Eventually even WoW will fall by the wayside. But honestly I don't see any of the future MMO's that are in development as the anticipated WoW killer. Near every game coming out is the same as any other at it's base. MMO's are stagnant (not in numbers but rather in development ideollogy). Every dev sees how well games such as EQ,WoW etc has done and hopes to parlay that into $$$ using the same ideas. Until an MMO company actually breaks the mold that is plaguing the industry we wont see anything new or revolutionary. Just the same old same old rehashed and with better graphics.
Gamers nowadays for the most part are more astute than they were 10 years ago. But at this time all we have to choose from is from a bunch of different flavors of the same thing. in the end it's still ice-cream. (no slight intended to the ice-cream lovers). But given enough time and some tech advances there will be a truly new gaming experience. Not the faux stuff labelled as "Nex gen" but a true move away from the norm that will once again capture the minds of gamers. I think that the game called "Wish" sorta touched into new territory before poofing into the void.
Sadly I forsee 4-5 years yet before a company has the wherewithall to take a chance and spend their money in developing a truly unique MMO that changes the way we as gamers view the genre. The genere itself is doing extremely well. But even with such a rabid fan base the support is finite. Can you see 25 years down the road if games such as EQ,WoW etc were still being produced? Only with better graphics and some new flash bang added? There will need to be IMO almost an about face ideologically about the way a game can be played to keep the industry viable and blooming.
Players want more freedom within the game. They want to do more things. They want to have larger worlds. Some want PvP some dont. These will have to be taken into account. But don't just add more classes into a game. Why not go with a game that has no classes? Only skills?Yes some games out now have that. And I think they are on the right track. Make the world MASSIVE in scope. If I can fly/swim/run across the world in a day then maybe it's to small. Where are the underwater cities? Where are the ships? etc etc. In some games they may have 1 maybe 2 of the above. Lets see about making one with everything. I think at that point the genre will be back on track. Lately it's not been advancing. It's just taken the base and played with it some and the game has garnered a following. I think mostly due to the fact that we gamers are hungry for anything new.
honestly i dont think that any of those games will get as big as WoW. People know about blizzard, blizzard can advertise A LOT, and blizzard continually comes out with amazingly well put together and fun products. Honestly i dont think LOTRO will be all to big compared to WoW. Im not saying it wont become successful, but there are different levels of success. There is UO/EQ successfull (back in the day) and then there is WoW successful. You have to remember that to most people WoW is the only MMO around. I think that innitially LOTRO will do fairly well if they advertise a lot to get the word out, because LOTR is a household franchise. WAR on the other hand, is really not all to well known. The type of people who traditionally play MMOs may know about it, but in order to get WoW type numbers you need to target a WAY bigger audience. So WAR would need to do a LOT of advertising and be an exceptionally well made game (which has a really smooth learning curve) to have any mass appeal. Two games which i think will do well withought as much needed advertising are All Points Bulletin and Age of Conan. Everyone know about grand theft auto, and who wouldnt be excited by an online version with tons of other players. And AoC has a darker feel and twitch combat, so a gamer who usually plays action games could become interested. The secret for any MMO to become big has to be advertising, but targeting more broad areas than just the stereotypical MMO gamer is also a must. APB and AoC do that
Turbine and EA making successful mmorpgs? I seriously doubt that. Time is ready for a killer game, though. I just doubt the game producers are capable. Only Blizzard seems competent of making high quality mmorpgs.
I think the only thing on the horizon that is realistically a "WoW killer" is probably Warhammer : Age of Reckoning. And the simple reason for that is it looks as if it will be very similar in style to WoW, only new, which for most gamers with the attention span demanded by WoW will mean better. WAR is of course trying to be technically better than WoW too, e.g. more maps for team PvP etc, and lets face it at the end of the day the Warhammer games world has some amazing artwork and fiction to draw from. In particular their "High Elves" are well, "real HIgh Elves" not elves with funny ears or funny eyebrows meticulously designed and named to avoid breaching Warhammer's copyrights.
In essence WAR is shaping up to be effectively be a "WoW 2", not just a WoW-wanna-be, which could really hit WoW's numbers. Let's face it, how many horde players would not want to play Chaos? Yes, a wolf mount is great, but unless WAR really messes up (i.e. tries to be "a third gen MMO" or plain runs out of funding) then how is WoW going to compete with riding a Tzeenich disc into battle or swapping out your Chaos mutations? Don't get me wrong, WoW is fun, for a bit. But the PvP is too "ganky", and quickly gets stale (how many times can you play the same ^&&* map?!). WAR will be new, and is really shaping up nicely to give WoW a real headache.
Oh and another thing, WoW keeps messing up with their bugs and hasn't fixed all of its original broken terrain yet. Things like spawn rates of NPC's in low level character areas occasionally being insane so that players can't solo the quests, and packing so many wandering NPC's into an area that it's wonderful for AFK macro grinding but impossible to evade your way through the tightly scripted terrain to get to the next area. Things like being able to fall off various points in the world and die from the fall, but not being able to return to your corpse due to the terrain, and the odd place you can fall into but cannot then jump, run or walk out of.
WoW has some great elements, but it's not actually as good as it could be - I really wish it was, then I'd happily keep playing it. But the design direction taken by the latest expansion simply confirms that "more of the same, less balance, more power to the twinks" is where WoW is still heading, so sooner or later someone is going to knock them over (even if it is a new game from Blizzard ).
There will be no WoW killer... Over time WoWs numbers will dwindle as people move on to other games and new subscribers are frightened off by the fact that all the servers will have little to no content or community for the lower levels so they will instead try out and play whatever happens to be the newest MMO at the time. Thats just the way it is... Those who have been around since UO/EQ started saw this every time a new mmo came out .
LOTRO will do good initially but unless Turbine pulls off some magic and listens to the player base for once, it will follow the same road as DDO. WAR will start big as well and dwindle due to the fact that it is going to be a heavy PvP/RvR game and even mentioning PvP scares off a lot of potention players. Spellborn had potential but the lack of communication on the developers part and dwindiling community, has caused a lot of potential players to seek other mmo's. Perhaps when they start the next phase of beta it might bring renewed interest but only time will tell. Vanguard, thought to have been a possible wow killer, was released too early and requires hardware that a majority of players cant afford. Over time as they improve performance and people upgrade thier PCs Vanguard will probably get a lot larger player base as the game still has great potention. Perhaps Lineage 3 will become the king as its predicessors previously were, but more then likely they wont get to even half of WoW's numbers.
As long as newer MMOs continue to be second-rate wow clones and not bother to further the genre in a significant way, there will be no true WoW killer.
Ive played both wow and lotr and i will say that while most dont realize it, lotr is a much deeper game than wow. You cant really see it at the begining but they have alot of "fluff" material in the game that makes it excellent for me.
I will predict LOTR to rival wow in north america, both having about a million customers each. The game is 33% cheaper, has better graphics, better story, and has some interesting systems that most people dont notice right off the bat.
The real determination will be how fast turbine adds content. If they add it monthly like in ac1, wow will be gettin a big hurtin coming up.
i was very skeptical on how good it is, but once i had a good look at the overall design, i am hooked. Unlike the drivvel that most say that it is a wow clone, it really is not, at least no more than any other mmo is. They are all EQ clones .
asherons call, a great game (my first mmo) but in order to be great you have to be a mage, the amount of buffing in that game is stupid (especially in groups, 30 + mins) expansions should have fixed this but instead increased amount of buffs:(
asherons call 2, should have taken all that was good in Ac1 and improved upon it, but failed in every aspect. (run for 5 mins and end up back where you started due to lag you couldnt see)
DDO, not enough content and felt too constrictive.
lorto, maybe a clone of wow, but i can live with that.
using the same engine they used in the last 2 games:(
but i hope they have learned from previous mistakes,get decent, lag free servers. and a live team like AC1. i loved those quests and events.
I believe that LOTR will be a sucsess, I had the same feel and play as WoW, and with another month of polishing It should be well done. And I agree that DDO felt restricted, way to restricted.
I truly believe this is one of the all time stupidest threads of all time. That being said, I actually have to reply as if it's a relevant topic. And, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I'm not a big fan of WoW. I've played it, started 2 years ago, have an active subscription right now. However, I don't like it all that much. Not enough character customization, individuality, ability to make my night elf hunter look or perform much differently than any other. Just not much customization no matter how you look at it. And that's a big deal to me, so I don't care for WoW much based on that. And the subscription won't be renewed this time.
The OP has just claimed to have previously claimed to have predicted things which have yet to occur, aren't in the process of occurring now, and really not going to occur in any way like the prediction of the OP.
And obviously the OP hasn't spent time in LotRO beta. It's not that great. Really. I've been in the Beta for almost 3 months. I like it, sort of. I need that character customization that's still missing, though. Absolutely need it. No preorder here.
The greatest part of the OP is that he makes all these claims about how it's going to be and how he already claimed it and all that... and then hedges and hems and haws at the end of the post.
Good grief, if you're going to make completely pointless claims about previous predictions and more irrelevant claims of something, at least just put it out there and stick with it.
Anyone can predict the loss of a significant number of WoW subscribers. All MMORPGS lose subscribers after a couple of years. The good ones, the bad ones, and the ugly ones. ALL of them. Some lose them sooner, some lose them later, but they all lose them. Because a whole bunch of players play the game for awhile, some a month, some a few months, some a couple of years, and then many of them find something else that takes up that time. Another game, another job, another school, another kid, another girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband...
As for WoW, it'll just be a little more noticeable, because the numbers will be so large. Percentages won't be much different than any other game, but the real numbers get the attention.
This actually works in the favor of new games coming out in the next year, because WoW brought many many many first timers into the realm of MMORPGs. And a couple million of them might just leave WoW in the next year or so to go check out other games, instead of other "get a life" options. If I were the producer of an "in the works" MMORPG, I'd be smiling at the possibilities.
No one's going to K.O WoW though. No other single game, or even 2 games, anyway. Simple attrition, following the same results as other games experience, will whittle away at WoW's numbers, but Blizzard's still gonna have it out there with a whole lot of subscribers, probably higher than any other game, for awhile. They've done such a good job with their product so far, it's likely they have a plan to keep their product at the top.
It's so ludicrous that someone like the Original Poser... I mean Poster... would claim to know all about all of this, and have no concept of the history of all the other MMORPGs that have gone before. Ludicrous. Yeah, that's how it's REALLY spelled.
HAving Played LoTRO and not talking out my ass without playing it , the game is simply Great. I am a Lineage 2 diehard , until the bot came , I loved the grind and hated the quest. That was almost about 3 years ago.With LotRO , I can still get an L2 grind but this time I LOVE THE QUESTs .
NEVER played WoW or SWG, and I am greatful that , they aren't my gauge for comparising .
What does LoTRO have :
1. Smooth polished game play
2. great graphics and Art
3. A hook of a story line
4.Just something you know and love
5. with Preordering it's CHEAPER monthly, which is the biggest draw among all else.
Maybe it won't break records now , but when expansions come and the world get's bigger and refined , this is going to be a pretty pinnacle shoe for any IP to game to fill.
Think of Turbines last 2 efforts as practice to this point, at last , it has begun .....
Yeah. Vanguard and Darkfall are going to take down WoW, mark my words.
When Hell freezes over, anyway.
lol!!! maybe vanguard could have gotten a million players if they had a decent launch, but they didn't i see VG running maybe 250k if they can fix things in 4 to 6 months
Clearly this one is no WoW killer, I have no idea whther it is a good game or not, but WoW is currently outselling it, box for box on the shop shelves. There have been no breakings of sales records for Vangaurd. So I think history has already ruled that one out.
Lord of Rings? I don't see it being a big one myself. Lord of the Rings products sell, but they don't have a big name for being great games. Turbine doesn't have the kind of pedigree games in it's stable that promotes consumer loyalty either. All but dead in 3 months is my bet.
No idea about Age of Conan. Don't know anything about it. Except Conan is in it, so like Lord of the Rings it will be fantasy based. I think the total disaster of Matrix online and for that matter all the Star Trek games shows us that franchise names alone don't make for best sellers.
What's the other one? Warhammer?
I'm open minded to this one. I don't know what it will be like, but I've played some good warhammer games in my time. PC and table top. Like Warcraft the theme world is not pre-written in the way that film or book frnachises are. It is designed from inception as a gameworld in which every player is the principle hero.
Neo, who's name you can't play or Spiderman or Conan or Gandalf are not all automatically the best there can ever be in the game. Each player may tale that role for themselves.
I also think that Mythic is a well established Development studio with a good track record and a history of making successful and well recived MMO's.
I don't know about it outselling Warcraft or dominating the market, but I think it's worth betting they will do very well.
If anything , this year will even out the market ... with LotrO knocking on the door of Blizzard. Anything could knock blizzard off , they could release some kind of hell patch, we all know what that does to a game and the communities .
[quote]Turbine doesn't have the kind of pedigree games in it's stable that promotes consumer loyalty either. All but dead in 3 months is my bet.[/quote]
I'd like to see you put your money where your mouth is. Most posters here have Lotro all wrong. The polish, familiar gameplay, and brand name will boost this up to at least 1 million subscribers in the first 6 months. It's already the most preordered game on gamestop, and it's already on back order.
Personally, I think a lot of you are overlooking a potential sleeper on the horizon, Gods and Heroes. One thing that they've already shown is that they want to release a quality game. Even with SOE looking over their shoulder, they pushed their release date back. We all know how much SOE wants that money NOW, so that's a feat in itself.
The game also seem to be taking an interesting approach, allowing the player to command a small band of NPCs in addition to his/her own character. While they're only featuring 6 classes and 12 gods at launch, it shows a lot of creativity and potential. But don't take my word for it. Hop to their site and check out the videos and screenshots. I was positively floored by what I saw when I did
I agree that Gods and Heroes looks interesting, but choosing SOE as a publisher is a huge mistake. I'll be damned if I play anything SOE is associated with for fear of their meddling and I certainly don't want any of my money ending up in Smedley's pockets.
WAR will take over a significant portion of the PvE crowd of WoW, which will kinda annoy Mythic that dreams of making a PvP game, however, if Mythic can put duty ahead of desire, it will bring more for them, for the PvE crowds and in the long run, for the PvP crowd...as an extremely popular game get more developpment. The PvP crowd is tired of this type of gameplay for PvP/RvR, they won't look kindly at WAR in general.
WoW will lose a significant portion of it PvP crowd to AoC.
Will WoW be KO? Not even close, but it will prolly be 3rd ranked in subscribtions in NA by 2008, if even that.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I don't agree with the previous post. The people playing on the PvP servers in WoW will likely be drawn to WAR more than AoC. Think about it. PvP servers in WoW offer a game where there the constant threat of RvR player battle exists in most areas, but it's also a game with definite safety nets and not much loss if you lose. There are rewards for winning in PvP, but none of them come at the expense of the other player. These people might not like the finer points of WoW's PvP system, and I'm the first to admit that some of those finer points suck, but if they're playing the game, they probably do like that general model. That model is a lot closer to what WAR is offering than AoC.
For the people who like PvE, LotRO offers nearly the same kind of mechanics with a fresh world and similar difficulty level, but it does so in a way that is even more accessible than in WoW.
That said, I think WoW is going to lose a lot more of its PvP enthusiasts than its PvE people. WoW's PvP isn't totally bullshit like some people would lead you to believe, but it has flaws, and some of them are quite noticeable. The solutions to them are obviously legacy solutions that never really make it feel like the underlying problem has been fixed. First of all, there are some annoying ways to grief, and more importantly, there's no real impetus to PvP other than to fight a few quick battles, as the actual "content" of the game is primarily PvE. Battlegrounds are nice and all, but if those people wanted arena PvP, they'd be playing Guild Wars which does it fifty times better. No. WoW's PvP lovers probably want a game which offers meaningful RvR and still features good PvE content. WAR offers just that.
I honestly don't think AoC is going to take any players away from WoW. Don't get me wrong. AoC will be very successful for one important reason: it's an action MMORPG designed from the ground up to work on a console where people have expressed huge enthusiasm for playing such titles. Still, the kind of people who will be playing both games are totally different in taste.
Comments
Gamers nowadays for the most part are more astute than they were 10 years ago. But at this time all we have to choose from is from a bunch of different flavors of the same thing. in the end it's still ice-cream. (no slight intended to the ice-cream lovers). But given enough time and some tech advances there will be a truly new gaming experience. Not the faux stuff labelled as "Nex gen" but a true move away from the norm that will once again capture the minds of gamers. I think that the game called "Wish" sorta touched into new territory before poofing into the void.
Sadly I forsee 4-5 years yet before a company has the wherewithall to take a chance and spend their money in developing a truly unique MMO that changes the way we as gamers view the genre. The genere itself is doing extremely well. But even with such a rabid fan base the support is finite. Can you see 25 years down the road if games such as EQ,WoW etc were still being produced? Only with better graphics and some new flash bang added? There will need to be IMO almost an about face ideologically about the way a game can be played to keep the industry viable and blooming.
Players want more freedom within the game. They want to do more things. They want to have larger worlds. Some want PvP some dont. These will have to be taken into account. But don't just add more classes into a game. Why not go with a game that has no classes? Only skills?Yes some games out now have that. And I think they are on the right track. Make the world MASSIVE in scope. If I can fly/swim/run across the world in a day then maybe it's to small. Where are the underwater cities? Where are the ships? etc etc. In some games they may have 1 maybe 2 of the above. Lets see about making one with everything. I think at that point the genre will be back on track. Lately it's not been advancing. It's just taken the base and played with it some and the game has garnered a following. I think mostly due to the fact that we gamers are hungry for anything new.
In essence WAR is shaping up to be effectively be a "WoW 2", not just a WoW-wanna-be, which could really hit WoW's numbers. Let's face it, how many horde players would not want to play Chaos? Yes, a wolf mount is great, but unless WAR really messes up (i.e. tries to be "a third gen MMO" or plain runs out of funding) then how is WoW going to compete with riding a Tzeenich disc into battle or swapping out your Chaos mutations? Don't get me wrong, WoW is fun, for a bit. But the PvP is too "ganky", and quickly gets stale (how many times can you play the same ^&&* map?!). WAR will be new, and is really shaping up nicely to give WoW a real headache.
WoW has some great elements, but it's not actually as good as it could be - I really wish it was, then I'd happily keep playing it. But the design direction taken by the latest expansion simply confirms that "more of the same, less balance, more power to the twinks" is where WoW is still heading, so sooner or later someone is going to knock them over (even if it is a new game from Blizzard
LOTRO will do good initially but unless Turbine pulls off some magic and listens to the player base for once, it will follow the same road as DDO. WAR will start big as well and dwindle due to the fact that it is going to be a heavy PvP/RvR game and even mentioning PvP scares off a lot of potention players. Spellborn had potential but the lack of communication on the developers part and dwindiling community, has caused a lot of potential players to seek other mmo's. Perhaps when they start the next phase of beta it might bring renewed interest but only time will tell. Vanguard, thought to have been a possible wow killer, was released too early and requires hardware that a majority of players cant afford. Over time as they improve performance and people upgrade thier PCs Vanguard will probably get a lot larger player base as the game still has great potention. Perhaps Lineage 3 will become the king as its predicessors previously were, but more then likely they wont get to even half of WoW's numbers.
Warp
Ive played both wow and lotr and i will say that while most dont realize it, lotr is a much deeper game than wow. You cant really see it at the begining but they have alot of "fluff" material in the game that makes it excellent for me.
I will predict LOTR to rival wow in north america, both having about a million customers each. The game is 33% cheaper, has better graphics, better story, and has some interesting systems that most people dont notice right off the bat.
The real determination will be how fast turbine adds content. If they add it monthly like in ac1, wow will be gettin a big hurtin coming up.
i was very skeptical on how good it is, but once i had a good look at the overall design, i am hooked. Unlike the drivvel that most say that it is a wow clone, it really is not, at least no more than any other mmo is. They are all EQ clones .
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
lets look at turbines history.
asherons call, a great game (my first mmo) but in order to be great you have to be a mage, the amount of buffing in that game is stupid (especially in groups, 30 + mins) expansions should have fixed this but instead increased amount of buffs:(
asherons call 2, should have taken all that was good in Ac1 and improved upon it, but failed in every aspect. (run for 5 mins and end up back where you started due to lag you couldnt see)
DDO, not enough content and felt too constrictive.
lorto, maybe a clone of wow, but i can live with that.
using the same engine they used in the last 2 games:(
but i hope they have learned from previous mistakes,get decent, lag free servers. and a live team like AC1. i loved those quests and events.
Hm... this is a tough one.
I truly believe this is one of the all time stupidest threads of all time. That being said, I actually have to reply as if it's a relevant topic. And, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I'm not a big fan of WoW. I've played it, started 2 years ago, have an active subscription right now. However, I don't like it all that much. Not enough character customization, individuality, ability to make my night elf hunter look or perform much differently than any other. Just not much customization no matter how you look at it. And that's a big deal to me, so I don't care for WoW much based on that. And the subscription won't be renewed this time.
The OP has just claimed to have previously claimed to have predicted things which have yet to occur, aren't in the process of occurring now, and really not going to occur in any way like the prediction of the OP.
And obviously the OP hasn't spent time in LotRO beta. It's not that great. Really. I've been in the Beta for almost 3 months. I like it, sort of. I need that character customization that's still missing, though. Absolutely need it. No preorder here.
The greatest part of the OP is that he makes all these claims about how it's going to be and how he already claimed it and all that... and then hedges and hems and haws at the end of the post.
Good grief, if you're going to make completely pointless claims about previous predictions and more irrelevant claims of something, at least just put it out there and stick with it.
Anyone can predict the loss of a significant number of WoW subscribers. All MMORPGS lose subscribers after a couple of years. The good ones, the bad ones, and the ugly ones. ALL of them. Some lose them sooner, some lose them later, but they all lose them. Because a whole bunch of players play the game for awhile, some a month, some a few months, some a couple of years, and then many of them find something else that takes up that time. Another game, another job, another school, another kid, another girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband...
As for WoW, it'll just be a little more noticeable, because the numbers will be so large. Percentages won't be much different than any other game, but the real numbers get the attention.
This actually works in the favor of new games coming out in the next year, because WoW brought many many many first timers into the realm of MMORPGs. And a couple million of them might just leave WoW in the next year or so to go check out other games, instead of other "get a life" options. If I were the producer of an "in the works" MMORPG, I'd be smiling at the possibilities.
No one's going to K.O WoW though. No other single game, or even 2 games, anyway. Simple attrition, following the same results as other games experience, will whittle away at WoW's numbers, but Blizzard's still gonna have it out there with a whole lot of subscribers, probably higher than any other game, for awhile. They've done such a good job with their product so far, it's likely they have a plan to keep their product at the top.
It's so ludicrous that someone like the Original Poser... I mean Poster... would claim to know all about all of this, and have no concept of the history of all the other MMORPGs that have gone before. Ludicrous. Yeah, that's how it's REALLY spelled.
Kalmenicus the Non-Predictor
NEVER played WoW or SWG, and I am greatful that , they aren't my gauge for comparising .
What does LoTRO have :
1. Smooth polished game play
2. great graphics and Art
3. A hook of a story line
4.Just something you know and love
5. with Preordering it's CHEAPER monthly, which is the biggest draw among all else.
Maybe it won't break records now , but when expansions come and the world get's bigger and refined , this is going to be a pretty pinnacle shoe for any IP to game to fill.
Think of Turbines last 2 efforts as practice to this point, at last , it has begun .....
I
who me ?
When Hell freezes over, anyway.
Vanguard is already on sale.
Clearly this one is no WoW killer, I have no idea whther it is a good game or not, but WoW is currently outselling it, box for box on the shop shelves. There have been no breakings of sales records for Vangaurd. So I think history has already ruled that one out.
Lord of Rings? I don't see it being a big one myself. Lord of the Rings products sell, but they don't have a big name for being great games. Turbine doesn't have the kind of pedigree games in it's stable that promotes consumer loyalty either. All but dead in 3 months is my bet.
No idea about Age of Conan. Don't know anything about it. Except Conan is in it, so like Lord of the Rings it will be fantasy based. I think the total disaster of Matrix online and for that matter all the Star Trek games shows us that franchise names alone don't make for best sellers.
What's the other one? Warhammer?
I'm open minded to this one. I don't know what it will be like, but I've played some good warhammer games in my time. PC and table top. Like Warcraft the theme world is not pre-written in the way that film or book frnachises are. It is designed from inception as a gameworld in which every player is the principle hero.
Neo, who's name you can't play or Spiderman or Conan or Gandalf are not all automatically the best there can ever be in the game. Each player may tale that role for themselves.
I also think that Mythic is a well established Development studio with a good track record and a history of making successful and well recived MMO's.
I don't know about it outselling Warcraft or dominating the market, but I think it's worth betting they will do very well.
who me ?
I'd like to see you put your money where your mouth is. Most posters here have Lotro all wrong. The polish, familiar gameplay, and brand name will boost this up to at least 1 million subscribers in the first 6 months. It's already the most preordered game on gamestop, and it's already on back order.
How easy you are to please.
My money is where my mouth is. I have no intention of buying this product.
Personally, I think a lot of you are overlooking a potential sleeper on the horizon, Gods and Heroes. One thing that they've already shown is that they want to release a quality game. Even with SOE looking over their shoulder, they pushed their release date back. We all know how much SOE wants that money NOW, so that's a feat in itself.
The game also seem to be taking an interesting approach, allowing the player to command a small band of NPCs in addition to his/her own character. While they're only featuring 6 classes and 12 gods at launch, it shows a lot of creativity and potential. But don't take my word for it. Hop to their site and check out the videos and screenshots. I was positively floored by what I saw when I did
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Get Hammered!
My name is "Todd". Drop the "T" and it explains sooooooo much!
WAR will take over a significant portion of the PvE crowd of WoW, which will kinda annoy Mythic that dreams of making a PvP game, however, if Mythic can put duty ahead of desire, it will bring more for them, for the PvE crowds and in the long run, for the PvP crowd...as an extremely popular game get more developpment. The PvP crowd is tired of this type of gameplay for PvP/RvR, they won't look kindly at WAR in general.
WoW will lose a significant portion of it PvP crowd to AoC.
Will WoW be KO? Not even close, but it will prolly be 3rd ranked in subscribtions in NA by 2008, if even that.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
For the people who like PvE, LotRO offers nearly the same kind of mechanics with a fresh world and similar difficulty level, but it does so in a way that is even more accessible than in WoW.
That said, I think WoW is going to lose a lot more of its PvP enthusiasts than its PvE people. WoW's PvP isn't totally bullshit like some people would lead you to believe, but it has flaws, and some of them are quite noticeable. The solutions to them are obviously legacy solutions that never really make it feel like the underlying problem has been fixed. First of all, there are some annoying ways to grief, and more importantly, there's no real impetus to PvP other than to fight a few quick battles, as the actual "content" of the game is primarily PvE. Battlegrounds are nice and all, but if those people wanted arena PvP, they'd be playing Guild Wars which does it fifty times better. No. WoW's PvP lovers probably want a game which offers meaningful RvR and still features good PvE content. WAR offers just that.
I honestly don't think AoC is going to take any players away from WoW. Don't get me wrong. AoC will be very successful for one important reason: it's an action MMORPG designed from the ground up to work on a console where people have expressed huge enthusiasm for playing such titles. Still, the kind of people who will be playing both games are totally different in taste.