Nothing competes with WoW's subscription numbers for a few reasons:
1) Great IP that they OWN
Having a great intellectual property helps make any MMO be successful. People already have a vested interest in the subject, they know something about the subject, they CARE about the subject. This is why any game with a decent IP is going to be a success (except STO, which was probably still a 'success' for the company with box sales and lifetime subs... boy did those people get screwed).
However the key to this is that they OWN the property. They can (and have) rewritten their own lore to justify things they want in-game. Look at the Emo-elves, I mean Blood Elves. Look at the Space aliens, I mean Dranei. Try doing that when you have an IP like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Warhammer where the owner of the IP will smack you down with a law suit so fast you're head will spin.
2) Ease of access (AKA low system requirements)
Compared to most MMOs of its launch, WoW had very low system requirements so just about everyone could get a computer that could play it decently. This ALONE makes WoW hard to compete with because you can buy a basic computer at Walmart and its internal video card will be enough to play WoW. When you get Wal-mart customers access to a PC game, you opened up a LARGE market.
3) WoW is easy...
Okay, you can hate on me now. But when WoW first came out it introduced a lot of things that the well-known (at the time) MMOs didn't do. Soloing to level cap was a huge paradigm shift for me. I realize that has (supposedly) changed with the addition of WotLK, but its still an easy game.
Decurvise and threat meters? SERIOUSLY? If you need threat meters to be a successful raider, you shouldn't be raiding in the first place. I'm sorry, but it takes the actual thinking out of being in a group. Hey, I'm 2 points away from the tank's threat, I best feint or Feign Death. I liked the idea of having to actually think: did I just crit big two times in a tow... I might want to slow down DPS or use my threat reducer at this time. And really, this has made content bad:
DPS race fights where you need to kill the boss before he just insta-kills you. And Decursive, it trivialized fights. You didn't have to pick out your target and apply the right spell. Just prioritize before the fight and hit the button... the addon did all the work for you.
These are what made WoW popular... and then its popularity added these reasons its number 1 in terms of sales:
4) Advertising. No MMO has more mainstream advertising than WoW... and I PITY DA FOOL that thinks differently. Sorry, I don't do Shatnar imitations.
5) The fanboi craze
Sorry, WoW has a fanboi craze out there. Anytime WoW has something in common with another MMO, the fanbois assume that WoW had it first. WoW only made a push for open siege PvP when Warhammer Online came out... despite the fact that stuff was part of the original development. Battlegrounds, SWG had those although no one used them much because they were way buggy.
Someone said LotRO stole their Legendary Items idea from WoW's heirloom items. Not only are they different in concept, but LotRO had them out first. But try convincing the fanbois of that.
I even had someone tell me that everyone goes back to WoW because no one can beat the original MMO... I wanted to beat him with a stick for being so stupid. He even called Warhammer Online a rip-off of WoW... which is funny considering Blizzard settled out of court with GW when Warcraft first came out over the IP... Blizzard still pays a 'please don't sue us' fee to GW every year.
So that's why WoW is number 1. Oh, yeah, they also lie about their sub numbers publicly. Look at the fine print, it includes anyone who's ever paid for a sub fee... including gold farmers they've banned and people like me who haven't played in YEARS...
Don't get me wrong, I'll give WoW its due: its a good game and it made MMOs mainstream. And I'll also give it its due: it has given the MMO community a lot of bad players who don't know how to play. I thought I was a good tank when I played WoW... then I played FFXI and got a lesson on real tanking...
When WoW adds in some amenities like "open:" raids, meaningful PvP, stronger crafting economy and player housing.. THEN I will say they are a "Quality" game aka 5 stars..
That is not quality. That is just different features. No every quality game needs a stronger crafting economy nor player housing.
It is like saying Diablo is a bad game because it has little story.
If you want to sit around in town all day talking to your friends about how leet you are and how bad everone elses gear that runs by you is, WoW is for you.
If you want any sort of depth other then clever quirky quest dialog, seek something else.
WoW's PvP is a joke. The reason its sucessful is because it makes the average joe feel like he can be competitive.
"WHOA MY 10% PROC TRIGGERED 3 TIMES I OWNED!!"
"WHOA MY 2s AND 3s COMBO IS SO OP, WE RULE THIS GAME!!"
WoW Raiding is a joke. "BLAH BLAH MONSTER X WILL NOW USE "IKEELYOU IF YOU DON'T MOVE TO THE RIGHT CORNER OF THE ROOM NOW" ATTACK, PLEASE KINDLY MOVE TO THE LIT UP AREA NOW"
The game makes the overwhelming majority feel powerfull and better then average, when they are not. That is why so many people enjoy WoW. Its like your parents telling you your special everyday when your nothing more then a drooling mongloid.
If you want to sit around in town all day talking to your friends about how leet you are and how bad everone elses gear that runs by you is, WoW is for you.
If you want any sort of depth other then clever quirky quest dialog, seek something else.
WoW's PvP is a joke. The reason its sucessful is because it makes the average joe feel like he can be competitive.
"WHOA MY 10% PROC TRIGGERED 3 TIMES I OWNED!!"
"WHOA MY 2s AND 3s COMBO IS SO OP, WE RULE THIS GAME!!"
WoW Raiding is a joke. "BLAH BLAH MONSTER X WILL NOW USE "IKEELYOU IF YOU DON'T MOVE TO THE RIGHT CORNER OF THE ROOM NOW" ATTACK, PLEASE KINDLY MOVE TO THE LIT UP AREA NOW"
The game makes the overwhelming majority feel powerfull and better then average, when they are not. That is why so many people enjoy WoW. Its like your parents telling you your special everyday when your nothing more then a drooling mongloid.
Leaving aside your obnoxious way of making a point, you are right. Blizzard used a simple and well known fact. Most people respond better to reward than to punishment. They made people that were not video gamers feel like they can achieve something.
I'd disagree with the title- you just have to look at LOTRO for professionalism, scope you can look at Eve Online?
What WoW has is its core fun abilities from its other games. Very few other games have the talent of making those fun abilities. You look at all the mmos- which has the most fun abilities?.. people will say WoW and rightly so. Only other game that I've seen compete with as fun abilities are Guild Wars or a non-mmo: League of legends. (ironically created by ex Blizzard employees- same for Torchwood)
Not that fun abilities are the core of mmorpgs- its like you look at different rpgs. You got some that go for arcadey fun abilities, and you got some that go for more serious rpg abilities. The arcadey fun is probably more drawing, but that doesn't mean to say the serious rpg abilities, and rpg as a whole aren't desired, or appealling. They are. Theres a place for both- and the rpg front, I don't think theres been a serious poster head for in the mmorpg genre.
Save your hatred for other threads; the simple fact is WoW remains king of MMOs for some very simple reasons, amongst which: it works, it has variety, it has a large world full of nooks and crannies to explore, it feels like a real world, and has zones that mostly don't require loading cross boundaries, it has both pve and pvp, its quests are quite fun and creative, there are a gazillion cute touches all over the place, there is genuine character and humor throughout the world etc etc
My question is, why has no other game been able to replicate anything like this?
The simple answer to your question is ... many games have been able to replicate this. Many games offer this. They just don't have the commercial success of WoW.
Just like many restaurants can replicate the quality, variety and value of McDonalds, yet none are as popular. Just like many films are better written, more visually entralling and better acted than Avatar, yet none have made as much money. Just like many drinks taste as good and provide as much of a caffeine rush as Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, yet none sell as much. etc, etc.
WoW is not a unique and beautiful snowflake. It's simply more commercially successful than its peers. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
I think if OP had thought about there thread a little more they would realise that no game lasts forever in terms of popularity and EQ for example was popular from 1999-2004 before new mmorpgs overtook it. Same probably goes for WoW it looks old, and polished new mmos will most likely eat into it's player base. The mmo game scene is becoming reminiscent of a food hall at a mall...yes of course their is McDonalds...but a lot of folks head to the more interesting world cuisine food stalls for fresh and tasty meals, since unless your a kid hamburgers every day gets a tad dull on you pallet.
If you want to sit around in town all day talking to your friends about how leet you are and how bad everone elses gear that runs by you is, WoW is for you.
If you want any sort of depth other then clever quirky quest dialog, seek something else.
WoW's PvP is a joke. The reason its sucessful is because it makes the average joe feel like he can be competitive.
"WHOA MY 10% PROC TRIGGERED 3 TIMES I OWNED!!"
"WHOA MY 2s AND 3s COMBO IS SO OP, WE RULE THIS GAME!!"
WoW Raiding is a joke. "BLAH BLAH MONSTER X WILL NOW USE "IKEELYOU IF YOU DON'T MOVE TO THE RIGHT CORNER OF THE ROOM NOW" ATTACK, PLEASE KINDLY MOVE TO THE LIT UP AREA NOW"
The game makes the overwhelming majority feel powerfull and better then average, when they are not. That is why so many people enjoy WoW. Its like your parents telling you your special everyday when your nothing more then a drooling mongloid.
When was the last time you played WoW? Seems like you've been out of the loop for a while. It's cool though, keep talking like you know what you're talking about. There haven't been procs ruling things since BC. 2's and 3's? 2's don't even count towards much anymore other than points. Another person that knows nothing and is completely wrong. Gotta love it.
Move to the lit up area? You just make yourself look soo childish when you make things up like this. It's pathetic really. You can't support your QQ enough so you start twisting things up?
You think WoW is so easy so that means you did the Yogg-saron fight right? You did Naxxramas in classic right? You did Twilight Vanquisher, Undying, the ToGC tribute run, and all of the ICC hardmodes? I doubt it. I doubt you even got the red proto drake through heroic achievements.
It's funny. I wager 90% of the people that say WoW is sooo easy both PvE or PvP haven't even broken 1800 in the arena ratings or they downed a raid without any hardmodes in 10man and felt like they broke the game. Chances are their guild probably carried them through it too.
To answer the OP: They have something for everyone. They have plenty for casuals, questers, achievement/title farmers, raiders, PvPers, casuals, soloers, and of course, girls. I play WoW with my girlfriend, she loves the game. In my guild there are a handful of couples (we tend to enjoy guilds with other couples more so there isn't that ackwardness when she talks in vent).
Also worth noting, the improper use of 'your' instead of "you're" in this thread makes me die a little inside.
I think if OP had thought about there thread a little more they would realise that no game lasts forever in terms of popularity and EQ for example was popular from 1999-2004 before new mmorpgs overtook it. Same probably goes for WoW it looks old, and polished new mmos will most likely eat into it's player base. The mmo game scene is becoming reminiscent of a food hall at a mall...yes of course their is McDonalds...but a lot of folks head to the more interesting world cuisine food stalls for fresh and tasty meals, since unless your a kid hamburgers every day gets a tad dull on you pallet.
I think the entire point of the post was that no game should dominate the market for this long and it is very unnatural for wow to have done so.
That is until one looks at what the completition has to offer. There has been 6 years of very bland and unfinished mmos rushed to release only to fall down hard. Even though the market has tens and tens of millions of new gamers who have joined, most mmos cannot even do half as well as older mmos.
People can criticize wow all they want, but if you look at the more popular and successful mmos on the market they all predate 2005. Why no other company has had the ability to litterly walk in and take a huge chunk of the mmo playerbase is just unbelievable. Everything has been ripe for this to happen for years, but game developers keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
Save your hatred for other threads; the simple fact is WoW remains king of MMOs for some very simple reasons, amongst which: it works, it has variety, it has a large world full of nooks and crannies to explore, it feels like a real world, and has zones that mostly don't require loading cross boundaries, it has both pve and pvp, its quests are quite fun and creative, there are a gazillion cute touches all over the place, there is genuine character and humor throughout the world etc etc
My question is, why has no other game been able to replicate anything like this?
The simple answer to your question is ... many games have been able to replicate this. Many games offer this. They just don't have the commercial success of WoW.
Just like many restaurants can replicate the quality, variety and value of McDonalds, yet none are as popular. Just like many films are better written, more visually entralling and better acted than Avatar, yet none have made as much money. Just like many drinks taste as good and provide as much of a caffeine rush as Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, yet none sell as much. etc, etc.
WoW is not a unique and beautiful snowflake. It's simply more commercially successful than its peers. Nothing more, nothing less.
It also has a 93% rating on Metacritics, and the two expansions are rated at 91%.
Wow had great programmers but it isn't the only MMO that has that kind of polish, so does Guildwars.
The sad truth is that companies like Turbine, SOE, NC soft and FunCom don't have that competence.
Besides that i don't see anything that Wow did really great, it has it's good points and bad points, but Blizzard programmers are both to release things with little bugs and fixing the ones they misses anyway. Blizzard also are good at adds and giving their fans what they want of course but not as good as they are at coding.
The reason Guilwars never got bigger than it was is economical, it was made on a low budget that forced the team to instance and take many other shortcuts, it still sold more than 8 million copies with less than a 10th of Wows budget.
If other companies want to sell as well as Wow they need a few really competent programmers, but the only other companies that makes MMO that has that is ANET and Bioware.
SOE will never get a really large game until they have better programmers and wait until the game is done before releasing it.
I think however that both TOR and GW2 will be huge, and so will whatever Blizzard makes next. Those companies both deliver "polish" and wait releasing a game until it is done and that is what sells a lot of games.
Ok had to reply to this thread, WOW is not the end all beat all in MMO's. Heck it is only the most successful simply because its game play and design are for the average joe. You don't have to be a genious to figure out how to play WOW, and to succeed at it doesn't take alot of work even. It appeals to the broadest crowd possible.
The OP kept saying, 6 years blah, your right Blizzard deserves respect for making a MMO that appeals to so many and having it last this long. Even though the time it will last is going to be for MANY MANY years I still prefer looking back to the older and IMO better MMO's of the day. The ones that catered to, and I mean no dissrespect, but real gamers. The people that would spend hours playing one game to get 1 item, then have it stolen by some guy who just logs on and takes it before you.
Ultima Online 1997 - I never played it, I wasn't into MMO's at the time but I am told this game was amazing and had very good commercal success, what is that 13 years it has being out and I understand it is still going?
Everquest 1999 - Again I never played it I was still not into MMO's at the time, but after 11 years people still refer to it as EverCrack because it was so addictive, oh and the game is still going.
Asheron's Call 1999 - The first MMO that I ever played, and it is still going as well, almost a full 11 years later and they are still releasing MONTHLY free content patches and new features, probably one of the most patched MMO's to date. Also this game is still going, and still a great game.
I know I probably left out quite a few other MMO's but those to me were the most popular for the day, that is why I used them. So I put to you is WOW better then any of these? Some people are going to say, hell yea just based on the graphics, but in reality everyone is going to answer different for different reasons.
Success to me is not measured by how many subs they have or how much money they make every month, instead it is messured by there longevity. In that case WOW has years to go before I crowns your giving it.
The primary reason why every single new release has been frankly lacklustre when compared to WOW is because some Marketting bod at all these companies has pointed a finger at WOW and said .
MAKE THE GAME WOW LIKE
and so we have game after game after game that is nothing more than a WOW clone , the reason that they have been unable to attract people away from WOW is because the only other option for first time wow players is a WOW type game but with a different skin and not as good.
You count how many games that have been released since wow and how many of them could be just called new skin wow.
Wow also has the added benefit that the game engine will run on ANYTHING even those cheapo netbook computers even the lowest spec one will run WOW ok it wont be amazing but very few moderm MMO's or even OLD ones will run on a netbook.
Branding how many other MMO's activly advertise outside of the internet, wow is the only that i have seen advertisments in the cinema and on television.
Wow has also had 6 years of continual development with money pouring into the company they can afford to take time and effort over bug testing and implementation, they have funds for decent customer support that dont take three days to answer a question (im just guessing that last bit but warhammer took 3 days to respond to a stuck question)
The other problem is that nearly every single MMO that goes to market nowadays is broken its unfinished and you have to wait at least 2 years for it to be finished. Look at startrek online yeah cryptic created a complete MMO in 2 years. But hell does it show zero replayable conent, no proper crafting, pvp thats just rubbish, and what is the gamer left with having to wait months between seasons for extra content which lets just say the season 2 content lasted me an afternoon.
I think games companies have lost the plot with MMORPG's they are too fast too down your neck with not enough down time to get to know your comunity and so much emphasis on INSTANCING every god dam game. it looses its appeal pretty quickly.
Im not saying WOW is brilliant amazing peice of work but they have managed to balance reward invested vs time spent.
When developers stop chasing the dragon and actually make a game they themselves are willing to play AND enjoy, then you will see more mmos with scope and professionalism. But if they keep trying to cater to the bickering minority, they'll always find that even the bickerers are willing to abandon their version of a mmo when the open-minded majority continues to completely ignore them without even breaking stride to the next crowd-pleasing mmo:
GW2
SWTOR
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I think the entire point of the post was that no game should dominate the market for this long and it is very unnatural for wow to have done so.
That is until one looks at what the completition has to offer. There has been 6 years of very bland and unfinished mmos rushed to release only to fall down hard. Even though the market has tens and tens of millions of new gamers who have joined, most mmos cannot even do half as well as older mmos.
People can criticize wow all they want, but if you look at the more popular and successful mmos on the market they all predate 2005. Why no other company has had the ability to litterly walk in and take a huge chunk of the mmo playerbase is just unbelievable. Everything has been ripe for this to happen for years, but game developers keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
Nothing competes with WoW's subscription numbers for a few reasons:
1) Great IP that they OWN
Having a great intellectual property helps make any MMO be successful. People already have a vested interest in the subject, they know something about the subject, they CARE about the subject. This is why any game with a decent IP is going to be a success (except STO, which was probably still a 'success' for the company with box sales and lifetime subs... boy did those people get screwed).
However the key to this is that they OWN the property. They can (and have) rewritten their own lore to justify things they want in-game. Look at the Emo-elves, I mean Blood Elves. Look at the Space aliens, I mean Dranei. Try doing that when you have an IP like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Warhammer where the owner of the IP will smack you down with a law suit so fast you're head will spin.
Oh the pain.
2) Ease of access (AKA low system requirements)
Compared to most MMOs of its launch, WoW had very low system requirements so just about everyone could get a computer that could play it decently. This ALONE makes WoW hard to compete with because you can buy a basic computer at Walmart and its internal video card will be enough to play WoW. When you get Wal-mart customers access to a PC game, you opened up a LARGE market.
You're exactly right. Some of these other games have tried so hard to make their game look good that they don't realize how badly they are limiting themselves. However, WoW didn't run so well when it came out.
3) WoW is easy...
Okay, you can hate on me now. But when WoW first came out it introduced a lot of things that the well-known (at the time) MMOs didn't do. Soloing to level cap was a huge paradigm shift for me. I realize that has (supposedly) changed with the addition of WotLK, but its still an easy game.
You can level up solo now more-so than ever. They turned almost every (group) elite quest into non-elite (Jintha' Alor etc if you remember that). However, the introduction of the dungeon finder helped offset that. You can do all the dungeons that you would otherwise miss leveling up because there weren't enough people on your server, in your level range, at that specific time. Some people hate it because they enjoy mundane tasks (imo) like travel and feel like it somehow takes away from the world.
Decurvise and threat meters? SERIOUSLY? If you need threat meters to be a successful raider, you shouldn't be raiding in the first place. I'm sorry, but it takes the actual thinking out of being in a group. Hey, I'm 2 points away from the tank's threat, I best feint or Feign Death. I liked the idea of having to actually think: did I just crit big two times in a tow... I might want to slow down DPS or use my threat reducer at this time. And really, this has made content bad:
I'm sorry you feel that way. If anything, it opened up the game so much more. It's much less about being afraid of your own group and more about pushing your group to the limit. Threat meters allow you to maximize your guilds efficiency. I don't see how being afraid of your tank, or yourself, is fun, but to each his own.
DPS race fights where you need to kill the boss before he just insta-kills you. And Decursive, it trivialized fights. You didn't have to pick out your target and apply the right spell. Just prioritize before the fight and hit the button... the addon did all the work for you.
Decursive is just a mod that adds a mouse-over macro to your dispels. I'm going to assume you haven't played the game in a long time (think you hinted at not playing lich king). They changed it so you don't just click the button and it auto-targets. You have to manually target with the right click. As a druid I left click a name/box to remove a curse or right click to apply abolish poison.
Same thing with healbot, it just adds a mouse-over so you don't have to click a target to target them, then cast your spell. You can hover your mouse over their name and cast your spell. You're still essentially targeting them, there's just 1 less click involved. When you're healing in a 25man, that's just less carpal tunnel/tedius garbage.
Sounds good to me. I don't bother with healbot, I i just have classic mouse-over macros for my spells, but I hear people hate on healbot like it killed healing, when in reality it just made it just reduced 1 click per heal.
These are what made WoW popular... and then its popularity added these reasons its number 1 in terms of sales:
4) Advertising. No MMO has more mainstream advertising than WoW... and I PITY DA FOOL that thinks differently. Sorry, I don't do Shatnar imitations.
I loved the Toyota Tacoma commercial. I think it wsa the Tacoma, but it was hilarious "Aw come on there are no trucks in warcraft!"
5) The fanboi craze
Sorry, WoW has a fanboi craze out there. Anytime WoW has something in common with another MMO, the fanbois assume that WoW had it first. WoW only made a push for open siege PvP when Warhammer Online came out... despite the fact that stuff was part of the original development. Battlegrounds, SWG had those although no one used them much because they were way buggy.
This is true somewhat, however it's not as simple as "fanboi craze". It's actually that WoW is the first MMO for a lot of the people that play it. There are a lot of people that I know who won't touch another MMO. Remember how you feel about your first MMO.
Someone said LotRO stole their Legendary Items idea from WoW's heirloom items. Not only are they different in concept, but LotRO had them out first. But try convincing the fanbois of that.
So because one person says something you're going to.. nevermind you should know better.
I even had someone tell me that everyone goes back to WoW because no one can beat the original MMO... I wanted to beat him with a stick for being so stupid. He even called Warhammer Online a rip-off of WoW... which is funny considering Blizzard settled out of court with GW when Warcraft first came out over the IP... Blizzard still pays a 'please don't sue us' fee to GW every year.
Again, remember how many people are playing WoW as their first MMO.
So that's why WoW is number 1. Oh, yeah, they also lie about their sub numbers publicly. Look at the fine print, it includes anyone who's ever paid for a sub fee... including gold farmers they've banned and people like me who haven't played in YEARS...
This is what every company does... Why do you think f2p's are able to boast such big number? Come on man..
Don't get me wrong, I'll give WoW its due: its a good game and it made MMOs mainstream. And I'll also give it its due: it has given the MMO community a lot of bad players who don't know how to play. I thought I was a good tank when I played WoW... then I played FFXI and got a lesson on real tanking...
Amen. Some of these guys are so stubborn. The average age in WoW is something like 28. I haven't been in a guild with someone that was younger than 18/19 since Wotlk. I haven't been in a guild with someone that was younger than 20/21 in months.
To be fair, he did say "time investment". He's right with that regards, older people don't have ridiculous amounts of time to spend on games anymore. Most of us aren't looking for a second virtual-life with "work to do".
Yes I'm sure that Toyoyta Tacoma spot was just aimed at little toddlers right? I loved that commercial. "I am the Law Giver!!"
The people they use to play the game/ talk are clearly not young kids.
You know, maybe they hired some people to do some market research. Maybe someone in that group said "Hey guys, the ones with the credit cards are 18+."
WoW was designed from the ground up to be an MMO for people who never would have touched an MMO while still offering basic features that current MMO players liked. The game was made to be easily accessable to the masses and not to be a time vampire.
Most MMOs were made to keep you playing through difficult mechanics that took time (and sometimes large amounts of it) to accomplish something. WoW was designed to allow people to accomplish more in far less time. No longer would you have to devote precious time (something a lot of people who play WoW had short supply of) to getting through the level game or the raid game.
Blizzard just wanted to shorten the gap between the elite player (those who got to experience everything) and the casual player (those who only got to experience what their playtime allowed). They just wanted a game where everyone was on a more equal playing field. And thats what they made.
As for professionalism, a lot of the people who worked on WoW were people who have been playing MMOs for a long time. They experienced issues with poor dev communication and poor customer support. They knew players liked being kept in the loop, so thats what they try to do. They know players want competent support when they have game/account issues, so they try to be as good as they can (and for the amount of players the game has, I would have to say they do a better job than many other smaller games with inhouse support teams).
Basically Blizzard learned that if you give the players as much as you can, the money will follow. Other companies are still on the idea of 'get the money and give the players something in return - even if its something they dont want'.
While many of the posters here don't like WoW (myself included) a lot of us can easily see all of the above to be true when it comes to Blizzard and their game. Blizzard isn't an evil company bent on destroying the MMO genre, they are just a company that wanted to make a game that appealed to both the main MMO audience and people who have never heard of the genre.
Now if other companies would look at how Blizzard works and start from there instead of looking at what Blizzard made, newer MMOs might fare a bit better.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Save your hatred for other threads; the simple fact is WoW remains king of MMOs for some very simple reasons, amongst which: it works, it has variety, it has a large world full of nooks and crannies to explore, it feels like a real world, and has zones that mostly don't require loading cross boundaries, it has both pve and pvp, its quests are quite fun and creative, there are a gazillion cute touches all over the place, there is genuine character and humor throughout the world etc etc
My question is, why has no other game been able to replicate anything like this?
WoW is a business success. And is king of business in MMO"s. It is a gaming failure. Seeing as how most of the player base was not gamers before WoW.
There werent that many MMO on the market at that time MMO were still in its cradle and most people refused to pay a monthly fee for a game they allready bought, the singleplayer market were still huge while MMO were just a niche.
Blizzard knew that World of Warcraft would be huge beacuse of one thing.
Warcraft1,2 and 3, Blizzard allready had a HUGE fanbase allready who loved the Warcraft world and lore, and Diablo and Starcraft so It don't take a rocket scientist to figure out what this is going.
For the first time there were a huge amount of gamers who never ever played a MMO before beacuse of that montly fee but all of the sudden Blizzard working on thier beloved Warcraft world in a MMO form and that was the nail that draged in alot of new gamers to the MMO world.
Blizzard used Everquest as a templat to create WoW and basiicly stoled most of the ideas and called it thier own.
If Blizzard didnt do WoW instead they did a world of thier own from scratch I doubt it would hit as much as WoW did.
Save your hatred for other threads; the simple fact is WoW remains king of MMOs for some very simple reasons, amongst which: it works, it has variety, it has a large world full of nooks and crannies to explore, it feels like a real world, and has zones that mostly don't require loading cross boundaries, it has both pve and pvp, its quests are quite fun and creative, there are a gazillion cute touches all over the place, there is genuine character and humor throughout the world etc etc
My question is, why has no other game been able to replicate anything like this?
WoW is a business success. And is king of business in MMO"s. It is a gaming failure. Seeing as how most of the player base was not gamers before WoW.
That logic makes zero sense. If anything it says just the opposite. If your product is good enough to BRING consumers into your industry, you're doing something right.
The Problem, as to why there are no MMORPG games that come close to WoW, is simply the fact that the WoW haters dont want their fn fav game to be anything like WoW.
By this I mean, even if a idea in WoW was taken from some other popular concept, the WoW haters will disapprove that idea in future games simply because its in WoW.
With a forum fanbase with this kind of mindset, imagine the damage they can have on the Development of new and current MMORPGs.
I think if OP had thought about there thread a little more they would realise that no game lasts forever in terms of popularity and EQ for example was popular from 1999-2004 before new mmorpgs overtook it. Same probably goes for WoW it looks old, and polished new mmos will most likely eat into it's player base. The mmo game scene is becoming reminiscent of a food hall at a mall...yes of course their is McDonalds...but a lot of folks head to the more interesting world cuisine food stalls for fresh and tasty meals, since unless your a kid hamburgers every day gets a tad dull on you pallet.
I think the entire point of the post was that no game should dominate the market for this long and it is very unnatural for wow to have done so.
That is until one looks at what the completition has to offer. There has been 6 years of very bland and unfinished mmos rushed to release only to fall down hard. Even though the market has tens and tens of millions of new gamers who have joined, most mmos cannot even do half as well as older mmos.
People can criticize wow all they want, but if you look at the more popular and successful mmos on the market they all predate 2005. Why no other company has had the ability to litterly walk in and take a huge chunk of the mmo playerbase is just unbelievable. Everything has been ripe for this to happen for years, but game developers keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
Well, most of the txt was a homage at their Blizzard gaming shrine. Going on to the wider point you are bringing to the table it is worth bearing in mind that there have been some spectacular mmo fails post-WoW that make Blizzard look good, eg AoC, WAR, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard. But, given the age of WoW the coming next gen mmos could well take large chunks of the mmo market. Will be gushed and geeked when XIV carves out a million subs post launch with its unique blend of thoughtful immersive PvE.
Comments
Nothing competes with WoW's subscription numbers for a few reasons:
1) Great IP that they OWN
Having a great intellectual property helps make any MMO be successful. People already have a vested interest in the subject, they know something about the subject, they CARE about the subject. This is why any game with a decent IP is going to be a success (except STO, which was probably still a 'success' for the company with box sales and lifetime subs... boy did those people get screwed).
However the key to this is that they OWN the property. They can (and have) rewritten their own lore to justify things they want in-game. Look at the Emo-elves, I mean Blood Elves. Look at the Space aliens, I mean Dranei. Try doing that when you have an IP like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Warhammer where the owner of the IP will smack you down with a law suit so fast you're head will spin.
2) Ease of access (AKA low system requirements)
Compared to most MMOs of its launch, WoW had very low system requirements so just about everyone could get a computer that could play it decently. This ALONE makes WoW hard to compete with because you can buy a basic computer at Walmart and its internal video card will be enough to play WoW. When you get Wal-mart customers access to a PC game, you opened up a LARGE market.
3) WoW is easy...
Okay, you can hate on me now. But when WoW first came out it introduced a lot of things that the well-known (at the time) MMOs didn't do. Soloing to level cap was a huge paradigm shift for me. I realize that has (supposedly) changed with the addition of WotLK, but its still an easy game.
Decurvise and threat meters? SERIOUSLY? If you need threat meters to be a successful raider, you shouldn't be raiding in the first place. I'm sorry, but it takes the actual thinking out of being in a group. Hey, I'm 2 points away from the tank's threat, I best feint or Feign Death. I liked the idea of having to actually think: did I just crit big two times in a tow... I might want to slow down DPS or use my threat reducer at this time. And really, this has made content bad:
DPS race fights where you need to kill the boss before he just insta-kills you. And Decursive, it trivialized fights. You didn't have to pick out your target and apply the right spell. Just prioritize before the fight and hit the button... the addon did all the work for you.
These are what made WoW popular... and then its popularity added these reasons its number 1 in terms of sales:
4) Advertising. No MMO has more mainstream advertising than WoW... and I PITY DA FOOL that thinks differently. Sorry, I don't do Shatnar imitations.
5) The fanboi craze
Sorry, WoW has a fanboi craze out there. Anytime WoW has something in common with another MMO, the fanbois assume that WoW had it first. WoW only made a push for open siege PvP when Warhammer Online came out... despite the fact that stuff was part of the original development. Battlegrounds, SWG had those although no one used them much because they were way buggy.
Someone said LotRO stole their Legendary Items idea from WoW's heirloom items. Not only are they different in concept, but LotRO had them out first. But try convincing the fanbois of that.
I even had someone tell me that everyone goes back to WoW because no one can beat the original MMO... I wanted to beat him with a stick for being so stupid. He even called Warhammer Online a rip-off of WoW... which is funny considering Blizzard settled out of court with GW when Warcraft first came out over the IP... Blizzard still pays a 'please don't sue us' fee to GW every year.
So that's why WoW is number 1. Oh, yeah, they also lie about their sub numbers publicly. Look at the fine print, it includes anyone who's ever paid for a sub fee... including gold farmers they've banned and people like me who haven't played in YEARS...
Don't get me wrong, I'll give WoW its due: its a good game and it made MMOs mainstream. And I'll also give it its due: it has given the MMO community a lot of bad players who don't know how to play. I thought I was a good tank when I played WoW... then I played FFXI and got a lesson on real tanking...
When WoW adds in some amenities like "open:" raids, meaningful PvP, stronger crafting economy and player housing.. THEN I will say they are a "Quality" game aka 5 stars..
That is not quality. That is just different features. No every quality game needs a stronger crafting economy nor player housing.
It is like saying Diablo is a bad game because it has little story.
If you want to sit around in town all day talking to your friends about how leet you are and how bad everone elses gear that runs by you is, WoW is for you.
If you want any sort of depth other then clever quirky quest dialog, seek something else.
WoW's PvP is a joke. The reason its sucessful is because it makes the average joe feel like he can be competitive.
"WHOA MY 10% PROC TRIGGERED 3 TIMES I OWNED!!"
"WHOA MY 2s AND 3s COMBO IS SO OP, WE RULE THIS GAME!!"
WoW Raiding is a joke. "BLAH BLAH MONSTER X WILL NOW USE "IKEELYOU IF YOU DON'T MOVE TO THE RIGHT CORNER OF THE ROOM NOW" ATTACK, PLEASE KINDLY MOVE TO THE LIT UP AREA NOW"
The game makes the overwhelming majority feel powerfull and better then average, when they are not. That is why so many people enjoy WoW. Its like your parents telling you your special everyday when your nothing more then a drooling mongloid.
Leaving aside your obnoxious way of making a point, you are right. Blizzard used a simple and well known fact. Most people respond better to reward than to punishment. They made people that were not video gamers feel like they can achieve something.
I'd disagree with the title- you just have to look at LOTRO for professionalism, scope you can look at Eve Online?
What WoW has is its core fun abilities from its other games. Very few other games have the talent of making those fun abilities. You look at all the mmos- which has the most fun abilities?.. people will say WoW and rightly so. Only other game that I've seen compete with as fun abilities are Guild Wars or a non-mmo: League of legends. (ironically created by ex Blizzard employees- same for Torchwood)
Not that fun abilities are the core of mmorpgs- its like you look at different rpgs. You got some that go for arcadey fun abilities, and you got some that go for more serious rpg abilities. The arcadey fun is probably more drawing, but that doesn't mean to say the serious rpg abilities, and rpg as a whole aren't desired, or appealling. They are. Theres a place for both- and the rpg front, I don't think theres been a serious poster head for in the mmorpg genre.
The simple answer to your question is ... many games have been able to replicate this. Many games offer this. They just don't have the commercial success of WoW.
Just like many restaurants can replicate the quality, variety and value of McDonalds, yet none are as popular. Just like many films are better written, more visually entralling and better acted than Avatar, yet none have made as much money. Just like many drinks taste as good and provide as much of a caffeine rush as Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, yet none sell as much. etc, etc.
WoW is not a unique and beautiful snowflake. It's simply more commercially successful than its peers. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
When was the last time you played WoW? Seems like you've been out of the loop for a while. It's cool though, keep talking like you know what you're talking about. There haven't been procs ruling things since BC. 2's and 3's? 2's don't even count towards much anymore other than points. Another person that knows nothing and is completely wrong. Gotta love it.
Move to the lit up area? You just make yourself look soo childish when you make things up like this. It's pathetic really. You can't support your QQ enough so you start twisting things up?
You think WoW is so easy so that means you did the Yogg-saron fight right? You did Naxxramas in classic right? You did Twilight Vanquisher, Undying, the ToGC tribute run, and all of the ICC hardmodes? I doubt it. I doubt you even got the red proto drake through heroic achievements.
It's funny. I wager 90% of the people that say WoW is sooo easy both PvE or PvP haven't even broken 1800 in the arena ratings or they downed a raid without any hardmodes in 10man and felt like they broke the game. Chances are their guild probably carried them through it too.
To answer the OP: They have something for everyone. They have plenty for casuals, questers, achievement/title farmers, raiders, PvPers, casuals, soloers, and of course, girls. I play WoW with my girlfriend, she loves the game. In my guild there are a handful of couples (we tend to enjoy guilds with other couples more so there isn't that ackwardness when she talks in vent).
Also worth noting, the improper use of 'your' instead of "you're" in this thread makes me die a little inside.
I think the entire point of the post was that no game should dominate the market for this long and it is very unnatural for wow to have done so.
That is until one looks at what the completition has to offer. There has been 6 years of very bland and unfinished mmos rushed to release only to fall down hard. Even though the market has tens and tens of millions of new gamers who have joined, most mmos cannot even do half as well as older mmos.
People can criticize wow all they want, but if you look at the more popular and successful mmos on the market they all predate 2005. Why no other company has had the ability to litterly walk in and take a huge chunk of the mmo playerbase is just unbelievable. Everything has been ripe for this to happen for years, but game developers keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
It also has a 93% rating on Metacritics, and the two expansions are rated at 91%.
Wow had great programmers but it isn't the only MMO that has that kind of polish, so does Guildwars.
The sad truth is that companies like Turbine, SOE, NC soft and FunCom don't have that competence.
Besides that i don't see anything that Wow did really great, it has it's good points and bad points, but Blizzard programmers are both to release things with little bugs and fixing the ones they misses anyway. Blizzard also are good at adds and giving their fans what they want of course but not as good as they are at coding.
The reason Guilwars never got bigger than it was is economical, it was made on a low budget that forced the team to instance and take many other shortcuts, it still sold more than 8 million copies with less than a 10th of Wows budget.
If other companies want to sell as well as Wow they need a few really competent programmers, but the only other companies that makes MMO that has that is ANET and Bioware.
SOE will never get a really large game until they have better programmers and wait until the game is done before releasing it.
I think however that both TOR and GW2 will be huge, and so will whatever Blizzard makes next. Those companies both deliver "polish" and wait releasing a game until it is done and that is what sells a lot of games.
Ok had to reply to this thread, WOW is not the end all beat all in MMO's. Heck it is only the most successful simply because its game play and design are for the average joe. You don't have to be a genious to figure out how to play WOW, and to succeed at it doesn't take alot of work even. It appeals to the broadest crowd possible.
The OP kept saying, 6 years blah, your right Blizzard deserves respect for making a MMO that appeals to so many and having it last this long. Even though the time it will last is going to be for MANY MANY years I still prefer looking back to the older and IMO better MMO's of the day. The ones that catered to, and I mean no dissrespect, but real gamers. The people that would spend hours playing one game to get 1 item, then have it stolen by some guy who just logs on and takes it before you.
Ultima Online 1997 - I never played it, I wasn't into MMO's at the time but I am told this game was amazing and had very good commercal success, what is that 13 years it has being out and I understand it is still going?
Everquest 1999 - Again I never played it I was still not into MMO's at the time, but after 11 years people still refer to it as EverCrack because it was so addictive, oh and the game is still going.
Asheron's Call 1999 - The first MMO that I ever played, and it is still going as well, almost a full 11 years later and they are still releasing MONTHLY free content patches and new features, probably one of the most patched MMO's to date. Also this game is still going, and still a great game.
I know I probably left out quite a few other MMO's but those to me were the most popular for the day, that is why I used them. So I put to you is WOW better then any of these? Some people are going to say, hell yea just based on the graphics, but in reality everyone is going to answer different for different reasons.
Success to me is not measured by how many subs they have or how much money they make every month, instead it is messured by there longevity. In that case WOW has years to go before I crowns your giving it.
The primary reason why every single new release has been frankly lacklustre when compared to WOW is because some Marketting bod at all these companies has pointed a finger at WOW and said .
MAKE THE GAME WOW LIKE
and so we have game after game after game that is nothing more than a WOW clone , the reason that they have been unable to attract people away from WOW is because the only other option for first time wow players is a WOW type game but with a different skin and not as good.
You count how many games that have been released since wow and how many of them could be just called new skin wow.
Wow also has the added benefit that the game engine will run on ANYTHING even those cheapo netbook computers even the lowest spec one will run WOW ok it wont be amazing but very few moderm MMO's or even OLD ones will run on a netbook.
Branding how many other MMO's activly advertise outside of the internet, wow is the only that i have seen advertisments in the cinema and on television.
Wow has also had 6 years of continual development with money pouring into the company they can afford to take time and effort over bug testing and implementation, they have funds for decent customer support that dont take three days to answer a question (im just guessing that last bit but warhammer took 3 days to respond to a stuck question)
The other problem is that nearly every single MMO that goes to market nowadays is broken its unfinished and you have to wait at least 2 years for it to be finished. Look at startrek online yeah cryptic created a complete MMO in 2 years. But hell does it show zero replayable conent, no proper crafting, pvp thats just rubbish, and what is the gamer left with having to wait months between seasons for extra content which lets just say the season 2 content lasted me an afternoon.
I think games companies have lost the plot with MMORPG's they are too fast too down your neck with not enough down time to get to know your comunity and so much emphasis on INSTANCING every god dam game. it looses its appeal pretty quickly.
Im not saying WOW is brilliant amazing peice of work but they have managed to balance reward invested vs time spent.
When developers stop chasing the dragon and actually make a game they themselves are willing to play AND enjoy, then you will see more mmos with scope and professionalism. But if they keep trying to cater to the bickering minority, they'll always find that even the bickerers are willing to abandon their version of a mmo when the open-minded majority continues to completely ignore them without even breaking stride to the next crowd-pleasing mmo:
GW2
SWTOR
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Thank you sir.
This is exactly what I was getting at in my OP.
Tell me please, who the following commercials/spokesman will appeal to A) children/teenagers or
Adults with ties to the 80's-90's
William Shatner
Jean Claude Vandam
Ozzy Ozbourne
Mr. T
Guillermo Toledo
Steve Van Zandt
Vern Troyer
Ron Livingston
Yep, wow certainly is aimed at kids alright.
Cause Blizzard a a good developer and all the other MMO developers aren't.
Wait till Bioware, Valve and whoever else is good has an MMO.
Amen. Some of these guys are so stubborn. The average age in WoW is something like 28. I haven't been in a guild with someone that was younger than 18/19 since Wotlk. I haven't been in a guild with someone that was younger than 20/21 in months.
To be fair, he did say "time investment". He's right with that regards, older people don't have ridiculous amounts of time to spend on games anymore. Most of us aren't looking for a second virtual-life with "work to do".
Yes I'm sure that Toyoyta Tacoma spot was just aimed at little toddlers right? I loved that commercial. "I am the Law Giver!!"
The people they use to play the game/ talk are clearly not young kids.
You know, maybe they hired some people to do some market research. Maybe someone in that group said "Hey guys, the ones with the credit cards are 18+."
WoW was designed from the ground up to be an MMO for people who never would have touched an MMO while still offering basic features that current MMO players liked. The game was made to be easily accessable to the masses and not to be a time vampire.
Most MMOs were made to keep you playing through difficult mechanics that took time (and sometimes large amounts of it) to accomplish something. WoW was designed to allow people to accomplish more in far less time. No longer would you have to devote precious time (something a lot of people who play WoW had short supply of) to getting through the level game or the raid game.
Blizzard just wanted to shorten the gap between the elite player (those who got to experience everything) and the casual player (those who only got to experience what their playtime allowed). They just wanted a game where everyone was on a more equal playing field. And thats what they made.
As for professionalism, a lot of the people who worked on WoW were people who have been playing MMOs for a long time. They experienced issues with poor dev communication and poor customer support. They knew players liked being kept in the loop, so thats what they try to do. They know players want competent support when they have game/account issues, so they try to be as good as they can (and for the amount of players the game has, I would have to say they do a better job than many other smaller games with inhouse support teams).
Basically Blizzard learned that if you give the players as much as you can, the money will follow. Other companies are still on the idea of 'get the money and give the players something in return - even if its something they dont want'.
While many of the posters here don't like WoW (myself included) a lot of us can easily see all of the above to be true when it comes to Blizzard and their game. Blizzard isn't an evil company bent on destroying the MMO genre, they are just a company that wanted to make a game that appealed to both the main MMO audience and people who have never heard of the genre.
Now if other companies would look at how Blizzard works and start from there instead of looking at what Blizzard made, newer MMOs might fare a bit better.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
WoW is a business success. And is king of business in MMO"s. It is a gaming failure. Seeing as how most of the player base was not gamers before WoW.
It's quite simple really.
There werent that many MMO on the market at that time MMO were still in its cradle and most people refused to pay a monthly fee for a game they allready bought, the singleplayer market were still huge while MMO were just a niche.
Blizzard knew that World of Warcraft would be huge beacuse of one thing.
Warcraft1,2 and 3, Blizzard allready had a HUGE fanbase allready who loved the Warcraft world and lore, and Diablo and Starcraft so It don't take a rocket scientist to figure out what this is going.
For the first time there were a huge amount of gamers who never ever played a MMO before beacuse of that montly fee but all of the sudden Blizzard working on thier beloved Warcraft world in a MMO form and that was the nail that draged in alot of new gamers to the MMO world.
Blizzard used Everquest as a templat to create WoW and basiicly stoled most of the ideas and called it thier own.
If Blizzard didnt do WoW instead they did a world of thier own from scratch I doubt it would hit as much as WoW did.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
That logic makes zero sense. If anything it says just the opposite. If your product is good enough to BRING consumers into your industry, you're doing something right.
The Problem, as to why there are no MMORPG games that come close to WoW, is simply the fact that the WoW haters dont want their fn fav game to be anything like WoW.
By this I mean, even if a idea in WoW was taken from some other popular concept, the WoW haters will disapprove that idea in future games simply because its in WoW.
With a forum fanbase with this kind of mindset, imagine the damage they can have on the Development of new and current MMORPGs.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I think the entire point of the post was that no game should dominate the market for this long and it is very unnatural for wow to have done so.
That is until one looks at what the completition has to offer. There has been 6 years of very bland and unfinished mmos rushed to release only to fall down hard. Even though the market has tens and tens of millions of new gamers who have joined, most mmos cannot even do half as well as older mmos.
People can criticize wow all they want, but if you look at the more popular and successful mmos on the market they all predate 2005. Why no other company has had the ability to litterly walk in and take a huge chunk of the mmo playerbase is just unbelievable. Everything has been ripe for this to happen for years, but game developers keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
Well, most of the txt was a homage at their Blizzard gaming shrine. Going on to the wider point you are bringing to the table it is worth bearing in mind that there have been some spectacular mmo fails post-WoW that make Blizzard look good, eg AoC, WAR, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard. But, given the age of WoW the coming next gen mmos could well take large chunks of the mmo market. Will be gushed and geeked when XIV carves out a million subs post launch with its unique blend of thoughtful immersive PvE.