Originally posted by treysmooth I have to agree with some of the previous post in that WOW has the user base it has in part due to the fact it brought in a bunch of people that may have never played a mmo in there life if it wasn't for this game. So from their perspective I can totally see it. Its super simple to get into and make progress to a point. To those who have never experienced the mmo I would equate it to how I felt about SWG when I first played, I was blown away by the MMO experience not because the orginal swg release was the best, but because I had never played anything like it before. Now for my reasons to why it isn't the end all be all of MMO's, point 1 nothing new was done in this game, check around and most of you will see that every element in wow has been done before and many of the things it does were done better by other earlier mmo's. In my opinion it doesn't do pvp all that well and the grind is unbearable, now I could tolerate that grind if I had something to reward me at 60 but thats just it at 60 people start to lose interest, why because the content for those that have endured that grind is pretty slim. I'll again reference SWG for this point(I know I know SWG was always full of issues but bear with me), you grind in SWG to 80 post CU pre NGE and now you have a 80, at this point you have a few options, focus on improving the 80 with great gear and prepare for the whole rebel Imp fight, hunt Jedi(bounty hunters) or start your quest for the Epic class in the Jedi( my choice at the time but each is a great time no matter how you stack it. Now for the biggest flaw that I found for me anyway, in that wow is a static world its not a living breathing world and it never will be its a giant theme park, you enjoy the ride while it last and then its over or repeat with another toon doing the same quest again, this might be ok but they didn't reward the player who made that grind with a epic class character reward or new content to tackle. I hate having to take the exact same path especially considering how painful the Wow grind can be. Its still personal preference I crave another SWG pre nge in a living breathing world where players own land, businesses, towns, have wars among the guilds etc. I played wow on a pvp server and heres my experience having fun then out of nowhere ganked by a lvl 50 when I 'm a lowly lvl 10 then again ganked by a high level when I was a lvl 15, and this basically is what I experienced during the slow grind. I wouldn't mind that if it wasn't for the fact that many of those players felt it necessary to message me about how I just got pwned, wow your a lvl 50 and you killed a lvl 10, bravo must make you feel so proud(sarcasm). So then I start on a non pvp server only to read various post and forums on how once you hit 50 its game over for many due to lack of relavent things to do. When I started to look into it I came to the conclusion it just wasn't for me, not to say its bad but little to light on depth, though to its credit for those new to the genre I can't think of a better game to cut your teeth on so to speak, but to say its the best seems a bit much in my opinion. Just my two cents, I'm waiting for the next game to get that living breathing universe feel right, but thats what I crave, a game that I can carve out my little part in the world to my liking, I think alot of others feel the same and many would leave wow if someone could nail that type of game(I'm praying that they make swg2 with that concept in mind but who knows). I'm not here to bash the game though I tried it and came to my own conclusions on it, which was it wasn't for me, doesn't make it bad just not tailored to the vets of the mmo genre who have already experienced much of what wow does but better in various games. Just my thoughts
Peace
No offence and I'm not flaming you here .... but .... could you please try to improve your grammar ? Just paragraphs would at least make this post readable.
As far as WOW goes, I'd put most of its success on:
1) It's not nearly as grindy as most other mmorpg. a) Less grindy than EQ1, daoc, EQ2, Lineage, Lineage2, FFXI, atitd, post-nge swg, etc. b) More grindy than pre-cu swg, ac1, etc. c) Equally grindy with coh/cov 2) The quests have meaningful rewards from level 1 to level 60. a) Quests in eq2 have meaningful rewards... once you're level 60-70ish. At the level you could use the "good quests" rewards, you can't finish the quests in EQ2... which sucks. b) coh/cov quests are all...the...same... go kill x in y. The rewards are ... all the same. boring. repetative. 3) The crafting system is simple and easily understood with quality useable items. 4) The PVP system on the "carebear" servers is alot of fun, you don't get ganked, but can engage almost anywhere as long as everyone is okie or you can do more "open pvp" with goals in the battlegrounds. 5) The PVP system on the "bloodbath" server is alot of fun for hardcore pvpers. Survival isn't easy and skill does matter to some degree.
Those four things are in my opinion the largest reason wow has the population it has today. For the casual mmo player grind is a big factor, especially new mmo players coming in from other genres other than rpgs... grind is a game killer for alot of people. All of these people who are currently playing wow are NOT for the large majority going to be willing to goto a game with a huge and hard level grind... they were broke in on a minor grind at worst and they're not going to want to jump two feet into the EQ2 or more-so EQ1 and Vanguard types of grind. WOW is going to be a genre changer in the long run in my opinion... there will be games like vanguard and such made in the future, but they're to appeal to the hardcore players and people who were broke in on eq1/uo/daoc/ac... they're not really for the people who play wow, except the top couple %age who play enough to feel a desire for something massively harder.
WOW really failed massively in the end-game arena, depth (although largely that's a function of the level of simplicity it maintains), and in having a large ammount of character customization.
It's a good game and in the long run it's going to change the target audience of mmo games for better or worse... but it could have been so much more.
Personally, I've been playing muds for years and just about every game that has come out at one point or another, wow was an interesting distraction for me and I found that the one thing I really loved about wow was that I could come on play 20m and logoff and have a *really* good time doing so and still be effective at leveling and finishing up quests. Almost every other game except for starwars (pre-cu) lacks that... and starwars had pretty much the exact opposite problem of wow... it was too complex for newbies. Wow is lacking in complexity for veterns.
Comments
Just paragraphs would at least make this post readable.
Cheers
I agree about WoW feeling like a theme park.
Exciting as hell when you first arrive but after half a day it's time to move on
As far as WOW goes, I'd put most of its success on:
1) It's not nearly as grindy as most other mmorpg.
a) Less grindy than EQ1, daoc, EQ2, Lineage, Lineage2, FFXI, atitd, post-nge swg, etc.
b) More grindy than pre-cu swg, ac1, etc.
c) Equally grindy with coh/cov
2) The quests have meaningful rewards from level 1 to level 60.
a) Quests in eq2 have meaningful rewards... once you're level 60-70ish. At the level you could use the "good quests" rewards, you can't finish the quests in EQ2... which sucks.
b) coh/cov quests are all...the...same... go kill x in y. The rewards are ... all the same. boring. repetative.
3) The crafting system is simple and easily understood with quality useable items.
4) The PVP system on the "carebear" servers is alot of fun, you don't get ganked, but can engage almost anywhere as long as everyone is okie or you can do more "open pvp" with goals in the battlegrounds.
5) The PVP system on the "bloodbath" server is alot of fun for hardcore pvpers. Survival isn't easy and skill does matter to some degree.
Those four things are in my opinion the largest reason wow has the population it has today. For the casual mmo player grind is a big factor, especially new mmo players coming in from other genres other than rpgs... grind is a game killer for alot of people. All of these people who are currently playing wow are NOT for the large majority going to be willing to goto a game with a huge and hard level grind... they were broke in on a minor grind at worst and they're not going to want to jump two feet into the EQ2 or more-so EQ1 and Vanguard types of grind. WOW is going to be a genre changer in the long run in my opinion... there will be games like vanguard and such made in the future, but they're to appeal to the hardcore players and people who were broke in on eq1/uo/daoc/ac... they're not really for the people who play wow, except the top couple %age who play enough to feel a desire for something massively harder.
WOW really failed massively in the end-game arena, depth (although largely that's a function of the level of simplicity it maintains), and in having a large ammount of character customization.
It's a good game and in the long run it's going to change the target audience of mmo games for better or worse... but it could have been so much more.
Personally, I've been playing muds for years and just about every game that has come out at one point or another, wow was an interesting distraction for me and I found that the one thing I really loved about wow was that I could come on play 20m and logoff and have a *really* good time doing so and still be effective at leveling and finishing up quests. Almost every other game except for starwars (pre-cu) lacks that... and starwars had pretty much the exact opposite problem of wow... it was too complex for newbies. Wow is lacking in complexity for veterns.
Just my couple coppers.
Shadus