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
I would say that it is so "great" because it was the first major MMOG to be accesible to a large number of people. Previous games had difficult learning curves, huge time sinks and high computer specs which kept most of the non-diehard gamers away from the genre even if they did want to try it. WoW came around and gave you a game that you could log on for a hour and do something on your low end machine.
Things like advertising, and word of mouth have a lot to do with it also. When you have TV commercials, shows about the game, and celebrities saying they play it, that helps a boat load I imagine. WoW has had more advertising than any MMO in existence, I think. There's also the fact that the company already had a huge fan-base before WoW's release. It's really not the greatest game, but it's also not bad, I think advertising has the most to do with the large sub numbers.
WAR did the same thing and look how that turned out. So I cant really agree on this. In the start of WoW there was not much comercials about it. The adverts came after like 3 years. By then WoW already had lots of subscribers.
But the reason so many play it is that its an easy game to get into, and when you get more advanced there is alot to do also. Even the endgame and content of WoW is very big.
Hmmm, I didn't even know there were WAR TV commercials, they must not have been on many networks, or just flat out sucked/not memorable, so then, being not worth showing. Which celebrities have said they played it? As in, fairly recognizable celebrities. TV shows about he game? Never seen 'em again.
WOW did a lot of things right, the biggest being just 'polish'. Everything in WOW is done well.
I think the one thing that WOW did right was make the 'grind' at the end rather than the beginning. In most games, you feel like you are 'working' to get to endgame. There is a huge grind to gain levels or skills. In WOW, the leveling process is excellent and very fun, the 'grind' comes at endgame if you chose to raid.
I've been playing since launch. The reason is because it is fun. it's hard to define 'fun', but I just really enjoy myself whenever I play. I can't say that about any other MMORPG out there. Most of them felt like work for a good portion of my playtime.
I play WoW, mostly because my friends play WoW, but I am coming to love this game. Why? Because it just keeps getting better with time. When other games keep trying to get better, WoW does it. The additions to the game and the way a lot of it plays just cannot be beat. Add to the fact that the game is so polished, from the art to the animations to the quest. Look at the details Blizzard puts in. Seriously...next time you play, pay close attention to all the little details. It is that kind of thing that makes WoW better than all the others out there right now. Face it, when a P2P game has as many and more than most f2p games - that game is obviously doing a lot right. Blizzard does things right and WoW just keeps getting better and better.
Damn imagine what their next MMORPG is going to be like. OMG I cannot wait to see what they will unleash on this genre next.
Originally posted by Mwaji Not to mention if you get used to wow and then want to play something else you will be sorry to find out the skill gap is rather high, you cant button smash through Eve online like you can on WoW. So it's better not to get used to it. WoW started off good a fun game with decent pvp balance and the raids were hard enough to make the game credible. But NOW the game is custom crafted for bored housewives, Dads and their 12 year old kids to play, not the serious gamer, not even the half serious casual wants to touch this poison. If you start playing now your ice skating uphill.
Was enjoying your post until you wrote that piece of crap.
I'm bored to death of WoW myself, and I do feel it’s just a bit too easy at the moment indeed. Plus, you feel somewhat alone when you want to level something from start.
But the worst is people like the author, who have zero tolerance for newcomers or for people that enjoy a simple and casual game style.
Still even after all this years wow is fun if you get a group of friends playing. With a bit of imagination, a good and open minded group can still find fun and challenge in wow.
Of course, end game is both the most and the less fun. Even being so "easy", "Dads" have some difficulty getting time to achieve everything in game, as it becomes almost "professional" for most end-game guilds...
But hey, I guess I’m just a dumb gamer so what do I know...
PS - I played WoW for years and still i can be on the top charters of the so called skill based action games... Strange...
I say it ONE more time for those not READING WELL : Wow is not only popular. Wow is the most succesful game in revenus in 30 years of video game history. THAT'S a complete other meaning of being "popular". Wow is the ONLY PAY to PLAY game on www.xfire.com in the top 10. NO other game that COSTS a monthly western sub fee can even come CLOSE to World of Warcraft. YES it is THAT good. It has NOTHING to do with being popualr, it has ALL to do with people willing to PAY it to even PLAY it ... every month. It has nothing to do with marketing, people WANT to PAY to play it on and on and on.... ----> The pockets of people NEVER lie. People always vote with their pockets. And in WOW they do vote every month 10 to 100 times more than the so called "competition".
It generates the most revenue because its so popular, that sort of makes perfect sense. I think most of us get that message and would not deny that WOW makes the most money.
But countless examples have been used to show that the masses don't always buy what is best, just what is more popular and sometimes advertising plays a huge part in shaping their tastes, WOW is no exception to this phenomenon.
There's lots of reasons for its popularity of course, and it does many things well, (not great mind you, at least to my tastes) and it has lots of followers.
By why post this in the first place? OP asked why WOW was so great, and its revenue streams and popularity really aren't part of the answer, unless of course being part of the crowd is an important factor to the player. (for some it is, I realize)
WOW is polished, had great depth of play, is updated regularly, you can always find someone in RL who's playing the game (my son's friend just got the game for his birthday and is playing for the first time) and a dozen other reasons that make it a great game.
But it also has a number of aspects that make it not the game for me and some others, and we're going to go play the other games that come out that are not WOW.
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
WoW can be played by those who don't like a challenge. Unlike back during original WoW where you actually had to EARN your way into endgame. Early on in WoW and into BC there was actually time spent doing a ton of attunements after the lvl cap, just so you could raid. WoW was great back then...now its slowly starting to slide downhill. I though BC was great (some thought it was crap) well after lvling to 80 in WotLK and raiding all the content out there BC and original WoW was how the game was good. but even BC started the slide of WoW.
Enter Arenas and resilience......the two things that RUINED WoW. it unbalanced open world PvP because someone running around in PvP gear could go up to someone out in the world in top PvE gear and beat them just because they had reslience. Then, what do you think all the class changes are for that have popped up lately??? It's for arena purposes, go read a blue post sometime. Blizz tries to balance classes so there is no challenge to PvP, when really they need to look at it as....there should be no balance, some classes need to be better at, and more powerful at certain things than other classes. Yet, they always wanna nerf a class based on PvP numbers at the expense of the damge or healing they do PvE wise.
Original WoW had the best idea for PvP back then.....it was something you did in your spare time or on the weekends when u weren't raiding and the PvP gear only had increased stam,no resil, and your raiding gear was the best for PvP because it was a break from the once great PvE WoW offered. When the bubble bursts on WoW (probably after Icecrown Citadel comes out and is cleared, because most of the known lore is already in the game) PvP will be the only thing left standing in the game. I would avoid this game at all costs now, but if you just wanna be casual player stay! because patch 3.2 will take away all prestige in getting gear and all challenge will leave the game.
"you know that whole 'we come in peace business.' Bite me!"
I say it ONE more time for those not READING WELL : Wow is not only popular. Wow is the most succesful game in revenus in 30 years of video game history. THAT'S a complete other meaning of being "popular". Wow is the ONLY PAY to PLAY game on www.xfire.com in the top 10. NO other game that COSTS a monthly western sub fee can even come CLOSE to World of Warcraft. YES it is THAT good. It has NOTHING to do with being popualr, it has ALL to do with people willing to PAY it to even PLAY it ... every month. It has nothing to do with marketing, people WANT to PAY to play it on and on and on.... ----> The pockets of people NEVER lie. People always vote with their pockets. And in WOW they do vote every month 10 to 100 times more than the so called "competition".
It generates the most revenue because its so popular, that sort of makes perfect sense. I think most of us get that message and would not deny that WOW makes the most money.
But countless examples have been used to show that the masses don't always buy what is best, just what is more popular and sometimes advertising plays a huge part in shaping their tastes, WOW is no exception to this phenomenon.
There's lots of reasons for its popularity of course, and it does many things well, (not great mind you, at least to my tastes) and it has lots of followers.
By why post this in the first place? OP asked why WOW was so great, and its revenue streams and popularity really aren't part of the answer, unless of course being part of the crowd is an important factor to the player. (for some it is, I realize)
WOW is polished, had great depth of play, is updated regularly, you can always find someone in RL who's playing the game (my son's friend just got the game for his birthday and is playing for the first time) and a dozen other reasons that make it a great game.
But it also has a number of aspects that make it not the game for me and some others, and we're going to go play the other games that come out that are not WOW.
Popularity is FREE. Phenomenal subscription based succes AND critical acclaim (see the pro reviews) are ... not..
Like I said: YOU don't HAVE to agree with the people. The people vote with their monthly subs money of what THEY think is best.
-----<<<< Answer to your question >>>>>
Popualrity is one thing, initial sales is another, but continuous economic succes ... after 5 years for a single video game is the general answer to the question of the OP.
Why is Wow so great? Because it is the single most succesful video game ever launched (not just "popular").
Whatever your personal love/hate cycle is at the moment. The monthly pockets of the people always tell the true story.
What I find is the people with the highest posts are all WoW followers. Do you need to post so many times repeating yourself over and over to convince people? or yourself.
Yes this game is great, yes its polished, the patches ruined it for me but hey, w/e people like.
I hate grinding for gear every week then having to do it all over again in 3 months. I mean come on I grinded all the way up to 80, grinded my rep, grnded my proffessions, grinded and grinded somemore.
You may think this is fun and new and exciting I don't. Many agree with you, many leave and come back just for updates and leave shortly after. This game is solid and in all honesty the best ther is, but why do you post in every thread either praising or defending WoW? Can you not let anything go? Is your life this disappointing that your joy comes from playing or praising or even defending a game?
WoW has 12m sub, so what? That just means its popular. There are games with more then 12m players in China, so what? Those 12m do not read English, they won't play WoW. Half of the WoW sub don't know Chinese. They will never cross path. Different games are popular to diffferent cultures and places. Chess and pokers have even more players. Wanna bet?
WoW has generated a lot of revenue. So what, same for Coke, same for McDonald. So are these healthy food?
WoW has topped the sales chart. So what? Paris Hilton did that too.
WoW has entertained a lot of people. Right, that is the answer we should care for: fun for those who played. That is a game.
Is WoW great? Does it matter? It keeps me happy during the hour or so I am online. That is it, it served its purpose. When I log out of WoW I forget it. Its just a game, for off hours. There are many things to deal with outside off hours, WoW is not one.
I say it ONE more time for those not READING WELL : Wow is not only popular. Wow is the most succesful game in revenus in 30 years of video game history. THAT'S a complete other meaning of being "popular". Wow is the ONLY PAY to PLAY game on www.xfire.com in the top 10. NO other game that COSTS a monthly western sub fee can even come CLOSE to World of Warcraft. YES it is THAT good. It has NOTHING to do with being popualr, it has ALL to do with people willing to PAY it to even PLAY it ... every month. It has nothing to do with marketing, people WANT to PAY to play it on and on and on.... ----> The pockets of people NEVER lie. People always vote with their pockets. And in WOW they do vote every month 10 to 100 times more than the so called "competition".
It generates the most revenue because its so popular, that sort of makes perfect sense. I think most of us get that message and would not deny that WOW makes the most money.
But countless examples have been used to show that the masses don't always buy what is best, just what is more popular and sometimes advertising plays a huge part in shaping their tastes, WOW is no exception to this phenomenon.
There's lots of reasons for its popularity of course, and it does many things well, (not great mind you, at least to my tastes) and it has lots of followers.
By why post this in the first place? OP asked why WOW was so great, and its revenue streams and popularity really aren't part of the answer, unless of course being part of the crowd is an important factor to the player. (for some it is, I realize)
WOW is polished, had great depth of play, is updated regularly, you can always find someone in RL who's playing the game (my son's friend just got the game for his birthday and is playing for the first time) and a dozen other reasons that make it a great game.
But it also has a number of aspects that make it not the game for me and some others, and we're going to go play the other games that come out that are not WOW.
Popularity is FREE. Phenomenal subscription based succes AND critical acclaim (see the pro reviews) are ... not..
Like I said: YOU don't HAVE to agree with the people. The people vote with their monthly subs money of what THEY think is best.
-----<<<< Answer to your question >>>>>
Popualrity is one thing, initial sales is another, but continuous economic succes ... after 5 years for a single video game is the general answer to the question of the OP.
Why is Wow so great? Because it is the single most succesful video game ever launched (not just "popular").
Whatever your personal love/hate cycle is at the moment. The monthly pockets of the people always tell the true story.
What I find is the people with the highest posts are all WoW followers. Do you need to post so many times repeating yourself over and over to convince people? or yourself.
Yes this game is great, yes its polished, the patches ruined it for me but hey, w/e people like.
I hate grinding for gear every week then having to do it all over again in 3 months. I mean come on I grinded all the way up to 80, grinded my rep, grnded my proffessions, grinded and grinded somemore.
You may think this is fun and new and exciting I don't. Many agree with you, many leave and come back just for updates and leave shortly after. This game is solid and in all honesty the best ther is, but why do you post in every thread either praising or defending WoW? Can you not let anything go? Is your life this disappointing that your joy comes from playing or praising or even defending a game?
WoW is right lol
Didnt start to post on this forum until a few days ago but have been around to read peoples post for quite some time and from what I can see its mostly the people who want promote whatever favorite MMO they have that has to discredit WoW for some reason, guessing its because its the biggest MMO out there so only natural but still.
Fun to see how everyone is bashing everyone but dont see that many that simple praise WoW as i see people bashing it in the name of making whatever MMO they like look better.=)
Kinda think this thread has gone quite of topic, dont really know what the subs and revanues has to do with if WoW is great or not, aside from the point that a great game gets subs.
Playing: CO, C&C and WoW. Played: Tabula Rasa, AoC, War, Aion. Regret Playing: Hellgate: London, EVE.
The only reason you think WWO has 6 million subs is because China is (or was) off-line. It is that simple. And until the China servers are completely back online and subs can be calculated again, nobody really knows how many players WOW does or does not have. No doubt WOW will lose some subs and for various reasons but the exact number is unknown. At some point, since December when the 11.5 million number was reported (press releases confirm it and are easy to find), and in June, WOW grew to 11.6 million subs. The Guinness Book of World Records confirmed this when the award was received in June. Link is here: http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-06-08/20090608030537350.shtml According to you, ~5.5 million players have left WOW since December which is laughable at best.
It is still in beta Temp, you can argue they will come back I am not disputing that, I will argue there are NOT that many as of this moment, until they get servers back in working order you will NOT know.
I'm a diehard EQ fan, or was until EQ went to crap a few years ago. Anyways, I hated WOW when it first came out. It was boring, easy, and there was no pvp. Now, that WOW has matured I actually really enjoy it.
My favorite part is PvP. I love the BGs. I can't wait until you can level in the BGs, ala WAR. I find leveling to be tediious, unreasonably long, and still far to easy to be of any use. If you can tolerate the boring grind to 80(I keep a toon at 39 to bg with to combat the boredom) its excellent.
like player housing or city sieges......gimme a break. Its popular because it doesn't require a powerful computer to play.
I agree with what your saying that WoW is only popular because it doesn't require a powerful high end computer to run, but it isn't the whole reason for it's popularity.
Zorndorf is here to put you all back with your feet on the ground. I am almost the only one here giving facts and general comments about "success" without resorting to PERSONAL frustration and feelings ... towards a game. I look into the broader picture and see the economic drive. The guys talking about very personal emotions about playing ... a game are the ones that lost the ground under their feet. And for some of them ... it takes years to overcome a hate about a game. I merely talk about stats, subs numbers and overall succes rate. Not about personal feelings about a game.
I have been reading the forums at this site for many years, but i never cared enough to reply. However this time i will make an exception. Zorndorf if you truly believe that you put up with an generally uncolored view in your posts, i really feel sorry for you. I hardly ever during a decade of MMO playing and forum readings, experienced a more biased person.
I say it ONE more time for those not READING WELL : Wow is not only popular. Wow is the most succesful game in revenus in 30 years of video game history. THAT'S a complete other meaning of being "popular". Wow is the ONLY PAY to PLAY game on www.xfire.com in the top 10. NO other game that COSTS a monthly western sub fee can even come CLOSE to World of Warcraft. YES it is THAT good. It has NOTHING to do with being popualr, it has ALL to do with people willing to PAY it to even PLAY it ... every month. It has nothing to do with marketing, people WANT to PAY to play it on and on and on.... ----> The pockets of people NEVER lie. People always vote with their pockets. And in WOW they do vote every month 10 to 100 times more than the so called "competition".
It generates the most revenue because its so popular, that sort of makes perfect sense. I think most of us get that message and would not deny that WOW makes the most money.
But countless examples have been used to show that the masses don't always buy what is best, just what is more popular and sometimes advertising plays a huge part in shaping their tastes, WOW is no exception to this phenomenon.
There's lots of reasons for its popularity of course, and it does many things well, (not great mind you, at least to my tastes) and it has lots of followers.
By why post this in the first place? OP asked why WOW was so great, and its revenue streams and popularity really aren't part of the answer, unless of course being part of the crowd is an important factor to the player. (for some it is, I realize)
WOW is polished, had great depth of play, is updated regularly, you can always find someone in RL who's playing the game (my son's friend just got the game for his birthday and is playing for the first time) and a dozen other reasons that make it a great game.
But it also has a number of aspects that make it not the game for me and some others, and we're going to go play the other games that come out that are not WOW.
Saying WoW is "great" is like saying Walmart is "great".
Both are cheap (since you don't need to get a new top of the line PC to play).
Both are convenient and easy to use.
Both are the biggest in the world.
However both are full of unrestrained 10 year olds, people that make you feel much better about yourself when you encounter them and cheap watered down product/content.
One thing WoW did great at was bringing casual gamers to MMO's, as most original MMO players from past games were on the more hardcore side of the fence. Casual gamers make up the largest available market for WoW. They (for the most part) are an instant gratification group, that gets frustrated by real challenges. So while WoW is financially smart for catering to their biggest available fanbase and increasing their potential customers exponentially, they end up providing a polished but watered down product that provides brief (if any) satisfaction for the original MMO player fanbase. To maximize it's $$$, it's a jack of all trades and master of none. That is just the nature of trying to please the masses.
It's success is great. It's marketing is great. It's profitability is great. It's allure to casual gamers is great. However, its game play is far too shallow, repetitive and generic and the pvp system is far too atrocious to be considered great.
They're raking in the dough so I don't blame them, but success and greatness are not correlated. Pizza Hut is successful, but Uno's is great. N'SYNC was successful but Whitney Houston was great etc. etc.
Someone somewhere in the thread asked why a game "has to be great". I never said that it had to be but so many people play it that it's not odd to wonder why. I know not everything makes sense (I think a lot of fads/whatever don't make sense in hindsight) but I go to a tech school so gamers aren't uncommon. A guy I know plays WoW, I remember him talking about an expansion pack I think. This was about, hmm...a little less than a year ago? I dunno, he was waiting for something to come out/happen.
Anyways, he told me about how much the makers were pulling in a year (I forget what the figure was that he gave me but it was definitely no where near small) so I wondered what kept people playing. I mean, I've played quite a few games, some longer than others, some more than once. I have a fair idea of what pulls me in so I wondered what was attracting so many people to it for so long. I once watched a video of a kid whose mother had cancelled his WoW subscription after he hit like level 60 or something and he flipped, I think he tried to shove a remote control up his, ahem, butt... You just sit there watching like, "O_O" and wondering if it's real. XD
Wow is by FAR the MOST expensive game of them all. It is the ONLY game you have to PAY each month to even play in that absolute TOP 10.
--- WOW is also for the HARDCORE.
Proof for PVP? Try being the sole Deadly Gladiator in the ladder based system PvP game: Tx to clustered PvP servers: that simply means the best of 200.000 potential players. (20 clustered servers). That's MORE than any other fantasy mmorpg can even offer because of .... NO players.
Reading is your friend....I said the reason it's cheap is that you don't need to invest much in the way of hardware to play it. Any bargain pc for the last 10 years can play WoW. Most other games have higher PC requirements, making additional hardware investments required which = $$$. It's cheap for the consumer, which is why it's attractive to casual gamers, and non-gamers as they can play it with their existing rigs.
WoW is not for the hardcore. Any putz with 9 friends can clear the content in 10-man mode. That takes away much of the feeling of accomplishment for true hardcore players. They want to see what others not on their skill level can't see, not the same crap 4 times on different difficulty levels. Also, when content is cleared by top guilds the weekend it's released, it's not that hard. With such a casual customer base, of course only a small % will make it to the hardest of hard content, because the numbers are skewed by the overwhelmingly casual player base.
The pvp sucks. You don't have to be good at pvp to be able to go into an arena and do the same thing 1000 times over to earn points. Constant world pvp, constant risk, consistent challenge, and non-repeated non-garbage instanced pvp is quality pvp. WoW pvp is casual gamers pvp. It's predictable, it's repetitive, it's simple, it's gear and class absed not skill based, it's unbalanced, and it's boring. Hell in most BG's people don't even pvp, they just blitz the objectives to win.
The world pvp in original WoW was pretty good, but that's almost nonexistant anymore. Now the pvp has no substance.
Nothing you said points to WoW being a great game. Only successful.
I played WoW for a long time - release to about the middle of TBC. Saying it's not a good game and arguably the best of the themepark-style MMOs is a great disservice - I honestly think WoW is about the best you can do using the DIKU-style EQ model of MMOs, and I'm pretty sure Blizzard knows this too simply by the steps they've taken to try and minimize the stagnation that inevitably occurs over time in such games.
As a virtual world / sandbox WoW fails spectacularly. Again, Blizzard knows this, they're smart people. I fully expect Blizzard's new MMO to borrow heavily from MMOs that have enjoyed long-term, sustainable growth, such as EvE and even Second Life, and do the same voodoo magic to those mechanics which are currently exclusivly in the domain of the hardcore (and furries) they did to EQ and other DIKU-style MMOs and hopefully come up with the next 'big' thing. I've been a Blizzard fan since the days of the original Warcraft, if anyone can make an accessible, fun sandbox game that will have mass appeal it's Blizzard, and I doubt they'll want to make a WoW 2 since WoW fans will play WoW until they're tired of it, and I can say with certainty that once you've burned out on one themepark MMO you're pretty much done with all of 'em.
I don't play WoW anymore personally but I still enjoyed my time there and don't fault anyone who is just getting into MMOs who picks it up and disappears for a year or so :P.
Yes, but that is not in itself making Wow a great game. The polish is great of course and the art.
But the community is not that great and the difficulty don't work for me. I guess I would play it if it was the only MMO around but it just wont give me the gaming fix I need. I anin't playing a game until I get max level to get any kind of challenge. Also the graphics is outdated, Blizzard should have worked more to update it like SOE did to EQ2. Wow looked better 5 years ago but now EQ2 looks far better (well, the art can be discussed so I am talking general graphics, not how the models look).
But that is of course my personal opinion and everyone who enjoys the game should play it.
I myself had a lot more fun in GW, it was harder and faced paced. Still too many kids in it also who suddenly have to quit an instance because their mom told them...
Wow do have the most players and some really nice features but if it is the best MMO is just anyones opinion.
Out of the many reasons I could mention I picked 3.
Firstly Polish, no other game (other than LOtR) comes close. Everything just works. I find it amazing that a game like WoW, built for PvE, can handle 120 vs 120 open world PvP battles with ease, while a game build for PvP such as WAR creeps to a halt when I had more than 60 players on screen (and no, it's not my computer). It just shows how advanced the WoW engine is behind the pretty little graphics.
Secondly Combat. People spend 80% of their time fighting mobs/players, it's the single most important thing in the game. The control that WoW gives you over your character is second to none. It feels like a very well oiled component that works smoothly every time and makes combat fun. It amazes me that so many of the recent MMOs have had a terrible combat feeling, specially the PvP ones. It's something you take for granted in WoW.
Third, Content. For all races you pick (other than gnomes and trolls) you get a completly difference leveling experience up to around lvl20 ish, and then you have a choice of 3+ zones all the way to 60. Once there you can pick and chose where to level in Outlands and Northrend. Once you get to 80, you can do dungeons (12+ normal and Heroic), you can level your professions, you can enter fishing competitions, you can gather all the mini pets or mounts in the game, you have the best raiding content out in any game (again in normal and hardmodes), can can pvp (both battlegrounds, arenas, raiding enemy cities or open world pvp in Wintergrasp), you can go after unike achievements and titles, you can get reputations up to exaulted and so on and so forth. All of which has been polished to a better degree than in any other game.
These are just 3 points, I could go on but the post would get rather big.
Comments
WOW has a lot of fun aspects, kept me playing about 18 months when it first launched.
It has some seroius definciencies that become more and more intolerable as time went on which lead to me leaving for good just before TBC came out.
Game has changed al ot since then, however it just doesn't offer what I'm looking for in a game, so I stay clear.
And some folks (as evidenced by this thread) really feel the need to play a game that everyone else is playing.
Defintiely not a req that influences me at all.
"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
I would say that it is so "great" because it was the first major MMOG to be accesible to a large number of people. Previous games had difficult learning curves, huge time sinks and high computer specs which kept most of the non-diehard gamers away from the genre even if they did want to try it. WoW came around and gave you a game that you could log on for a hour and do something on your low end machine.
WAR did the same thing and look how that turned out. So I cant really agree on this. In the start of WoW there was not much comercials about it. The adverts came after like 3 years. By then WoW already had lots of subscribers.
But the reason so many play it is that its an easy game to get into, and when you get more advanced there is alot to do also. Even the endgame and content of WoW is very big.
Hmmm, I didn't even know there were WAR TV commercials, they must not have been on many networks, or just flat out sucked/not memorable, so then, being not worth showing. Which celebrities have said they played it? As in, fairly recognizable celebrities. TV shows about he game? Never seen 'em again.
WOW did a lot of things right, the biggest being just 'polish'. Everything in WOW is done well.
I think the one thing that WOW did right was make the 'grind' at the end rather than the beginning. In most games, you feel like you are 'working' to get to endgame. There is a huge grind to gain levels or skills. In WOW, the leveling process is excellent and very fun, the 'grind' comes at endgame if you chose to raid.
I've been playing since launch. The reason is because it is fun. it's hard to define 'fun', but I just really enjoy myself whenever I play. I can't say that about any other MMORPG out there. Most of them felt like work for a good portion of my playtime.
WOW is fun, which is why WOW is great.
I play WoW, mostly because my friends play WoW, but I am coming to love this game. Why? Because it just keeps getting better with time. When other games keep trying to get better, WoW does it. The additions to the game and the way a lot of it plays just cannot be beat. Add to the fact that the game is so polished, from the art to the animations to the quest. Look at the details Blizzard puts in. Seriously...next time you play, pay close attention to all the little details. It is that kind of thing that makes WoW better than all the others out there right now. Face it, when a P2P game has as many and more than most f2p games - that game is obviously doing a lot right. Blizzard does things right and WoW just keeps getting better and better.
Damn imagine what their next MMORPG is going to be like. OMG I cannot wait to see what they will unleash on this genre next.
Was enjoying your post until you wrote that piece of crap.
I'm bored to death of WoW myself, and I do feel it’s just a bit too easy at the moment indeed. Plus, you feel somewhat alone when you want to level something from start.
But the worst is people like the author, who have zero tolerance for newcomers or for people that enjoy a simple and casual game style.
Still even after all this years wow is fun if you get a group of friends playing. With a bit of imagination, a good and open minded group can still find fun and challenge in wow.
Of course, end game is both the most and the less fun. Even being so "easy", "Dads" have some difficulty getting time to achieve everything in game, as it becomes almost "professional" for most end-game guilds...
But hey, I guess I’m just a dumb gamer so what do I know...
PS - I played WoW for years and still i can be on the top charters of the so called skill based action games... Strange...
"Vidis Fodidis Est"
It generates the most revenue because its so popular, that sort of makes perfect sense. I think most of us get that message and would not deny that WOW makes the most money.
But countless examples have been used to show that the masses don't always buy what is best, just what is more popular and sometimes advertising plays a huge part in shaping their tastes, WOW is no exception to this phenomenon.
There's lots of reasons for its popularity of course, and it does many things well, (not great mind you, at least to my tastes) and it has lots of followers.
By why post this in the first place? OP asked why WOW was so great, and its revenue streams and popularity really aren't part of the answer, unless of course being part of the crowd is an important factor to the player. (for some it is, I realize)
WOW is polished, had great depth of play, is updated regularly, you can always find someone in RL who's playing the game (my son's friend just got the game for his birthday and is playing for the first time) and a dozen other reasons that make it a great game.
But it also has a number of aspects that make it not the game for me and some others, and we're going to go play the other games that come out that are not WOW.
"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
WoW can be played by those who don't like a challenge. Unlike back during original WoW where you actually had to EARN your way into endgame. Early on in WoW and into BC there was actually time spent doing a ton of attunements after the lvl cap, just so you could raid. WoW was great back then...now its slowly starting to slide downhill. I though BC was great (some thought it was crap) well after lvling to 80 in WotLK and raiding all the content out there BC and original WoW was how the game was good. but even BC started the slide of WoW.
Enter Arenas and resilience......the two things that RUINED WoW. it unbalanced open world PvP because someone running around in PvP gear could go up to someone out in the world in top PvE gear and beat them just because they had reslience. Then, what do you think all the class changes are for that have popped up lately??? It's for arena purposes, go read a blue post sometime. Blizz tries to balance classes so there is no challenge to PvP, when really they need to look at it as....there should be no balance, some classes need to be better at, and more powerful at certain things than other classes. Yet, they always wanna nerf a class based on PvP numbers at the expense of the damge or healing they do PvE wise.
Original WoW had the best idea for PvP back then.....it was something you did in your spare time or on the weekends when u weren't raiding and the PvP gear only had increased stam,no resil, and your raiding gear was the best for PvP because it was a break from the once great PvE WoW offered. When the bubble bursts on WoW (probably after Icecrown Citadel comes out and is cleared, because most of the known lore is already in the game) PvP will be the only thing left standing in the game. I would avoid this game at all costs now, but if you just wanna be casual player stay! because patch 3.2 will take away all prestige in getting gear and all challenge will leave the game.
"you know that whole 'we come in peace business.' Bite me!"
It generates the most revenue because its so popular, that sort of makes perfect sense. I think most of us get that message and would not deny that WOW makes the most money.
But countless examples have been used to show that the masses don't always buy what is best, just what is more popular and sometimes advertising plays a huge part in shaping their tastes, WOW is no exception to this phenomenon.
There's lots of reasons for its popularity of course, and it does many things well, (not great mind you, at least to my tastes) and it has lots of followers.
By why post this in the first place? OP asked why WOW was so great, and its revenue streams and popularity really aren't part of the answer, unless of course being part of the crowd is an important factor to the player. (for some it is, I realize)
WOW is polished, had great depth of play, is updated regularly, you can always find someone in RL who's playing the game (my son's friend just got the game for his birthday and is playing for the first time) and a dozen other reasons that make it a great game.
But it also has a number of aspects that make it not the game for me and some others, and we're going to go play the other games that come out that are not WOW.
Popularity is FREE. Phenomenal subscription based succes AND critical acclaim (see the pro reviews) are ... not..
Like I said: YOU don't HAVE to agree with the people. The people vote with their monthly subs money of what THEY think is best.
-----<<<< Answer to your question >>>>>
Popualrity is one thing, initial sales is another, but continuous economic succes ... after 5 years for a single video game is the general answer to the question of the OP.
Why is Wow so great? Because it is the single most succesful video game ever launched (not just "popular").
Whatever your personal love/hate cycle is at the moment. The monthly pockets of the people always tell the true story.
What I find is the people with the highest posts are all WoW followers. Do you need to post so many times repeating yourself over and over to convince people? or yourself.
Yes this game is great, yes its polished, the patches ruined it for me but hey, w/e people like.
I hate grinding for gear every week then having to do it all over again in 3 months. I mean come on I grinded all the way up to 80, grinded my rep, grnded my proffessions, grinded and grinded somemore.
You may think this is fun and new and exciting I don't. Many agree with you, many leave and come back just for updates and leave shortly after. This game is solid and in all honesty the best ther is, but why do you post in every thread either praising or defending WoW? Can you not let anything go? Is your life this disappointing that your joy comes from playing or praising or even defending a game?
WoW is right lol
Enjoy : )
Why must WoW be great? It is just a game.
WoW has 12m sub, so what? That just means its popular. There are games with more then 12m players in China, so what? Those 12m do not read English, they won't play WoW. Half of the WoW sub don't know Chinese. They will never cross path. Different games are popular to diffferent cultures and places. Chess and pokers have even more players. Wanna bet?
WoW has generated a lot of revenue. So what, same for Coke, same for McDonald. So are these healthy food?
WoW has topped the sales chart. So what? Paris Hilton did that too.
WoW has entertained a lot of people. Right, that is the answer we should care for: fun for those who played. That is a game.
Is WoW great? Does it matter? It keeps me happy during the hour or so I am online. That is it, it served its purpose. When I log out of WoW I forget it. Its just a game, for off hours. There are many things to deal with outside off hours, WoW is not one.
It generates the most revenue because its so popular, that sort of makes perfect sense. I think most of us get that message and would not deny that WOW makes the most money.
But countless examples have been used to show that the masses don't always buy what is best, just what is more popular and sometimes advertising plays a huge part in shaping their tastes, WOW is no exception to this phenomenon.
There's lots of reasons for its popularity of course, and it does many things well, (not great mind you, at least to my tastes) and it has lots of followers.
By why post this in the first place? OP asked why WOW was so great, and its revenue streams and popularity really aren't part of the answer, unless of course being part of the crowd is an important factor to the player. (for some it is, I realize)
WOW is polished, had great depth of play, is updated regularly, you can always find someone in RL who's playing the game (my son's friend just got the game for his birthday and is playing for the first time) and a dozen other reasons that make it a great game.
But it also has a number of aspects that make it not the game for me and some others, and we're going to go play the other games that come out that are not WOW.
Popularity is FREE. Phenomenal subscription based succes AND critical acclaim (see the pro reviews) are ... not..
Like I said: YOU don't HAVE to agree with the people. The people vote with their monthly subs money of what THEY think is best.
-----<<<< Answer to your question >>>>>
Popualrity is one thing, initial sales is another, but continuous economic succes ... after 5 years for a single video game is the general answer to the question of the OP.
Why is Wow so great? Because it is the single most succesful video game ever launched (not just "popular").
Whatever your personal love/hate cycle is at the moment. The monthly pockets of the people always tell the true story.
What I find is the people with the highest posts are all WoW followers. Do you need to post so many times repeating yourself over and over to convince people? or yourself.
Yes this game is great, yes its polished, the patches ruined it for me but hey, w/e people like.
I hate grinding for gear every week then having to do it all over again in 3 months. I mean come on I grinded all the way up to 80, grinded my rep, grnded my proffessions, grinded and grinded somemore.
You may think this is fun and new and exciting I don't. Many agree with you, many leave and come back just for updates and leave shortly after. This game is solid and in all honesty the best ther is, but why do you post in every thread either praising or defending WoW? Can you not let anything go? Is your life this disappointing that your joy comes from playing or praising or even defending a game?
WoW is right lol
Didnt start to post on this forum until a few days ago but have been around to read peoples post for quite some time and from what I can see its mostly the people who want promote whatever favorite MMO they have that has to discredit WoW for some reason, guessing its because its the biggest MMO out there so only natural but still.
Fun to see how everyone is bashing everyone but dont see that many that simple praise WoW as i see people bashing it in the name of making whatever MMO they like look better.=)
Kinda think this thread has gone quite of topic, dont really know what the subs and revanues has to do with if WoW is great or not, aside from the point that a great game gets subs.
Playing: CO, C&C and WoW.
Played: Tabula Rasa, AoC, War, Aion.
Regret Playing: Hellgate: London, EVE.
It is still in beta Temp, you can argue they will come back I am not disputing that, I will argue there are NOT that many as of this moment, until they get servers back in working order you will NOT know.
I'm a diehard EQ fan, or was until EQ went to crap a few years ago. Anyways, I hated WOW when it first came out. It was boring, easy, and there was no pvp. Now, that WOW has matured I actually really enjoy it.
My favorite part is PvP. I love the BGs. I can't wait until you can level in the BGs, ala WAR. I find leveling to be tediious, unreasonably long, and still far to easy to be of any use. If you can tolerate the boring grind to 80(I keep a toon at 39 to bg with to combat the boredom) its excellent.
I have been reading the forums at this site for many years, but i never cared enough to reply. However this time i will make an exception. Zorndorf if you truly believe that you put up with an generally uncolored view in your posts, i really feel sorry for you. I hardly ever during a decade of MMO playing and forum readings, experienced a more biased person.
It generates the most revenue because its so popular, that sort of makes perfect sense. I think most of us get that message and would not deny that WOW makes the most money.
But countless examples have been used to show that the masses don't always buy what is best, just what is more popular and sometimes advertising plays a huge part in shaping their tastes, WOW is no exception to this phenomenon.
There's lots of reasons for its popularity of course, and it does many things well, (not great mind you, at least to my tastes) and it has lots of followers.
By why post this in the first place? OP asked why WOW was so great, and its revenue streams and popularity really aren't part of the answer, unless of course being part of the crowd is an important factor to the player. (for some it is, I realize)
WOW is polished, had great depth of play, is updated regularly, you can always find someone in RL who's playing the game (my son's friend just got the game for his birthday and is playing for the first time) and a dozen other reasons that make it a great game.
But it also has a number of aspects that make it not the game for me and some others, and we're going to go play the other games that come out that are not WOW.
WoW does earn alot of revenu...ALOT! 0_o
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...
Saying WoW is "great" is like saying Walmart is "great".
Both are cheap (since you don't need to get a new top of the line PC to play).
Both are convenient and easy to use.
Both are the biggest in the world.
However both are full of unrestrained 10 year olds, people that make you feel much better about yourself when you encounter them and cheap watered down product/content.
One thing WoW did great at was bringing casual gamers to MMO's, as most original MMO players from past games were on the more hardcore side of the fence. Casual gamers make up the largest available market for WoW. They (for the most part) are an instant gratification group, that gets frustrated by real challenges. So while WoW is financially smart for catering to their biggest available fanbase and increasing their potential customers exponentially, they end up providing a polished but watered down product that provides brief (if any) satisfaction for the original MMO player fanbase. To maximize it's $$$, it's a jack of all trades and master of none. That is just the nature of trying to please the masses.
It's success is great. It's marketing is great. It's profitability is great. It's allure to casual gamers is great. However, its game play is far too shallow, repetitive and generic and the pvp system is far too atrocious to be considered great.
They're raking in the dough so I don't blame them, but success and greatness are not correlated. Pizza Hut is successful, but Uno's is great. N'SYNC was successful but Whitney Houston was great etc. etc.
Someone somewhere in the thread asked why a game "has to be great". I never said that it had to be but so many people play it that it's not odd to wonder why. I know not everything makes sense (I think a lot of fads/whatever don't make sense in hindsight) but I go to a tech school so gamers aren't uncommon. A guy I know plays WoW, I remember him talking about an expansion pack I think. This was about, hmm...a little less than a year ago? I dunno, he was waiting for something to come out/happen.
Anyways, he told me about how much the makers were pulling in a year (I forget what the figure was that he gave me but it was definitely no where near small) so I wondered what kept people playing. I mean, I've played quite a few games, some longer than others, some more than once. I have a fair idea of what pulls me in so I wondered what was attracting so many people to it for so long. I once watched a video of a kid whose mother had cancelled his WoW subscription after he hit like level 60 or something and he flipped, I think he tried to shove a remote control up his, ahem, butt... You just sit there watching like, "O_O" and wondering if it's real. XD
Reading is your friend....I said the reason it's cheap is that you don't need to invest much in the way of hardware to play it. Any bargain pc for the last 10 years can play WoW. Most other games have higher PC requirements, making additional hardware investments required which = $$$. It's cheap for the consumer, which is why it's attractive to casual gamers, and non-gamers as they can play it with their existing rigs.
WoW is not for the hardcore. Any putz with 9 friends can clear the content in 10-man mode. That takes away much of the feeling of accomplishment for true hardcore players. They want to see what others not on their skill level can't see, not the same crap 4 times on different difficulty levels. Also, when content is cleared by top guilds the weekend it's released, it's not that hard. With such a casual customer base, of course only a small % will make it to the hardest of hard content, because the numbers are skewed by the overwhelmingly casual player base.
The pvp sucks. You don't have to be good at pvp to be able to go into an arena and do the same thing 1000 times over to earn points. Constant world pvp, constant risk, consistent challenge, and non-repeated non-garbage instanced pvp is quality pvp. WoW pvp is casual gamers pvp. It's predictable, it's repetitive, it's simple, it's gear and class absed not skill based, it's unbalanced, and it's boring. Hell in most BG's people don't even pvp, they just blitz the objectives to win.
The world pvp in original WoW was pretty good, but that's almost nonexistant anymore. Now the pvp has no substance.
Nothing you said points to WoW being a great game. Only successful.
I played WoW for a long time - release to about the middle of TBC. Saying it's not a good game and arguably the best of the themepark-style MMOs is a great disservice - I honestly think WoW is about the best you can do using the DIKU-style EQ model of MMOs, and I'm pretty sure Blizzard knows this too simply by the steps they've taken to try and minimize the stagnation that inevitably occurs over time in such games.
As a virtual world / sandbox WoW fails spectacularly. Again, Blizzard knows this, they're smart people. I fully expect Blizzard's new MMO to borrow heavily from MMOs that have enjoyed long-term, sustainable growth, such as EvE and even Second Life, and do the same voodoo magic to those mechanics which are currently exclusivly in the domain of the hardcore (and furries) they did to EQ and other DIKU-style MMOs and hopefully come up with the next 'big' thing. I've been a Blizzard fan since the days of the original Warcraft, if anyone can make an accessible, fun sandbox game that will have mass appeal it's Blizzard, and I doubt they'll want to make a WoW 2 since WoW fans will play WoW until they're tired of it, and I can say with certainty that once you've burned out on one themepark MMO you're pretty much done with all of 'em.
I don't play WoW anymore personally but I still enjoyed my time there and don't fault anyone who is just getting into MMOs who picks it up and disappears for a year or so :P.
Yes, but that is not in itself making Wow a great game. The polish is great of course and the art.
But the community is not that great and the difficulty don't work for me. I guess I would play it if it was the only MMO around but it just wont give me the gaming fix I need. I anin't playing a game until I get max level to get any kind of challenge. Also the graphics is outdated, Blizzard should have worked more to update it like SOE did to EQ2. Wow looked better 5 years ago but now EQ2 looks far better (well, the art can be discussed so I am talking general graphics, not how the models look).
But that is of course my personal opinion and everyone who enjoys the game should play it.
I myself had a lot more fun in GW, it was harder and faced paced. Still too many kids in it also who suddenly have to quit an instance because their mom told them...
Wow do have the most players and some really nice features but if it is the best MMO is just anyones opinion.
Out of the many reasons I could mention I picked 3.
Firstly Polish, no other game (other than LOtR) comes close. Everything just works. I find it amazing that a game like WoW, built for PvE, can handle 120 vs 120 open world PvP battles with ease, while a game build for PvP such as WAR creeps to a halt when I had more than 60 players on screen (and no, it's not my computer). It just shows how advanced the WoW engine is behind the pretty little graphics.
Secondly Combat. People spend 80% of their time fighting mobs/players, it's the single most important thing in the game. The control that WoW gives you over your character is second to none. It feels like a very well oiled component that works smoothly every time and makes combat fun. It amazes me that so many of the recent MMOs have had a terrible combat feeling, specially the PvP ones. It's something you take for granted in WoW.
Third, Content. For all races you pick (other than gnomes and trolls) you get a completly difference leveling experience up to around lvl20 ish, and then you have a choice of 3+ zones all the way to 60. Once there you can pick and chose where to level in Outlands and Northrend. Once you get to 80, you can do dungeons (12+ normal and Heroic), you can level your professions, you can enter fishing competitions, you can gather all the mini pets or mounts in the game, you have the best raiding content out in any game (again in normal and hardmodes), can can pvp (both battlegrounds, arenas, raiding enemy cities or open world pvp in Wintergrasp), you can go after unike achievements and titles, you can get reputations up to exaulted and so on and so forth. All of which has been polished to a better degree than in any other game.
These are just 3 points, I could go on but the post would get rather big.