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A world without WoW - What would it be like today?
n00bit
Member UncommonPosts: 345
Imagine Blizzard stuck to RTS/Dungeon crawlers - what would we be facing today? I asked this question a year ago and phrased it poorly enough to get locked; I'm asking now with a straight-forward topic: What do you think our MMORPG world would be like today without the 10m+ titan lording over all the developers?
Personally, I think WoW ruined the MMO market. Sure, we have a lot more MMO games to play today, but the majority are just money grabs by shady developers (even the big guys are buying it...I'm looking at you EA/Bioware). I think we would have less MMO games to play today, but the quality would be of UO/EQ/Pre-CU SWG quality.
Comments
Edited: nevermind
Honestly, I think that WoW was the natural next step in the evolution of the genre when you consider that the goal of any business is profitability.
Back then, server and bandwidth costs still mattered, and the monthly fee business model was sort of justifable as being necessary to keep the game running and to produce new content. So even if Blizzard never existed, someone else would have continued with that business model. Naturally, companies exist to make money, and turning the game into a web of neverending treadmills is the most effective way to squeeze money out of the subscription model. Any company would have identified that.
So I think that if it weren't Blizzard, then it would have been someone else, and the genre would have advanced in pretty much the same way.
I would say that the model would follow suit of Everquest. Blizzard did as well but they made everything accessible and easy. Just like t-ball, everyone gets a trophy. I would assume that the genre would have games cater to niche's like the mmo's before WoW. I bet challenge wouldn't be an issue.
Instancing already existed. I'm really suprised to see how many people either forget about Asherons Call or never played it. Though I think they did instancing right.
As to the OP's question. I'm not sure. I would imagine someone else would have struck gold with an MMO. But who knows. It took a combination of things for WOW to succeed like it did. A game company with a great reputation, great PR, low PC system reqs, perfect timeing ect ect.
I also think its turning out like every industry. Every industry hits a "stale" spot. Granted it happened rather early in the MMORPG cycle but its not like every other entertainment industry hasnt had the same problem.
Not so sure.
What wow did sure had influence on other games but Blizzard didn't really invent much. There have been games before and practically next to wow which also were blatant themeparks, like EQ2 which released at the same time or GW1 which released only 5 months later.
I think the textbook themepark model relying on quests, instanced gameplay and pvp in a can was unavoidable for the industry.
All I know is that when I first played WOW, back in 2005/2006 I LOVED its seamless open world which allowed you to travel continents from coast to coast without loading screens, its pvp ruleset which allowed for city raiding and how enemy territory and your own started to overlap after the lowbie zones. That really shaped very tight world pvp communities on the servers I played on.
I only have hard feelings about WOW's progress driven endgame being tied in to instanced forms of gameplay so much. Adding Arena's for me was the start of the downward slope.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I knew it was a fallacious statement which is why I edited it
Lets rephrase this. What would it be like if the following never happened?
. NGE never happened?
. Aion had dev support and actually been westernized
. AOC was not a buggy piece of crap
. WarHammer actually had pve on launch..what about no bright wizards?
. Guild Wars had actually been a mmorpg and not a CORPG with no jumping
. SWTOR had not been over hyped and Ilum had not been broken as shit on launch
. SONY had actually focused on Everquest and kept the game current and lightened the grind
We can only blame Blizzard for so much. Up until Trion in my opinion every dev had been a piece of shit only out for a quick cash grab.
The first thing that would have happened without WoW would be drastic changes to EQ2. EQ2 would not have drastically changed their game in beta to copy WoW and likely would not have released such a poor and unfinished game. The same goes for Vanguard. Both would have not shifted to quest directed gameplay and super fast fast leveling. Both would have likely had problems in requiring to much hardware to play the game but likely both would have done very well.
My guess is LOTRO would have done better. Without focusing on creating quests they might have made interesting classes and a better combat system. Most likely EQ2 and Vanguard wouldhave been the dominant games.
Warhammer would likely have been a lot more like DAOC without the WoW influence and have been a better game.
My guess is today most games would be copyingvVanguard and sticking to the EQ model. The communities would be better, more patient and mature. MMOs would likely be more niche but that would be a very good thing. Budgets would be smaller, expectations at release smaller and Independent MMOs would have a much better chance at success. We would see more sandbox and open ended UO type games contrasting themselves with the EQ raiding formula. We would also see more games like SWG and Horizons with a srong emphasis on crafting, buillding and cmmunity projects.
Overall the genre would be a lot better IMO and the games would require more thought and effort. The quality, production values and polish would likely not be as good. Certainly the eye candy and flash would be less. But the substance would likely be a lot better. The players would be older, smarter, better, more patient and much more skilled. Not to mention they would be a lot more literate with greater communication skills. Communities in MMOs would be closer nit and much better.
Websites like MMORPG.COM would have to employ writers that actually play MMOs rather than the pretend players they employ now. They would have to write articles of substance to reach a more niche playerbase than the developer talking points they repeat for the ignorant masses.
RIP Orc Choppa
Hmm a jackwagon -free world.....sounds like heaven....I only played for a handful of months but the population of the server I was on were a bunch of aholes.....How was everyone elses?
WoW had such a heavy impact on the gaming genre I would speculate the following:
* I would expect that at least 50% of the people on these forums wouldnt be here.
* Playing an MMO would still be akin to PnP D&D and limited to a much smaller underground audience.
* Larger corporations would have taken much less interest in the profitability of MMOs. Inevitebly eliminating a large amount of the titles released after the WoW success.
* Titles that were released would have a much smaller monetary requirement. Indie games would have probably been more popular. The market was ripe for a WoW. If it would not have been them, nearly all games at the time were using EQ as a template to tring and knock SOE off the throne.
* Chuck Norris' fame reroll would have been limited to porta potty writings and stall walls.
* A blue elf would still be evil. Nuff said. (if he wasnt evil hed be too busy running his ass away from Gargamel to participate)
* MMORPGs would probably be slower paced than they are now. Focused more on party mechanics than massacre style solo content.
* The standard would be lower. I only say this because glitches and bugs were just something you expected in an MMO back then. You expected them to get fixed but their was more patience because MMO's were still relatively unique. Players understood there were issues that needed to be solved in the creation of such a unique style of gaming. Nerd raging seemed much less common.
* I think community probably would have played a bigger roll in MMos than it does now. At least until someone else made a big push toward the casual gamer.
* I think that MMORPGs would still be a more adult audience. MMOs were gaming for adults back then, kids didnt pay monthly subs. Many were old D&D PnP types. Not that I have anything against minors playing MMO's, it was just less common back then. They were their, but not at the numbers we have now. (I'm talking 99'ish now). Nerd rage was much less acceptable.
* Graphics would have followed a realistic model more so than they do now. WoW taking the cartoony model they went with took alot of creativity to pull off. If not done correctly it would have been laughed off and dropped as an option. That was the biggest deterrent to me before I actally began playing it after years of EQ.
Speculation of course. In the end WoW's success changed the genre so as to give us all the options we have today. There are games for casual players, hardcore players. Poor players and rich players. Kids and adults. Evil blue elves and happy nice blue elves. And Chuck Norris now reigns as a geriatric badass.
For better or for worse.
I think without WoW, EA would have had the chance to develop and cancel a third sequel to UO (they cancelled the first 2 sequels.
If WoW hadn't been released, EQ2 would have taken its place as the next big thing, and nothing would have really changed. I honestly think people's hatred for SoE is what drove a lot of players away from EQ2 and into WoW.
SoE was already in the process of "ruining" EQ by introducing instances (LDoN), fast travel (PoP), and making the game easier. Blizzard just happened to do it all at once with WoW, and they did it during a period where the gaming industry as a whole was gaining significant ground as an entertainment medium.
MMORPG would be full of people whining about no Themepark style MMO's and how they are superior to the old and outdated Sandbox games.
"I'm sick to death of all this levelling..... first its one handed pick axes, then level metalurgy so I can then level minor Blacksmithing to then level intermediate Blacksmithing and then major Blacksmithing just to make a bloody one handed sword cause the ingame ones are shit or I have to buy one for a super exorbitant price from greedy crafters"
"For good sake will they ever put in a fast travel system I'm going to throw my computer out the window if I have to walk from DragonsMane to Village of the Doomed again"
"I've explored every part of this land with my tribe and all we found was more fucking land give us a bloody reason to do this Pleeaaaaassseee! something like achievements from Themepark games would be cool"
"Why can't we have some Themepark elements in our Sandboxes? a ThemeBox if you will"
"Would putting the quests in a more orderly fashion really ruin the Sandbox?"
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Well... something else getting a big thing? Nope, it would have a leader position that i'm sure off but nothing would bring in the numbers that WoW did.
The community would be growing slow not like a big bang like it did with WoW.
SWTOR could have been the WoW (as in draw a lot of non MMO players in) BUT! it would never be designed without WoW.
As much as WoW did Good/Bad in peoples eyes they did as much Good/Bad to the industry.
And the biggest thing I applaud Blizzard for bringing to the MMO industry is overall polishness.Better to score a 7 or 8/10 on most systems in your game than like most have a few 9's here or there to be followed by 4 or 5/10.
I would argue that WoW was the beginning of the themepark experience and these issues wouldnt have been an issue because they would have been nonexistent until it arrived. In all honesty, all the spoiled gaming whining and bitching really came after the WoW themepark was introduced.People with better eyesight. Pub's would not have closed down. Etc.
Many great things would have happened.
MMORPGs would not try to become a WoW clones... which just copied EQ2.
More games would be designed similar to the actually good games that many of us put years into playing.
We would not have these phrases such as QQ and L2___ posted in every other forum post.
I wouldn't have to go into Wal-Mart and hear some 15 year old say a shirt being sold at Wal-Mart is, and I quote, "Epic" .
I would have saved a lot of money not playing AoC, Rift, or SWTOR hoping one would be a decent game, not a WoW clone (AoC being the most unique of all of those)
This is true. Since, WoW all you see is nerf this, change this, give me this threads on game forums. (that is because WoW made MMO's cool for kids ages 2+)
Even gold farmers. Any game I played prior to WoW, if there was someone selling the games currency, it was an actual player... and it was not spammed every 2seconds by a bot.
Every game after WoW. You got bots sitting in cities spamming for gold, you got mass tells sent out for gold by bots, you got mass emails sent for gold by bots.
With the absence of wow, Mmorpgs wouldn't be main stream and mostly played by a large number of people which society would call "nerds".
In conjunction with this, building and construction industry would be booming with the demand of modern day contemporary "Lairs" also known as basements.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Alien Space Bats ftw!
So many scenarios, probably another mmorpg would have stepped in. Eg Blizzard originally wanted the Games Workshop license and without it, made their own version just the same... the rest is history.
More of a trend due to tech, mmorpgs growing in player numbers, cycles in the economy of the games industry, internet + society... as they say, right time, right place, right company!
Seems more directions for mmorpg land to go than last few years:
1. smaller mmorpgs/mobile mmorpgs
2. genre-blending mmorpgs PS2 MMOFPS etc
3. destructable/constructable/customizable virtual worlds ala minecraft
4. social genre + mmorpgs influence? Titan?
5. Combining mmorpgs eg EvE + Dust
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Well,real world would be ok but gaming world would be empty and boring. We have only 2 good games in mmo and one of them is wow
WoW was based on the first Themepark game Everquest and you really believe that all the whining came after WoW was relaesed? No-one bitched about the Planes Of Power or Lost Dungeons of Norrath xpacs?, no-one bitched about the Renaissance xpac? no-one bitched about the Trials Of Atlantis xpac? no-one bitched about the release of Anarchy Online? SWG was a wonderfully bug free content rich game at release and everyone was ecstatic about it. No it was a serene and wonderful world back in the old days dancing round the maypole and stroking pretty maidens hair in feilds of lush clover I sure.
/sarcasm
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
EQ2 would definitely have been a much bigger game. As big as WoW? Probably not. But still flooded with the same b.net refugees. It's probable that the b.net problem behavior cases would exceed EQ2 population's ability to absorb.
EQ2's marketing, not up to the job, would drop the football...and the whole genre would currently be much smaller.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I think a game like WoW would have been inevitable. Most likely we ould have just decided to pick on "Game X" instead.