Originally posted by Rekrul Originally posted by Spathotan When things go wrong, Blizzard gives people a free day. (It's free for Blizzard, they don't lose much). When things go wrong, SOE is quiet, promises fake rewards, gives 2x xp and similar. This doesn't work, but it's the way they do it, because they are way too afraid to lose 1 day's subscriptions.
Aww come on man dont be shy, you know you adore those awesome rewards, like a plant, or a painting.
Those are ok.
I meant the CH bracelet in TooW expansion. Or that pearls were bugged, and couldn't drop premiums due to levels. Or Sher'kar (how long did it take for people to get into that instance?) Or everything similar.
The vet rewards are pointless. They don't change anyones opinion..
Oh yea, I forgot about that. Lets reward CH for preordering ToOW then remove the class a week later, hooray!
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now." Boba Fett
There are a few things that Blizzard does did very well with WoW which gives it so much appeal.
1) No truely gimped class. Every class has a roll to play within a group and has specific strengths and weaknesses. While many argue that the classes aren't balanced, they do come very close and a skilled player in a "bad" class can win against any "average" player in a "good" class.
2) Quests and Instances. One of my pet peeves in SWG was that the only efficent way to level was to take hunting missions out of MO over and over again. It was easy but highly repetitive and the only "reward" was xp. WoW has a worse grind IMO but they are able to halfway mask it with quests and instances which makes the grind a tad less monotonous.
3) Easy of use. This one doesn't need to be explained, everything in WoW is straightforward compared to SWG. I'm not a fan of this because it really takes quite a bit out of game diversity but it opens up the game to a lot more players.
4) Very few bugs. Although WoW does have bugs (can't expect anything to be 100% clean unfortunetly) it far surpases SWG in this respect. SOE put off fixes patch after patch after patch, easy fixes that couldn't require too much manpower (think BH seeker droids that didn't lose charges). Now one can argue that the complexity of SWG breed these flaws in the game but that's no excuse really.
Now I play WoW but it's simply because the SWG that I loved is gone. SWG was my first MMO and I thought it was incredible although there were design aspects implimented that I didn't agree with (Dev help with unlocking Jedi... holocrons were the beginning of the end of classic SWG). Playing this verison of SWG is like trying to visit with a friend who since you've last seen them has become a meth addict. Everything you loved about them is gone and all that's left is a vapid, empty shell of who they used to be.
I'd go back to SWG in a SECOND if they rolled the servers back, which will never happen. All that I can hope is that somewhere down the line, maybe 5 years from now a more complete, better thought out Star Wars MMO will be created.
========== SWG - 1st Gen MBH (Closed) EVE (Closed) WoW (61 Orc Hunter - Blackwing Lair) GuildWars (Boring...)
Originally posted by LAW! Hmmm...Just wondering I have never played WOW because I love Sci-Fi. I often wonder what makes Blizzard so special. I mean they have 7 million customers! I sometimes wonder if I would play "STARCRAFT ONLINE" if Blizzard developed it with the same principles as WOW in mind. At least SOE and DARTH SMEDLEY couldn't touch it, and for that reason alone I would play it! Would you try it?
Maybe its cartoonyness? maybe the HYPE? i dont know ... i think 7 million is an overestimate designed to hype up the game .. mayber closer to 1 million active subs ... and maybe theyve sold 2 or 3 million boxes ...
i wouldnt try it just cuz i like to start FRESH in an MMO ... i wont play a game thats been out longer than 6 months ...
Originally posted by Spathotan Originally posted by Rekrul
Originally posted by Spathotan
When things go wrong, Blizzard gives people a free day. (It's free for Blizzard, they don't lose much). When things go wrong, SOE is quiet, promises fake rewards, gives 2x xp and similar. This doesn't work, but it's the way they do it, because they are way too afraid to lose 1 day's subscriptions.
Aww come on man dont be shy, you know you adore those awesome rewards, like a plant, or a painting.
Those are ok.
I meant the CH bracelet in TooW expansion. Or that pearls were bugged, and couldn't drop premiums due to levels. Or Sher'kar (how long did it take for people to get into that instance?) Or everything similar.
The vet rewards are pointless. They don't change anyones opinion..
Oh yea, I forgot about that. Lets reward CH for preordering ToOW then remove the class a week later, hooray!
Don't forget the plaque!
SOE knows what you like... You don't! And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
Some simple answers to the original question: Why is WoW doing well while nobody else is?:
WoW released, for the most part, free of any major game-breaking bugs.
WoW released based upon an extroardinarily successful single player RPG (possibly the most successful fantasy RPG ever actually)
WoW was released by a game company with a huge reputation for quality products.
WoW is a simple to learn, very basic game which has a fast pace but still feels fantasy.
Just to take SWG as a contrast:
Had numerous bugs at release that never seemed to get fixed. Every patch fixed a FEW bugs but actually brought in more than it fixed.
SWG released upon a movie that had wild popularity but no defined ruleset or RPG game that had ever been even remotely successful. Even the Star Wars PnP RPG never really caught on because, in the end, people wanna fly a spaceship or wack at things with a glowstick when they think of "star Wars". SOE and LEC didn't provide EITHER of those options at release and, once they WERE added, they were done in a horrid way that made people hate it. (hologrind... ungh). By the time spaceflight was added and jedi moved to a *slightly* less tedious process the game was over a year old. They'd missed the window of opportunity. Furthermore the game itself doesn't FEEL like star wars (well actually that's improved now but the gameplay that was so good is now broken... LOL) so the story didn't feel like star wars (who ever watched star wars and dreamed of one day beating up on a giant lizard with a stick for hours on end?) the game didn't play like star wars and you couldn't fly ships or get a cool glow stick at release.... so it SAID star Wars but it realy didn't feel like it for a long time.
SWG was billed from day one, even by EQ players as "oh god... EQ in Space" because SOE was chosen to make it. EVERYONE was saying "I am not gonna play EQ in space" and, unfortunately, despite all protests to the contrary by SOE, it really DID play like EQ in space at first.
SWG, pre NGE, was very complex, had a crappy tutorial and thus was very hard for new players to learn and understand. It truely catered to a much more intellectual crowd than your average single player RPG.
So, basically, Blizzard did the same thing they always do: 1) Kept it simple 2) Kept it smooth, few bugs. 3) Marketted it well 4) Had a great reputation
Other MMORPGs on the market either released buggy, didn't deliver what they said they would because their ambition got the better of them, released with no "name" to drive interest or never made it to market.
Look at EVE: Awesome game but very complex and no real 'name' to stirr interest. Look at EQ2: Decent Game, based on a pretty well known game, buggy as a flea-ridden-dog at release. Look at DAOC: Decent game, had a good name... had a solid release but it's complex and hard to learn. Look at Asheron's Call: Decent game, very complex, no name at all to build from.
WoW had it all right. Other MMORPG's have had 1 or 2 strong variables but Blizzrard basically hit the proverbial "Grand Slam". Someone else may do it. WHO may... but the bottom line is that WoW is simple, elegant, well known and supported by a company with a great rep. Those 4 things combined make it very very popular. I personally don't like it but those 4 items do combine to a recipe for success.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sig image Pending Still in: A couple Betas
* Has deep Solo, Group, PvP, and Raid play * Launched with very few bugs (in Beta for almost 2 years) * Broad variety in Races, Classes, and homelands * Huge explorable World * Can be played in 'simple' mode, or in a more complex fashion * Lots of great Visuals, Sounds, Effects, and loads of Lore * Completely moddable; don't like the UI? Change it. * Tons more, but mainly it is FUN! FUN! FUN!
StarCraft? Who knows. Sure I would play it. And I cannot imagine that Bliz is not working on its next MMORPG. If anything, they are a forward thinking company.
Originally posted by LAW! Hmmm...Just wondering I have never played WOW because I love Sci-Fi. I often wonder what makes Blizzard so special. I mean they have 7 million customers! I sometimes wonder if I would play "STARCRAFT ONLINE" if Blizzard developed it with the same principles as WOW in mind. At least SOE and DARTH SMEDLEY couldn't touch it, and for that reason alone I would play it! Would you try it?
And why is this in the SWG forums?
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
The only people who call WoW simplistic are people who have never tried to get past the first few layers. The lore, details and tiny points of interest are just as deep as any game out there if you take the time to look. Each class and profession is different and unique in hundreds of ways and playing each class from 1 to 60 is a totally different experience.
If you want to know why WoW succeeds while other games flounder though all you have to do is see what they do right. WoW pays attention to little details, fixes things that are broken, has a sense of direction, sticks to that sense of direction and caters to many styles of gameplay.
The guy that said WoW leads you around by the hand doesn't know what he is talking about. WoW will lead you around by the hand if you want it to, but you can also go out and grind like a mindless monkey if you prefer as well. Or you can stop leveling at any point in time to PvP in the battlegrounds. Or you can just do instances. Or you can just help friends. The choice is yours and the game doesn't force you into any one of them although the most efficient way to level from 20 to 50 is through quests and missions.
Where WoW falters is in the endgame. Once you reach 60 there are really only 2 options...raiding endgame instances over and over or PvP, but casual players rarely reach 60 and powergamers are satisfied with the choices. Hence....millions playing the game.
Any game that has Finkle Einhorn in it is worth the price of addmission.
One of the the things I enjoy about it is the way tha tthe devs there slip in strange references. I am NOT by nature a fantasy genre game player, but yes this one is not bad.
when you get get a quest titled : along the watch towers...well us old farts smile at the reference.
Comments
Those are ok.
I meant the CH bracelet in TooW expansion.
Or that pearls were bugged, and couldn't drop premiums due to levels.
Or Sher'kar (how long did it take for people to get into that instance?)
Or everything similar.
The vet rewards are pointless. They don't change anyones opinion..
Oh yea, I forgot about that. Lets reward CH for preordering ToOW then remove the class a week later, hooray!
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
There are a few things that Blizzard does did very well with WoW which gives it so much appeal.
1) No truely gimped class. Every class has a roll to play within a group and has specific strengths and weaknesses. While many argue that the classes aren't balanced, they do come very close and a skilled player in a "bad" class can win against any "average" player in a "good" class.
2) Quests and Instances. One of my pet peeves in SWG was that the only efficent way to level was to take hunting missions out of MO over and over again. It was easy but highly repetitive and the only "reward" was xp. WoW has a worse grind IMO but they are able to halfway mask it with quests and instances which makes the grind a tad less monotonous.
3) Easy of use. This one doesn't need to be explained, everything in WoW is straightforward compared to SWG. I'm not a fan of this because it really takes quite a bit out of game diversity but it opens up the game to a lot more players.
4) Very few bugs. Although WoW does have bugs (can't expect anything to be 100% clean unfortunetly) it far surpases SWG in this respect. SOE put off fixes patch after patch after patch, easy fixes that couldn't require too much manpower (think BH seeker droids that didn't lose charges). Now one can argue that the complexity of SWG breed these flaws in the game but that's no excuse really.
Now I play WoW but it's simply because the SWG that I loved is gone. SWG was my first MMO and I thought it was incredible although there were design aspects implimented that I didn't agree with (Dev help with unlocking Jedi... holocrons were the beginning of the end of classic SWG). Playing this verison of SWG is like trying to visit with a friend who since you've last seen them has become a meth addict. Everything you loved about them is gone and all that's left is a vapid, empty shell of who they used to be.
I'd go back to SWG in a SECOND if they rolled the servers back, which will never happen. All that I can hope is that somewhere down the line, maybe 5 years from now a more complete, better thought out Star Wars MMO will be created.
==========
SWG - 1st Gen MBH (Closed)
EVE (Closed)
WoW (61 Orc Hunter - Blackwing Lair)
GuildWars (Boring...)
Maybe its cartoonyness? maybe the HYPE? i dont know ... i think 7 million is an overestimate designed to hype up the game .. mayber closer to 1 million active subs ... and maybe theyve sold 2 or 3 million boxes ...
i wouldnt try it just cuz i like to start FRESH in an MMO ... i wont play a game thats been out longer than 6 months ...
Those are ok.
I meant the CH bracelet in TooW expansion.
Or that pearls were bugged, and couldn't drop premiums due to levels.
Or Sher'kar (how long did it take for people to get into that instance?)
Or everything similar.
The vet rewards are pointless. They don't change anyones opinion..
Oh yea, I forgot about that. Lets reward CH for preordering ToOW then remove the class a week later, hooray!
Don't forget the plaque!
SOE knows what you like... You don't!
And don't forget... I am forcing you to read this!
Why is WoW doing well while nobody else is?:
- WoW released, for the most part, free of any major game-breaking bugs.
- WoW released based upon an extroardinarily successful single player RPG (possibly the most successful fantasy RPG ever actually)
- WoW was released by a game company with a huge reputation for quality products.
- WoW is a simple to learn, very basic game which has a fast pace but still feels fantasy.
Just to take SWG as a contrast:- Had numerous bugs at release that never seemed to get fixed. Every patch fixed a FEW bugs but actually brought in more than it fixed.
- SWG released upon a movie that had wild popularity but no defined ruleset or RPG game that had ever been even remotely successful. Even the Star Wars PnP RPG never really caught on because, in the end, people wanna fly a spaceship or wack at things with a glowstick when they think of "star Wars". SOE and LEC didn't provide EITHER of those options at release and, once they WERE added, they were done in a horrid way that made people hate it. (hologrind... ungh). By the time spaceflight was added and jedi moved to a *slightly* less tedious process the game was over a year old. They'd missed the window of opportunity. Furthermore the game itself doesn't FEEL like star wars (well actually that's improved now but the gameplay that was so good is now broken... LOL) so the story didn't feel like star wars (who ever watched star wars and dreamed of one day beating up on a giant lizard with a stick for hours on end?) the game didn't play like star wars and you couldn't fly ships or get a cool glow stick at release.... so it SAID star Wars but it realy didn't feel like it for a long time.
- SWG was billed from day one, even by EQ players as "oh god... EQ in Space" because SOE was chosen to make it. EVERYONE was saying "I am not gonna play EQ in space" and, unfortunately, despite all protests to the contrary by SOE, it really DID play like EQ in space at first.
- SWG, pre NGE, was very complex, had a crappy tutorial and thus was very hard for new players to learn and understand. It truely catered to a much more intellectual crowd than your average single player RPG.
So, basically, Blizzard did the same thing they always do:1) Kept it simple
2) Kept it smooth, few bugs.
3) Marketted it well
4) Had a great reputation
Other MMORPGs on the market either released buggy, didn't deliver what they said they would because their ambition got the better of them, released with no "name" to drive interest or never made it to market.
Look at EVE: Awesome game but very complex and no real 'name' to stirr interest.
Look at EQ2: Decent Game, based on a pretty well known game, buggy as a flea-ridden-dog at release.
Look at DAOC: Decent game, had a good name... had a solid release but it's complex and hard to learn.
Look at Asheron's Call: Decent game, very complex, no name at all to build from.
WoW had it all right. Other MMORPG's have had 1 or 2 strong variables but Blizzrard basically hit the proverbial "Grand Slam". Someone else may do it. WHO may... but the bottom line is that WoW is simple, elegant, well known and supported by a company with a great rep. Those 4 things combined make it very very popular. I personally don't like it but those 4 items do combine to a recipe for success.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
WoW is tops because :
* Has deep Solo, Group, PvP, and Raid play
* Launched with very few bugs (in Beta for almost 2 years)
* Broad variety in Races, Classes, and homelands
* Huge explorable World
* Can be played in 'simple' mode, or in a more complex fashion
* Lots of great Visuals, Sounds, Effects, and loads of Lore
* Completely moddable; don't like the UI? Change it.
* Tons more, but mainly it is FUN! FUN! FUN!
StarCraft? Who knows. Sure I would play it. And I cannot imagine that Bliz is not working on its next MMORPG. If anything, they are a forward thinking company.
And why is this in the SWG forums?
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
The only people who call WoW simplistic are people who have never tried to get past the first few layers. The lore, details and tiny points of interest are just as deep as any game out there if you take the time to look. Each class and profession is different and unique in hundreds of ways and playing each class from 1 to 60 is a totally different experience.
If you want to know why WoW succeeds while other games flounder though all you have to do is see what they do right. WoW pays attention to little details, fixes things that are broken, has a sense of direction, sticks to that sense of direction and caters to many styles of gameplay.
The guy that said WoW leads you around by the hand doesn't know what he is talking about. WoW will lead you around by the hand if you want it to, but you can also go out and grind like a mindless monkey if you prefer as well. Or you can stop leveling at any point in time to PvP in the battlegrounds. Or you can just do instances. Or you can just help friends. The choice is yours and the game doesn't force you into any one of them although the most efficient way to level from 20 to 50 is through quests and missions.
Where WoW falters is in the endgame. Once you reach 60 there are really only 2 options...raiding endgame instances over and over or PvP, but casual players rarely reach 60 and powergamers are satisfied with the choices. Hence....millions playing the game.
Any game that has Finkle Einhorn in it is worth the price of addmission.
One of the the things I enjoy about it is the way tha tthe devs there slip in strange references. I am NOT by nature a fantasy genre game player, but yes this one is not bad.
when you get get a quest titled : along the watch towers...well us old farts smile at the reference.
all the other reasons have been cited above.