Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Why is WoW so popular?
meharris1
Member Posts: 30
In 2008 Blizzard released a press statement announcing that, ‘its award-winning subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is now played by more than 11.5 million subscribers worldwide.’[1]
My question is: With over 350 MMORPGs in the marketplace (some of-which are free-to-play) why does WoW hold on so well to its subscription based players. It far exceeds anyone else, what's wrong with diversifying once in a while?
Its not that I dislike WoW I just find the ratings compared to other MMORPGs astonishing!
Matt Harris
Comments
Lets see...
I basically destroys any themepark released after it and any themepark that was better than WoW before was changed by greedy devs so they suck now also.
So WoW is the best Themepark game for the Item collection, raider instant gradification crowd (thats like all of the community).
Ill even go as far as to say WoW is better than every sandbox other than Eve also.
The mmo genre is in a pathetic state right now.
We have two games WoW and Eve it's sad imo.
Edit: just to make myself clear I am not hating on WoW, I am disgusted with every other dev (except CCP) that either copied WoW after 04 or changed their game because of WoW.
These devs are the reason this genre is in such bad shape.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
IMO, it's because it is easier compared to other MMO's, that you can log in and get something done in 30 mins-1 hour, almost any computer can play it, and the crazy ad campaign Blizzard had and is doing for it.
Playing - EVE, Wurm
Retired - Final Fantasy XI, Anarchy Online, Mabinogi
Waiting - ArcheAge, Salem
All the tedious stuff was taken out; WoW focuses on fun.
.
Combat is fluid, can be complex and is fun.
.
Always something to do, even when you reach 80
.
That WoW is easier or harder than other MMOs is wrong. It's less tedious.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
The same reason alot of free to play MMO's are played by alot of people. Advertising.
Free to play MMO's are advertised on alot of diffrent gaming sites people will try them out and either like or dotn like em but because they are free alot of people will play those games.
WoW has its succes grnated towards its prequals. the Warcraft RTS games. Alot of RTs players wich liked warcraft alot ( and should its still bloody good :P ) got in touch with MMO's when blizzard released WoW. Because WoW continues the lore and story of the warcraft series people wich normally don't play MMO's tried it out and most liked it. wich gave a very early large playerbase. And because blizzard has alot of money and can advertise like a maniac and because alot of people know eachother in real life, alot of people who don't normmaly play MMO's will try it.
The game itself is pretty easy to comprehend and you dont need a beast of a computer therefor its pretty succesfull. When the people new to MMO's try to go to a diffrent MMO it ussually fails because other MMO's are harsher in several ways and might have bugs here and there. (blizzard likes to supershine evrything).
It's a sad thing really because other games have so much more potential.
I myself played MMO's long before blizzard came out with WoW and my first 3d MMO was EQOA wich was a damn hard game. But im greatfull that i got a chanse to play those games because those games where the basis of MMO gaming. Now evry games tries to look like wow in one way or another.
But uhm yeah peopel cling to WoW because other games fail for their sttanderds of MMO's wich is: i want to get my epics handfed or im out. aka effort = epics. but no effort = the same epics .....
Yep, the Annoyance Factor is way way low in that game. Every other game that has come out has something that annoys the crap out of you and they never fix it. It's easy on the eyes , smooth models(regardless of how cheap looking they are).
Log on , Get something done , Log off , its just that simple.
I've played it for 5 years(nearly) and it was alot of fun. But all good things must come to an end. It did for me when most of the Guilds broke up on my server. This was due to the 10 and 25 man content instead of 40. Everyone spread out into smaller guilds. It seemed like all the crappy players got together and formed a Crappy guild and then there was a ton of them all over the place! I'm not stating this because of my Epeen either.
I was in a pretty decent guild. We made it through Black temple and started tasting a bit of------- , Ya know I can never remember the name of that place LOL , anyway it was on an island. My buddy landed in this one guild he was happy with. I was a shadow priest and he said they need a person to fill in. so I did.
Now, they have been doing Karazahn for a while , and I mean it was 3-4 months. I figured yeah they are just messing around, go in clean up the place in a couple of hours + and be on my way. I was loaded with 3 pieces of T6 so I was way way over geared for the place. So I roll up and gear check everyone, they were in Kara gear and some blues. I was like WTF have you guys been doing?
Sad part is, it took us over 6 hours to clear the place. I told my buddy never to ask again , dont even mention it.
Toward the end of TBC my guildies asked me if I was going to buy the expansion. I told them NO way in hell will i buy that. After this is done, I'm giving my account to my buddy and he can do whatever he wants with it.
He is in that same crappy guild to this day with my toons that are all UNDERGEARED now.
WOW will never ever be the way it was and should be. It really really fell off the edge after TBC.
Even now when WoW really isn't anywhere near as good as it used to be because they've streamlined everything ( a nicer way of saying its been made easier ) it still does offer better pvp than all the other fantasy based mmos I 've tried . Unfortunatly its now almost always confined to arenas or battlegrounds since the cross server looking for a group system that instantly teleports a player to his or her dungeon or raid . WoW is pretty much at its weakest now as an immersive mmo world but its still a good game if you like instanced play . The expansive game world is virtually unused outside of the citys nowdays as its easier to level by grinding the instances than quest . Cataclysm might change that for a short while but within a few months it ll be buisness as usual again . It now for all intents and purposes a mixture of Warhammer and Guild Wars . Which is why I gave up and at present have no plans to return but obvioulsy it appeals to a lot of people .
The top MMOs at the moment aren't MMORPGs. They're F2P casual MMOs. Zynga is at the top right now, and they used Facebook and Myspace to propel themselves to the top. This brings me to the main point up next...
...Blizzard did the same thing that Zynga did years ago: a free social network propelled WoW to the top.
Now, you might be thinking, "What social network?"
Battle.net of course. They had MILLIONS of people online from all over the world just chatting away, not even playing one of their games. Blizzard's marketing guy is a genius because they're about to merge Battle.net with another large social network: Facebook
No other MMORPG developer will match Blizzard because no other MMORPG developer seems to understand the power of social networking. There have been some talk about how SW: TOR or FFXIV are strong contenders against WoW, but they won't even sustain 1 million subscribers 6 months after their launch. BioWare's social networking site is hilariously bad. Square Enix's playonline.com had a lot of potential in the mid 2000s, but they left that goldmine to rot.
wolr dof warcraft is the best game ever because its easy to play but hard to get to the top everyone who says it is to easy has not beatin lich king
So Blizzard tricked us? And all this time I thought I was playing because it was fun. Curse you Blizzard!
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
lets wait and see with StarWars TOR Bioware have a good reputation for producing decent games and StarWars is the ultimate franchise if done well it could be the next big thing in this genre of gaming . FF 14 will be interesting but i think the lack of pvp may hamper it a little and place it firmly in the niche gameing category . Sooner or later there will be a game that challenges WoW for its subscribers . Not so much a matter of an if but a when .
You can have the best singing voice in the world, but it won't matter if no one hears it.
You can make the most beautiful paintings in the world, but it won't matter if no one sees it.
You can create the most fun MMORPG in the world, but it won't matter if no one plays it.
WoW is the most networked MMORPG at the moment. Even this thread is a part of that network for mentioning WoW in the title.
The answer is very simple.
Accessability.
It is a little everything to every one.
Mne eto nado kak zuby v zadnitse.
.
So Blizzard tricked us? And all this time I thought I was playing because it was fun. Curse you Blizzard!
You can have the best singing voice in the world, but it won't matter if no one hears it.
You can make the most beautiful paintings in the world, but it won't matter if no one sees it.
You can create the most fun MMORPG in the world, but it won't matter if no one plays it.
WoW is the most networked MMORPG at the moment. Even this thread is a part of that network for mentioning WoW in the title.
.
I think you're flat out wrong. I think the way the Internet is today and how fast word of mouth spreads, you couldn't keep a good game down even if the government outlawed the game.
.
If it's good, they will come.
.
You might not like it, but millions do.
.
And those millions have tried your games and they have stuck with WoW.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Because a lot of people find it an enjoyable experience.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
As a teacher I can say that many children ages 12-15 want to play the same mmo that their roommates.
Simply as that. WOW is a great mmo but is very childish (as everyone can see) so kids will always play regardless of another mature games such as AOC for example.
Everyday in our world hundreds of kids are playing and discovering wow just to play with their pals and have fun.
You just cant beat that.
What are you talking about? I have a WoW subscription.
To think that any game can be number 1 based solely on its own merits is naive.
What you describe is a part of social networking. Sooo... yea.
Some could try to argue Mcdonald's is the best restaurant just look at the numbers. It works to be all things to all people and more or less pulls it off for the vast majority. It plays to our want and desires for instant gratification.
Is this thread a question or statement?
If question then my take on why WoW is so popular is:
Casual (low leveling curve and it removed all annoying things like long downtimes and forced grouping that many other MMORPGs had at the time it was released)
Easy
Linear
Solid (i.e. not so many bugs)
Low spec. needed to run it
Lots of PvE and PvP content
Blizzard (yes they are a factor as the company holds a high reputation and has a huge, loyal fanbase)
My gaming blog
Thanks to you all for the great replies so far, this is very interesting.
I've recently been examining Internet trends and have become interested in MMORPGs as an online phenomena. I have been looking at other reasons why WoW might be so strong in the marketplace.
There is a data researcher named Bill Tancer who, in his book Click (2009), has suggested a notion called the 'Super-Connector'. The idea is that online products (lets say in this case WoW) can adopt users who attract a great deal of attention to themselves and bring with them a large following.
I was recently looking at Leeroy Jenkins and his contribution to WoW's mythic status amongst MMOs. Jenkins has been good at raising WoWs profile, for example, the LJ youtube video has garnered over 16,000,000 hits, the popular South Park episode Make Love, Not Warcraft features a griefer named Jenkins. These types of gamers must help towards WoWs popularity outside of the hardcore community?
I was wondering if anyone knew any other legendary players of other MMOs who could be considered as super-connectors? Or even if you agree with this idea.
Cheers!
Matt Harris
past glory!most just have sub but almost never play .if they play 5 hour a month its a record
!but check on xfire number,last year or so at the top of season .player were loging 500000 hours!
this year if they log 300000 its a very good period on average its more like 240000
these are easy number veryfiable.wow is fading and the worst is: its fading for the wrong reason.thats what so madning about it!espacially when you think about the huge amount of money they spend on publicity!
cataclysm isnt gona change that !contrary to what a lot of game dev think!blizzard lost their core player a while back
no core player(original wow style content)means overhall lost. since the core player are the one that rave about this feature and that feature.tell me this: how did original wow pull in such big number so quick .advertising was a candle compared to today !yet with just the raving of core player it got to be the top dog!
did blizzard show this year number?are they to 11 million?did they change the way they count ?etc!
Because they're like McDonalds. And just as once upon a time McDs was considered pretty cool and a bit of a treat, now it's become more and more generic, trying to offer something for everyone, increasing its menu size to cater for vegetarians, coeliacs, lactose intolerants and black lesbian dwarf transsexuals. Well, maybe not lactose intolerant. Breakfast menus, coffee shop, bakery and on and on. Doesn't do any of it brilliantly but it does all of it decently.
But the point is that whereas once it was the top dog because people wanted to go there and it could innovate to its own agenda, now the markets getting more and more saturated and it trades on reputation and in order to keep the juggernaut rolling is has to hit as wide a demographic as possible. So it offers what lots of people want whereas once upon a time it offered what noone knew they wanted.
And it will grind to a stop just as WoW2 and the WoW movie hit the market simultaneously, at which point WoW will go F2P and the WoW2 cash cow will waddle into view, udders obscenely full and swaying heavily under the panting breaths of a couple of million excited gamers. Of which I'll probably be one.
The ruptured capillaries in your nose belie the clarity of your wisdom.
I think the reason why World of Warcraft is popular is because:
It was already an established game series
It doesn't take itself far too serious therefore it doesn't grab the D&D connotations that most games of the genre do
It was the first game in the UK atleast to start selling gamecards; meaning that people with credit cards could enjoy it, ie. kids
It has marketting, I have never seen a MMORPG game advertised on prime time TV
It is accesible for all with some good tutorials and a steady learning curve
It is actually deep, fun and a good game
In my opinion WoW only has the numbers it has because 1) CHINA , 2) it's simplified to the lowest casual denominator.. If you want a starter MMO for newcombers, it's the best out there for simplicity.. However, if you want more, then I suggest other MMOs .. BTW.. I call tendious is daily grinding for weeks to build rep.. Is do you call that "fun"? I'm curious..
My opinion on this:
1. Most important, they came at a time where MMO's were rare. Competition wasn't nearly as stiff as today.
2. Their age TODAY is very important because MMO's take time to flesh out. It's far ahead most other current MMO's because of having more time to develop as a whole. MMO's are definitely financially lucrative only as a long-term investment hence the long-term cost of them.
3. Over time, they have been most consistent especially with delivering to their customers. It appears easy to make 1 slip and see an MMO crumble to pieces especially how fast the Internet Age moves things along.
4. I think social media as a whole help bring much of its attention to itself to rake in even more people. I don't think it was so much the marketing since I think the marketing followed its already huge success.
5. They just do it better. They cut out the tedium like an early poster said and aren't afraid to just give the people what they want. Whatever they give, they do it very well in terms of design, quality and programming.
6. Low barrier of entry. Probably not nearly mentioned enough, PC games have been known to require mid-high end PC's at the time WoW released but this game ran on low-end/netbooks to high-end $2000+ PC's and deliver on a wide varying scale. I won't be surprised to see iPhones running WoW in the next 5 years.