To the topic in general... No MMO is going to be the death of WoW clones.
Unless that MMO is a totally different core design and very successful. At which point a bunch of games would just try to copy what they think "worked" in that game.
If a "wow clone" fails the consensus is simply that they didn't copy it correctly or copied the wrong things. In the case of BioWare their mantra of: This is our first MMO... despite the fact they were put in charge of all of EA's MMO's and had one of the most experiend MMO teams out there (along with the best tools and a budget most only dream of).... will be the reason used.
In other words other companies will simply say.... "it was their first MMO so of course their cloning technology wasn't quite up to snuff."
Plus you obviously need to spend 6 MILLION dollars to make a clone ... stronger.. faster... better than it was before. Along with having Stone Cold Steve Austin on your design team. Oh wait... that was a different Steve Austin...
The irony is that no well funded design team wants to break the core design glut... they keep pushing out the same thing because they all simply believe the other studio's (or the same studio's prior game) didn't copy it quite right. So obviously failure is not the deterrant here... but you can't ever have the success needed to change the market.. because nobody wants to make a different game.
Naturally the OP is right to some extent or I can only hope that he is I mean.
I am sadened by the extreme will of the companies to always make the next biggest game instead of making more like niched and different MMO's. Sadened by the fact that til this day WoW-clones are still spewing out. The reason for the kids buying it....oh well...who knows....
Sadened also because ToR might NOT be the end of WoW-clones. I think it might be a small dent or something...cause 1,7 million subscribers isnt all that bad. How so many could buy this total WoW game is a mistery to me...and it just might be so that Bioware will actually make a buck here...so go on and buy theese stupid WoW clones....
And no, GW2 is not going to be different, cause in my eyes it is still a WoW-clone...
this is just , a , ummm ,kinda analogy. This is just my opinion coming from a much older gamer.
so , say 7 years ago blizzard invented pizza (just using it as an example, you can replace pizza with anything). Everyone loved pizza. After a year or so of eating nothing but pizza blizzard invents some coke to go with your pizza. Now your like wow , pizza and soda this is amazing.
another year or so goes by and blizzard is like we have added sausage to our pizza! and you can now get cherry coke!
cool , more stuff on my pizza. So, your going on 2 years of pizza and soda.
During this time other businesses start releasing pizza. You try it and some people may like pepsi and the other companies pizza better. The majority however, enjoy that suasage pizza and cherry coke.
another year goes by and blizzard invents stuffed crust pizza and diet coke (gotta watch the calories). People were slowly getting tired of pizza , this new pizza has something "different" to it , and the sugar free coke , is a nice touch.
yet, another year goes by and blizzard adds onions, mushrooms, chickent, sausage and label it supreme pizza. no different beverage flavor. So your like "eh maybe i'll try it". The pizza is getting old though. Despite all the added stuff its still pizza and soda.
after years and years of pizza and soda, you want something different. Companies come out with veggie lovers, meat lovers, buffallo chicken pizza, mountain dew, dr.pepper. It's still pizza and soda.
In reality, people are tired of pizza for 8 years in a row. That's why steak is taking off (league of legends) and other different styles of games. People keep looking in the pizza box expecting something different, but all your getting is a different type of pizza.
swtor , basically made a fancy pizza box but when you opened it, there was cheese missing, sauce dripping out the sides, but it came wrapped up nice.
tldr:
quit playing the same game expecting different results.
oh and i did play swtor, great game till you get max level, after that , yes, it is just another pizza. in the mean time im enjoying a variety of different food groups. Steak (league of legends) on mondays, buffalo wings (dungeon defenders ) on tuesdays, chicken or fish the rest of the week (fps games, steam specials what have you).
It should be pretty apparent by now that SWTOR aka WOWTOR is not doing as well as Bioware or their fans had hoped. The game is already being discounted by $10 on origin, they are already offering multiple free weekends for the game, and one of the most replied to posts on the official forums is titled "Server population is dropping...". Yes it looks like it is the beginning of the end for this game.
When a company spends $200 million on a new game and instead of growth, the total population starts to decline (or stabilizies) as individual server populations drop noticeably, its an obvious sign that customers are not satisfied. The game also has a small number of subscribers relative to the total number of potential customers, compared to WoW 7 years ago which had an equal or possibly greater number of subscribers the same length of time after its' release, back when MMO's were not as mainstream as today.
This should speak volumes that gamers are not looking for games that are "similar to WoW" anymore and do not want games that fit the bill of a linear theme park. If WOWTOR monumentally collapses or does not experience great success (profit), I would expect more developers, if they haven't already, will begin to distance themselves from SWTOR/WOW as they realize now that advertising a game as a WoW clone should not be considered a selling point to get people interested in their MMO anymore.
I for one will not be playing another MMO until it is very innovative and different than a MMO I have played in the past, in particular, WoW. Developers should stop worrying about making a viable competitor in the MMO market that is nearly identical to WoW in order to appeal to that playerbase. Instead they really should be making it completely unlike WoW in order to compete with Titan, which I guarantee will probably be vastly different than WoW.
I suspect SWTOR will probably be the last wow clone we will see. Overall I think this is very good news for the genre, even at the expense of a game that had such a massive budget for a company eyeing major success.
RIP SWTOR "Tortanic"
Unfortunately you underestimate the stupidity factor of these developers making these games. The stupidity factor requires that you take into account that one guy on the dev team in the meeting that calls out, "HEY! WOW HAS TEN MILLION SUBS LET'S COPY THEM!" and everyone claps as they destroy their game's future.
Comments
To the topic in general... No MMO is going to be the death of WoW clones.
Unless that MMO is a totally different core design and very successful. At which point a bunch of games would just try to copy what they think "worked" in that game.
If a "wow clone" fails the consensus is simply that they didn't copy it correctly or copied the wrong things. In the case of BioWare their mantra of: This is our first MMO... despite the fact they were put in charge of all of EA's MMO's and had one of the most experiend MMO teams out there (along with the best tools and a budget most only dream of).... will be the reason used.
In other words other companies will simply say.... "it was their first MMO so of course their cloning technology wasn't quite up to snuff."
Plus you obviously need to spend 6 MILLION dollars to make a clone ... stronger.. faster... better than it was before. Along with having Stone Cold Steve Austin on your design team. Oh wait... that was a different Steve Austin...
The irony is that no well funded design team wants to break the core design glut... they keep pushing out the same thing because they all simply believe the other studio's (or the same studio's prior game) didn't copy it quite right. So obviously failure is not the deterrant here... but you can't ever have the success needed to change the market.. because nobody wants to make a different game.
Please, oh please!
Naturally the OP is right to some extent or I can only hope that he is I mean.
I am sadened by the extreme will of the companies to always make the next biggest game instead of making more like niched and different MMO's. Sadened by the fact that til this day WoW-clones are still spewing out. The reason for the kids buying it....oh well...who knows....
Sadened also because ToR might NOT be the end of WoW-clones. I think it might be a small dent or something...cause 1,7 million subscribers isnt all that bad. How so many could buy this total WoW game is a mistery to me...and it just might be so that Bioware will actually make a buck here...so go on and buy theese stupid WoW clones....
And no, GW2 is not going to be different, cause in my eyes it is still a WoW-clone...
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this is just , a , ummm ,kinda analogy. This is just my opinion coming from a much older gamer.
so , say 7 years ago blizzard invented pizza (just using it as an example, you can replace pizza with anything). Everyone loved pizza. After a year or so of eating nothing but pizza blizzard invents some coke to go with your pizza. Now your like wow , pizza and soda this is amazing.
another year or so goes by and blizzard is like we have added sausage to our pizza! and you can now get cherry coke!
cool , more stuff on my pizza. So, your going on 2 years of pizza and soda.
During this time other businesses start releasing pizza. You try it and some people may like pepsi and the other companies pizza better. The majority however, enjoy that suasage pizza and cherry coke.
another year goes by and blizzard invents stuffed crust pizza and diet coke (gotta watch the calories). People were slowly getting tired of pizza , this new pizza has something "different" to it , and the sugar free coke , is a nice touch.
yet, another year goes by and blizzard adds onions, mushrooms, chickent, sausage and label it supreme pizza. no different beverage flavor. So your like "eh maybe i'll try it". The pizza is getting old though. Despite all the added stuff its still pizza and soda.
after years and years of pizza and soda, you want something different. Companies come out with veggie lovers, meat lovers, buffallo chicken pizza, mountain dew, dr.pepper. It's still pizza and soda.
In reality, people are tired of pizza for 8 years in a row. That's why steak is taking off (league of legends) and other different styles of games. People keep looking in the pizza box expecting something different, but all your getting is a different type of pizza.
swtor , basically made a fancy pizza box but when you opened it, there was cheese missing, sauce dripping out the sides, but it came wrapped up nice.
tldr:
quit playing the same game expecting different results.
oh and i did play swtor, great game till you get max level, after that , yes, it is just another pizza. in the mean time im enjoying a variety of different food groups. Steak (league of legends) on mondays, buffalo wings (dungeon defenders ) on tuesdays, chicken or fish the rest of the week (fps games, steam specials what have you).
-demmi
Your post will be the death of the thread that is the death of the "SWTOR will be the death of WoW clones" clone threads.
Unfortunately you underestimate the stupidity factor of these developers making these games. The stupidity factor requires that you take into account that one guy on the dev team in the meeting that calls out, "HEY! WOW HAS TEN MILLION SUBS LET'S COPY THEM!" and everyone claps as they destroy their game's future.