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.
Mhmm, WoW did great things for the genre.
Thank you, Blizzard! (something almost every MMO developer out there ought to say too :P)
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
FFXIV isn't an MMO killer. In fact, it's arguably the most successful MMO released since WoW, and yet there are things which differ quite a bit.
MMOs are thriving. Sure there's a lot of junk out there, but there's also a lot of good stuff too. With all that's available to us, if you can't find an MMO to suit your tastes, it's not the genre's problem. It's yours.
Extremely small zones are a big deal, It breaks up the game and kills Imisrsion. Lots of people will agree.
250 story line keeps everyone doing there story quest, infact FF14 makes you SOLO. An don't give any crap that others can join in, cause that doesn't happen.
45 min times dungeons....So much for Dungeon crawling, and making friends, why do you even play mmos ?
No name plates, who is who? Or don't you even care, again why do you even play mmos ?
FF14 is not arguably the best mmo? Its about as popular and the last 10 mmos that people play and skip over. And thats the point of the topic. People skipping over, games dont even last 30 days
I do not know where you're getting your info but newsflash FFXIV ARR is very popular .Or haven't you been reading about the unique logins and revised SquareEnix financial reports on these forums.
Anyway you can live in your alternate reality where FFXIV is not popular and continue spouting misinformation. The dungeons you may have done must not have been beyond the very first few if you think that the dungeons are easy in FFXIV and they can take well over an hour sometimes worse if you have wipes and are learning.
There is no point arguing with someone who paints their own truths about the popularity of games like FFXIV . If you only actually played you will see how bloody popular the game is but you do not and try to be an expert on the topic. Your thread your reality I guess.
I will not play an MMO that doesn't have a dungeon finder. They needed to remove the boring part of the game where we stand around and wait for a pickup group for an unknown amount of time. You guys act like you are retired and have oodles of time to stand around jabbering about the new trick you just taught your dog last night or how the president is ruining the country with his latest whatever. Give me more dungeon finders!!!!
Yeah because it is written in stone that if something is popular it can not be of quality. Thanks for this nugget of wisdom.
Except I never said that anywhere. I said that popularity doesn't prove quality.
Again you are talking in absolutes which is the worse thing you can do while making your argument.
And if WOW has not set standards for polish and quality then i don't know what MMO has.
Exactly. WOW is the reason the word 'polish' ever surfaced when describing MMOs. It provided a reasonably complete, stable and feature rich game at release.
"...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 " -iridescence
Actually, that isn't opinion. WOW genuinely did improve on almost every aspect of gameplay. often introducing features that we now expect in an MMO. An example would be the comparison panel that shows your respective equipped item when hovering over an item on a vendor.
That's not opinion. It's fact, and it was a core design goal when creating the game.
It kind of reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where you got the 'revolutionaries' moaning about, 'what did the romans ever do for us' and then admitting that they did quite a bit with roads and sanitation etc.
Thing is WoW has done a lot for the genre, its just one of those inconvenient truths that some find hard to swallow
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.
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.
WoW and EQ2 were both released in November, 2004; with EQ2 coming out a few weeks before WoW. WoW was in development in 2003, but it was also in development for a long time before that.
Zoning was not a major problem with EQ2. People weren't making the huge deal about zones back then that they seem to now, and it's rather annoying to see people revising history now to make it sound like it was a major issue back then.
The graphics EQ2 was capable of was not an issue, either. EQ2's graphics, for the time, were pretty bleeding-edge. What killed EQ2 was that hardly anyone could play it on even the lowest settings because the engine was horribly unoptimized, and built on the expectation that CPU technology would evolve in a direction it ultimately didn't. To put it simply: They didn't count on multi-core processing to become common on the home PC at that point, and so the engine was designed around a more single-core design. They also did pretty much all the graphics processing on the CPU, not the GPU, which would also bite them in the ass. It wasn't 'til years later that multi-core or GPU support would find its way into the engine. Consequently, people - even those with pretty high end systems - couldn't turn up the settings to see EQ2's graphics at their best, without bringing their computer to its knees.
Another reason for EQ2's early issues was what we'd consider a normal part of a MMO's "birthing pains" - bugs, gameplay elements that needed tweaking, etc. I remember having to look for ages just to find a single resource node, they were so few and far between. By the time they'd had the chance
It was also designed much more around the more traditional MMORPG, with a lot more focus on the "RPG" part.
SOE did eventually start to turn around, but not before WoW, with its huge built-in Warcraft fanbase, came along and did just about everything completely the opposite: It would run on a child's Easy Bake Oven (obvious hyperbole), it was designed more as a "game" than a "world", and it didn't go very deep into any actual RPG elements. It was, as we've come to know it: "more accessible". It was also polished and very "immediate" in its feedback.
This left us with only World of Warcraft, with perfect timing of EVERYTHING.
- Faster internet with DSL and Cable modem.
EQ2 had this benefit as well, as did others that came out at the time.
- Non instanced game world.
Err.. non-instanced? You mean except for Ragefire Chasm, Deadmines, Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps, The Stockade, Razorfen Kraul, Razorfen Downs,Scarlet Monastery, Uldaman, Scholomance, Stratholme, Zul'Farrak, Atal'Hakkar Temple, Blackrock Depths, and the Onyxia and Molten Core raids?
Sorry, WoW's world most certainly did have instancing... from day 1.
- Community based tools and quest hubs.
Concentrated quest-hubs is a subjective thing. Some people think they were a boon to the genre. Some think they were a horrible thing to introduce. Regardless, this is a matter of personal preference, and not something you can objectively state was a key reason for the game's success.
- Slow leveling, allowing everyone to stay that level for longer periods to make friends with a mutual goal.
Err,no. "WoW" and "Slow Leveling" (even in Vanilla) do not belong in the same sentence. The leveling in WoW, compared to any other MMO at the time, was significantly faster. This sounds more like another attempt at revising history, or a case of distorted memory.
- Cartoon, but stable for lower end computers.
You're confusing art style with graphics tech. They could have used the same graphics tech, but went for a more realistic look, and the game would have looked much different, while maintaining the same performance. They stuck with that look because it's the style they'd established in Warcraft III, and 'worked' for their universe.
- Quick fixes to bugs.
Another dubious claim that seems more "flawed memory" than actual fact. I remember issues going on for quite some time in WoW. Especially early on.
- Non-Zoned Areas to play, with a theme for each one along with music to set the mood.
Well, each zone having its own theme song is hardly noteworthy. Seems more like filler to make the list seem more impressive. Most MMOs have unique songs for a given zone, and did even before WoW came out.
Again, zoning is a subjective thing. Some people seem to treat it as though it's some huge deal, and I think they're overstating things. Let me explain why with some questions...
Considering there were no flying mounts in Azeroth for the first several years...
If you're in Stormwind, and want to get to... say... Lakeshire. Are you going to run there on foot since, you know, it's a seamless world? Or are you going to hop on a gryphon and fly there? I'm guessing you're going to fly there, correct? What are you doing while flying? You're waiting, right? Kinda like you'd be doing with loading screens? Or, how about moving between contintents? Loading screen, right? Entering/exiting dungeons/instances? Loading screens, right? Returning to your Homepoint? Loading screen, right? Using a player-conjured portal to another location? Loading screen, right?
My point is, unless you're running from one zone to the next one over, or maybe 2 zones over... chances are you're going to be either teleporting there, which involves a loading screen, or using fast travel, which involves waiting while you get there.
Meanwhile, in a MMO with zones, you tend to spend a lot of time in one zone anyway. If you're going to be traveling a longer distance, several zones away, chances are you're going to teleporting there, or using some means of fast travel - which requires loading screens and waiting, just like it does in a seamless world. So, unless you, for some reason, are choosing to move back and forth between areas a lot, you're not going to be zoning that much anyway.
In other words: the whole "seamless worlds are so much better than zones!" thing is kinda pointless.
- 6 starting areas for freedom and replay.
Well, limited freedom. I can't choose Human but choose to start in Teldrassil. I can't be an Orc and choose to start in the Forsaken area. So, if you're someone who sticks to certain races over others (as many people do, in my experience), you actually are going to be seeing the same zones, and doing the same content quite a lot. True freedom would be like how FFXI (among others): Choose your race, and your Starting City yourself.
- PvP that worked.
Debatable, considering how Blizzard would later neuter the world PvP as they did, favoring structured and controlled arena-style combat, over open, conquest-based world PvP.
- Low competition
Another vague item. Low competition for what?
- No costly expansion's for years, adding they were not needed for years
Another highly subjective item that, frankly, seems to run counter to what many/most others say. One of the bigger complaints about Blizzard and WoW over the years has been that they don't release new expansions or content fast enough. That it took them 3 years to release their first expansion could be seen as a big negative... not a positive. It means that people were stuck doing the same content over and over again, month after month, before Blizzard provided them some truly new content to play through.
With WoW's faster progression rate, relative to most any other MMO out there (especially at the time), their slow content release schedule was actually a problem for a lot of players.
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 ".
Why do you specifically address EQ2 players? Do you have a friend who debates you all the time on which game is better or something?
No one could argue that WoW absolutely kicked EQ2's ass. I readily state that, and I preferred EQ2's world and playstyle much more than I did WoW's. I suppose in a place, like these forums, where reality is readily ignored by some, in favor of their own preferred "beliefs", that would make sense. But, for those of us who deal in reality, WoW came out on top... compared to EQ2, and almost every new MMO to come since.
Lol, I remember dial-up! The Country Market Coin Star in our southern city still uses it. It makes that silly noise that brings back so many memories. Beep beep beep buuuuzzzzzzzzzzz click connect. That sound always makes me nervous the connection will fail.
Originally posted by Jemcrystal Lol, I remember dial-up! The Country Market Coin Star in our southern city still uses it. It makes that silly noise that brings back so many memories. Beep beep beep buuuuzzzzzzzzzzz click connect. That sound always makes me nervous the connection will fail.
Ha, I know this small town bank ATM that still uses dial up......I don't ever use it because I think I may loose my money in ciber space
Are you saying WoW wasn't the best game on the market at the time in terms of quality? If that's your contention, give reasons why you believe this.
Btw, when your game is the sole reason an entire genre goes from unpopular to mainstream over the course of a few years, chances are pretty high that there is some quality involved in what you are doing. I don't give a good shit what you think popularity implies, the numbers back up what I'm saying.
Once again, implying WoW only got to where it is by marketing and dumb luck is lazy thinking by lazy people. I stand by that statement.
I'm saying there are very few ways you can objectively measure MMO quality.
I do not think WoW is the most fun or highest quality MMO on the market (obviously since I stopped playing it long ago ) but my reasons for this are subjective just as yours are for thinking it is the highest quality game. Unless you can provide some measurable objective facts that demonstrate how WoW is higher quality than other games you are just giving your opinion.
People have been giving lists of reasons why WOW is best quality game on the market for years now. And i bet i am not the only one tired of rehashing the same replies over and over and over...... i guess you get the point.
It is a lost effort because no matter how many reasons you give someone like is you gonna come along and say 'hey quality is subjective'. Well good for you..why even ask for objective facts then.
That is why i earlier said that either you are talking in absolutes when you say 'quantity doesn't equal quality' or you made that statement specifically for WOW. And no i am sure it was the later.
People are way too biased with WOW and it success and just need a reason to tear it down. Been 10 years now and it is a never ending cycle.
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.
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.
This left us with only World of Warcraft, with perfect timing of EVERYTHING.
- Faster internet with DSL and Cable modem.
- Non instanced game world.
- Community based tools and quest hubs.
- Slow leveling, allowing everyone to stay that level for longer periods to make friends with a mutual goal.
- Cartoon, but stable for lower end computers.
- Quick fixes to bugs.
- Non-Zoned Areas to play, with a theme for each one along with music to set the mood.
- 6 starting areas for freedom and replay.
- PvP that worked.
- Low competition
- No costly expansion's for years, adding they were not needed for years
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 :
Around the EXACT SAME TIME maybe 2008 or so ( don't hold me to that ) three things happened.
1) Developers began mass producing mmos to hop on the action
2) Marketing took over.
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.
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.
Other factors that killed the mmo experience were Dynamic events, personal story lines and instanced zones. This turned mmos into just games.
Not many players play games longer than 30 days, but mmos they will !
If you're not going to get history right then you have no reason to speculate on future or present activities.
Your very first sentence is wrong and when you refuse to include Asheron's Call, your point thereafter becomes moot!
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
WoW really did have a development dream team working on it back in Vanilla. The BC and WotLK teams were also not too shabby either. To accurately say all the things WoW had going for it would assault all of our forum readers with a wall of text.
But WoW didn't ruin everything. That was the fault of short sighted development teams that chose to work off the model, thinking that it was mana from heaven.
Not sure if I'm repeating what I've previously posted, but my two cents is that MMO developers lost track of the entire focus of what MMORPGs were attempting to do: Create living, breathing fantasy worlds for players to engage each other in. Vanilla WoW was about a day in the life of a grunt, footman, mage, or some other archetype from its namesake RTS series. Units had to work together, so a social component worked perfectly for it. Ultimately it worked out well. The model fit the idea they were using it for.
I think contemporary MMORPGs try to do too much and the developers push their development budgets too far. Secondly, they keep looking to a game whose model perfectly fit its own original idea and attempt to shoehorn their own idea into a WoW shaped hole.
Originally posted by pappacube I will not play an MMO that doesn't have a dungeon finder. They needed to remove the boring part of the game where we stand around and wait for a pickup group for an unknown amount of time. You guys act like you are retired and have oodles of time to stand around jabbering about the new trick you just taught your dog last night or how the president is ruining the country with his latest whatever. Give me more dungeon finders!!!!
And different game modes. It is very convenient to jump in whatever game (dungeons, raids, pvp ...) at the click of a button.
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.
Prototypical response of the "hold my hand" class of today's gamers. Just bc you CAN play it like WoW, doesnt mean IT IS like WoW. The fact that you choose to play the sandbox like a themepark and then complain its like WoW tells me you dont belong there. AA is as much like WoW as is EvE online. ... HEY ITS GOT QUESTS! Instead of thinking your own opinion is somehow more pertinent than the OP's, maybe you should just try reading. The very community which was killed by the introduction of WoW and its "features" is that same community thats ALIVE AND WELL in AA. Does AA have thempark elements.. sure, it has a topical quest line to allow solo leveling to 50. Does it on the other hand punish those who dont participate in the community, yes, and in fact very harshly. Few other MMO have done this since WoW's explosion, and THAT is why AA is causing controversy. Dont kid yourself kid, AA is not a wow clone, no matter how hard you wish it to be ( otherwise what fuel would you have for your troll posts)
Star Wars Galaxies was losing 10,000 subs a month to WoW. The devs panicked and launched two patches, the New Game Enhancements and the Combat Upgrade, in combination these two patches killed the game.
I don't think you really can blame WoW, but if there was no WoW, SWG would still be around.
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.
I couldn't agree more. So many people with rose colored tinted glasses on. I recall the days of EQ1 and DAoC. These were not fun times trying to find people for stuff for hours.
As all things (movies, music etc). Things change and usually for the better. Old people like the OP are too busy screaming at kids to turn down their crappy music (since there 70s music is still the best). This is nothing new. I'm sure there were people who grew up on radios and no T.V. that thought the same way. "T.V.s are killing the entertainment industry!" " They need to go back to the old ways of radio shows only!".
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.
I'm glad to see at least someone who I don't have the same stance on, give a logical response. I find it funny when people use the word "fail" as if it has some other definition. Yes, WoW has made billions and brought in millions of new players and made MMOs a solid genre instead of a niche one. Somehow, to people like the OP that means fail.
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.
The business standpoint is more important to most gamers then you think. If your developer of choice isn't doing well, well you might not ever get another game from that developer. So, the amount of money and business a developer earns is pretty important.
You have been here since 2007 and are just now realizing this?
No seriously, the majority of people have known WoW destroyed this genre with its "revolutionary-ness". Brought MMOs to the masses and took away everything the niche crowd of us loved about them in one fell swoop. Good for gaming companies, bad for the minority of MMOers who loved the old way.
Oh...and you forgot Daoc.
Here lies the problem. Only a small vocal minority want mmos to go back to the dark days of EQ1 and DAoC. If I'm wrong, you wouldn't see all the top mmos in the world being themeparks.
The business standpoint is more important to most gamers then you think. If your developer of choice isn't doing well, well you might not ever get another game from that developer. So, the amount of money and business a developer earns is pretty important.
Up to a point this is true but if your MMO of choice made say $10 million vs. $5 million last year does that really benefit you as a player? You could hope they put the extra profit into expansions but they are probably just as likely just to pocket it. I don't see how just because a game makes more money it is somehow "better" [speaking from a player's perspective not an investor's obviously] .
I think the worst thing WoW did was kill diversity. There is no other genre that plays so similar maybe outside of RTS following the Dune 2 archetype. It really has nothing to do with hardcore because I never like to grind in the first place.
Almost every last MMORPG made catered to the WoW customers. It just left those who liked other type of MMORPG's out in the cold. For the majority who started out from WoW there is nothing to miss because WoW and games aimed at that crowd have defined what a MMORPG is. Can't miss what you never had.
I'm not sure that what many may now consider a genre-defining game can really be described as having killed everything.
Wow has its problems certainly and one would think that other games in the genre seeking to be a real competitor would do their utmost to cater to solving those problems and providing a gaming experience that exceeds whatever one can get from WoW.
If the endresult of that is that those would-be-competitors are simply not good enough then the fault of that can't be placed at Blizzard's feet surely?
I'm not sure that what many may now consider a genre-defining game can really be described as having killed everything.
Wow has its problems certainly and one would think that other games in the genre seeking to be a real competitor would do their utmost to cater to solving those problems and providing a gaming experience that exceeds whatever one can get from WoW.
If the endresult of that is that those would-be-competitors are simply not good enough then the fault of that can't be placed at Blizzard's feet surely?
Its not Blizzards fault. The problem really was in the budget and market share. WoW's market share dwarfed any other MMORPG. The logic is that if you make a like game you had a chance to get the same results or some of their huge market. 25% of WoW would put you way out in second place.
The budget also limited chances developers would take. Risk a game on a huge budget that has only shown 250k or strive to get even 25% of WoW and be raking in dough? Since there has been any success in making a cheap but good MMORPG there are no successful indie or low budget games to push other ideas.
Comments
Mhmm, WoW did great things for the genre.
Thank you, Blizzard! (something almost every MMO developer out there ought to say too :P)
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I do not know where you're getting your info but newsflash FFXIV ARR is very popular .Or haven't you been reading about the unique logins and revised SquareEnix financial reports on these forums.
Anyway you can live in your alternate reality where FFXIV is not popular and continue spouting misinformation. The dungeons you may have done must not have been beyond the very first few if you think that the dungeons are easy in FFXIV and they can take well over an hour sometimes worse if you have wipes and are learning.
There is no point arguing with someone who paints their own truths about the popularity of games like FFXIV . If you only actually played you will see how bloody popular the game is but you do not and try to be an expert on the topic. Your thread your reality I guess.
It kind of reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where you got the 'revolutionaries' moaning about, 'what did the romans ever do for us' and then admitting that they did quite a bit with roads and sanitation etc.
Thing is WoW has done a lot for the genre, its just one of those inconvenient truths that some find hard to swallow
Ha, I know this small town bank ATM that still uses dial up......I don't ever use it because I think I may loose my money in ciber space
@OP
WoW didn't kill anything.
Everything else that was killed was done so by it's own development.....or lack there of.
People have been giving lists of reasons why WOW is best quality game on the market for years now. And i bet i am not the only one tired of rehashing the same replies over and over and over...... i guess you get the point.
It is a lost effort because no matter how many reasons you give someone like is you gonna come along and say 'hey quality is subjective'. Well good for you..why even ask for objective facts then.
That is why i earlier said that either you are talking in absolutes when you say 'quantity doesn't equal quality' or you made that statement specifically for WOW. And no i am sure it was the later.
People are way too biased with WOW and it success and just need a reason to tear it down. Been 10 years now and it is a never ending cycle.
If you're not going to get history right then you have no reason to speculate on future or present activities.
Your very first sentence is wrong and when you refuse to include Asheron's Call, your point thereafter becomes moot!
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
WoW really did have a development dream team working on it back in Vanilla. The BC and WotLK teams were also not too shabby either. To accurately say all the things WoW had going for it would assault all of our forum readers with a wall of text.
But WoW didn't ruin everything. That was the fault of short sighted development teams that chose to work off the model, thinking that it was mana from heaven.
Not sure if I'm repeating what I've previously posted, but my two cents is that MMO developers lost track of the entire focus of what MMORPGs were attempting to do: Create living, breathing fantasy worlds for players to engage each other in. Vanilla WoW was about a day in the life of a grunt, footman, mage, or some other archetype from its namesake RTS series. Units had to work together, so a social component worked perfectly for it. Ultimately it worked out well. The model fit the idea they were using it for.
I think contemporary MMORPGs try to do too much and the developers push their development budgets too far. Secondly, they keep looking to a game whose model perfectly fit its own original idea and attempt to shoehorn their own idea into a WoW shaped hole.
And different game modes. It is very convenient to jump in whatever game (dungeons, raids, pvp ...) at the click of a button.
Prototypical response of the "hold my hand" class of today's gamers. Just bc you CAN play it like WoW, doesnt mean IT IS like WoW. The fact that you choose to play the sandbox like a themepark and then complain its like WoW tells me you dont belong there. AA is as much like WoW as is EvE online. ... HEY ITS GOT QUESTS! Instead of thinking your own opinion is somehow more pertinent than the OP's, maybe you should just try reading. The very community which was killed by the introduction of WoW and its "features" is that same community thats ALIVE AND WELL in AA. Does AA have thempark elements.. sure, it has a topical quest line to allow solo leveling to 50. Does it on the other hand punish those who dont participate in the community, yes, and in fact very harshly. Few other MMO have done this since WoW's explosion, and THAT is why AA is causing controversy. Dont kid yourself kid, AA is not a wow clone, no matter how hard you wish it to be ( otherwise what fuel would you have for your troll posts)
Star Wars Galaxies was losing 10,000 subs a month to WoW. The devs panicked and launched two patches, the New Game Enhancements and the Combat Upgrade, in combination these two patches killed the game.
I don't think you really can blame WoW, but if there was no WoW, SWG would still be around.
http://gnomophobia.com
I couldn't agree more. So many people with rose colored tinted glasses on. I recall the days of EQ1 and DAoC. These were not fun times trying to find people for stuff for hours.
As all things (movies, music etc). Things change and usually for the better. Old people like the OP are too busy screaming at kids to turn down their crappy music (since there 70s music is still the best). This is nothing new. I'm sure there were people who grew up on radios and no T.V. that thought the same way. "T.V.s are killing the entertainment industry!" " They need to go back to the old ways of radio shows only!".
Lol, these threads are always amusing.
I'm glad to see at least someone who I don't have the same stance on, give a logical response. I find it funny when people use the word "fail" as if it has some other definition. Yes, WoW has made billions and brought in millions of new players and made MMOs a solid genre instead of a niche one. Somehow, to people like the OP that means fail.
The business standpoint is more important to most gamers then you think. If your developer of choice isn't doing well, well you might not ever get another game from that developer. So, the amount of money and business a developer earns is pretty important.
Here lies the problem. Only a small vocal minority want mmos to go back to the dark days of EQ1 and DAoC. If I'm wrong, you wouldn't see all the top mmos in the world being themeparks.
Up to a point this is true but if your MMO of choice made say $10 million vs. $5 million last year does that really benefit you as a player? You could hope they put the extra profit into expansions but they are probably just as likely just to pocket it. I don't see how just because a game makes more money it is somehow "better" [speaking from a player's perspective not an investor's obviously] .
I think the worst thing WoW did was kill diversity. There is no other genre that plays so similar maybe outside of RTS following the Dune 2 archetype. It really has nothing to do with hardcore because I never like to grind in the first place.
Almost every last MMORPG made catered to the WoW customers. It just left those who liked other type of MMORPG's out in the cold. For the majority who started out from WoW there is nothing to miss because WoW and games aimed at that crowd have defined what a MMORPG is. Can't miss what you never had.
I'm not sure that what many may now consider a genre-defining game can really be described as having killed everything.
Wow has its problems certainly and one would think that other games in the genre seeking to be a real competitor would do their utmost to cater to solving those problems and providing a gaming experience that exceeds whatever one can get from WoW.
If the endresult of that is that those would-be-competitors are simply not good enough then the fault of that can't be placed at Blizzard's feet surely?
8 years and counting addicted to
Avalon: The Legend Lives - the longest running online RPG in history
Its not Blizzards fault. The problem really was in the budget and market share. WoW's market share dwarfed any other MMORPG. The logic is that if you make a like game you had a chance to get the same results or some of their huge market. 25% of WoW would put you way out in second place.
The budget also limited chances developers would take. Risk a game on a huge budget that has only shown 250k or strive to get even 25% of WoW and be raking in dough? Since there has been any success in making a cheap but good MMORPG there are no successful indie or low budget games to push other ideas.