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Poll: WoW worst thing to happen to the genre?
Yamota
Member UncommonPosts: 6,593
Like the title says:
EDIT: Preview erased the poll
Comments
No..
Afterall who were the ones who made it popular?
the MMO players.
Blizzard offered their product and pretty much every mmo gamer (and non) bit.
I'm thinking no. The worst thing to happen was other developers trying to ride on the success of WoW and pump out themepark games that lack innovation.
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I don't think so
Without WoW, there wouldn't be as much money funnel into the production of newer mmo, I don't think it is WoW's fault for other developers being lazy and not advancing their game.
without Wow, games like Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, Rift (lol) probably wouldn't be developed.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Well one thing is a side effect of the other so the main cause is still WoW. Cant really blame investors for investing in what they think is making money no more than you can blame vultures for feasting on carcasses, that is what they do. The issue, as I see it, is that WoW is what made these vultures interested in the genre.
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Only half true. Ever NON mmo gamer bit. I would say most MMO veterans saw the watered down game that it was and left after trying it.
I cant see alot of EQ, AC, UO fans going to WoW as the game is a shell of what those were in therms of dificulty, complexity etc.
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thats purely speculation..
I played EQ for 6 years and played WoW for 2..
Im betting a ton of vet mmo players bit.
Even if they did quit afterwards,they still bought a copy of the game,which help fuel WoW to what it is today.
Like I said: I cant see... so obviously it is pure speculation. But speculation based on playing those games and seeing how different, in the sense that WoW is dumbed down and simplified, they were compared to WoW.
And I bought WoW too, that does not mean I think it is good. When I am talking about playing an MMORPG I usually mean sticking to it, not just trying it out, which I am sure alot of veteran MMORPG players have.
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That alone makes WoW a good candidate for the worst thing to happen to the MMORPG genre.
Stagnant, old, tired, rehashed.
"Haven't I played this game already?" is my thought when I've been trying a number of MMORPGs for years now.
WoW's success funneled the genre into a strict path that most are too afraid to stray from. Even vaunted BioWare is scared to stray from WoW (just read the previews for goodness' sake).
At first I didn't want to put blame on Blizzard. After all, everyone wants their company and products to succeed. But Blizzard's success with WoW is so dominant that the MMORPG genre cannot get out of its shadow. Most are afraid to even step out of that shadow these days.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
So a more interesting poll would perhaps be: Will the MMORPG genre ever get out of WoWs shadow?
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devs just stopped making sandbox mmo's......nothing more nothing less
It's obvious wow has had an effect on the mmo landscape but to act like it's their fault, their evil or whatever is just dumb.
What if scenarios are pointless and the blame train why stop at wow/blizzard? The core problem is the desire for profit which stems from labor for income in order to survive, that's the real root.
WoW isn't the worst thing to happen to the genre. Lazy development teams trying to copy it for a quick $ are.
Actually the insta-porting would belong to the dishonorable mentions. It's one of the things that killed the world of WoW. And phasing has it's pro's and cons, if used too much it can also destroy "the world" as most players wouldn't even be able to see each other in certain areas.
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
All WoW did was be successful. It was the investors and publishers who came afterwards that are to blame for demanding WoW-like success in every MMO that followed.
By the op's argument anything that is successful is to blame for the decline of that thing's genre.
No, anything that is dumbed down and is so successful that it dominates the market so that other innovative products are not being invested is to blame for decline of that things genre.
EQ was successful, WoW is so dominating that it eclipses all other games in the genre.
As I see it investors do what investors supposed to do. It was Blizzard who started this by making a dumbed down, simplified, casual MMORPG and brought in the hordes of Warcraft fans they already had into the genre.
And what has it improved really? Non existant death penalties? Meaningless PvP? Quest markers? Instances? Cartoony GFX? MMORPG on rails? Instant travel? (yes some of these existed before WoW, but they were not the norm)
In my opinion it did not bring one single feature that improved the genre, not one.
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As is always, people do what their told to do so I won't push with off on Blizzard. The issue belongs to the Dev's.
I agree, it not wow fault it's the game companys looking to feed of the scraps of blizzards table. it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that game companys want to build a better mouse trap. Where sandboxes all went wrong was SWG.
If you look at time lines, IF SOE had stuck to their development guns and had not followed blizzard. They would have opened the door to many sandbox MMOs. But sadly it failed and the entire genre moved toward themeparks. If it had been a smashing success then other game developers would have copied SWG.
So in short they may not have had a direct hand in it, but they defined how game developers want to make games, and that is like world of warcraft.
The Wow genre has made people lazy and greedy. The game presents no real challenge and players became use to getting rewards with little effort. In SWG you had to work at it. now you see where we all failed, we opened the door to a new generation that thinks games like wow are the standard and every game they want to play better have for example:
instanced PVP
Raid gear
Boring crafting not better then raid drops
levels and loot based economy.
these above are expected in all new games. if a game does not have one the whiners will rage in the forums.
they know like wow they can bitch if the devs keep to the formula set by wow and others.
take all the above away? and many players the wow generation spawned will start to look for another wow like game. they don't want a sandbox, to unpredictable and they don't like that. it wont change becuase we had one shot at it with SWG the first AAA MMO based on the starwars IP and it failed and he we are.
I would like to add that, TOR will not define the genre but maybe GW2 might. since we know for sure BW devs are sticking to the Wow frame work to a tee, we can guess it will attract tons of you guessed it...people who had Wow as their first MMO and of course kotor fans. Noting will change in this area. thats why you will see so much hate for former SWG vets on their forums becuase they think a sandbox MMO is fail. they don't see it the only way to save MMO gaming.
So, what? Guns don't kill people; people do. Blame the investors, not WoW. At the very least there's funding being pumped into the genre, and, hey, it might give us something great.
The genre would be stuck in the doldrums of uesteryear if WoW hadn't come along anyway, and epopel would be equally as bored.
RIFT was a *crushing* disappointment; a shallow, loveless, generic MMO the likes of which hasn't been seen in a P2P format since, well, forever.
Eagerly awaiting: World of Darkness, ArcheAge.
Meh.
Computer games are a piece of art. The computer gaming industry has the same problem as the music industry or the movie industry: they are trying to have commercial success with the production of culture.
Culture however, in its very essence, is ideas. And ideas, in their essence, are free, not commercial.
This is a big conflict.
It all works quite fine as long as dedicated artist have the say in what is done. But when the business suits take over, things go downhill. The result is shallow trash products nobody needs.
So whats the issue with WoW ? It was a huge success. I dont know much about why. I assume that it is because
- low hardware requirements
- extremely strong advertisement
- good basic design of the game - it was "fun"
Now if reports are to be believed, Blizzard is not actually knowing what they want to do with this kind of success. Instead of generating content with their enormous profits, they didnt do anything for a long time. And when they finally released addons to WoW, they only made the game easier and easier.
Would the MMO genre look better today without WoW ? I have no clue. Certainly WoW has introduced many gamers into the MMO genre. It has definitely expanded the market. But maybe this expansion would have happened without WoW as well ? And we wouldnt have seen so many boring thinly veiled copies of WoW.
So yeah, I simply have no clue if WoW was overall good or overall bad. I myself certainly never played it. To me, the MMO with the biggest impact is still Vanguard, because it had so many elements that are uber fun.
Vanila WoW was the best thing ever to the mmo market, its other mmo creators that fail hard and try to copy wow's succes.
WoW failed when it became world if instand craft where you never ever had to leave the city to do something and they are paying the price for it in the long run.
Blaming wow for the failures the market creates is just /facepalm rofl
The worst thing that happened to the genre was that broadband is now the norm for most everyone.
1998, the vast majority of people online were early adopters, eg nerds, nowadays everyone and their grandmas is online including children, alcoholics and the mentally ill.
So games have a much more diverse population these days.
I would say it was both the worst and best thing that happened to the genre.
WoW's success brought millions of new players to the genre. It showed that an MMO could launch pretty much polished and ready to go from the gate. While it was not the most innovative game ever created it didn't need to be. It was easy to get in to and fun for many people.
The downside is that with those millions of new players you got a whole lot of trash. MMO devs and investors are now blinded by the money that WoW generates and can not seem to understand that there very well could be a very profitable success with another type of MMO. Fantasy themeparks will be common place for many many years.
Do I blame WoW or Blizzard for any of the bad. No. It is just the way things turned out. At some point in the future I am pretty sure we will see a mmo crash like in the console industry during the 80's. There is only so much trash that can be put out there before people just lose interest.
IMO WoW is one of the better games on the market. Even though the game is more and more geared to the casual instant action gamer. Though many of you dont remember how games used to be was back in ancient times. Like in EQ. Which I always here many players wishing games were like that. But they never remember the long very long amount of time to regain mana, or the running around zones to find a group to grind for hours only to die and loose that experiece you gained.
Also WoW was not as casual gaming as many of you think, the first casual mmo out there was Anarchy Online. Which by the way WoW took many of its features. IE instanced dungeons. Also, as WoW became more popular many other mmo's in a bid to compete made their games easier. For expample LOTRO's leveling curve was reduced.
Though WoW is the giant in the field, its not their fault other mmo's come out unfinished, or lacking in being original. Even new mmo's like Rift, being polished , is so much like wow and a couple other games its no wonder its polished. Why add something new when you can copy and paste.
WoW does have one huge problem. Its the player base. Haveing played many many mmo's no other mmo can compete with the most pathetic player base. haveing now played WoW for many years now i am still amazed by players. sometimes i have to log into other mmos just to be around normal people.
Oh and for mmo's to compete with WoW, dont promise then dont deliver, launch a finished product, do not go full pvp, dont let the hype get you and most of all, the better the graphics then less amount of players that can play. So simple its amazing
I don't blame the game. I think when WoW became so popular that the genre went mainstream, things began to change. Being an old-timer, some of those changes don't seem so great to me. But some of them are pretty good. No sense in complaining about it now though. I was taught to lead by example, so I'll just keep marching on.
WoW was actually pretty awesome when it was first released, in my opinion. Nothing like it is right now. After playing EQ for years, WoW was a big step forward. I do still miss some of EQ's mechanics though. Many of which the developers have changed in order to appeal to the new WoW crowd. I still don't blame WoW though. I could probably point the finger at certain development teams of each game, but I don't have enough information to track down where it all started.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Far be it from me to be a WoW defender but was bringing million of new people into the genre really a bad thing? In fact WoW really didn't bring anything new to the table. Copy EQ formula, add in a shit ton of with direction, speed up the leveling curve and toss it into the Warcraft universe. Nothing really new or innovative there.
How is it WoW fault that developers can't think outside the box and do something different? Unfortunelty we are stuck in the 2 design philosophy rut. We have the standard theme park design and the standard ffa pvp sandbox design and nothing in between.