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.
What Zolgar said! Zolgar is wise bryond his years! "Guide us ohhh great one!"
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.
What Zolgar said! Zolgar is wise bryond his years! "Guide us ohhh great one!"
It's funny how when someone makes a valid point the only thing that people who don't want to hear the truth can come up with is troll posts and sarcastic remarks.
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
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.
What Zolgar said! Zolgar is wise bryond his years! "Guide us ohhh great one!"
It's funny how when someone makes a valid point the only thing that people who don't want to hear the truth can come up with is troll posts and sarcastic remarks.
Isnt it just (oh how I wish there was a rolling eyes smiley for this comment) Just to be clear Zolgar is in many ways correct
So, the worst thing to happen the MMO Genre was the first game to release fully functional with content and the one that showed that if you release a game with plenty of content and plenty of polish people will flock to it?
No the worst thing to happen to the MMO genre was not wow, I am done with that game wont go back but what it did was raise the bar and raise peoples expectations of subsiquent releases so that half finished tosh like STO, AoC, FFXIV, Warhammer and a whole deluge of other mediocre games were exposed for what they were.
The worst thing to happen to GAMING in general is megacorp risk averse publishers who want games rushed out.
Heh , the worst thing to have happened to the genre isn't the birth of WoW , it's the ammount of idiots who keep posting about how shitty it is instead of playing something else.
I'd love to play something else. Care to show me a AAA MMO that isn't a WoW clone? I'd love to try it.
before wow mmos had like 2k players per shard, and not alot of shards per "country" or rather country-group.
i remember times where only 200 players have been online in daoc, and less.
wow changed at least the masses, i doubt half of you would be here without wow
wow made mmos interesting for the masses.
if you wanna play niche games, bad luck they're out of stock
Whaaat? Most Dark Age of Camelot servers had about 2000 players each, and there were about 20 servers per country.
And since when is "bringing the masses" to anything a good thing? The masses are the reason we haven't had a good game in years. Making a game "interesting for the masses" translates to making a game so dirt simple even my grandma could figure it out, and not giving much enjoyment to anyone smarter.
Like I said before, it wasn't WoW that caused the "dumbing down" of the mmorpg genre, it's the result. Unless you want to say UOs trammel was somehow WoWs fault. IMO, that's where it started. All of the original mmorpg s, UO, AC, EQ, AO, etc., got "dumbed down" with each update and expansion. Why? Because the old school gamers whined and complained about time sinks and downtimes way back then. Each subsequent mmorpg learned from the "mistakes" of the previous ones till we got WoW. You got what you wanted. Stop whining and support the few games out there that try something different and maybe we can slowly get devs to see us as a viable target audience again.
Heh , the worst thing to have happened to the genre isn't the birth of WoW , it's the ammount of idiots who keep posting about how shitty it is instead of playing something else.
I'd love to play something else. Care to show me a AAA MMO that isn't a WoW clone? I'd love to try it.
EVE Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Guild Wars, Saga of Ryzom, Wakfu.
The worst thing to happen however was how easy they've made WoW from every expansion. Then how every MMO since WoW has just cloned it and done nothing new.
before wow mmos had like 2k players per shard, and not alot of shards per "country" or rather country-group.
i remember times where only 200 players have been online in daoc, and less.
wow changed at least the masses, i doubt half of you would be here without wow
wow made mmos interesting for the masses.
if you wanna play niche games, bad luck they're out of stock
Whaaat? Most Dark Age of Camelot servers had about 2000 players each, and there were about 20 servers per country.
And since when is "bringing the masses" to anything a good thing? The masses are the reason we haven't had a good game in years. Making a game "interesting for the masses" translates to making a game so dirt simple even my grandma could figure it out, and not giving much enjoyment to anyone smarter.
So your saying your grandma is stupid? It's not about being too dumb to play a game. It's about treating the game as short-term entertainment and not a long-term hobby. Most people don't have time for a sandbox game where you have to make your own fun or frustrating gankfest open pvp games. Face it, most people are not like you. Just accept it and move on. Instead of hoping for some utopian game that will never exist. The glory days when nerdy teenagers in their basements where the kings of the MMORPG games are long gone and they will never return.
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.
Considering it single-handedly stagnated all innovation even to this day by major development studios, yes, it absolutely is the worst thing to ever happen to the MMO genre.
". It's about treating the game as short-term entertainment and not a long-term hobby"
That's the problem right there, A mmorg is not a single player pick up meaningless blast, however blizz turned it into this as a result of demands like this, they got greedy and made it into a themepark because it tapped into the much bigger single plyer market and so now it is not an immersive experience. So from this perspective they did have a hugely negative effect on mmorgs as the large corps that have shareholders only care about profit not quality. I give GWars as a great example where this was not the case, although not a true mmorg, they had the guts to stick to their original design principles. As a result GWars has a much lower but much happier and loyal player base even after all these years.
If you cant afford to invest time to immerse in a game trying to represent a living world, dont play the game - dont demand you change the game, otherrweise every game will be the same - stagnation..
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Considering it single-handedly stagnated all innovation even to this day by major development studios, yes, it absolutely is the worst thing to ever happen to the MMO genre.
seconded
The Deathstar destroyed planets...Lucas Arts destroyed Galaxies
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Played: SWG | EVE | WOW | VG | LOTRO | WAR | FML | STO | APB | AOC | MORTAL | WOT | BP | SW:TOR
Saying blizzard and wow made it so other companies wont be innovative is idiotic. Its not wow or blizzards fault other companies aren't willing to take chances.
I have some advice stop blaming wow for all that ails mmo's and start putting the blame where it belongs with the devs who try to feed u crap and yourselves for buying it.
Look wow did alot of things right and has done some innovative stuff from phasing, to there dungeon finder to ease of access and simplistic ui's that dotn take a phd to learn.
These things made mmo's ease of access better and made the mmo game user a much more common gamer. It took away the stuff that made people play go no and leave.
without wow the 100 million dollar budge mmo's wouldnt be here. Say what u will about the 5 mils subs everyone says galzies had. Wow made publshers stand up and go wow we can really make some money of this.
Problem isnt wow its all the companies forcing half finished crap and taken and wrapping wow type gameplay into bad packages with no innovation. Thats not wows fault its the companies hoping to leach wows sub base and take advantage of wows popularity.
There the ones who should be blamed no wow. or blizzard. Its not ther fault other game companies chose to follow wow so closely without any of the polish that games that come out suck its the devs who make the horrid games they put out.
If tor fails u dont blame wow u blame bioware. if trion puts out a half assed game that copies wow u blame trion. U dont blame blizzard and wow for other companies follies and for devs stagnation.
If u want real innovation u may hve to wait for blizzards next mmo.
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.
As I see it investors do what investors supposed to do.
The genre would be stuck in the doldrums of uesteryear if WoW hadn't come along anyway, and epopel would be equally as bored.
Not at all.
MMOs were far more diverse, interesting, engaging and deep prior to WoW than they are now. They were open worls, not "on-rails" theme parks with rewards a-plenty and hand-holding at every turn. They each had their own approach to designing a MMO and, subsequently, each was its own unique game.
Every new MMO to come out, even though it shared the basic aspects of a MMORPG (or RPG for that matter) - levels, stats, gear, mobs, quests, etc - was its own unique offering.
As I've put it in other threads, if you were to play Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, Eve, Everquest I (or even II at its launch, shortly before WoW came out), DAoC, FFXI or various other MMOs from that period, you would not think any one of them feels like any other one of them. They were each their own game.
Nowadays, you can log into WoW, LoTRO, WAR, Rift, or any of a host of other MMOs to come since WoW and they all feel like they were cut from the same cloth. I *never* once heard the words "I feel like I've played this before" uttered in reference to pre-WoW MMOs. I hear/read it all the time with MMOs to come out since WoW launched. That's not coincidence.
I agree with what was said earlier as well... WoW brought in legions of people who had never played a MMO - many didn't even know WoW *was* a MMO or even what a MMO was; they were just looking to play the next Warcraft game. It also brought in legions of players weened on single player "beat the game as fast as possible and move on to the next" type players. This is when you saw a flood of people into the genre that suddenly cared more about how quickly they could get to end-game than they did about what happened along the way. This is when you saw the flood of people coming in who would complain that a month is too long to reach level cap.
WoW brought a massive amount of people into the genre who had no idea what MMOs were, what they were about, what they were designed as or how they were intended to be played. As has been said, even WoW was a much different game at launch - but that wasn't enough for people. Folks started complaining en masse "It's too slow! Make it faster!", "Gear takes too long to get! Make it easier!", "Level cap takes too long to reach! Make it quicker!" and so on... and so Blizzard followed suit.
To compound the problem, you have companies who previously wouldn't touch MMOs with a 10 foot pole suddenly smelling the gravy train roll by (WoW) and deciding to hop on it. So began the wave of WoW clones. This isn't unique. It happens with every genre of game to become popular and, in fact, any kind of entertainment that becomes popular. As is typically the case, they aren't interested in innovating the product, they just want some of the $$$ going around. So they seek to create the best clone they can without landing themselves in court. It's not about the game. It's about the green. They don't understand the kind of game they're making, they don't understand what made WoW successful... and they don't care. They just want to ride the gravy train as long as they can.
What I *will* say has hurt the genre is how Blizz has continued to simplify and dumb down WoW, and other devs are trying to out-do them in that area. When WAR came out, I remember thinking "What, is Mythic trying to out-WoW WoW in terms of how much hand-holding they can have?". Mythic and other developers seemed to follow the trend of "Easier is always better" and "More rewards for less effort is always better" and ran with it. Real life friends of mine used to defend it tooth and nail, claiming that making the games easier and "more accessible" was what the genre needed; that MMOs had "finally become what they should have been from the beginning". Even they've since stopped and said "Okay, this is getting ridiculous now" in terms of how far it's gone.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
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 stick with this answer
Was about to say the same...
The only bad thing from WoW's success is that it stopped the innovation from developers. Only the indie developers are really trying to be innovative, but generally lack the funds to do so - mostly because the game is 'deemed unsuccessull' by the investors who don't see the 'generic WoW influence' in the game.
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 stick with this answer
mostly because the game is 'deemed unsuccessull' by the investors who don't see the 'generic WoW influence' in the game.
Exactly, wow was successful in vanilla and tbc and was evolving nicely and blizz had a decent balance between Quality and profit but they had a change of ownership and look at it now. The sole benchmark of their success is now the profit margin and how many active accounts they have - thats not a measurement of quality at all. To be fair to blizzard some other company would have eventually done the same, its a lot to do with corporate greed but the fact remains, its blizzard that was the first to dumb down for pure profit.
Example - recycling old content thats been in the game for 4-5 years, which is actually easier than it was originally. They have massive profits, and could have invested time and money to produce new content, but instead they rehash old content. Thats got nothing to do with quality of gaming experience and caring about their player base, and everything to do with profit. Do we hope the next big mmorg does this? I think not.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
". It's about treating the game as short-term entertainment and not a long-term hobby"
That's the problem right there, A mmorg is not a single player pick up meaningless blast, however blizz turned it into this as a result of demands like this, they got greedy and made it into a themepark because it tapped into the much bigger single plyer market and so now it is not an immersive experience. So from this perspective they did have a hugely negative effect on mmorgs as the large corps that have shareholders only care about profit not quality. I give GWars as a great example where this was not the case, although not a true mmorg, they had the guts to stick to their original design principles. As a result GWars has a much lower but much happier and loyal player base even after all these years.
If you cant afford to invest time to immerse in a game trying to represent a living world, dont play the game - dont demand you change the game, otherrweise every game will be the same - stagnation..
A problem for whom? You? Most MMORPG players will beg to differ. Don't act like you and your "kind" are more pure than everyone else. It's just arrogant. GW went their own way yes. The question is why aren't more companies doing that?
When has Blizzard ever stated that wow is a representation of a living world? Never. They are in the business to make games. If you know anything about them then you should know that. At the time when Blizzard actually started working on Wow most of the leadership was unsure about it. They had never made a MMORPG before and they really didn't believe Wow would become the hit it is today. So I really don't see how you can act greedy with that outlook. Are they greedy today? Perhaps. They might have become more lazy due to their enormous success, but that's a different topic. Greed was not a factor when making Wow. Greed is ripping off wow to make a quick buck.
So you should ask 'why are companies so greedy today?' and stop bashing on a company that just made a damn fine product and got the success they deserved.
Comments
What Zolgar said! Zolgar is wise bryond his years! "Guide us ohhh great one!"
It's funny how when someone makes a valid point the only thing that people who don't want to hear the truth can come up with is troll posts and sarcastic remarks.
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
Wow is actually the best thing happened to mmorpg.
before wow mmos had like 2k players per shard, and not alot of shards per "country" or rather country-group.
i remember times where only 200 players have been online in daoc, and less.
wow changed at least the masses, i doubt half of you would be here without wow
wow made mmos interesting for the masses.
if you wanna play niche games, bad luck
they're out of stock
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Isnt it just (oh how I wish there was a rolling eyes smiley for this comment) Just to be clear Zolgar is in many ways correct
So, the worst thing to happen the MMO Genre was the first game to release fully functional with content and the one that showed that if you release a game with plenty of content and plenty of polish people will flock to it?
No the worst thing to happen to the MMO genre was not wow, I am done with that game wont go back but what it did was raise the bar and raise peoples expectations of subsiquent releases so that half finished tosh like STO, AoC, FFXIV, Warhammer and a whole deluge of other mediocre games were exposed for what they were.
The worst thing to happen to GAMING in general is megacorp risk averse publishers who want games rushed out.
I'd love to play something else. Care to show me a AAA MMO that isn't a WoW clone? I'd love to try it.
Whaaat? Most Dark Age of Camelot servers had about 2000 players each, and there were about 20 servers per country.
And since when is "bringing the masses" to anything a good thing? The masses are the reason we haven't had a good game in years. Making a game "interesting for the masses" translates to making a game so dirt simple even my grandma could figure it out, and not giving much enjoyment to anyone smarter.
Like I said before, it wasn't WoW that caused the "dumbing down" of the mmorpg genre, it's the result. Unless you want to say UOs trammel was somehow WoWs fault. IMO, that's where it started. All of the original mmorpg s, UO, AC, EQ, AO, etc., got "dumbed down" with each update and expansion. Why? Because the old school gamers whined and complained about time sinks and downtimes way back then. Each subsequent mmorpg learned from the "mistakes" of the previous ones till we got WoW. You got what you wanted. Stop whining and support the few games out there that try something different and maybe we can slowly get devs to see us as a viable target audience again.
EVE Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Guild Wars, Saga of Ryzom, Wakfu.
No.. it was the warcraft fans.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
WoW was great when it launched.
The worst thing to happen however was how easy they've made WoW from every expansion. Then how every MMO since WoW has just cloned it and done nothing new.
So your saying your grandma is stupid?
It's not about being too dumb to play a game. It's about treating the game as short-term entertainment and not a long-term hobby. Most people don't have time for a sandbox game where you have to make your own fun or frustrating gankfest open pvp games. Face it, most people are not like you. Just accept it and move on. Instead of hoping for some utopian game that will never exist. The glory days when nerdy teenagers in their basements where the kings of the MMORPG games are long gone and they will never return.
i stick with this answer
Considering it single-handedly stagnated all innovation even to this day by major development studios, yes, it absolutely is the worst thing to ever happen to the MMO genre.
". It's about treating the game as short-term entertainment and not a long-term hobby"
That's the problem right there, A mmorg is not a single player pick up meaningless blast, however blizz turned it into this as a result of demands like this, they got greedy and made it into a themepark because it tapped into the much bigger single plyer market and so now it is not an immersive experience. So from this perspective they did have a hugely negative effect on mmorgs as the large corps that have shareholders only care about profit not quality. I give GWars as a great example where this was not the case, although not a true mmorg, they had the guts to stick to their original design principles. As a result GWars has a much lower but much happier and loyal player base even after all these years.
If you cant afford to invest time to immerse in a game trying to represent a living world, dont play the game - dont demand you change the game, otherrweise every game will be the same - stagnation..
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
seconded
The Deathstar destroyed planets...Lucas Arts destroyed Galaxies
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Played:
SWG | EVE | WOW | VG | LOTRO | WAR | FML | STO | APB | AOC | MORTAL | WOT | BP | SW:TOR
Saying blizzard and wow made it so other companies wont be innovative is idiotic. Its not wow or blizzards fault other companies aren't willing to take chances.
I have some advice stop blaming wow for all that ails mmo's and start putting the blame where it belongs with the devs who try to feed u crap and yourselves for buying it.
Look wow did alot of things right and has done some innovative stuff from phasing, to there dungeon finder to ease of access and simplistic ui's that dotn take a phd to learn.
These things made mmo's ease of access better and made the mmo game user a much more common gamer. It took away the stuff that made people play go no and leave.
without wow the 100 million dollar budge mmo's wouldnt be here. Say what u will about the 5 mils subs everyone says galzies had. Wow made publshers stand up and go wow we can really make some money of this.
Problem isnt wow its all the companies forcing half finished crap and taken and wrapping wow type gameplay into bad packages with no innovation. Thats not wows fault its the companies hoping to leach wows sub base and take advantage of wows popularity.
There the ones who should be blamed no wow. or blizzard. Its not ther fault other game companies chose to follow wow so closely without any of the polish that games that come out suck its the devs who make the horrid games they put out.
If tor fails u dont blame wow u blame bioware. if trion puts out a half assed game that copies wow u blame trion. U dont blame blizzard and wow for other companies follies and for devs stagnation.
If u want real innovation u may hve to wait for blizzards next mmo.
Not at all.
MMOs were far more diverse, interesting, engaging and deep prior to WoW than they are now. They were open worls, not "on-rails" theme parks with rewards a-plenty and hand-holding at every turn. They each had their own approach to designing a MMO and, subsequently, each was its own unique game.
Every new MMO to come out, even though it shared the basic aspects of a MMORPG (or RPG for that matter) - levels, stats, gear, mobs, quests, etc - was its own unique offering.
As I've put it in other threads, if you were to play Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, Eve, Everquest I (or even II at its launch, shortly before WoW came out), DAoC, FFXI or various other MMOs from that period, you would not think any one of them feels like any other one of them. They were each their own game.
Nowadays, you can log into WoW, LoTRO, WAR, Rift, or any of a host of other MMOs to come since WoW and they all feel like they were cut from the same cloth. I *never* once heard the words "I feel like I've played this before" uttered in reference to pre-WoW MMOs. I hear/read it all the time with MMOs to come out since WoW launched. That's not coincidence.
I agree with what was said earlier as well... WoW brought in legions of people who had never played a MMO - many didn't even know WoW *was* a MMO or even what a MMO was; they were just looking to play the next Warcraft game. It also brought in legions of players weened on single player "beat the game as fast as possible and move on to the next" type players. This is when you saw a flood of people into the genre that suddenly cared more about how quickly they could get to end-game than they did about what happened along the way. This is when you saw the flood of people coming in who would complain that a month is too long to reach level cap.
WoW brought a massive amount of people into the genre who had no idea what MMOs were, what they were about, what they were designed as or how they were intended to be played. As has been said, even WoW was a much different game at launch - but that wasn't enough for people. Folks started complaining en masse "It's too slow! Make it faster!", "Gear takes too long to get! Make it easier!", "Level cap takes too long to reach! Make it quicker!" and so on... and so Blizzard followed suit.
To compound the problem, you have companies who previously wouldn't touch MMOs with a 10 foot pole suddenly smelling the gravy train roll by (WoW) and deciding to hop on it. So began the wave of WoW clones. This isn't unique. It happens with every genre of game to become popular and, in fact, any kind of entertainment that becomes popular. As is typically the case, they aren't interested in innovating the product, they just want some of the $$$ going around. So they seek to create the best clone they can without landing themselves in court. It's not about the game. It's about the green. They don't understand the kind of game they're making, they don't understand what made WoW successful... and they don't care. They just want to ride the gravy train as long as they can.
What I *will* say has hurt the genre is how Blizz has continued to simplify and dumb down WoW, and other devs are trying to out-do them in that area. When WAR came out, I remember thinking "What, is Mythic trying to out-WoW WoW in terms of how much hand-holding they can have?". Mythic and other developers seemed to follow the trend of "Easier is always better" and "More rewards for less effort is always better" and ran with it. Real life friends of mine used to defend it tooth and nail, claiming that making the games easier and "more accessible" was what the genre needed; that MMOs had "finally become what they should have been from the beginning". Even they've since stopped and said "Okay, this is getting ridiculous now" in terms of how far it's gone.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Was about to say the same...
The only bad thing from WoW's success is that it stopped the innovation from developers. Only the indie developers are really trying to be innovative, but generally lack the funds to do so - mostly because the game is 'deemed unsuccessull' by the investors who don't see the 'generic WoW influence' in the game.
Exactly, wow was successful in vanilla and tbc and was evolving nicely and blizz had a decent balance between Quality and profit but they had a change of ownership and look at it now. The sole benchmark of their success is now the profit margin and how many active accounts they have - thats not a measurement of quality at all. To be fair to blizzard some other company would have eventually done the same, its a lot to do with corporate greed but the fact remains, its blizzard that was the first to dumb down for pure profit.
Example - recycling old content thats been in the game for 4-5 years, which is actually easier than it was originally. They have massive profits, and could have invested time and money to produce new content, but instead they rehash old content. Thats got nothing to do with quality of gaming experience and caring about their player base, and everything to do with profit. Do we hope the next big mmorg does this? I think not.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
A problem for whom? You? Most MMORPG players will beg to differ. Don't act like you and your "kind" are more pure than everyone else. It's just arrogant. GW went their own way yes. The question is why aren't more companies doing that?
When has Blizzard ever stated that wow is a representation of a living world? Never. They are in the business to make games. If you know anything about them then you should know that. At the time when Blizzard actually started working on Wow most of the leadership was unsure about it. They had never made a MMORPG before and they really didn't believe Wow would become the hit it is today. So I really don't see how you can act greedy with that outlook. Are they greedy today? Perhaps. They might have become more lazy due to their enormous success, but that's a different topic. Greed was not a factor when making Wow. Greed is ripping off wow to make a quick buck.
So you should ask 'why are companies so greedy today?' and stop bashing on a company that just made a damn fine product and got the success they deserved.
read up - what do you think of recycling old content as an example?
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D