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What MMO did WoW Kill?
Simsu
Member UncommonPosts: 386
With the near constant talk about the mythical "WoW Killer" I began to wonder what MMOs have been killed by WoW.
My question is of all the MMOs to open _prior_ WoW how many of them have closed down because WoW came out? If you can think of any then my follow up question is did it fail because of WoW or because of something the developers did/didn't do? (i.e. just poor game design/implementation)
I'm submitting that even with all the records set by WoW and its huge popularity that it didn't "kill" any game that came out before it and people should stop using the term "WoW Killer". Because while WoW, like every game, will eventually lose popularity, but the concept of any single MMO coming out and taking so many subscribers away from WoW that Blizzard will have to shut it down is pretty absurd.
Comments
IMHO one game that had potential at the time was SWG...but WoW alone didn't kill it, it had lots of help from the idiots at SOE and LA calling the shots then because also IMHO they got greedy and panicked when they saw the fast rate of success WoW was having.
PIRATE LORDS
Wow didn't kill any game that wasn't already slowly dying or on its last leg to to begin with. I personally never heard anyone say "I'm leaving this or that game because wow is better" If you like wow game style, you'll go there. If you don't, you'll stay where you are happy. Wow caters to players that don't want to have to put in any sort of strained effort to feel accomplished. Those that appriciate having to strive (root word "strife", meaning to suffer or burden) won't play wow as it does not satisfy thier need to feel accomplished for thier patience and hard work. Thus, would either go back to thier original game or most likely never have left at all. Therefore, I doubt that like wal-mart, wow has put any other MMORPG out of business. I could be wrong, but doubtful.
A tiny mind is a tidy mind...
I see what you're saying but here's the thing, WoW created a new playerbase. Instead of pulling solely from other MMOs to WoW; WoW pulled average Jane and Joe into their game and made MMOs popular.
Now that a large majority of the people who would play are playing it's a matter of shuffling subscribers between products and there aren't a lot of demographics, if any, left to tap into. I doubt any one MMO will come and kill WoW. No MMO to rule them all, no MMO to find them, no MMO to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Instead WoW will decline as people naturally part ways with the game and as people are picked off bit by bit for other games. I wouldn't expect WoW to close it's servers for at least another 15+ years though, to be honest.
I think in a way WoW killed SWG. However, SWG was already dieing due to lack of bug fixes and the holo-grind (There was nothing worse than walking into the cantina in Theed and seeing my favorite and trusted weapons crafter in some entertainer dance macro because he is no longer a crafter but grinding entertatiner for his jedi. I think he had to actually master every proffession except one to unluck his). We have SOE to thank for that. WoW was just the final nail in the coffin.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
With a few dramatic exceptions, MMOs don't die by closing beacuse it doesn't take a lot of money to keep a server running. Rather, they slowly suffocate as resources are squeezed and ambitions dwindle. It's not so much that WoW "kills" games ... it just sort of "wraiths" them.
doubt
I would have to say SWG as well. If not for WOW they would have no other gane to copy at the time.
true.
its amazing how ppl forget all the troubles swg had.even its inital basic design was a key problem.it was made to be a mmorpg in star wars universe where you are basically a common working folk or a foot solider at best not someone powerful.
unlike other mmorpg where you can gather your forces and strike at the greatest evil in the land and at least feel powerful for a few minutes even though the same villian respawns next time you or someone else comes past.
in swg at best you were a safari hunter killing some generic wildlife such as krayt .
Then they put in the much demanded jedi and of course everyone wants to play this class that is 10x stronger then the next class.So eventually all would have been a jedi with other tree/profession been mainly as side kicks you log in to craft or laugh with.
There was nothing really worth grouping for as people took doctor buffs ,grouped up but then went spread ways just to get a high level lair(yes more safari) which was basically a mission to go destroy some nest spawning randomly somewhere and took 2 mins to do.
loads of bugs.many tree that did not work .take ranger for instance.totally useless and i laughed myself once when couple of us went hunting for krayt(again more safari,see the combat content pattern yet folks) and we asked the ranger to track for us and he said nothing on track yet we could see a krayt close to us .
it was a good economy/crafting sim but otherwise it was horribly boring and was already declining rapidly pre wow.
lol @ swg
When I played it, it was after the nge.. and it was still full of people. It might not have been the awesomeness that it was before, but it wasn't "killed", it just changed target audience and went on for years.
Let me state, for one, i dont think WoW completely killed off any competitors. Most of WoWs fanbase were brand new players that had never played mmos before.
But I do think WoW put a hurt on a few games.
Daoc-At the time WoW came out, DAOC was losing a bit of fanbase anyways, but WoW certainly took a number of players.
Eq-EQ lost a healthy amount of there players.
EQ2 -WoW and EQ2 were released really close to the same time. At one point, WoW and EQ2 were neck and neck. And WoW just kept moving up and everytime I turned around I was hearing something bad about EQ2.
Shadowbane (wait, that might of been suicide!)
even though SWG was a little safari like.... i still loved the player housing and crafting and multiple habitable planets concept. and it wasnt easy to be jedi so it was a earned class not a over populated feature. and i dont think WoW killed it im sure SOE killed it and WoW just ran over the road kill
Very surprised.....I expected someone to say all the ones that came after it.
--John Ruskin
if any game that got hurt by WoW when it came out was DAOc and EQ2 which had came out a month before. But EQ2 was plague with bug at release so it only didn't help them either
Games that came out after WoW controlled their own fate IMO...still do. The same can be said of any game actually preWoW or post.
Yet there is a large portion of the community wanting more than what is currently available....this may always be the case for some but that is how things evolve IMO else we all become stagnent with content.
PIRATE LORDS
The only game that got hurt by wow i think was EQ2 they both came out less then two weeks in between.
It did hurt EQ2 a bit me thinks......but surely didnt kill it.
Earned class? sorry, but grinding more than the other duide isnt earning anythiung, same with playing differently than the other guy isnt earning anything either.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
WoW didnt kill any MMO. Thats why its funny to hear about the imaginary WoW killer.
WoW's initial following was mostly blizzard fans who loved the series already. With others who had experienced the MMO world and were excited that blizzard was attempting an MMO. Kinda like people are excited bioware is taking a shot at the genre. Then word spread out around beta un officially. I knew afew beta testers that would talk about the beta over IRC.
And, im going on record here, there will never be a game that "Kills" WoW. Or forces it to shut down. A game may come along and drop the amount of people that play wow, but the only people that can put the nail in the coffin is blizzard itself. And if the current trend keeps up, and if WoW's numbers did start to dwindle seriously, they would probably go F2P too and add a cash shop.. But I doubt they'll have to. Atleast no one would whine about the community being destroyed if they did though.. Ehehehe XD
Low blow.
"We got rid of the trinity." How'd you do that? "Now everyone can heal." Sounds like you just took the mechanic and spread it thin. "Well no, there's one class that can do it better than others." I see, so they're healers. "No. They're.." -mind asplode-
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
WoW didn't kill any mmorpg in particular but diluted the genre by bringing lots of casuals in playerbase. Since game biz is about money everyone tries to repeat WoW's success and build same gold mountain as blizzard did. Devs have to listen to their fanbase in order to keep subs high and since it's mostly consists of people who want after school/work relax game and don't care much about R.P.G. part... Well, you can add 2 and 2. That kills innovative approach since it might not be what majority wants = not profitable.
Well by that logic you don't really earn anything in a MMO. Regardless plenty of people liked SWG as a sandbox game before SOE screwed them over and lots still do enjoy it on emulators that aren't even complete. SOE did indeed get greedy and I think it's possible that was because of WOW's success.
Lastly I don't think the game design was flawed anymore than WOW is. It just appeals to differnet people some people like playing in a believed open world and some people like doing quest which tell them they are important when all they are really doing is killing mobs and reporting back to NPCs. What is flawed though is making one game and than trying to turn it into something very different.
that brings back memories...
buying a 10k doctor buff for 3 hrs and then doing bazz nitch/piket/or those vorithor??? missions.
But still, even when it lacked content, it was stil more fun then that dreaded notorious 2005 'update'.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Wow...What a post. I find it odd that you think wow diluted the genre by bringing in a casual playerbase. The casual gamer was already there in other games. They didnt create that sub group of players or their intrest in the genre. And last time I played WoW, it was only the hardcore guilds that were downing the big guys. There sure as hell wasnt any casual guilds clearing those instance bosses with ease....... Care to ellaborate?
WoW killed pretty much everything except for Eve and a couple of browser based games.
.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
I tend to believe hardcore / casual difference is in consequences. WoW is game of zero consequences. You can't loose. The biggest loss is time spent for corpse run or well, if somebody ninjas phat lewt you were grinding for 3 month straight.
WoW had peak population of what? 11 million people, if my memory doesn't fail me. I don't think all of them were in other mmorpg games before. Something tells me that for most of them WoW was first rpg. So WoW set example for many people 'how mmorpgs should be'...
So to cut long story short, WoW as undoubtful successful project set future guidelines for genre which by some people are viewed as wrong, degrading.
P.S. Maybe my thoughts are a bit messy, but this should do for morning pre-breakfast rant