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What will topple Blizzards Bohemoth . ?
Taiphoz
Member UncommonPosts: 353
There have been millions of threads accross hundreds of forums all over the net and world about what the next wow killer is going to be, anything from Guild War's 2, to StarWars to Alganon, or Dark Fall, there have been so many different games come out since WoW hit our shelves and to date none of them have been able to put a sizable dent in the WoW Population.
So why is this, I asked myself this question as a long time WoW Player, since Alpha, Beta, then Vanila Releas my time has been spent mostly in WoW, while I have played bucket loads of other games, most of my time has been sunk into Blizzards game.
When I really think about it, and when I look at some of the MMO offerings I have played which could have been that fabled wow killer, I asked myself why did this game not do it.
I actually went about it systematically, and scored games based on art style, content, features etc, and was surprised that a LOT of the new MMO's really were putting more on their launch plate than wow ever did, dont get me wrong most of them have their failings as WoW did on its launch, but when I really looked at it, most of these games actually had more to offer than WoW.
SO WHY! ?
Why is that MMO's coming to market these days that offer more than wow did and do it better in a lot of respects are not toppling the giant off its throne, and the when I asked myself this my only thought was my character, my guild, my friends, the bottom line is that while I have seen some amazing games that offer more and sometimes more of what I really want, I still stay with what is now a 5 year old game because I have deep roots in it.
When I look at games now like the coming Archage which is so feature packed its gona pop a vain in some ones head, that I dont askmyself is this the wow killer, I now ask myself is this the game thats going to allow me to abandon 6 years worth of character development to start fresh, potentially creating new guilds new friends and new roots.
So I think my point is, Ask yourself, not what the next WoW killer is, but what the next game might be to lure you away and allow you to abandon your long developed characters in favour of starting fresh.
My next game could be Archeage.
Comments
Golly gee! Nothing can kill it!
*I'm guessing that was what you were wanting to hear.
Blizzard will kill WoW. They keep mucking it and they'll be considered the next SOE.
It's easy, WoW caters to the masses, and the masses are simple. Therefore the game that is the least complicated and casual friendly/dumbled down wins simply because of the hoarde of the general public. *shrug*
I think the old time EQ players etc, are going to be saved by an indie game, because we don't need a blockbuster seller to be happy with a game.
I've always believed that only time itself will take away the crown from the king. And the clock is certainly ticking.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I am not sure all games that have arrived after is worse than WOW. It is just that people have spent A LOT OF TIME in WOW so why leave it for something similar? I have friends that after a week in Warhammer said WOW was the shit and they had no intentions to ever go back. But then two weeks later they came to the conclusion that they didn't want to go through all the levels again and start over as you do when you go to a new game. People have spent endless hours in front of WOW and they hate to see they go wasted.
I hate the wow-killer talk because it will not happen. It doesn't matter if a new game is great because after a few weeks people understand that what they have to go through to end up with the best gear and everything again. New games will drag people from WOW though, but I doubt it will kill it. Some people hate to be on even grounds. They love what they have build up and hate that when they enter a scenario/battleground they no longer are beasts with the best gear. Yeah, I heard that as well from friends in Warhammer.
Some hated that they couldn't make bags with many slots for their new characters. Others that they couldn't send money from one of their highlevels. They have all that in WOW and have worked hard to get it like that.
I played WOW for a long time but stopped playing when Lord Of The Rings came out. I have had small comebacks, but never stayed for longer than a few weeks. A couple of weeks ago my friend who has played it since start wanted to have me back in game. He game me great gear, money, help etc. But I couldn't stand the game anymore. And still I can see that it is ten times better than it was before. They have improved A LOT. It is not for me though.
Now I am having extremely fun in the RIFT beta and that will be the next game for me. And then I have Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR ahead of me that I hope will give me back the joy again. And all I'll see in those games is the endless talk about the WOW Killer. In fact in the RIFT beta people talk about WOW all the time and like we know from these forums people tend to hate people that love a game that they hate themselves. I have no idea why it is like this in the gamer-community. But as soon as someone mention WOW you'll see 20 lines of WOW-bashing and 20 lines when people try to explain for the WOW-brainwashed that WOW didn't invent MMO's. They also "stole" ideas from other games in the past. Is it something I am not looking forward to in RIFT, GW2 or SWTOR then it is the same old WOW-arguments in the chat.
No singular game is going to kill WoW. One game stealing even half of WoW's subscription base will leave them with 4-5 million subscribers. Why are people so caught up on this? A six year old game that breaks sales records everytime they release an x-pac; a game that after six years still has 10 million subscribers. WoW's spot in the MMO heirarchy is not a spot for the taking. Six years of other companies having a chance and nothing has come close. WoW has become a cultural phenom, and has performed in a way that the genre will probably never see again. I doubt even Blizzard can make another MMO that would do what WoW has done. Despite the hate, it's really quite amazing.
Way to insult a worldwide player base there Sherlock. It's no wonder that people think PC gamers are some of the most antisocial misfits on the planet and why we still get portrayed as fat slobs living in our mom's basements while the world passes us by. Newsflash bro, breathing is easy. So easy you can do it without even thinking, I guess that makes every human on the planet simple cause we all can do it right?
Anyway to answer the OP's question. Blizzard will get toppled when mmos reach the stage in it's evolution when fans of the genre learn to accept gamers for being gamers and stop writing off players who enjoy a different type of mmo that they may enjoy. Only then will dialect for the mmo genre will be open to make way for the return of online communities that are strengthened by their members by how they play and not what they play.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Guess it just depends on how long we allow ourselves to accept WoW as being the best, how much longer it will survive..
Blizzards next MMO...
Remember Old School Ultima Online
Thats my point, its not the best, dont get me wrong I am loving Cata to hell and back its back to being hard, like vanila was, so they made a step in the right direction..
The point I was trying to make that a few of you seem to have missed, is that wow is not the best mmo truth is other mmo's have come out that not only look better visually but they do thing better than wow, but we still play wow, its got nothing to do with what mmo is the best, its got a lot to do with how many years worth of wow work would be lost if we moved to another game.
In a nut shell, the next wow killer will not be a game thats better, there are a few of those already, it will be the game that the players want to play so much that they do not mind losing or leaving their 6 year long character progression in the dust and starting a fresh.
Blizzard is the only entity capable of destroying itself. I think they saw that when they tried to force RealID on folks. It just shocks me that so many people blessed off on such a stupid idea. But, arrogance causes stupid decisions sometimes.
Why do people feel the need to ask such a question?
Seriously OP....it's like asking what burger joint will topple McDonalds. None ever will. And who really cares. McDonalds (WoW) is okay for a quick burger once in awhile....but I have another place I usually go to for mine, And guess what....nobody at that other place cares about McDonalds.
The Truth shall set you free!!
You started smoking and are now up to two packs a day of Reds, it's all you ever smoked since day one. Just can't seem to see yourself smoking any of those cheap brands, they are just imitations of the real, true smokes in the red box.
They say the first step to curing you of an adiction is admitting you have a problem. And this is true of ALL adictons. Most people who smoke, will eventually realize they can smoke something other than the one brand they started with, and most do later on. Some, eventually wake up one day and decide they dont 'need' to smoke at all and just quit. In the same manner, those who started thier MMO career playing with WoW probably never imagined they would ever be addicted to a computer game, hell most still wont admit they are addicted after playing it every single day, religiously, for the past 5 years. The truth is, its an addiction none the less. And just like the guy who smokes nothing but Reds for the past 10 years, they haven't realized there are other games out there they could be playing instead of thier first one of choice. Eventually most will realize there are other brands out there they can play and get the fix they crave each day. And then there will be some, who wake up one day and decide to just quit, to these I say good for you!!
The fact remains though, that WoW as a first time addiction to many of its playerbase, will only be brought down by the truth itself. When the players finally realize they are addicted to MMO gaming, then they can start looking for other games to play or do that thing called real life they haven't seen in years. It is something the players who are hooked on the daily fix must chose to break first, no other way will 'topple' WoW. As long as the players blindly log in day after day without a glace in either direction, as long as they defend thier addiction and deny its existance, as long as the money for the 4 accounts gets the budget in the family finances over going to the movies together, WoW will survive.
Someday, someone will start a non-profit charity to help the 13 million plus adicts out there who need help...hmm now there is an idea......
EDIT: oh and if you want to see something funny, check out the Civanon V vids. If you ever played Civilization you will laugh your ass off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDmtDCsEIOU
Time. Eventually everything becomes dated.
I think it will be mostly technical improvements like 3d technology and the undoubted next gen consoles being that and mmo friendly . PC gaming wise I think something like cloud gaming will up the anti given as I understand it that it means the cloud handles the proccessing power rather than the pc part of the reason that WoW does well is that it is playable on pretty much any PC once thats removed from the equation WoW will look very old very fast . Gameplay wise it would have to be something familiar to some extent but offer something new as well . I know a lot of people think that WoW will never be toppled but thats like thinking space invaders would never be toppled or MUDs would last forever its kind of blinkered thinking . Never is a long time . It will happen its not so much as an if but when .
That actually made sense.
Just do yourself a favor and think about it! Time AND Kotick will kill it they've started to milk every dime and will continue to so. There won't be another juggernaut the MMO market will hopefully split up again very soon. The mythos of one game for everyone will be gone and we will have games for different audiences, can't wait for that day.
Sick of having the easy mode, instant gratification wowcrowd in my game, can honestly say I hate 85 % of them.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
There seems to be a running theme that 'hard' means 'time consuming' in MMOs.
Never understood why though.
I think WoW took alot of those time consuming mechanics out and lets you succeed/fail on your own merits rather than spend an enourmous amount of time doing 'meta game stuff'.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Yes alot of newer games have more content more polish more stability then WOW at LAUNCH. However there were only 300k people who played WOW at launch or there abouts. It took 12 months and a launch in China for WOW to top 1 million subs/active accounts (the Chinese pay as they go they don't pay a sub which is why you can't say WOW makes published active accounts times 15 dollars a month but thats a whole other subject). With Wow's continued (yet slowed) growth of active accounts this means that for the most part when you launch a game saying you have more stuff than WOW at launch is pointless what you need is more stuff than WOW NOW because the number of people who saw what WOW had at launch is about 2.3% of the people who have seen what WOW has now (thats using the rounded numbers of 300,000 who saw launch day divided by 13,000,000 current active accounts times 100). Those numbers don't evan take into account the numbers of those who started post launch and cancelled their account because I don't know if those are reported anywhere and highly doubt they are lets face it Activision/Blizzard get enough positive press just saying they have 13 million active accounts they arn't going to say well we had 100 million* accounts created and have only been able to keep 13 million of them.
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people who play MMO's today expect a new MMO to be as polished as WOW is now with 6 years of post release polish right out of the gate because thats all they have experianced and why play something that for all intents and purposes isn't better, shares basicly the same setting and while there are differences those differences are bugged or implimented in such a way that while sounding good in theory don't really work out that well and costs the same per month to play as WOW.
However all that being said you are right OP in the end weather something actually kills WOW dead really doesn't matter all that much. As long as the MMO sells enough boxes to cover the development costs and keeps enough subs/active accounts to pay for the servers and patches plus a bit extra to pay for the development of expansions plus some extra that investors stay invested and as long as you personnally enjoy it then that is your own personal WOW killer.
* number completly fictitious any resemblance to numbers living or dead are purely coincidental
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
There is nothing more dangerous than a true believer.
Quite Frankly, one of the above posters hit the nail on the head. A certain game won't kill wow. Blizzard AND its own players will kill it. The community is terrible..beyond terrible. and they keep "testing" new theories on classes by releasing them first and not pre-testing it. The game quite frankly sucks now. bottom line. Hate to say it as i loved the wow lore universe, before they totally bastardized it. but this game single handedly dealt a vicious and terrible blow to the MMO market as a whole.. This 800 lb. Gorilla overshadows many great games out there, and the reason is WoW is easy accessible to the thumbless monkeys that play this game. When a game caters to that many stupid people, you just can't lose. They chose their audience quite well. WoW will probably never officially be "dethroned". It is dying though. After the numerous and huge class and spec imbalances when Cata dropped, players are leaving in droves. Blizzard is killing its' own horse it rode into town.
Blizzard is in the progress of making a new mmo code named "Titan", when you look at how amazing and successful WoW was and see that it was their first mmo, imagine how amazing their second mmo will be.... It is suspected to be announced in 2011 or 2012 the name Titan was leaked.
Over time people will get tired of playing Wow and either play a new game or leave the genre altogether. No one game will suddenly make wow lose all it's players.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Itself.
Give it time and Lego Universe will finally over take WOW
"He's no good to me dead."
Will Titan be a WoW Clone? Honestly, unless Titan is a sci-fi MMO like the rumors have been saying
http://www.blizzmmo.com/topic/48-blizzards-titan-and-ensembles-cancelled-titan/I don't see it pulling as large of a crowd as WoW did. The MMO population seems to be tiring of the fantasy MMO. If it is indeed a sci-fi, then we may have a problem.I don't think I'll be playing anything made by Blizzard for quite a while. I'm still comtemplating whether to give up on Diablo III.
I have to agree with the statement made about the game being watered down so that a 10-year old can play it as effectively as a 30-year old. They have attracted such a large population because it appealed to such a massive amount of people because the learning curve was nearly non-existent, there was a massive amount of content, and it nearly had something for everybody. Warcraft's time will come. Until then, they can keep their crowd.