For me this feature list is boring.. quests, big land, auction house.. yawn. Almost every game has those. It's like those f2p mmos.. at least some of them. "Come to our new awesome f2p mmo.. we have MOSTERS!" yea Like every frigging mmo has monsters. My vote.. No.
People "bash" WoW not because it's the big kid but because it uses the same gameplay forumula that it's used since it was created. It is a pretty damn good formula, but most people just don't want the same thing over and over.
Tell that to any author who has had to keep writing books about the same character just to keep the fans happy. Or any maker of a video game series. Or any restaurant that serves "regulars" who pick the same thing every day.
Some people don't want the same thing over and over, sure...but most? I'm not convinced.
Anyway I think the POINT is that Blizzard, love or hate their game doesn't matter, but they figured out a formula and that formula has resonated and left an extremely powerful and important dent on the MMORPG genre and gaming industry as a whole.
I don't think we'll ever see a game that is different and better until some developers can figure out what WoW did right instead of just discrediting it and just trying to be different without understanding why.
The point is, WoW was in the right place at the right time when a whole slew of new players entered the marketplace for the first time. As such, it was positioned right for a ton of people to join on, people who are not typically gamers and who view WoW as the entirety of online gaming. They didn't do anything particularly right, they were just there when people were looking for something to do with their shiny new fast computers and broadband connections.
That's the only thing that developers don't seem to understand, they're trying to emulate WoW's success when they cannot emulate the conditions that brought about WoW's success. That time is gone and will never come back. You're never going to get another WoW because you're never going to get another set of conditions like that.
The point is, WoW was in the right place at the right time when a whole slew of new players entered the marketplace for the first time. As such, it was positioned right for a ton of people to join on, people who are not typically gamers and who view WoW as the entirety of online gaming. They didn't do anything particularly right, they were just there when people were looking for something to do with their shiny new fast computers and broadband connections.
That's the only thing that developers don't seem to understand, they're trying to emulate WoW's success when they cannot emulate the conditions that brought about WoW's success. That time is gone and will never come back. You're never going to get another WoW because you're never going to get another set of conditions like that.
I have to agree here. That's probably the most intelligent thing I've ever heard in regards to WoW and its success. Well done sir.
You can't use the tools if you don't know they exist... http://www.ic3.gov - Internet Crime Complaint Center - Report cyber crimes to the FBI.
Little experiment here - based off the following feature list, would you be interested in this MMO game?
Features-
Adventure together with thousands of other players simultaneously.
Explore an expansive, seemless world with miles of forests, deserts, snow-blown mountains, and other exotic lands.
Choose from four server types and find the one best suited for your own playing style: Normal, Player versus Player, Role-playing, and Role-playing Player versus Player.
Over ten playable races.
Encounter many familiar and new characters and monsters.
Learn the continuing story by completing a wide variety of challenging quests.
Customize your characters to fit your style for solo play, party and large group play, and for both PvE and PvP.
Journey through an epic world filled with dungeons and raid encounters of different styles and depths.
-Selectable Dungeon Difficulty Settings.
-In addition to dungeons, raids come in both smaller and larger group-size varieties, each offering independent challenges and rewards.
Fight other players in factional open world playe versus player combat over strategic locations, as well as in instanced, balanced matches and in gladiatorial-style player versus player colliseums.
Explore huge capital cities, which serve as major hubs for the races inhabiting them.
Practice various professions to make and enhance custom items, locate and harvest reagents and raw materials, acquire wealth through trade with other players, and more.
Purchase tickets for travel along a number of air routes flown by creatures. For global transportation, travel by boat or airship.
Players can purchase permanent personal mounts, including personal flying mounts.
Join a guild of like-minded players to adventure and conquer the game's many challenges together - or establish your own!
-Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements.
Mail gold, items, or messages to other players, or send them to your own characters for easy muling.
Sell your items or search for items for sale via the automated auction house.
Locate and engage other players with easy-to-use features and tools, including chat channels, friends lists, and animated and audible character expressions.
Customize the game's interface via XML.
Enjoy hundreds of hours of gameplay with new quests, items, and adventures every month.
Sounds good except for classes instead of skills, or you can mix different skills to work on depending on the class you pick (and I mean skills ala uo and eq), and the other bad thing for me is the flying mounts.
Also you could add player built and upgradeable towns for guilds that would start as an outpost, then a village, then a town, then having the option to build a castle, and letting the guild sell their player made items there and add different npc's. Then have the castles be besieged by rival guilds and looted/damaged/destroyed, but not captured, as a way to always keep the action going and giving something for the crafters to do.
Also with the guild towns you can eliminate the auction houses and just have a npc that browses all the published town merchants, so you see all the items with static prices, no auctioning.
But if they are not up to par with WoW, which has had millions upon millions of dollars and years of development, then they are called "paid beta, overhyped garbage, crappy WoW clone" and other derogative terms, which are usually true when compared to a game like WoW.
Therefore most new themepark games which have a very similar feature list to WoW will almost certainly lose most of their subs after the first few months since it is unlikely that they will be as polished or have the same level of content as WoW (WAR, AoC).
But if they are not up to par with WoW, which has had millions upon millions of dollars and years of development, then they are called "paid beta, overhyped garbage, crappy WoW clone" and other derogative terms, which are usually true when compared to a game like WoW.
Therefore most new themepark games which have a very similar feature list to WoW will almost certainly lose most of their subs after the first few months since it is unlikely that they will be as polished or have the same level of content as WoW (WAR, AoC).
Hence why the comparison to other games when creating/playing new MMO's has to stop.
First there was sandbox, it was the only genre for games, then it was theme, now it's sandbox vs theme, there's got to be more, new and different ways to make games, time to step out of the box and pioneer something new that can't be compared to anything else.
Anyway I think the POINT is that Blizzard, love or hate their game doesn't matter, but they figured out a formula and that formula has resonated and left an extremely powerful and important dent on the MMORPG genre and gaming industry as a whole.
I don't think we'll ever see a game that is different and better until some developers can figure out what WoW did right instead of just discrediting it and just trying to be different without understanding why.
The point is, WoW was in the right place at the right time when a whole slew of new players entered the marketplace for the first time. As such, it was positioned right for a ton of people to join on, people who are not typically gamers and who view WoW as the entirety of online gaming. They didn't do anything particularly right, they were just there when people were looking for something to do with their shiny new fast computers and broadband connections.
That's the only thing that developers don't seem to understand, they're trying to emulate WoW's success when they cannot emulate the conditions that brought about WoW's success. That time is gone and will never come back. You're never going to get another WoW because you're never going to get another set of conditions like that.
It's a really good point. Right about when Gen Y was entering the market, WoW launched.
I dont see anything on that feature list that destinguishes it from other games out now, so no I wont try it, I play games looking for something new, I am already bored with the current format.
you are even including game flaws, the instance diffuculty
They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.Malcolm X
A feature list means nothing, it just something that tries to pique gamers interest, its how the features work and come together to produce a fun gaming experience for the gamers. That can only be seen by each gamer, as everyone is individual in their tastes, through a trial of the game. A good game is much much more than the sum of the features within it, its how they come together and the community of the game itself that make a good game.
Comments
For me this feature list is boring.. quests, big land, auction house.. yawn. Almost every game has those. It's like those f2p mmos.. at least some of them. "Come to our new awesome f2p mmo.. we have MOSTERS!" yea Like every frigging mmo has monsters. My vote.. No.
Tell that to any author who has had to keep writing books about the same character just to keep the fans happy. Or any maker of a video game series. Or any restaurant that serves "regulars" who pick the same thing every day.
Some people don't want the same thing over and over, sure...but most? I'm not convinced.
The point is, WoW was in the right place at the right time when a whole slew of new players entered the marketplace for the first time. As such, it was positioned right for a ton of people to join on, people who are not typically gamers and who view WoW as the entirety of online gaming. They didn't do anything particularly right, they were just there when people were looking for something to do with their shiny new fast computers and broadband connections.
That's the only thing that developers don't seem to understand, they're trying to emulate WoW's success when they cannot emulate the conditions that brought about WoW's success. That time is gone and will never come back. You're never going to get another WoW because you're never going to get another set of conditions like that.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I have to agree here. That's probably the most intelligent thing I've ever heard in regards to WoW and its success. Well done sir.
You can't use the tools if you don't know they exist...
http://www.ic3.gov - Internet Crime Complaint Center - Report cyber crimes to the FBI.
http://www.spamcop.net - SpamCop.net - Report spam and scam emails.
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/ - Network Solutions WHOIS - Investigate and reveal suspcious websites.
Sounds good except for classes instead of skills, or you can mix different skills to work on depending on the class you pick (and I mean skills ala uo and eq), and the other bad thing for me is the flying mounts.
Also you could add player built and upgradeable towns for guilds that would start as an outpost, then a village, then a town, then having the option to build a castle, and letting the guild sell their player made items there and add different npc's. Then have the castles be besieged by rival guilds and looted/damaged/destroyed, but not captured, as a way to always keep the action going and giving something for the crafters to do.
Also with the guild towns you can eliminate the auction houses and just have a npc that browses all the published town merchants, so you see all the items with static prices, no auctioning.
Will gamers play themeparks? Obviously
But if they are not up to par with WoW, which has had millions upon millions of dollars and years of development, then they are called "paid beta, overhyped garbage, crappy WoW clone" and other derogative terms, which are usually true when compared to a game like WoW.
Therefore most new themepark games which have a very similar feature list to WoW will almost certainly lose most of their subs after the first few months since it is unlikely that they will be as polished or have the same level of content as WoW (WAR, AoC).
Hence why the comparison to other games when creating/playing new MMO's has to stop.
First there was sandbox, it was the only genre for games, then it was theme, now it's sandbox vs theme, there's got to be more, new and different ways to make games, time to step out of the box and pioneer something new that can't be compared to anything else.
It's a really good point. Right about when Gen Y was entering the market, WoW launched.
I didn't vote. Because feature lists don't tell the story.
What is the setting? Fantasy? Scifi? Superhero?
What races/species?
What are the quests like?
Those are more important than any of the things you listed there.
I dont see anything on that feature list that destinguishes it from other games out now, so no I wont try it, I play games looking for something new, I am already bored with the current format.
you are even including game flaws, the instance diffuculty
They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.Malcolm X
A feature list means nothing, it just something that tries to pique gamers interest, its how the features work and come together to produce a fun gaming experience for the gamers. That can only be seen by each gamer, as everyone is individual in their tastes, through a trial of the game. A good game is much much more than the sum of the features within it, its how they come together and the community of the game itself that make a good game.
F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html