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Poll: GW2 VS. SWTOR - who will inherit the WOW throne?
Yunbei
Member Posts: 898
Haha, flame on! Nah, pls keep a good British sport's spirit. Bring on, on whose side you are.
Who will be the next big thing? Who will inherit the throne of WOW? Or will none of them? Let us hear why! ^^
In the one corner: World of Warcraft, a known and proven champion through many a fight. Many have tried to beat or dent him, but every MMO ran away with tail between legs. The power: a known IP, a huge established fanbase, playability for all ages, genders and playstyles and Blizzard, a company which got insanely rich and prolly has very deep coffers to compete with the young upstarts. Weakness: too long established and too well known, people might seek something new.
In the next corner: The Old Republic, based on one of the biggest IPs every know, Star Wars. They bring in the most money ever invested into a new MMO with full Voice Over and all story. The power: big Star Wars fan community, popular IP and promised rich story and heroic gameplay. Also the name Bioware standing for succesful RPGs. Weakness: might be too railroaded, little real details about anything outside of "story following".
And finally, relatively new to the throne fight, Guild Wars 2, the outsider in the MMO genre, who with it's highly instanced by free to play game GW1 made an unexpected success back then. Arena Net, the company behind it, has released a plethora of thoughtful design texts which show many new and advanced implementations. It looks like the most thought through design so far. Weakness: F2P seems to target another audience altogether; some stuff is still vague; some sounds "too good to believe".
Comments
WoW just has too much gravity for any other game to touch I believe. It was the proper mix of playability, immersive world setting and story line, PvE to PvP balance, and polished smooth gameplay, universally appealing fantasy mythos structure, combined with the HUGE established Warcraft fanbase... in a time when the average MMO standard was fairly low, compared to Blizzards high standard of production quality.
They claimed not only all of their Warcraft and Starcraft Fanbois, but alot of the diehard MMO junkies, and fantasy fans. The massive influx of subscriptions have given blizzard virtually limitless resources with which to research their playerbase, maintain their game servers and expand/improve upon their product.
I am of the mind that only Blizzard will be able to topple thier empire... Starcraft Universe (they really are dumb if they don't do this) or some other unforseen project will be the only possible threat to their fat piggy of an MMO.
For the record... I myself don't play WoW anymore, but I cannot deny its obvious and unprecedented success in the genre.
I think its closest competitor in terms of subscription numbers was probably Lineage, and I believe at Lineage's height it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3million subscriptions. And obviously since the release of WoW its sub base has dropped dramatically. WoW has the momentum of a runaway train... it will crash and burn before anything can stop it.
None.
IMHO very little of WoW's long term succes has to do with the IP itself because I've yet to see a company which has the same level of production quality/values and a intense desire to release a finished product as Blizzard. Even with a "polished" product Blizzard continues to refine and improve their game when in reality they could just get by with doing nothing but releasing mindless level increase expansions but Blizzard goes beyond that step and actually creates better content with each new paid expansion. Look no further then their next expansion as evidence of the things I've mentioned above.
The only other company that can match Blizzard would be in IMHO CCP because they are stubborn and continue plugging away at EVE with new ideas. Where CCP falls short is actually going back to older content they've release to fix, update and refine it some more ::cough:: Faction Warfare ::cough:: like Blizzard does with WoW.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
Blizzard not going to lose anything for a while.
If they start dropping too many subs, they just pull a SOE. Put all their games up on a deal that you can pay to play them all:)
Most likely where they are headed anyhow, since they tied WOW into battlenet a while back.
Of the other 2, i think GW 2 will most likely make more cash at the end than SWTOR. Trying to live up to Star wars, and really, what peoples ideas of what a star wars game should be, just too hard.
At the end, WOW will keep chugging along doing what they do best, take the best ideas of everyone else, and polish them to a bright shine and add them to WOW
I don't think so. If Blizz themselves believed that there would be no need to make a new MMO, all they had to do is fixing the GFX engine but they are in fact working on a new MMO and moved their best guy (Kaplan) from Wow to lead the new project.
Blizzard are no fools, the know that the competition will be tough in the future and that Wow can't keep it up for another 6 years, not a chance.
And don't count out the other games.
GW 2 have a great budget and many of the original Wow theme working on it (more than Blizzard have in fact). They are veterans and the GFX engine is written by the same guy who made Wows engine too. Counting this game out just because Blizzard isn't making it is foolish. No monthly fees makes it even more dangerous.
TOR is made by Bioware who besides Wow sold as many games as Blizzard. It has the highest budget ever and Bioware have many fans. I am not sure the IP is as popular as fantasy but counting the game out is also not smart.
Rift is made by the guy who made Heroes of might and magic and about 200 other games. They have many veterans working for them several from EQ among others. Good art and the demo they showed is pretty well made. You might not have heard of Trion but they might be on the road to success.
Copernicus is headed by R.A Salvatore (Drizzt) and Todd McFairlaine (Spawn). They have many fans and several old Wow devs working for them...
And there are others. There is no way Wow will be the largest MMO in the west late 2012. And before you start talking about 12 millions, 8 of those are in China and if you count them then Perfect world who have something like 60 million players would be the largest game. And Wows 4 million western players have been about that many for almost 2 years now, even if everyone of them stays I doubt that many new will start playing it.
GW 1 had 4,5 million players, if they all pick up GW 2 it will already be larger than Wow in the west.
As I said before, Blizzard know all this and is putting a lot of work into their next game but just because they made 1 huge game does not mean they actually can do it again. Before Diablo were Blizz mostly known for porting Amiga games to PC, getting from small to huge can go fast. In Blizz case they were unknown early '97 and giants with both Diablo and Starcraft late the same year. This can happen with someone else too. And large companies can fail badly with new games too.
Whatever that will happen am I sure we will have a fun time with several new interesting MMOs. But the time of Wow is fading, at least in the west while things is different in China. One or several games will take it's place.
I have to agree that only Blizzard will topple Blizzard. Either they will massively mess things up, they will retire WoW in favor of their new game, or they will release a new game that offers what WoW does in another setting for those that want to play something other than fantasy.
While I dislike this fact, it is the nature of the average gamer that pays the bills.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I voted for GW2 because i am a fanboi lol. I have zero interest in SWTOR. I don't hate it or anything, it just isn't for me.
Archlinux ftw
If anything, GW2. SWTOR? lmao!
Guild Wars 2!
based on GW1, I am very skeptical about GW2 being anything more than a niche game that gets old after a couple weeks, but I have hope.
SWTOR is going to be huge though. I'd put money on it.
However, bliz's next mmo will probably be the next 10-mil subscriber mmo.
Funny how these kinds of threads keep popping up on a weekly basis. I would've thought that people would've grown bored of them by now.
Anyway, I voted none, certainly not in the short term, WoW has too large a headstart on any other MMO when it comes to sub numbers.
I do expect the MMORPG scene in the course of 2011 to be fully different from what it is now, when GW2, SW:TOR, Rift, TERA, TSW, Jumpgate Evolution and WoD are all live and running.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
None.
The games will not even put a dent into the subscriptions and revenue.
Besides GW2 doen't even have subscriptions. Did GW1 influence the subscriptions? Nope.
Besides GW2 is 3 years late, it is already done (changing landscapes - rvr zone - clustered server fights - clustered BG's).
The next Blizzard mmo could take 50% out of WOW though.
But ... we will never know since Blizzard will introduce a combo subscription for their 2 MMO's.
That's a misinterpretation. ANet really is doing some innovative stuff with GW2. I suggest you read up the available info better next time, that is if that really interests you. Bottomline is that what ANet is doing with GW2 as it will appear as a whole hasn't been already done and is certainly ahead of the curve.
Although I agree, it would've been better for the MMO genre as a whole if a MMORPG as GW2 would have been released 3 years ago.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Ideally we'll never get another WoW.
I prefer the MMO market much more if there is instead a multitude of games to choose from, and none gets more than, say, 500,000 players.
But GW2 and SW:TOR will probably both get multimillion playerbases.
I answered none, as has been stated ad nauseum over a plethora of similar threads the people that were drawn to MMO gaming by WoW aren't typical MMORPG gamers. IMO you won't see sub numbers for WoW drop much until Diablo 3 releases because again IMO- that's what players actually wanted when they got WoW. They wanted a MMO action/adventure- not a MMORPG.
I want neither to inherit it as we will only play that playstyle from then on. Do you want every MMO that is released after STOR to have a strong story theme for example? I like the idea but would not want to see it in every MMO released from 2011.
Once the king dies I will be saying 'may he rest in peace' not 'long live the king'.
With the legions of star wars fans, the pop culture main stream influence of star wars, the games graphics being able to be turned down low enough to run on really low end PCs, combined with Bioware's typical polish and storytelling, and the massive advertising budget of EA?
Uhhh I'm gonna go with SWTOR. Will probably try both GW2 and SWTOR. It would take a really huge goof up for SWTOR to not at least equal WoWs subsriber numbers within a year. The graphics are, believe it or not, years beyond WoW. The game code is years beyond WoW. So it will come down to the gameplay. Is it addictive?
None, thats no assumption, thats a fact.
If you dont believe it, you got no idea of mmo's.
btw: both games will end up very dissapointing - remember my words.
Honestly neither, SWTOR I suspect is going to bomb like ff14 sort of did based on information thats been released. GW2 uses a diff pay setup so it can't really count, Going to be hard to top 15 million subscribers. I don't like wow myself but it must be doing something right for the amount of subscribers it has. On another note my god people stop making these kinds of threads, No other mmorpg will probally ever get close to 15 mil subscribers no matter how good it is, they are usually lucky to hit 300-500k. Mmorpg players now a days want ezmode instant gratification gameplay due to wow, its messed up the mmorpg scene. Dev see's wow is working they then clone it, they need to learn to do their own thing and not try to copy WoW just because its big. Second I hear anyone say X game is like WoW I usually write it off as crap and stop caring about it.
"An MMORPG could be completely diffirent from WoW. Just look at games like Dofus, Wizard101 or EVE. But as it is, most of the Western MMOs are trying to succeed by out-WoWing WoW. It's like an army of 10 sports games made about same sports, and barely none about other sports. WoW clone is an accurate description of those games, it manages to convey much information with only two words."
-Poster on mmorpg.com
Rift: World of Warcraft clone #9321 Nothing special to see here move along.
Weird every time a guy says SWTOR will flop. Cause I don't see how it can flop. With how many commercials and advertising EA will buy, with how low the graphics can be turned down, I think my grandmas computer could run SWTOR. And Bioware does sci fi, storytelling, and quality like almost no other developer. And this is Star Wars. What other fictional franchise beats its combined movies, comics, books, video game base? Star wars is cemented into our culture.
I can see it not being the best hardcore gamer MMO. But how could fail to bring in massive amounts of casual gamers?? Am I crazy?
Crazy.. no.. but blinkered perhaps, i dont personally think SW:TOR will fail, but i dont think its going to be much of a success either, it probably will appeal to KOTOR fans, but, not sure that Starwars fans are going to be all that impressed by it, the game play is far more limited - which by comparison, GW2 isnt, kind of odd when you think of it, given that one is going to be P2P and the other B2P... people are overestimating Biowares abilities imo, they do pretty good single player games (dragon age was boring though imo, not a patch on the ME games!) but what works well in single player games isnt true for MMO's and the more gameplay is curtailed, the less appealing it becomes. but, WoW as has already been demonstrated is moving from strength to strength, they know their playerbase and they continue to work on adding content and improving the game, it won't last forever but, theres nothing on the horizon yet that is likely to disrupt their reign.
I voted for SW:TOR but to be honest I don't think any of the two will be able to come up to WoW.
You can't see how TOR can flop? Perhaps not on initial sales, but past the first weeks it all depends on the game play.
Lore doesn't matter: there are already 2 star wars MMO's. Did Lore had an impact on long term play? No, only game play did.
In fact there are hardly any more new Lores left to gun down the number one.
All you cite are non game play issues : .. marketing, lore, story telling, movies, ...
All in all, these things have ZERO impact on what makes an MMO tick or not. Sales yes, prolonged gameplay: none whatsoever.
MMORPG's are not played for their individual story telling: it is even a nuissance to watch a cartoony NPC tell a looooong story in an on line game.
MMO's are played to advance the character and make up your own adventures and stories within a certain backdrop and general history line. NPC's will never replace the stories you tell to friends on line.
Did Bioware hit the ball so badly? The fact that they said story telling was their prime feature is not encouraging at all. The use of NPC's as replacements for players is even worse.
The cartoony animation doesn't help either, because that is not the way we look at Star Wars lore: Han Solo as an animated Simpson?!?!?
So all signs are in of not getting the core wishes of on line play. Better be prepared (Lores of Conan and Warhammer are still burned in the back of our heads).
It's true, my 60 year old mother is interested in playing SWTOR. I don't even know where she heard about it. But it's not going to run on her computer. She's had that thing since 1997.
Anyway, I hope SWTOR lives up to the hype, and I hope GW2 does, too, even if neither of them turn out to be games I personally enjoy. I'd like to see the Big One MMO become the Big Three, at very least, or better yet, diversify even more.
It's not because I hate Blizzard and want to see them lose millions of subs, it's simply that homogenization is bad, unless your product is dairy.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
AoC and WAR launched unfinished, that's what hurt them, including the large promised feature set that was promised and not delivered at launch.
ANet and BW seem to follow a different route, only talking about features that are sure to have made it ingame, also both SW:TOR and GW2 both have already a very accessible and polished gameplay experience in the lower levels, which is promising so far.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I couldn't agree more. It's something all MMO gamers with a love for MMORPG's should wish for, rich variety and diversity in the MMO's around.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Neither. WoW is a freak of nature and wont be toppled for atleast 2-3 more years and certainly not by those two titles.
GW 2 is ArenaNets first attempt at a real MMORPG so for sure it will not cater to the mainstream MMORPG crowd and unless it has a subscription fee I really dont see how you can compare the two because then it is more comparable to games like Diablo III which also will be semi-persistant and free.
SWTOR will have huge initial sales but I doubt that Bioware "gets" the MMORPG genre and they will by all likelyhood produce a game similar to Mass Effect where story is what drives the game forward. But why pay for that when you can have it for free (i.e. without a subscription fee).
So WoW will stay on top. It will take something really extraordinary to topple it and neither of those two will be extraordinary. They will be good, maybe great, but that wont be enough.
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