Many have said many things, and most were correct, but I must say one thing that WoW had, as an innovation, over everyone else was: SMOOTH and RESPONSIVE Combat.
It is no coincidence that, no matter what you think of WoW, when a new MMO is released one of the first questions is "Is the combat WoW-like?" and here they do not intend "press a button and ability X happen", they mean "press 1 button and your character IMMEDIATELY perform an action, all is smooth and responsive".
As far as I know, WoW was the first with such smoothness in the combat department and even today, going back to an older game (like DAoC, that I played and liked a lot before WoW) is HARD because games tended to be on the.. "press the button, action get queued and when it is your turn, your char will execute it" type. Even "instant" abilities, were not really instant.
This also lead to the second point: Fast paced combat. Combats in wow, at least against normal Mobs, are finished in seconds, one way or the other.
Third point -> NO DOWNTIME. or very little downtime, much less than what came before (mage before level 20 used to have downtime, for example, but while in WoW it was a few seconds, in EQ it was a few MINUTES). Fighting in WoW meant go, kill mob and... you are ready to kill another! hop hop!
Others have mentioned the quest-centered level progression, WoW was not the first to have quests, but it was the first to have them so central to the game, so much that you did not need to do anythung but quest to get from level 1-60.
Polish was also central. WoW was extremely polished at launch and had lots of content for a newly launched game. WoW's launch problems were all server related due to the massive influence of players.
We could also go deeper and start speaking of class design for example. WoW had comparatelively few classes than other games, but each class had many many more abilities than other classes in other games. An example I still remember is the DAoC Fire mage had something like 5-7 skills, while the WoW fire mage had 25+ abilities. But these are not innovation anymore, these are refinements of elements already existing. Technically, you could call them all refinement. After all every game had combat like WoW, just not as smooth and responsive, and the lack of downtime could also be seen as a refinement...
In the end, I think especially for WoW, the sum of its parts was way greater than the parts themselves.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
I would not say they did anything extremely innovative. They just did it in a way to appeal to the widest cross section of people. They stole a lot from Ashererons Call 2 which actually was very innovative (kind of funny when people accuse lotro of stealing from wow. Turbine actually had most of those ideas first).
The level by questing I would call innovative. But I am pretty sure COH did that before WoW The Manner in which they moved people around the world with quest hubs was pretty innovative. did.
For the most part blizzard just did what blizzard always does, perfectly tune their game for the wides possible audience.
Also wow came at a time when there was nothing else totally like it and the MMO market was growing. If wow launched today i highly doudt it would get the numbers it has.
World of warcraft was more about EVOLUTION than it was about INNOVATION. It showed that the proper elements to make a great mmo already existed, but were not being used to their full extent.
Most of what wow innovted isn't in the specific game mechanics, like spells or movement. It is about how the games are made at a design level.
The first being that the game was not released until it was ready. This may not sound like a big deal, but mmos had this bad habit of releasing early and unfinished with the mindset that things could be finished on the subscribers dime.
The second was that wow was designed to be fun in all aspects right from the start of the game. Again something that might sound like common sense, but older mmos were more designed around concepts that would stretch subscriptions or punish players for anything but perfect gameplay. If something was found to not be fun in testing it was fixed or it was removed.
The scope of the game was also pushing boundries. Group and solo gameplay being equally viable, casual and hardcore, pve and pvp all had solid offerings in the game that had not really been seen in the genre.
World of warcraft was more about EVOLUTION than it was about INNOVATION. It showed that the proper elements to make a great mmo already existed, but were not being used to their full extent.
Most of what wow innovted isn't in the specific game mechanics, like spells or movement. It is about how the games are made at a design level.
The first being that the game was not released until it was ready. This may not sound like a big deal, but mmos had this bad habit of releasing early and unfinished with the mindset that things could be finished on the subscribers dime.
The second was that wow was designed to be fun in all aspects right from the start of the game. Again something that might sound like common sense, but older mmos were more designed around concepts that would stretch subscriptions or punish players for anything but perfect gameplay. If something was found to not be fun in testing it was fixed or it was removed.
The scope of the game was also pushing boundries. Group and solo gameplay being equally viable, casual and hardcore, pve and pvp all had solid offerings in the game that had not really been seen in the genre.
Innovation, I wouldnt say much in THAT term. What they did bring was a game with alot of initial polish and appeal. MMORPG.com users LOVE to bash wow. I dont play it anymore but i'm unbiased enough to give it credit where credit is due, its the most succesful video game in human history, people love to hate the big guy.
"Well let me just quote the late-great Colonel Sanders, who said…’I’m too drunk to taste this chicken." - Ricky Bobby
Its a simple question that long time WoW vets may know. What innovation did WoW bring at launch? What new things did it bring to MMOs in its first few months of being released?
Not looking for flames, "nothing" comments, or a list of what it clonned.
Key innovation, soloable/duoable content, a lot of people here claim that it's not to be considered a feature of an MMO but the fact is that unless you have unlimited time at your disposal and have a number of friends similarly endowed actually being able to do things without spending hours preparing makes a game hugely more accessible. No longer play WoW and haven't for years but I very much doubt I'll play an MMO today that didn't allow me to do things solo/duo or in spontaneous groups like WAR's PQ's.
Ok, I made a list that combines what has been said and is most relevant to OP. I still struggle with the term innovation too because while there are many improvements from how MMOs used to be there are still good/bad outcomes from that change. Which is to question if innovation is always a good change or simply a moving forward that we have to accept.
Solid game engine and design
A higher amount of attention to quality and polish than seen before.
Quest based leveling
Art style that holds its age longer
Accessability
Better Newbie experiance and Learning curve
Solo friendly but with other outlets too
Faster Leveling
Less down time
Most changes revolve around removing the frusterating or un-fun parts, especially ones relating to combat.
Originally posted by sloeber Originally posted by sevitoth
Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw WoW brought something to MMO's that has not been seen since... polish. It didn't innovate, or invent. It took what was working in other games and made it better. What's funny is that after that, many company's tried to literally clone WoW's systems (the same ones they had borrowed elsewhere) but forgot to clone the one thing that made WoW the fiscal king of the castle... polish. I'm not at all downplaying WoW's lack of new gameplay by any stretch.
This. lolz.....the same is sayd about rift right now Which would be great .....if Rift was released in 2005.
Yeah, simply not sucking hardcore is an amazing feat with today's MMOs(sadly) but is that enough in 2011? We will see.
WoW brought something to MMO's that has not been seen since... polish. It didn't innovate, or invent. It took what was working in other games and made it better. What's funny is that after that, many company's tried to literally clone WoW's systems (the same ones they had borrowed elsewhere) but forgot to clone the one thing that made WoW the fiscal king of the castle... polish.
I'm not at all downplaying WoW's lack of new gameplay by any stretch.
WoW brought something to MMO's that has not been seen since... polish. It didn't innovate, or invent. It took what was working in other games and made it better. What's funny is that after that, many company's tried to literally clone WoW's systems (the same ones they had borrowed elsewhere) but forgot to clone the one thing that made WoW the fiscal king of the castle... polish.
I'm not at all downplaying WoW's lack of new gameplay by any stretch.
Actually there was a great deal of polish in wow at launch. Heck, the beta had far more polish than lineage 2 at launch.
I had the exact same problem that those people did, not able to get in because of queues. But that's not that much of an issue. They just miscalculated on how many people would be interested in their game. Once I got in game there really weren't any problems. but then again I just waited patiently and didn't blow a gasket.
I think otto_manic in that thread had the right of it though I don't know if his time table was on or not. Probably not but stil he had the best sense of it.
I'm really not tripping on this, there is only so many people in that can be in one place at any given time, be the environment electronic or like real life. I'm unsurprised and unconcerned, things will smooth out in a few days. Also, try playing on Pac or Mountain servers, I've had no problems there at all- AT ALL.
Otto!
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
WoW did alot of great stuff. Keep in mind, I hated WoW then. I hate it now.
WoW brought a beloved IP to the masses. Alot of people in their early 30's grew up on warcraft. We loved Warcraft and we loved Diablo. We loved Blizzard. With good reason. Blizzard has given us so many years of entertainment.
WoW gave us faction PvP. I came from EQ in 99. Did not really PvP at that time at all. Here I was whipping ass on those annoying druids. Taught me a valuable strat. Soon as that fucker drops bear form, fear his ass or silence him. Hes gonna heal. Man that was fun stuff.
WoW brought fast gameplay. In 99 it took 5 minutes to zone. It took 1 minute to kill a mob and it took 3 minutes to rest up. By rest up, I mean you open your spell book and stare at it while your health and mana regens. Litterally minutes. The term "Bio" came from this. You literally had enough time in between pulls to go piss, go smoke, pour some alcohol. You had time and lots of it. Wow did away with this senseless waiting. No longer did you spend the vast magority of your time waiting. You spent time playing. How many of us EQ vets remember having an hour to play? That gave us just enough time to run to the boat, wait on the boat, zone through 5 zones, run to the camp and rest up, then log off. That was your play time. Hopefully tommorow night your friends do the same so you can finally kill mobs.
Lots of polish. As everyone else said. Polish out the cornhole. Little creatures running around. A world that somehow seemed vibrant. A world that seems smooth around the edges.
WoW got rid of the hassle and upped the fun factor. WoW did alot of good for the market. WoW is the reason why we have some really great games today. It proved you can make money a tthis thing.
I really hate wow. I hate the stupid graphics. I hate the chuck norris jokes. I hate little gnomes hopping around casting stuff. I hate the males playing little fat female gnomes with names like "Muffins". I hate Merlocs. I really hate everything about that game.
WoW brought something to MMO's that has not been seen since... polish. It didn't innovate, or invent. It took what was working in other games and made it better. What's funny is that after that, many company's tried to literally clone WoW's systems (the same ones they had borrowed elsewhere) but forgot to clone the one thing that made WoW the fiscal king of the castle... polish.
I'm not at all downplaying WoW's lack of new gameplay by any stretch.
The only innovation WoW brought was that it was mindlessly easy. Especially for a class like a Hunter, there's no challenge at all to leveling up. Every MMO I played prior to wow, leveling was HARD. You had to SERIOUSLY devote yourself to the game to even think about hitting the level cap. They even put in the rest bonus xp to make it even easier.
Tradesklls: mindlessly easy to level in wow. Other games required months and months to max out your tradeskills. Wow you could do it in a week without any trouble. Wow tradeskills are for the most part useless but no one knows that when you start playing a game. The last 2 games I played before wow..DAOC and EQ2, tradeskills were insanely difficult to level up but, at least in DAOC, it was well worth the time you spent doing it. Wow tradeskills are nothing more than something to look at on your character sheet to make it appear that your toon has value, everyone knows all gear in wow comes from instances.
The bottom line is WoW was very, very easy and it's competition was very, very hard for casual gamers.
The true meaning of Massively in MMO. Eq is just a irc chat chamber compared to Wow.
LMAO, good one! But seriously- were there other games that had harvesting as easy as in WoW, with physical nodes? All I ever did as far as crafting in EQ1 is brewing so I don't actually recall.
It was the first game to popularize quest grinding, so I guess you could call that an innovation.
The main thing about WoW is that it didn't so much innovate as it simply refined concepts from EQ and other games, leaving most players little reason to stick to their old games after WoW was released.
It brought probably the smoothest mmo ever to launch, anyone that plays this game will be screwed in mmos from then on. Nothing can compare to how fucking smooth and polished this game is/was.
Only other mmo that has such fluid movement/combat etc was Aion.
Right, because other mmos are comparable to a steak and glass of wine. Excellent analogy you have there.
lol well said
People in general just go for the easy stuff.
This is why Vin Diesel sells more movies than Kim Ki Duk, Britney Spears more albums than Dream Theater and Ken Follet more books than Sartre.
This applies to MMOs too.
True. McDonald's is quick, easy, and cheap. WoW has quick fun, easy play, and is cheap on time invested. It ain't the best, but it still atracts many people for these reasons.
Now to answer the OP's question. I think WoW's innovation was to show the world that an IP can be made into a successful MMO. Have we had any other MMO's that live up to their IP since WOW? I persoanlly don't think any other MMO has capured the essence of their IP. While good in their own respects (DDO, LotR) they just don't give off the feel of the IPs. The others IP based MMOs just feel butchered.
Comments
Many have said many things, and most were correct, but I must say one thing that WoW had, as an innovation, over everyone else was: SMOOTH and RESPONSIVE Combat.
It is no coincidence that, no matter what you think of WoW, when a new MMO is released one of the first questions is "Is the combat WoW-like?" and here they do not intend "press a button and ability X happen", they mean "press 1 button and your character IMMEDIATELY perform an action, all is smooth and responsive".
As far as I know, WoW was the first with such smoothness in the combat department and even today, going back to an older game (like DAoC, that I played and liked a lot before WoW) is HARD because games tended to be on the.. "press the button, action get queued and when it is your turn, your char will execute it" type. Even "instant" abilities, were not really instant.
This also lead to the second point: Fast paced combat. Combats in wow, at least against normal Mobs, are finished in seconds, one way or the other.
Third point -> NO DOWNTIME. or very little downtime, much less than what came before (mage before level 20 used to have downtime, for example, but while in WoW it was a few seconds, in EQ it was a few MINUTES). Fighting in WoW meant go, kill mob and... you are ready to kill another! hop hop!
Others have mentioned the quest-centered level progression, WoW was not the first to have quests, but it was the first to have them so central to the game, so much that you did not need to do anythung but quest to get from level 1-60.
Polish was also central. WoW was extremely polished at launch and had lots of content for a newly launched game. WoW's launch problems were all server related due to the massive influence of players.
We could also go deeper and start speaking of class design for example. WoW had comparatelively few classes than other games, but each class had many many more abilities than other classes in other games. An example I still remember is the DAoC Fire mage had something like 5-7 skills, while the WoW fire mage had 25+ abilities. But these are not innovation anymore, these are refinements of elements already existing. Technically, you could call them all refinement. After all every game had combat like WoW, just not as smooth and responsive, and the lack of downtime could also be seen as a refinement...
In the end, I think especially for WoW, the sum of its parts was way greater than the parts themselves.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
I would not say they did anything extremely innovative. They just did it in a way to appeal to the widest cross section of people. They stole a lot from Ashererons Call 2 which actually was very innovative (kind of funny when people accuse lotro of stealing from wow. Turbine actually had most of those ideas first).
The level by questing I would call innovative. But I am pretty sure COH did that before WoW The Manner in which they moved people around the world with quest hubs was pretty innovative. did.
For the most part blizzard just did what blizzard always does, perfectly tune their game for the wides possible audience.
Also wow came at a time when there was nothing else totally like it and the MMO market was growing. If wow launched today i highly doudt it would get the numbers it has.
World of warcraft was more about EVOLUTION than it was about INNOVATION. It showed that the proper elements to make a great mmo already existed, but were not being used to their full extent.
Most of what wow innovted isn't in the specific game mechanics, like spells or movement. It is about how the games are made at a design level.
The first being that the game was not released until it was ready. This may not sound like a big deal, but mmos had this bad habit of releasing early and unfinished with the mindset that things could be finished on the subscribers dime.
The second was that wow was designed to be fun in all aspects right from the start of the game. Again something that might sound like common sense, but older mmos were more designed around concepts that would stretch subscriptions or punish players for anything but perfect gameplay. If something was found to not be fun in testing it was fixed or it was removed.
The scope of the game was also pushing boundries. Group and solo gameplay being equally viable, casual and hardcore, pve and pvp all had solid offerings in the game that had not really been seen in the genre.
In short they made an MMO version of Mcdonalds.
Innovation, I wouldnt say much in THAT term. What they did bring was a game with alot of initial polish and appeal. MMORPG.com users LOVE to bash wow. I dont play it anymore but i'm unbiased enough to give it credit where credit is due, its the most succesful video game in human history, people love to hate the big guy.
Key innovation, soloable/duoable content, a lot of people here claim that it's not to be considered a feature of an MMO but the fact is that unless you have unlimited time at your disposal and have a number of friends similarly endowed actually being able to do things without spending hours preparing makes a game hugely more accessible. No longer play WoW and haven't for years but I very much doubt I'll play an MMO today that didn't allow me to do things solo/duo or in spontaneous groups like WAR's PQ's.
Right, because other mmos are comparable to a steak and glass of wine. Excellent analogy you have there.
lol well said
Ok, I made a list that combines what has been said and is most relevant to OP. I still struggle with the term innovation too because while there are many improvements from how MMOs used to be there are still good/bad outcomes from that change. Which is to question if innovation is always a good change or simply a moving forward that we have to accept.
Solid game engine and design
A higher amount of attention to quality and polish than seen before.
Quest based leveling
Art style that holds its age longer
Accessability
Better Newbie experiance and Learning curve
Solo friendly but with other outlets too
Faster Leveling
Less down time
Most changes revolve around removing the frusterating or un-fun parts, especially ones relating to combat.
Other things I'm not sure about:
! Quest markers
Battleground pvp senarios
lolz.....the same is sayd about rift right now
Which would be great .....if Rift was released in 2005.
Yeah, simply not sucking hardcore is an amazing feat with today's MMOs(sadly) but is that enough in 2011? We will see.
Polish you say ? I think not! Try reading this.... http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/28037
Actually there was a great deal of polish in wow at launch. Heck, the beta had far more polish than lineage 2 at launch.
I had the exact same problem that those people did, not able to get in because of queues. But that's not that much of an issue. They just miscalculated on how many people would be interested in their game. Once I got in game there really weren't any problems. but then again I just waited patiently and didn't blow a gasket.
I think otto_manic in that thread had the right of it though I don't know if his time table was on or not. Probably not but stil he had the best sense of it.
I'm really not tripping on this, there is only so many people in that can be in one place at any given time, be the environment electronic or like real life. I'm unsurprised and unconcerned, things will smooth out in a few days. Also, try playing on Pac or Mountain servers, I've had no problems there at all- AT ALL.
Otto!
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
WoW did alot of great stuff. Keep in mind, I hated WoW then. I hate it now.
WoW brought a beloved IP to the masses. Alot of people in their early 30's grew up on warcraft. We loved Warcraft and we loved Diablo. We loved Blizzard. With good reason. Blizzard has given us so many years of entertainment.
WoW gave us faction PvP. I came from EQ in 99. Did not really PvP at that time at all. Here I was whipping ass on those annoying druids. Taught me a valuable strat. Soon as that fucker drops bear form, fear his ass or silence him. Hes gonna heal. Man that was fun stuff.
WoW brought fast gameplay. In 99 it took 5 minutes to zone. It took 1 minute to kill a mob and it took 3 minutes to rest up. By rest up, I mean you open your spell book and stare at it while your health and mana regens. Litterally minutes. The term "Bio" came from this. You literally had enough time in between pulls to go piss, go smoke, pour some alcohol. You had time and lots of it. Wow did away with this senseless waiting. No longer did you spend the vast magority of your time waiting. You spent time playing. How many of us EQ vets remember having an hour to play? That gave us just enough time to run to the boat, wait on the boat, zone through 5 zones, run to the camp and rest up, then log off. That was your play time. Hopefully tommorow night your friends do the same so you can finally kill mobs.
Lots of polish. As everyone else said. Polish out the cornhole. Little creatures running around. A world that somehow seemed vibrant. A world that seems smooth around the edges.
WoW got rid of the hassle and upped the fun factor. WoW did alot of good for the market. WoW is the reason why we have some really great games today. It proved you can make money a tthis thing.
I really hate wow. I hate the stupid graphics. I hate the chuck norris jokes. I hate little gnomes hopping around casting stuff. I hate the males playing little fat female gnomes with names like "Muffins". I hate Merlocs. I really hate everything about that game.
So you believe a thread on mmorpg.com forums ?
The only innovation WoW brought was that it was mindlessly easy. Especially for a class like a Hunter, there's no challenge at all to leveling up. Every MMO I played prior to wow, leveling was HARD. You had to SERIOUSLY devote yourself to the game to even think about hitting the level cap. They even put in the rest bonus xp to make it even easier.
Tradesklls: mindlessly easy to level in wow. Other games required months and months to max out your tradeskills. Wow you could do it in a week without any trouble. Wow tradeskills are for the most part useless but no one knows that when you start playing a game. The last 2 games I played before wow..DAOC and EQ2, tradeskills were insanely difficult to level up but, at least in DAOC, it was well worth the time you spent doing it. Wow tradeskills are nothing more than something to look at on your character sheet to make it appear that your toon has value, everyone knows all gear in wow comes from instances.
The bottom line is WoW was very, very easy and it's competition was very, very hard for casual gamers.
None. WoW is an EQ clone.
The true meaning of Massively in MMO. Eq is just a irc chat chamber compared to Wow.
LMAO, good one! But seriously- were there other games that had harvesting as easy as in WoW, with physical nodes? All I ever did as far as crafting in EQ1 is brewing so I don't actually recall.
Advertising.
Accessibility.
wow did one single thing in the big picture.. it made mmorpg mainstream!
some of us still prefer underground and indie, the same way we like music.. thats just the way it is!
It was the first game to popularize quest grinding, so I guess you could call that an innovation.
The main thing about WoW is that it didn't so much innovate as it simply refined concepts from EQ and other games, leaving most players little reason to stick to their old games after WoW was released.
i didnt read all the BS that people put down, but for me it was the first time i saw a Mail Box and Auction House.
It brought probably the smoothest mmo ever to launch, anyone that plays this game will be screwed in mmos from then on. Nothing can compare to how fucking smooth and polished this game is/was.
Only other mmo that has such fluid movement/combat etc was Aion.
People in general just go for the easy stuff.
This is why Vin Diesel sells more movies than Kim Ki Duk, Britney Spears more albums than Dream Theater and Ken Follet more books than Sartre.
This applies to MMOs too.
True. McDonald's is quick, easy, and cheap. WoW has quick fun, easy play, and is cheap on time invested. It ain't the best, but it still atracts many people for these reasons.
Now to answer the OP's question. I think WoW's innovation was to show the world that an IP can be made into a successful MMO. Have we had any other MMO's that live up to their IP since WOW? I persoanlly don't think any other MMO has capured the essence of their IP. While good in their own respects (DDO, LotR) they just don't give off the feel of the IPs. The others IP based MMOs just feel butchered.