before WoW launched we were all playing Enemy Territory together and having an absolute blast. We even bought our own server and recruited more people to play with us. We had a web site with strats and all kinds of other stuff on it. Only 3 guys in that group had played an MMO before, most of them were hard core FPS type guys. I had played Earth and Beyond and really liked it and was dissappointed when they cancelled it. I tried City of Heroes and liked it and tried to get others to play. Others tried it but they all quit. Then I got in the beta for WoW. I realized this was going to take the place of Earth and Beyond for me. I started to tell the others about it, but no one was all that interested. Then the game was released and I had a couple other guys try it. To this day they almost all still play. All those hard core FPS guys could really get into WoW. It's not twitch, but it's as close as you can get to it in an MMO. No other MMO has been able to do that, to get people to swtich to it over there preferred genre. Well WoW did. WoW made people switch. There was a guy in the group that had been playing Guildwars and said that he wouldn't switch because he wasn't going to pay a monthly fee to play a game. I got him to try the demo for just a week to see if he liked it. 4 years later both him AND his wife play and I haven't heard a peep out of him about paying a monthly subscription.
You people just don't get it. No, 12 million subscriptions doesn't equal quality. But quality does equal subscriptions, and I know thousands of satisfied customers.
There is a REAL big problem with your argument it IS pure BS !.
You think the Toyota Camry and Honda civic were the top selling cars right out of the gate?Nope they were Fun to drive and others told them and WORD got around so they became the number one selling cars.It was no fluke they were number #1,and OF COURSE this all means they are a MUCH better product than a Vette or a VIPER.
Of course INDIA is one of the B EST places to live in the world,WHY NOT?they have the second most people,it MUST BE the best.
See how DUMB that kind of statement is?I wonder were you even there during the influx of millions of new gamers that HAD NEVER even played a MMORPG before?You can thank EQ for that.Oh by your theory the new influx of players ONLY came out and joined a MMORPG because they KNEW wow was so great?Of course they KNEW this because they had inside information.
I WAS THERE when it all happened and i DID pay attention to what people were talking about and complaining about.MANY and i mean MANY of the new gamers actually wanted to play EQ2 but they were disgruntled with the new ideas Eq2 brought in over EQ,the same sort of change we witness now from the NGE and SWG.Many were also miffed that there beloved EQ was now losing thousands of players that wanted a new game to move on to.
When you get MORE initial games than the competition EVER had,there is a MUCH bigger reason that FUN or the game is good.They NEVER even knew what to expect from WOW at that point,so how would they know anything?they did NOT.
It was sheer numbers all moving to one game right out of the gate.Then when they heard the servers were full[VERY BIG REASON to MOST]more and more joined.I am sure even a remotely active forum user has heard MILLIONS of times pople asking for a game with lots of players.
Even if your a fanbois or just stubborn,no matter,just look at the fact that EQ2 and WOW are identical games,EXACT copies,so you can NOT use ANY excuse about the game play as being the factor.Besides that EQ2 had MORE quantity and quality quests than WOW.Then you take into account WOW's quests are the EXACT same BS as every game out there.
SO WHERE exactly does this suprficial BS FUN statement come out?wait i can answer this because i WAS THERE during WOW's launch.All the childish kids that got High SPeed for the very first time were in the game acting like RETARDS.For at least a week there was thousands of NON stop choo choo train emotes going on in the main strating areas.These train lines were sometimes 30/40/50 people long,they were NOT even playing the game,i doubt ANY of them were past level 5 after a week.Yes the game must have been so great ,that is why they were not even out playing the darn thing,unless you consider acting like a choo choo train tard playing?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Wizardry, even most of the die hard EQ2 fans admit what a piece of shit EQ2 was at release.
From terrible performance, misguided game designs, broken loot table, keyed zones, terrible combat and animations, lackluster class balance, a trade skill system that was haphazardly thrown together, disfunctional solo/group content. Just look at the sheer volume of rewrites to the core game mechanics it had over the first year. Not tweaks, but entire redesigns. EQ2 was terrible at launch for many reasons and only did as well as it did because of the Everquest name. Even to this day there is almost a complete lack of consistent game design. EQ2 was rushed to market and it suffered because it wasn't finished by a long shot.
WoW was mostly feature complete with a pretty good design right out of the box. It then started out by suctioning a large portion of players from other MMOs right away. It wasn't like the game was primarily noobs who had never played an MMO before.
For example I tried to get some of my non mmo frieds to join EQ back in the day. A few tried, but almost none stayed, because the game had some issues which most label as hardcore these days. Repeat that with WoW and it was much easier to get people to play. To central concept of the game wasn't to grind long hours hoping for the chance that something exciting happened.
You think the Toyota Camry and Honda civic were the top selling cars right out of the gate? No, I think they got to be the top selling cars because they are of high quality. That was kinda the whole point of my post. Of course INDIA is one of the B EST places to live in the world,WHY NOT?they have the second most people,it MUST BE the best. Has zero to do with WoW. Zero. As if everyone gets to choose where they live. Most of the people that live in India live there because they were born there. Their family is there. They've only ever known India and many don't have the means NOR the desire to go anywhere else. See how DUMB that kind of statement is? Yes I do see how dumb a statement like yours is. For the people that live in India many of them believe that India is the BEST place in the world to live. Go ask them. You think most of them want to live somewhere else? They don't. They like it there, whether you agree with them or not.
I WAS THERE when it all happened... As was I. and i DID pay attention to what people were talking about and complaining about.MANY and i mean MANY of the new gamers actually wanted to play EQ2 but they were disgruntled with the new ideas Eq2 brought in over EQ,the same sort of change we witness now from the NGE and SWG. What exactly does that tell you. What you just said is that people wanted to like EQ2, but they didn't. WoW, revelation time. Many were also miffed that there beloved EQ was now losing thousands of players that wanted a new game to move on to. Yep, thousands. Probably several hundred thousand. You realize that WoW got around 4 milion subscriptions in the first 6 months right? Where did they come from? They sure as heck didn't come from EQ nor any of the other MMO's because there weren't even 4 million people playing MMO's at the time. WoW brought many of them to the MMO genre. When you get MORE initial games than the competition EVER had,there is a MUCH bigger reason that FUN or the game is good.They NEVER even knew what to expect from WOW at that point,so how would they know anything?they did NOT. So you are saying that people just don't know what they like? No you're not saying that at all. What your saying is that people like WoW, but they would like something better if they tried it, but they won't try it. And how do you know this? You don't. It's pure conjecture on your part. And how do you explain all the people that constantly say "I've tried everything else and I'm coming back to WoW"? What about them? They HAVE tried other stuff and they still think WoW is better. You simply don't agree with them. So I guess you know best. It was sheer numbers all moving to one game right out of the gate. Why? Why did all these people move to WoW right out of the gate? Why? That is the question and you are avoiding it. Why? All the rest is just rhetoric.
WoW is a success for the same reason the Wii is...
It's cheap to set up. It is easy to use. It is nicely presented. Everyone else is doing it.
I agree here,especially the last point,that is the big reason it kept getting bigger.
It is pretty amazing that they took the all out marketing approach to build this puppy up.They took there initial success and kept with the same marketing approach all along.Instead of building there game up piece by piece,describing to the potential buyers,the proponents of the game,they used a cheap approach ,by telling everyone out there,"Everyone is playing""We have this many subs".
So potential users are joining up,without any knowledge of the actual game,do you think 90% of these users would have even thought of the game if it used the small marketing you see from Square and FFXI?Why?because there is virtually ZERO marketing for FFXI,try to find an add anywhere,however wow is everywhere.Each and every time,it is the same thing "We have 5/6/7/8/9 10 million subs so join us now".
That in theory is a VERY weak marketing strategy,instead of perhaps lying or making your game out to be something it is not,they just flat out say "Join the masses".Blizzard does of course use some false advertising,there video marketing is all false,NONE of the actual game play is ever like they portray it to be.Perhaps,this is a sneaky ploy that works?Perhaps a lot of the NEW gamer,just thinks in there mind,that just maybe that amazing type video i watched really will show up in the game sooner or later.
I noticed the poster after mentions fun/fun FUN .well that is a out right RFLMAO.
WOW and it's game play is no different than any other game out there..AT ALL.The quests are even the same boring ass quests you see everywhere else as well.The gear pretty much functions the EXACT same as any other game,the hotbar,the spells they are all EVERQUEST designed and copied.The game is not about polish at all,i mean they took some former members of EQ,so they had the EXACT idea of how to COPY EQ,they would have to be total boneheads to mess that up.
THE ONLY proponent Blizzard did was make the game easier to play on more systems.I do not believe for a second that this was by design,i believe it was sheer cheapness and wanted the game out fast.It is a good line to use after the fact ,i know they are going to stick to that statement for sure.
The fact WOW runs on weaker systems is perhaps a bigger reason than most may think.All you have to do is wander around all these different simplistic browser games and see how many people out there ,really don't have the systems to play anything decent looking.I have been on a few browser games that have 2+ million subs,that is insane for such a cheap ass product,but it does show how limited people are.
I'm sorry, but this is just about 90% pure BS. It's a nice theory, the problem is that it has nothing to do with reality.
Haha, so funny to read your comment, I blocked that pimple a long time ago.
Originally posted by Pappy13 There's just one problem with your argument. How do you get to be #1 in the FIRST place? You seem to think it just happens by mere accident. You're wrong. It's no accident that WoW is #1. No, it didn't have 12 million subscribers from day 1, but it had around a million or so and at the time that was huge. Then they continued to add subscriptions at an equally astonishing rate to where they had around 4 million by about the 6 month mark.
Wow has 11 million subscribers and it just hit that recenetly and it took them almost a year to go from 10 million to 11 million. I started playing WoW in June 2005 and it just hit 3 million subscribers worldwide soon after I started playing. It was mid 2005 through to last 2006 where WoW had its biggest growth.
You think that was some kind of accident? You're fooling yourself. They had a great product and it got around and people joined in because it was great fun, not because of advertising or anything else. In the first couple months of WoW, there wasn't any more advertising for WoW than any other MMO, it was only after it became a smash hit did Blizzard start advertising the game big time when Blizzard knew they had a hit on their hands.
Wrong. WoW had the biggest and most hyped launch of any mmorpg at that time. It was widely advertised in the gaming scene and mags and web sites. In late 2004 I was also playing Enemy Territory and had nothing to do with the mmorpg scene and even I knew about WoW though I was a fan of the RTS warcraft series.
It's fine and dandy to say, well everyone else is doing it, but you can only say that after everyone else IS doing it.
You're right. WoW was a great game back in 2005 when I started playing. Your argument holds up until the advertising drastically increased in late 2006/early 2007and WoW started getting mainstream press.
Pappy, I know you're the great fanboi protector of all that is WoW around here which is fine, someone has to balance the argument. But who do you think flocked to wow at the start? It was the EQ/SWG/UO/AO players. It was "hardcore" mmorpg players that you despise so much. This was in the day when casuals didn't know what an mmorpg was. By mid 2005 non mmorpg gamers started migrating to WoW through world of mouth. I was part of that.
You want to know what it's even better than advertising? Word of mouth and having a great product. I have a group of friends that I have been playing video games with for several years now. A few months before WoW launched we were all playing Enemy Territory together and having an absolute blast ...
But isn't word of mouth another form of "everyone else is doing it"? But if WoW was crap then people would have left the game but they didn't. So again I agree with you that WoW's early success had to do with it being good.
At launch WoW was mostly other mmorpg players, Warcraft RTS fans, Diablo 2/Battle.net players and a few FPS players. But I doubt very few of WoW's subscribers at the 6 month mark had never played an mmorpg or a Blizzard game. Second half of 2005 saw another big jump in WoW players as gamers from other genres migrated to WoW. But like me these people were more dedicated than your typical xbox or single player gamer. A lot of these people were active in other gaming communities. This big jump in 2nd half of 2005 caught Blizzard by suprise. They thought that WoW would slow down after being out for 1 year.
You people just don't get it. No, 12 million subscriptions doesn't equal quality. But quality does equal subscriptions, and I know thousands of satisfied customers.
Your argument holds true for the first 18 months of WoW and I agree. But look at http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html. You can see that by mid to late 2006 WoW was starting to flatten out and this is where the advertising really started to be ramped up. From April 2006 to July 2006 there was not much growth, Europe wasnt increasing at all, Asia was slowing down dramatically and North America had a small, but noticeable decline in the rate of growth.
For example at July 06 Europe was almost 1 million subscibers behind North America. By Jan 07 (and the release of BC) it was only a few hundred thousand behind.Now the advertising that was done at the launch of WoW was virtually all in North America. Europe had very little advertising but that changed for Burning Crusade where advertising for that started appearing in Europe.
As I said before I agree with you that WoW's success for the first 18 months was largely due to it being a good game. Its why I started playing it. But once a game has been out for 2 years you would think world of mouth and good reviews of a game stop being a factor in getting people to play since everyone knows about the game by then. Unless you've been living in a cave on the Pakistan-Afghan you would have heard about WoW after 2 years.
How does your argument that the main factor influencing people to play WoW is that its a great game apply to someone who has only just recently started playing? It takes someone FOUR YEARS to work out that a game is worth playing and is good???
"what happened to this year's new entrants and why did WoW come out on top? Age of Conan had an extremely rough start, with plenty of bugs and incomplete content for higher level characters when it was pushed out. Warhammer seemed to have a smoother launch but as the year closes it already appears to be losing its audience in the face of WoW's latest expansion."
the problem with all these stupid threads is that you are trying to compare a game that has spent (roughly) 4 years finding its place in the market and has had 4 years of bug fixes and patches. trying to compare that to a brand new game that sounded good in the design stage is just plain stupid. Its like trying to compare someone who has worked at a company for 10 years (lots of experiance) to someone who is just starting (little to no experiance) its just plain stupid.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds -Solid non level based game -Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Wizardry, even most of the die hard EQ2 fans admit what a piece of shit EQ2 was at release.
From terrible performance, misguided game designs, broken loot table, keyed zones, terrible combat and animations, lackluster class balance, a trade skill system that was haphazardly thrown together, disfunctional solo/group content. Just look at the sheer volume of rewrites to the core game mechanics it had over the first year. Not tweaks, but entire redesigns. EQ2 was terrible at launch for many reasons and only did as well as it did because of the Everquest name. Even to this day there is almost a complete lack of consistent game design. EQ2 was rushed to market and it suffered because it wasn't finished by a long shot.
Hmm, of course WoW was perfect at release in Nov 04? I only started playing WoW in early July 05 and the amount of improvements since then has been staggering. There was no misguided game design in vanilla WoW? I remember the cries about how buggy BWL was when it was released. Remember how crap Tier 1, and even tier 2, sets were for most classes? And at release WoW was a LOT less solo friendly than it is now. Yes, it was still solo friendly compared to EQ but a lot of quests had to be completed in a group unless you were that high a level to solo, in which case you would have got no XP for it. If you didnt do instances or the numerous group quests in each zone (zones like arathi highlands and alterac mountains were virtually all group quests) you would level much slower since most classes had crap talent trees.
How many feral or balance druids did you see raiding pre-BC? How many prot or ret paladins did you see raiding? Hell, until teh Ahn'Qiraj patch there wasnt even any gear in the game for those classes and in the cases of shaman and paladins tier 2 was crap for healing. Remember how broken warlocks and hunters were at launch until their talent reviews? Infact, remember how horrible most classes talents were until their reviews? Only rogues and shamans had decent talent trees at launch and for months after.
Go get the millions of WoW players who only ever started playing post BC and put them back on a WoW server from early 2005 and see how they like it. The crying and whining would be deafening. Infact, I'm 99.9% sure most of them would cancel their accounts and run off to a different game.
somebody has way way too much time on their hands.
And by writing that on mmorpg forums you're proving you don't have too much time on your hands? Got it. Your social life is so great that you took the time to go to your computer on a friday night, load up your browser, go to mmorpg.com (like all the cool kids do), go to the WoW forums and make your post.
I bet you were one of the cool kids in school, huh?
p.s. its saturday afternoon where I am and I'm watching sport on TV while I'm writing this. I wont be on mmorpg come night.
"what happened to this year's new entrants and why did WoW come out on top? Age of Conan had an extremely rough start, with plenty of bugs and incomplete content for higher level characters when it was pushed out. Warhammer seemed to have a smoother launch but as the year closes it already appears to be losing its audience in the face of WoW's latest expansion." http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/17/mmo_games_in_2008/
Hmm, first of all did both those other games release at least 6 months too early... It wouldn't have matter so much in 2004 because the US launch of Wow wasn't so great that the players who weren't there seems to think because Everquest was aging at the time and the only big competition that year was Guildwars.
The best time to launch a new game is when the last big one starts to loose players really fast, and Wow isn't there.
Also Wow is very good polished now, at the time EQ had to many sequels.
EQ2 released in a very bad shape, too bad also because it is a good game now.
So at least one of the reasons is timing. Another one is that Wow caters too all players. WAR aims for the PvP players, AoC to the ones over 18 with a good computer, it limits the numbers who would like the game. And Mythic choice of GOA seems to have hurt their EU sales badly.
Another reason is that kids in school play Wow so they like to discuss the game on their breaks, if you don't play you miss out on that part.
And lastly, Blizzard had many fans even before Wow and Blizzard gives it fans what they want. Mythic missjudged what they fans wanted and made WAR more like Wow than DAoC.
I am not saying Wow is a bad game, or the best game either but Blizzard know it's fanbase, companies like SOE don't. The future will be harder because both Bioware and Bethdesda are releasing their MMOs too and they know their fanbase as well.
And Wow are getting older, WOTLK didn't increase Wows playerbase like TBC did but Wow will still be the king 2009. 2010 is the year the real battle begins, Blizzard are no fools and have a new MMO in work too, it is not Wow 2 (say Morhaime, he should know) but something similar, Maybe "World of Diablo"
And there are off course smaller developers like Arenanet, Aventurine and Star vault, while some of those games might be to niched to make it big you never know, who had heard of Vereant before EQ or Blizzard before Diablo for that matter?
There is only one thing certain and that is that Wow wont be biggest forever, if Blizzard will take the Throne (sooner or later they will make a Wow2, Blizzard have made sequels to all their good selling games since Battlechess, am I the only one here that played it?) or someone else is just something we will see. It might be that the market will have 2 or 3 games with a few million players instead like now also.
Wizardry, even most of the die hard EQ2 fans admit what a piece of shit EQ2 was at release.
From terrible performance, misguided game designs, broken loot table, keyed zones, terrible combat and animations, lackluster class balance, a trade skill system that was haphazardly thrown together, disfunctional solo/group content. Just look at the sheer volume of rewrites to the core game mechanics it had over the first year. Not tweaks, but entire redesigns. EQ2 was terrible at launch for many reasons and only did as well as it did because of the Everquest name. Even to this day there is almost a complete lack of consistent game design. EQ2 was rushed to market and it suffered because it wasn't finished by a long shot.
Hmm, of course WoW was perfect at release in Nov 04? I only started playing WoW in early July 05 and the amount of improvements since then has been staggering. There was no misguided game design in vanilla WoW? I remember the cries about how buggy BWL was when it was released. Remember how crap Tier 1, and even tier 2, sets were for most classes? And at release WoW was a LOT less solo friendly than it is now. Yes, it was still solo friendly compared to EQ but a lot of quests had to be completed in a group unless you were that high a level to solo, in which case you would have got no XP for it. If you didnt do instances or the numerous group quests in each zone (zones like arathi highlands and alterac mountains were virtually all group quests) you would level much slower since most classes had crap talent trees.
How many feral or balance druids did you see raiding pre-BC? How many prot or ret paladins did you see raiding? Hell, until teh Ahn'Qiraj patch there wasnt even any gear in the game for those classes and in the cases of shaman and paladins tier 2 was crap for healing. Remember how broken warlocks and hunters were at launch until their talent reviews? Infact, remember how horrible most classes talents were until their reviews? Only rogues and shamans had decent talent trees at launch and for months after.
Go get the millions of WoW players who only ever started playing post BC and put them back on a WoW server from early 2005 and see how they like it. The crying and whining would be deafening. Infact, I'm 99.9% sure most of them would cancel their accounts and run off to a different game.
You really had to be in EQ2 at launch to understand the difference. It is as drastic as night and day.
Sure WoW had its share of problems, but EQ2 was flawed. Not just buggy or needing tweaks, but at the design core it was flawed. The massive revamps were sweeping and the design changes were all over the map. Many of their 'innovations' were removed, because they were prohibitive to fun gameplay.
While WoW was gaining subscribers and people were willing to wait in line to play it, EQ2 was merging servers after a successful launch reaching over 300 thousand people (by estimates). It was that bad.
You really had to be in EQ2 at launch to understand the difference. It is as drastic as night and day.
Sure WoW had its share of problems, but EQ2 was flawed. Not just buggy or needing tweaks, but at the design core it was flawed. The massive revamps were sweeping and the design changes were all over the map. Many of their 'innovations' were removed, because they were prohibitive to fun gameplay.
While WoW was gaining subscribers and people were willing to wait in line to play it, EQ2 was merging servers after a successful launch reaching over 300 thousand people (by estimates). It was that bad.
Not disputing what you say about EQ2 since I didn't play. But people keep glossing over the issues WoW has faced and how radically the game has changed since launch.
You really had to be in EQ2 at launch to understand the difference. It is as drastic as night and day.
Sure WoW had its share of problems, but EQ2 was flawed. Not just buggy or needing tweaks, but at the design core it was flawed. The massive revamps were sweeping and the design changes were all over the map. Many of their 'innovations' were removed, because they were prohibitive to fun gameplay.
While WoW was gaining subscribers and people were willing to wait in line to play it, EQ2 was merging servers after a successful launch reaching over 300 thousand people (by estimates). It was that bad.
Not disputing what you say about EQ2 since I didn't play. But people keep glossing over the issues WoW has faced and how radically the game has changed since launch.
I won't disagree that WoW has had its share of evolution just like many other MMOs. However comparing the changes in WoW to what happened in EQ2 isn't even remotely close. Ugh so many bad memories.
"It's stunning how game makers tailor their creations only to a tiny niche of folks running bleeding-edge systems and wonder why they're losing audience to game consoles."
I think it's because they don't "get" MMORPGs.
"Graphics before Gameplay" seems to have been the mentality for a long time now on consoles, and even on single-player or limited multiplayer PC games.
Developers have learned - with help from players - that eye candy will sell boxes and, well, even if the game sucks... the player's already forked over the cash by the time they figure it out. How well the game plays is secondary.. what *really* matters is how cool it looks. Sounds cyincal, but isn't that pretty much the way it works out? Games coming out nowadays might look incredible, but only provide a handful of hours of gameplay.
Thing is, that mindset works well for single player and limited multiplayer games because the developers can control how much is rendered at any given time, via smart environment design, not having too many creatures/NPCs in view at once... etc. etc.
Then they come to a genre like MMOs where the goal is thousands on a single server with as many as a few hundred in one area, at one time... suddenly their ability to control what a player sees becomes limited. They can control it to a degree... via Level of Detail, line-of-sight, etc. But they can't predict that "Area A" will never have more than 50 people in it...
Yet, they're still forcing that "graphics over gameplay" mindset.. "we'll make more initial box sales with great eye candy... throw everything at it!"
And, of course, the players eat it up, gasping, ooh'ing and ahh'ing at the amazing screenshots and videos being released (typically of a quality they'll rarely see in the live game at playable frame-rates).
As players realize they can't run the game with the quality settings they'd like, making it look like those screenshots they saw without bringing the FPS to its knees, they get frustrated and, in many cases, leave.
This happened to EQII early on. I remember so many people wanting to play that game... bought the game the day of release and had uninstalled it only days later. After trying to make the game look good and still be playable on their system and failing, they gave up, cancelled and uninstalled.
To go back to my opening sentence... Very few MMO devs "get it" with MMOs. The "Massively Multiplayer" is in there for a reason.... because it's supposed to support dozens of players in any given spot at any given time and still run smoothly.
DX10 shaders, refractive water and heat effects, parallax mapping, full-screen glow, full dynamic shadows, real-time ambient occlusion, and all that look *great*... But they also sap resources and, if not used with restraint, can bring even the most powerful PC to its knees under the right (or perhaps "wrong") circumstances.
Blizzard got it right, in my opinion. They kept resource requirements low and relied more on art style to define WoW's look than they did on graphics technology.
WoW is very much an art-driven game... You can turn down the settings in that game and the game still looks pretty much the same... because the texture art defines its look and feel.
On the other hand, something like EQ2, or Vanguard are very much technology driven games. Turn down the settings on those games and the visual differences are very noticeable. Without bump mapping, everything looks flat and bland... some textures literallly look like monotone blobs of color without the bump-mapping active. Without high quality shadows, the environments don't look as dynamic, etc. Those games rely heavily on graphics tech to define their look.
WoW may not have refractive/reflective/ambient occlusion/and-every-other-gfx-buzzword-you-can-fit out the ears... but it also runs a hell of a lot better than some of its contemporaries do... especially under much more "stressful" situations, and on a wider range of hardware.
I was reading a forum thread on here about a certain other MMO that boasts graphics as one of its strongest points (never a good sign for the longevity of a game for me). It boasts massive PvP battles.. with like.. 50 against 50 battling it out. Sounds really enticing.. 'til I look at another PvP MMO, like Lineage 2, where just last weekend, we had 215 people at a castle siege.. and that was just *our* side... An equal amount on the other side could well have shown up too. Was there a hit on frame-rates? Yep.. but it was still playable. Compared to that, 50 vs. 50 just doesn't seem that impressive.
But anyway... that's my take on it
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
There is a bit in that article that really, really, frustrates me.
It's this bit:
"That not everyone is a masochist is the hardest lesson the MMO genre has come to terms with in recent years. For those who don't play MMOs, I'll give an example of how developers historically have terrorized their customers with what's probably the biggest bugbear of MMOs: the penalty for a character dying."
It's amazing to me that an author who seems to have a pretty fair view of other aspects of the genre is still slave to this short-sighted, false notion that those who enjoy a harsher death penalty (along with slower leveling, etc) are "masochists".
I'm one of those people and, no, I'm not a masochist. I simply have a different approach to the genre than those who find the very thought of risking even a single moment of their time to dying appalling.
When you look at MMOs as "all about getting to level cap and then doing end-game content", or "the real game starts at level cap", as is often the mindset these days - something WoW did largely bring about - then yes, losing any time, or effort to death seems like a horrible terrible thing. After all, all those delays are keeping you from reaching the "real game".
Getting to level cap and reaching end-game in post-WoW MMO's seems to be the analog for "beating the game". It's a mindset rooted in single-player games with finite content and defined endings... two elements MMOs don't share. MMOs (good ones anyway) have no defined ending, and they're always expanding.
But that's where the main difference is.
Many of the so-called "old-school" MMO players did not approach MMOs in that fashion. We didn't play them "to get to the end as quickly as possible" so we could "reach the real game". We played them for the exprience of playing them, no matter the level, no matter what we were doing. The "real game" started at character creation and lasted until we'd decided we were done playing it.
An analogy to explain the difference might be two people going ot the top of a steep mountain-side.
One chooses to climb the mountain them self, while the other chooses to ride the convenient tram car to the top.
The climber is exerting effort and risking serious injury, or even death, should they lose their grip and fall. The one in the tram might have the temporary inconvenience of having to share a small space with a few strangers.
The climber might take well over an hour to get there. The tram car rider will be there in about 10 minutes.
For the person in the tram-car, all that climbing stuff seems too risky and not worth the time or effort... The view at the top is all they're interested in. The climber is just as interested in the view, but find the challenge and effort of that journey to the top to be just as interesting.
Would you say the one who chose to climb is "masochistic"? Well... if you're the one in the tram car, perhaps. But if you're someone else who also enjoys climbing, you'd find it quite interesting.
That's the difference between the pre-WoW and post-WoW gamers. One group is more interested in being at the end-game with as few delays as possible. The other is just as interested in the journey there, including all the risk and danger along the way.
Each playstyle is equally fun for their respective side, and there's no reason to label either as anything but gamers who enjoy a different approach to gaming.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
The way you describe it WSIMike, I would say masochist is the correct word to use.
Well what can one say...
It's unfortunate you can't accept that others simply don't enjoy the same playstyle as you, without having to resort to negative labels.
Were I to respond to you with the same mentality you did to me... I could say you're very closed-minded...
... except I'm not that ignorant.
But... to each their own. Good thing there are developers out there still who don't agree with you .
Some people really enjoy masochism, there's nothing wrong with that.. It's only wrong if you think you're somehow better becasue you do.
Well then it's a good thing I don't think I'm better.
I just accept that others don't enjoy the same kind of playstyle as me, and that it's okay. I don't feel compelled to categorically place them into some box by labeling them as one thing or another.
The problem I have with calling it "masochistic" is that it comes from a very myopic, subjective point-of-view, and that point-of-view is being projected on to others.
Because it would be "painful", perhaps to you, you seem to assume that it's "painful" to everyone else as well, and that it boils down to whether or not they "enjoy it".
It's simply not like that.
It's not masochistic, and it's not a matter of "enjoying the pain" or not, because it's not "painful" in the first place. It's just the way some people prefer to play.
If you asked the person climbing that cliff from my analogy if they do it instead of taking the tram because they enjoy pain, they'd look at you like you were nuts.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Originally posted by SonofSeth Some people really enjoy masochism, there's nothing wrong with that.. It's only wrong if you think you're somehow better becasue you do.
Well then it's a good thing I don't think I'm better.
I just accept that others don't enjoy the same kind of playstyle as me, and that it's okay. I don't feel compelled to categorically place them into some box by labeling them as one thing or another.
The problem I have with calling it "masochistic" is that it comes from a very myopic, subjective point-of-view, and that point-of-view is being projected on to others.
Because it would be "painful", perhaps to you, you seem to assume that it's "painful" to everyone else as well, and that it boils down to whether or not they "enjoy it".
It's simply not like that.
It's not masochistic, and it's not a matter of "enjoying the pain" or not, because it's not "painful" in the first place. It's just the way some people prefer to play.
If you asked the person climbing that cliff from my analogy if they do it instead of taking the tram because they enjoy pain, they'd look at you like you were nuts.
mas·och·ism - A willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences.
That is what you are describing with the climbing expirience, no?
Posters here talk about "subscriptions" without even thinking of what that means exactly. There was one poster above who really made my day. He stated "well until October 2008 Wow only could add 1.000.000 new subscribers to its base". Forgetting to say .... that in that period during a p
Nope, you're right. Blizzard didn't put out an expansion. But they did spend more money on advertising during that period than what most mmorpg developers spend on an expansion. Funny how the Mr. T, William Shatner adds popped up during this period isn't it? Though I think my comments are lost on you.
Comments
I don't get why people even argue the fact that WoW is one of the highest quality mmo's out there. There's something for just about everyone in the game and that's just one of the reasons it got 11+ mil subscribers
I could go on with many subjective and factual reasons, but what is the point. The end result is that in an even field with its competition, WoW kicked so many asses it isn't funny. There is no reason this game should be as dominating as it is except for one thing. Most other games lack quality to compete on the same level.
Several games have low system specs, are "easy" to use and cheap. Most have not done so well, because after the intial ease of entry they just aren't as fun for most people.
To many times people just shoot out a list of reasons why they think WoW is popular and they are right. Those reasons allowed a large number of people to try the game and not hit a major barrier like poor performance. However none of the reasons address why WoW retains so many players and has such good word of mouth referals.
The game is well made and fun. Many other MMOs miss that basic design and just push a product out to market and hope for the best. There is an eqaully long list of why other games have done so poorly simply because of their own mismanagement and bad design choices.
One game should not dominate this much, but developers have not gotten the message yet.
There's just one problem with your argument. How do you get to be #1 in the FIRST place? You seem to think it just happens by mere accident. You're wrong. It's no accident that WoW is #1. No, it didn't have 12 million subscribers from day 1, but it had around a million or so and at the time that was huge. Then they continued to add subscriptions at an equally astonishing rate to where they had around 4 million by about the 6 month mark. You think that was some kind of accident? You're fooling yourself. They had a great product and it got around and people joined in because it was great fun, not because of advertising or anything else. In the first couple months of WoW, there wasn't any more advertising for WoW than any other MMO, it was only after it became a smash hit did Blizzard start advertising the game big time when Blizzard knew they had a hit on their hands.
It's fine and dandy to say, well everyone else is doing it, but you can only say that after everyone else IS doing it.
You want to know what it's even better than advertising? Word of mouth and having a great product. I have a group of friends that I have been playing video games with for several years now. A few months before WoW launched we were all playing Enemy Territory together and having an absolute blast. We even bought our own server and recruited more people to play with us. We had a web site with strats and all kinds of other stuff on it. Only 3 guys in that group had played an MMO before, most of them were hard core FPS type guys. I had played Earth and Beyond and really liked it and was dissappointed when they cancelled it. I tried City of Heroes and liked it and tried to get others to play. Others tried it but they all quit. Then I got in the beta for WoW. I realized this was going to take the place of Earth and Beyond for me. I started to tell the others about it, but no one was all that interested. Then the game was released and I had a couple other guys try it. To this day they almost all still play. All those hard core FPS guys could really get into WoW. It's not twitch, but it's as close as you can get to it in an MMO. No other MMO has been able to do that, to get people to swtich to it over there preferred genre. Well WoW did. WoW made people switch. There was a guy in the group that had been playing Guildwars and said that he wouldn't switch because he wasn't going to pay a monthly fee to play a game. I got him to try the demo for just a week to see if he liked it. 4 years later both him AND his wife play and I haven't heard a peep out of him about paying a monthly subscription.
You people just don't get it. No, 12 million subscriptions doesn't equal quality. But quality does equal subscriptions, and I know thousands of satisfied customers.
There is a REAL big problem with your argument it IS pure BS !.
You think the Toyota Camry and Honda civic were the top selling cars right out of the gate?Nope they were Fun to drive and others told them and WORD got around so they became the number one selling cars.It was no fluke they were number #1,and OF COURSE this all means they are a MUCH better product than a Vette or a VIPER.
Of course INDIA is one of the B EST places to live in the world,WHY NOT?they have the second most people,it MUST BE the best.
See how DUMB that kind of statement is?I wonder were you even there during the influx of millions of new gamers that HAD NEVER even played a MMORPG before?You can thank EQ for that.Oh by your theory the new influx of players ONLY came out and joined a MMORPG because they KNEW wow was so great?Of course they KNEW this because they had inside information.
I WAS THERE when it all happened and i DID pay attention to what people were talking about and complaining about.MANY and i mean MANY of the new gamers actually wanted to play EQ2 but they were disgruntled with the new ideas Eq2 brought in over EQ,the same sort of change we witness now from the NGE and SWG.Many were also miffed that there beloved EQ was now losing thousands of players that wanted a new game to move on to.
When you get MORE initial games than the competition EVER had,there is a MUCH bigger reason that FUN or the game is good.They NEVER even knew what to expect from WOW at that point,so how would they know anything?they did NOT.
It was sheer numbers all moving to one game right out of the gate.Then when they heard the servers were full[VERY BIG REASON to MOST]more and more joined.I am sure even a remotely active forum user has heard MILLIONS of times pople asking for a game with lots of players.
Even if your a fanbois or just stubborn,no matter,just look at the fact that EQ2 and WOW are identical games,EXACT copies,so you can NOT use ANY excuse about the game play as being the factor.Besides that EQ2 had MORE quantity and quality quests than WOW.Then you take into account WOW's quests are the EXACT same BS as every game out there.
SO WHERE exactly does this suprficial BS FUN statement come out?wait i can answer this because i WAS THERE during WOW's launch.All the childish kids that got High SPeed for the very first time were in the game acting like RETARDS.For at least a week there was thousands of NON stop choo choo train emotes going on in the main strating areas.These train lines were sometimes 30/40/50 people long,they were NOT even playing the game,i doubt ANY of them were past level 5 after a week.Yes the game must have been so great ,that is why they were not even out playing the darn thing,unless you consider acting like a choo choo train tard playing?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
<edited>
Wizardry, even most of the die hard EQ2 fans admit what a piece of shit EQ2 was at release.
From terrible performance, misguided game designs, broken loot table, keyed zones, terrible combat and animations, lackluster class balance, a trade skill system that was haphazardly thrown together, disfunctional solo/group content. Just look at the sheer volume of rewrites to the core game mechanics it had over the first year. Not tweaks, but entire redesigns. EQ2 was terrible at launch for many reasons and only did as well as it did because of the Everquest name. Even to this day there is almost a complete lack of consistent game design. EQ2 was rushed to market and it suffered because it wasn't finished by a long shot.
WoW was mostly feature complete with a pretty good design right out of the box. It then started out by suctioning a large portion of players from other MMOs right away. It wasn't like the game was primarily noobs who had never played an MMO before.
For example I tried to get some of my non mmo frieds to join EQ back in the day. A few tried, but almost none stayed, because the game had some issues which most label as hardcore these days. Repeat that with WoW and it was much easier to get people to play. To central concept of the game wasn't to grind long hours hoping for the chance that something exciting happened.
I agree here,especially the last point,that is the big reason it kept getting bigger.
It is pretty amazing that they took the all out marketing approach to build this puppy up.They took there initial success and kept with the same marketing approach all along.Instead of building there game up piece by piece,describing to the potential buyers,the proponents of the game,they used a cheap approach ,by telling everyone out there,"Everyone is playing""We have this many subs".
So potential users are joining up,without any knowledge of the actual game,do you think 90% of these users would have even thought of the game if it used the small marketing you see from Square and FFXI?Why?because there is virtually ZERO marketing for FFXI,try to find an add anywhere,however wow is everywhere.Each and every time,it is the same thing "We have 5/6/7/8/9 10 million subs so join us now".
That in theory is a VERY weak marketing strategy,instead of perhaps lying or making your game out to be something it is not,they just flat out say "Join the masses".Blizzard does of course use some false advertising,there video marketing is all false,NONE of the actual game play is ever like they portray it to be.Perhaps,this is a sneaky ploy that works?Perhaps a lot of the NEW gamer,just thinks in there mind,that just maybe that amazing type video i watched really will show up in the game sooner or later.
I noticed the poster after mentions fun/fun FUN .well that is a out right RFLMAO.
WOW and it's game play is no different than any other game out there..AT ALL.The quests are even the same boring ass quests you see everywhere else as well.The gear pretty much functions the EXACT same as any other game,the hotbar,the spells they are all EVERQUEST designed and copied.The game is not about polish at all,i mean they took some former members of EQ,so they had the EXACT idea of how to COPY EQ,they would have to be total boneheads to mess that up.
THE ONLY proponent Blizzard did was make the game easier to play on more systems.I do not believe for a second that this was by design,i believe it was sheer cheapness and wanted the game out fast.It is a good line to use after the fact ,i know they are going to stick to that statement for sure.
The fact WOW runs on weaker systems is perhaps a bigger reason than most may think.All you have to do is wander around all these different simplistic browser games and see how many people out there ,really don't have the systems to play anything decent looking.I have been on a few browser games that have 2+ million subs,that is insane for such a cheap ass product,but it does show how limited people are.
I'm sorry, but this is just about 90% pure BS. It's a nice theory, the problem is that it has nothing to do with reality.
Haha, so funny to read your comment, I blocked that pimple a long time ago.
Wow has 11 million subscribers and it just hit that recenetly and it took them almost a year to go from 10 million to 11 million. I started playing WoW in June 2005 and it just hit 3 million subscribers worldwide soon after I started playing. It was mid 2005 through to last 2006 where WoW had its biggest growth.
Wrong. WoW had the biggest and most hyped launch of any mmorpg at that time. It was widely advertised in the gaming scene and mags and web sites. In late 2004 I was also playing Enemy Territory and had nothing to do with the mmorpg scene and even I knew about WoW though I was a fan of the RTS warcraft series.
You're right. WoW was a great game back in 2005 when I started playing. Your argument holds up until the advertising drastically increased in late 2006/early 2007and WoW started getting mainstream press.
Pappy, I know you're the great fanboi protector of all that is WoW around here which is fine, someone has to balance the argument. But who do you think flocked to wow at the start? It was the EQ/SWG/UO/AO players. It was "hardcore" mmorpg players that you despise so much. This was in the day when casuals didn't know what an mmorpg was. By mid 2005 non mmorpg gamers started migrating to WoW through world of mouth. I was part of that.
But isn't word of mouth another form of "everyone else is doing it"? But if WoW was crap then people would have left the game but they didn't. So again I agree with you that WoW's early success had to do with it being good.
At launch WoW was mostly other mmorpg players, Warcraft RTS fans, Diablo 2/Battle.net players and a few FPS players. But I doubt very few of WoW's subscribers at the 6 month mark had never played an mmorpg or a Blizzard game. Second half of 2005 saw another big jump in WoW players as gamers from other genres migrated to WoW. But like me these people were more dedicated than your typical xbox or single player gamer. A lot of these people were active in other gaming communities. This big jump in 2nd half of 2005 caught Blizzard by suprise. They thought that WoW would slow down after being out for 1 year.
Your argument holds true for the first 18 months of WoW and I agree. But look at http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html. You can see that by mid to late 2006 WoW was starting to flatten out and this is where the advertising really started to be ramped up. From April 2006 to July 2006 there was not much growth, Europe wasnt increasing at all, Asia was slowing down dramatically and North America had a small, but noticeable decline in the rate of growth.
For example at July 06 Europe was almost 1 million subscibers behind North America. By Jan 07 (and the release of BC) it was only a few hundred thousand behind.Now the advertising that was done at the launch of WoW was virtually all in North America. Europe had very little advertising but that changed for Burning Crusade where advertising for that started appearing in Europe.
As I said before I agree with you that WoW's success for the first 18 months was largely due to it being a good game. Its why I started playing it. But once a game has been out for 2 years you would think world of mouth and good reviews of a game stop being a factor in getting people to play since everyone knows about the game by then. Unless you've been living in a cave on the Pakistan-Afghan you would have heard about WoW after 2 years.
How does your argument that the main factor influencing people to play WoW is that its a great game apply to someone who has only just recently started playing? It takes someone FOUR YEARS to work out that a game is worth playing and is good???
somebody has way way too much time on their hands.
and WoW's launch was just the same.
the problem with all these stupid threads is that you are trying to compare a game that has spent (roughly) 4 years finding its place in the market and has had 4 years of bug fixes and patches. trying to compare that to a brand new game that sounded good in the design stage is just plain stupid. Its like trying to compare someone who has worked at a company for 10 years (lots of experiance) to someone who is just starting (little to no experiance) its just plain stupid.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Hmm, of course WoW was perfect at release in Nov 04? I only started playing WoW in early July 05 and the amount of improvements since then has been staggering. There was no misguided game design in vanilla WoW? I remember the cries about how buggy BWL was when it was released. Remember how crap Tier 1, and even tier 2, sets were for most classes? And at release WoW was a LOT less solo friendly than it is now. Yes, it was still solo friendly compared to EQ but a lot of quests had to be completed in a group unless you were that high a level to solo, in which case you would have got no XP for it. If you didnt do instances or the numerous group quests in each zone (zones like arathi highlands and alterac mountains were virtually all group quests) you would level much slower since most classes had crap talent trees.
How many feral or balance druids did you see raiding pre-BC? How many prot or ret paladins did you see raiding? Hell, until teh Ahn'Qiraj patch there wasnt even any gear in the game for those classes and in the cases of shaman and paladins tier 2 was crap for healing. Remember how broken warlocks and hunters were at launch until their talent reviews? Infact, remember how horrible most classes talents were until their reviews? Only rogues and shamans had decent talent trees at launch and for months after.
Go get the millions of WoW players who only ever started playing post BC and put them back on a WoW server from early 2005 and see how they like it. The crying and whining would be deafening. Infact, I'm 99.9% sure most of them would cancel their accounts and run off to a different game.
And by writing that on mmorpg forums you're proving you don't have too much time on your hands? Got it. Your social life is so great that you took the time to go to your computer on a friday night, load up your browser, go to mmorpg.com (like all the cool kids do), go to the WoW forums and make your post.
I bet you were one of the cool kids in school, huh?
p.s. its saturday afternoon where I am and I'm watching sport on TV while I'm writing this. I wont be on mmorpg come night.
Hmm, first of all did both those other games release at least 6 months too early... It wouldn't have matter so much in 2004 because the US launch of Wow wasn't so great that the players who weren't there seems to think because Everquest was aging at the time and the only big competition that year was Guildwars.
The best time to launch a new game is when the last big one starts to loose players really fast, and Wow isn't there.
Also Wow is very good polished now, at the time EQ had to many sequels.
EQ2 released in a very bad shape, too bad also because it is a good game now.
So at least one of the reasons is timing. Another one is that Wow caters too all players. WAR aims for the PvP players, AoC to the ones over 18 with a good computer, it limits the numbers who would like the game. And Mythic choice of GOA seems to have hurt their EU sales badly.
Another reason is that kids in school play Wow so they like to discuss the game on their breaks, if you don't play you miss out on that part.
And lastly, Blizzard had many fans even before Wow and Blizzard gives it fans what they want. Mythic missjudged what they fans wanted and made WAR more like Wow than DAoC.
I am not saying Wow is a bad game, or the best game either but Blizzard know it's fanbase, companies like SOE don't. The future will be harder because both Bioware and Bethdesda are releasing their MMOs too and they know their fanbase as well.
And Wow are getting older, WOTLK didn't increase Wows playerbase like TBC did but Wow will still be the king 2009. 2010 is the year the real battle begins, Blizzard are no fools and have a new MMO in work too, it is not Wow 2 (say Morhaime, he should know) but something similar, Maybe "World of Diablo"
And there are off course smaller developers like Arenanet, Aventurine and Star vault, while some of those games might be to niched to make it big you never know, who had heard of Vereant before EQ or Blizzard before Diablo for that matter?
There is only one thing certain and that is that Wow wont be biggest forever, if Blizzard will take the Throne (sooner or later they will make a Wow2, Blizzard have made sequels to all their good selling games since Battlechess, am I the only one here that played it?
) or someone else is just something we will see. It might be that the market will have 2 or 3 games with a few million players instead like now also.
Hmm, of course WoW was perfect at release in Nov 04? I only started playing WoW in early July 05 and the amount of improvements since then has been staggering. There was no misguided game design in vanilla WoW? I remember the cries about how buggy BWL was when it was released. Remember how crap Tier 1, and even tier 2, sets were for most classes? And at release WoW was a LOT less solo friendly than it is now. Yes, it was still solo friendly compared to EQ but a lot of quests had to be completed in a group unless you were that high a level to solo, in which case you would have got no XP for it. If you didnt do instances or the numerous group quests in each zone (zones like arathi highlands and alterac mountains were virtually all group quests) you would level much slower since most classes had crap talent trees.
How many feral or balance druids did you see raiding pre-BC? How many prot or ret paladins did you see raiding? Hell, until teh Ahn'Qiraj patch there wasnt even any gear in the game for those classes and in the cases of shaman and paladins tier 2 was crap for healing. Remember how broken warlocks and hunters were at launch until their talent reviews? Infact, remember how horrible most classes talents were until their reviews? Only rogues and shamans had decent talent trees at launch and for months after.
Go get the millions of WoW players who only ever started playing post BC and put them back on a WoW server from early 2005 and see how they like it. The crying and whining would be deafening. Infact, I'm 99.9% sure most of them would cancel their accounts and run off to a different game.
You really had to be in EQ2 at launch to understand the difference. It is as drastic as night and day.
Sure WoW had its share of problems, but EQ2 was flawed. Not just buggy or needing tweaks, but at the design core it was flawed. The massive revamps were sweeping and the design changes were all over the map. Many of their 'innovations' were removed, because they were prohibitive to fun gameplay.
While WoW was gaining subscribers and people were willing to wait in line to play it, EQ2 was merging servers after a successful launch reaching over 300 thousand people (by estimates). It was that bad.
You really had to be in EQ2 at launch to understand the difference. It is as drastic as night and day.
Sure WoW had its share of problems, but EQ2 was flawed. Not just buggy or needing tweaks, but at the design core it was flawed. The massive revamps were sweeping and the design changes were all over the map. Many of their 'innovations' were removed, because they were prohibitive to fun gameplay.
While WoW was gaining subscribers and people were willing to wait in line to play it, EQ2 was merging servers after a successful launch reaching over 300 thousand people (by estimates). It was that bad.
Not disputing what you say about EQ2 since I didn't play. But people keep glossing over the issues WoW has faced and how radically the game has changed since launch.
You really had to be in EQ2 at launch to understand the difference. It is as drastic as night and day.
Sure WoW had its share of problems, but EQ2 was flawed. Not just buggy or needing tweaks, but at the design core it was flawed. The massive revamps were sweeping and the design changes were all over the map. Many of their 'innovations' were removed, because they were prohibitive to fun gameplay.
While WoW was gaining subscribers and people were willing to wait in line to play it, EQ2 was merging servers after a successful launch reaching over 300 thousand people (by estimates). It was that bad.
Not disputing what you say about EQ2 since I didn't play. But people keep glossing over the issues WoW has faced and how radically the game has changed since launch.
I won't disagree that WoW has had its share of evolution just like many other MMOs. However comparing the changes in WoW to what happened in EQ2 isn't even remotely close. Ugh so many bad memories.
I think it's because they don't "get" MMORPGs.
"Graphics before Gameplay" seems to have been the mentality for a long time now on consoles, and even on single-player or limited multiplayer PC games.
Developers have learned - with help from players - that eye candy will sell boxes and, well, even if the game sucks... the player's already forked over the cash by the time they figure it out. How well the game plays is secondary.. what *really* matters is how cool it looks. Sounds cyincal, but isn't that pretty much the way it works out? Games coming out nowadays might look incredible, but only provide a handful of hours of gameplay.
Thing is, that mindset works well for single player and limited multiplayer games because the developers can control how much is rendered at any given time, via smart environment design, not having too many creatures/NPCs in view at once... etc. etc.
Then they come to a genre like MMOs where the goal is thousands on a single server with as many as a few hundred in one area, at one time... suddenly their ability to control what a player sees becomes limited. They can control it to a degree... via Level of Detail, line-of-sight, etc. But they can't predict that "Area A" will never have more than 50 people in it...
Yet, they're still forcing that "graphics over gameplay" mindset.. "we'll make more initial box sales with great eye candy... throw everything at it!"
And, of course, the players eat it up, gasping, ooh'ing and ahh'ing at the amazing screenshots and videos being released (typically of a quality they'll rarely see in the live game at playable frame-rates).
As players realize they can't run the game with the quality settings they'd like, making it look like those screenshots they saw without bringing the FPS to its knees, they get frustrated and, in many cases, leave.
This happened to EQII early on. I remember so many people wanting to play that game... bought the game the day of release and had uninstalled it only days later. After trying to make the game look good and still be playable on their system and failing, they gave up, cancelled and uninstalled.
To go back to my opening sentence... Very few MMO devs "get it" with MMOs. The "Massively Multiplayer" is in there for a reason.... because it's supposed to support dozens of players in any given spot at any given time and still run smoothly.
DX10 shaders, refractive water and heat effects, parallax mapping, full-screen glow, full dynamic shadows, real-time ambient occlusion, and all that look *great*... But they also sap resources and, if not used with restraint, can bring even the most powerful PC to its knees under the right (or perhaps "wrong") circumstances.
Blizzard got it right, in my opinion. They kept resource requirements low and relied more on art style to define WoW's look than they did on graphics technology.
WoW is very much an art-driven game... You can turn down the settings in that game and the game still looks pretty much the same... because the texture art defines its look and feel.
On the other hand, something like EQ2, or Vanguard are very much technology driven games. Turn down the settings on those games and the visual differences are very noticeable. Without bump mapping, everything looks flat and bland... some textures literallly look like monotone blobs of color without the bump-mapping active. Without high quality shadows, the environments don't look as dynamic, etc. Those games rely heavily on graphics tech to define their look.
WoW may not have refractive/reflective/ambient occlusion/and-every-other-gfx-buzzword-you-can-fit out the ears... but it also runs a hell of a lot better than some of its contemporaries do... especially under much more "stressful" situations, and on a wider range of hardware.
I was reading a forum thread on here about a certain other MMO that boasts graphics as one of its strongest points (never a good sign for the longevity of a game for me). It boasts massive PvP battles.. with like.. 50 against 50 battling it out. Sounds really enticing.. 'til I look at another PvP MMO, like Lineage 2, where just last weekend, we had 215 people at a castle siege.. and that was just *our* side... An equal amount on the other side could well have shown up too. Was there a hit on frame-rates? Yep.. but it was still playable. Compared to that, 50 vs. 50 just doesn't seem that impressive.
But anyway... that's my take on it
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
There is a bit in that article that really, really, frustrates me.
It's this bit:
"That not everyone is a masochist is the hardest lesson the MMO genre has come to terms with in recent years. For those who don't play MMOs, I'll give an example of how developers historically have terrorized their customers with what's probably the biggest bugbear of MMOs: the penalty for a character dying."
It's amazing to me that an author who seems to have a pretty fair view of other aspects of the genre is still slave to this short-sighted, false notion that those who enjoy a harsher death penalty (along with slower leveling, etc) are "masochists".
I'm one of those people and, no, I'm not a masochist. I simply have a different approach to the genre than those who find the very thought of risking even a single moment of their time to dying appalling.
When you look at MMOs as "all about getting to level cap and then doing end-game content", or "the real game starts at level cap", as is often the mindset these days - something WoW did largely bring about - then yes, losing any time, or effort to death seems like a horrible terrible thing. After all, all those delays are keeping you from reaching the "real game".
Getting to level cap and reaching end-game in post-WoW MMO's seems to be the analog for "beating the game". It's a mindset rooted in single-player games with finite content and defined endings... two elements MMOs don't share. MMOs (good ones anyway) have no defined ending, and they're always expanding.
But that's where the main difference is.
Many of the so-called "old-school" MMO players did not approach MMOs in that fashion. We didn't play them "to get to the end as quickly as possible" so we could "reach the real game". We played them for the exprience of playing them, no matter the level, no matter what we were doing. The "real game" started at character creation and lasted until we'd decided we were done playing it.
An analogy to explain the difference might be two people going ot the top of a steep mountain-side.
One chooses to climb the mountain them self, while the other chooses to ride the convenient tram car to the top.
The climber is exerting effort and risking serious injury, or even death, should they lose their grip and fall. The one in the tram might have the temporary inconvenience of having to share a small space with a few strangers.
The climber might take well over an hour to get there. The tram car rider will be there in about 10 minutes.
For the person in the tram-car, all that climbing stuff seems too risky and not worth the time or effort... The view at the top is all they're interested in. The climber is just as interested in the view, but find the challenge and effort of that journey to the top to be just as interesting.
Would you say the one who chose to climb is "masochistic"? Well... if you're the one in the tram car, perhaps. But if you're someone else who also enjoys climbing, you'd find it quite interesting.
That's the difference between the pre-WoW and post-WoW gamers. One group is more interested in being at the end-game with as few delays as possible. The other is just as interested in the journey there, including all the risk and danger along the way.
Each playstyle is equally fun for their respective side, and there's no reason to label either as anything but gamers who enjoy a different approach to gaming.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
The way you describe it WSIMike, I would say masochist is the correct word to use.
Well what can one say...
It's unfortunate you can't accept that others simply don't enjoy the same playstyle as you, without having to resort to negative labels.
Were I to respond to you with the same mentality you did to me... I could say you're very closed-minded...
... except I'm not that ignorant.
But... to each their own. Good thing there are developers out there still who don't agree with you
.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Well what can one say...
It's unfortunate you can't accept that others simply don't enjoy the same playstyle as you, without having to resort to negative labels.
Were I to respond to you with the same mentality you did to me... I could say you're very closed-minded...
... except I'm not that ignorant.
But... to each their own. Good thing there are developers out there still who don't agree with you
.
Some people really enjoy masochism, there's nothing wrong with that.. It's only wrong if you think you're somehow better becasue you do.
Well what can one say...
It's unfortunate you can't accept that others simply don't enjoy the same playstyle as you, without having to resort to negative labels.
Were I to respond to you with the same mentality you did to me... I could say you're very closed-minded...
... except I'm not that ignorant.
But... to each their own. Good thing there are developers out there still who don't agree with you
.
Some people really enjoy masochism, there's nothing wrong with that.. It's only wrong if you think you're somehow better becasue you do.
Well then it's a good thing I don't think I'm better.
I just accept that others don't enjoy the same kind of playstyle as me, and that it's okay. I don't feel compelled to categorically place them into some box by labeling them as one thing or another.
The problem I have with calling it "masochistic" is that it comes from a very myopic, subjective point-of-view, and that point-of-view is being projected on to others.
Because it would be "painful", perhaps to you, you seem to assume that it's "painful" to everyone else as well, and that it boils down to whether or not they "enjoy it".
It's simply not like that.
It's not masochistic, and it's not a matter of "enjoying the pain" or not, because it's not "painful" in the first place. It's just the way some people prefer to play.
If you asked the person climbing that cliff from my analogy if they do it instead of taking the tram because they enjoy pain, they'd look at you like you were nuts.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Well then it's a good thing I don't think I'm better.
I just accept that others don't enjoy the same kind of playstyle as me, and that it's okay. I don't feel compelled to categorically place them into some box by labeling them as one thing or another.
The problem I have with calling it "masochistic" is that it comes from a very myopic, subjective point-of-view, and that point-of-view is being projected on to others.
Because it would be "painful", perhaps to you, you seem to assume that it's "painful" to everyone else as well, and that it boils down to whether or not they "enjoy it".
It's simply not like that.
It's not masochistic, and it's not a matter of "enjoying the pain" or not, because it's not "painful" in the first place. It's just the way some people prefer to play.
If you asked the person climbing that cliff from my analogy if they do it instead of taking the tram because they enjoy pain, they'd look at you like you were nuts.
mas·och·ism - A willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences.
That is what you are describing with the climbing expirience, no?
Don't be such a hypocrite!
Nope, you're right. Blizzard didn't put out an expansion. But they did spend more money on advertising during that period than what most mmorpg developers spend on an expansion. Funny how the Mr. T, William Shatner adds popped up during this period isn't it? Though I think my comments are lost on you.
Let's start by you naming any MMO's that still added a million users (or a significant portion) to their game's subscriber base in it's 3-4th year.