I like how people blame LFG tools when really they are whining that they are unable to make friends and want the design of the game to force people to group with them all the time.
Instead get in a guild. Get involved. Take your time to get groups to do things on the guild. Make the community instead of whining the game does not force the community.
The only one denying themselves entertainment is themselves. As a child, you would eat dirt, this was fun. Thought running around naked was a blast. Found enjoyment in throwing food. No one taught you to do these things. You came up with them all on your very own. Amazing how a child can find the simplest of things the most entertaining but an adult can't do the same thing. Children don't go around looking for unfun things to do. They don't analyze everything to death to help them decide what is and is not fun to do. They just do it and if it's fun, they do it again and if it's not, they don't.
WoW didn't kill anything... you did. You chose to find it unfun. But unlike a child that simply avoids those things it doesn't like, adults seem to wallow in it, looking for reasons as to why. Do you really need reasons why something is unfun? You already decided it was unfun, why go looking for more reasons?
I'll only play this game if they change X... well I guess you won't be playing it then.
This game is great except for Y... then don't do Y.
Fun isn't a learned behavior... it's an acquired one. Go out there and find your dirt, fling your food, and dance naked in the street. I'll guarantee someone will find it fun.
ArcheAge is as wowish as every other traditional mmo out there.
The only difference is the crafting and trading in AA is based on a sandbox idea.
Dont type huge walls of texts blaming old mmos for the demise of new ones and then use AA as the one making the difference and causing controversy.
MMOS that live under WoWs shadow saw it coming. You cant beat WoW at its own game, they will beat themselves in time. AA made something diffrerent (craftin/trading) but the majority of the game is traditional mmorpg
EDIT: AA started on the right path to break the wow cycle, but then they became another wow like game with generic features.
when you compare every mmo to wow,you have no case,means you never played any mmo but wow.1st wow was NOT first,it is a copy itself. a very bad copy.i played it for about 6 months than could not stand it.it is popular cause it IS stupid. people like stupid games they do not have to think.now every game that comes out it proclaimed a wow knockoff?wow cause it is online?an mmorpg?it has classes?aa is nothing like wow,you can choose up to 3 classes to draw skills from.wow is on the decline,as more and more people get tired of it.why would people want to duplicate a game that is in decline?
finder did not kill anything,what was the reason for the finder,because NO ONE wanted to play healers or tanks.THAT was the cause NOT the finders.even with the finders you still had the same problem healers and tanks were not great solo.
get over WOW.let me guess wildstar is wow cause of its cartoon graphics.
the controversy with aa IS the lp system.that makes you have to buy a sub to play than still has a cash shop.frankly aa is in someways pretty good,as long as you do not want to do any crafting or build house or.....so if you do not want to do the sandbox it is okay,i find it a lot better game than wow was ever.but it is wow cause it is an mmorpg and everyone knows that all mmorpg games are wowish cause you say so,.
I didn't bother reading most of this thread but what I'm taking from this is people blame dungeon finders for the decline in MMO quality or w/e right? Because people rely less on guilds etc, right? I guess that could depend on the game really. WoW gives your guild bonuses if you do dungeon finder stuff with people from your guild. Lack of guild closeness isn't because of that, its because most guilds are good cash grabs. So everyone and their mother is trying to start a guild since a portion of quests and such are siphoned automatically to the guild bank, depending on the game. But this has always existed, everyone wants to make a quick e-buck with little effort. Maybe blame guild mechanics versus other things.
3) World of Warcraft developed the dungeon finder. The beginning of Lobby game. This idea was met with mixed reactions. I could safely say 50/50. This killed the community. You no longer needed that guild, or a friends list THIS WAS THE REAL BOTTOM LINE OF THE END OF DEEP FRIENDSHIP.
Deep friendship is what makes you log in day after day for months or years. It's why people don't stop playing after they learn all them cool abilities and have seen all the world has to offer.
Yup, it sure was one of the "3 strikes". Add to it cataclysm and the battlegroup shared space and we get all the strikes!
Can't ever go back, them 3 things set the hate meter to Vader level anger! *Takes double bloodpressure tablets*
No trials. No tricks. No traps. No EU-RP server. NO THANKS!
AFAIK, dungeon finder is one of the things WoW got right. I refuse to play a game without one. Not everyone likes to spam chat for LFG all day long. Equally, not everyone likes to see LFG spam in chat all day long. And universally, no one likes to wait for sometimes hours on end trying to get a group together to do a dungeon. If you do not like dungeon finders, the option to avoid them is still there for you. Simply don't use them. But to deny those who like them, the option to use them, is a bit selfish.
WoW has always been simplified,accessible and designed to appeal to the masses OP should at least be consistent about whether that is a good thing or a bad thing in their opinion. What I read in their post in "WoW was awesome in 2004 because I was part of the large group of people they were appealing to but then in 2009 they started trying to appeal to some different people so now the game sucks!" Make up your mind OP, either you want a niche game designed to appeal to you specifically or you want a mass appeal game that of course will evolve over time based on what the suits think "the masses" want.
Also, I'd blame games that modified their design to be more like what WoW was doing more than WoW itself for killing innovation in the genre.
WoW did not change. The people that played WoW in the beginning changed. They went out and found jobs. They got married and had kids. Bills became more important. Time became more valuable. In most cases anyway. WoW only adapted to meet the demands of a changing player base.
Another excellent example of the players blaming the Devs for something THE Players are responsible for....
is that really how you remember it? what a healthy dose of "good-ole-day" syndrome you have.
You think WoW just popped the Dungeon Finder idea out of the blue? That they just decided to throw it out there while everyone was screaming for them to not implement it?
Au contraire, my friend, the vast public was crying for this. The majority was sick and tired and wasting hours at summon stones or cities, spamming nonstop for a damn tank.
Don't be mad at WoW for inventing the dungeon finder, or that it is an idea that has stuck with other games. Its there because YOUR peers demanded it BE there.
QFT!
Blizzard don't introduce features like that without good reason, and that is because there was significant demand for it, if anything WoW has laid the groundwork for other games to learn from, these days there are basic features that are now considered a necessity for a game to succeed, skimping on any one of which will usually have a detrimental impact on the game in question, you could almost point to some of the more recent ones, ESO in particular, that have failed because they didn't implement enough of the right quality of life features into their game, if anything with the more games that do fail and have an identified lack of certain features, will probably ensure that future games will incorporate them in their future game designs.
Once I discovered this really cool thing called "outside" and these things called "wife" and "children" I've found that dungeon finders are quite helpful now that I don't play games 9 hours per day.
The only thing WoW killed was the necessity to spend 40 hours a week playing a freaking video game. Good riddance.
Funny you should say that " Time to play ".
I'm playing Vanilla World of Warcraft now. It's long and hard. Dungeon crawling takes sometimes hours.
I play 45 min at a time.....Often I don't play at all for a week or more. I only do a dungeon IF I HAVE TIME.
Life can easily come first !
Now here's the best part, I can still make memories. This only comes with playing with others. I have a long drive to work everyday, I can fill that drive with good times of playing my mmo with friends
I have to leave here in about 20 min, I'm going to Kung Fu. I have to be there I'm an instructor, I like being their. I don't neglect nothing !
I agree OP I also dont have a ton of time but I too do not need a LFD tool because its not needed never will be needed. If players play MMO properly and make friends and create a network of friends they will almost never need to find a random person. The problem is the people who feel its needed come up with 50 million excuses, however the fact still remains. They dont want to play an MMO and they would be better off in a single player game.
Anyone who has a family to take care of and has wife and kids (those are the majority of gamers now days) would never claim that LFD is not needed. Why? because at this point in your life time is money.
How can anyone here with a straight face say i am a family man and yet out of two hours that he gets to play the game he is willing to spend atleast an hour just spamming LFG?
Only those people would understand for whom time is a luxury..and you are just pretending to be one.
Op you are dead on, Wow success was due to perfect timing and the ability for most computers to be able to play the game, I myself wanted to play EQ2 but at that time my copmuter couldn't handle it so I tried WoW and got sucked in, and played for 7 years.
I get the point you're trying to make but you shoot yourself in the foot a lot.
Pre WoW there were dozens of MMOs, many of them had more subs than AAA MMOs do today (Age of Conan would kill to have DAOC's 250k subs). The designs in EQ were certainly rough draft, but they were iterated on and more or less perfected by 2003 in a lot of ways.
Second, EQ2 did suffer from the things you listed, but that's not really why WoW dominated. Most of the people that played WoW didn't even know that EQ2 was a choice to choose. They heard about WoW because it was the first big name big budget mainstream MMO advertised to non MMO gamers with Blizzards year long marketing blitz.
And third, many of the things you list WoW as having that worked... either weren't unique to WoW, or aren't even true.
Slow leveling? WoW had the ffastest leveling in the genre when it launched.
Marketing is what won the day for WoW, more than anything else, and them playing it safe with just copying EQ's design.
Originally posted by Warjin Op you are dead on, Wow success was due to perfect timing and the ability for most computers to be able to play the game, I myself wanted to play EQ2 but at that time my copmuter couldn't handle it so I tried WoW and got sucked in, and played for 7 years.
So you didn't have fun playing it at all? just played it because your pc couldn't handle it for almost 7 years?
I get the point you're trying to make but you shoot yourself in the foot a lot.
Pre WoW there were dozens of MMOs, many of them had more subs than AAA MMOs do today (Age of Conan would kill to have DAOC's 250k subs). The designs in EQ were certainly rough draft, but they were iterated on and more or less perfected by 2003 in a lot of ways.
Second, EQ2 did suffer from the things you listed, but that's not really why WoW dominated. Most of the people that played WoW didn't even know that EQ2 was a choice to choose. They heard about WoW because it was the first big name big budget mainstream MMO advertised to non MMO gamers with Blizzards year long marketing blitz.
And third, many of the things you list WoW as having that worked... either weren't unique to WoW, or aren't even true.
Slow leveling? WoW had the ffastest leveling in the genre when it launched.
Marketing is what won the day for WoW, more than anything else, and them playing it safe with just copying EQ's design.
Blizzard also had a huge and loyal built in fan base.
I get the point you're trying to make but you shoot yourself in the foot a lot.
Pre WoW there were dozens of MMOs, many of them had more subs than AAA MMOs do today (Age of Conan would kill to have DAOC's 250k subs). The designs in EQ were certainly rough draft, but they were iterated on and more or less perfected by 2003 in a lot of ways.
Second, EQ2 did suffer from the things you listed, but that's not really why WoW dominated. Most of the people that played WoW didn't even know that EQ2 was a choice to choose. They heard about WoW because it was the first big name big budget mainstream MMO advertised to non MMO gamers with Blizzards year long marketing blitz.
And third, many of the things you list WoW as having that worked... either weren't unique to WoW, or aren't even true.
Slow leveling? WoW had the ffastest leveling in the genre when it launched.
Marketing is what won the day for WoW, more than anything else, and them playing it safe with just copying EQ's design.
Blizzard also had a huge and loyal built in fan base.
Yeah it is funny how people forget that they had Warcraft strategy games running successfully for many years before WOW.
The advertising came much later on after WOW release. Even if they didn't say a word people would still gatecrash WOW thanks to success of Warcraft games.
3) World of Warcraft developed the dungeon finder. The beginning of Lobby game. This idea was met with mixed reactions. I could safely say 50/50. This killed the community. You no longer needed that guild, or a friends list THIS WAS THE REAL BOTTOM LINE OF THE END OF DEEP FRIENDSHIP.
Deep friendship is what makes you log in day after day for months or years. It's why people don't stop playing after they learn all them cool abilities and have seen all the world has to offer.
Cute theory and all, but a major reason why WoW is still the #1 MMO on the market is due to the deep friendships many of the long-time players developed with each other. So if the Dungeon finder made it into a lobby game, and killed off those relationships like you suggest, how is it that WoW still flourishes and has some of the longest running guilds in the MMO genre?
I'm no fan of dungeon and raid finders, but it didn't kill community in MMOs. That's a silly point to make. Particularly when you consider the fact that no game succeeds these days while trying to circumvent that now very basic feature. Games have tried to launch without it, and they've been met with downright hostility from its player base. It's a feature based on convenience. Nothing more. And convenience is something the players nowadays, the majority of them being casual, seek. If your game isn't convenient to play, it isn't going to be played by many.
All that being said, I would like to see a return to open world, non-instanced dungeons more often in MMOS.
3) World of Warcraft developed the dungeon finder. The beginning of Lobby game. This idea was met with mixed reactions. I could safely say 50/50. This killed the community. You no longer needed that guild, or a friends list THIS WAS THE REAL BOTTOM LINE OF THE END OF DEEP FRIENDSHIP.
Deep friendship is what makes you log in day after day for months or years. It's why people don't stop playing after they learn all them cool abilities and have seen all the world has to offer.
Cute theory and all, but a major reason why WoW is still the #1 MMO on the market is due to the deep friendships many of the long-time players developed with each other. So if the Dungeon finder made it into a lobby game, and killed off those relationships like you suggest, how is it that WoW still flourishes and has some of the longest running guilds in the MMO genre?
I'm no fan of dungeon and raid finders, but it didn't kill community in MMOs. That's a silly point to make. Particularly when you consider the fact that no game succeeds these days while trying to circumvent that now very basic feature. Games have tried to launch without it, and they've been met with downright hostility from its player base. It's a feature based on convenience. Nothing more. And convenience is something the players nowadays, the majority of them being casual, seek. If your game isn't convenient to play, it isn't going to be played by many.
All that being said, I would like to see a return to open world, non-instanced dungeons more often in MMOS.
Lets go Way back. MMOs were still new and not completely refined. We had UO and EQ1 but they were rough drafts in a time where Dialup was the best we could use.
No, we also had Lineage 1/2, Anarchy Online, FFXI, DAOC, EVE, Asherson's Call to name a few, and many of us played on internet connections, not dial-up by 2002/2003.
Around 2003 Blizzard developed World of Warcraft in with competition of Everquest 2 by Sony to be the next generation MMO. Everquest 2 lost with it's poor graphics engine and just plain ugly world and zoning.
Specifically November of 2004 to be precise for both titles.
This left us with only World of Warcraft, with perfect timing of EVERYTHING.
- Faster internet with DSL and Cable modem. - Not specific to WOW
- Non instanced game world. - Not specific to WOW, besides, the dungeons were almost all instanced, unlike some other titles previously.
- Community based tools and quest hubs. - What Community based tools are you referring to? Quest hubs it had in spades of course.
- Slow leveling, allowing everyone to stay that level for longer periods to make friends with a mutual goal. - Slow leveling compared to what, the theme park's of today? It was tons faster than anything I experienced in Lineage 1/2, DAOC or even Shadowbane?
- Cartoon, but stable for lower end computers. - It did take the smart path and make it accessible on a very broad range of computers, one of the first to do so, and one of the largest reasons why this game hit it so big.
- Quick fixes to bugs. - Er, no, we battled with the overload DB issues for almost a year, bug free is not how most players would describe the early playing experience. Who doesn't remember dieing while zoning between continents on the boat rides, or some of the more entertaining bugs you could hit on the early dungeon raids.
- Non-Zoned Areas to play, with a theme for each one along with music to set the mood. - Non zoned? They were quite zoned, level restricted, and abrupt in their transition. Sure, you didn't have to wait for a loading screen, but they were zones none the less.
- 6 starting areas for freedom and replay. - This was a good thing, I really enjoyed this about WOW
- PvP that worked. - Ugh no, totally disagree in this case, matter of opinion I guess. I prefer well designed open world PVP, and WOW quickly took the road of directing everyone to limited BG and arena instances, letting the open world PVP to not only languish, but actually discourage people from doing it.
- Low competition - There were a dozen MMORPG's at the time of launch, and within a few years, hundreds came out, plenty of competition.
- No costly expansion's for years, adding they were not needed for years - Many people might disagree, I personally felt the expansions should have been more on an annual basis, and look at all the whining lately from people saying they've been slacking in this area.
The list could go on and on. EverQuest 2 fans could argue forever but WoW was it, hands down. The money was rolling in. Marketing was not structured enough to interfere yet, not that it had to !......Millions of people were rolling in, kids in school had a major fade. " if you don't play WoW your behind "
OK, now that I set the stage, I'll go into the downhill slide : well, you did, sort of skewed, incorrect view, but sure, let's go on.
Around the EXACT SAME TIME maybe 2008 or so ( don't hold me to that ) three things happened. 2004 - 2008 are not the exact same time, what are you trying to say?
1) Developers began mass producing mmos to hop on the action - I believe between 2004 and 2008 we saw Vanguard, LOTRO, and a number of other games, but I wouldn't call them mass produced, though they all were starting to borrow heavily from WOW by then.
2) Marketing took over. - much sooner than 2008, WOW was using Mr T commercials back in 2005 or 2006, and it was paying off big time.
3) World of Warcraft developed the dungeon finder. The beginning of Lobby game. This idea was met with mixed reactions. I could safely say 50/50. This killed the community. You no longer needed that guild, or a friends list THIS WAS THE REAL BOTTOM LINE OF THE END OF DEEP FRIENDSHIP. - While I agree DF's are a bad idea and contribute to the reduction in socialization, you have it all wrong, deep friendship is not what matters in a MMORPG, in fact, game designs that encourage total strangers to help each other out are what really keeps players going over the long term, and have largely disappeared over the years.
Deep friendship is what makes you log in day after day for months or years. It's why people don't stop playing after they learn all them cool abilities and have seen all the world has to offer. - Not at all true. I'm a guild hopper, I make friends, play with them as long as it suits me, then I move on, to another guild or another game, deep friendship on the internet is an illusion. Look at it this way, if those folks would not be willing to die for you in real life, they are not really your friends, merely acquaintences.
Marketing departments began studying Blizzards World of Warcraft. They took it upon themselves to copy the Dungeon Finder not knowing it was a downfall, thinking Bilzzard was still making millions. They in braced this extremely new feature without the understanding that it will destroy long term gameplay that only World of Warcraft could overcome with its monopoly............This is when the 30 day non-social mmo came to life.
They copied a whole lot more than the DF, and that's why today's MMO's are so similar. Now if you like that sort of design, and aren't looking for a long term experience, you are probably pretty happy with current designs.
Other factors that killed the mmo experience were Dynamic events, personal story lines and instanced zones. This turned mmos into just games. yes, its true, they kept adding game mechanics the increasing reduced socialization mechanics between strangers, but in fact the designs encourage guilds to draw in upon themselves even more than ever, which isolated the players from everyone else even more.
Not many players play games longer than 30 days, but mmos they will !
The majority of today's player base is not interested in playing a game more than 2 or 3 months, they really aren't. Sure, I'll play one for years, but I'm part of niche, and so are you. So game design and monetization have evolved to cater to that majority of the marketplace.
I might not like the designs, but doesn't change the fact that from a business point of view they make sense, even if they fail (IMO) artistically
Originally posted by delete5230
FF14 is the perfect example of the mmo killer.
- Dungeon finder
- Extremely small zones, even split cities.
- 250 part solo quest line.
- 45 min times dungeons.
How did this kill anything? It's one of the largest subscription games on the marketplace if reports are to believed? What exactly did it kill, that's what's largely missing from your argument. Deep player friendship, not nearly as important as you seem to believe in terms of financial success.
Elders Scrolls Online makes a good second example with
- Mega servers - A brilliant move if you look at how things are turning out in Wildstar right now.
- No name plates. - Yeah, this sucks IMO.
- Instanced zones - Not a fan myself, but most people don't notice or care.
- Solo easy - Yea, it is pretty easy, which seems to be what the market favors.
- Dungeon finder - I didn't notice...but not the game killer you think it is.
Modern my butt !!!!!!!...............This is why ArcheAge is so controversial right now. Its community based. But the Cash shop is causing panic. Lots of miss trust !.....Yet, its what players are looking for !
They are most definitely modern, and I agree it's debatable whether they are improvements, not to me or you maybe, but other folks continue to pay for them.
Originally posted by Viper482
Originally posted by Kyleran Killed everything? Set the standard is a better way to describe the situation, by which all MMORPG success would be measured against.
It far and away attracted the largest audience ever seen in MMO space, and regardless of why it managed to do so it was inevitable that most game developers would look to it for design inspiration, especially with the ever increasing amounts of money these games take to design.
Probably should not use FFXIV as an example of market failure, by all accounts it may very well be the second most successful subscription based MMO currently out there, if it's managed to surpass Lineage 1 yet. If this successful, you can't point towards its designs and say don't do this, because apparently many people are quite happy with it.
Same goes for SWTOR, ESO, along with FFXIV and WOW, they dominate the MMO space outside of MOBAs and their ilk.
Now I'm not happy this is how it turned out, I'm fortunate I have EVE to play during this MMORPG "dark age" I feel we've been in, and there has been some signs of new life with titles such as AA, BD, SC, to name a few.
But we really need to stop calling modern theme park design a failure, it brought in hordes of new players and cash, which is the primary goal of the people who fund and create these games.
You are talking from a business standpoint, we are gamers here dude in case you didn't notice. No one would be stupid enough to say WoW was a business failure, the fact you think this is what the topic is baffles me.
Er yeah, I'm a MMORPG player, not a casual gamer, but the fact that you think somehow you can disassociate the business discussion from what influences design decisions in MMOs baffles me even more.
OP infers game developers were mistaken to follow the current path, question remains, did they make their investment back, are they still running and adding new content, and do they continue to retain some amount of players? The answer for most titles is yes to all of these questions, so how can you say they did something wrong?
If you are going to say WOW killed "everything" you'd better be very specific on what exactly it is that it killed, then perhaps I would agree with you.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Marketing is what won the day for WoW, more than anything else, and them playing it safe with just copying EQ's design.
The amount of things WoW "copied" from EQ pales in comparison to the amount of things it IMPROVED from that basic design. WoW succeeded because it was a massive improvement over every other game in the genre. So much so that it opened the genre up for the casual player, for better or worse.
Saying WoW copied from EQ or was the beneficiary of fortuitous timing or good marketing is simply lazy thinking by people who don't want to give credit where it's due.
The amount of things WoW "copied" from EQ pales in comparison to the amount of things it IMPROVED from that basic design. WoW succeeded because it was a massive improvement over every other game in the genre. So much so that it opened the genre up for the casual player, for better or worse.
Saying WoW copied from EQ or was the beneficiary of fortuitous timing or good marketing is simply lazy thinking by people who don't want to give credit where it's due.
No, those things in your last sentence are pretty easy to demonstrate while saying "WoW was just a massive improvement on everything else." is just an opinion which can't possibly be proven one way or the other (and please don't try to use a popularity=quality fallacy argument)
2001 Anarchy Online, Asherons Call, Dark Age of Camelot
2002 Asherons Call 2, Earth & Beyond, Final Fantasy XI
2003 Shadowbane, Lineage 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Horizons (now called Istaria)
early 2004 City of Heroes
I think back then, it wasn't such a race to the end like it is today... sure there were content locusts back then and there are content locusts now... but far more people were having fun leveling together than concerned about who got there first. Today if you're not first, you're behind the power curve. It's like watching a tsunami... if you're not part of that wave, you've already missed the party.
Comments
Instead get in a guild. Get involved. Take your time to get groups to do things on the guild. Make the community instead of whining the game does not force the community.
The only one denying themselves entertainment is themselves. As a child, you would eat dirt, this was fun. Thought running around naked was a blast. Found enjoyment in throwing food. No one taught you to do these things. You came up with them all on your very own. Amazing how a child can find the simplest of things the most entertaining but an adult can't do the same thing. Children don't go around looking for unfun things to do. They don't analyze everything to death to help them decide what is and is not fun to do. They just do it and if it's fun, they do it again and if it's not, they don't.
WoW didn't kill anything... you did. You chose to find it unfun. But unlike a child that simply avoids those things it doesn't like, adults seem to wallow in it, looking for reasons as to why. Do you really need reasons why something is unfun? You already decided it was unfun, why go looking for more reasons?
I'll only play this game if they change X... well I guess you won't be playing it then.
This game is great except for Y... then don't do Y.
Fun isn't a learned behavior... it's an acquired one. Go out there and find your dirt, fling your food, and dance naked in the street. I'll guarantee someone will find it fun.
when you compare every mmo to wow,you have no case,means you never played any mmo but wow.1st wow was NOT first,it is a copy itself. a very bad copy.i played it for about 6 months than could not stand it.it is popular cause it IS stupid. people like stupid games they do not have to think.now every game that comes out it proclaimed a wow knockoff?wow cause it is online?an mmorpg?it has classes?aa is nothing like wow,you can choose up to 3 classes to draw skills from.wow is on the decline,as more and more people get tired of it.why would people want to duplicate a game that is in decline?
finder did not kill anything,what was the reason for the finder,because NO ONE wanted to play healers or tanks.THAT was the cause NOT the finders.even with the finders you still had the same problem healers and tanks were not great solo.
get over WOW.let me guess wildstar is wow cause of its cartoon graphics.
the controversy with aa IS the lp system.that makes you have to buy a sub to play than still has a cash shop.frankly aa is in someways pretty good,as long as you do not want to do any crafting or build house or.....so if you do not want to do the sandbox it is okay,i find it a lot better game than wow was ever.but it is wow cause it is an mmorpg and everyone knows that all mmorpg games are wowish cause you say so,.
Yup, it sure was one of the "3 strikes". Add to it cataclysm and the battlegroup shared space and we get all the strikes!
Can't ever go back, them 3 things set the hate meter to Vader level anger! *Takes double bloodpressure tablets*
No trials. No tricks. No traps. No EU-RP server. NO THANKS!
...10% Benevolence, 90% Arrogance in my case!
AFAIK, dungeon finder is one of the things WoW got right. I refuse to play a game without one. Not everyone likes to spam chat for LFG all day long. Equally, not everyone likes to see LFG spam in chat all day long. And universally, no one likes to wait for sometimes hours on end trying to get a group together to do a dungeon. If you do not like dungeon finders, the option to avoid them is still there for you. Simply don't use them. But to deny those who like them, the option to use them, is a bit selfish.
WoW has always been simplified,accessible and designed to appeal to the masses OP should at least be consistent about whether that is a good thing or a bad thing in their opinion. What I read in their post in "WoW was awesome in 2004 because I was part of the large group of people they were appealing to but then in 2009 they started trying to appeal to some different people so now the game sucks!" Make up your mind OP, either you want a niche game designed to appeal to you specifically or you want a mass appeal game that of course will evolve over time based on what the suits think "the masses" want.
Also, I'd blame games that modified their design to be more like what WoW was doing more than WoW itself for killing innovation in the genre.
QFT!
Blizzard don't introduce features like that without good reason, and that is because there was significant demand for it, if anything WoW has laid the groundwork for other games to learn from, these days there are basic features that are now considered a necessity for a game to succeed, skimping on any one of which will usually have a detrimental impact on the game in question, you could almost point to some of the more recent ones, ESO in particular, that have failed because they didn't implement enough of the right quality of life features into their game, if anything with the more games that do fail and have an identified lack of certain features, will probably ensure that future games will incorporate them in their future game designs.
Anyone who has a family to take care of and has wife and kids (those are the majority of gamers now days) would never claim that LFD is not needed. Why? because at this point in your life time is money.
How can anyone here with a straight face say i am a family man and yet out of two hours that he gets to play the game he is willing to spend atleast an hour just spamming LFG?
Only those people would understand for whom time is a luxury..and you are just pretending to be one.
I get the point you're trying to make but you shoot yourself in the foot a lot.
Pre WoW there were dozens of MMOs, many of them had more subs than AAA MMOs do today (Age of Conan would kill to have DAOC's 250k subs). The designs in EQ were certainly rough draft, but they were iterated on and more or less perfected by 2003 in a lot of ways.
Second, EQ2 did suffer from the things you listed, but that's not really why WoW dominated. Most of the people that played WoW didn't even know that EQ2 was a choice to choose. They heard about WoW because it was the first big name big budget mainstream MMO advertised to non MMO gamers with Blizzards year long marketing blitz.
And third, many of the things you list WoW as having that worked... either weren't unique to WoW, or aren't even true.
Slow leveling? WoW had the ffastest leveling in the genre when it launched.
Marketing is what won the day for WoW, more than anything else, and them playing it safe with just copying EQ's design.
So you didn't have fun playing it at all? just played it because your pc couldn't handle it for almost 7 years?
Blizzard also had a huge and loyal built in fan base.
Yeah it is funny how people forget that they had Warcraft strategy games running successfully for many years before WOW.
The advertising came much later on after WOW release. Even if they didn't say a word people would still gatecrash WOW thanks to success of Warcraft games.
Cute theory and all, but a major reason why WoW is still the #1 MMO on the market is due to the deep friendships many of the long-time players developed with each other. So if the Dungeon finder made it into a lobby game, and killed off those relationships like you suggest, how is it that WoW still flourishes and has some of the longest running guilds in the MMO genre?
I'm no fan of dungeon and raid finders, but it didn't kill community in MMOs. That's a silly point to make. Particularly when you consider the fact that no game succeeds these days while trying to circumvent that now very basic feature. Games have tried to launch without it, and they've been met with downright hostility from its player base. It's a feature based on convenience. Nothing more. And convenience is something the players nowadays, the majority of them being casual, seek. If your game isn't convenient to play, it isn't going to be played by many.
All that being said, I would like to see a return to open world, non-instanced dungeons more often in MMOS.
Er yeah, I'm a MMORPG player, not a casual gamer, but the fact that you think somehow you can disassociate the business discussion from what influences design decisions in MMOs baffles me even more.
OP infers game developers were mistaken to follow the current path, question remains, did they make their investment back, are they still running and adding new content, and do they continue to retain some amount of players? The answer for most titles is yes to all of these questions, so how can you say they did something wrong?
If you are going to say WOW killed "everything" you'd better be very specific on what exactly it is that it killed, then perhaps I would agree with you.
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The amount of things WoW "copied" from EQ pales in comparison to the amount of things it IMPROVED from that basic design. WoW succeeded because it was a massive improvement over every other game in the genre. So much so that it opened the genre up for the casual player, for better or worse.
Saying WoW copied from EQ or was the beneficiary of fortuitous timing or good marketing is simply lazy thinking by people who don't want to give credit where it's due.
agree - WOW was the fastest leveling mmo that i knew of, when it launched in 2004
I posted about wow's speed, 10 years ago
when someone made to it 60, 2 weeks after WOWs release
http://www.therunes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=6924
other slow leveling mmos for context
Pre2001
Everquest, Ultima Online, Lineage
2001
Anarchy Online, Asherons Call, Dark Age of Camelot
2002
Asherons Call 2, Earth & Beyond, Final Fantasy XI
2003
Shadowbane, Lineage 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Horizons (now called Istaria)
early 2004
City of Heroes
EQ2 fan sites
No, those things in your last sentence are pretty easy to demonstrate while saying "WoW was just a massive improvement on everything else." is just an opinion which can't possibly be proven one way or the other (and please don't try to use a popularity=quality fallacy argument)
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I think back then, it wasn't such a race to the end like it is today... sure there were content locusts back then and there are content locusts now... but far more people were having fun leveling together than concerned about who got there first. Today if you're not first, you're behind the power curve. It's like watching a tsunami... if you're not part of that wave, you've already missed the party.
claiming WoW killed MMOs is like claiming doom killed shooters, or warcraft killed RTS.
they did not.
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