never include Lineage2 as a mmorpg to compare to, its success is solely in Korea where its being played on internet cafes so the figure is a bit distorted. Additionally, WoW's figures are about 2 million Korean or so with the same sort of thing. WoW's success is mainly due to their brandname, their international sales, the solidness of the game, bugs aren't very common, its appeal to a younger audience than typical mmorpgs, and its friendliness to casualness. The game isn't outstanding as a mmorpg but is Blizzard excellence in being able to produce the games it does.
Originally posted by sidebuster I'm guessing a great purge in mmorpgs to come. Only the strong will survive the impact allowing for better mmorpgs than we ever seen before.
I agree with this idea. There are a lot of good MMO's out there, but also a lot of bad ones. Strangely enough I don't usually hear of them so I don't know first hand that they are horrible. Luckily for us we have this great website to see for ourselves what is a good game and which isn't. WoW is hugely popular, my server is only a Medium server which I think is heavy enough. I am glad I'm not on a light server though, groups and finding people might be too sporadic to enjoy.
Lineage 2 has 2 million subs, last recorded, but theyr increase was leveling off. Lineage 1 last reported about 2.1mill Wow now has 4mill, Lineage 1 is losing players at a semi-steady rate, and Lineage 2 is growing at a much slower rate.
WoW has dominated them. Infact as I type this, WoW might have more subscribers than the two combined assuming the growth trends continued for those two games.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
World of Warcraft, like Everquest before it, is bringing MMORPGs ever closer to the mainstream. So it's popularity is a good thing in that sense. As others have said, its popularity could also result in lots of clones, which is a bad thing.
I, like many others, think that the next big thing in MMOGs generally, probably won't arrive until the next decade and it's likely that game is only a flicker of an idea in some developer's imagination at the moment.
Originally posted by enixryan I hate WoW But yer its most likely in the top 10! So it is toooo popular that it sucks! I play on a FREE Server of it and that is just right for me!
No wonder you find WoW bad, you play on a free server -_-
Blizzard did with WoW what it has done with all its other games. They took what worked, and added a little flavour to it. Then they ironed it out till it was perfectly solid.
and it worked.
They have never been known for greating somthing truly revolutionary, but they always make solid games. They take what is out there, fix the problems, and make it a SOLID game. Warcraft 1 wasnt by any stretch of the imagination revolutionary, but it was a solid game. Warcraft 2 wasnt revolutionary. but it was SOLID had good support and was fun. Diablo wasnt anything new, but it was fast, fun, and brought a lot of people to the rpg genre. Starcraft wasnt complicated, but it was perfectly balanced, SOLID rts, probably the most sucessful one ever. Diablo 2 wasnt much different from Diablo 1, except it was even more solid, The skill Tree showed up again, and decided to stay (see WoW) WoW, Nothing really new, BUT, its solid. The problems that plagued most MMORPGS are fixed. nothing redical was tried, so there was nothing that could go crashing down in flames. By no meens was it a revolution, but instead of just bringing a bit of attention to the genre like they did with Diablo, or Warcraft. They pretty much single handedly brought MMORPGS into the mainstream. Heck 4 million people talk to friends, thats a LARGE number when you think about it, thats leads to a lot of friends telling friends telling friends. All the sudden, people are playing mmorpgs, WoW also brought a HUGE amount of female gamers into the mmorpg pool. At last check there was a statistic saying as much as 30% of WoWs player base was Female, keep in mind, they might be casual and not broadcast it openly before you scream "LIAR!"
Before WoW, mmorpgs were slowly digging out of the niche market with a spoon. WoW brought in the dynamite.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
WoW is so not popular enough. They need alot more customers to make thier mark on history and step up thier game. They only have 4 million customers after going through Korea. Thats pretty unpopular.
blizzard is a successful company well known throughout the world. Yes any game by blizard gets publicity. They also had there hordes of bnet players to rush to get it. Wow is only successful cause blizzard is. The game onne i thought sucked to dummy downed with bolt on pvp. Thats my opinion though.
The game with most sucess to me would be uo and eq starting out. Both were born in a time when only a few even knew what a mmo was. They didnt have marketing or really a ton of money. They brought game niches though and word of mouth made there games enormous. Thats the difference between a good game and one with a large amount of money to throw at advertiseing.
It's exactly the same on a Free Server I just can't be arsed with more Monthly Fees I allready got 7 games on my mum credit card coming out of my pocket money and I got my fags n that yo buy so I am low on cash...
Originally posted by Cleffy WoW is so not popular enough. They need alot more customers to make thier mark on history and step up thier game. They only have 4 million customers after going through Korea. Thats pretty unpopular.
I think it will go down in history. The game may not be revolutionary but it's created the biggest buzz in the genre since Everquest and will have given all MMORPG developers something to think about. It's the GTA of MMORPGs.
WoW earns its money by its massive level of polish. This seems altogether reasonable to me.
It doesn't preclude new development because others can always compete against it by making use of innovation. Nothing about WoW keeps the next Guild Wars, CoH, etc... from existing. The only thing that keeps CoH down for example, is limitations in their own implementation (CoH always feels painfully dated compared to modern MMOG technology) and their target audience. But then, I'm sure they spend a whole lot less to capture their market share, so it probably works fine for them.
WoW is a behemoth, but unless you're planning to compete in the 'yet another fantasy RPG' space, it won't matter at all. And if you were planning on competing in that space, you should probably be thinking hard about your risk analysis instead.
Originally posted by Vendayn actually last I heard on a mmorpg chart site World of warcraft had 5million people playing...this was about a week ago, so I doubt much has changed from thatBut if WoW is too popular, then why isnt anyone complaining about lineage 2 popularity? That game has more subscribers then world of warcraft
Nope, originally Lineage and Lineage 2 had more. In the last few months, according to that MMORPG chart website, in about June both games took a dive and came equal in population to WOW. WOW just beat both of them recently.
i play on australian servers because racism is acceptable there
WoW has been mentioned in non-game specialist magazines/artciles more than any mmorpg. Game playing in general is on the increase and WoW has broken into the mainstream more so than any other. In my opinion someone who wants more detail or complex mmorpg may find WoW simplistic compared to what they are used to. That on the whole is a good thing, but I do agree that at max level WoW is not casual friendly which is WoW's main audience. WoW probably has a more diverse audience, people with an hour to spare each week play with those who play 20 hours a day. This makes the whole casual vs. hardcore issue more difficult to resolve, because there is such a gulf between the two.
End game is WoW is like most mmorpgs, spend 200 odd hours trying to get a dozen items and more raid content is planned. Molten Core is so dull and Onyxia is easy now with 16-debuff limit. Haven't been to Blackwing Liar since I no longer play, haha.
Originally posted by 9216544 How do you think it will affect the industry? It has become insanely popular in just one year. I have noticed at least 30 times the amount of kids playing online games then four years ago (WoW I should say). So how will it affect the future of the mmorpgs after WoW dies in popularity? Probably at least half of the four million WoW players will buy another mmorpg in the future, so the generation of online gamers will advance to the next gen games, and of course will have a large imapct. Maybe it will be good, maybe it will be negative.
It's already benefiting the gaming community at large. Tons of folks who have grown tired of WoW have swelled the subscriber numbers of other MMOs as they look for their next game. WoW's lifespan for your average gamer is about 6-9 months. Truely casual players will probably enjoy it for years but anyone who winds up in the powergamer or moderate gamer category will burn up it's existing content in mere months and wind up looking for something else to play.
This will fuel subscriptions to numerous MMORPG's.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
I disagree with those that say WoW brings nothing new.
How many other games have a quest system that takes you from 1-60 and introduces you to the lore of the game?
How many other RPG's have a twitch-reflex aspect to their game where you have to setup your buttons and react FAST?
WoW is a wonderful game on so many levels, it definitely deserves to be popular, it's simply a better game than anything else out there right now. I don't consider WoW and Eve-Online to be in the same category, but those are basically the 2 games I play, they are the best in their category. I play them for the physical reactions they give me.
With WoW, its so fast paced, alot of times I can spend 3 hours and find my chair soaked with sweat, and having a blast.
With Eve-Online, its so brutal and unforgiving, alot of times when I am facing a human opponent my heart is pounding, and my hands are shaking.
That's how you recognize great games, not just by the pretty pictures, but what the gameplay does to the person playing, it should affect you in some way, like for example Doom3, the first time playing it at night I was so scared, it was freaking me out, not many games can make me feel scared but I love the sensation.
I think WoW is definitely one of the great games in History, it deserves to be #1. For now.
Other ground breaking games include The Sims Online and Planetside, its a shame those games are dying, but I guess it's all for the best.
Competition makes the games BETTER. If games didn't die out, no company would build a better game.
naw WoW just newer bigger and meaner than the others the hype will die down when the newer big boys move into the area to play too.Similar to when the realms came out UO came out and murdered the realms the eq afterward did the same and so on wow came out and blew them away.Its gonna be a never endeing battle problem with WoW is they release hella big content to fast eventually they gonna run out of ideas then they gonna die down slowly like eq too many expansion too fast people got tired and quit now its dien off slowly as we speak.
naw WoW just newer bigger and meaner than the others the hype will die down when the newer big boys move into the area to play too.Similar to when the realms came out UO came out and murdered the realms the eq afterward did the same and so on wow came out and blew them away.Its gonna be a never endeing battle problem with WoW is they release hella big content to fast eventually they gonna run out of ideas then they gonna die down slowly like eq too many expansion too fast people got tired and quit now its dien off slowly as we speak.
naw WoW just newer bigger and meaner than the others the hype will die down when the newer big boys move into the area to play too.Similar to when the realms came out UO came out and murdered the realms the eq afterward did the same and so on wow came out and blew them away.Its gonna be a never endeing battle problem with WoW is they release hella big content to fast eventually they gonna run out of ideas then they gonna die down slowly like eq too many expansion too fast people got tired and quit now its dien off slowly as we speak.
It will be hard to appease such a big player base, and really it seems that their servers have been SUCKING really badl,y so this is displeasing alot of people since they pay for time to play not downtimes/maintence. I mean come on out of ALL the MMORPG I have played nothing is compared to World of Downtime.
I find it so funny that you guys are raggin on WoW... Even though when EQ2 and WoW were about to come out... most of the population here was like Oooohhh EQ2 is GOing to OWN!!!UUZzz Wow is so stupid and dinky and the graphics are so horrible and blah blah blah....
I think it's hillarious to see those same people saying that WoW is too popular... Just shut up about it... What i like about WoW is that they dont seem to be worried one bit with competition... When WoW was released Blizzard didn't have enough copies...That shows that they weren't even expecting it to be a big hit.. As other games change and do drastic things and market ploys to get a leg up on the competition... WoW just continues to do the same thing they've been doing from day one... Releasing a game and supporting it to their ability..... WoW also doesn't seem to be imposing its position by forcing people to play 25 hours a day... WoW is like well if you want to play casual then do that if you want hardcore then do that...
I have a bunch of female friends that come to me to talk about games BECAUSE of games like WoW... and The Sims... And while you hardcore gamers have a problem with WoW being too popular, I say SHAME on you.... If ANY game can increase the female gamer demographic then I'm ALLL for it...
A couple years ago Girls thought games were stupid... NOW because of WOW and The Sims... and GTA-SA Games are soo cool and can be fun... And i can enjoy these games with girls that I like...
What's your Wu Name? Donovan --> Wu Name = Violent Knight Methane47 --> Wu Name = Thunderous Leader "Some people call me the walking plank, 'cuz any where you go... Death is right behind you.." <i>ME<i>
Originally posted by Elnator Originally posted by 9216544 How do you think it will affect the industry? It has become insanely popular in just one year. I have noticed at least 30 times the amount of kids playing online games then four years ago (WoW I should say). So how will it affect the future of the mmorpgs after WoW dies in popularity? Probably at least half of the four million WoW players will buy another mmorpg in the future, so the generation of online gamers will advance to the next gen games, and of course will have a large imapct. Maybe it will be good, maybe it will be negative.
It's already benefiting the gaming community at large. Tons of folks who have grown tired of WoW have swelled the subscriber numbers of other MMOs as they look for their next game. WoW's lifespan for your average gamer is about 6-9 months. Truely casual players will probably enjoy it for years but anyone who winds up in the powergamer or moderate gamer category will burn up it's existing content in mere months and wind up looking for something else to play.
This will fuel subscriptions to numerous MMORPG's.
To an extent that's true, others will be put off MMORPG's altogether. In that instance WoW is too popular.
Comments
never include Lineage2 as a mmorpg to compare to, its success is solely in Korea where its being played on internet cafes so the figure is a bit distorted. Additionally, WoW's figures are about 2 million Korean or so with the same sort of thing.
WoW's success is mainly due to their brandname, their international sales, the solidness of the game, bugs aren't very common, its appeal to a younger audience than typical mmorpgs, and its friendliness to casualness. The game isn't outstanding as a mmorpg but is Blizzard excellence in being able to produce the games it does.
I agree with this idea. There are a lot of good MMO's out there, but also a lot of bad ones. Strangely enough I don't usually hear of them so I don't know first hand that they are horrible. Luckily for us we have this great website to see for ourselves what is a good game and which isn't. WoW is hugely popular, my server is only a Medium server which I think is heavy enough. I am glad I'm not on a light server though, groups and finding people might be too sporadic to enjoy.
Lineage 2 has 2 million subs, last recorded, but theyr increase was leveling off.
Lineage 1 last reported about 2.1mill
Wow now has 4mill, Lineage 1 is losing players at a semi-steady rate, and Lineage 2 is growing at a much slower rate.
WoW has dominated them. Infact as I type this, WoW might have more subscribers than the two combined assuming the growth trends continued for those two games.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
World of Warcraft, like Everquest before it, is bringing MMORPGs ever closer to the mainstream. So it's popularity is a good thing in that sense. As others have said, its popularity could also result in lots of clones, which is a bad thing.
I, like many others, think that the next big thing in MMOGs generally, probably won't arrive until the next decade and it's likely that game is only a flicker of an idea in some developer's imagination at the moment.
Raymondo
Blizzard did with WoW what it has done with all its other games.
They took what worked, and added a little flavour to it.
Then they ironed it out till it was perfectly solid.
and it worked.
They have never been known for greating somthing truly revolutionary, but they always make solid games.
They take what is out there, fix the problems, and make it a SOLID game.
Warcraft 1 wasnt by any stretch of the imagination revolutionary, but it was a solid game.
Warcraft 2 wasnt revolutionary. but it was SOLID had good support and was fun.
Diablo wasnt anything new, but it was fast, fun, and brought a lot of people to the rpg genre.
Starcraft wasnt complicated, but it was perfectly balanced, SOLID rts, probably the most sucessful one ever.
Diablo 2 wasnt much different from Diablo 1, except it was even more solid, The skill Tree showed up again, and decided to stay (see WoW)
WoW, Nothing really new, BUT, its solid. The problems that plagued most MMORPGS are fixed. nothing redical was tried, so there was nothing that could go crashing down in flames.
By no meens was it a revolution, but instead of just bringing a bit of attention to the genre like they did with Diablo, or Warcraft.
They pretty much single handedly brought MMORPGS into the mainstream.
Heck 4 million people talk to friends, thats a LARGE number when you think about it, thats leads to a lot of friends telling friends telling friends. All the sudden, people are playing mmorpgs, WoW also brought a HUGE amount of female gamers into the mmorpg pool. At last check there was a statistic saying as much as 30% of WoWs player base was Female, keep in mind, they might be casual and not broadcast it openly before you scream "LIAR!"
Before WoW, mmorpgs were slowly digging out of the niche market with a spoon.
WoW brought in the dynamite.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
blizzard is a successful company well known throughout the world. Yes any game by blizard gets publicity. They also had there hordes of bnet players to rush to get it. Wow is only successful cause blizzard is. The game onne i thought sucked to dummy downed with bolt on pvp. Thats my opinion though.
The game with most sucess to me would be uo and eq starting out. Both were born in a time when only a few even knew what a mmo was. They didnt have marketing or really a ton of money. They brought game niches though and word of mouth made there games enormous. Thats the difference between a good game and one with a large amount of money to throw at advertiseing.
Orky Name Generator, only at www.bigchoppaz.com
I think it will go down in history. The game may not be revolutionary but it's created the biggest buzz in the genre since Everquest and will have given all MMORPG developers something to think about. It's the GTA of MMORPGs.
Raymondo
So you are complaining that yhe game is too popular?
or that it has to many kiddies's?
Witty saying to amuse you goes here.
WoW earns its money by its massive level of polish. This seems altogether reasonable to me.
It doesn't preclude new development because others can always compete against it by making use of innovation. Nothing about WoW keeps the next Guild Wars, CoH, etc... from existing. The only thing that keeps CoH down for example, is limitations in their own implementation (CoH always feels painfully dated compared to modern MMOG technology) and their target audience. But then, I'm sure they spend a whole lot less to capture their market share, so it probably works fine for them.
WoW is a behemoth, but unless you're planning to compete in the 'yet another fantasy RPG' space, it won't matter at all. And if you were planning on competing in that space, you should probably be thinking hard about your risk analysis instead.
WoW has been mentioned in non-game specialist magazines/artciles more than any mmorpg. Game playing in general is on the increase and WoW has broken into the mainstream more so than any other. In my opinion someone who wants more detail or complex mmorpg may find WoW simplistic compared to what they are used to. That on the whole is a good thing, but I do agree that at max level WoW is not casual friendly which is WoW's main audience. WoW probably has a more diverse audience, people with an hour to spare each week play with those who play 20 hours a day. This makes the whole casual vs. hardcore issue more difficult to resolve, because there is such a gulf between the two.
End game is WoW is like most mmorpgs, spend 200 odd hours trying to get a dozen items and more raid content is planned. Molten Core is so dull and Onyxia is easy now with 16-debuff limit. Haven't been to Blackwing Liar since I no longer play, haha.
It's already benefiting the gaming community at large. Tons of folks who have grown tired of WoW have swelled the subscriber numbers of other MMOs as they look for their next game. WoW's lifespan for your average gamer is about 6-9 months. Truely casual players will probably enjoy it for years but anyone who winds up in the powergamer or moderate gamer category will burn up it's existing content in mere months and wind up looking for something else to play.
This will fuel subscriptions to numerous MMORPG's.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
I disagree with those that say WoW brings nothing new.
How many other games have a quest system that takes you from 1-60 and introduces you to the lore of the game?
How many other RPG's have a twitch-reflex aspect to their game where you have to setup your buttons and react FAST?
WoW is a wonderful game on so many levels, it definitely deserves to be popular, it's simply a better game than anything else out there right now. I don't consider WoW and Eve-Online to be in the same category, but those are basically the 2 games I play, they are the best in their category. I play them for the physical reactions they give me.
With WoW, its so fast paced, alot of times I can spend 3 hours and find my chair soaked with sweat, and having a blast.
With Eve-Online, its so brutal and unforgiving, alot of times when I am facing a human opponent my heart is pounding, and my hands are shaking.
That's how you recognize great games, not just by the pretty pictures, but what the gameplay does to the person playing, it should affect you in some way, like for example Doom3, the first time playing it at night I was so scared, it was freaking me out, not many games can make me feel scared but I love the sensation.
I think WoW is definitely one of the great games in History, it deserves to be #1. For now.
Other ground breaking games include The Sims Online and Planetside, its a shame those games are dying, but I guess it's all for the best.
Competition makes the games BETTER. If games didn't die out, no company would build a better game.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
It will be hard to appease such a big player base, and really it seems that their servers have been SUCKING really badl,y so this is displeasing alot of people since they pay for time to play not downtimes/maintence. I mean come on out of ALL the MMORPG I have played nothing is compared to World of Downtime.
But the thing is how many wow players realise that there are other mmos out there.
Oops
I find it so funny that you guys are raggin on WoW... Even though when EQ2 and WoW were about to come out... most of the population here was like Oooohhh EQ2 is GOing to OWN!!!UUZzz Wow is so stupid and dinky and the graphics are so horrible and blah blah blah....
I think it's hillarious to see those same people saying that WoW is too popular... Just shut up about it...
What i like about WoW is that they dont seem to be worried one bit with competition... When WoW was released Blizzard didn't have enough copies...That shows that they weren't even expecting it to be a big hit.. As other games change and do drastic things and market ploys to get a leg up on the competition... WoW just continues to do the same thing they've been doing from day one... Releasing a game and supporting it to their ability..... WoW also doesn't seem to be imposing its position by forcing people to play 25 hours a day... WoW is like well if you want to play casual then do that if you want hardcore then do that...
I have a bunch of female friends that come to me to talk about games BECAUSE of games like WoW... and The Sims... And while you hardcore gamers have a problem with WoW being too popular, I say SHAME on you.... If ANY game can increase the female gamer demographic then I'm ALLL for it...
A couple years ago Girls thought games were stupid...
NOW because of WOW and The Sims... and GTA-SA
Games are soo cool and can be fun... And i can enjoy these games with girls that I like...
What's your Wu Name?
Donovan --> Wu Name = Violent Knight
Methane47 --> Wu Name = Thunderous Leader
"Some people call me the walking plank, 'cuz any where you go... Death is right behind you.."
<i>ME<i>
It's already benefiting the gaming community at large. Tons of folks who have grown tired of WoW have swelled the subscriber numbers of other MMOs as they look for their next game. WoW's lifespan for your average gamer is about 6-9 months. Truely casual players will probably enjoy it for years but anyone who winds up in the powergamer or moderate gamer category will burn up it's existing content in mere months and wind up looking for something else to play.
This will fuel subscriptions to numerous MMORPG's.
To an extent that's true, others will be put off MMORPG's altogether. In that instance WoW is too popular.