Justify it however you want, but there remains 1 constant that cannot be refuted.
WE were the ones who made it sucessful.
Look at it however you want, but the truth is that the kind of MMO that WoW is (i.e. Dungeon finder, themepark, etc.) is the dominating force of the MMO industry. New MMOs are taking the ideas because statistics show that this is the kind of MMO the population wants and will buy.
Again, justify it however you want. The facts are there.
Who are we?
If you mean PC gamers in general then I would say yes.
If you mean MMORPG gamers then I would say no.
The MMORPG player base, in the west, before the release of WoW was less than 1 million. After it was 5 million.
And seeing as not all other MMORPGs suddently became empty it is safe to assume that not all those 1 million started playing WoW (and by that I mean more than just tried it).
So the ones who made WoW successful were PC gamers and not MMORPG gamers and that is because Blizzard basically said lets screw this virtual world thing and just go for single player quests and instances, much like single/multiplayer RPGs. That is what made it big, because it catered to NON MMORPG players.
So WoW is responsible for bringing in a bunch of people who previously were not interested in MMORPGs and are now demanding games that are even farther away from how the MMORPGs were before WoW. And that is how it basically killed the genre and transformed it to something else.
Whether or not the "Console Gamers" were the ones who attibuted to its success is becides the point. What IS true however, is that the industry has immensely grown since that point. As you mentioned it has grown over 5 times as big as what it used to be. Whether you look at it as a bad thing or a good thing is a personal opinion.
The way I see it is WoW boosted the industry to what it is today. A Billion dollar industry. Without WoW's success it is hard to say it would be the same in popularity.
All the game designers do is cater to the population. This may not settle well with the minority, but at the end of the day it is all buisness, and the minority will remain the minority.
That's assuming pre-WOW MMORPG gamers, which I consider to be the actual MMO gamer population cares about popularity. Our genre may not of been popular, but the communities were close-knit and our games were a lot more complex, so I'd rather have a genre with a close-knit population with more complex games than a genre full of rude anti-social people and ultra-polished linear games that cost mega millions of dollars to make.
This. The same "popularity" that WoW "brought to the genre" is the same "popularity" the Wii brought to the genre. EG- it doesn't exist.
That makes no sense considering that the popularity of the Wii caused Sony to make the Playstation Move and Microsoft to make the X-box Kinect.
Justify it however you want, but there remains 1 constant that cannot be refuted.
WE were the ones who made it sucessful.
Look at it however you want, but the truth is that the kind of MMO that WoW is (i.e. Dungeon finder, themepark, etc.) is the dominating force of the MMO industry. New MMOs are taking the ideas because statistics show that this is the kind of MMO the population wants and will buy.
Again, justify it however you want. The facts are there.
Who are we?
If you mean PC gamers in general then I would say yes.
If you mean MMORPG gamers then I would say no.
The MMORPG player base, in the west, before the release of WoW was less than 1 million. After it was 5 million.
And seeing as not all other MMORPGs suddently became empty it is safe to assume that not all those 1 million started playing WoW (and by that I mean more than just tried it).
So the ones who made WoW successful were PC gamers and not MMORPG gamers and that is because Blizzard basically said lets screw this virtual world thing and just go for single player quests and instances, much like single/multiplayer RPGs. That is what made it big, because it catered to NON MMORPG players.
So WoW is responsible for bringing in a bunch of people who previously were not interested in MMORPGs and are now demanding games that are even farther away from how the MMORPGs were before WoW. And that is how it basically killed the genre and transformed it to something else.
Whether or not the "Console Gamers" were the ones who attibuted to its success is becides the point. What IS true however, is that the industry has immensely grown since that point. As you mentioned it has grown over 5 times as big as what it used to be. Whether you look at it as a bad thing or a good thing is a personal opinion.
The way I see it is WoW boosted the industry to what it is today. A Billion dollar industry. Without WoW's success it is hard to say it would be the same in popularity.
All the game designers do is cater to the population. This may not settle well with the minority, but at the end of the day it is all buisness, and the minority will remain the minority.
That's assuming pre-WOW MMORPG gamers, which I consider to be the actual MMO gamer population cares about popularity. Our genre may not of been popular, but the communities were close-knit and our games were a lot more complex, so I'd rather have a genre with a close-knit population with more complex games than a genre full of rude anti-social people and ultra-polished linear games that cost mega millions of dollars to make.
This. The same "popularity" that WoW "brought to the genre" is the same "popularity" the Wii brought to the genre. EG- it doesn't exist.
That makes no sense considering that the popularity of the Wii caused Sony to make the Playstation Move and Microsoft to make the X-box Kinect.
Right, the Wii is successful, that's not what's being argued. What's being argued is, it got that success from non gamers. It didn't make the pool of gamers bigger, it just started appealing to non gamers, just like WoW. Like I said, grandma buying Wii bowling isn't suddenly going to become a hardcore gamer now that she's tried a motion remote. She's going to play the Wii and nothing else, just like grandma playing WoW will play WoW and not real MMOs.
That is like asking if the original Star Wars was bad for the science fiction film industry. While it was a fanaical boon for film makers causing many new films of that genre to be green lighted with nice fat budgets, it also destroyed most of the charm of the earlier small budget classics that came before. At the same time though, out of all the new films spawned by Star Wars success, only the SW franchise truly became a Deathstar built out of solid gold. For the people who enjoy hackneyed films that are one part King Arthur, one part spaghetti space western, with a few Akira Kurosawaesque electric samurai, and some aliens scattered about for dramatic effect, it was great times. For those fans who prefered the less glitzy, and far more quirky, strangeness of films such as 2001 A Space Oddity, Zardoz, Dark Star, or Silent Running, Star War's success meant they could just about beguaranteed to never see this kind of film again. (Well at least unil the 1990s when a ton of coke jagged producers would greenlight anything because they learned they could turn garbage into gold, usually at the film stuidos expense.) So for makers and watchers of SCI FI it was a double edged sword at best.
The same applies to the success of Wow. In truth only Wow has seriouly benefited from its success. All the other games so far that have tried to build on its features haven't really made more money than any of the pre-Wow games. In fact since their budgets were much higher than their early predecessors, they probably came out making less.
That said I feel it is unfair to blame wow for the demise of the sandbox universe. The wrecking ball started rolling on that one with the launch and success of EQ. Its impact on the susbscription numbers of Ultima Online led to the creation of Trammel, which many UO lovers complain killed UO as we know it. In reality the sschism started here. Not with Wow. Wow simply capitalized on it. It was truly a VHS vs Betamax moment. Both customers and manufacturers chose accessibility over quality.
So while Wow didn't do any good for the world of sandbox games, their die was cast far before it was born. And if you want to blame anyone for killing the sandbox genre, I suggest you all start by looking in a mirrior. It was the MMO player base that killed the beast. Any time a new indie studio sandbox game comes out and YOU DON'T support it because it just isn't perfect enough, you are helping to kill the kind of game you profess to love. Every time you ruthlessly attack themepark games because they aren't the kind of game you enjoy, you further cement in the minds of players who have never played anything else, that these sandbox games must be full of grumpy elitests and not worth playing.
Want to see something different on the menu? Then start trying out of few of those hole in the wall restaurants until you find something you like. Tell your friends about it. And maybe, just maybe, IT came become the next big thing. Otherwise all you are really doing is staging a sit in at your local McDonalds where you refuse to buy anything in the hope of making the people who do enjoy eating there think twice. The problem is, is that this solves nothing. You are still hungry and most of these customers just ignore you and get their food via the drive through because that is the path of most convenience.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
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.
I would say yes based on this answer. Also - the new community it brought.
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
I say Yes, and not becuase of what it is but becuase it brought to many people, both players and Devs/Investers that really have no buisness playing and/or developing MMoRPGs.
Only a complete fool would blame WoW for ruining the MMO industry. The blame goes squarely at the developers who are too stupid to understand that a WoW clone won't ever succeed. EVER. WoW is in no way responsible for what other developers do.
Developers need to understand that a MMO does not need 1 million players for it to be successful.
That is like asking if the original Star Wars was bad for the science fiction film industry.
Not really. The original Star Wars was famous because it was ground breaking and well made. WoW is famous because it's simple and had a massive marketing campaign. So uh, no.
After WoW, it became apparent that the landscape had changed, but WoW itself isn't to blame as its core mechanics were very attractive at the time. You figure that the only competing games that were coming out at the time were FFXI, which has slow-bro combat, and Lineage, which felt rigid despite having superb competetive elements.
The fact is that developers got the hint that combat and premade factions were a significantly easier way to rid the problems inherent in the 1st-generation, where you wouldn't know where the hell to go. In the process, freedom was sacked as a core element, and the playerbase forgot about it until, well, recently.
We're getting back to freedom, however. GW2 and ArcheAge have articulated that their focus is about making the world feel large and affectable again. Combine that with the demand for better combat and we will eventually get to that point where MMOs offer something unique.
Wow help the genre more than what people think. Before WOW there were not many MMO's to chose from. WOW shed light on the genre and brought more devs and sponsors make more games. It also forced companies to rethink the way they were made. If anything blizz helped bring more attention and that spawned good/bad games.
The worst thing that has happened to the genre is the players who forgot what MMORPG means. The players who skip over the lore then complain there is no story. The ones who powerlevel thru the game the first month and say there is "No Content". Where are the days when making a group just enjoying other players company? The industry only changes when its consumers do. So you want to blame someone blame the player not the game.
That is like asking if the original Star Wars was bad for the science fiction film industry.
Not really. The original Star Wars was famous because it was ground breaking and well made. WoW is famous because it's simple and had a massive marketing campaign. So uh, no.
That is interesting because that could be exactly the way I would describe the early Star Wars franchise. (And yes Wow as well) The acting was mainly substandard, the plot was a hodge podge of other story tellers ideas. And while the first three Star Wars films did have some nifty special effects for the age, they were all ideas thought up by others that Lucas had his people cobble together to get the most whim wham out of a tiny budget.
Humorously enough the one area that Star Wars was a pioneer in was self hype and MERCHANDISING THE CRAP out of its intellectual properties. Ask any male child who was 5 to 15 during the time that Star Wars came out and you will find that while they did enjoy the films, their most cheerished memories of the event was their Star Wars action figures, play sets, Legos, bed sheets, pajamas, posters, special edition drinking tumblers from Macdonalds,comic books, sound track albums, halloween costumes, and other litte plastic widgets of cargo cult nonsense, that since Star Wars now surround just about every popular sci fi yarn these days.
So sorry I still feel my analogy holds quite a lot of water.
+++addendum+++
On the subject of Star War's special effects. I feel that the film 2001, a flim that antedates Star Wars by 10 yeras, had better ones. The reson for this is I felt they did a better job with far less technology to work with. Sadly though 2001's plot was dry and serious and not the wild wild west, pew pew LaZoR BeAm fest that was Star Wars.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
After WoW, it became apparent that the landscape had changed, but WoW itself isn't to blame as its core mechanics were very attractive at the time. You figure that the only competing games that were coming out at the time were FFXI, which has slow-bro combat, and Lineage, which felt rigid despite having superb competetive elements.
Lineage didn't come out the same time as WoW... and EQ2 was also there to compete. The difference was, WoW wasn't aimed at MMORPG gamers, it aimed at the Starcrafters and house wives, and that's where it found success with its massive marketing budget and brand name.
Wow help the genre more than what people think. Before WOW there were not many MMO's to chose from.
Um... what? At the time of WoW there were about 8 big budget successful healthy MMOs running, all massively unique for one another, filling every genre or niche, and dozens upon dozens of smaller ones.
Now, post WoW, we have about 2 MMOs who are healthy and growing, and a dozen or so failures that are bleeding subscribers faster and faster, and the only MMOs to choose from are WoW clones.
First a confession: I am a WoW fanboy I have been playing it since BC (except for a few months I played Warhammer online .... a victim of hype) I only play one mmo.
Definitions
Fanboy:
A fan, sometimes also called aficionado or supporter, is a person with a liking and enthusiasm for something, such as a band or a sports team. Fans of a particular thing or person constitute its fanbase or fandom. They may show their enthusiasm by being a member of a fan club, holding fan conventions, creating fanzines, writing fan mail, or by promoting the object of their interest and attention.
or if you like:
A fanboy is a person considered to belong to one or more fandoms to a point of obsession.
The so called Hardcore Gamers are Fanboys of an unpopular style of games (at least nowadays). I do not understand exactly what they want in a game other than "Not Easy" , Not Dumbed down (whatever that means), Having hellish penalties for failure (ie death) having long inconvienient time sinks (for travel for instance), etc. They want a challenge that only the "best" gamers can stand up to.
Well, it stands to reason that the "best" gamers are greatly in the minority of gamers (by definition ... we can't all be best). So which game company is going to sink 100 million and 5 or more years into a game that only a few will get any satisfaction out of??
and:
Ok then Blizzard is the Evil company (who has never really made a truly crap game) who causes all the other developers to make all the crap games, by making games people like to play. Hmmm pretty dumb conclusion IMO.
Popular games are popular because lots of people like to play them. They like to play them because they are having fun (somehow). I admit Playing WoW so long has made me try out some other games. Thery have all been crap (compared to WoW IMO) and I returned to WoW.
There will always be peeps who throw stones at the "popular" things in life, perhaps to elevate themselves above we cattle who are herded into the popular thing. We are so ......... unpopular. /lol
Note: All the above is just my opinion. You all are allowed to have your own. It is not that you are wrong, it is just that I disagree with some of you.
That's assuming pre-WOW MMORPG gamers, which I consider to be the actual MMO gamer population cares about popularity. Our genre may not of been popular, but the communities were close-knit and our games were a lot more complex, so I'd rather have a genre with a close-knit population with more complex games than a genre full of rude anti-social people and ultra-polished linear games that cost mega millions of dollars to make.
Hmmmm aren't some of those close knit complex games still around? Why not just play them?
After WoW, it became apparent that the landscape had changed, but WoW itself isn't to blame as its core mechanics were very attractive at the time. You figure that the only competing games that were coming out at the time were FFXI, which has slow-bro combat, and Lineage, which felt rigid despite having superb competetive elements.
Lineage didn't come out the same time as WoW... and EQ2 was also there to compete. The difference was, WoW wasn't aimed at MMORPG gamers, it aimed at the Starcrafters and house wives, and that's where it found success with its massive marketing budget and brand name.
I meant L2, which was around the same generation. EQ2 could be described as a disaster that hardly competed with WoW. I mean, it didn't persuade the old EQ croud to switch over. Remember, most games sported a clunky point-and-click style. You talk about this aim as if it were a bad thing, but in your blind dislike towards the current state of MMOs, you've probably forgotten how clunky all the other games were that surrounded WoW at the time of its release.
Also, dogging on Starcraft is dumb. MMO communities could learn from how the SC community maintains a modicum of sportsmanship. The fact that you imply that they're bad gamers in the same categories of housewives demonstrates how you are part of the nebulous MMO community that, frankly, has killed MMOs by themselves.
WoW coming into being is lot like selling your soul to the devil. It brought in a lot of money for game development but it the end we lost our souls in the process.
I confess, I enjoyed WOW when it launched and have no regrets. But eventually the game took a direction I wasn't willing to go when BC released and I decided to move on.
Only to find that almost every other game designer out there decided to emulate Blizzard and MMORPG's became depresssingly the same. Worse, they all started to eschew features that I enjoyed in earlier games (thank goodness I found EVE for 3 years) and that I feel is the worst thing to happen to the genre. (copycatting)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Far be it from me to be a WoW defender but was bringing million of new people into the genre really a bad thing?
Honestly, it's one of the changes to the genre that I think was highly detrimental. With smaller communites, the quality of those communities was generally much better. Many of those new millions of players who've never experienced a strong, helpful community will never see MMORPGs as more than a video game, like Pacman or Mario Brothers.
And without those millions of new paying players what type of quality games do you think we would see? You have to accept the bad with the good.
I and many of us were okay with the quality found in games before WoW. DAoC was my first MMO, SWG my second, and COH my third and I found all 3 more enjoyable that WoW and all games released since WOW. All three of those games were built around group play from the time you logged in until the time you logged out. You could solo as well, but the difference is that people actually wanted to group and socialize. Plus all 3 of those games had a lot better customization and depth than games released since WoW.
WoW did bring more polish to the genre, but that polish wasn't worth the MMO's on rails we have now, where you don't see a AAA MMO where you're required to carefully allocate stat points, have lots of progression choices within each class, and lots of places to explore per level range. Quests used to mean something before WoW. Now they're simply chores. You gather up a bunch of these chores, complete them, return to the quest hub and rinse and repeat until you are sent to the next quest hub. You do this ad naseum until max level. It's detrimental to your progress to group before then except for PvP matches, instant dungeons, and raids at the end of the game.
So maybe we have a difference of opinion what quality means. I look for quality in gameplay, character progression, and features. Maybe you look more towards a smooth polished finish, with negligible technical problems.
I don't disagree with any of your statements. I started UO in 98 which has so much more then any game since with maybe the exception of swg. But without building a alternate reality portal who is to say the genre wouldn't of crashed as a whole without the influx of additional players and cash. If the mmo population would of stayed the same could developers make a profit in todays market? Or would the low budget gems we see now not the ones back then be the norm.
No because WoW just pleased that huge number of new players that just got access to internet. Wow just responded to the demand.
Yes because it cut the head of the good old sandbox dream (SWG) with it, well SOE cut his own head in fact thinking they would grab some noob cake for this noble gesture, but obviously failed on both front, gg guys
Comments
That makes no sense considering that the popularity of the Wii caused Sony to make the Playstation Move and Microsoft to make the X-box Kinect.
Right, the Wii is successful, that's not what's being argued. What's being argued is, it got that success from non gamers. It didn't make the pool of gamers bigger, it just started appealing to non gamers, just like WoW. Like I said, grandma buying Wii bowling isn't suddenly going to become a hardcore gamer now that she's tried a motion remote. She's going to play the Wii and nothing else, just like grandma playing WoW will play WoW and not real MMOs.
That is like asking if the original Star Wars was bad for the science fiction film industry. While it was a fanaical boon for film makers causing many new films of that genre to be green lighted with nice fat budgets, it also destroyed most of the charm of the earlier small budget classics that came before. At the same time though, out of all the new films spawned by Star Wars success, only the SW franchise truly became a Deathstar built out of solid gold. For the people who enjoy hackneyed films that are one part King Arthur, one part spaghetti space western, with a few Akira Kurosawaesque electric samurai, and some aliens scattered about for dramatic effect, it was great times. For those fans who prefered the less glitzy, and far more quirky, strangeness of films such as 2001 A Space Oddity, Zardoz, Dark Star, or Silent Running, Star War's success meant they could just about beguaranteed to never see this kind of film again. (Well at least unil the 1990s when a ton of coke jagged producers would greenlight anything because they learned they could turn garbage into gold, usually at the film stuidos expense.) So for makers and watchers of SCI FI it was a double edged sword at best.
The same applies to the success of Wow. In truth only Wow has seriouly benefited from its success. All the other games so far that have tried to build on its features haven't really made more money than any of the pre-Wow games. In fact since their budgets were much higher than their early predecessors, they probably came out making less.
That said I feel it is unfair to blame wow for the demise of the sandbox universe. The wrecking ball started rolling on that one with the launch and success of EQ. Its impact on the susbscription numbers of Ultima Online led to the creation of Trammel, which many UO lovers complain killed UO as we know it. In reality the sschism started here. Not with Wow. Wow simply capitalized on it. It was truly a VHS vs Betamax moment. Both customers and manufacturers chose accessibility over quality.
So while Wow didn't do any good for the world of sandbox games, their die was cast far before it was born. And if you want to blame anyone for killing the sandbox genre, I suggest you all start by looking in a mirrior. It was the MMO player base that killed the beast. Any time a new indie studio sandbox game comes out and YOU DON'T support it because it just isn't perfect enough, you are helping to kill the kind of game you profess to love. Every time you ruthlessly attack themepark games because they aren't the kind of game you enjoy, you further cement in the minds of players who have never played anything else, that these sandbox games must be full of grumpy elitests and not worth playing.
Want to see something different on the menu? Then start trying out of few of those hole in the wall restaurants until you find something you like. Tell your friends about it. And maybe, just maybe, IT came become the next big thing. Otherwise all you are really doing is staging a sit in at your local McDonalds where you refuse to buy anything in the hope of making the people who do enjoy eating there think twice. The problem is, is that this solves nothing. You are still hungry and most of these customers just ignore you and get their food via the drive through because that is the path of most convenience.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Wow sucks, always had. It was cool to bring in a whole new wave of gamers, but they do not know what a true mmo is yet.
Raids, gamer scores, and AH. Most new gamers that are WOW vets put every game down.....when it is what they know ....is what truely sucks.
I don't see how this exempts it from being a detrimental event.
I would say yes based on this answer. Also - the new community it brought.
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
I say Yes, and not becuase of what it is but becuase it brought to many people, both players and Devs/Investers that really have no buisness playing and/or developing MMoRPGs.
Godz of War I call Thee
Only a complete fool would blame WoW for ruining the MMO industry. The blame goes squarely at the developers who are too stupid to understand that a WoW clone won't ever succeed. EVER. WoW is in no way responsible for what other developers do.
Developers need to understand that a MMO does not need 1 million players for it to be successful.
Not really. The original Star Wars was famous because it was ground breaking and well made. WoW is famous because it's simple and had a massive marketing campaign. So uh, no.
Absolutely.. WoW has done what the microwave has done to the art of cooking..
It was an evolution, however it also bought about some very clear and concrete negatives as well..
After WoW, it became apparent that the landscape had changed, but WoW itself isn't to blame as its core mechanics were very attractive at the time. You figure that the only competing games that were coming out at the time were FFXI, which has slow-bro combat, and Lineage, which felt rigid despite having superb competetive elements.
The fact is that developers got the hint that combat and premade factions were a significantly easier way to rid the problems inherent in the 1st-generation, where you wouldn't know where the hell to go. In the process, freedom was sacked as a core element, and the playerbase forgot about it until, well, recently.
We're getting back to freedom, however. GW2 and ArcheAge have articulated that their focus is about making the world feel large and affectable again. Combine that with the demand for better combat and we will eventually get to that point where MMOs offer something unique.
Whether it is detrimental or not is ones own opinion.Im just bringing to mind that we the consumers made WoW what it is..
Whether you think its horrible or positive for the industry,it is because the the gaming/mmo consumer made it that way.
Wow help the genre more than what people think. Before WOW there were not many MMO's to chose from. WOW shed light on the genre and brought more devs and sponsors make more games. It also forced companies to rethink the way they were made. If anything blizz helped bring more attention and that spawned good/bad games.
The worst thing that has happened to the genre is the players who forgot what MMORPG means. The players who skip over the lore then complain there is no story. The ones who powerlevel thru the game the first month and say there is "No Content". Where are the days when making a group just enjoying other players company? The industry only changes when its consumers do. So you want to blame someone blame the player not the game.
That is interesting because that could be exactly the way I would describe the early Star Wars franchise. (And yes Wow as well) The acting was mainly substandard, the plot was a hodge podge of other story tellers ideas. And while the first three Star Wars films did have some nifty special effects for the age, they were all ideas thought up by others that Lucas had his people cobble together to get the most whim wham out of a tiny budget.
Humorously enough the one area that Star Wars was a pioneer in was self hype and MERCHANDISING THE CRAP out of its intellectual properties. Ask any male child who was 5 to 15 during the time that Star Wars came out and you will find that while they did enjoy the films, their most cheerished memories of the event was their Star Wars action figures, play sets, Legos, bed sheets, pajamas, posters, special edition drinking tumblers from Macdonalds,comic books, sound track albums, halloween costumes, and other litte plastic widgets of cargo cult nonsense, that since Star Wars now surround just about every popular sci fi yarn these days.
So sorry I still feel my analogy holds quite a lot of water.
+++addendum+++
On the subject of Star War's special effects. I feel that the film 2001, a flim that antedates Star Wars by 10 yeras, had better ones. The reson for this is I felt they did a better job with far less technology to work with. Sadly though 2001's plot was dry and serious and not the wild wild west, pew pew LaZoR BeAm fest that was Star Wars.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Lineage didn't come out the same time as WoW... and EQ2 was also there to compete. The difference was, WoW wasn't aimed at MMORPG gamers, it aimed at the Starcrafters and house wives, and that's where it found success with its massive marketing budget and brand name.
Um... what? At the time of WoW there were about 8 big budget successful healthy MMOs running, all massively unique for one another, filling every genre or niche, and dozens upon dozens of smaller ones.
Now, post WoW, we have about 2 MMOs who are healthy and growing, and a dozen or so failures that are bleeding subscribers faster and faster, and the only MMOs to choose from are WoW clones.
Yeah, improvement alright.
First a confession: I am a WoW fanboy I have been playing it since BC (except for a few months I played Warhammer online .... a victim of hype) I only play one mmo.
Definitions
Fanboy:
A fan, sometimes also called aficionado or supporter, is a person with a liking and enthusiasm for something, such as a band or a sports team. Fans of a particular thing or person constitute its fanbase or fandom. They may show their enthusiasm by being a member of a fan club, holding fan conventions, creating fanzines, writing fan mail, or by promoting the object of their interest and attention.
or if you like:
A fanboy is a person considered to belong to one or more fandoms to a point of obsession.
The so called Hardcore Gamers are Fanboys of an unpopular style of games (at least nowadays). I do not understand exactly what they want in a game other than "Not Easy" , Not Dumbed down (whatever that means), Having hellish penalties for failure (ie death) having long inconvienient time sinks (for travel for instance), etc. They want a challenge that only the "best" gamers can stand up to.
Well, it stands to reason that the "best" gamers are greatly in the minority of gamers (by definition ... we can't all be best). So which game company is going to sink 100 million and 5 or more years into a game that only a few will get any satisfaction out of??
and:
Ok then Blizzard is the Evil company (who has never really made a truly crap game) who causes all the other developers to make all the crap games, by making games people like to play. Hmmm pretty dumb conclusion IMO.
Popular games are popular because lots of people like to play them. They like to play them because they are having fun (somehow). I admit Playing WoW so long has made me try out some other games. Thery have all been crap (compared to WoW IMO) and I returned to WoW.
There will always be peeps who throw stones at the "popular" things in life, perhaps to elevate themselves above we cattle who are herded into the popular thing. We are so ......... unpopular. /lol
Note: All the above is just my opinion. You all are allowed to have your own. It is not that you are wrong, it is just that I disagree with some of you.
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
Hmmmm aren't some of those close knit complex games still around? Why not just play them?
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
I meant L2, which was around the same generation. EQ2 could be described as a disaster that hardly competed with WoW. I mean, it didn't persuade the old EQ croud to switch over. Remember, most games sported a clunky point-and-click style. You talk about this aim as if it were a bad thing, but in your blind dislike towards the current state of MMOs, you've probably forgotten how clunky all the other games were that surrounded WoW at the time of its release.
Also, dogging on Starcraft is dumb. MMO communities could learn from how the SC community maintains a modicum of sportsmanship. The fact that you imply that they're bad gamers in the same categories of housewives demonstrates how you are part of the nebulous MMO community that, frankly, has killed MMOs by themselves.
... I dont think MMORPGs have been killed, otherwise, among other things, this site would have already shut down.
WoW coming into being is lot like selling your soul to the devil. It brought in a lot of money for game development but it the end we lost our souls in the process.
I confess, I enjoyed WOW when it launched and have no regrets. But eventually the game took a direction I wasn't willing to go when BC released and I decided to move on.
Only to find that almost every other game designer out there decided to emulate Blizzard and MMORPG's became depresssingly the same. Worse, they all started to eschew features that I enjoyed in earlier games (thank goodness I found EVE for 3 years) and that I feel is the worst thing to happen to the genre. (copycatting)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I don't disagree with any of your statements. I started UO in 98 which has so much more then any game since with maybe the exception of swg. But without building a alternate reality portal who is to say the genre wouldn't of crashed as a whole without the influx of additional players and cash. If the mmo population would of stayed the same could developers make a profit in todays market? Or would the low budget gems we see now not the ones back then be the norm.
Of course not,
-Semper ubi sub ubi!
always wear underwear
No because WoW just pleased that huge number of new players that just got access to internet. Wow just responded to the demand.
Yes because it cut the head of the good old sandbox dream (SWG) with it, well SOE cut his own head in fact thinking they would grab some noob cake for this noble gesture, but obviously failed on both front, gg guys