There are games out there that don't get old or stale after 1month besides WOW. I like WOW , but I'm over it. Tired of doing the same thing over and over. I'll try out Cataclysm, but the graphics are getting a little stale for me, personally. Blizz does make good games, and WOTLK is a great XPAC. But I'm tired of doing the same thing over and over and over.
I play the PVE part mostly with experience turned off. Hunt for the most lucrative world/dungeon quests and blue gear in dungeons and then put experience turned on again to level in the Bg's.
A blast. It took me more than a year to get my Dwarf rogue at 79. He's retired now until CATA (only a Stratholme solo run for the rare horse now and then).
It was that good I decided to reroll another Rogue (undead - another angle) with the same goals: becoming Batttlemaster and Conqueror.
Normally it will take till March/April before even reaching 80 that way.
At this scheme WOW needs to be supported till 2020 for me to even reach a handful characters with PvP goals.
The challenge lies within the fun creativeness of the player.
No need to hunt down inferior products with this kind offreedom in even the most basic game mechanism: leveling.
6 years and count the other 10 to follow already.
O yes, I have one main too, but I am not spoiling the fun of the end game more than once.
The game that can give me this kind of choices with the same polishment is not born yet and probably isn't even the next MMO from Blizzard.
But nevertheless, call me if that rare gem will ever drop in the next 5 years.
Doing the same thing over and over does not necessarily mean boring. I do the same thing every weekend, throw a bunch of food over cooking fire and grill. That does not seem too boring.
Doing the same thing over and over till you puke, is not the fault of anyone else. After paying for a subscription, you can allocate something less than you lifetime on it. Allocating excessive and that is failure on your part.
It is like buying a TV and telling us that you watch so much TV programs that you feel like shooting yourself in the head.
Do you think, that nearly 50% of all World of Warcraft players have tried other games?
The reason Everquest numbers declined, was that even though those subs, were active. Everquest already had massively declined player base. It just that a good many kept their accounts active, while trying many other games. SOE actually upped their price right around then too, if I remember correctly, because that is right when I canceld my EQ and beta tested many games.
EQ's "Instancing" expansion, also alienated a good portion of the EQ fans. EQ had change so drastically.
Coincidentally, almost every EQ player tried EQ2.. and many just played both games... but EQ2 did diluted the EverQuest franchise, split their fanbase, with the toll of all three (SWG, EQ & EQ2), SOE saw tons of their subs move elsewhere. They lost their fans.
WoW has very little to do with any of this..
Why couldn't you just ask that in it's own thread... quite taking this off topic..! dammit!
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
I don't hate World of Warcraft and play it from time to time but to say Blizzard did anything differently is completely incorrect. They had a bug filled release full of hour long queues to get into servers and broken promises. Drastic changes to the core game that angered players, breaking the lore to fit their vision, and hacks and exploits galore. World of Warcraft didn't thrive because of professionalism, it thrived despite not being professional. This has a lot to do with having a huge fanbase that doesn't know any better.
I agree that WoW is a fluke that probably won't be duplicated any time soon.
2) The scope of WoW is more commonly referred to as; "kindergarten for learning the basics of playing an mmo".
3) It's easy see WoW was a hit because there are a lot of gamers have trouble trying to think too hard, so WoW became the perfect storm for their fanbase type.
4) I hardly call constantly flaming and griefing new gamers & lowbies in-game by 80% of the WoW server pop. as professionalism.
So basically the answer to your question OP; "why has no other game been able to replicate anything like this?"
No one wants to. Any respectable developer would not want to insult the intelligence of real gamers like Blizzard does.
Unfortunately there are some developers that are trying to replicate WoW's formula though. But only because they can see how ignorant some gamers can be to fall for the same mediocre content twice.
Wow has a large player base since it can be played on almost any pc...
They avertise on everything even on eq2 websites...Everywhere you go you see wow....
Same with top 5-10 new games for 2011 and 2012 wow is in the list on youtube... everyone has played wow its very easy and you don't have to do much work to get anything good... Want good gear? Um just do bg for a week and there is your gear fully epic.
Most new games comeing out are much harder then wow and if they have forced pvp they only do good for a short time you also have a lot of gold farmers farming gold on wow to sell and i think they pay almost nothing to play it... um i'd actually think atlest 5% of each server populations are gold farmers... they get band then they just log onto another account seconds latter...
As much as i can say is wow i don't think will be matched for along time and i don't think they will put in free servers eaither like Everquest 2 just did....
For something new to come out to be a wow killer would have to be easyer and lower settings to play. Most of the problems with the newer mmorpg's as well is they are sucky after the noobie lvls... aion was fun after lvl 20 then lvls where really slow and in the Rift one side could not even hold 1 area the other side totally killed everyone with out trying...i beta tested aion sure it was fun... once beta was over played for a little over a month then quit... The forced pvp i did not like....
Guildwars 2 comeing out soon I'v heard its not open pvp so its actually going to be fun i hope... Diablo 3 is to but not sure if its going to be fun or not....But what i do know is blizzard is so slow to release anything... I do actually like a lot of blizzard games but they just release them so slow...
All we can hope is something new comes out soon instead of another paste and copy game
2) The scope of WoW is more commonly referred to as; "kindergarten for learning the basics of playing an mmo".
3) It's easy see WoW was a hit because there are a lot of gamers have trouble trying to think too hard, so WoW became the perfect storm for their fanbase type.
4) I hardly call constantly flaming and griefing new gamers & lowbies in-game by 80% of the WoW server pop. as professionalism.
So basically the answer to your question OP; "why has no other game been able to replicate anything like this?"
No one wants to. Any respectable developer would not want to insult the intelligence of real gamers like Blizzard does.
Unfortunately there are some developers that are trying to replicate WoW's formula though. But only because they can see how ignorant some gamers can be to fall for the same mediocre content twice.
What a sad state of mind.
Blizzard does "Insult the intelligence of "real" gamers".
"A lot of gamers have trouble trying to think too hard".
Hehe, he never played WoW yet pretends it's a game for dumb people... next post he will also pretend heroic ICC is easy, even though he never set foot in that place.
It's a bit like the people watching extreme sports on their TV, with their beer belly body comfortably installed in an armchair, and pretending it's easy and they could do it without even training...
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
2) The scope of WoW is more commonly referred to as; "kindergarten for learning the basics of playing an mmo".
3) It's easy see WoW was a hit because there are a lot of gamers have trouble trying to think too hard, so WoW became the perfect storm for their fanbase type.
4) I hardly call constantly flaming and griefing new gamers & lowbies in-game by 80% of the WoW server pop. as professionalism.
So basically the answer to your question OP; "why has no other game been able to replicate anything like this?"
No one wants to. Any respectable developer would not want to insult the intelligence of real gamers like Blizzard does.
Unfortunately there are some developers that are trying to replicate WoW's formula though. But only because they can see how ignorant some gamers can be to fall for the same mediocre content twice.
What a sad state of mind.
Blizzard does "Insult the intelligence of "real" gamers".
"A lot of gamers have trouble trying to think too hard".
Let me guess: you think you are intelligent ?
plz stop insulting people and go play intelligent game will ya.......what a load of crap you can sell man realy
Hehe, he never played WoW yet pretends it's a game for dumb people... next post he will also pretend heroic ICC is easy, even though he never set foot in that place.
It's a bit like the people watching extreme sports on their TV, with their beer belly body comfortably installed in an armchair, and pretending it's easy and they could do it without even training...
The beer belly was collected in the hour long waiting time for the Raids to assemble in those highly intelligent games, no doubt.
Let's see: a flask of beer potion delivers an intelligence increase of +2....
Do you think, that nearly 50% of all World of Warcraft players have tried other games?
[2] The reason Everquest numbers declined, was that even though those subs, were active. Everquest already had massively declined player base. It just that a good many kept their accounts active, while trying many other games. SOE actually upped their price right around then too, if I remember correctly, because that is right when I canceld my EQ and beta tested many games.
EQ's "Instancing" expansion, also alienated a good portion of the EQ fans. EQ had change so drastically.
Coincidentally, almost every EQ player tried EQ2.. and many just played both games... but EQ2 did diluted the EverQuest franchise, split their fanbase, with the toll of all three (SWG, EQ & EQ2), SOE saw tons of their subs move elsewhere. They lost their fans.
WoW has very little to do with any of this..
Why couldn't you just ask that in it's own thread... quite taking this off topic..! dammit!
[1] Do I see "any" wow players trying other games right now, yes plenty. Do they end up staying, for the most part no they do not.
Just because other games are not growing, doesn't mean that people are not trying them. If you really understood the point of the thread you were posting in then common sense would have answered this question for you.
Just go to any free trial area of any game and ask who has played wow, then listen to the responses. You seem surprised that a bunch of hacked out low quality games have not taken a portion of wows playerbase. Again, see thread topic.
[2] As for the state of EQ in 2004, I don't disagree with you that soe was doing a poor job of running the game, but things were like that for years already.
However if things were so bad, people would have left BEFORE wow released, but they didn't. Massive amounts of people didn't quit the game and keep most of the subscriptions open. Then suddenly all decide to stop paying when wow released.
Thank you for not disappointing and living up to expectations. Yeah people were so displeased with EQ that massive amounts of people quit, but kept paying money for the game.
Again we are right back to the topic of this thread about the lack of quality in mmos and the effect one game had on the entire market, strange how that keeps happens isn't it?
It would be amusing to hear your theories of why all those others game saw decline at the same exact time wow released or listen to your "proof" of why so many experienced mmo players left wow shortly after release, but at this point I think I have seen enough of your so called facts and proof to know all I need to know. Thanks for the laughs.
Do you think, that nearly 50% of all World of Warcraft players have tried other games?
[2] The reason Everquest numbers declined, was that even though those subs, were active. Everquest already had massively declined player base. It just that a good many kept their accounts active, while trying many other games. SOE actually upped their price right around then too, if I remember correctly, because that is right when I canceld my EQ and beta tested many games.
EQ's "Instancing" expansion, also alienated a good portion of the EQ fans. EQ had change so drastically.
Coincidentally, almost every EQ player tried EQ2.. and many just played both games... but EQ2 did diluted the EverQuest franchise, split their fanbase, with the toll of all three (SWG, EQ & EQ2), SOE saw tons of their subs move elsewhere. They lost their fans.
WoW has very little to do with any of this..
Why couldn't you just ask that in it's own thread... quite taking this off topic..! dammit!
[1] Do I see "any" wow players trying other games right now, yes plenty. Do they end up staying, for the most part no they do not.
Just because other games are not growing, doesn't mean that people are not trying them. If you really understood the point of the thread you were posting in then common sense would have answered this question for you.
Just go to any free trial area of any game and ask who has played wow, then listen to the responses. You seem surprised that a bunch of hacked out low quality games have not taken a portion of wows playerbase. Again, see thread topic.
[2] As for the state of EQ in 2004, I don't disagree with you that soe was doing a poor job of running the game, but things were like that for years already.
However if things were so bad, people would have left BEFORE wow released, but they didn't. Massive amounts of people didn't quit the game and keep most of the subscriptions open. Then suddenly all decide to stop paying when wow released.
Thank you for not disappointing and living up to expectations. Yeah people were so displeased with EQ that massive amounts of people quit, but kept paying money for the game.
Again we are right back to the topic of this thread about the lack of quality in mmos and the effect one game had on the entire market, strange how that keeps happens isn't it?
It would be amusing to hear your theories of why all those others game saw decline at the same exact time wow released or listen to your "proof" of why so many experienced mmo players left wow shortly after release, but at this point I think I have seen enough of your so called facts and proof to know all I need to know. Thanks for the laughs.
How did you not get it? People left Everquest on their own... the game was already going on 6 years old and another Everquest had just been released... people were trying other games, or simple outgrew the time commitment.
The whole market stagnated, because WoW wasn't the answer for a good many players and most oldschool players grew disgruntled. Not only that, most Everquest players in 2004 were in their 30's, starting new careers and families. Ask Korrigan why he quite..
Don't you listen to people on the boards?
Lastly, the following comment by you, indicates you have no clue what the market was doing, or what took place.
If it wasn't for WoW... "Why did star wars galaxies subscriptions decline?"
Anyone want to explain to him, (with 3 letters), what caused all those SWG fans to leave the game...?
[Mod Edit]
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
How did you not get it? People left Everquest on their own... the game was already going on 6 years old and another Everquest had just been released... people were trying other games, or simple outgrew the time commitment.
The whole market stagnated, because WoW wasn't the answer for a good many players and most oldschool players grew disgruntled. Not only that, most Everquest players in 2004 were in their 30's, starting new careers and families. Ask Korrigan why he quite..
Don't you listen to people on the boards?
Lets slow down a bit. I'm getting lost with all the changes to your story about why veteran players quit mmos around the end of 2004.
First you said "everyone" in eq played wow, but quit wow and returned to their former games in post #253, even though those games lost 60% of the subscriber base and never recovered.
Then you said in post #340 that EQ had already suffered massive decline, but people were still paying for their subscription fees and all mass cancelled around the same time for some unknown reason.
Now in post #352 the new real reason you say is that hundreds of thousands of experienced mmo players were disgruntled, turned 30 and started families and careers.
I guess all of these are great explainations of why EQ and EQ2 each lost roughly 60% of their playerbase that one year. I just don't know which one is the real reason without any of your supporting information to pick the real reason. I don't want to bother Korrigan to be the sample size of one to support the choices of hundreds of thousands. I'm sure he is a nice guy and everything, but that is a little to much for one person to be responsible for.
On top of that, you say the mmo market stagnated at that point in time. Lets see if the charts you find so educational support your claims of stagnation and people quitting the genre.
Well it sure looks like there were 7-8 million total paying players around nov of 2004 and about 12 million 1 year later. I guess we just have different definitions of what stagnation is.
It is strange that wow had more total subscribers than the total number of new players joining during that time period. I guess there must have been some massive changing of the guard where millions of old players left when the two biggest new titles released and double that amount of new players joined to make up for all of those departing veterans.
P.S. As for swg, you remember those charts you linked? The ones that showed SWG losing 125,000 players before the NGE. The one that showed a steady population in the game right up to the point were wow released. I don't know, but that seemed to be a rather important bit of information to overlook if you are going to blame everything on the NGE. Sorry to point out the common sense and obvious again.
[1] Do I see "any" wow players trying other games right now, yes plenty. Do they end up staying, for the most part no they do not.
That is actually rather weird, most Wow players I know quit more often than smokers but start again after a month or two.
If they would think Wow was truly great they shouldn't have quited in the first place but on the other hand they get back in all the time.
A few of them plain sucks and get killed in most other games but others are high end raiders so player skills are not the issue here in most cases.
Every single Wow player I know have quit at least once (even the fanatics) and some over 15 times. I wonder why?
Sorry for OT but this is definitely +1!
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online Playing: CS:GO
[1] Do I see "any" wow players trying other games right now, yes plenty. Do they end up staying, for the most part no they do not.
That is actually rather weird, most Wow players I know quit more often than smokers but start again after a month or two.
If they would think Wow was truly great they shouldn't have quited in the first place but on the other hand they get back in all the time.
A few of them plain sucks and get killed in most other games but others are high end raiders so player skills are not the issue here in most cases.
Every single Wow player I know have quit at least once (even the fanatics) and some over 15 times. I wonder why?
I think the simple answer is twofold 1) there just isn't anything else out there and 2) if most of the people you know are playing one game, you're going to eventually go back to that game. The quit ratio isn't surprising at all, WoW has a high burnout factor due to the way it's designed. Someone who's moderately competent is going to burn through the content. Once you've reached a certain point, you either re-roll or quit. Achievements and BG's aren't going to sustain you in the long run. I think the fact that the game still maintains 11.5 million subs affirms this. I'm one who doesn't believe their is an infinite pool of players that WoW continues to draw upon. For as many as it loses in subs every month (which I'm sure is a substantial number), it gains that much back with a combo of fresh new players and returning players. Going into the starting areas proves this as well, since it's not like those areas are teaming with new players all the time.
[1] Do I see "any" wow players trying other games right now, yes plenty. Do they end up staying, for the most part no they do not.
That is actually rather weird, most Wow players I know quit more often than smokers but start again after a month or two.
If they would think Wow was truly great they shouldn't have quited in the first place but on the other hand they get back in all the time.
A few of them plain sucks and get killed in most other games but others are high end raiders so player skills are not the issue here in most cases.
Every single Wow player I know have quit at least once (even the fanatics) and some over 15 times. I wonder why?
I have quit several times myself. What is so weird about it?
A game can be the most awesome excellent best thing ever for someone, but eventually they will grow tired of it and move on to another game. I understand you are trying to be sarcastic in your statement, but lets not be silly. I think Indian food is about the best food on earth, but that doesn't mean I am going to eat it every single day for the rest of my life.
No game lasts forever and wow, by mmo standards, is an old game.
Seeing that people continually return to wow over and over and over again really suggests just how weak the rest of the market is at attracting new players and keeping them. Just think about how many people have grown bored of wow over the last 6 years and then ask why people don't stick around playing other games after trying them?
Lets not be facetious and suggest that all wow players are incapable of playing other mmos, because they are so "hard". If someone sucks in wow they will suck in other games and the same is true if they have are exceptional players. If somone understands how to kill a boss in wow I am more than certain they will be able to play kill bosses in eq2 or whatever fantasy mmo.
Over a million people tried Conan and Warhammer each and most left in a month or two. Why do you think they quit so fast?
[1] Do I see "any" wow players trying other games right now, yes plenty. Do they end up staying, for the most part no they do not.
That is actually rather weird, most Wow players I know quit more often than smokers but start again after a month or two.
If they would think Wow was truly great they shouldn't have quited in the first place but on the other hand they get back in all the time.
A few of them plain sucks and get killed in most other games but others are high end raiders so player skills are not the issue here in most cases.
Every single Wow player I know have quit at least once (even the fanatics) and some over 15 times. I wonder why?
I have quit several times myself. What is so weird about it?
A game can be the most awesome excellent best thing ever for someone, but eventually they will grow tired of it and move on to another game. I understand you are trying to be sarcastic in your statement, but lets not be silly. I think Indian food is about the best food on earth, but that doesn't mean I am going to eat it every single day for the rest of my life.
No game lasts forever and wow, by mmo standards, is an old game.
Seeing that people continually return to wow over and over and over again really suggests just how weak the rest of the market is at attracting new players and keeping them. Just think about how many people have grown bored of wow over the last 6 years and then ask why people don't stick around playing them?
Lets not be facetious and suggest that all wow players are incapable of playing other mmos, because they are so "hard". If someone sucks in wow they will suck in other games and the same is true if they have are exceptional players. If somone understands how to kill a boss in wow I am more than certain they will be able to play kill bosses in eq2 or whatever fantasy mmo.
Over a million people tried Conan and Warhammer each and most left in a month or two. Why do you think they quit so fast?
AoC was simply not done when the game was released. WAR suffered a lack of identity. Neither of which was anywhere nearly as well polished as WoW is.
The gameplay of WoW is very straight forward. Most classes operate on relatively simple rotations or priority systems ( 5 or so abilities) for pve. EQ2 tends to have longer and more involved rotations. EQ2 also has far more stringent group composition. The majority of WoW pve is not hard. The majority of WoW pve is fun, well polished, and doable for even casual players. The only concession to the hardcore is heroic modes (ie only really heroic LK in ICC).
In pvp, WoW gameplay shines. WoW pvp is very twitch based. In that you can defeat a better geared player based on better execution of your abilities. Better players will win mirror matches the vast majority of the time even with lesser gear.
I have played WoW for a long time. I have taken breaks away from the game but I do come back. The reasons that I come back is the community of friends that I have built up. My friends want me to team with them for the arena season or to raid with them.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
As far as content is concerned, you are correct, EQ has a whole lot more than WoW (I would hope so after 14 expansions). But I'll flip it around and ask how much of that 'content' is being utilized compared to how much content is utilized in WoW? Cataclysm will up the ante even more, because it will allow the old world to be more utilized than it is now.
6 years into EQs lifespan quite a bit of it was still being used. And Kunark and Velious were actually bigger expansions than BC and WotLK, and they came MUCH faster. PoP stayed relevant for an astonishing length of time, and even now is likely still being used.
And how much content IS still utilized in WoW? Vanilla raids are soloed/duoed by people bored or looking for useless legendaries/mounts. BC raids are almost never visited by anyone. BC heroics are used occasionally for rep runs, but thats about it. Most people do Hellfire > Zangarmarsh > Nagrand or some brief 3 zone stop because they are *FORCED* to go to outlands.
WoWs second expansion rendered its ENTIRE first expansion irrelevant with the exception of being forced to level there for a bit.
EQs content stayed relevant for many years after it was released. WoW content does not.
EQ content was just as outdated as other games with each new expansions. The only reason anyone played previous expansion content is because they had to wait until the big guilds moved on to new content just so they could get a chance see a boss spawn live for more than 5 minutes. It was a pretty terrible design when 1 or 2 guilds would dominate the majority of a servers endgame content and then having small groups of those players kill much of the entry level bosses on off nights just to have something to do. Yes, I have been a guild that dominated a server and another guild that was on the other side of the fence.
In all honesty most of early EQ was spent not being able to enjoy the content, because limited content on stupid long respawn timers that were dominated by a very small percentage of the games population. Planes of power is a perfect example of that terrible design with gated content, flagging system from hell and ridiculous raid sizes.
Once those restrictions were removed, suddenly everyone could kill everything and having a guild full of early time zone players wasn't the key to success on patch days.
Still have a lot of good memories though, but an equal number of frustrating experiences to go right along with it.
Save your hatred for other threads; the simple fact is WoW remains king of MMOs for some very simple reasons, amongst which: it works, it has variety, it has a large world full of nooks and crannies to explore, it feels like a real world, and has zones that mostly don't require loading cross boundaries, it has both pve and pvp, its quests are quite fun and creative, [where I stopped reading]
Fun and creative quests? Really?? Go kill 20 dwarfs that ALL have silver hammers. Gather the 20 silver hammers from those dwarfs and report back to me. "Awesome, so I have to go kill 20 dwarfs for their silver hammers, but why again? No real explanation? Oooook... whatever. Alright, here are the dwarves. Aaand backstab, gouge, etc etc, eviscerate! Alright, now time to loo--- ok... no silver hammer on this guy, who is clearly holding one even as he lays on the ground. Alright, shake it off. I'll gather a couple of them up this time [attack attack attack]. Let's see what these guys have. There's one............ One? I just killed 4 guys, and all I have to show for it is ONE silver hammer??? When they're all clearly holding silver hammers??? Really Blizzard?? I mean, REEEEEEEALLY??? Whatever, don't let them get to you. It's just a game... It's just a game..... [attack attack attack] Now, I should get at LEAST one out of thi--- you have got to be kidding me! Nothing??? So I need to collect 20 more hammers, I've killed 7 and collected 1. I need 19 more. It's taken me 5 minutes to kill 7 dwarves. So, according to statistics, it's going to take me over almost 2 hours to finish this quest? Jesus H... I'm done."
That's about the extent of their creativity and "funness".
And I won't even begin to batter the rest of this game. I played it for about 3 years, including beta, and in the beginning, thought the game to be brilliantly done. But now, anyone playing this game is just a friggin' sucker. Or you have nothing you like better, in which case... yeah, I'll refer back to the sucker comment for that one too.
Here's to hoping that SW:TOR can pack a punch. Space combat rail system aside, the game looks and sounds as though it should do the trick.
Comments
Doing the same thing over and over does not necessarily mean boring. I do the same thing every weekend, throw a bunch of food over cooking fire and grill. That does not seem too boring.
Doing the same thing over and over till you puke, is not the fault of anyone else. After paying for a subscription, you can allocate something less than you lifetime on it. Allocating excessive and that is failure on your part.
It is like buying a TV and telling us that you watch so much TV programs that you feel like shooting yourself in the head.
and then there was GW2
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
Scope? WoW? Oh boy.
Dude, how old is WoW right now...?
Do you see any WoW Players, trying other games..?
Do you think, that nearly 50% of all World of Warcraft players have tried other games?
The reason Everquest numbers declined, was that even though those subs, were active. Everquest already had massively declined player base. It just that a good many kept their accounts active, while trying many other games. SOE actually upped their price right around then too, if I remember correctly, because that is right when I canceld my EQ and beta tested many games.
EQ's "Instancing" expansion, also alienated a good portion of the EQ fans. EQ had change so drastically.
Coincidentally, almost every EQ player tried EQ2.. and many just played both games... but EQ2 did diluted the EverQuest franchise, split their fanbase, with the toll of all three (SWG, EQ & EQ2), SOE saw tons of their subs move elsewhere. They lost their fans.
WoW has very little to do with any of this..
Why couldn't you just ask that in it's own thread... quite taking this off topic..! dammit!
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
I don't hate World of Warcraft and play it from time to time but to say Blizzard did anything differently is completely incorrect. They had a bug filled release full of hour long queues to get into servers and broken promises. Drastic changes to the core game that angered players, breaking the lore to fit their vision, and hacks and exploits galore. World of Warcraft didn't thrive because of professionalism, it thrived despite not being professional. This has a lot to do with having a huge fanbase that doesn't know any better.
I agree that WoW is a fluke that probably won't be duplicated any time soon.
1) You're right, I won't touch WoW
2) The scope of WoW is more commonly referred to as; "kindergarten for learning the basics of playing an mmo".
3) It's easy see WoW was a hit because there are a lot of gamers have trouble trying to think too hard, so WoW became the perfect storm for their fanbase type.
4) I hardly call constantly flaming and griefing new gamers & lowbies in-game by 80% of the WoW server pop. as professionalism.
So basically the answer to your question OP; "why has no other game been able to replicate anything like this?"
No one wants to. Any respectable developer would not want to insult the intelligence of real gamers like Blizzard does.
Unfortunately there are some developers that are trying to replicate WoW's formula though. But only because they can see how ignorant some gamers can be to fall for the same mediocre content twice.
Wow has a large player base since it can be played on almost any pc...
They avertise on everything even on eq2 websites...Everywhere you go you see wow....
Same with top 5-10 new games for 2011 and 2012 wow is in the list on youtube... everyone has played wow its very easy and you don't have to do much work to get anything good... Want good gear? Um just do bg for a week and there is your gear fully epic.
Most new games comeing out are much harder then wow and if they have forced pvp they only do good for a short time you also have a lot of gold farmers farming gold on wow to sell and i think they pay almost nothing to play it... um i'd actually think atlest 5% of each server populations are gold farmers... they get band then they just log onto another account seconds latter...
As much as i can say is wow i don't think will be matched for along time and i don't think they will put in free servers eaither like Everquest 2 just did....
For something new to come out to be a wow killer would have to be easyer and lower settings to play. Most of the problems with the newer mmorpg's as well is they are sucky after the noobie lvls... aion was fun after lvl 20 then lvls where really slow and in the Rift one side could not even hold 1 area the other side totally killed everyone with out trying...i beta tested aion sure it was fun... once beta was over played for a little over a month then quit... The forced pvp i did not like....
Guildwars 2 comeing out soon I'v heard its not open pvp so its actually going to be fun i hope... Diablo 3 is to but not sure if its going to be fun or not....But what i do know is blizzard is so slow to release anything... I do actually like a lot of blizzard games but they just release them so slow...
All we can hope is something new comes out soon instead of another paste and copy game
Think think pink
What a sad state of mind.
Blizzard does "Insult the intelligence of "real" gamers".
"A lot of gamers have trouble trying to think too hard".
Let me guess: you think you are intelligent ?
Hehe, he never played WoW yet pretends it's a game for dumb people... next post he will also pretend heroic ICC is easy, even though he never set foot in that place.
It's a bit like the people watching extreme sports on their TV, with their beer belly body comfortably installed in an armchair, and pretending it's easy and they could do it without even training...
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
plz stop insulting people and go play intelligent game will ya.......what a load of crap you can sell man realy
The beer belly was collected in the hour long waiting time for the Raids to assemble in those highly intelligent games, no doubt.
Let's see: a flask of beer potion delivers an intelligence increase of +2....
[1] Do I see "any" wow players trying other games right now, yes plenty. Do they end up staying, for the most part no they do not.
Just because other games are not growing, doesn't mean that people are not trying them. If you really understood the point of the thread you were posting in then common sense would have answered this question for you.
Just go to any free trial area of any game and ask who has played wow, then listen to the responses. You seem surprised that a bunch of hacked out low quality games have not taken a portion of wows playerbase. Again, see thread topic.
[2] As for the state of EQ in 2004, I don't disagree with you that soe was doing a poor job of running the game, but things were like that for years already.
However if things were so bad, people would have left BEFORE wow released, but they didn't. Massive amounts of people didn't quit the game and keep most of the subscriptions open. Then suddenly all decide to stop paying when wow released.
Thank you for not disappointing and living up to expectations. Yeah people were so displeased with EQ that massive amounts of people quit, but kept paying money for the game.
Again we are right back to the topic of this thread about the lack of quality in mmos and the effect one game had on the entire market, strange how that keeps happens isn't it?
It would be amusing to hear your theories of why all those others game saw decline at the same exact time wow released or listen to your "proof" of why so many experienced mmo players left wow shortly after release, but at this point I think I have seen enough of your so called facts and proof to know all I need to know. Thanks for the laughs.
How did you not get it? People left Everquest on their own... the game was already going on 6 years old and another Everquest had just been released... people were trying other games, or simple outgrew the time commitment.
The whole market stagnated, because WoW wasn't the answer for a good many players and most oldschool players grew disgruntled. Not only that, most Everquest players in 2004 were in their 30's, starting new careers and families. Ask Korrigan why he quite..
Don't you listen to people on the boards?
Lastly, the following comment by you, indicates you have no clue what the market was doing, or what took place.
If it wasn't for WoW... "Why did star wars galaxies subscriptions decline?"
Anyone want to explain to him, (with 3 letters), what caused all those SWG fans to leave the game...?
[Mod Edit]
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
Lets slow down a bit. I'm getting lost with all the changes to your story about why veteran players quit mmos around the end of 2004.
First you said "everyone" in eq played wow, but quit wow and returned to their former games in post #253, even though those games lost 60% of the subscriber base and never recovered.
Then you said in post #340 that EQ had already suffered massive decline, but people were still paying for their subscription fees and all mass cancelled around the same time for some unknown reason.
Now in post #352 the new real reason you say is that hundreds of thousands of experienced mmo players were disgruntled, turned 30 and started families and careers.
I guess all of these are great explainations of why EQ and EQ2 each lost roughly 60% of their playerbase that one year. I just don't know which one is the real reason without any of your supporting information to pick the real reason. I don't want to bother Korrigan to be the sample size of one to support the choices of hundreds of thousands. I'm sure he is a nice guy and everything, but that is a little to much for one person to be responsible for.
On top of that, you say the mmo market stagnated at that point in time. Lets see if the charts you find so educational support your claims of stagnation and people quitting the genre.
Well it sure looks like there were 7-8 million total paying players around nov of 2004 and about 12 million 1 year later. I guess we just have different definitions of what stagnation is.
It is strange that wow had more total subscribers than the total number of new players joining during that time period. I guess there must have been some massive changing of the guard where millions of old players left when the two biggest new titles released and double that amount of new players joined to make up for all of those departing veterans.
P.S. As for swg, you remember those charts you linked? The ones that showed SWG losing 125,000 players before the NGE. The one that showed a steady population in the game right up to the point were wow released. I don't know, but that seemed to be a rather important bit of information to overlook if you are going to blame everything on the NGE. Sorry to point out the common sense and obvious again.
Lets cut out the personal attacks and arguements in this thread. Please stay on topic and remember to follow our Rules of Conduct when posting.
That is actually rather weird, most Wow players I know quit more often than smokers but start again after a month or two.
If they would think Wow was truly great they shouldn't have quited in the first place but on the other hand they get back in all the time.
A few of them plain sucks and get killed in most other games but others are high end raiders so player skills are not the issue here in most cases.
Every single Wow player I know have quit at least once (even the fanatics) and some over 15 times. I wonder why?
Sorry for OT but this is definitely +1!
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online
Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online
Playing: CS:GO
I think the simple answer is twofold 1) there just isn't anything else out there and 2) if most of the people you know are playing one game, you're going to eventually go back to that game. The quit ratio isn't surprising at all, WoW has a high burnout factor due to the way it's designed. Someone who's moderately competent is going to burn through the content. Once you've reached a certain point, you either re-roll or quit. Achievements and BG's aren't going to sustain you in the long run. I think the fact that the game still maintains 11.5 million subs affirms this. I'm one who doesn't believe their is an infinite pool of players that WoW continues to draw upon. For as many as it loses in subs every month (which I'm sure is a substantial number), it gains that much back with a combo of fresh new players and returning players. Going into the starting areas proves this as well, since it's not like those areas are teaming with new players all the time.
I have quit several times myself. What is so weird about it?
A game can be the most awesome excellent best thing ever for someone, but eventually they will grow tired of it and move on to another game. I understand you are trying to be sarcastic in your statement, but lets not be silly. I think Indian food is about the best food on earth, but that doesn't mean I am going to eat it every single day for the rest of my life.
No game lasts forever and wow, by mmo standards, is an old game.
Seeing that people continually return to wow over and over and over again really suggests just how weak the rest of the market is at attracting new players and keeping them. Just think about how many people have grown bored of wow over the last 6 years and then ask why people don't stick around playing other games after trying them?
Lets not be facetious and suggest that all wow players are incapable of playing other mmos, because they are so "hard". If someone sucks in wow they will suck in other games and the same is true if they have are exceptional players. If somone understands how to kill a boss in wow I am more than certain they will be able to play kill bosses in eq2 or whatever fantasy mmo.
Over a million people tried Conan and Warhammer each and most left in a month or two. Why do you think they quit so fast?
AoC was simply not done when the game was released. WAR suffered a lack of identity. Neither of which was anywhere nearly as well polished as WoW is.
The gameplay of WoW is very straight forward. Most classes operate on relatively simple rotations or priority systems ( 5 or so abilities) for pve. EQ2 tends to have longer and more involved rotations. EQ2 also has far more stringent group composition. The majority of WoW pve is not hard. The majority of WoW pve is fun, well polished, and doable for even casual players. The only concession to the hardcore is heroic modes (ie only really heroic LK in ICC).
In pvp, WoW gameplay shines. WoW pvp is very twitch based. In that you can defeat a better geared player based on better execution of your abilities. Better players will win mirror matches the vast majority of the time even with lesser gear.
I have played WoW for a long time. I have taken breaks away from the game but I do come back. The reasons that I come back is the community of friends that I have built up. My friends want me to team with them for the arena season or to raid with them.
Curious, I never left. Nor have my brother and most of my RL friends.
I am the only one who tried a lot of other MMO's though.
The friends then pass at my home to watch them. Their intrest is trivial at best.
I don't think they will switch that easy.
A lot of them still play boardgames though and I think they don't fall into a predefined category. Oldest is 61, youngest is 17.
Technicians, students, army men, construction workers, retired, nurses, teachers and a lot of IT guys.
And I am the only one typing on MMO forums....
So the sample of "many returns" is coming straight from these kind of forums.
People here already are deeply into forum grinding, the other 99% grind in game...
... And these people are much happier than forum grinders... because they are playing.
So... that'd mean you are less happy than them because you're not playing, but hanging around forums?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
6 years into EQs lifespan quite a bit of it was still being used. And Kunark and Velious were actually bigger expansions than BC and WotLK, and they came MUCH faster. PoP stayed relevant for an astonishing length of time, and even now is likely still being used. And how much content IS still utilized in WoW? Vanilla raids are soloed/duoed by people bored or looking for useless legendaries/mounts. BC raids are almost never visited by anyone. BC heroics are used occasionally for rep runs, but thats about it. Most people do Hellfire > Zangarmarsh > Nagrand or some brief 3 zone stop because they are *FORCED* to go to outlands. WoWs second expansion rendered its ENTIRE first expansion irrelevant with the exception of being forced to level there for a bit. EQs content stayed relevant for many years after it was released. WoW content does not.EQ content was just as outdated as other games with each new expansions. The only reason anyone played previous expansion content is because they had to wait until the big guilds moved on to new content just so they could get a chance see a boss spawn live for more than 5 minutes. It was a pretty terrible design when 1 or 2 guilds would dominate the majority of a servers endgame content and then having small groups of those players kill much of the entry level bosses on off nights just to have something to do. Yes, I have been a guild that dominated a server and another guild that was on the other side of the fence.
In all honesty most of early EQ was spent not being able to enjoy the content, because limited content on stupid long respawn timers that were dominated by a very small percentage of the games population. Planes of power is a perfect example of that terrible design with gated content, flagging system from hell and ridiculous raid sizes.
Once those restrictions were removed, suddenly everyone could kill everything and having a guild full of early time zone players wasn't the key to success on patch days.
Still have a lot of good memories though, but an equal number of frustrating experiences to go right along with it.
Fun and creative quests? Really?? Go kill 20 dwarfs that ALL have silver hammers. Gather the 20 silver hammers from those dwarfs and report back to me. "Awesome, so I have to go kill 20 dwarfs for their silver hammers, but why again? No real explanation? Oooook... whatever. Alright, here are the dwarves. Aaand backstab, gouge, etc etc, eviscerate! Alright, now time to loo--- ok... no silver hammer on this guy, who is clearly holding one even as he lays on the ground. Alright, shake it off. I'll gather a couple of them up this time [attack attack attack]. Let's see what these guys have. There's one............ One? I just killed 4 guys, and all I have to show for it is ONE silver hammer??? When they're all clearly holding silver hammers??? Really Blizzard?? I mean, REEEEEEEALLY??? Whatever, don't let them get to you. It's just a game... It's just a game..... [attack attack attack] Now, I should get at LEAST one out of thi--- you have got to be kidding me! Nothing??? So I need to collect 20 more hammers, I've killed 7 and collected 1. I need 19 more. It's taken me 5 minutes to kill 7 dwarves. So, according to statistics, it's going to take me over almost 2 hours to finish this quest? Jesus H... I'm done."
That's about the extent of their creativity and "funness".
And I won't even begin to batter the rest of this game. I played it for about 3 years, including beta, and in the beginning, thought the game to be brilliantly done. But now, anyone playing this game is just a friggin' sucker. Or you have nothing you like better, in which case... yeah, I'll refer back to the sucker comment for that one too.
Here's to hoping that SW:TOR can pack a punch. Space combat rail system aside, the game looks and sounds as though it should do the trick.
THE Rooster Nash