I think some people touched on this ( im not 100% sure, im too drunk right now) but honestly WoW has taken the multiplayer out of MMO. EVERYTHING can be done solo in the game. (leveling, getting gear, pvp, grinding, etc) to all people that played MMORPG's before WoW, we know that you mostly had to group to level, grinding was an asset to leveling and PvP had a goal and/or purpose (at least for my DAoC and UO buddies)
On the other-hand, WoW makes everything like a single player RPG. you are the hero and only you can do everything (apparently). The only difference is that in single player RPG's u still needed a group to get the job done (regardless if u controlled their actions or not). In my opinion a game (especially a multiplayer game) needs to be an interaction with other people, at least helping others to accomplish a common goal, and for pvp, working together against another group to compete.
And this is why i hate WoW, not because its mainsteam or because it took other ideas and made them popular, it is simply a single player game dressed up in an online outfit. I'd rather play The Witcher or Mass Effect, atleast i dont have to waste $15 a month to replay it.
Protip: If someone does NOT list at least one positive and one negative about the game they are critiquing, its best to ignore the post.
im in the "bored with it" crowd as well. honestly when i hear that people have been playing it for years i just think "how"??!! i couldnt play anything for years. i played wow longer than ive ever played any video game. wow was the first mmo i had ever played, althouhg i had played almost every pen and paper rpg ever. a freind gave me a trial and when i got to lvl 20 loooong b4 the trila ran out i was hooked, but after 2 70s and a slew of lvl 30+ toons i cant do another quest in azeroth...yawn. what really made me stop playing though was all the dumb, rude people, most of whome i assumed where 12 or so. i was bored with the game and then the people just made it so that i couldnt take it anymore. i dont hate the game though and i actually hope that by the time LK comes out i feel like playing agian, but i probly wont, at this moment i have zero interest.
i found a free game i like so ill stick with that for now maybe until champions comes out or they make a sci-fi game thats good. thats my prob with the mmo genre in general and is a constant turn off for me, y does almost every game have to be fantasy based?
because there are two communities, the "mmo" community and the "WoW" community, this is the "mmo" community made up of players who played many mmos and people looking for games different from WoW
Really?
Gosh-darn, sarge, imagine that.
And here I thought I was a member of the MMO community. After all, I've played:
Everquest
Everquest 2
Earth & Beyond
Anarchy Online
Acheron's Call
Acheron's Call 2
Dark Age of Camelot
Star Wars Galaxies
City of Heroes/Villains
Matrix Online
World of Warcraft
Lord of the Rings Online (at least some of the trial)
. . . and just resubbed to World of Warcraft.
But, hey, that must make me a member of the "WoW Community".
*moron*
yes and everyone is you, of course there are people in between, but you can make a poll on here, and ask how many people like both WoW and other mmos, if the majority of people agree with you then i stand corrected
yes and everyone is you, of course there are people in between, but you can make a poll on here, and ask how many people like both WoW and other mmos, if the majority of people agree with you then i stand corrected
I like WoW, and I'm also a MMO vet. There are a lot of very experienced MMO gamers playing WoW. I've played nearly every graphical MMO that has come out since UO, and before UO I was playing MUDs. Let's face it, WoW is 'the' PvE raiding game out there at the moment and this is what draws in many of the old school gamers, raids are the most important aspect of MMOs for me personally.
In terms of the WoW community. My guild has an average age of over 25, and the people I associate with within the game are much more refined and articulate than the majority of the posters on these boards.
''Hello my name is X and I like playing MMORPGs'' -''Oh, so is your main on Horde or Alliance?''
That's the reason I dislike World of Warcraft. People take it as THE MMORPG and instantly assume, that if you play MMORPG you are playing World of Warcraft.
Back when the game came out most of the bashers were calling it the greatest thing on god green earth...now that it is the big dog they bash it for being successful. People hate success.
There's a few contributing factors to the dislike of WoW: -They keep screwing over long-time players: If you've played before TBC you'll know what i mean by this, they keep taking all your hard-earned gear, which this game is centered around, and making it worthless with every expansion.
-Gear: This game is probably one of the most gear needy games that I know of. But its not just the gear, but its the fact that the best gear is acquired through hours upon hours of grinding and there is no player-made gear that is worth it. -Crafting: The crafting is useless for the most part, aside from such things as repair bots, potions and the sorts. The best player crafted gear is Bind on Pickup. WTF. You waste like 5,000 gold on a recipe for a sword or armor, and make it ONCE, because you cant get any return from what you spent to get it. Whats worse is that then you go to a dungeon and find a sword to replace that one you made and you go "oh... well that was a waste of money". -GRIND: Its cleverly disguised as a quest system "go bring me 20 pig intestines and I'll make you some soup". How many mother f*cking pigs do you have to kill to get there intestines???!! I've killed thousands of pigs and they're missing there entrails. There's something seriously wrong with this!! Bats without wings... pigs without guts... bandits without mask that clearly have mask... IT GETS OLD! But it doesn't stop there, no. Then you have the "gold grind". In NO other game have I come across a worse need for money. The repair bills are horrible for purple gear, and blacksmiths cant even fix it for a cheaper price to help them make some cash. Not only this but the crafting in the game doesn't let you make money. Hell, i have never played a game that the crafting is so horrible that you LOSE money selling things. You make more money selling the ingredients then the actual product. Something is very wrong with this system and Blizzard wonders why there are these gold farming companies making MINTS off of their game.
-Balance: So many people keep bitching about the balance between classes. MMO's are social games. Get this through your heads. You NEED other classes to complete objectives. No, I don't think you should ALWAYS need someone else to help you complete objectives, but yes for many things you should. If a warrior is out dps-ing a rogue, there's a problem. If a druid is out-healing a priest, there's a problem. -PvP: As mentioned with the balance complaint, you're not meant to be the solution to all problems, but in WoW people play like that. As a warlock you shouldn't be able to go toe to toe with a warrior, but I've seen it done. There's something wrong with this... that and that gear is the ONLY influence over whos the better man in PvP.
Now aside from all these faulty game mechanics there is the problem of the awful community. I cant stand trade chat. I turn it off its just that awful. The forums are even worse. The game itself has set the progression of MMO's back quite a few years as there is no thought, strategy or skills to create a good character. There is nothing innovative about the game at all. Lastly a major obstacle that needs to be overcome by other developers is that they all want the numbers that WoW has. Its not going to happen and the financial backers of other developers want this. Because of this you need to find someone with faith in your development abilities and deep, deep pockets. WoW is a freak of nature and its success probably wont be recreated again. If any other game gets a million active subscribers then that will be a good day for games. Overall WoW just shunts the growth of the genre as long as it remains as popular as it has. Because of this, other potential games that could have a lot to offer rarely make it out of the starting gate, and many people who started with WoW are now looking for the next thing, thats a little more advanced and has a little more depth then what WoW has to offer... and it wont happen for a while.
I love this post.
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? ~Ernest Gaines
Because it's a direct example of the mindless extravaganza MMORPGs are to become. WoW offers NOTHING new to mmorpgs, and yet has such a large subscription base.
This says to people that WoW is a direct threat to innovation and creation in MMOs
Bad PvP (4BG+arena) and no Oceanic based servers was reason I quit.
Other than that, wow is a pretty good PvE game. The quest system does not seem like a grind like someone else said, it was actually refreshing to me. The graphics and animations are pretty good. Only PvE problem is of course its all item grind then they wipe hard work with expansion and item grind again. But I guess something needs to keep people playing.
I think a lot of the ex-wow players I know feel that it's just one item threadmill after another and kind of see no more point to it.
My guess is that WoW is a significantly younger population than the population of MMORPG.com. Just a hunch, because I notice that most people here seem to talk about older games like EQ and UO a lot which would age them a bit. I doubt most WoW players could relate to those games. Just a guess.
Why do so many people that visit MMORPG.com dislike WoW?
I believe the answer is even more simple than others have suggested. WoW fans hang out on the Blizzard forums. As you can imagine, there is substantially more useful information there about WoW. Here, there might be 2-3 topics a day posted in the WoW sub-forum. On the Blizzard general WoW forum a topic can easily get pushed off the first page in a matter of minutes - there's really no comparison to the activity.
I think it's fair to say that most people (not all) posting in this forum aren't active WoW subscribers. And since they aren't, they probably have a reason - and that often has to do with not liking the game. The WoW fans that are visiting this site are likely here to look at other games so they spend their time in other forums and aren't even bothering with this one.
I'm back to playing WoW again, and I have an extensive list of MMOs on my resume. So, WoW wasn't my first MMO, EQ was and it still remains my favorite MMO of all time, but I think WoW is a better game if that makes sense. A few of the creators of WoW, Rob Pardo and Jeff Kaplan were both ex-EQ guildmates, I believe they were in the guild <Legacy of Steel>. So, they looked at all of the annoyances of EQ and made sure that they were not a part of WoW.
This site is filled with a lot of juvenile kids that hate anything that is mainstream, so to them its more of a rebellion thing I think. If not for WoW most of them wouldn't even know what an MMO was let alone have ever played one.
People that complain about WoW being gear dependent are right, but what is the alternative? A game like AoC where level 40 items have the same look and stats as a level 10 item? The more time people put into the game the better gear they get, I'm ok with that.
Every time I play a new MMO it reminds me of how good WoW is, the fact that you can travel from end of a continent to the other without hitting a zone makes the world feel very open. I HATE constant zoning, talk about an immersion killer. The WoW UI is so smooth and responsive. In NO other MMO have I been able to perform the turn-around-jump shot with a Ranger class like I have been able to do in WoW with my Hunter. A fully robust and working auction house, a mail system, etc. - this stuff all worked out of the box, unlike some games like AoC and Tab Rasa. They're silly and simple minded features, but it speaks volumes about the extra attention to detail that Blizzard displays.
People bitch about the grind, I'm not sure how they want Blizzard to provide leveling progression? Tossing water balloons?
After playing a turd like AoC I have more appreciation for WoW, sure the game is looking old, I used to defend the graphics but the game will be 4 years old soon and it is really showing its age in the graphics department but what other game out there allows 40 on 40 pvp BG battles, with spells going off, people fighting with no severe frame rate impact? Try doing that with a modern MMO and the game will turn into a slideshow.
I enjoy PVP in WoW, moreso then any other form of PVP I've ever played in any other MMO, well maybe AO because they had the level restrictions which made ganking difficult. But I love BGs. I've learned more about my class, my skills and other classes playing PVP then years of PVE raiding.
Is it perfect, no - and for all of the WoW haters show me what you are playing that is so much better? Blizzard is not an innovator, they take a game design and polish the hell out of it till it shines - I've played every Blizzard game and every one of them have been fun and addicting. Blizzard stays true to their fans, they don't release garbage, they trashed GHOST because it wasn't meeting up to their standards, they trashed Warcraft Clan Adventures because it wasn't progressing - this is a lot of money to flush down the toilet even for Blizzard, who at the time had no WoW cash-cow to rely on. For crying out loud they're still patching Starcraft and Diablo!!!!!!!!!! Lets see EA support a 10-year old game.
Blizzard is a rare company today, a company that exists among the corporate blood suckers like EA. At Blizzard the mantra is "games for gamers by gamers". At EA its "make games that make money, regardless if they're good".
I'm sorry, hate all I want, I've met these guys, they're awesome and I love Blizzard and I love WoW.
I found WoW to be ok. I had fun for a while, off and on, but to me, it was a lesser version of EQ. I certainly had more fun in EQ and DAoC. It was more consuming. I even went back to those 2 games after I quit WoW about the time of TBC expansion and had a blast. I've played many others and WoW doesn't really top the list.
By no means do I hate the game though. If someone finds it fun, and wants to keep playing, then that is great. Oh and about the comment earlier about having to start all over getting new gear, haha. That is the point. If you have all the best gear and beat all the dungeons, what point would there be to continue playing? The answer is more zones, more levels, new gear if you have a PvE centered game. Games like DAoC and upcoming WAR focus on the RvR, which I find a bit more dynamic, but I still had fun in the whole EQ model of epic zones and raids and such.
I'm about to give Vanguard another shot since I last played it in beta. It only cost me $6.00 for a new copy, so can't go wrong. Hope all the good pr lately on it is half true, hehe. Should hold me over until WAR.
Oh, back to the OP, I've noticed lately it is popular to hate, whether is is games, politics, etc. Just see so many things people can't help but hating.
Why do so many people that visit MMORPG.com dislike WoW?
because wow has changed what mmo's are. no longer are there sandbox games that let you carve out your own name in the world, nowadays all mmo's are level and gear grinds, and this negates the sense of community because everyone is too busy leveling.
Why do so many people that visit MMORPG.com dislike WoW?
because wow has changed what mmo's are. no longer are there sandbox games that let you carve out your own name in the world, nowadays all mmo's are level and gear grinds, and this negates the sense of community because everyone is too busy leveling.
Well finding this post saved me a lot of work. Sums it up perfectly.
WOW by itself wasn't a bad game, I had a good time when I played it. But its success lead to so may copycats of their level grinding formula I think the game is more despised for what it did the the genre than on its actual gameplay.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
There's a few contributing factors to the dislike of WoW: -They keep screwing over long-time players: If you've played before TBC you'll know what i mean by this, they keep taking all your hard-earned gear, which this game is centered around, and making it worthless with every expansion.
-Gear: This game is probably one of the most gear needy games that I know of. But its not just the gear, but its the fact that the best gear is acquired through hours upon hours of grinding and there is no player-made gear that is worth it. -Crafting: The crafting is useless for the most part, aside from such things as repair bots, potions and the sorts. The best player crafted gear is Bind on Pickup. WTF. You waste like 5,000 gold on a recipe for a sword or armor, and make it ONCE, because you cant get any return from what you spent to get it. Whats worse is that then you go to a dungeon and find a sword to replace that one you made and you go "oh... well that was a waste of money". -GRIND: Its cleverly disguised as a quest system "go bring me 20 pig intestines and I'll make you some soup". How many mother f*cking pigs do you have to kill to get there intestines???!! I've killed thousands of pigs and they're missing there entrails. There's something seriously wrong with this!! Bats without wings... pigs without guts... bandits without mask that clearly have mask... IT GETS OLD! But it doesn't stop there, no. Then you have the "gold grind". In NO other game have I come across a worse need for money. The repair bills are horrible for purple gear, and blacksmiths cant even fix it for a cheaper price to help them make some cash. Not only this but the crafting in the game doesn't let you make money. Hell, i have never played a game that the crafting is so horrible that you LOSE money selling things. You make more money selling the ingredients then the actual product. Something is very wrong with this system and Blizzard wonders why there are these gold farming companies making MINTS off of their game.
-Balance: So many people keep bitching about the balance between classes. MMO's are social games. Get this through your heads. You NEED other classes to complete objectives. No, I don't think you should ALWAYS need someone else to help you complete objectives, but yes for many things you should. If a warrior is out dps-ing a rogue, there's a problem. If a druid is out-healing a priest, there's a problem. -PvP: As mentioned with the balance complaint, you're not meant to be the solution to all problems, but in WoW people play like that. As a warlock you shouldn't be able to go toe to toe with a warrior, but I've seen it done. There's something wrong with this... that and that gear is the ONLY influence over whos the better man in PvP.
Now aside from all these faulty game mechanics there is the problem of the awful community. I cant stand trade chat. I turn it off its just that awful. The forums are even worse. The game itself has set the progression of MMO's back quite a few years as there is no thought, strategy or skills to create a good character. There is nothing innovative about the game at all. Lastly a major obstacle that needs to be overcome by other developers is that they all want the numbers that WoW has. Its not going to happen and the financial backers of other developers want this. Because of this you need to find someone with faith in your development abilities and deep, deep pockets. WoW is a freak of nature and its success probably wont be recreated again. If any other game gets a million active subscribers then that will be a good day for games. Overall WoW just shunts the growth of the genre as long as it remains as popular as it has. Because of this, other potential games that could have a lot to offer rarely make it out of the starting gate, and many people who started with WoW are now looking for the next thing, thats a little more advanced and has a little more depth then what WoW has to offer... and it wont happen for a while.
This post is spot on! For those who joined WoW late or are a more casual gamer, you will just never understand how Blizzard screwed many players over starting with TBC. That is OK, but please don't make up reasons why people don't like WoW when the above post nails 90% of the reason.
You need look no further than all the people bashing vnguard, AOC, etc. to see the negaitve effect of WoW neophytes n the genre.
On the flipside, as these gamers mature and realize that WoW wasn't the only MMO ever made, things are only going to improve for all MMO's. WoW is a well made game and extremely popular, but one needs to realize as more and more people get wired and internet savvy, that the MMORPG market was/is headed for heavy expansion anyways.
It used to be that developers were satisfied as long as they had a good enough population to fill their little online world. 100,000 people total playing was more than enough. The developers spent more time focusing on making the world and keeping the players happy. And we as players had tighter communities where we actually sought each other out just to have fun together, instead of just to get that one difficult quest and then go back to solo. We had fun together, joked and chatted, explored just for the sake of exploring.
Then WoW hit.
Suddenly, you needed several million players to be considered a success. You needed the potential of several million players to even get funding. So obviously, you had to be like WoW. Or so the devs thought ( and think ).
No more tight knit communities, no more exploring just to explore. Just wave after wave of easy mode quests so the FPS, console, and twenty minutes a day average Joe can have what they want immediately. Being reduced to "noob" status if we want to enjoy the scenery instead of joining the millionth scheduled raid for that +1 epic sword of e-peen.
No more devs making worlds strictly the way they wanted, and being happy when a 100k of us decided we liked it there. Now the games have to be made casual friendly or die. No more "worlds", no more "rpg". Just online games.
You are right even though you don't want to be: MMOs need to be made more casual friendly to survive. And WoW wasn't the first to do this. City of Heroes launched in April 2004 and was, and is, extremely casual friendly.
Read development interviews. Attend the gaming conventions. Any developer will tell you that the days of the EQ1 time-sink grinds are over. The majority of the subscriber base is casual players . . . people with careers, kids, real-life events, and such that don't log-in for hours on end.
All WoW did was copy what was already there. They didn't invent a damned thing. Their marketing, company history, and the popularity of the Warcraft line did the rest to WoW overnight.
I don't think WoW is the perfect game. I like many of the system aspects in LoTRO, just not the setting (I'm not a great Tolkein fan). I love the character-customization in City of Heroes. I like the ship combat, and the PC to PC crew aspect, in Pirates of the Caribbean Online. I liked the player-city aspect in the original SWG. The seige aspect in AoC sounds interesting.
What developers need to do is create a vision and STICK WITH IT. This is a major failing of Pirates of the Burning Sea, for example. It destroyed SWG, too.
Copying WoW is just copying the older games that WoW copied, and then made more player-friendly. It's been done, and it has its playerbase. Such companies will not take players away from WoW. Those players already have WoW, and their time investment in it, for that type of gameplay.
Yes, WoW changed industry expectations on sales. It made it more mainstream, and that is an inevitable result. It's up to other development companies to now step-up to the plate and create a game vision, a product, and stick with it for once.
Until that happens, WoW will continue to be the domnating factor.
Right now, I look at the MMO list to my left and I see 90% crap. And that isn't comparing it to WoW, that is taking it for its own merits and flaws.
I might have played AoC, if my comp could have handled it. But, I'm not upgrading a comp that does more than I need for work and daily living just for one MMO.
I do play CoH. Matter of fact, my limited game time will usually go between that or WoW. Why? Because I don't have to play for hours or hours to do anything. Whether it is quest/level or RP.
But take a look at that list and then ask yourself why WoW is so popular. And then take a look at the Games in Development List and ask yourself that same thing.
I'm back to playing WoW again, and I have an extensive list of MMOs on my resume. So, WoW wasn't my first MMO, EQ was and it still remains my favorite MMO of all time, but I think WoW is a better game if that makes sense. A few of the creators of WoW, Rob Pardo and Jeff Kaplan were both ex-EQ guildmates, I believe they were in the guild <Legacy of Steel>. So, they looked at all of the annoyances of EQ and made sure that they were not a part of WoW. This site is filled with a lot of juvenile kids that hate anything that is mainstream, so to them its more of a rebellion thing I think. If not for WoW most of them wouldn't even know what an MMO was let alone have ever played one. People that complain about WoW being gear dependent are right, but what is the alternative? A game like AoC where level 40 items have the same look and stats as a level 10 item? The more time people put into the game the better gear they get, I'm ok with that. Every time I play a new MMO it reminds me of how good WoW is, the fact that you can travel from end of a continent to the other without hitting a zone makes the world feel very open. I HATE constant zoning, talk about an immersion killer. The WoW UI is so smooth and responsive. In NO other MMO have I been able to perform the turn-around-jump shot with a Ranger class like I have been able to do in WoW with my Hunter. A fully robust and working auction house, a mail system, etc. - this stuff all worked out of the box, unlike some games like AoC and Tab Rasa. They're silly and simple minded features, but it speaks volumes about the extra attention to detail that Blizzard displays. People bitch about the grind, I'm not sure how they want Blizzard to provide leveling progression? Tossing water balloons? After playing a turd like AoC I have more appreciation for WoW, sure the game is looking old, I used to defend the graphics but the game will be 4 years old soon and it is really showing its age in the graphics department but what other game out there allows 40 on 40 pvp BG battles, with spells going off, people fighting with no severe frame rate impact? Try doing that with a modern MMO and the game will turn into a slideshow. I enjoy PVP in WoW, moreso then any other form of PVP I've ever played in any other MMO, well maybe AO because they had the level restrictions which made ganking difficult. But I love BGs. I've learned more about my class, my skills and other classes playing PVP then years of PVE raiding. Is it perfect, no - and for all of the WoW haters show me what you are playing that is so much better? Blizzard is not an innovator, they take a game design and polish the hell out of it till it shines - I've played every Blizzard game and every one of them have been fun and addicting. Blizzard stays true to their fans, they don't release garbage, they trashed GHOST because it wasn't meeting up to their standards, they trashed Warcraft Clan Adventures because it wasn't progressing - this is a lot of money to flush down the toilet even for Blizzard, who at the time had no WoW cash-cow to rely on. For crying out loud they're still patching Starcraft and Diablo!!!!!!!!!! Lets see EA support a 10-year old game. Blizzard is a rare company today, a company that exists among the corporate blood suckers like EA. At Blizzard the mantra is "games for gamers by gamers". At EA its "make games that make money, regardless if they're good". I'm sorry, hate all I want, I've met these guys, they're awesome and I love Blizzard and I love WoW.
The graphic look good in WoW for such a dated game I feel. They struck a good balance between catering to everyone's comp and graphics.
UI elements and responsivity in an MMO is so far unpararelled. It makes you feel more connected with your character. As a company Blizz has always delivered on their games in gameplay aspects.
However the PvP although sufficient for you leaves much to be desired. I mean years of development to come up with 4 BGs and arena? It may be enough for some people but to me it was sorely lacking. After coming from DAOC with massive scale combats most of the time it seemed like WOW lost the "massive" out of MMO for PvP. Although so far no game has got PvP content right. PvP content should come out just as fast as PvE content.
Killing world PvP and causing everything to be bottled into arena and bgs was bad. Although world pvp was never much good anyways cept as a form of distraction cos there was really no point to it except some fun.
Now besides BGs and arenas for rewards (item oriented) it seems repetitive and somewhat stale. PvP in wow is really a remote afterthought in a PvE centric game. Some of the PvErs who never experienced real PvP or never liked it would like wow carebear PvP mechanics, but I find the goal-oriented (not item oriented) PvP which is integral to the plot sadly missing.
Another thing is although most US based players don't care Oceanic based servers are in the works for WAR, which is really nice. Having to PvP with 600ms ping really sucks. We've petitioned bliz to do it for years but they kept saying it was impossible. Now WAR proved them wrong.
Lastly, a lot of people have really biased views with arguments scaled one way or the other. All positive or all negative. You can't have liked every single aspect of WOW, just because it's not perfect and no game can be. just like it had many good things going for it so you can't disregard those entirely.
Right now there don't seem to be enough good choices in good MMOs to satisfy the great variety of players. The fantasy based PvPers especially.
I think overall people (myself included) are afraid of the next generation of MMOs being WoW clones.
That's my biggest fear. WoW is just so spoonfed and terrible endgame. I don't want to see nothing but a bunch of clones on the shelves and that looks like where we're heading.
Truth be told WoW is a good game for everyone, but chances are there's a better MMO out there for each of us.
Reasons I quit: controled pvp, lack of endgame, cloned characters everywhere, and battlegrounds/arenas taking over the game. And of course Blizzard trying to make a terribly balanced game an E-Sport.
I personally just want WoW to disappear and will celebrate the day it does. And more innovative games will come to the table.
WoW fanboi: "lolz 11.5 million customers, itz obviously da best"
I don't hate WoW. But I hate the effect WoW had on our genre. It used to be that developers were satisfied as long as they had a good enough population to fill their little online world. 100,000 people total playing was more than enough. The developers spent more time focusing on making the world and keeping the players happy. And we as players had tighter communities where we actually sought each other out just to have fun together, instead of just to get that one difficult quest and then go back to solo. We had fun together, joked and chatted, explored just for the sake of exploring. Then WoW hit. Suddenly, you needed several million players to be considered a success. You needed the potential of several million players to even get funding. So obviously, you had to be like WoW. Or so the devs thought ( and think ). No more tight knit communities, no more exploring just to explore. Just wave after wave of easy mode quests so the FPS, console, and twenty minutes a day average Joe can have what they want immediately. Being reduced to "noob" status if we want to enjoy the scenery instead of joining the millionth scheduled raid for that +1 epic sword of e-peen. No more devs making worlds strictly the way they wanted, and being happy when a 100k of us decided we liked it there. Now the games have to be made casual friendly or die. No more "worlds", no more "rpg". Just online games.
I read what you say and agree with most of it. However I just don't think that WoW is responsible for how the genre developes in the future. It is just the highest visibile way to success and has been that way since Everquest.
Everyone looks at WoWs success and it has been huge. However, any developer could have cracked that door open had they made the right product. Verrant did it with Everquest and brought in over half a million people to a type of game that was mostly unheard of. Ask yourself why almost no one has done better since that time and then look at the gamelist to the left. Almost 10 years later and an Everquest clone is the most popular game on the market?
Any company could have made the MMO equivalent of doom or simcity, but they didn't. Instead the MMO market was pounded with low quality terrible games that were cranked out as fast as possible to try to earn a buck on what was considered a booming new market. The money craze was already happening before WoW.
Ask yourself this. How many SWG clones do you think we will see? How many clones of Vanguard, Dark and Light, Sims online, PoTBS, Tabula Rasa, EQ2, Planetside, Horizens, Mythica, UO2, Gods & Heroes, etc do you think we will see? Why would any rational company follow the footsteps laid down by any of those games? Would you invest your money into the development of one of those games?
I don't blame Blizzards success for the state of the MMO industry, I blame the many other companies that have failed to make engaging alternatives. Looking at the long list of failures, where is the incentive to do anything other than yet another EQ clone with some modernizations?
What does it say about the state of MMOs when one game is so overwhelmingly popular above every single other game out? One game should not be this dominant.
Here we are coming up on 4 years post WoW and what has any other company done to broaden the market? How long can we blame the failures of so many companies on the success of just one?
Why do so many people that visit MMORPG.com dislike WoW?
The question you should be asking yourself is why do so many people make it known they dislike WoW?
I don't give my opinion on games I don't like to open forums. What's the point? To warn others? Of what? My opinion? Isn't it best if they play the game and decide for themselves if they like it? I don't think that's providing a service.
The best advice you can give someone is to try the free demo. Almost all MMO's have them. You can usually tell in the first couple hours of playing a game whether you like it or not. You don't need someone else to give you their opinion on the game. If you just don't want to waste your time trying the demo, then go read a few reviews of the game from people who get paid to do that. They are paid to try to give unbiased opinions and have usually played enough to at least give an informed opinion which is more than I can say for 90% of the people on these forums.
It amazes me when people come to this forum and ask for opinions on WoW. What do they expect to hear? They are only going to get 2 types of opinions. Either fans of the game or haters. No one else comes to these forums....except Kyleran. I'm still not quite sure why he comes here If you want an unbiased opinion, I'd take his over just about anyone else.
Comments
I think some people touched on this ( im not 100% sure, im too drunk right now) but honestly WoW has taken the multiplayer out of MMO. EVERYTHING can be done solo in the game. (leveling, getting gear, pvp, grinding, etc) to all people that played MMORPG's before WoW, we know that you mostly had to group to level, grinding was an asset to leveling and PvP had a goal and/or purpose (at least for my DAoC and UO buddies)
On the other-hand, WoW makes everything like a single player RPG. you are the hero and only you can do everything (apparently). The only difference is that in single player RPG's u still needed a group to get the job done (regardless if u controlled their actions or not). In my opinion a game (especially a multiplayer game) needs to be an interaction with other people, at least helping others to accomplish a common goal, and for pvp, working together against another group to compete.
And this is why i hate WoW, not because its mainsteam or because it took other ideas and made them popular, it is simply a single player game dressed up in an online outfit. I'd rather play The Witcher or Mass Effect, atleast i dont have to waste $15 a month to replay it.
Protip: If someone does NOT list at least one positive and one negative about the game they are critiquing, its best to ignore the post.
im in the "bored with it" crowd as well. honestly when i hear that people have been playing it for years i just think "how"??!! i couldnt play anything for years. i played wow longer than ive ever played any video game. wow was the first mmo i had ever played, althouhg i had played almost every pen and paper rpg ever. a freind gave me a trial and when i got to lvl 20 loooong b4 the trila ran out i was hooked, but after 2 70s and a slew of lvl 30+ toons i cant do another quest in azeroth...yawn. what really made me stop playing though was all the dumb, rude people, most of whome i assumed where 12 or so. i was bored with the game and then the people just made it so that i couldnt take it anymore. i dont hate the game though and i actually hope that by the time LK comes out i feel like playing agian, but i probly wont, at this moment i have zero interest.
i found a free game i like so ill stick with that for now
maybe until champions comes out or they make a sci-fi game thats good. thats my prob with the mmo genre in general and is a constant turn off for me, y does almost every game have to be fantasy based?
Really?
Gosh-darn, sarge, imagine that.
And here I thought I was a member of the MMO community. After all, I've played:
Everquest
Everquest 2
Earth & Beyond
Anarchy Online
Acheron's Call
Acheron's Call 2
Dark Age of Camelot
Star Wars Galaxies
City of Heroes/Villains
Matrix Online
World of Warcraft
Lord of the Rings Online (at least some of the trial)
. . . and just resubbed to World of Warcraft.
But, hey, that must make me a member of the "WoW Community".
*moron*
yes and everyone is you, of course there are people in between, but you can make a poll on here, and ask how many people like both WoW and other mmos, if the majority of people agree with you then i stand corrected
yes and everyone is you, of course there are people in between, but you can make a poll on here, and ask how many people like both WoW and other mmos, if the majority of people agree with you then i stand corrected
I like WoW, and I'm also a MMO vet. There are a lot of very experienced MMO gamers playing WoW. I've played nearly every graphical MMO that has come out since UO, and before UO I was playing MUDs. Let's face it, WoW is 'the' PvE raiding game out there at the moment and this is what draws in many of the old school gamers, raids are the most important aspect of MMOs for me personally.
In terms of the WoW community. My guild has an average age of over 25, and the people I associate with within the game are much more refined and articulate than the majority of the posters on these boards.
''Hello my name is X and I like playing MMORPGs'' -''Oh, so is your main on Horde or Alliance?''
That's the reason I dislike World of Warcraft. People take it as THE MMORPG and instantly assume, that if you play MMORPG you are playing World of Warcraft.
Back when the game came out most of the bashers were calling it the greatest thing on god green earth...now that it is the big dog they bash it for being successful. People hate success.
I love this post.
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? ~Ernest Gaines
Look a whole post about hating success.
Answering OP's Question:
Because it's a direct example of the mindless extravaganza MMORPGs are to become. WoW offers NOTHING new to mmorpgs, and yet has such a large subscription base.
This says to people that WoW is a direct threat to innovation and creation in MMOs
you assume that the masses that actually support games want innovation
Bad PvP (4BG+arena) and no Oceanic based servers was reason I quit.
Other than that, wow is a pretty good PvE game. The quest system does not seem like a grind like someone else said, it was actually refreshing to me. The graphics and animations are pretty good. Only PvE problem is of course its all item grind then they wipe hard work with expansion and item grind again. But I guess something needs to keep people playing.
I think a lot of the ex-wow players I know feel that it's just one item threadmill after another and kind of see no more point to it.
My guess is that WoW is a significantly younger population than the population of MMORPG.com. Just a hunch, because I notice that most people here seem to talk about older games like EQ and UO a lot which would age them a bit. I doubt most WoW players could relate to those games. Just a guess.
I believe the answer is even more simple than others have suggested. WoW fans hang out on the Blizzard forums. As you can imagine, there is substantially more useful information there about WoW. Here, there might be 2-3 topics a day posted in the WoW sub-forum. On the Blizzard general WoW forum a topic can easily get pushed off the first page in a matter of minutes - there's really no comparison to the activity.
I think it's fair to say that most people (not all) posting in this forum aren't active WoW subscribers. And since they aren't, they probably have a reason - and that often has to do with not liking the game. The WoW fans that are visiting this site are likely here to look at other games so they spend their time in other forums and aren't even bothering with this one.
I'm back to playing WoW again, and I have an extensive list of MMOs on my resume. So, WoW wasn't my first MMO, EQ was and it still remains my favorite MMO of all time, but I think WoW is a better game if that makes sense. A few of the creators of WoW, Rob Pardo and Jeff Kaplan were both ex-EQ guildmates, I believe they were in the guild <Legacy of Steel>. So, they looked at all of the annoyances of EQ and made sure that they were not a part of WoW.
This site is filled with a lot of juvenile kids that hate anything that is mainstream, so to them its more of a rebellion thing I think. If not for WoW most of them wouldn't even know what an MMO was let alone have ever played one.
People that complain about WoW being gear dependent are right, but what is the alternative? A game like AoC where level 40 items have the same look and stats as a level 10 item? The more time people put into the game the better gear they get, I'm ok with that.
Every time I play a new MMO it reminds me of how good WoW is, the fact that you can travel from end of a continent to the other without hitting a zone makes the world feel very open. I HATE constant zoning, talk about an immersion killer. The WoW UI is so smooth and responsive. In NO other MMO have I been able to perform the turn-around-jump shot with a Ranger class like I have been able to do in WoW with my Hunter. A fully robust and working auction house, a mail system, etc. - this stuff all worked out of the box, unlike some games like AoC and Tab Rasa. They're silly and simple minded features, but it speaks volumes about the extra attention to detail that Blizzard displays.
People bitch about the grind, I'm not sure how they want Blizzard to provide leveling progression? Tossing water balloons?
After playing a turd like AoC I have more appreciation for WoW, sure the game is looking old, I used to defend the graphics but the game will be 4 years old soon and it is really showing its age in the graphics department but what other game out there allows 40 on 40 pvp BG battles, with spells going off, people fighting with no severe frame rate impact? Try doing that with a modern MMO and the game will turn into a slideshow.
I enjoy PVP in WoW, moreso then any other form of PVP I've ever played in any other MMO, well maybe AO because they had the level restrictions which made ganking difficult. But I love BGs. I've learned more about my class, my skills and other classes playing PVP then years of PVE raiding.
Is it perfect, no - and for all of the WoW haters show me what you are playing that is so much better? Blizzard is not an innovator, they take a game design and polish the hell out of it till it shines - I've played every Blizzard game and every one of them have been fun and addicting. Blizzard stays true to their fans, they don't release garbage, they trashed GHOST because it wasn't meeting up to their standards, they trashed Warcraft Clan Adventures because it wasn't progressing - this is a lot of money to flush down the toilet even for Blizzard, who at the time had no WoW cash-cow to rely on. For crying out loud they're still patching Starcraft and Diablo!!!!!!!!!! Lets see EA support a 10-year old game.
Blizzard is a rare company today, a company that exists among the corporate blood suckers like EA. At Blizzard the mantra is "games for gamers by gamers". At EA its "make games that make money, regardless if they're good".
I'm sorry, hate all I want, I've met these guys, they're awesome and I love Blizzard and I love WoW.
I found WoW to be ok. I had fun for a while, off and on, but to me, it was a lesser version of EQ. I certainly had more fun in EQ and DAoC. It was more consuming. I even went back to those 2 games after I quit WoW about the time of TBC expansion and had a blast. I've played many others and WoW doesn't really top the list.
By no means do I hate the game though. If someone finds it fun, and wants to keep playing, then that is great. Oh and about the comment earlier about having to start all over getting new gear, haha. That is the point. If you have all the best gear and beat all the dungeons, what point would there be to continue playing? The answer is more zones, more levels, new gear if you have a PvE centered game. Games like DAoC and upcoming WAR focus on the RvR, which I find a bit more dynamic, but I still had fun in the whole EQ model of epic zones and raids and such.
I'm about to give Vanguard another shot since I last played it in beta. It only cost me $6.00 for a new copy, so can't go wrong. Hope all the good pr lately on it is half true, hehe. Should hold me over until WAR.
Oh, back to the OP, I've noticed lately it is popular to hate, whether is is games, politics, etc. Just see so many things people can't help but hating.
because wow has changed what mmo's are. no longer are there sandbox games that let you carve out your own name in the world, nowadays all mmo's are level and gear grinds, and this negates the sense of community because everyone is too busy leveling.
because wow has changed what mmo's are. no longer are there sandbox games that let you carve out your own name in the world, nowadays all mmo's are level and gear grinds, and this negates the sense of community because everyone is too busy leveling.
Well finding this post saved me a lot of work. Sums it up perfectly.
WOW by itself wasn't a bad game, I had a good time when I played it. But its success lead to so may copycats of their level grinding formula I think the game is more despised for what it did the the genre than on its actual gameplay.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This post is spot on! For those who joined WoW late or are a more casual gamer, you will just never understand how Blizzard screwed many players over starting with TBC. That is OK, but please don't make up reasons why people don't like WoW when the above post nails 90% of the reason.
You need look no further than all the people bashing vnguard, AOC, etc. to see the negaitve effect of WoW neophytes n the genre.
On the flipside, as these gamers mature and realize that WoW wasn't the only MMO ever made, things are only going to improve for all MMO's. WoW is a well made game and extremely popular, but one needs to realize as more and more people get wired and internet savvy, that the MMORPG market was/is headed for heavy expansion anyways.
I hate WoW because it's boring and the graphics suck.
That is all.
-----Zero Punctuation Eve Online Review-----
I don't hate WoW.
But I hate the effect WoW had on our genre.
It used to be that developers were satisfied as long as they had a good enough population to fill their little online world. 100,000 people total playing was more than enough. The developers spent more time focusing on making the world and keeping the players happy. And we as players had tighter communities where we actually sought each other out just to have fun together, instead of just to get that one difficult quest and then go back to solo. We had fun together, joked and chatted, explored just for the sake of exploring.
Then WoW hit.
Suddenly, you needed several million players to be considered a success. You needed the potential of several million players to even get funding. So obviously, you had to be like WoW. Or so the devs thought ( and think ).
No more tight knit communities, no more exploring just to explore. Just wave after wave of easy mode quests so the FPS, console, and twenty minutes a day average Joe can have what they want immediately. Being reduced to "noob" status if we want to enjoy the scenery instead of joining the millionth scheduled raid for that +1 epic sword of e-peen.
No more devs making worlds strictly the way they wanted, and being happy when a 100k of us decided we liked it there. Now the games have to be made casual friendly or die. No more "worlds", no more "rpg". Just online games.
You are right even though you don't want to be: MMOs need to be made more casual friendly to survive. And WoW wasn't the first to do this. City of Heroes launched in April 2004 and was, and is, extremely casual friendly.
Read development interviews. Attend the gaming conventions. Any developer will tell you that the days of the EQ1 time-sink grinds are over. The majority of the subscriber base is casual players . . . people with careers, kids, real-life events, and such that don't log-in for hours on end.
All WoW did was copy what was already there. They didn't invent a damned thing. Their marketing, company history, and the popularity of the Warcraft line did the rest to WoW overnight.
I don't think WoW is the perfect game. I like many of the system aspects in LoTRO, just not the setting (I'm not a great Tolkein fan). I love the character-customization in City of Heroes. I like the ship combat, and the PC to PC crew aspect, in Pirates of the Caribbean Online. I liked the player-city aspect in the original SWG. The seige aspect in AoC sounds interesting.
What developers need to do is create a vision and STICK WITH IT. This is a major failing of Pirates of the Burning Sea, for example. It destroyed SWG, too.
Copying WoW is just copying the older games that WoW copied, and then made more player-friendly. It's been done, and it has its playerbase. Such companies will not take players away from WoW. Those players already have WoW, and their time investment in it, for that type of gameplay.
Yes, WoW changed industry expectations on sales. It made it more mainstream, and that is an inevitable result. It's up to other development companies to now step-up to the plate and create a game vision, a product, and stick with it for once.
Until that happens, WoW will continue to be the domnating factor.
Right now, I look at the MMO list to my left and I see 90% crap. And that isn't comparing it to WoW, that is taking it for its own merits and flaws.
I might have played AoC, if my comp could have handled it. But, I'm not upgrading a comp that does more than I need for work and daily living just for one MMO.
I do play CoH. Matter of fact, my limited game time will usually go between that or WoW. Why? Because I don't have to play for hours or hours to do anything. Whether it is quest/level or RP.
But take a look at that list and then ask yourself why WoW is so popular. And then take a look at the Games in Development List and ask yourself that same thing.
The graphic look good in WoW for such a dated game I feel. They struck a good balance between catering to everyone's comp and graphics.
UI elements and responsivity in an MMO is so far unpararelled. It makes you feel more connected with your character. As a company Blizz has always delivered on their games in gameplay aspects.
However the PvP although sufficient for you leaves much to be desired. I mean years of development to come up with 4 BGs and arena? It may be enough for some people but to me it was sorely lacking. After coming from DAOC with massive scale combats most of the time it seemed like WOW lost the "massive" out of MMO for PvP. Although so far no game has got PvP content right. PvP content should come out just as fast as PvE content.
Killing world PvP and causing everything to be bottled into arena and bgs was bad. Although world pvp was never much good anyways cept as a form of distraction cos there was really no point to it except some fun.
Now besides BGs and arenas for rewards (item oriented) it seems repetitive and somewhat stale. PvP in wow is really a remote afterthought in a PvE centric game. Some of the PvErs who never experienced real PvP or never liked it would like wow carebear PvP mechanics, but I find the goal-oriented (not item oriented) PvP which is integral to the plot sadly missing.
Another thing is although most US based players don't care Oceanic based servers are in the works for WAR, which is really nice. Having to PvP with 600ms ping really sucks. We've petitioned bliz to do it for years but they kept saying it was impossible. Now WAR proved them wrong.
Lastly, a lot of people have really biased views with arguments scaled one way or the other. All positive or all negative. You can't have liked every single aspect of WOW, just because it's not perfect and no game can be. just like it had many good things going for it so you can't disregard those entirely.
Right now there don't seem to be enough good choices in good MMOs to satisfy the great variety of players. The fantasy based PvPers especially.
I think overall people (myself included) are afraid of the next generation of MMOs being WoW clones.
That's my biggest fear. WoW is just so spoonfed and terrible endgame. I don't want to see nothing but a bunch of clones on the shelves and that looks like where we're heading.
Truth be told WoW is a good game for everyone, but chances are there's a better MMO out there for each of us.
Reasons I quit: controled pvp, lack of endgame, cloned characters everywhere, and battlegrounds/arenas taking over the game. And of course Blizzard trying to make a terribly balanced game an E-Sport.
I personally just want WoW to disappear and will celebrate the day it does. And more innovative games will come to the table.
WoW fanboi: "lolz 11.5 million customers, itz obviously da best"
McDonald's: over 1 billion burgers served
I read what you say and agree with most of it. However I just don't think that WoW is responsible for how the genre developes in the future. It is just the highest visibile way to success and has been that way since Everquest.
Everyone looks at WoWs success and it has been huge. However, any developer could have cracked that door open had they made the right product. Verrant did it with Everquest and brought in over half a million people to a type of game that was mostly unheard of. Ask yourself why almost no one has done better since that time and then look at the gamelist to the left. Almost 10 years later and an Everquest clone is the most popular game on the market?
Any company could have made the MMO equivalent of doom or simcity, but they didn't. Instead the MMO market was pounded with low quality terrible games that were cranked out as fast as possible to try to earn a buck on what was considered a booming new market. The money craze was already happening before WoW.
Ask yourself this. How many SWG clones do you think we will see? How many clones of Vanguard, Dark and Light, Sims online, PoTBS, Tabula Rasa, EQ2, Planetside, Horizens, Mythica, UO2, Gods & Heroes, etc do you think we will see? Why would any rational company follow the footsteps laid down by any of those games? Would you invest your money into the development of one of those games?
I don't blame Blizzards success for the state of the MMO industry, I blame the many other companies that have failed to make engaging alternatives. Looking at the long list of failures, where is the incentive to do anything other than yet another EQ clone with some modernizations?
What does it say about the state of MMOs when one game is so overwhelmingly popular above every single other game out? One game should not be this dominant.
Here we are coming up on 4 years post WoW and what has any other company done to broaden the market? How long can we blame the failures of so many companies on the success of just one?
The question you should be asking yourself is why do so many people make it known they dislike WoW?
I don't give my opinion on games I don't like to open forums. What's the point? To warn others? Of what? My opinion? Isn't it best if they play the game and decide for themselves if they like it? I don't think that's providing a service.
The best advice you can give someone is to try the free demo. Almost all MMO's have them. You can usually tell in the first couple hours of playing a game whether you like it or not. You don't need someone else to give you their opinion on the game. If you just don't want to waste your time trying the demo, then go read a few reviews of the game from people who get paid to do that. They are paid to try to give unbiased opinions and have usually played enough to at least give an informed opinion which is more than I can say for 90% of the people on these forums.
It amazes me when people come to this forum and ask for opinions on WoW. What do they expect to hear? They are only going to get 2 types of opinions. Either fans of the game or haters. No one else comes to these forums....except Kyleran. I'm still not quite sure why he comes here
If you want an unbiased opinion, I'd take his over just about anyone else.