raystantzFinal Fantasy XI CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 1,237
WoW is the MTV of MMO's... its the most popular, with the least amount of resemblance to what MMO's "were".
WoW did alot of good things for the MMO genre, but for me.. It destroyed what I loved about them. WoW is a GIGANTIC marketing ploy, complete with hats, steins, and whatever other merchandise they can figure out to sell. I mean, you know a game has gone far beyond the boundaries of "popular" when you can buy soft drinks with the characters printed on the can.
Back in the day, MMO's were such a niche genre... only a specific crowd of people played. This was better in many ways because the communities were often more tight nit, and since the only people who played were those who were "in the know" the games were more challenging, and people worked together better.
Now, with WoW.. mmo's are no longer "underground" WoW is the NFL of MMO's. Its as mainstream as it gets. Moms, dads, grandmas, uncles, etc. all play. Most of them have never touched an MMO before. Most of them will never touch any other. But this caused chaos in the community. The WoW community is a cess pool. The adventure and exploration are gone. Its all about number crunching.
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Currently playing:
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Why is it that, whenever someone gets PO'd at THEIR game, people have to blame their games problems on WoW?
Everyone always tries to knock number 1 off its pedestal no matter what they are number 1 in and WoW is no different.
Why does the OP hate WoW? Because whatever game the OP plays probably launches bug-filled patches that take days or even weeks to clean up. WoW can fix a problem in a few hours. WoW has a huge population meaning their is always someone else to interact or play with, while the OP might be playing a game that has a couple of hundred thousand people spread all over the place at many varied times of the day.
In short, people hate WoW because its everything THEIR game is not. Large, well polished, mostly bug free, constantly being tweaked for balance, on a regular schedule of content additions, varied beyond belief.
SWG came out a short while before WoW and, after WoWs success SOE changed their game to mimic WoW. This wasn't WoWs fault, this was SOEs fault. The game AS IT WAS ORIGINALLY INTENDED would have blown WoW clear out of the water. There is no other single franchise more geek friendly than Star Wars AND SOE SCREWED IT UP!
Everyone knows the myriad of ways SOE pumped the pooch, and since listing them all would take a short novella I'll get to the point. Games don't suck because of WoW, games suck because too many people in the industry listen to the vocal minority like the OP and don't follow WoWs path to success. Its not about being a WoW clone, just follow their business practices of putting out a polished, complete and as bug free as possible game.
If you have to hate on someone, hate on the publishers of the game YOU play, after all its their lack of foresight that has screwed up your playing experience.
I respect your right to voice your opinion and reserve the right to blow it right out of the water
Didn't read your entire post, but just to answer the poll: no.
Rule number one: If you don't bother to read a post, don't reply either.
But I see the OPs points, for the last few years have the new MMOs just been Wow with less polish and a slightly different world.
On the plus side did Wow bring in many new players and showed that a polished game have a lot bigger chanses of becoming big then one that releases a year too early.
But Wow didn't kill the MMO genre, there are actually coming out non Wow based games now (TOR, GW2, MO, DF and many more).
We do need some change now, it is pathethic that so many MMOs try copy Wow and EQ. But you can't make another MMO that is just like Wow and think your game will be the next big one, WAR learned that the hard way.
All other genres games differs a lot more from eachother than MMOs today, even RTS games use different systems and rules. And every single of them have better AI than the current games, heck Diablo had better AI in many cases.
But all that isn't really Wows fault, it is Mythic, Funcoms, Turbines, SOE, NC soft and the rest that have so little imagination. If Blizzards next game will be too close to Wow it will probably be a failure too, we have gotten all we can out of the old EQ genre now.
But MMOs have a lot of potential. You could do a MMO that is a lot closer to pen and paper RPGs, RTS games, we already seen a few MMOFPS games. Eve and Guildwars proved that a small company making a game their own way can work out fine. And now is companies like Bioware and Bethesda working on MMOs, they will add their specialities to the genre also.
I predict that the MMOs will go a far way for the next 10 years, we have had a slow 10 years now since EQ set the market and Wow added the polish to the genre. But there is no way people will actually play the same thing for another 10 years.
I believe we will have at least one game with more subs than Wow by the end of 2012. Hopefully will we then have a few large games instead of one, that way people wouldn't copy so much from a single game.
That's what I'm saying. But at the same time, it has flooded the genre with a lot more douchebags than were ever here before. Yes, you can say more people, more idiots, and it's true to a point. But go on any WoW server, or any server of any game with PvP elements since WoW and tell me it isn't WAY worse than the days of EQ and UO. Or even EVE, which is a PvP game I have played off and on for 2 years now. It has a fairly civil PvP community. Why? Long progression and tough game play.
You mean like in UO, with the community that assasinated Richard Garriot/Lord British? Was *that* the group of winners you were referring to?
There were, are, and always will be douchebags in these games. It's the nature of the beast. Hiding behind a keyboard makes it far too easy to get away with shit that would get your ass beat in real life, and certain types of people thrive on that.
Katsma is Lithuanian for 'he who drinks used douche fluid'.
WoW is the MTV of MMO's... its the most popular, with the least amount of resemblance to what MMO's "were". WoW did alot of good things for the MMO genre, but for me.. It destroyed what I loved about them. WoW is a GIGANTIC marketing ploy, complete with hats, steins, and whatever other merchandise they can figure out to sell. I mean, you know a game has gone far beyond the boundaries of "popular" when you can buy soft drinks with the characters printed on the can. Back in the day, MMO's were such a niche genre... only a specific crowd of people played. This was better in many ways because the communities were often more tight nit, and since the only people who played were those who were "in the know" the games were more challenging, and people worked together better. Now, with WoW.. mmo's are no longer "underground" WoW is the NFL of MMO's. Its as mainstream as it gets. Moms, dads, grandmas, uncles, etc. all play. Most of them have never touched an MMO before. Most of them will never touch any other. But this caused chaos in the community. The WoW community is a cess pool. The adventure and exploration are gone. Its all about number crunching.
There were, are, and always will be douchebags in these games. It's the nature of the beast. Hiding behind a keyboard makes it far too easy to get away with shit that would get your ass beat in real life, and certain types of people thrive on that.
WoW is the MTV of MMO's... its the most popular, with the least amount of resemblance to what MMO's "were". WoW did alot of good things for the MMO genre, but for me.. It destroyed what I loved about them. WoW is a GIGANTIC marketing ploy, complete with hats, steins, and whatever other merchandise they can figure out to sell. I mean, you know a game has gone far beyond the boundaries of "popular" when you can buy soft drinks with the characters printed on the can. Back in the day, MMO's were such a niche genre... only a specific crowd of people played. This was better in many ways because the communities were often more tight nit, and since the only people who played were those who were "in the know" the games were more challenging, and people worked together better. Now, with WoW.. mmo's are no longer "underground" WoW is the NFL of MMO's. Its as mainstream as it gets. Moms, dads, grandmas, uncles, etc. all play. Most of them have never touched an MMO before. Most of them will never touch any other. But this caused chaos in the community. The WoW community is a cess pool. The adventure and exploration are gone. Its all about number crunching.
Agree.
This is the main problem hardcore gamers have with WoW. It all boils down to this. They no longer feel special. WoW brought the dirty "masses" to the mmorpg community. And everyone knows the emo kids can't do anything considered popular or mainstream.
The reason WoW is so successful is because they take all the good stuff from other games and put it in theirs now if they were unable to do this WoW would not be what it is at it's current state. I could see it being at a few million but not over 10. Pretty much everything "new" being added to the game has been taken from another MMO thus making that MMO fail because the MMO taking this stuff has that and other stuff taken from other games. Till WoW makes original stuff and not stolen stuff it gets nothing from me.
The reason WoW is so successful is because they take all the good stuff from other games and put it in theirs now if they were unable to do this WoW would not be what it is at it's current state. I could see it being at a few million but not over 10. Pretty much everything "new" being added to the game has been taken from another MMO thus making that MMO fail because the MMO taking this stuff has that and other stuff taken from other games. Till WoW makes original stuff and not stolen stuff it gets nothing from me.
So you think that... because WoW uses good ideas from other games, that it does nothing original.
WoW uses good ideas from other games.
WoW has done nothing original in it's game.
These are unrelated sentences and while the first one is true, the second one is false.
The reason WoW is so successful is because they take all the good stuff from other games and put it in theirs now if they were unable to do this WoW would not be what it is at it's current state. I could see it being at a few million but not over 10. Pretty much everything "new" being added to the game has been taken from another MMO thus making that MMO fail because the MMO taking this stuff has that and other stuff taken from other games. Till WoW makes original stuff and not stolen stuff it gets nothing from me. You just made the dumbest argument for not playing WoW ever. So lets see, so you think WoW takes "all the good stuff from other games and put it in theirs." .... But you say you wont play WoW "till wow makes original stuff..." And so you want a fail game, aka a super-duper original game, because you think that people play games not for the "good stuff" but for "original stuff." Let me give you an example of your thought process: There are 3 car makers. 2 of them develop their own cars, they are original but A car has problems with breaks, B car has problems with airbags. Now 3rd car company, takes airbags from car A and breaks from car B and makes a car C for the same price as A or B. Being the original person that you are, you will of course automatically reject car C. Being original, of course, does not mean that the game must be fail, but your reason for not playing WoW is false. False because it is biased. Just admit you don't like WoW and no need for all that "good stuff...original stuff" excuse. There is nothing wrong with not liking a game even if its popular with a lot of other people. Don't let me get started on Halo...
Where does Age of Conan and Guild Wars fit into this?
They both seem very diffrent from WoW, yet nether of them took the top spot. Whats going on?
raystantzFinal Fantasy XI CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 1,237
The thing is.. WoW has two things that these other companies don't..
A. A proven track record.
B. A relatively large fanbase before they ever thought about making an MMO.
These other companies were already setting themselves up to fail, because well.. the mmo's before them failed. WoW is made by Blizzard.. and that in itself gave WoW the edge over other games. The other games are also not as accessible as WoW. I'd dare say over half the population of WoW are not playing on a gaming machine. Most likely they have store bought budget pcs that just happen to be able to run wow, but won't run much else. And thats the third part of the equation of WoW's huge success..
C. Make it run on a toaster.
No other games on the market in the same bracket as WoW will run on a low end machine.
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Don't blame WoW. Blizzard, has always taken their time in making a badass video game, from Blackthorne to date. When you heard about them comming out with their next game, people would ask "When is it going to be released?" and the answer was always "When it's done." Blizzard helped the genre expand...
It's the MASSIVE pressure from the sordid, avaricious publishers that is put on the devs... especially SINCE WoW stomped a mud hole in Everquest 2 as far as sales and player base were concerned... and everything else since then, frankly. Now I said especially. Money has always been the major drive for ANY MMO. It costs money to get the ball rolling, and publishers expect results because everyone else is promising more and better than the person before them. To publishers, the more money the better... because honestly... they have expensive taste, and they have a lot of shit they want to buy... like other indie IP's so they can get rid of the potential competition. To them, it's not about QUALITY, so much as it is QUANTITY.
Secondly, it's the blind-faith gamers that need to be one of the FIRST to play the game, and be the best at being the best in it.
You've all seen how the hype works. EPIC VIDEOS CONTAINING 10 MINUTES OF CINEMATIC CG FOOTAGE OF SHIT YOU'LL NEVER SEE IN GAME WITH A LEGENDARY HEART-POUNDING MUSICAL SCORE!!one1!iiI+1 (Reference Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London, go ahead, look up the cinematic vids on youtube right now... and after that, let me know how the player base is doing.)
Then you pay the $50'ish for your preorder along with the 1000's of others, and post on all the forums and on gamestop about how this game will be the next "<insert MMO> KILLER" based on what you've seen and imagined, not from actually playing it, further amplifying the hype. Then you get a chance at the beta, and don't care if it plays like dogshit on a stick... you tell yourself "It's beta! The game will be perfect on launch!"
Then the game is finally released, and you along with the thousands of people install it only to find that it has indeed NOT gotten any better since the last day you played it in its beta form, but in fact gotten worse. The majority of people who were permitted to "beta test" were in fact just "playing" it more than giving a shit about "testing" it, therefore leaving the exploits and glitches there for immediate future use disrupting the initial game balance. Devs. promise they will eventually get to these, but they have to sift through the inevitable, as Yahtzee would say, "Pants-on-head retarded" questions from the lazy and stupid section of playerbase wanting to know "HOW I MINE FOR FISH" to "PWNZJ00 SAID I WAZ ST00PID SO I SAID I WOULD REPORT HIM CAN YOU BAN HIM HE IS A NUB". Meanwhile in your attempts to justify the farce that you just spent 50 dollars on a beta game you tell yourself that you're getting a "free month" of playtime, and at the end of that they will address the game stopping issues and all will be happy </insert smiley_face>.
After enduring your first FREE MONTH, it's time to evaluate your commitment. It's no longer a "free game" you tell yourself, it's time to actually pay for a subscription for the beta game you purchased in full. You do some research and many of the gaming magazines are trumpeting out their asses with jewel-encrusted horns the success of this game, and how they will offer sliced fried gold to those who stick with them through the coming months. You read the forums looking for "honest and unbiased" opinions under your game... and find out that there are a few posters whom zealot fanbois refer to as "butthurt" and "newbs" being the only ones who hate the game. You're not butthurt or a newb, are you? So therefore you must love the game!
Two months down the road, you realize that the game isn't as finished as it should be having reached "the end"...and realize you'd rather dryhump a cheesegrater than replay the pain you went through the first time to get to where you are at now. You're not the only one. People start to leave in droves, retaining only the righteous following that still hail the game as the second coming of Christ. Faith being not enough to support a MMO, it is eventually put down like a sickly, homeless dog and missed the same.
/rinse
/repeat
Gamers condoning that "plays-like-shit" games are ok, and that they will buy them so long as they are hyped well enough... combined with the obvious drive for publishers wanting to obtain money... especially equal to that of what WoW has pulled off... you get many half-assed, half-finished products that you happily pay full price for, before you even play it. Don't blame Blizzard, blame yourselves.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Unfortunately, grinding is a rather central concept to most MMO's. Without something with replay value (Running a dungeon repeatedly, killing enemies in hope of a specific item, etc), developers are forced to create a great deal more content. To begin with, this might not be such an issue (Though development time and cost would undoubtedly increase). However, as time goes on, players will inevitably experience all the game has to offer. And, seeing as MMO players are a notoriously impatient bunch, we will turn to the developers and demand more. Without grinding, we require a constant stream of new, innovative content. And most developers lack the time, capital, and manpower for that level of development (Ironically, Blizzard may be one of the few companies in the market capable of pulling off such a feat).
1) Yes wow did in fact have million and millions of subscribers before the television ads, product endorsements, etc. I will link you the press releases if you really need, but here is the chart that used those same press releases. The millionS occured long before the television commercials.
what? WoW was awesome when it came out even tho that was like 7 years ago. Its not what WoW has done it is what everyone else has done because of WoW.
WoW WAS unique no matter how many people say otherwise. It was definitely the first to impliment a slew of questing and a relatively easy and painless leveling up system and it was the FIRST (if i remember correctly)to succesfully impliment instanced dungeons. It gave a lot of new ideas. Oh man I remember even being blow away because warriors could Charge... Nooooo other mmo even attempted that.
The problem is nobody wants to try something unique and everyone just copies because idiots will spend money on them anyways
What? Wow was the first to impliment instanced dungeons? Try EQ, AO and a few others.... WoW just copied everyone else, seriously, the fanboyism here is remarkable.
Ya'll can flame me for defending WoW, but the game's ideas are original. Don't believe me? Play the god damn Warcraft series. Gryphon Riders, all of their franchise and lore is based on the Warcraft Trilogy. Warcraft I, II, Reign of Chaos, The Frozen Throne. HINT HINT? Get over the fact WoW is the dominant MMO at the moment, until someone decides to make a break through MMO. Which will probably end up being the same company that made WOW... Blizzard.
The following is something I think is the case, and not to be taken for the ultimate truth:
WoW is a great game, whatever it did, steal from others, "dumb things down" Blizzard did it good. They refined their game into exactly what a lot of people find or found fun. Hence it became a success.
Now you blame it for hurting the genre by bringing a lot more people / dumbing it down or whatever. You say a lot of crap clones are being released and I agree, but ask yourselves this, how many big budget MMOs were being published every year before WoW ? How many are being published per year after Blizzard has shown that it is possible to make MMOs not niche ?
Sure these games are crap, and they are crap because the companies making them are gunning for a free ride to loads of cash by cloning WoW, which isnt Blizzards fault. The only thing you can really put on Blizzards shoulders is showing that an MMO can be MASSIVELY popular and there by getting all these companies to try and develop MMOs. Now a lot of them suck, but do you really think they will keep committing the mistake of beating WoW at its own game after failing once ?
I dont think they will. What companies will do however is try harder and harder to figure out what will make their game cool and fun to play so that they too get a proper shot at glory like Blizzard.
In conclusion, Blizzard did one thing to the genre; it showed that big bucks can be made in MMOs. Which only means more will try making games. Sure what they are doing at the moment is silly, but at the end of the day, Blizzard brought more big developers into MMOs which cant be a bad thing. They will keep trying until they too make great games in different ballparks which equals win in the long run in terms of number of cool MMOs.
it also showed that you can spoon feed people in an MMO, and make it so it can run on ay system to make money. But at the same time, piss off all the veterans by making them grind for gear, onlt to make it obsolete in the next patch.
it also showed that you can spoon feed people in an MMO, and make it so it can run on ay system to make money. But at the same time, piss off all the veterans by making them grind for gear, onlt to make it obsolete in the next patch.
1) Veteran gamers are not forced to do anything in wow. There are plenty of other games to play.
2) Grinding for gear was in full effect way back in Everquest, long before wow was even a thought. This isn't something wow brought to the market at all.
3) Yes, every patch outdates all the gear in the game.
Why is it that, whenever someone gets PO'd at THEIR game, people have to blame their games problems on WoW? Everyone always tries to knock number 1 off its pedestal no matter what they are number 1 in and WoW is no different. Why does the OP hate WoW? Because whatever game the OP plays probably launches bug-filled patches that take days or even weeks to clean up. WoW can fix a problem in a few hours. WoW has a huge population meaning their is always someone else to interact or play with, while the OP might be playing a game that has a couple of hundred thousand people spread all over the place at many varied times of the day. In short, people hate WoW because its everything THEIR game is not. Large, well polished, mostly bug free, constantly being tweaked for balance, on a regular schedule of content additions, varied beyond belief. SWG came out a short while before WoW and, after WoWs success SOE changed their game to mimic WoW. This wasn't WoWs fault, this was SOEs fault. The game AS IT WAS ORIGINALLY INTENDED would have blown WoW clear out of the water. There is no other single franchise more geek friendly than Star Wars AND SOE SCREWED IT UP! Everyone knows the myriad of ways SOE pumped the pooch, and since listing them all would take a short novella I'll get to the point. Games don't suck because of WoW, games suck because too many people in the industry listen to the vocal minority like the OP and don't follow WoWs path to success. Its not about being a WoW clone, just follow their business practices of putting out a polished, complete and as bug free as possible game. If you have to hate on someone, hate on the publishers of the game YOU play, after all its their lack of foresight that has screwed up your playing experience.
<Mod Edit>
First of all, if you want people to take you seriously, it usually is not a good idea to start out by referring to them as fan-bois or douches simply because they have a view contrary to yours. The person you are replying to raised some good arguments and you responded by calling him names. Perhaps if your arguments had more basis in reality you would not need to resort to such methods?
Secondly, the fact that you have played every MMO out there does not make you an expert on anything. We do not know how long you have played any of these titles, nor how far you got in any of them. I too have played pretty much every MMO since Ultima Online, but that does not make my opinion any more valid than anyone else's here.
It is entirely your prerogative to hate WoW if you so choose, but don't act as though your opinion is fact. If you really want to get factual, we could yet again quote the subscription numbers to prove that the vast majority of players in the MMO genre disagree with you. Or perhaps the reviews from pretty much every major gaming site (other than MMORPG.com). The FACT is that most people consider WoW to be a very good game for a very wide assortment of reasons that have already been mentioned on this thread.
Your argument that WoW has somehow caused other developers to 'forget' how to make good games is utter nonsense. The ONLY people at fault for the failure of other games are the companies who made them. They are the ones that attempt (and fail) to copy other successful games and rush titles out long before they are ready. They are the ones who set expectations unrealistically high and then fail to meet them. They are the ones who consistently choose to adopt tried and true design concepts rather than attempt to innovate. Its not like this is something new or somehow the result of WoW's success. Companies were rushing out incomplete garbage MMOs long before WoW ever hit the scene.
Blizzard did nothing but avoid the mistakes of other companies and released a product that was massively superior to the competition in terms of content and quality. They are not to blame for anything other than delivering the ONLY product on the market that meets (or exceeds) most of our expectations of quality. You should be thanking them for finally setting the bar of quality to a point where the genre actually has mainstream attention.
And before you call me a 'fan-boi' and summarily dismiss my arguments, I would like to say that I do not even play WoW. I played it for about 4 years until I got incredibly tired of it. Even though I could not personally stand playing WoW another minute, I can and do appreciate it for what it is...
It is entirely your prerogative to hate WoW if you so choose, but don't act as though your opinion is fact. If you really want to get factual, we could yet again quote the subscription numbers to prove that the vast majority of players in the MMO genre disagree with you. Or perhaps the reviews from pretty much every major gaming site (other than MMORPG.com). The FACT is that most people consider WoW to be a very good game for a very wide assortment of reasons that have already been mentioned on this thread. Your argument that WoW has somehow caused other developers to 'forget' how to make good games is utter nonsense. The ONLY people at fault for the failure of other games are the companies who made them. They are the ones that attempt (and fail) to copy other successful games and rush titles out long before they are ready. They are the ones who set expectations unrealistically high and then fail to meet them. They are the ones who consistently choose to adopt tried and true design concepts rather than attempt to innovate. Its not like this is something new or somehow the result of WoW's success. Companies were rushing out incomplete garbage MMOs long before WoW ever hit the scene. Blizzard did nothing but avoid the mistakes of other companies and released a product that was massively superior to the competition in terms of content and quality. They are not to blame for anything other than delivering the ONLY product on the market that meets (or exceeds) most of our expectations of quality. You should be thanking them for finally setting the bar of quality to a point where the genre actually has mainstream attention. And before you call me a 'fan-boi' and summarily dismiss my arguments, I would like to say that I do not even play WoW. I played it for about 4 years until I got incredibly tired of it. Even though I could not personally stand playing WoW another minute, I can and do appreciate it for what it is...
1. So, because McDonalds is the world's most financially successful restaurant, with the most customers, that means most people agree McDonalds has the best food ever? Your logic is falling apart. Now, let me introduce you to CrazyRacing Kartrider. It has 15,000,000 subscribers. http://kart.nexon.com/kart/page/Main.aspx?URL=Home/Index There goes your popular = good argument.
2. It is true, that WoW cannot be blamed for other game companies choosing to copy tried and true methods, and churn out derivative garbage to generate mass appeal. Games were doing this before everybody was trying to copy WoW- case in point, it's exactly what WoW did.
3. What Blizzard did, is precisely what the most popular company within any market will do- they created a bland, mass-appeal product that has just enough to get people interested, and doesn't threaten, challenge, or do anything wrong enough to drive people away. McDonald's. Starbucks. Wal-Mart. If you want to insist that all of these companies do what they do by having the best possible product of the highest possible quality, then go right ahead and make a fool of yourself saying so. Or, accept that mass appeal =/ quality, not in any other industry, and not in MMOs, and think it through again.
Comments
WoW is the MTV of MMO's... its the most popular, with the least amount of resemblance to what MMO's "were".
WoW did alot of good things for the MMO genre, but for me.. It destroyed what I loved about them. WoW is a GIGANTIC marketing ploy, complete with hats, steins, and whatever other merchandise they can figure out to sell. I mean, you know a game has gone far beyond the boundaries of "popular" when you can buy soft drinks with the characters printed on the can.
Back in the day, MMO's were such a niche genre... only a specific crowd of people played. This was better in many ways because the communities were often more tight nit, and since the only people who played were those who were "in the know" the games were more challenging, and people worked together better.
Now, with WoW.. mmo's are no longer "underground" WoW is the NFL of MMO's. Its as mainstream as it gets. Moms, dads, grandmas, uncles, etc. all play. Most of them have never touched an MMO before. Most of them will never touch any other. But this caused chaos in the community. The WoW community is a cess pool. The adventure and exploration are gone. Its all about number crunching.
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Currently playing:
FFXIV on Behemoth, FFXI on Eden, and Gloria Victis on NA.
Why is it that, whenever someone gets PO'd at THEIR game, people have to blame their games problems on WoW?
Everyone always tries to knock number 1 off its pedestal no matter what they are number 1 in and WoW is no different.
Why does the OP hate WoW? Because whatever game the OP plays probably launches bug-filled patches that take days or even weeks to clean up. WoW can fix a problem in a few hours. WoW has a huge population meaning their is always someone else to interact or play with, while the OP might be playing a game that has a couple of hundred thousand people spread all over the place at many varied times of the day.
In short, people hate WoW because its everything THEIR game is not. Large, well polished, mostly bug free, constantly being tweaked for balance, on a regular schedule of content additions, varied beyond belief.
SWG came out a short while before WoW and, after WoWs success SOE changed their game to mimic WoW. This wasn't WoWs fault, this was SOEs fault. The game AS IT WAS ORIGINALLY INTENDED would have blown WoW clear out of the water. There is no other single franchise more geek friendly than Star Wars AND SOE SCREWED IT UP!
Everyone knows the myriad of ways SOE pumped the pooch, and since listing them all would take a short novella I'll get to the point. Games don't suck because of WoW, games suck because too many people in the industry listen to the vocal minority like the OP and don't follow WoWs path to success. Its not about being a WoW clone, just follow their business practices of putting out a polished, complete and as bug free as possible game.
If you have to hate on someone, hate on the publishers of the game YOU play, after all its their lack of foresight that has screwed up your playing experience.
I respect your right to voice your opinion and reserve the right to blow it right out of the water
Rule number one: If you don't bother to read a post, don't reply either.
But I see the OPs points, for the last few years have the new MMOs just been Wow with less polish and a slightly different world.
On the plus side did Wow bring in many new players and showed that a polished game have a lot bigger chanses of becoming big then one that releases a year too early.
But Wow didn't kill the MMO genre, there are actually coming out non Wow based games now (TOR, GW2, MO, DF and many more).
We do need some change now, it is pathethic that so many MMOs try copy Wow and EQ. But you can't make another MMO that is just like Wow and think your game will be the next big one, WAR learned that the hard way.
All other genres games differs a lot more from eachother than MMOs today, even RTS games use different systems and rules. And every single of them have better AI than the current games, heck Diablo had better AI in many cases.
But all that isn't really Wows fault, it is Mythic, Funcoms, Turbines, SOE, NC soft and the rest that have so little imagination. If Blizzards next game will be too close to Wow it will probably be a failure too, we have gotten all we can out of the old EQ genre now.
But MMOs have a lot of potential. You could do a MMO that is a lot closer to pen and paper RPGs, RTS games, we already seen a few MMOFPS games. Eve and Guildwars proved that a small company making a game their own way can work out fine. And now is companies like Bioware and Bethesda working on MMOs, they will add their specialities to the genre also.
I predict that the MMOs will go a far way for the next 10 years, we have had a slow 10 years now since EQ set the market and Wow added the polish to the genre. But there is no way people will actually play the same thing for another 10 years.
I believe we will have at least one game with more subs than Wow by the end of 2012. Hopefully will we then have a few large games instead of one, that way people wouldn't copy so much from a single game.
You mean like in UO, with the community that assasinated Richard Garriot/Lord British? Was *that* the group of winners you were referring to?
There were, are, and always will be douchebags in these games. It's the nature of the beast. Hiding behind a keyboard makes it far too easy to get away with shit that would get your ass beat in real life, and certain types of people thrive on that.
Katsma is Lithuanian for 'he who drinks used douche fluid'.
Agree.
There were, are, and always will be douchebags in these games. It's the nature of the beast. Hiding behind a keyboard makes it far too easy to get away with shit that would get your ass beat in real life, and certain types of people thrive on that.
LOL, boy isn't that the truth.
Agree.
This is the main problem hardcore gamers have with WoW. It all boils down to this. They no longer feel special. WoW brought the dirty "masses" to the mmorpg community. And everyone knows the emo kids can't do anything considered popular or mainstream.
The reason WoW is so successful is because they take all the good stuff from other games and put it in theirs now if they were unable to do this WoW would not be what it is at it's current state. I could see it being at a few million but not over 10. Pretty much everything "new" being added to the game has been taken from another MMO thus making that MMO fail because the MMO taking this stuff has that and other stuff taken from other games. Till WoW makes original stuff and not stolen stuff it gets nothing from me.
So you think that... because WoW uses good ideas from other games, that it does nothing original.
WoW uses good ideas from other games.
WoW has done nothing original in it's game.
These are unrelated sentences and while the first one is true, the second one is false.
WTB Shadowbane 2
What I wana know is
Where does Age of Conan and Guild Wars fit into this?
They both seem very diffrent from WoW, yet nether of them took the top spot. Whats going on?
The thing is.. WoW has two things that these other companies don't..
A. A proven track record.
B. A relatively large fanbase before they ever thought about making an MMO.
These other companies were already setting themselves up to fail, because well.. the mmo's before them failed. WoW is made by Blizzard.. and that in itself gave WoW the edge over other games. The other games are also not as accessible as WoW. I'd dare say over half the population of WoW are not playing on a gaming machine. Most likely they have store bought budget pcs that just happen to be able to run wow, but won't run much else. And thats the third part of the equation of WoW's huge success..
C. Make it run on a toaster.
No other games on the market in the same bracket as WoW will run on a low end machine.
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Currently playing:
FFXIV on Behemoth, FFXI on Eden, and Gloria Victis on NA.
Don't blame WoW. Blizzard, has always taken their time in making a badass video game, from Blackthorne to date. When you heard about them comming out with their next game, people would ask "When is it going to be released?" and the answer was always "When it's done." Blizzard helped the genre expand...
It's the MASSIVE pressure from the sordid, avaricious publishers that is put on the devs... especially SINCE WoW stomped a mud hole in Everquest 2 as far as sales and player base were concerned... and everything else since then, frankly. Now I said especially. Money has always been the major drive for ANY MMO. It costs money to get the ball rolling, and publishers expect results because everyone else is promising more and better than the person before them. To publishers, the more money the better... because honestly... they have expensive taste, and they have a lot of shit they want to buy... like other indie IP's so they can get rid of the potential competition. To them, it's not about QUALITY, so much as it is QUANTITY.
Secondly, it's the blind-faith gamers that need to be one of the FIRST to play the game, and be the best at being the best in it.
You've all seen how the hype works. EPIC VIDEOS CONTAINING 10 MINUTES OF CINEMATIC CG FOOTAGE OF SHIT YOU'LL NEVER SEE IN GAME WITH A LEGENDARY HEART-POUNDING MUSICAL SCORE!!one1!iiI+1 (Reference Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London, go ahead, look up the cinematic vids on youtube right now... and after that, let me know how the player base is doing.)
Then you pay the $50'ish for your preorder along with the 1000's of others, and post on all the forums and on gamestop about how this game will be the next "<insert MMO> KILLER" based on what you've seen and imagined, not from actually playing it, further amplifying the hype. Then you get a chance at the beta, and don't care if it plays like dogshit on a stick... you tell yourself "It's beta! The game will be perfect on launch!"
Then the game is finally released, and you along with the thousands of people install it only to find that it has indeed NOT gotten any better since the last day you played it in its beta form, but in fact gotten worse. The majority of people who were permitted to "beta test" were in fact just "playing" it more than giving a shit about "testing" it, therefore leaving the exploits and glitches there for immediate future use disrupting the initial game balance. Devs. promise they will eventually get to these, but they have to sift through the inevitable, as Yahtzee would say, "Pants-on-head retarded" questions from the lazy and stupid section of playerbase wanting to know "HOW I MINE FOR FISH" to "PWNZJ00 SAID I WAZ ST00PID SO I SAID I WOULD REPORT HIM CAN YOU BAN HIM HE IS A NUB". Meanwhile in your attempts to justify the farce that you just spent 50 dollars on a beta game you tell yourself that you're getting a "free month" of playtime, and at the end of that they will address the game stopping issues and all will be happy </insert smiley_face>.
After enduring your first FREE MONTH, it's time to evaluate your commitment. It's no longer a "free game" you tell yourself, it's time to actually pay for a subscription for the beta game you purchased in full. You do some research and many of the gaming magazines are trumpeting out their asses with jewel-encrusted horns the success of this game, and how they will offer sliced fried gold to those who stick with them through the coming months. You read the forums looking for "honest and unbiased" opinions under your game... and find out that there are a few posters whom zealot fanbois refer to as "butthurt" and "newbs" being the only ones who hate the game. You're not butthurt or a newb, are you? So therefore you must love the game!
Two months down the road, you realize that the game isn't as finished as it should be having reached "the end"...and realize you'd rather dryhump a cheesegrater than replay the pain you went through the first time to get to where you are at now. You're not the only one. People start to leave in droves, retaining only the righteous following that still hail the game as the second coming of Christ. Faith being not enough to support a MMO, it is eventually put down like a sickly, homeless dog and missed the same.
/rinse
/repeat
Gamers condoning that "plays-like-shit" games are ok, and that they will buy them so long as they are hyped well enough... combined with the obvious drive for publishers wanting to obtain money... especially equal to that of what WoW has pulled off... you get many half-assed, half-finished products that you happily pay full price for, before you even play it. Don't blame Blizzard, blame yourselves.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Unfortunately, grinding is a rather central concept to most MMO's. Without something with replay value (Running a dungeon repeatedly, killing enemies in hope of a specific item, etc), developers are forced to create a great deal more content. To begin with, this might not be such an issue (Though development time and cost would undoubtedly increase). However, as time goes on, players will inevitably experience all the game has to offer. And, seeing as MMO players are a notoriously impatient bunch, we will turn to the developers and demand more. Without grinding, we require a constant stream of new, innovative content. And most developers lack the time, capital, and manpower for that level of development (Ironically, Blizzard may be one of the few companies in the market capable of pulling off such a feat).
In watching this graph, and knowing they represent paying custumors.
It is clear the game is - on average - 4 times better than the competition.
Since 2004, mmorpg's = World of Warcraft for all new people entering the zone.
What? Wow was the first to impliment instanced dungeons? Try EQ, AO and a few others.... WoW just copied everyone else, seriously, the fanboyism here is remarkable.
Sorry to say it but WoW copied EQ1. I think WoW handled the instancing better though. WoW copied EQ1 EQ2 copied WoW. Subject up for debate.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Actually EQ2 was in development a bit before WoW.. for example. WoW's gryphons.... yep.. they were in EQ2 first.
WoW took the things that they liked from other games and polished them and put them in their own. Similar to the way Aion has done.
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Currently playing:
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Ya'll can flame me for defending WoW, but the game's ideas are original. Don't believe me? Play the god damn Warcraft series. Gryphon Riders, all of their franchise and lore is based on the Warcraft Trilogy. Warcraft I, II, Reign of Chaos, The Frozen Throne. HINT HINT? Get over the fact WoW is the dominant MMO at the moment, until someone decides to make a break through MMO. Which will probably end up being the same company that made WOW... Blizzard.
Have fun.
The following is something I think is the case, and not to be taken for the ultimate truth:
WoW is a great game, whatever it did, steal from others, "dumb things down" Blizzard did it good. They refined their game into exactly what a lot of people find or found fun. Hence it became a success.
Now you blame it for hurting the genre by bringing a lot more people / dumbing it down or whatever. You say a lot of crap clones are being released and I agree, but ask yourselves this, how many big budget MMOs were being published every year before WoW ? How many are being published per year after Blizzard has shown that it is possible to make MMOs not niche ?
Sure these games are crap, and they are crap because the companies making them are gunning for a free ride to loads of cash by cloning WoW, which isnt Blizzards fault. The only thing you can really put on Blizzards shoulders is showing that an MMO can be MASSIVELY popular and there by getting all these companies to try and develop MMOs. Now a lot of them suck, but do you really think they will keep committing the mistake of beating WoW at its own game after failing once ?
I dont think they will. What companies will do however is try harder and harder to figure out what will make their game cool and fun to play so that they too get a proper shot at glory like Blizzard.
In conclusion, Blizzard did one thing to the genre; it showed that big bucks can be made in MMOs. Which only means more will try making games. Sure what they are doing at the moment is silly, but at the end of the day, Blizzard brought more big developers into MMOs which cant be a bad thing. They will keep trying until they too make great games in different ballparks which equals win in the long run in terms of number of cool MMOs.
it also showed that you can spoon feed people in an MMO, and make it so it can run on ay system to make money. But at the same time, piss off all the veterans by making them grind for gear, onlt to make it obsolete in the next patch.
1) Veteran gamers are not forced to do anything in wow. There are plenty of other games to play.
2) Grinding for gear was in full effect way back in Everquest, long before wow was even a thought. This isn't something wow brought to the market at all.
3) Yes, every patch outdates all the gear in the game.
First of all, if you want people to take you seriously, it usually is not a good idea to start out by referring to them as fan-bois or douches simply because they have a view contrary to yours. The person you are replying to raised some good arguments and you responded by calling him names. Perhaps if your arguments had more basis in reality you would not need to resort to such methods?
Secondly, the fact that you have played every MMO out there does not make you an expert on anything. We do not know how long you have played any of these titles, nor how far you got in any of them. I too have played pretty much every MMO since Ultima Online, but that does not make my opinion any more valid than anyone else's here.
It is entirely your prerogative to hate WoW if you so choose, but don't act as though your opinion is fact. If you really want to get factual, we could yet again quote the subscription numbers to prove that the vast majority of players in the MMO genre disagree with you. Or perhaps the reviews from pretty much every major gaming site (other than MMORPG.com). The FACT is that most people consider WoW to be a very good game for a very wide assortment of reasons that have already been mentioned on this thread.
Your argument that WoW has somehow caused other developers to 'forget' how to make good games is utter nonsense. The ONLY people at fault for the failure of other games are the companies who made them. They are the ones that attempt (and fail) to copy other successful games and rush titles out long before they are ready. They are the ones who set expectations unrealistically high and then fail to meet them. They are the ones who consistently choose to adopt tried and true design concepts rather than attempt to innovate. Its not like this is something new or somehow the result of WoW's success. Companies were rushing out incomplete garbage MMOs long before WoW ever hit the scene.
Blizzard did nothing but avoid the mistakes of other companies and released a product that was massively superior to the competition in terms of content and quality. They are not to blame for anything other than delivering the ONLY product on the market that meets (or exceeds) most of our expectations of quality. You should be thanking them for finally setting the bar of quality to a point where the genre actually has mainstream attention.
And before you call me a 'fan-boi' and summarily dismiss my arguments, I would like to say that I do not even play WoW. I played it for about 4 years until I got incredibly tired of it. Even though I could not personally stand playing WoW another minute, I can and do appreciate it for what it is...
1. So, because McDonalds is the world's most financially successful restaurant, with the most customers, that means most people agree McDonalds has the best food ever? Your logic is falling apart. Now, let me introduce you to CrazyRacing Kartrider. It has 15,000,000 subscribers. http://kart.nexon.com/kart/page/Main.aspx?URL=Home/Index There goes your popular = good argument.
2. It is true, that WoW cannot be blamed for other game companies choosing to copy tried and true methods, and churn out derivative garbage to generate mass appeal. Games were doing this before everybody was trying to copy WoW- case in point, it's exactly what WoW did.
3. What Blizzard did, is precisely what the most popular company within any market will do- they created a bland, mass-appeal product that has just enough to get people interested, and doesn't threaten, challenge, or do anything wrong enough to drive people away. McDonald's. Starbucks. Wal-Mart. If you want to insist that all of these companies do what they do by having the best possible product of the highest possible quality, then go right ahead and make a fool of yourself saying so. Or, accept that mass appeal =/ quality, not in any other industry, and not in MMOs, and think it through again.