I was expecting some more solidified facts in this article to support the writer's argument, but this seems like nothing more than the gushing of a die-hard fan. Not even worth writing an argument over the points made in the article.
I would think that a staff writer that's part of a website dedicated to supporting and reporting to the MMO community at large could do better than this.
There's only 1 reason I see you can claim about WOW: the first one. Seriously, the 2nd reason there were other games that had the same things before WOW. The 3rd reason is not even that great, considering the quantity of expansions other games made with the same or better quality. Just search for Guild Wars that launched some months before WOW, and it wasn't even an MMORPG but a Co-opRPG.
But I have to admit, WOW was the one that brought a large quantity of players to the genre. It was the marketing plan of Blizzard that made that possible. It wasn't polished nor had new features in the genre, but they made it work really well. There's no arguing here. But this is the sole reason why there's people that call "WOW-clone" to a lot of other games, that's the bad side of this.
WOW is still first, ut not for much time. As almost all things and people known to be the best in any area of knowledge for a certain time, this will follow the same path and end up beeing hated and criticised by everyone in a near future.
Wow, I must say that MMO players are the hardest buunch of people to make/keep happy. All I see on this site is negativity of the highest degree - Why a game sucks or will fail, most post are before the games even come out. It's sad.
1) Opened the doors to the lowest common denominator which has in turn fractured and hurt far more communities than it has helped.
2) Brought about the sense of entitlement bs into our games, thanks to number 1. The one place where you actually had to earn your way these mouth breathers turned into a welfare state where you are given crap just because you log in.
3) Because of the huge population, again thanks to number 1, in World of Warcrap it forced other developers to throw away ideas that would have actually progressed the genre in favor of churning subpar clone after clone.
Making MMORPGs mainstream is probably the biggest reason disgruntled vets have for believing that WoW helped ruin the genre, in my opinion. It seems that the games are more like console action games than role-playing games these days. Even the old games have adopted these features. When the games were niche, most players had something in common which lead to healthier and more friendly communities. With millions of people from all walks of life playing them, there is conflict everywhere. People were safe and comfortable in the niche. Now they have to deal with everybody else, just like in real life.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Originally posted by Palebane Making MMORPGs mainstream is probably the biggest reason disgruntled vets have for believing that WoW helped ruin the genre, in my opinion. It seems that the games are more like console action games than role-playing games these days. Even the old games have adopted these features. When the games were niche, most players had something in common which lead to healthier and more friendly communities. With millions of people from all walks of life playing them, there is conflict everywhere. People were safe and comfortable in the niche. Now they have to deal with everybody else, just like in real life.
WoW shortened the time to mainstream a great deal, but the games were headed in that direction anyway. The whole gaming industry was headed in that direction. It's headed in the direction of being the biggest entertainment segment of our economy. In 20 years, hipsters will still watch movies, and everyone else will be playing video games.
I think that the whole 'niche' thing could be rephrased as 'exclusive'. Those 'niche' players lived in insular game communities and had little contact with outside influences. It probably felt like living in a gated community. Then, almost out of nowhere and overnight, ten times as many new players entered the populations and the existing players had to deal with the idea that they didn't actually live in a gated community.
I think it must have been a bit of a shock. I don't know if that's a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing. It would have eventually happened anyway, there just wasn't an adjustment period.
Everything else that's happened since then is just a result of developers trying to meet the demands of the players.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Actually, WoW was not even close to "polished" at launch. I can't believe how many people forget how messed up it was. Blizzard saved themselves by relatively quickly fixing what was wrong, though.
I played 2 years SWG before I started with WoW. And WoW was bugfree and polished compared to SWG, there was not even 1 server rollback where you lost a few hours of gameplay
Just because SWG was more broke at launch doesn't mean WoW wasn't broke...
And for the record, I don't think WoW ruined MMORPG's...it's the 11 million subscribers that accept WoW as the "norm" that are ruining MMORPG's!
I agree, WoW didn't ruin MMO's. It's also unreasonable to say the people who like WoW ruined them. All of the teams who use WoW as their inspiration and try to follow in its footsteps, even though most of WoW's large subscription base isn't really interested in another lamer, worse version of WoW; those people are to blame. Blame the people making crappy games, not Blizzard who made a decent one that was quite forward thinking for its time.
This article is pretty terrible though. WoW has nothing to do with mmo success in the east, it wasn't even released there until fairly recently. I think ragnarok or lineage etc are the ones responsible for the expansion there. And I really don't see how the 3 reasons mentioned are even remotely related to the premise. To analyze whether WoW ruined mmos or not, you might think about actually looking at OTHER GAMES THAN WOW. Otherwise you are just listing things about WoW that you like.
Originally posted by Elidien And no 90% of us on this forum are not today's average gamer.
Haha, you got that right. Today's average gamer spends what little free time they have playing games, rather than lurking for hours on end in a discussion area talking about how wonderful games used to be I think most of us here spend actually more time discussing than we do playing. I know I do.
"...but none of them had the polsih and punch that WoW had when it first launched seven years agp."
Okay apparently the writer of this column never actually PLAYED the beta before WoW even got the hunter class much less pets it was VERY VERY buggy at launch. They didn't have enough devs to keep up so they had to mass hire devs for error corrections, gm's to help players and they had a two week period where the game was entirely NOT functioning.
This writer really has no clue. The reason WoW has been so successful is due to social aspects of the game. Friends would group grow guilds that were very tight nit group of people and actually had a social impact. The reason people stay with the game today is because their friends are there. No one wants to leave their friends for another title without ensuring their friends follow, this and this alone has kept wow alive.
Why do i know, I've played WoW for 5 years and stopped about six months ago. Was it easy? no, because i left alot of friends behind when i left the game. But i am glad i left the game. When you're devs are only interested in keeping people holding on by dangling a piece of cheeze every once in a while in front of the faces of their players the company is going downhill fast. Case in point, the recent addition of Cosmetics, a requested feature since WoW was first created the devs decided it was time to add suddenly after 6+ years to the game. Why did they add it? Because they lost 1 million subscribers. Don't fool yourselves folks, that loss alone was the ONLY reason they added cosmetics. It had nothing absolutely nothing to do with Devs finally listening to their community of players and everything to do with trying to keep the giant breathing long enough to make Titan and Diablo III.
How WoW has ruined the mmo gaming, forced end game grouping, the allowance of elitest jerks to drop people if they don't approve of what they are wearing, low quality recycled graphics in supposedly new updates, not enough game content per patch to keep the player busy unless it has to do with repeatable dailies, the business model of requiring long drawn out dungeon/questing to get anywhere in the game (running a raid 4 times per week for 3 months and never seeing your drop gets old or trying to earn enough badges for a faction that's only temporary in the first place), constant gear grind to replace outdated gear you JUST DID EARN the week before. My list goes on if anyone is interested.
1) WoW didn't make bad MMOs that are so pervasive today.
2) WoW doesn't control what other companies do.
3) WoW introduced some concepts that increase the fun of MMOs.
So true.
Oh how I remember well some of those 1st text driven MUD's, like Lostsouls for example, people who played these were considered "outside the fringe". There was Asherons Call which cost me a small fortune in time as well as money but ended up consigning so few players.
I started playing WoW when it first came out and, with many breaks in between, I continue too do so. Between WoW bouts I've played many others (Warhammer Online, Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars, etc.) but in the end there is always one thing Blizzard does better than any other, they listen to the community. Don't get me wrong I've had my fair share on irritations with WoW, most recently the blatant clone of Warhammer's guild system to shut down smaller guilds, but I still believe that WoW helped to make MMO's what they are today. Companies will continue to experiment with MMO's in order to topple Blizzard but until one does this furious competition will help design better and more interesting MMO's for all of us, and I enjoy testing each one.
Ultimately World of Warcraft made the MMO what it is today! It created the foundation on which every other successful MMO has been designed, and the driving force which will create its successor.
With wow you pay for the cd to begin with AND a monthly fee (with slight discounts for paying for more than a month at a time)
WoW is popular for several reasons first of all it generally works, which at the time of release was still a rarity amongst mmorpgs which people just expected to be riddled with bugs, secondly it runs on even very old computers well (although now its graphics are looking dated on high end pcs) thirdly its the social side of the game thats far more addictive than the game play itself. I would be surprised if any of the hard core "addicted" players arent part of very active guilds. People are drawn to the game to play with their online friends to not log in for a night is to abandon their friends and probably fall behind in some group achievement or another - letting the team down.
The game hands you plenty of time consuming goals to complete, but what makes them worthwhile completeing isnt the "rewards" in game play terms its the rewards of working with your friends and chatting about the rewards after with your friends (bragging or complaining either way its social...).
MMORPG's have very much redefined gaming, at one time gaming was a solitary pursuit, wow and other mmorpgs turn it into a social activity and many players consider it a good alternative to meeting friends in the local pub.
"its the social side of the game thats far more addictive than the game play itself"
You are absolutely correct. In fact I only just cancelled my subscription a few days ago because I no longer have friends who play the game, all I have is an aging guild with vast wealth in memories but dark empty halls. Thanks to the new guild leveling system I only remember the colour of my guild chat due to Carbonite.
WoW has a lot to answer for but it did not bring about the demise of PC gaming. That was due to the rise of consoles and companies seeing they could make us pay for two computers instead of just one. Especially Microsoft bringing out the Xbox which is basically a downmarket PC but games on one cannot be played on the other. Before this Microsoft had been at the forefront of releasing games for the PC, after the Xbox they had a commercial interest not to release any at all, and fell somewhere between these two stools for releases.
But WoW did open the gates to the idea that MMO’s were a console game. This brought down the average age of the MMO population and MMO companies started to cater for the preferences of that younger age. The car journey cry of ‘are we there yet?’ became the psychology WoW and subsequent MMO’s were based on.
That lead us as Serverius has mentioned to the establishment of an entitlement culture in MMO’s. Where all players are entitled to get everything for just logging in. The reward for extra time and effort a player can put in is being eroded with every patch. If players need to play for a long time and work for that suit of armour they will stay, if the get given it for logging in why bother to play the MMO? This has led to the drifting MMO player base we now have, which plays a game like it was a solo game for a month or two then moves on.
WoW's major drawback and problem is during these 6yrs Blizz never added anything to the core game or implemented anything beyond the treadmill chasing the carrot on the stick for gear.
And the LFG Tool did harm the community while at the same time help... people stand around in town now leaving the world empty they que and wait while at the same time looking like clones since everyone was wearing the same thing.
So if you don't chase the gear pvp/pve what is there to do in WoW?
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE Waiting on: Lost Ark Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
I started playing WOW because it was the nearest thing to Dungeons and Dragons, that I played as a kid, in my mind. I really loved the exploring and just looking around, doing quests that I had no idea where to find things. I remember that stupid tubors quest and giving up on it, because I couldn't figure out where anything was. I have stopped playing Wow because now it seems that the entire game is centered around the raider, which isn't me. I wish I could be a store clerk, or a pro farmer, or just explore like in Minecraft. Oh well.
WoW has a lot to answer for but it did not bring about the demise of PC gaming. That was due to the rise of consoles and companies seeing they could make us pay for two computers instead of just one. Especially Microsoft bringing out the Xbox which is basically a downmarket PC but games on one cannot be played on the other. Before this Microsoft had been at the forefront of releasing games for the PC, after the Xbox they had a commercial interest not to release any at all, and fell somewhere between these two stools for releases.
But WoW did open the gates to the idea that MMO’s were a console game. This brought down the average age of the MMO population and MMO companies started to cater for the preferences of that younger age. The car journey cry of ‘are we there yet?’ became the psychology WoW and subsequent MMO’s were based on.
That lead us as Serverius has mentioned to the establishment of an entitlement culture in MMO’s. Where all players are entitled to get everything for just logging in. The reward for extra time and effort a player can put in is being eroded with every patch. If players need to play for a long time and work for that suit of armour they will stay, if the get given it for logging in why bother to play the MMO? This has led to the drifting MMO player base we now have, which plays a game like it was a solo game for a month or two then moves on.
Very well put, and so true.
Since the audience of MMO's has been ...is expanded the right word?... to this level, and game companies are in business to make money, we will continue to see more of the same.
Investors don't invest money to risk losing it, they invest to make more money. They all seem to see the 'WoW formula' as safer than breaking the mould, so the put their money into the types of games that emulate WoW. So, where the money goes the development goes...
"China and Korea have huge online communities and continue to grow drastically. All of this can be attributed to World of Warcraft’s phenomenal rise to stardom."
Cute, but no not even close.
I always thought that MMOs in the Far East were mor epopularised by games such as Lineage than WoW. There were huge communities in Korea and China playing Lineage long before WoW came along, weren't there?
Maybe I'm wrong a second time, but isn't WoW relatively a new phenomenon in China and Korea?
No matter what is correct, I don't feel that a huge market for MMOs in the Far East is a huge indicator of success in the West. I see it as there being two different types of market in each region and a minor amount of crossover.
As for Garret's third point, well I don't really see where his love of WotLK fits in with the whole article. Did that expansion change MMOs for the better? Did Garret even say why, or did he run out of ideas? It just soudnbed to me like he wanted to pump that expansion.
I've come a long way since WoW released. I played the game for a few months until I got bored at level 46. For a long time after I had a hatred for the game. All I could see was MMOs following the leader's lead and never even thinking about trying something new. I was rather stuck on my hatred for WoW.
Then I considered something else. Wasn't EQ2 questy and far easier than it's father? Was it WoW that was making newer games questy or was it the just the predominant feature of games, at the time, that developers were just unwilling, or unable, to change?
I've come so far from my blaming of WoW, that I actually blame games developers.
It's devs that choose what goes in to their games. It's devs that decide they want to beat WoW by doing what it does better...or attempting to do so. It's devs that are far too often scared to do something new.
WoW did what it did really well. I can't argue with that. It's post-WoW developers who, in an attempt to emulate, stagnated the genre for so long.
Long live GW2, and the new-minded devs at Arena Net. May they bring a fresh new face to this genre and save us from the stagnation trap that has befallen developers.
The developers of games that followed WoW were to blame for the stagnation. That doesn't mean I liked WoW.
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.
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).
I think GW ruined community when it introduced heroes. Now everyone seems to run around with heroes and hirelings instead of grouping with actual players.
Long live GW2, and the new-minded devs at Arena Net. May they bring a fresh new face to this genre and save us from the stagnation trap that has befallen developers.
The developers of games that followed WoW were to blame for the stagnation. That doesn't mean I liked WoW.
couldnt agreee more with arena.net they are prepared to build first and ask customrer to pay in merit. RE wow it was not the developers it was the corporate shift mid tbc.
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
Actually, WoW was not even close to "polished" at launch. I can't believe how many people forget how messed up it was. Blizzard saved themselves by relatively quickly fixing what was wrong, though.
I played 2 years SWG before I started with WoW. And WoW was bugfree and polished compared to SWG, there was not even 1 server rollback where you lost a few hours of gameplay
I can recall falling through the boats into the sea in WoW quite a few times. Always when way out to sea so that it was instant death.
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.
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).
I think GW ruined community when it introduced heroes. Now everyone seems to run around with heroes and hirelings instead of grouping with actual players.
Comments
I was expecting some more solidified facts in this article to support the writer's argument, but this seems like nothing more than the gushing of a die-hard fan. Not even worth writing an argument over the points made in the article.
I would think that a staff writer that's part of a website dedicated to supporting and reporting to the MMO community at large could do better than this.
There's only 1 reason I see you can claim about WOW: the first one. Seriously, the 2nd reason there were other games that had the same things before WOW. The 3rd reason is not even that great, considering the quantity of expansions other games made with the same or better quality. Just search for Guild Wars that launched some months before WOW, and it wasn't even an MMORPG but a Co-opRPG.
But I have to admit, WOW was the one that brought a large quantity of players to the genre. It was the marketing plan of Blizzard that made that possible. It wasn't polished nor had new features in the genre, but they made it work really well. There's no arguing here. But this is the sole reason why there's people that call "WOW-clone" to a lot of other games, that's the bad side of this.
WOW is still first, ut not for much time. As almost all things and people known to be the best in any area of knowledge for a certain time, this will follow the same path and end up beeing hated and criticised by everyone in a near future.
Three ways in which wow ruined mmos.
1) Opened the doors to the lowest common denominator which has in turn fractured and hurt far more communities than it has helped.
2) Brought about the sense of entitlement bs into our games, thanks to number 1. The one place where you actually had to earn your way these mouth breathers turned into a welfare state where you are given crap just because you log in.
3) Because of the huge population, again thanks to number 1, in World of Warcrap it forced other developers to throw away ideas that would have actually progressed the genre in favor of churning subpar clone after clone.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Making MMORPGs mainstream is probably the biggest reason disgruntled vets have for believing that WoW helped ruin the genre, in my opinion. It seems that the games are more like console action games than role-playing games these days. Even the old games have adopted these features. When the games were niche, most players had something in common which lead to healthier and more friendly communities. With millions of people from all walks of life playing them, there is conflict everywhere. People were safe and comfortable in the niche. Now they have to deal with everybody else, just like in real life.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
WoW shortened the time to mainstream a great deal, but the games were headed in that direction anyway. The whole gaming industry was headed in that direction. It's headed in the direction of being the biggest entertainment segment of our economy. In 20 years, hipsters will still watch movies, and everyone else will be playing video games.
I think that the whole 'niche' thing could be rephrased as 'exclusive'. Those 'niche' players lived in insular game communities and had little contact with outside influences. It probably felt like living in a gated community. Then, almost out of nowhere and overnight, ten times as many new players entered the populations and the existing players had to deal with the idea that they didn't actually live in a gated community.
I think it must have been a bit of a shock. I don't know if that's a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing. It would have eventually happened anyway, there just wasn't an adjustment period.
Everything else that's happened since then is just a result of developers trying to meet the demands of the players.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Just because SWG was more broke at launch doesn't mean WoW wasn't broke...
And for the record, I don't think WoW ruined MMORPG's...it's the 11 million subscribers that accept WoW as the "norm" that are ruining MMORPG's!
I agree, WoW didn't ruin MMO's. It's also unreasonable to say the people who like WoW ruined them. All of the teams who use WoW as their inspiration and try to follow in its footsteps, even though most of WoW's large subscription base isn't really interested in another lamer, worse version of WoW; those people are to blame. Blame the people making crappy games, not Blizzard who made a decent one that was quite forward thinking for its time.
This article is pretty terrible though. WoW has nothing to do with mmo success in the east, it wasn't even released there until fairly recently. I think ragnarok or lineage etc are the ones responsible for the expansion there. And I really don't see how the 3 reasons mentioned are even remotely related to the premise. To analyze whether WoW ruined mmos or not, you might think about actually looking at OTHER GAMES THAN WOW. Otherwise you are just listing things about WoW that you like.
Haha, you got that right. Today's average gamer spends what little free time they have playing games, rather than lurking for hours on end in a discussion area talking about how wonderful games used to be
I think most of us here spend actually more time discussing than we do playing. I know I do.
1- If the genre kept niche we would have much more original MMOs today.
2- I prefer single server games and hate instances
3- WOTLK made WoW even more single-player oriented with phasing, de-evolving the MMO genre.
"...but none of them had the polsih and punch that WoW had when it first launched seven years agp."
Okay apparently the writer of this column never actually PLAYED the beta before WoW even got the hunter class much less pets it was VERY VERY buggy at launch. They didn't have enough devs to keep up so they had to mass hire devs for error corrections, gm's to help players and they had a two week period where the game was entirely NOT functioning.
This writer really has no clue. The reason WoW has been so successful is due to social aspects of the game. Friends would group grow guilds that were very tight nit group of people and actually had a social impact. The reason people stay with the game today is because their friends are there. No one wants to leave their friends for another title without ensuring their friends follow, this and this alone has kept wow alive.
Why do i know, I've played WoW for 5 years and stopped about six months ago. Was it easy? no, because i left alot of friends behind when i left the game. But i am glad i left the game. When you're devs are only interested in keeping people holding on by dangling a piece of cheeze every once in a while in front of the faces of their players the company is going downhill fast. Case in point, the recent addition of Cosmetics, a requested feature since WoW was first created the devs decided it was time to add suddenly after 6+ years to the game. Why did they add it? Because they lost 1 million subscribers. Don't fool yourselves folks, that loss alone was the ONLY reason they added cosmetics. It had nothing absolutely nothing to do with Devs finally listening to their community of players and everything to do with trying to keep the giant breathing long enough to make Titan and Diablo III.
How WoW has ruined the mmo gaming, forced end game grouping, the allowance of elitest jerks to drop people if they don't approve of what they are wearing, low quality recycled graphics in supposedly new updates, not enough game content per patch to keep the player busy unless it has to do with repeatable dailies, the business model of requiring long drawn out dungeon/questing to get anywhere in the game (running a raid 4 times per week for 3 months and never seeing your drop gets old or trying to earn enough badges for a faction that's only temporary in the first place), constant gear grind to replace outdated gear you JUST DID EARN the week before. My list goes on if anyone is interested.
This article is all wrong.
1) WoW didn't make bad MMOs that are so pervasive today.
2) WoW doesn't control what other companies do.
3) WoW introduced some concepts that increase the fun of MMOs.
So true.
Oh how I remember well some of those 1st text driven MUD's, like Lostsouls for example, people who played these were considered "outside the fringe". There was Asherons Call which cost me a small fortune in time as well as money but ended up consigning so few players.
I started playing WoW when it first came out and, with many breaks in between, I continue too do so. Between WoW bouts I've played many others (Warhammer Online, Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars, etc.) but in the end there is always one thing Blizzard does better than any other, they listen to the community. Don't get me wrong I've had my fair share on irritations with WoW, most recently the blatant clone of Warhammer's guild system to shut down smaller guilds, but I still believe that WoW helped to make MMO's what they are today. Companies will continue to experiment with MMO's in order to topple Blizzard but until one does this furious competition will help design better and more interesting MMO's for all of us, and I enjoy testing each one.
Ultimately World of Warcraft made the MMO what it is today! It created the foundation on which every other successful MMO has been designed, and the driving force which will create its successor.
With wow you pay for the cd to begin with AND a monthly fee (with slight discounts for paying for more than a month at a time)
WoW is popular for several reasons first of all it generally works, which at the time of release was still a rarity amongst mmorpgs which people just expected to be riddled with bugs, secondly it runs on even very old computers well (although now its graphics are looking dated on high end pcs) thirdly its the social side of the game thats far more addictive than the game play itself. I would be surprised if any of the hard core "addicted" players arent part of very active guilds. People are drawn to the game to play with their online friends to not log in for a night is to abandon their friends and probably fall behind in some group achievement or another - letting the team down.
The game hands you plenty of time consuming goals to complete, but what makes them worthwhile completeing isnt the "rewards" in game play terms its the rewards of working with your friends and chatting about the rewards after with your friends (bragging or complaining either way its social...).
MMORPG's have very much redefined gaming, at one time gaming was a solitary pursuit, wow and other mmorpgs turn it into a social activity and many players consider it a good alternative to meeting friends in the local pub.
You are absolutely correct. In fact I only just cancelled my subscription a few days ago because I no longer have friends who play the game, all I have is an aging guild with vast wealth in memories but dark empty halls. Thanks to the new guild leveling system I only remember the colour of my guild chat due to Carbonite.
wow didnt just ruin mmo's it killed pc games all of them
here is why
when i played wow i didnt buy a single other game for the three years i played wow
when i wander around my local game shop and i see about 1 shelf of pc games before wow came out there would be 30%-50% of the shop full of pc games
its strange that during the time of wow when more and more people are getting pc's we are getting less and less games
i really do belive wow not only ruined mmo's but killed pc games
WoW has a lot to answer for but it did not bring about the demise of PC gaming. That was due to the rise of consoles and companies seeing they could make us pay for two computers instead of just one. Especially Microsoft bringing out the Xbox which is basically a downmarket PC but games on one cannot be played on the other. Before this Microsoft had been at the forefront of releasing games for the PC, after the Xbox they had a commercial interest not to release any at all, and fell somewhere between these two stools for releases.
But WoW did open the gates to the idea that MMO’s were a console game. This brought down the average age of the MMO population and MMO companies started to cater for the preferences of that younger age. The car journey cry of ‘are we there yet?’ became the psychology WoW and subsequent MMO’s were based on.
That lead us as Serverius has mentioned to the establishment of an entitlement culture in MMO’s. Where all players are entitled to get everything for just logging in. The reward for extra time and effort a player can put in is being eroded with every patch. If players need to play for a long time and work for that suit of armour they will stay, if the get given it for logging in why bother to play the MMO? This has led to the drifting MMO player base we now have, which plays a game like it was a solo game for a month or two then moves on.
WoW's major drawback and problem is during these 6yrs Blizz never added anything to the core game or implemented anything beyond the treadmill chasing the carrot on the stick for gear.
And the LFG Tool did harm the community while at the same time help... people stand around in town now leaving the world empty they que and wait while at the same time looking like clones since everyone was wearing the same thing.
So if you don't chase the gear pvp/pve what is there to do in WoW?
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
I started playing WOW because it was the nearest thing to Dungeons and Dragons, that I played as a kid, in my mind. I really loved the exploring and just looking around, doing quests that I had no idea where to find things. I remember that stupid tubors quest and giving up on it, because I couldn't figure out where anything was. I have stopped playing Wow because now it seems that the entire game is centered around the raider, which isn't me. I wish I could be a store clerk, or a pro farmer, or just explore like in Minecraft. Oh well.
Who
Very well put, and so true.
Since the audience of MMO's has been ...is expanded the right word?... to this level, and game companies are in business to make money, we will continue to see more of the same.
Investors don't invest money to risk losing it, they invest to make more money. They all seem to see the 'WoW formula' as safer than breaking the mould, so the put their money into the types of games that emulate WoW. So, where the money goes the development goes...
I always thought that MMOs in the Far East were mor epopularised by games such as Lineage than WoW. There were huge communities in Korea and China playing Lineage long before WoW came along, weren't there?
Maybe I'm wrong a second time, but isn't WoW relatively a new phenomenon in China and Korea?
No matter what is correct, I don't feel that a huge market for MMOs in the Far East is a huge indicator of success in the West. I see it as there being two different types of market in each region and a minor amount of crossover.
As for Garret's third point, well I don't really see where his love of WotLK fits in with the whole article. Did that expansion change MMOs for the better? Did Garret even say why, or did he run out of ideas? It just soudnbed to me like he wanted to pump that expansion.
I've come a long way since WoW released. I played the game for a few months until I got bored at level 46. For a long time after I had a hatred for the game. All I could see was MMOs following the leader's lead and never even thinking about trying something new. I was rather stuck on my hatred for WoW.
Then I considered something else. Wasn't EQ2 questy and far easier than it's father? Was it WoW that was making newer games questy or was it the just the predominant feature of games, at the time, that developers were just unwilling, or unable, to change?
I've come so far from my blaming of WoW, that I actually blame games developers.
It's devs that choose what goes in to their games. It's devs that decide they want to beat WoW by doing what it does better...or attempting to do so. It's devs that are far too often scared to do something new.
WoW did what it did really well. I can't argue with that. It's post-WoW developers who, in an attempt to emulate, stagnated the genre for so long.
Long live GW2, and the new-minded devs at Arena Net. May they bring a fresh new face to this genre and save us from the stagnation trap that has befallen developers.
The developers of games that followed WoW were to blame for the stagnation. That doesn't mean I liked WoW.
.
couldnt agreee more with arena.net they are prepared to build first and ask customrer to pay in merit. RE wow it was not the developers it was the corporate shift mid tbc.
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
I can recall falling through the boats into the sea in WoW quite a few times. Always when way out to sea so that it was instant death.