Love it or hate it, if it wasn't for WoW HUGE success, we probably wouldn't be seeing the likes of SWTOR, TERA, GW2, SW etc coming out.
WoW brought MMO's to the forefront and captured a whole new audience that didn't play them before. Because of that, we'll all reap the rewards of other companies trying to cash in.
It was happier times for me before WoW.
I had Shadowbane, EQ, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, and Star Wars Galaxies to keep me busy.
When Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft came into the picture, yeah we saw a major flux in the community on mmorpg gamers, however it also brought the trash with them <imo>
The older mmorpg's to me had a better immersion factor, today I feel like I am just playing a xbox / ps3 game on my PC.
If WoW didn't happen, I gurantee we would still have mmorpg today.
I agree. WoW didn't ruined MMOs. We can't blame WoW for the lack of innovation of its competitors.
But with some outside-the-box big budget games on their way and with the success of a few indie studios like CCP and Aventurine, we're already seeing a shy evolution of the genre. In the meanwhile, some companies still don't understand that the mentality of their target-population has left behind the standards they're trying to copy.
No, its exactly the opposite. Look over what games maintain the highest population, they all have the same basic mechanics. Those companies aren't evolving anything, they are attaching themselves to the niche market that has existed since the days of UO. You can't evolve the genre until you can find a way to evolve the players in it. Right now, those players have spoken and said, "MOAR THEMEPARKZ PLZ".
Is what it is
Everything revolves around the choices delivered to those players. We use to talk about sandboxes and themeparks because they use to have diametrically opposed mechanics. While Sandboxes revolve around harsh death penalties, lack of guidance, deep crafting and poor PvE content, themeparks use to bring lack of not-guided content, poor crafting, nonexistent/extremely soft death penalties and poor PvP.
The middle ground between these two game concepts is the clue.
First of al I want to say I've played WoW for about a year myself, though I stopped playing, due to lack of interest in how the game plays and feels.
As you say yourself you've played WoW for six years now, and you like it, so why would you suddenly bring it down?
People should stop complaining about eachothers games/life's and what not, do what you want to do and what you like, and stop bothering some else cause he/she doesn't like what you like.
.1.
MMO's were there before WoW, the game didn't change that, nor did it suddenly make another load of MMO's appear. Just cause WoW had millions of players doesn't mean other MMO's got noticed more. When the game was released yes it did have appealing content other games didn't have, but that doesn't make it the best and biggest MMO out there for me. I think it was mainly the name (Warcraft, which was already loved by many) and a brilliant marketing strategy by Blizzard that made this game, not content/gameplay/graphics.
.2.
I agree on the cross server instances, that was a good idea, though I do not see how that in any way i related to any other MMO out there, just cause one game has certain content and another does not, doesn't mean the one that does have it ruined the other game.
.3.
I feel the same bout your third statement as I do about my thoughts on your second. Because WoW has expansions doesn't mean another game would suddenly become better/worse.
STOOPID When someone does something so utterly moronic that it kills your brain cells at the very thought of it.
Love it or hate it, if it wasn't for WoW HUGE success, we probably wouldn't be seeing the likes of SWTOR, TERA, GW2, SW etc coming out.
WoW brought MMO's to the forefront and captured a whole new audience that didn't play them before. Because of that, we'll all reap the rewards of other companies trying to cash in.
Right..because WoW's success has more to do with GW2 than, say, GW's success?
Little forum boys with their polished cyber toys: whine whine, boo-hoo, talk talk.
LOL this guy is a noob....Cross server LFG system????? Really????? So what you are saying MMOs should be just one big instanced lobby?? That we should sit around and wait for the queue to pop and be thrown straight into action?? How is that create COMMUNITY, which is the main purpose of a MMO, how does that create a LIVING, BREATHING, dynamic world of perpetual motion, which each MMO attempts or is aspiring to create.....
Then WoTLK.....yeah the expansion, where gear was handed out practically for free, pvp was in it most unbalanced state since Vanilla, the mechanics of classes had been totally left behind, classes became homogenized, money was worthless, the old world was left to rot and was dead, actually the whole world felt dead because everyone sat in the capital city waiting for queue's to pop.....
Love it or hate it, if it wasn't for WoW HUGE success, we probably wouldn't be seeing the likes of SWTOR, TERA, GW2, SW etc coming out.
WoW brought MMO's to the forefront and captured a whole new audience that didn't play them before. Because of that, we'll all reap the rewards of other companies trying to cash in.
why do people insist thinking wow was the holy grail of mmorpg...what makes people think that if we didnt have wow we wouldnt have tera / gw2 / sw ...there were many mmo's before wow..do people forget that? or maybe it was the only mmo they ever played..imo..if wow wasnt released we would probly see BETTER mmo's comeing out than all the new rainbows and lolly pop mmo's that are being released of today
and these "new players" that wow had captured have morfed into the"ima casual player that only plays for 3-4hrs a day or week" and we all know that the true mmorpg players liked to stay up for 10+hrs or days even trying to scrap and claw their way to the top..but now its just given to em on a silver platter...all in all imo wow has fliped the whole genra upside down and made it so lazy (ingame) that its hard to capture a real sence of game play for no longer than a 1yr tops for AAA+ titles no matter what it is
Classic/Vanilla WoW was so much better... I really miss that game.
TBC had some great memories for sure, but Outland was just awful.
WoW really should have never raised the level cap and just expanded Azeroth and forgot about Outland all together. Horizontal expansion of Azeroth FTW.
Took them two more expansion to get back to the heart of Azeroth and to try and reinvent the war between Alliance/Horde.
Both TBC and WOTLK were garbage, Cataclysm at least reclaimed the old, good world but in the process kept the WOTLK fail train rolling in terms of system design.
WOTLK did have the best new zones though, I'll give it that, Northrend was awesome but the game mechanic changes were garbage.
To sum up -
TBC - great addition of heroics and 10/25 raid split, rest was garbage including all of Outland.
Wrath - Northrend was amazing, rest of expansion was garbage.
Cata - Great reinvention of old world, rest total garbage.
I quess the part I'm having a hard time with is the title itself. The title of the post indicates that MMO's are indeed ruined. This is a very broad statement. Judging from subription numbers, I think it appears as though MMO's are relatively healthy. The title of the post goes toward what I was saying earlier.. the general unhappiness of MMO fans in general and the sour nature of just about every post I have read lately...
I'm currently very happy in WoW... or else I wouldn'nt be playing it. I wouldn't consider MMO's ruined by any means. But, that's just me.
South Koreas MMO community exists thanks to Lineage even if Wow have been popular there. Lineage already had over a million players before Wow released so you are somewhat wrong, Garreth.
I can't say Wow ruined MMOs but greedy investors trying to cash in on the Wow train surely didn't help the genre.
the general unhappiness of MMO fans in general and the sour nature of just about every post I have read lately...
This is the problem people on this site just don't seem to understand.
The genre as a whole is VERY healthy and bigger and better then ever, we have dozens and dozens if games to choose from and many top quality, popular and well supported MMO's to play.
It's just the people on THIS site and maybe a few other fan sites that represent probably 1-2% of the over-all MMO community that are unhappy.
Classic/Vanilla WoW was so much better... I really miss that game.
TBC had some great memories for sure, but Outland was just awful.
WoW really should have never raised the level cap and just expanded Azeroth and forgot about Outland all together. Horizontal expansion of Azeroth FTW.
Totally agree. Vanilla was better than what it is now.
The LFG tool, it helps in getting groups and doing the dungeons, but let's face it. Building a better community it does not. You get in, run the instance, no one speaks, beat the boss, leave dungeon. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Some of the older Mmo's that forced group were a pain but the communities that evolved from it were some of the best out there.
Classic/Vanilla WoW was so much better... I really miss that game.
TBC had some great memories for sure, but Outland was just awful.
WoW really should have never raised the level cap and just expanded Azeroth and forgot about Outland all together. Horizontal expansion of Azeroth FTW.
Totally agree. Vanilla was better than what it is now.
The LFG tool, it helps in getting groups and doing the dungeons, but let's face it. Building a better community it does not. You get in, run the instance, no one speaks, beat the boss, leave dungeon. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Some of the older Mmo's that forced group were a pain but the communities that evolved from it were some of the best out there.
I remember my days in Everquest as a Wood Elf Druid, people loved having you in the group because of your talents (Spirit of the Wolf and druid ports).
Back then, you felt you had a reason to log on with your character and you were making a difference in the game.
Today, you feel like a number in most of the mmo's and the world would careless even if you played.
We lost a lot of the RPG elements in mmo's today in my opinion.
I remember my days in Everquest as a Wood Elf Druid, people loved having you in the group because of your talents (Spirit of the Wolf and druid ports).
Back then, you felt you had a reason to log on with your character and you were making a difference in the game.
Today, you feel like a number in most of the mmo's and the world would careless even if you played.
We lost a lot of the RPG elements in mmo's today in my opinion.
Absolutely. 'Can I have SoW plz?' lol
It's a weird paradox. EQ had camp grinds but having ppl you liked in it made it more tolerable and enjoyable. Today's themeparks are enjoyable to play, if somewhat of a different type of grind..the quest grind, but there's no more sense of belonging.
You do have exceptions if you play with RL friends and what not, but the rush to endgame has overshadowed the journey through the game.
Mmo's seem to be more a la Farmville than virtual worlds, and no matter how you slice it, the Multiplayer aspect of Mmo's has definitely changed in definition.
WoW is a really good game, played it off and on for the last 7 years(ok, it will be 7 in a month or so) and had alot of fun, hell I might even go back again in the future for a month or two, who knows.
There are other really good games out there too and I am always on the lookout for the next really good game, WoW increased the number of options we have and I am thankful for that.
its sadly funny...in today's society people consider us more social. We have cell phones, Internet, facebook, etc... We have more ways to be social. But honestly, we are not.
We are more connected but in a passive way. it is almost voyeuristic. We like to know but we do not want to be more involved. We like to see but not participate.
MMO's are just a reflection of society. People like to play games but nor form a community. Community is gone in society and MMO's. To live in a virtual world, you must have a community and we no longer form communities in games.
I will admit I play WOW because it frees me from a lot of the hassle of other MMO's and for the reasons that many play it. However, I miss the old worlds and old community. But other games are the same way. EQ now lets you group with NPC's or so I hear. Task dungeons in DACO pretty much let you solo to 50 (which is like 5 days and not 5 months now).
My point is WOW is not the problem but a symptom of a bigger problem. WOW just gives the majority of players what they want.
I agree.
Mmo's like any other demographic dependent product will only follow the direction of current trends. It's not that far off than saying our technology that allows us to connect more easily to one another is actually making us more isolationists.
I don't mind WoW, it's a fun game (I don't play it anymore) but find the direction it went lacking. You can't find a better casual mmo out there, unless you're sick of it and are playing Rift or Lotro or something, but they're all pretty much the same.
In our society we can forgive the lack of interpersonal relationships because we still keep in touch via technology. However, put that in a small village context and it'll become evident pretty quick that it'd be to its detriment.
Times change and all that, and all we can do is adapt and go with the flow
I'd agree with the saying that " WoW did not ruin MMOs ".
I think it's more appropriate to say " WoW ruined MMO developers " instead.
The game itself is not responsible for 95% of its genre's developers putting on blinders and mantra chanting " WoW is the way! Make the game today! ".
I'd disagree with the point that it getting 12 million subscribers was more good than bad, though. This genre was growing, slowly but surely. Such an influx of gamers over the span of a few short years distorted what could have been a more natural, measured growth in which we could have seen greater variety in the types of MMOs made at relative equal quality.
+1
There is nothing inherently wrong with WOW, there is just something wrong with pretty much every single game developer/investor thinking WOW is the only way to make a successfull game. That's about as brain dead as every resturant trying to be Taco Bell.
Originally posted by Evilkanebel I remember my days in Everquest as a Wood Elf Druid, people loved having you in the group because of your talents (Spirit of the Wolf and druid ports). Back then, you felt you had a reason to log on with your character and you were making a difference in the game. Today, you feel like a number in most of the mmo's and the world would careless even if you played. We lost a lot of the RPG elements in mmo's today in my opinion.
A friend of mine calls this the, "I'm a special snowflake syndrome". Being a special snowflake made people useful, regardless of their social deficiencies. There's a limit on how many special snowflakes you can have though.
For every happy little snowflake, there were a bunch of unhappy snowflakes...they were superfluous in the grander scheme of things because the first set of snowflakes had already filled the special snowflake niches in the game's ecosystem.
Now, nobody gets to be a special snowflake, but more people can participate. If someone is a jerk, they are easily replaceable because you don't have to find a special snowflake to fill their role.
It's a trade off really. I really enjoyed being the group's mana battery in WoW on my Shadow Priest. Everyone was pretty OK with my priest not being a healer...especially the other healers. So I always had a spot, and that meant that other people didn't. The same thing happened with other people too...we had a core group that always went on raids, and a bunch of extras. After the mana battery thing changed, I wasn't a special snowflake anymore. I noticed that a lot of the 'extras' got to go on raids a lot more too. In my opinion, that's better overall, even if I didn't have a guaranteed spot.*
* I did have a spot actually, I got really good at healing and managing myself during encounters. But it was kind of a relief to know that if I didn't feel like logging in, somebody else could fill in on raids and I wasn't ruining a night's activity for 9 to 24 other people.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
WOW is best thing that ever happen to MMO. Every game i tried after WOW was so empty and cheap. It is normal that we can see wow haters on every forum, same as you will see Microsoft haters all around us but 90% of computer users use Windows. Most of people who hate wow didnt even played this game to the level cap. It is only game where i leveled all classes to cap and enjoyed every moment. Best PVP ever, huge lands,awesome music,epic story with in game movies, so many mounts, achivements, professions, auction house and so much more. I feel so good when i remember epic raids on Ogrimar when we was crushing Burning Blade server because of huge number of players who was in raid. You can smell air around you when you fly over Northrend on your drake. I have accounts in EQ2,GW,AOC,EVE,RIFT,WAR but like i said i was always returning to WOW
A friend of mine calls this the, "I'm a special snowflake syndrome". Being a special snowflake made people useful, regardless of their social deficiencies. There's a limit on how many special snowflakes you can have though.
For every happy little snowflake, there were a bunch of unhappy snowflakes...they were superfluous in the grander scheme of things because the first set of snowflakes had already filled the special snowflake niches in the game's ecosystem.
Now, nobody gets to be a special snowflake, but more people can participate. If someone is a jerk, they are easily replaceable because you don't have to find a special snowflake to fill their role.
It's a trade off really. I really enjoyed being the group's mana battery in WoW on my Shadow Priest. Everyone was pretty OK with my priest not being a healer...especially the other healers. So I always had a spot, and that meant that other people didn't. The same thing happened with other people too...we had a core group that always went on raids, and a bunch of extras. After the mana battery thing changed, I wasn't a special snowflake anymore. I noticed that a lot of the 'extras' got to go on raids a lot more too. In my opinion, that's better overall, even if I didn't have a guaranteed spot.*
* I did have a spot actually, I got really good at healing and managing myself during encounters. But it was kind of a relief to know that if I didn't feel like logging in, somebody else could fill in on raids and I wasn't ruining a night's activity for 9 to 24 other people.
WoW actually increased this attitude though, because now showing off your e-peen while being condescending without the consequences of such behavior is more alllowable.
Nobody wants to play a game where they don't feel special about their character. Masochism is not that rampant yet. It's not the feeling of always being useful that really matters but that your actions matter and have a community of people that know you and how you behave, not some random internet user that plays the same game.
You said it yourself, you adapted from spriest to become a healer and stayed within that core grp of raiders. Seems like being a special snowflake again.
The only thing WoW ruined was itself - over years of patches and expansions that changed the game and really took it far, far away from the original direction.
And why? Because we (maybe not us here on MMORPG.com) asked them to.
We didn't know this was where it'd lead, but WoW is really a shadow and a whisper of the game it once was... yet, at the same time, all of the quality of life improvements made to the game have made certain/many things much better.
But over all, despite all the fixes and positive changes, something was certainly lost. The soul of the game one could say.
The real problem with the genre as a whole is not WoW but it is/was in everyone else trying to copy/emulate WoW.
Accepting the new "standards" that WoW set is one thing - all games of all genres that are successful do this, like FPS games and HUD's - it's just an industry standard you copy and hopefully try and improve on/customize for your purposes.
It's the spin-off strategy that always leads to the same thing - unoriginal, uncreative garbage that tries to capture a piece of the other guy's pie and fails.
Television does this, movies do this, books and music certainly do this.
TV show is exceptional and popular - you get bad spin offs - Law and Order, NCIS, Friends, etc. etc. led to all kinds of garbage shows.
Movie is exceptional and popular - you get spin bad offs - Lord of the Rings - fantasy movies, Iron Man - comic book movies, etc. etc. led to all kinds of garbage movies.
Book is exceptional and popular - you get bad spin offs - Harry Potter / Twilight, there have been all kinds of garbage spin offs.
(Not saying Twilight was ever good but HP certainly is)
Music, a sound is popularized and successful, you get all kinds of crappy spin-off bands trying to get their piece of that pie, to emulate that sound....
But we all know how this turns out right?
Only thing that will "save" the genre from unoriginal, uncreative spin-offs is bold, decisive action and fresh new thinking.
Comments
It was happier times for me before WoW.
I had Shadowbane, EQ, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, and Star Wars Galaxies to keep me busy.
When Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft came into the picture, yeah we saw a major flux in the community on mmorpg gamers, however it also brought the trash with them <imo>
The older mmorpg's to me had a better immersion factor, today I feel like I am just playing a xbox / ps3 game on my PC.
If WoW didn't happen, I gurantee we would still have mmorpg today.
Everything revolves around the choices delivered to those players. We use to talk about sandboxes and themeparks because they use to have diametrically opposed mechanics. While Sandboxes revolve around harsh death penalties, lack of guidance, deep crafting and poor PvE content, themeparks use to bring lack of not-guided content, poor crafting, nonexistent/extremely soft death penalties and poor PvP.
The middle ground between these two game concepts is the clue.
First of al I want to say I've played WoW for about a year myself, though I stopped playing, due to lack of interest in how the game plays and feels.
As you say yourself you've played WoW for six years now, and you like it, so why would you suddenly bring it down?
People should stop complaining about eachothers games/life's and what not, do what you want to do and what you like, and stop bothering some else cause he/she doesn't like what you like.
.1.
MMO's were there before WoW, the game didn't change that, nor did it suddenly make another load of MMO's appear. Just cause WoW had millions of players doesn't mean other MMO's got noticed more. When the game was released yes it did have appealing content other games didn't have, but that doesn't make it the best and biggest MMO out there for me. I think it was mainly the name (Warcraft, which was already loved by many) and a brilliant marketing strategy by Blizzard that made this game, not content/gameplay/graphics.
.2.
I agree on the cross server instances, that was a good idea, though I do not see how that in any way i related to any other MMO out there, just cause one game has certain content and another does not, doesn't mean the one that does have it ruined the other game.
.3.
I feel the same bout your third statement as I do about my thoughts on your second. Because WoW has expansions doesn't mean another game would suddenly become better/worse.
STOOPID
When someone does something so utterly moronic that it kills your brain cells at the very thought of it.
Right..because WoW's success has more to do with GW2 than, say, GW's success?
Little forum boys with their polished cyber toys: whine whine, boo-hoo, talk talk.
I miss the days when MMORPGs were niche gaming. They were so much better back then.
What good is it to make MMORPGs mainstream if every major title that gets released is a quest-grinding themepark?
Currently Playing: DAOC Uthgard
Previously Played: UO, DAOC, Shadowbane, AC2, SWG, Horizons, COX, WOW, EQ2, LOTRO, AOC, WAR, Vanguard, Rift, SWTOR, ESO, GW2.
LOL this guy is a noob....Cross server LFG system????? Really????? So what you are saying MMOs should be just one big instanced lobby?? That we should sit around and wait for the queue to pop and be thrown straight into action?? How is that create COMMUNITY, which is the main purpose of a MMO, how does that create a LIVING, BREATHING, dynamic world of perpetual motion, which each MMO attempts or is aspiring to create.....
Then WoTLK.....yeah the expansion, where gear was handed out practically for free, pvp was in it most unbalanced state since Vanilla, the mechanics of classes had been totally left behind, classes became homogenized, money was worthless, the old world was left to rot and was dead, actually the whole world felt dead because everyone sat in the capital city waiting for queue's to pop.....
Well when you dumb down the gameplay so that a 2 year old can figure it out it becomes a problem.
why do people insist thinking wow was the holy grail of mmorpg...what makes people think that if we didnt have wow we wouldnt have tera / gw2 / sw ...there were many mmo's before wow..do people forget that? or maybe it was the only mmo they ever played..imo..if wow wasnt released we would probly see BETTER mmo's comeing out than all the new rainbows and lolly pop mmo's that are being released of today
and these "new players" that wow had captured have morfed into the"ima casual player that only plays for 3-4hrs a day or week" and we all know that the true mmorpg players liked to stay up for 10+hrs or days even trying to scrap and claw their way to the top..but now its just given to em on a silver platter...all in all imo wow has fliped the whole genra upside down and made it so lazy (ingame) that its hard to capture a real sence of game play for no longer than a 1yr tops for AAA+ titles no matter what it is
Classic/Vanilla WoW was so much better... I really miss that game.
TBC had some great memories for sure, but Outland was just awful.
WoW really should have never raised the level cap and just expanded Azeroth and forgot about Outland all together. Horizontal expansion of Azeroth FTW.
Took them two more expansion to get back to the heart of Azeroth and to try and reinvent the war between Alliance/Horde.
Both TBC and WOTLK were garbage, Cataclysm at least reclaimed the old, good world but in the process kept the WOTLK fail train rolling in terms of system design.
WOTLK did have the best new zones though, I'll give it that, Northrend was awesome but the game mechanic changes were garbage.
To sum up -
TBC - great addition of heroics and 10/25 raid split, rest was garbage including all of Outland.
Wrath - Northrend was amazing, rest of expansion was garbage.
Cata - Great reinvention of old world, rest total garbage.
I quess the part I'm having a hard time with is the title itself. The title of the post indicates that MMO's are indeed ruined. This is a very broad statement. Judging from subription numbers, I think it appears as though MMO's are relatively healthy. The title of the post goes toward what I was saying earlier.. the general unhappiness of MMO fans in general and the sour nature of just about every post I have read lately...
I'm currently very happy in WoW... or else I wouldn'nt be playing it. I wouldn't consider MMO's ruined by any means. But, that's just me.
South Koreas MMO community exists thanks to Lineage even if Wow have been popular there. Lineage already had over a million players before Wow released so you are somewhat wrong, Garreth.
I can't say Wow ruined MMOs but greedy investors trying to cash in on the Wow train surely didn't help the genre.
I couldn't wait for wow to come out i was still playing EQ and Daoc.
When wow was finally released i played it for a month and went back to EQ and Daoc
I tried to play it several times but could never get into it, it was just boring and easy
This is the problem people on this site just don't seem to understand.
The genre as a whole is VERY healthy and bigger and better then ever, we have dozens and dozens if games to choose from and many top quality, popular and well supported MMO's to play.
It's just the people on THIS site and maybe a few other fan sites that represent probably 1-2% of the over-all MMO community that are unhappy.
Totally agree. Vanilla was better than what it is now.
The LFG tool, it helps in getting groups and doing the dungeons, but let's face it. Building a better community it does not. You get in, run the instance, no one speaks, beat the boss, leave dungeon. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Some of the older Mmo's that forced group were a pain but the communities that evolved from it were some of the best out there.
I remember my days in Everquest as a Wood Elf Druid, people loved having you in the group because of your talents (Spirit of the Wolf and druid ports).
Back then, you felt you had a reason to log on with your character and you were making a difference in the game.
Today, you feel like a number in most of the mmo's and the world would careless even if you played.
We lost a lot of the RPG elements in mmo's today in my opinion.
Absolutely. 'Can I have SoW plz?' lol
It's a weird paradox. EQ had camp grinds but having ppl you liked in it made it more tolerable and enjoyable. Today's themeparks are enjoyable to play, if somewhat of a different type of grind..the quest grind, but there's no more sense of belonging.
You do have exceptions if you play with RL friends and what not, but the rush to endgame has overshadowed the journey through the game.
Mmo's seem to be more a la Farmville than virtual worlds, and no matter how you slice it, the Multiplayer aspect of Mmo's has definitely changed in definition.
WoW is a really good game, played it off and on for the last 7 years(ok, it will be 7 in a month or so) and had alot of fun, hell I might even go back again in the future for a month or two, who knows.
There are other really good games out there too and I am always on the lookout for the next really good game, WoW increased the number of options we have and I am thankful for that.
I agree.
Mmo's like any other demographic dependent product will only follow the direction of current trends. It's not that far off than saying our technology that allows us to connect more easily to one another is actually making us more isolationists.
I don't mind WoW, it's a fun game (I don't play it anymore) but find the direction it went lacking. You can't find a better casual mmo out there, unless you're sick of it and are playing Rift or Lotro or something, but they're all pretty much the same.
In our society we can forgive the lack of interpersonal relationships because we still keep in touch via technology. However, put that in a small village context and it'll become evident pretty quick that it'd be to its detriment.
Times change and all that, and all we can do is adapt and go with the flow
+1
There is nothing inherently wrong with WOW, there is just something wrong with pretty much every single game developer/investor thinking WOW is the only way to make a successfull game. That's about as brain dead as every resturant trying to be Taco Bell.
A friend of mine calls this the, "I'm a special snowflake syndrome". Being a special snowflake made people useful, regardless of their social deficiencies. There's a limit on how many special snowflakes you can have though.
For every happy little snowflake, there were a bunch of unhappy snowflakes...they were superfluous in the grander scheme of things because the first set of snowflakes had already filled the special snowflake niches in the game's ecosystem.
Now, nobody gets to be a special snowflake, but more people can participate. If someone is a jerk, they are easily replaceable because you don't have to find a special snowflake to fill their role.
It's a trade off really. I really enjoyed being the group's mana battery in WoW on my Shadow Priest. Everyone was pretty OK with my priest not being a healer...especially the other healers. So I always had a spot, and that meant that other people didn't. The same thing happened with other people too...we had a core group that always went on raids, and a bunch of extras. After the mana battery thing changed, I wasn't a special snowflake anymore. I noticed that a lot of the 'extras' got to go on raids a lot more too. In my opinion, that's better overall, even if I didn't have a guaranteed spot.*
* I did have a spot actually, I got really good at healing and managing myself during encounters. But it was kind of a relief to know that if I didn't feel like logging in, somebody else could fill in on raids and I wasn't ruining a night's activity for 9 to 24 other people.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
1 Reason WoW didn't ruin MMO's, it made MMO's mainstream by going Mainstream.
WOW is best thing that ever happen to MMO. Every game i tried after WOW was so empty and cheap. It is normal that we can see wow haters on every forum, same as you will see Microsoft haters all around us but 90% of computer users use Windows. Most of people who hate wow didnt even played this game to the level cap. It is only game where i leveled all classes to cap and enjoyed every moment. Best PVP ever, huge lands,awesome music,epic story with in game movies, so many mounts, achivements, professions, auction house and so much more. I feel so good when i remember epic raids on Ogrimar when we was crushing Burning Blade server because of huge number of players who was in raid. You can smell air around you when you fly over Northrend on your drake. I have accounts in EQ2,GW,AOC,EVE,RIFT,WAR but like i said i was always returning to WOW
WoW actually increased this attitude though, because now showing off your e-peen while being condescending without the consequences of such behavior is more alllowable.
Nobody wants to play a game where they don't feel special about their character. Masochism is not that rampant yet. It's not the feeling of always being useful that really matters but that your actions matter and have a community of people that know you and how you behave, not some random internet user that plays the same game.
You said it yourself, you adapted from spriest to become a healer and stayed within that core grp of raiders. Seems like being a special snowflake again.
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WoW didn't ruin the MMO genre.
The only thing WoW ruined was itself - over years of patches and expansions that changed the game and really took it far, far away from the original direction.
And why? Because we (maybe not us here on MMORPG.com) asked them to.
We didn't know this was where it'd lead, but WoW is really a shadow and a whisper of the game it once was... yet, at the same time, all of the quality of life improvements made to the game have made certain/many things much better.
But over all, despite all the fixes and positive changes, something was certainly lost. The soul of the game one could say.
The real problem with the genre as a whole is not WoW but it is/was in everyone else trying to copy/emulate WoW.
Accepting the new "standards" that WoW set is one thing - all games of all genres that are successful do this, like FPS games and HUD's - it's just an industry standard you copy and hopefully try and improve on/customize for your purposes.
It's the spin-off strategy that always leads to the same thing - unoriginal, uncreative garbage that tries to capture a piece of the other guy's pie and fails.
Television does this, movies do this, books and music certainly do this.
TV show is exceptional and popular - you get bad spin offs - Law and Order, NCIS, Friends, etc. etc. led to all kinds of garbage shows.
Movie is exceptional and popular - you get spin bad offs - Lord of the Rings - fantasy movies, Iron Man - comic book movies, etc. etc. led to all kinds of garbage movies.
Book is exceptional and popular - you get bad spin offs - Harry Potter / Twilight, there have been all kinds of garbage spin offs.
(Not saying Twilight was ever good but HP certainly is)
Music, a sound is popularized and successful, you get all kinds of crappy spin-off bands trying to get their piece of that pie, to emulate that sound....
But we all know how this turns out right?
Only thing that will "save" the genre from unoriginal, uncreative spin-offs is bold, decisive action and fresh new thinking.