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(WoW=MMO Killer) [Question] Has past MMOs older then WoW, increase in Population since WoW has come
tro44_1
Member Posts: 1,819
I herd this term in another thread.
WoW = MMO Killer
Problem I have with this, is that I notice that the MMO market, seem to have grown since WoW came out.
Even Older MMOs are still running to this day.
So I ask,,
1) Since WoW has come out, has Older MMOs population increase at some point (2004-now)?
2) If not, Where did their player base go, and Why?
Comments
Only MMO i can think off the bat that has grown it's player base is EVE online.
IMO WoW is the best thing that happened in the MMO world.
Not because of the game in itself but because since WoW the average MMO players has changed from a total nolife to something more casual and thus widely opening the genre.
We have seen a lack of creativity this last year probably because of WoW but in the long term it's going to be very positive for the MMO market
EVE Online has, but the normal trend of attrition over time has been present in the older MMOs since before WOW. If anythong, WOW brought more people to MMOs and actually slowed the bleeding for some MMOs.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
So has the population stayed the same in many of the older MMOs other then Eve, or has it droped?
If it droped, then why? And where did these gamers go? Different genre of gaming perhaps? New MMO?
Older MMO were quite time consuming. Maybe the players just grew up and don't have time to play that much anymore
WoW brought big changes to the market, some bad, and one extremely good.
The bad is that every new game is, much like wow, very poor in rpg elements and character customization (not appearance, i mean, skills and feats etc.)
The good, and this is a major thing fortunately, and why wow keeps on top, Blizzard brought a great polished product. And from the day wow launched and beyond, players became much more used to quality, and just wont swallow any crappy thing developers throw at them. This is the reason why older and newer games cant grow in population.
In the best they keep their population, but the usual nowadays is that they somewhat lose it
www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html
According to MMO chart, many of the games released before WoW have seen a drop in numbers, but if you look at the data in other charts, the MMO market has grown since WoW came out. Part of the reason for this is that the older games became dated and many haven't had the graphical and content upgrades that are common in the games that were released since WoW. I think that WoW has been a huge boon for the MMO industry as a whole and those who say otherwise are the hardcore players who don't like that the industry is catering to a wider audience than pimply faced teenagers and 30 something guys who smoke pot and live in their parent's basement.
A witty saying proves nothing.
-Voltaire
WoW was both good and bad for the genre in my opinion.
It was great because it showed the industry that MMOs can be a viable genre and make a ton of profit for a company if done right. It alos opened the genre to a bigger audiance than other MMOs of the past ever did. It almost nearly tripled the amount of players in the genre in under 6 months.
What was bad is that Blizzard made the game more appealing to the basic gamer as time went on. The game got easier and easier to the point of needing nothing more than a pulse to play. WoW is a streamlined, slimmed down version of what MMOs used to be. The player base that started with WoW as their first MMO have etched in their minds that an MMO needs to be 'like' WoW to be fun. New MMOs that came out stopped trying to innovate and instead started to mimic. The genre hit a plateau. New games are the same as the last few titles which are pretty much an imitation WoW. Older games changed core gameplay dynamics to become more WoW like, hoping to appeal to those who play WoW in an attempt to gain even the slightest influx of subscriptions. Is this Blizzards fault? Nope.
And before anyone says I am a WoW fan, I am not. But I will say it wasnt Blizzard or WoW who forced developers to choose the path of least resistance. In my opinion it was both the developers and the players. If a dev team makes a game that is different from WoW, they get hit with things such as 'Well in WoW it was done this way and was 100times better' or when they copy WoW they get the 'Ugh! If I wanted to play WoW I would re-sub to it, not buy a new version of it...'
So to answer the question: No, WoW didnt kill the genre. Age and stagnation is killing it and the devs and players as a whole are too busy arguing over the treatment to see the cure.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
EVE is the obvious answer, to be sure. Others are RuneScape, Dofus, Tibia and Second Life.
I don't think the population has grown at all infact, I find the mmo genre to be a niche playerbase to begin with. I think people are disappointed with the triple A titles and are seeking refuge in much smaller mmos like Eve,FFXI and f2p mmos. Everyone is spread out all over the place these days.
MMOs that were around before WoW were slaughtered when it was released. Why? I dunno, I guess more people find WoW fun than don't. DAoC and EQ were absolutely taken to the woodshed. EQ refuses to merge servers(well, they did once, but that was years ago). That game is a ghost town, which is a shame, because I still play it. DAoC kinda killed their own game, and WoW just put nails in the coffin.
Where have the gamers gone? We have more MMO players now, than ever. So, I imagine the same people are playing, and more people are coming along. As much as I dislike WoW it took everyone's complaints from EQ, and fixed it. Unfortunately, by "fixing" it they gutted the community, and any sense of accomplisment, IMO(which means jack squat).
You think WoW sucks. Some people here think that, as well. I do, too. We are the minority. If you've been deluding yourself into thinking that WoW players are the problem you're just being foolish. We are the problem, because we refuse to be assimilated into the largest game on the planet. The good news is there is only room for one WoW. As demonstrated by all the clones going down in flames after the first few months. Hopefully, all these WoW clones will stop, and we will get a game that can be happy with 300-500k subscribers(AKA EVE).
I can sum up my position in a brief statement.
If WoW is God, then I'm glad to be an atheist. I'll play what I want, thank-you.
Ken
www.ActionMMORPG.com
One man, a small pile of money, and the screwball idea of a DIY Indie MMORPG? Yep, that's him. ~sigh~
EVE is the obvious answer, to be sure. Others are RuneScape, Dofus, Tibia and Second Life.
Again...... SecondLife is not an MMORPG. It's a virtual world, much more like a 3D world wide web, complete with horrible design and lots of porn.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
WOW brought mmos to the mainstream.
Just like Britney Spears, Nsync, Hannah Montanta, High School Musical, and the Jonas Brothers are all main stream.
See where I'm going with this?
The Official God FAQ
I agree with people about Eve Online, they've keep growing mainly because the mmo type is different from wow.
On other hand, all other fantasy mmo lile EQ, Aion, Warrhammer etc name them, all suffer from the popularity of wow.
Not because they suck or anything, some are very good mmo, but what's always happend when such a mmo get out, it that the general chat immediatly get spam with wow comparaison. Many wow player are bored of wow, and they try different mmo, but they can't find what they had in wow so the bashing start.
WoW for sure have change the way fantasy mmo goes, but someday people will get tired or starting over every expansion and maybe figure out how good new mmo are
Don't get me wrong, i played 5 years to wow, it's an amasing game, but it's kinda going down since WoTLK. I miss the old vanilla wow, where when you had a epic you could feel accomplished. Now, epics are just everywhere, it no longer mean anything.
Runescape and Tibia are two games I have played in the past and I can say they still have strong populations (Not sure if they are still growing).
Some things about these games are, younger populations, low end pcs and low subscription fees. Easy games to download runescape can be run from a client and tibia is a 50mb download. And both games can be played on a free version or you can pay that small sub fee for a premium account.
I guess what this tells us is these people may not have access to wow so they just go for something which is available to them? With a overall MMo population increase this kinda makes sense..
Ps. I started on runescape about 10 years ago and for me that was one of the greatest games back then haha. It had features which I have not seen in games since, kinda sad really...
Edit- Forgot to say both games are updated regularly and are not very linear. If you get bored of one thing then you can just go and do another. Some of the latest mmo's are not like this.
Natural pattern for most MMOs is an increase in subs for the first year or so and then it's all retention from there.
The entire design of most MMOs almost reinforce the behavior of playing until the content seems like more of the same - for many is is halfway through and for others it is once the cap becomes repetitious - and then moving on to the next MMO. Look at the preorders and initial sales of each MMO... jumping to a new shiny MMO that promises to not have all the problems of the previous one seems to be a pattern.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
THIS kind of comment is what makes me despise WoW. Not the game itself as much, but the community it has delivered onto the genre. Nice assumption of older players and their MMO's.
When I started EQ in 99' (When you were 12), I was through my first year of enlistment in the Navy, had already done a tour in the Middle East/Persian Gulf, was married, and working as a graphic designer/photographer at a Naval Intelligence Command. Had friends I hung out with, visited friends and family (Out of state), and went out with the wife almost every weekend. FAR cry from having no life. And I knew TONS of enlisted people AND civilians who had the same kinds of activities outside of EQ.
What defines casual to you? Because with all the grinding for gear, grinding for rep, grinding for rank (when it was in game), grinding raids to roll on gear..it wasn't much different than what we had in old school games. Yes, getting gear,levels, etc all comes much faster in current MMO's (Too fast IMO), but players still spend months/years playing these MMO's as we did then. It's all the same stuff, just situated differently, polished, and repackaged in a different wrapper.
I DO agree the creativity has gone downhill. Again, IMO this is the developer's faults for just following the WoW model of "what works" instead of coming up with new ideas to add to their respective games to make them a breath of fresh air to players.