Originally posted by templarga Again, people don't get it. Success and quality are not linked and are not one and the same.Quality is subjective. However, since WOW has sols so much, great quality is inferred. A good example are movies that win Oscars. Usually these movies are great (qualitative assessment) but they do not do well at the box office (quanitative assessment). The opposite is true as well - successful movies at the box office (Dark Knight, Star trek, The Hangover) rarely do well at the Oscars.
I think you may have that a little mixed up too. Success and quality are not "ALWAYS" linked, but that does not mean that they are not linked sometimes! To use your own analogy, where would you fall with 'Titanic'? Huge commercial success as well as a huge oscar winner?
Every now and again something comes along with the right idea, that certain something that captures the audiences imagination and WOW has been one of those things. Everyone that plays has their own reasons for liking it. The one thing that differs from the whole movie/music thing though is that people are paying to play this every month, so there has to be an element of 'quality' however each individual player qualifies it to keep them paying and playing.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
These guys just made it into the guiniess book of world records, i think it safe to say they are winning the war.
By this Logic, Brittney Spears is the greatest singer EVER!! Sales don't mean everything.
Oh, and I chose "faster leveling" as the worst, but it looks like I'm in the manority. The expansion option was my second choice (a very close second). Not to compare the games, but I remembered thinking how I liked GW expansion setup over the WoW method.
Oh ok! So WOW is the Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus of MMOs?
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
The biggest mistake wow made was neglecting world pvp. Battlegrounds were a mistake that took pvp from being fun and challenging to an instanced grindfest. I remember WOW in beta and in the first few months after it launched when guilds would have these mini wars just because they were fun. If blizzard had been smart they would have put WAR-esque keeps on the world map and have the horde and alliance fight over them, they actually tried this in TBC but it was too little too late and having allready introduced battleground no one was interested.
Blizzard uses WOW to harvest hours played into bottles so that the dev team can remain immortal
The only reason WoW has so many complaints is because of the ratio of people who don't play any more in WoW to people who don't play XYZ game. If you think about it, people complain a lot about WoW, but it has it's well known 12+ million subs, so proportionally, there are a lot of people who will complain. When you think about Darkfall or other MMO's, if not all, none have as impressive subs numbers like WoW (as if it will ever happen), but there are still complaints about them being boring, a grind in x, y, or z category, too linear, not linear enough, too sandboxy, not sandboxy enough, no customization, etc.
Again, people don't get it. Success and quality are not linked and are not one and the same.Quality is subjective. However, since WOW has sols so much, great quality is inferred. A good example are movies that win Oscars. Usually these movies are great (qualitative assessment) but they do not do well at the box office (quanitative assessment). The opposite is true as well - successful movies at the box office (Dark Knight, Star trek, The Hangover) rarely do well at the Oscars.
I think you may have that a little mixed up too. Success and quality are not "ALWAYS" linked, but that does not mean that they are not linked sometimes! To use your own analogy, where would you fall with 'Titanic'? Huge commercial success as well as a huge oscar winner?
Every now and again something comes along with the right idea, that certain something that captures the audiences imagination and WOW has been one of those things. Everyone that plays has their own reasons for liking it. The one thing that differs from the whole movie/music thing though is that people are paying to play this every month, so there has to be an element of 'quality' however each individual player qualifies it to keep them paying and playing.
Titanic like WOW is a phenomenon. One comes along every so often and does the impossible (massive $$ and Oscars or 12 million subs).
It does not happen that often and when it does, it is usually quite a shock.
Personally, I didn't like Titanic and still have no idea why it won Oscars. Maybe, like WOW is came along ata time when the market was crap.
just to point out the titantic itself was a big ship which was ment to be unsinkable .it was very popular and sunk without a trace in a short space of time lol .
ps i do know your on about the movie
your right warcraft is really only there because its the best of a bad bunch at the moment . that virtual monopoly ends as soon as an mmo is released that has mass appeal . within the next few years (maybe this year) thats bound to happen . its when something like that comes along people move on . think of it like this myspace was very popular but more people now use facebook .
warcraft is simply this . the first mmo that realised is full potential . there were ones before it that had a niche market and unfortunatly all since have as well . another mmo will come along because the rewards are so high for the company that gets it right .
the mmos of tomorrow will offer far greater depth of gameplay and far better graphics as the technology improves . warcraft simply cannot hope to maintain its popularity . with each year that passes its game engine looks more and more dated .
that aside i think it proberbly would have been as successful and it would have kept being popular longer if blizzard had not made some of the choices it has done.
i think warcrafts on the bubble and it wont be too long now before it bursts .
The only reason WoW has so many complaints is because of the ratio of people who don't play any more in WoW to people who don't play XYZ game. If you think about it, people complain a lot about WoW, but it has it's well known 12+ million subs, so proportionally, there are a lot of people who will complain. When you think about Darkfall or other MMO's, if not all, none have as impressive subs numbers like WoW (as if it will ever happen), but there are still complaints about them being boring, a grind in x, y, or z category, too linear, not linear enough, too sandboxy, not sandboxy enough, no customization, etc.
Just my 2c
I think that the 5+ million chinamen who plays WoW complains as well.
You do realise that if WoW suddenly did burst and every one jumped ship that it would probably kill the MMO market all together, no one would be pushing for MMOs any more and the fact that WoW made signifigant growth in a video game are that was considered a Niche market of video games shows that they did any thing but fail.
You guys whine about all the bad thing about WoW and yet any other MMO that has tried to beat it has failed for much bigger flaws in the basic mechanics of the game. Cant solo play, No end game, Lack of races/classes, terrible combat, terrible graphics, most games that failed to WoW had one if not more of these problems with the game.
Again WoW didn't go wrong, you just didn't like where it went.
What WoW missed the boat on: Open world PvP Character customization Additional Races Additional Classes ............
Yeah wasn't BC supposed to bring in some additional classes? What happened there? Did the devs say "ah fuck it just give the opposing sides Pallys and Shammys and we'll grab a beer."
My pointless 2pence is that I loved the game, but just got bored. Had fun levelling to 80 in WOTLK (although it was far too easy) but then couldn't face the rep/pvp/raid treadmill.
Only reason I "hate" it is because my bastard RL friends refuse to play anything else while I'd love to try other MMO's with them.
Everyone is going to have a pretty different view of where WoW went wrong. I voted other so I will try to explain where it wrong for me.
1) WoW went wrong for me when they seperated the game from PvP/PvE. I don't like needing to have PvP and PvE gear. I think there should just be gear. It just feels like to me that it totally splits the game into two. Some people loved this change I'm sure, I just personally hated it.
2) WoW went wrong with WoTLK to me. It just didn't feel different enough from BC for me to keep playing. There was a lot of nice changes, but it just felt all the same. Another 10 levels to grind so you can raids/arena all over. It just didn't feel new to me at all. Most of the changes in WoTLK just felt like quality of life changes that could have been patched over time instead of new content (Not saying there wasn't new content, it just wasn't different enough to feel new to me).
I think I liked WoW more for what it could be instead of what it actually is. To me it seems like the Devs pidgeon hold themselves into a mold they created and must follow while developing content. Its all the same recycled ideas.
Every one is on the wow wagon. I would just like to know, in a few simple sentences, what exactly makes this game so awesome? Without mentioning the 11.5 million subs it has gathered.
"Everything the light touches is our kingdom" -- Mufasa ---
1. Honor and removing PvP ranks + dishonorable kills - By giving players points for killing stuff and gear you could by with those points, they effectively killed world PvP because the Battlegrounds where the most efficient way to accumulate Honor faster and buy gear faster. The PvP ranks they had before made you grind non-stop to achieve higher ranks, which was not good, instead of rewarding good players. Removing dishonorable kills, which lowered your honor and could contribute to de-ranking you, made griefing totally acceptable and forced many away from the PvP servers.
What they should have done- Tied the PvP ranking to actual player skill, like using Kill versus Death ratios kind of like LOTRO does. Also they could have objectives in Battlegrounds like capturing/stealing/recovering flags and such count towards your Rank, but K/D ratio would reign supreme for determining your PvP Rank. Instead, a linear system of accumulating points through repetitive actions is the very definition of a grind.
Killing lower level players that still "conned" green would give you less, but killing players grey (10 levels lower or more) would count against your K/D ration and thus rank. Remove high level griefing, give people reason to fight fairly.
*note* You'd have to come up with a system to reward healers for the amount they heal targets engaged in PvP minus overhealing.
Give experience for landing killing blows (or experience for % of damage done to a target or healing done to any ally) to prevent twinking and encourage PvP through the entire level range in the open world. High Rank does not = better gear, just different gear that looked cooler and give you e-peen Titles. Better for K/D ration to kill higher Rank players. Higher Rank allows access to more "flavor" items like banners and tabards and also "convenience" items like potions/bandages/regents.
Just some thoughts.. would have to flesh out details more to include things to encourage attacks on towns/cities.
2. Removing attunement quests for dungeons / raids - Neccessary step to prove a player is "ready" for the encounter and a PERFECT way to develope back story.
What they should have done - Change the quest chains for attunements to involve only solo-able quests instead of using dungeons and raids, and focus them more on the story and reasoning for going to that dungeon/raid. Why? Gives solo players more to do and gives them motivation to seek groups and enter the dungeon/raid once they are attuned. Also makes it so players who are a little behind or alts can "catch up" easier, without having to force guildies/friends to run them through obsolete content.
When they release new dungeons/raids, don't make the attunement tied to old dungeons/raids, make new solo-friendly quest lines to attune players to the new raids/dungeons. Same reasons, develope back story and create motivation for finding groups once you are attuned, also don't have to go back and help alts/newer players "catch up."
3. Using Tiers for new Raid content, and not dungeon content - Creates obsolete content and makes it near impossible for players to jump into the new tier without completing the old tier first.
What they should have done - Every new raid should have come with new dungeon(s). The new 5 person dungeons would be the same Tier of gear as the previous raid dungeon, and the new raid would require a minimum "gear check" of gear at the tier from the first raid / new dungeons.
Why? Gives small group non-raiders more options for progression, but still keeps the raiders as the "top" of the gear food chain. If content creation is an issue for Blizzard (lawl) they chould just up the Badges you get from Heroics to match the Tier level of the previous Raid. So when Ulduar is released you get Valor badges from Heroics now instead of Heroism, because Ulduar 10 gives Valor badges, and the 25 Ulduar gives new Conquest and thus the "best" gear. Next raid released, heroics move up to Conquest and new raid has new badges. etc.
4. Death Knights starting at 55 - They had the perfect opportunity to revitalize the ENTIRE 1-70 content with WotLK, but instead they took the easy way out and made DK's start at 55 and thus made old-world even more obsolete.
What they should have done - Death Knights have new starting zones and 1-20 content just like they did with Blood Elves and Dranei. Why? Not everyone would have re-rolled one and thus creating FOTM DKs and "Death Noobs". Would have been a great opportunity to add additional content in the 20-70 range and/or change how quests/NPCs reacted to the Death Knights to keep things fresh.
They should have also included some kind of incentive for players to roll new alts that were NOT DKs, like making the "recruit a friend" program differently, so instead of new accounts and such you could link your alts to a friends alts and level together a bit faster too. Like if you created a new DK and wanted a friend to level with, they could create a new toon and you could link the two and level together with all the recruit a friend benefits.
5. Create Hierloom items a LONG time ago - Seriously why was this a new idea for WotLK?
What they should have done - Created Hierloom items back when TBC was released, and created more then just weapons/shoulders/trinkets. Like anybody with a character over level 55 who created a Blood Elf or Dranei when TBC released and they'd automatically come with a set of some hierloom gear that was bound to that toon and leveled up with them. When WotLK released same applied to DK alts of players with a toon at least level 65 (start with gear that leveled with them whole way) and same for any friend's alt you link a DK to.
BUT in doing this hierloom and recruit-a-friend-type thing they should have kept leveling rates 1-60 (70) the same as when the game released. It'd be like rediscovering the game all over again, you'd gain enough of a boost from the hierloom items and alt linking.
Comments
I think you may have that a little mixed up too. Success and quality are not "ALWAYS" linked, but that does not mean that they are not linked sometimes! To use your own analogy, where would you fall with 'Titanic'? Huge commercial success as well as a huge oscar winner?
Every now and again something comes along with the right idea, that certain something that captures the audiences imagination and WOW has been one of those things. Everyone that plays has their own reasons for liking it. The one thing that differs from the whole movie/music thing though is that people are paying to play this every month, so there has to be an element of 'quality' however each individual player qualifies it to keep them paying and playing.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
By this Logic, Brittney Spears is the greatest singer EVER!! Sales don't mean everything.
Oh, and I chose "faster leveling" as the worst, but it looks like I'm in the manority. The expansion option was my second choice (a very close second). Not to compare the games, but I remembered thinking how I liked GW expansion setup over the WoW method.
Oh ok! So WOW is the Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus of MMOs?
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
The biggest mistake wow made was neglecting world pvp. Battlegrounds were a mistake that took pvp from being fun and challenging to an instanced grindfest. I remember WOW in beta and in the first few months after it launched when guilds would have these mini wars just because they were fun. If blizzard had been smart they would have put WAR-esque keeps on the world map and have the horde and alliance fight over them, they actually tried this in TBC but it was too little too late and having allready introduced battleground no one was interested.
Blizzard uses WOW to harvest hours played into bottles so that the dev team can remain immortal
The only reason WoW has so many complaints is because of the ratio of people who don't play any more in WoW to people who don't play XYZ game. If you think about it, people complain a lot about WoW, but it has it's well known 12+ million subs, so proportionally, there are a lot of people who will complain. When you think about Darkfall or other MMO's, if not all, none have as impressive subs numbers like WoW (as if it will ever happen), but there are still complaints about them being boring, a grind in x, y, or z category, too linear, not linear enough, too sandboxy, not sandboxy enough, no customization, etc.
Just my 2c
I think you may have that a little mixed up too. Success and quality are not "ALWAYS" linked, but that does not mean that they are not linked sometimes! To use your own analogy, where would you fall with 'Titanic'? Huge commercial success as well as a huge oscar winner?
Every now and again something comes along with the right idea, that certain something that captures the audiences imagination and WOW has been one of those things. Everyone that plays has their own reasons for liking it. The one thing that differs from the whole movie/music thing though is that people are paying to play this every month, so there has to be an element of 'quality' however each individual player qualifies it to keep them paying and playing.
Titanic like WOW is a phenomenon. One comes along every so often and does the impossible (massive $$ and Oscars or 12 million subs).
It does not happen that often and when it does, it is usually quite a shock.
Personally, I didn't like Titanic and still have no idea why it won Oscars. Maybe, like WOW is came along ata time when the market was crap.
just to point out the titantic itself was a big ship which was ment to be unsinkable .it was very popular and sunk without a trace in a short space of time lol .
ps i do know your on about the movie
your right warcraft is really only there because its the best of a bad bunch at the moment . that virtual monopoly ends as soon as an mmo is released that has mass appeal . within the next few years (maybe this year) thats bound to happen . its when something like that comes along people move on . think of it like this myspace was very popular but more people now use facebook .
warcraft is simply this . the first mmo that realised is full potential . there were ones before it that had a niche market and unfortunatly all since have as well . another mmo will come along because the rewards are so high for the company that gets it right .
the mmos of tomorrow will offer far greater depth of gameplay and far better graphics as the technology improves . warcraft simply cannot hope to maintain its popularity . with each year that passes its game engine looks more and more dated .
that aside i think it proberbly would have been as successful and it would have kept being popular longer if blizzard had not made some of the choices it has done.
i think warcrafts on the bubble and it wont be too long now before it bursts .
I think that the 5+ million chinamen who plays WoW complains as well.
What WoW missed the boat on:
Open world PvP
Character customization
Additional Races
Additional Classes
............
You do realise that if WoW suddenly did burst and every one jumped ship that it would probably kill the MMO market all together, no one would be pushing for MMOs any more and the fact that WoW made signifigant growth in a video game are that was considered a Niche market of video games shows that they did any thing but fail.
You guys whine about all the bad thing about WoW and yet any other MMO that has tried to beat it has failed for much bigger flaws in the basic mechanics of the game. Cant solo play, No end game, Lack of races/classes, terrible combat, terrible graphics, most games that failed to WoW had one if not more of these problems with the game.
Again WoW didn't go wrong, you just didn't like where it went.
Yeah wasn't BC supposed to bring in some additional classes? What happened there? Did the devs say "ah fuck it just give the opposing sides Pallys and Shammys and we'll grab a beer."
My pointless 2pence is that I loved the game, but just got bored. Had fun levelling to 80 in WOTLK (although it was far too easy) but then couldn't face the rep/pvp/raid treadmill.
Only reason I "hate" it is because my bastard RL friends refuse to play anything else while I'd love to try other MMO's with them.
Everyone is going to have a pretty different view of where WoW went wrong. I voted other so I will try to explain where it wrong for me.
1) WoW went wrong for me when they seperated the game from PvP/PvE. I don't like needing to have PvP and PvE gear. I think there should just be gear. It just feels like to me that it totally splits the game into two. Some people loved this change I'm sure, I just personally hated it.
2) WoW went wrong with WoTLK to me. It just didn't feel different enough from BC for me to keep playing. There was a lot of nice changes, but it just felt all the same. Another 10 levels to grind so you can raids/arena all over. It just didn't feel new to me at all. Most of the changes in WoTLK just felt like quality of life changes that could have been patched over time instead of new content (Not saying there wasn't new content, it just wasn't different enough to feel new to me).
I think I liked WoW more for what it could be instead of what it actually is. To me it seems like the Devs pidgeon hold themselves into a mold they created and must follow while developing content. Its all the same recycled ideas.
Every one is on the wow wagon. I would just like to know, in a few simple sentences, what exactly makes this game so awesome? Without mentioning the 11.5 million subs it has gathered.
"Everything the light touches is our kingdom" -- Mufasa
---
Where did Warcraft go wrong?
Here are your answers, the real answers:
1. Honor and removing PvP ranks + dishonorable kills - By giving players points for killing stuff and gear you could by with those points, they effectively killed world PvP because the Battlegrounds where the most efficient way to accumulate Honor faster and buy gear faster. The PvP ranks they had before made you grind non-stop to achieve higher ranks, which was not good, instead of rewarding good players. Removing dishonorable kills, which lowered your honor and could contribute to de-ranking you, made griefing totally acceptable and forced many away from the PvP servers.
What they should have done- Tied the PvP ranking to actual player skill, like using Kill versus Death ratios kind of like LOTRO does. Also they could have objectives in Battlegrounds like capturing/stealing/recovering flags and such count towards your Rank, but K/D ratio would reign supreme for determining your PvP Rank. Instead, a linear system of accumulating points through repetitive actions is the very definition of a grind.
Killing lower level players that still "conned" green would give you less, but killing players grey (10 levels lower or more) would count against your K/D ration and thus rank. Remove high level griefing, give people reason to fight fairly.
*note* You'd have to come up with a system to reward healers for the amount they heal targets engaged in PvP minus overhealing.
Give experience for landing killing blows (or experience for % of damage done to a target or healing done to any ally) to prevent twinking and encourage PvP through the entire level range in the open world. High Rank does not = better gear, just different gear that looked cooler and give you e-peen Titles. Better for K/D ration to kill higher Rank players. Higher Rank allows access to more "flavor" items like banners and tabards and also "convenience" items like potions/bandages/regents.
Just some thoughts.. would have to flesh out details more to include things to encourage attacks on towns/cities.
2. Removing attunement quests for dungeons / raids - Neccessary step to prove a player is "ready" for the encounter and a PERFECT way to develope back story.
What they should have done - Change the quest chains for attunements to involve only solo-able quests instead of using dungeons and raids, and focus them more on the story and reasoning for going to that dungeon/raid. Why? Gives solo players more to do and gives them motivation to seek groups and enter the dungeon/raid once they are attuned. Also makes it so players who are a little behind or alts can "catch up" easier, without having to force guildies/friends to run them through obsolete content.
When they release new dungeons/raids, don't make the attunement tied to old dungeons/raids, make new solo-friendly quest lines to attune players to the new raids/dungeons. Same reasons, develope back story and create motivation for finding groups once you are attuned, also don't have to go back and help alts/newer players "catch up."
3. Using Tiers for new Raid content, and not dungeon content - Creates obsolete content and makes it near impossible for players to jump into the new tier without completing the old tier first.
What they should have done - Every new raid should have come with new dungeon(s). The new 5 person dungeons would be the same Tier of gear as the previous raid dungeon, and the new raid would require a minimum "gear check" of gear at the tier from the first raid / new dungeons.
Why? Gives small group non-raiders more options for progression, but still keeps the raiders as the "top" of the gear food chain. If content creation is an issue for Blizzard (lawl) they chould just up the Badges you get from Heroics to match the Tier level of the previous Raid. So when Ulduar is released you get Valor badges from Heroics now instead of Heroism, because Ulduar 10 gives Valor badges, and the 25 Ulduar gives new Conquest and thus the "best" gear. Next raid released, heroics move up to Conquest and new raid has new badges. etc.
4. Death Knights starting at 55 - They had the perfect opportunity to revitalize the ENTIRE 1-70 content with WotLK, but instead they took the easy way out and made DK's start at 55 and thus made old-world even more obsolete.
What they should have done - Death Knights have new starting zones and 1-20 content just like they did with Blood Elves and Dranei. Why? Not everyone would have re-rolled one and thus creating FOTM DKs and "Death Noobs". Would have been a great opportunity to add additional content in the 20-70 range and/or change how quests/NPCs reacted to the Death Knights to keep things fresh.
They should have also included some kind of incentive for players to roll new alts that were NOT DKs, like making the "recruit a friend" program differently, so instead of new accounts and such you could link your alts to a friends alts and level together a bit faster too. Like if you created a new DK and wanted a friend to level with, they could create a new toon and you could link the two and level together with all the recruit a friend benefits.
5. Create Hierloom items a LONG time ago - Seriously why was this a new idea for WotLK?
What they should have done - Created Hierloom items back when TBC was released, and created more then just weapons/shoulders/trinkets. Like anybody with a character over level 55 who created a Blood Elf or Dranei when TBC released and they'd automatically come with a set of some hierloom gear that was bound to that toon and leveled up with them. When WotLK released same applied to DK alts of players with a toon at least level 65 (start with gear that leveled with them whole way) and same for any friend's alt you link a DK to.
BUT in doing this hierloom and recruit-a-friend-type thing they should have kept leveling rates 1-60 (70) the same as when the game released. It'd be like rediscovering the game all over again, you'd gain enough of a boost from the hierloom items and alt linking.
Just some thoughts...