Serious reply, WoW is good enough that spending time and money investing into it is actually worth it. The amount of games I play and pay for to give it a chance never had same investing feeling.
However one game I did love is Atalantica Online which is the daddy of investment (time and money wise) but you still needed to play insane amounts to be really competitive which is a huge shame.
I started playing World of Warcraft when it was released five years ago and it was my first MMORPG. I had played things like action RPGs like Diablo which appealed to the "incremental gamer" in me where playing for the next item, spell or level was the objective. World of Warcraft was easy to get into, the lore was a great draw from previous Warcraft RTS games and many of my friends convinced me to play on the Horde side. I had also played Dungeons and Dragons previously and had been a fan of Blizzard's franchises since Lost Vikings.
As my friends and I started to play the game it was very easy to spend hours killing monsters for gold just so you could go onto the auction house to purchase a weapon that does 2 more DPS than your existing one. Or spending an hour of your game time completing a quest chain or even spending time levelling your Tailoring skill so you could make a wedding dress. It was only when raiding took over as the focal point of the game did the hardcore become very seperated from casual players.
Blizzard have taken measures to make it more "casual" friendly, in a sense they seperate your play time for you with little systems from collecting items to create a total of X items (Primal Fires, Motes etc), heroic dungeons where you farm for emblems which you use as currency and daily quests e.g. "I'll do my 5 dailies then log off". Even the auction house provided many forms of world economy that would be affected whenever Blizzard released another content patch.
In short, it has come a long way from release where you couldn't get anywhere in the game unless you raided with 39 other players which was a logistical nightmare for any guild. I played a Shaman because they used to be a Horde unique class and were a "jack-of-all-trades" which appealed to my RPG preferences. I suppose I played semi-hardcore completing Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and half of Ahn Qiraj 40 before my first guild disbanded then joined a different guild and completed all the content in the Burning Crusade Expansion. I stopped playing shortly after Icecrown Citadel was released during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
It was a fun ride for 5 years and I made many friends online through the experience, some of which I still speak to outside of the game and I think that's why World of Warcraft was so successful; it was easy to pick up and play and many people can now put in what they want and gain from it (as some posters have already mentioned).
WoW is really popular because the game is extremely polished and easy to start playing with. As your character grows so does the combat system which rewards speed.
I have gotten a little tired of WoW at this stage, so I am playing Age of Conan more but that does change the fact that WoW is a good game.
Comments
Serious reply, WoW is good enough that spending time and money investing into it is actually worth it. The amount of games I play and pay for to give it a chance never had same investing feeling.
However one game I did love is Atalantica Online which is the daddy of investment (time and money wise) but you still needed to play insane amounts to be really competitive which is a huge shame.
I started playing World of Warcraft when it was released five years ago and it was my first MMORPG. I had played things like action RPGs like Diablo which appealed to the "incremental gamer" in me where playing for the next item, spell or level was the objective. World of Warcraft was easy to get into, the lore was a great draw from previous Warcraft RTS games and many of my friends convinced me to play on the Horde side. I had also played Dungeons and Dragons previously and had been a fan of Blizzard's franchises since Lost Vikings.
As my friends and I started to play the game it was very easy to spend hours killing monsters for gold just so you could go onto the auction house to purchase a weapon that does 2 more DPS than your existing one. Or spending an hour of your game time completing a quest chain or even spending time levelling your Tailoring skill so you could make a wedding dress. It was only when raiding took over as the focal point of the game did the hardcore become very seperated from casual players.
Blizzard have taken measures to make it more "casual" friendly, in a sense they seperate your play time for you with little systems from collecting items to create a total of X items (Primal Fires, Motes etc), heroic dungeons where you farm for emblems which you use as currency and daily quests e.g. "I'll do my 5 dailies then log off". Even the auction house provided many forms of world economy that would be affected whenever Blizzard released another content patch.
In short, it has come a long way from release where you couldn't get anywhere in the game unless you raided with 39 other players which was a logistical nightmare for any guild. I played a Shaman because they used to be a Horde unique class and were a "jack-of-all-trades" which appealed to my RPG preferences. I suppose I played semi-hardcore completing Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and half of Ahn Qiraj 40 before my first guild disbanded then joined a different guild and completed all the content in the Burning Crusade Expansion. I stopped playing shortly after Icecrown Citadel was released during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
It was a fun ride for 5 years and I made many friends online through the experience, some of which I still speak to outside of the game and I think that's why World of Warcraft was so successful; it was easy to pick up and play and many people can now put in what they want and gain from it (as some posters have already mentioned).
WoW is really popular because the game is extremely polished and easy to start playing with. As your character grows so does the combat system which rewards speed.
I have gotten a little tired of WoW at this stage, so I am playing Age of Conan more but that does change the fact that WoW is a good game.