What killed WOW

hercules

Originally posted by Railgunner

I started playing WOW shortly after it came out and played up until a few weeks before the first x-pac was released.

I was a "hardcore" player... a MT in a large guild... I raided 4 nights a week, 4-5 hours a night... I was one of the 1st on my realm to get full T2 back when it actually meant something...

When the x-pac was announced I knew it was the end of the game... Sure it would take it a while to die, but the glory days were over... and I was right...

Here's what went wrong...

#1.  Serious MMO players devote lots of time to character development... grinding, leveling, and acquiring gear... Its a status symbol... It's like having a BMW or Mercedes in the real world...  You see someone with leet raid gear and you know they've "paid their dues"... Lots of nights raiding 4-5 hours a night...

When the x-pac was announced, Blizzard decided to allow existing players to obtain vastly better gear without 1st finishing the existing content.  That was a MAJOR slap in the face to raiders and proved that Blizzard had absolutely no respect for the time and effort that dedicated players had invested in character development.

It would have been really easy to have required existing players to finish Naxx to get a "key" that allowed them access to x-pac areas where they could then "unlock" level 61 and starting leveling again. 

They could have prevented level 60 players from grouping with level 61+ level players to prevent higher level players from "rushing" lower level players thru existing content.

If Blizzard has done this, then you would still have players running Molten Core, Oxynia, BWL, etc and serious players wouldn't have been raped of 2 years of character development.

#2.  40 man raids were epic.  Changing 40 man instances to 20 man was incredibly stupid.  For starters, it destroyed untold thousands of raid guilds... Bench 1/2 your 40 man raid guild you've been playing with for 2 years... Yeah, right...

It was also bad because it destroyed the continuity of the game...  Another slap in the face to serious players... If a player wants to get where I am in the game, I want them to have to do what I had to do to get there... Otherwise, there is no character development... No standard by which players are judged...  

#3.  Battlegrounds suck... Anyone remember Southshore?  So what if it got a little laggy at times... It was real...  and it was fun...

So there you have it... Now I'm sure some would say... But casual players would have never bought the x-pac if they had to finish 40 man Naxx to unlock level 61 and new areas... Yeah they would have... Sure, you might have to slightly "nerf" the difficulty but that had been going on all along.  IF Blizzard had added some goodies that everyone wanted like  better crafting, player housing (done right), player stores with NPC traders to sell your goods... (take crafted items off the AH), guild forts, ships, etc in the x-pac areas, then the game would have become even more popular instead of slowing dying like it is now.  

WOW could have been the start of something incredible... Instead, they tried to implement virtual Socialism... Let's make everyone equal...  In the end, they just ruined the game...

I remember the night I logged off forever shortly before the 1st x-pac came out... I was been so into the game for so long... The guild has literally become a band of brothers.  The xpac is going to rule they said... No it won't... it will ruin the game I said...  You'll be back they said!  No I won't I said... It was good while it lasted... and I still miss it to this day, but I don't miss what it became... As the years went by my old guildmates quit the game...  In the end, most admited I had been right. 

So that's the bad news... Wow was ruined...

The good news is, another company could easily "get it right"... The original WOW model works... Change the plot, update the graphics, state up front that you will respect the time that serious players invest in character development, and you would have a winner. 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I agree that southshore pvp was way more intresting then the BG and the grind for pvp gear was stupid considering you had to fight for ranking.

But  i think its pointless to moan about gear upgrade since no matter which mmorpg you play each xpac even if there not increase in level brings better gear thats easy to access.otherwise the xpac will struggle to keep folks intrested.

also many guilds struggled to get 40 attentive players .i recall as a guild leader having to have 120+ players in th guild since that means a 33% attendance .guilds that big meant loads of trouble .it so much easier to manage a 40 man guild.i am laughing when i remember some actually falling asleep mid raid and because there are so many (40) u lose control of the raid.

i have my axe to grind with wow tbh .like the game is more or less instanced now.most hang out in dalaran and just wait for raid and be summoned down.so dull.

Emoqqboy

Trust me when i say this, the peeps at blizzard are not bad at math in any way you can imagine. They have obviously worked it out, that probably for every ONE person like you they make unhappy, ONE HUNDRED people are happier with what they have implemented. You, unfortunately may be a minority, thats life, move on.

OkhamsRazor

Blizzard have been pretty successful with thier target audiance mostly younger players and very casual gamers . If I joined it today not knowing what it was like 5 years ago i would proberbly enjoy it for what it is now . It certainly would nt hold my interest for more than a few months let alone the three + years i played . What killed WoW for me as well as just about every other person I knew in the initial years was a number of changes made by Blizzard to make the game easier . The cross server looking for a group system did make it easier to do the mid level instances but it pretty much wiped out people who wanted to quest or do world pvp which was pretty much the straw that broke the camels back for me . This should have only been applied to pve servers and never pvp ones . I also found the community seamed to be getting more and more unfriendly and immature . Had Blizzard maintained their integrity I would have most likly still be playing and proberbly would be playing for many years to come . I sometimes miss it and think about going back but i remind myself its not the game i remember and theres nothing to go back to . Till the next big thing comes along I'm happy to fill my time with welcome back offers and free to play games as well as good old solo games . Cataclysm will proberbly boost WoW for a bit and I think it will appeal to those that enjoy WoW for what it is now for those of us that gave up it really does'nt put rigth any of the things that led us to leave .

odessabo

 

I hate to correct you, but Meridian 59 did not invent anything. Other then taking the already well established mud base and adding a static graphic overlay to it. That is all Meridian 59 did for the genre. Something that several custom mud clients already did at the time.

As far as the grandfather of all MMO's is / was a small mud simply named MUD at the time. It was started by a single Universty student as a small project to see if he could take Zork elements and add a multiplayer style interaction to it.   Zork was greatly inspired by a small little game called Adventure or as most people called it at the time ADVENT.

So lets get the facts straight atleast. Meridian 59 is far from the grandfather of all MMOs. It may well be the first commercial static graphical MMO, but it is by no means the first MMO by any stretch of the scale.

I approve this message as it's the most correct...