I see a few people saying "im worried about the Community of GW2" but if im being real honist with you, im more worried about if GW2 does well and DOES "beat WoW" that means alot of the WoW community will come to GW2 and THAT is bad imo, dont get me wrong i know not all wow players are the same and i wont try to lable them all the same, but come on guys, even your cant say that WoW does not hold the largest community of MMORPG Dickheads that just play to fuck everyone elses fun up.
WoW has the most dickheads because it has the most players...period. Some of the nicest, coolest people I've met in gaming have been from my time playing WoW. But when you have a large population, you're going to have more trolls and griefers than other games. I've played tons of other games besides WoW, and found just as many jagoffs in terms of percentage of population in this games. Fact is, you're playing a video game, which automatically means you are going to have a segment of the population that doesn't deal in reality and is sorely lacking in social skills anyway. This goes for any MMO.
I agree. It is unfortunate that SWTOR will [probably] be so popular though, because I've seen the demo and there is NOTHING new brought to their table.
If we see in terms of sheer popularity i would still keep WOW on top. It will always be the most talked about and most popular MMO.
This will only remain true if no other company spends the prime time advertising dollars that Blizzard spent and spends. Now....that is possible, since they spent multiple fortunes on advertising, BUT.....as soon as another GOOD game spends that kind of advertising money.....it will be talked about just as much as WoW is now, if not as much as it used to be.
THANK YOU!!!
THANK YOU!.
Finally someone else gets it! I can finally take off my "wow is only popular because of advertising" shirt and go home....i can finally go home...
Pretty easy to make a list when the criteria for ranking isn't given. I can only think of two non-subjective metrics of success. The main one is total subscribers. I'll be shocked if WoW doesn't keep the number one spot for at least a few more years. The other one is number of new subscribers added next year. Some reasonable criteria needs to be used for that though, such as subscribing and being an active player for at least 3 months. If you are going by that then I could see ranking TOR and GW2 above WoW, but it sure would be nice if you told us what you used instead of making us guess.
The problem is, if you were to use any objective criteria for success...the "top 10 list" of MMORPGs would likely only be 3 or 4 games long next year. Actually, maybe only two.
Most MMORPGs suffer from what the conventional wisdom in the genre considers the "new normal" success, which is large box sales, and then a huge drop-off in active accounts over the following months, eventually stabilizing at niche subscription numbers ~200k and high turnover. All the games on the list other than 3 or 4 are going to be in that boat (or are already there...perhaps using free play or other gimicks to prop up numbers), and there's nothing "top 10" about that at all. It's just squeaking by and keeping the lights on.
Maybe he was talking about polish? Most Polished MMOs? That's more important than quality or game play or longevity now-a-days, isn't it? (sarcasm)
I think success in the MMORPG genre should be based on:
-Player retention - if you're supposedly creating a living, breathing immersive world for players to get lost in and tons of content, and you can't keep players interested for more than a month or two... I wouldn't call that success. If I were a dev, I would want to know how many people were still having fun and loving my game 6 months or a year later. I would want to measure average /played times in the hundreds of hours, not the tens. Creating a thriving community surrounding your game full of people who are connected and excited about their characters and the world...THAT"s success.
-Targeted market - If you are clearly creating a game targeted at WoW's 11 million subscribers, and you end up with 300k... sorry, you're not a niche success, you're a mass-market failure. You can't shoot the wall behind the target and then claim you were aiming at the wall. Target audience matters. You have to measure the players you ended up with against the players you were intending to target...it's really the only honest way. Did you honestly tell the money men at the beginning of this journey that you were going to stabilize at ~200k subscriptions with high turnover? I'll bet you didn't.
-Subscription / active population numbers that INCREASE over time, not decrease (goes along with the first two nicely. Sure there's only a few games in this genre that can ever boast this type of graph (one that goes up), that should definitely be a part of considering a game a success. People should not only want to play your game for a long time, they should be wanting to get their family and friends and coworkers involved. That's a social game.
If your game doesn't stand up to those standards, I would not call it a success.
At the moment in the genre, people really have very few good choices. Getting some of those desperate people to try your game by offering free trials doesn't show ANYTHING about the quality of your game. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Keeping players (and gaining more) is a much better sign, and so few games can claim to be doing that.
Wait until there's some real quality competition, and then we'll separate the successes and failures much more easily. There's going to be three or four games next year that could be real successes...and then there's going to be everything else (i.e. the post-WoW graveyard of games just keeping the lights on). The Everything else category is growing ever larger, but none of the games can really be called "Top" of anything. The best failure isn't really a category that makes any sense.
Hopefully the number of games in that REAL success category will increase over time (as developers learn from the last 6 years and stop making the same mistakes, or are lead by the nose towards innovation by companies like ArenaNet), but as to the crop we're looking at now, most of them don't have a chance of being anything other than what they are.
That ended up quite a bit longer than I intended. Sorry.
I'm too lazy to look it up. What was the reason for SWTOR not releasing in some form of asian markets? And if I'm wrong about it completely, and they will be, then I apologize.
I think that the list looks very good. Still, it is difficult to imagine WoW not being on number 1. They really have to lose a lot of subs to SWTOR to drop 2 places.
Im looking forward to GW2 myself. But I find it difficult how to measure its success compared to subbased games. A game that doesnt need a sub, will always sell extra boxes because of that. You also cant really compare boxsales to amount of subs.
As for The Secret World and possibly ArcheAge. Im kind of sceptical about Funcom and the way the state they release their games in. ArcheAge I expect to be a nichegame, especially if it stays open world PVP.
Then Planetside 2 is a fpsstyle game and made by Sony (also not a great quality release record), so even if they release in 2012, I dont expect they will get a large amount of subs .
I approve of this list. However with Rift, I think it should go below The Secret World, because in-game I've been in so many conversations with people saying how they can't wait for one of the big 3 (GW2, SW:TOR, TSW).
Also regarding SW:TOR and GW2. The reason I agree with their positions on the list is because there is no doubt that SW:TOR will be hugely popular in the US and Europe. It will likely do better than GW2 in at least one of those continents. However GW2 will have something SW:TOR won't have... an Asian market, alongside the US and Europe. I say this because GW2 is aiming to be a highly competitive, highly skill-based, e-sport and it is no secret that a lot of Western games that have that sort of format appeal to the Asian market (Starcraft, Diablo & Dota-styled games).
So if NCSoft heavily markets GW2 to the east (focusing on the PvP) and NCSoft West markets it well over here, then we could get a highly successful game that will at least trump SW:TOR.
You beat me to it. I'd put the list as GW2, TOR, TSW, then the rest. People are sick of WoW and company. In fact, I might even put TSW before TOR for the long haul.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
I see TSW growing more than GW2 and SW:TOR, it will launch weaker, and get momentum.
Yeah that would be nice. It is really something different and I hope they will succeed. But with past releases it showed that if the launch is weak, it never recovers to full potential. So Funcom better do its best to avoid this scenario again.
I've just started playing AoC and find it a wonderful game: beautiful, sexy women, challenging, innovative, immersive, but above all, with a fabulous combat system. I even think I'm spoiled now: I don't think I can ever go back to auto-attack/refresh-powers/cycle.
If we see in terms of sheer popularity i would still keep WOW on top. It will always be the most talked about and most popular MMO.
No it wont. Everquest used to be the top dog MMO everyone tried to kill. Now most MMOers have no clue what that game is. EQ was the first online game to have 500'000 players logged in at one time. Now 500'000 is the base line to have a MMO that can make real money so content keep flowing and still make a profit. WoW's days of glory will pass into the shadow as does all games.
SWTOR will be the top MMO for 2012 and set a new standard for MMOs. I will be there for a few years to be sure. Now Bioware needs to add game mechanic depth to stay top dog. We will see if BW can do that. I fear that voice acting could be its sink hole when it comes to new content. Its could be its biggest win and ship sinker at the same time.
I can see gw2 being popular. However Aion had very impressive graphics as well, and its flavor died very quickly cause in my opinion it was very poorly balanced. I have a feeling that the repetitvness in gw2 will hurt that title, and bring it down after several months. I do believe as with kotor. Swtor's playibility and re-rollibility will be legendary in comparison to any other MMO out there. I really do believe that more people will end up staying in swtor than people continuing with gw2. I also trully believe that a free to play MMO has no chance what so ever, contentwise or the longeviity of gameplay against a pay to play MMO.
I can see gw2 being popular. However Aion had very impressive graphics as well, and its flavor died very quickly cause in my opinion it was very poorly balanced. I have a feeling that the repetitvness in gw2 will hurt that title, and bring it down after several months. I do believe as with kotor. Swtor's playibility and re-rollibility will be legendary in comparison to any other MMO out there. I really do believe that more people will end up staying in swtor than people continuing with gw2. I also trully believe that a free to play MMO has no chance what so ever, contentwise or the longeviity of gameplay against a pay to play MMO.
you will eat those words my friend. The Buy to Play model works and what GW2 is doing is what the MMO market needs GW2 will be played based on a fun-factor not on a grind for gear reward system that makes players re-do content over and over. and due to this content will have to be quality and come out faster then patches of P2P games.
I dunno. I'm not sure about that. Warcraft, which I think will still be #1 in playerbase in 2012, has similar mechanics to swtor. I think part of it comes down to frustration aswell. Rage quiting. I see swtor being less frustrating than wow. So if anything, swtor will take a huge percentage of their playbase perminanently. Plus all the ones from swg, and any number of new players aswell. I just don't think gw2 can compete with that.
I can see gw2 being popular. However Aion had very impressive graphics as well, and its flavor died very quickly cause in my opinion it was very poorly balanced. I have a feeling that the repetitvness in gw2 will hurt that title, and bring it down after several months. I do believe as with kotor. Swtor's playibility and re-rollibility will be legendary in comparison to any other MMO out there. I really do believe that more people will end up staying in swtor than people continuing with gw2. I also trully believe that a free to play MMO has no chance what so ever, contentwise or the longeviity of gameplay against a pay to play MMO.
To answer your pink statement, Aion was developend and published by NCSoft, NOT Arena-net. Arena-net is owned by NCsoft, and NCsoft is the "publisher". The equivalent in SWTOR terms is saying SWTOR is an EA game because EA owns Bioware. Or that SWTOR will fail because EA-Mythic made WAR, which is regarded as a "fail".
The blue statement is much easier to answer, and i can answer red at the same time. The "Repetitiveness" in GW2 needs more elaboratation, but ill answer in several categories off the top of my head that you could mean.
Combat: The combat is very action-y, the dodge is almost OP based on what i've been able to see so far (look up the A-Net vs Boon Control GW2 PvP match. epic.) giving you a GUARANTEED evade. There are no "Magic arrows" that track down moving opponents, making movement EXTREMELY valuable. To top it off, they're putting in bosses all throughout the world (as in NOT INSTANCED) with mechanics on par with raids in other games. Not only that, the removal of the holy trinity makes the combat much more interesting.
Re-rolling: Lets face it, people love alts, i love alts, and it sounds like you do. Sure, in SW:TOR your going to have different stories for each class, and depending on what choices you make theres either a neutral path, a light path or a dark path for each class on each world, so lets say theres a good 25 worlds, which i believe is pretty reasonable at launch, thats 50 ways to play through the game, if you make two of each class just to see it all. In GW2, the stories are not just by class but by race, and the 7 questions they ask you during creation, and the choices you make. So lets see, 5 races times 8 classes times 7 questions times the Evil or Good path is a whopping 560 choices. This is, of course, excluding if you played every role of every dynamic event in the game, which is an even bigger number.
for all those worried about the pay to win model, in the alpha they already have the costume system in place, they're called town clothes
TL;DR: the F2P is a plus because unlike you paying 60 dollars + 15 dollars a month, i can play a game with much more diversity, and much more potential. Have fun emptying your wallet while all i have to pay for is expansions and some town clothes that i can show off to my friends. (Oh and BTW, for those that forget, SW:TOR will make you pay for any expansion too, especially following the blizzard model ((ALA BC, WOTLK, CATA)) so have fun! )
I dunno. I'm not sure about that. Warcraft, which I think will still be #1 in playerbase in 2012, has similar mechanics to swtor. I think part of it comes down to frustration aswell. Rage quiting. I see swtor being less frustrating than wow. So if anything, swtor will take a huge percentage of their playbase perminanently. Plus all the ones from swg, and any number of new players aswell. I just don't think gw2 can compete with that.
I do agree that TOR will take away from WoW as well as bring in more players hwo havent played an MMO yet. However from a gamer perspective GW2 will be a good investment. TOR will play every similar to WoW, but have a different quest structure. TOR will feel as if you are playing a single player and if you are not invested into the story then you will be skiping all the VO, the main cost of the game. TORs end game will be repeating space combat missions, battleground PvP (as i have yet to see world PvP with any real objectives as side from the pleasure of killing player) and raiding for those pieces of gear, OR playing another class for their story (but i assume there are side quests in the game which will be the same across all classes for that side, wihich will bring repeated content).
P.S those who play SWG, for more then just Star Wars will not go to TOR, they will flock to ArcheAge or Fallen Earth (the latter being just a guess as its free to play now so I can assume that many will shy away)
NOW with GW2, you have the loyal GW fans (that of which i am apart of , no surpise but still hear me out ), those people who are sick of the same old combat system and moving only when boss machinics force them too, these are the people looking for more of an active combat role and more of an action game. The B2P model is simply a good thing, pay ONCE play forever (now i am not stupid and i know of the cash shop as i have played GW1 since launch but I trust Arenanet to keep the shop in check and understand how to keep the "pay to win" items away and I have seen what has been done with the GW1 shop and I was there when it came out). The game has a Story Mode with Player housing (I Have yet to see TOR bring anything custom on the spaceship that you get) A story by Jeff Grub and the rest of the Arenanet writters, which you know cant be bad. Dynamic Content in the fact that a zone can litterally be DIFFERNT the next time you walk through it. WvWvW PvP that will be about server pride with castle sieges very similar to to best part of DAoC. OHH and dont let me forget the Dungeons, the Dungeons that change once you finish it once, the dungeons that have 3 different paths after you finish story mode, and the dungeons that have random events that trigger like an old school D&D dungeon crawl.
I Like what i see from TOR, dont get me wrong, but GW2 has such a better showing and changing the way MMOs are played. Now I have done my research, hell i made the first post in the first thread in the entire GW2 fourm here. The two game TOR and GW2 will the top spot in 2010 and you will see WoW hurting if they dont bring in some heavy hitting patches (now this wont be the downfall of bilzzard as D3 will be huge and Titan im sure will be good and polished and a great MMO) Im sure a huge amount of people will play both GW2 and TOR but in the end which icon are they clicking on their desktop more? which game will have more play time?
Except for AoC and Tera's reticle mechanic, all I see are gear-dependent-heavy games. Gear dice-rolls and grinding for more gear for the stats are soooooo yesterday. We want more interaction in all aspects of a game. Numbers controlling the outcome of most of the action removes the "human" aspects of the game.
IMHO this list is just a WoW-Clonish Top List of 2012. WoW-clone because I see WoW as the leader in making quality mmorpg respectable in terms of the BASICS. Stripped down to the basic form of how mmorpgs should be made and presented. Adding a few ingredients here in there doesn't make it a breakthrough game and raise it to a level of complex the new crowd demands.
I'm a Tekken and FPS/TPS fan and all I want is more of that twitch action and better controls!!! Damnit! Anarchy Online and Dark Age of Camelot will beat the crap out of the top 2 by just updating the graphics.
I know that I'll be playing GW2, SWTOR, Secret World, DUST, Skyrim, Kingdom of Amalur, TERA, and Diablo III in the next 12 months from now. So many new games in a short time...a gamer's paradise.
i find it interesting the GUild Wars 2 is listed. seeing the fact that Arena.Net themselves has stated that the Guild Wars Franchise isnt a MMO. THey have stated time and time again that the Guild Wars Franchise is a CORPG(Competittive Online ROle PLaying Game).
"Possibly we humans can exist without actually having to fight. But many of us have chosen to fight. For what reason? To protect something? Protect what? Ourselves? The future? If we kill people to protect ourselves and this future, then what sort of future is it, and what will we have become? There is no future for those who have died. And what of those who did the killing? Is happiness to be found in a future that is grasped with blood stained hands? Is that the truth?"
Comments
WoW has the most dickheads because it has the most players...period. Some of the nicest, coolest people I've met in gaming have been from my time playing WoW. But when you have a large population, you're going to have more trolls and griefers than other games. I've played tons of other games besides WoW, and found just as many jagoffs in terms of percentage of population in this games. Fact is, you're playing a video game, which automatically means you are going to have a segment of the population that doesn't deal in reality and is sorely lacking in social skills anyway. This goes for any MMO.
I agree. It is unfortunate that SWTOR will [probably] be so popular though, because I've seen the demo and there is NOTHING new brought to their table.
GW2 all the way for sure! No arguing there.
Guild Wars 2!
WOW #1 alaways wow rulez!
I've just renewed my sub to Aion but i still havn't played it.. Don't know what i was thinking to be honest..
I think the list is spot on too.
I get the same feeling when I play wow after wating a video of GW2.
THANK YOU!!!
THANK YOU!.
Finally someone else gets it! I can finally take off my "wow is only popular because of advertising" shirt and go home....i can finally go home...
The problem is, if you were to use any objective criteria for success...the "top 10 list" of MMORPGs would likely only be 3 or 4 games long next year. Actually, maybe only two.
Most MMORPGs suffer from what the conventional wisdom in the genre considers the "new normal" success, which is large box sales, and then a huge drop-off in active accounts over the following months, eventually stabilizing at niche subscription numbers ~200k and high turnover. All the games on the list other than 3 or 4 are going to be in that boat (or are already there...perhaps using free play or other gimicks to prop up numbers), and there's nothing "top 10" about that at all. It's just squeaking by and keeping the lights on.
Maybe he was talking about polish? Most Polished MMOs? That's more important than quality or game play or longevity now-a-days, isn't it? (sarcasm)
I think success in the MMORPG genre should be based on:
-Player retention - if you're supposedly creating a living, breathing immersive world for players to get lost in and tons of content, and you can't keep players interested for more than a month or two... I wouldn't call that success. If I were a dev, I would want to know how many people were still having fun and loving my game 6 months or a year later. I would want to measure average /played times in the hundreds of hours, not the tens. Creating a thriving community surrounding your game full of people who are connected and excited about their characters and the world...THAT"s success.
-Targeted market - If you are clearly creating a game targeted at WoW's 11 million subscribers, and you end up with 300k... sorry, you're not a niche success, you're a mass-market failure. You can't shoot the wall behind the target and then claim you were aiming at the wall. Target audience matters. You have to measure the players you ended up with against the players you were intending to target...it's really the only honest way. Did you honestly tell the money men at the beginning of this journey that you were going to stabilize at ~200k subscriptions with high turnover? I'll bet you didn't.
-Subscription / active population numbers that INCREASE over time, not decrease (goes along with the first two nicely. Sure there's only a few games in this genre that can ever boast this type of graph (one that goes up), that should definitely be a part of considering a game a success. People should not only want to play your game for a long time, they should be wanting to get their family and friends and coworkers involved. That's a social game.
If your game doesn't stand up to those standards, I would not call it a success.
At the moment in the genre, people really have very few good choices. Getting some of those desperate people to try your game by offering free trials doesn't show ANYTHING about the quality of your game. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Keeping players (and gaining more) is a much better sign, and so few games can claim to be doing that.
Wait until there's some real quality competition, and then we'll separate the successes and failures much more easily. There's going to be three or four games next year that could be real successes...and then there's going to be everything else (i.e. the post-WoW graveyard of games just keeping the lights on). The Everything else category is growing ever larger, but none of the games can really be called "Top" of anything. The best failure isn't really a category that makes any sense.
Hopefully the number of games in that REAL success category will increase over time (as developers learn from the last 6 years and stop making the same mistakes, or are lead by the nose towards innovation by companies like ArenaNet), but as to the crop we're looking at now, most of them don't have a chance of being anything other than what they are.
That ended up quite a bit longer than I intended. Sorry.
I agree with the whole list except for Tera. Tera so far has been some what of a flop in Korea. I would put Archeage or Planetside 2 in its place.
I see TSW growing more than GW2 and SW:TOR, it will launch weaker, and get momentum.
I'm too lazy to look it up. What was the reason for SWTOR not releasing in some form of asian markets? And if I'm wrong about it completely, and they will be, then I apologize.
I think that the list looks very good. Still, it is difficult to imagine WoW not being on number 1. They really have to lose a lot of subs to SWTOR to drop 2 places.
Im looking forward to GW2 myself. But I find it difficult how to measure its success compared to subbased games. A game that doesnt need a sub, will always sell extra boxes because of that. You also cant really compare boxsales to amount of subs.
As for The Secret World and possibly ArcheAge. Im kind of sceptical about Funcom and the way the state they release their games in. ArcheAge I expect to be a nichegame, especially if it stays open world PVP.
Then Planetside 2 is a fpsstyle game and made by Sony (also not a great quality release record), so even if they release in 2012, I dont expect they will get a large amount of subs .
You beat me to it. I'd put the list as GW2, TOR, TSW, then the rest. People are sick of WoW and company. In fact, I might even put TSW before TOR for the long haul.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Yeah that would be nice. It is really something different and I hope they will succeed. But with past releases it showed that if the launch is weak, it never recovers to full potential. So Funcom better do its best to avoid this scenario again.
I've just started playing AoC and find it a wonderful game: beautiful, sexy women, challenging, innovative, immersive, but above all, with a fabulous combat system. I even think I'm spoiled now: I don't think I can ever go back to auto-attack/refresh-powers/cycle.
No it wont. Everquest used to be the top dog MMO everyone tried to kill. Now most MMOers have no clue what that game is. EQ was the first online game to have 500'000 players logged in at one time. Now 500'000 is the base line to have a MMO that can make real money so content keep flowing and still make a profit. WoW's days of glory will pass into the shadow as does all games.
SWTOR will be the top MMO for 2012 and set a new standard for MMOs. I will be there for a few years to be sure. Now Bioware needs to add game mechanic depth to stay top dog. We will see if BW can do that. I fear that voice acting could be its sink hole when it comes to new content. Its could be its biggest win and ship sinker at the same time.
I can see gw2 being popular. However Aion had very impressive graphics as well, and its flavor died very quickly cause in my opinion it was very poorly balanced. I have a feeling that the repetitvness in gw2 will hurt that title, and bring it down after several months. I do believe as with kotor. Swtor's playibility and re-rollibility will be legendary in comparison to any other MMO out there. I really do believe that more people will end up staying in swtor than people continuing with gw2. I also trully believe that a free to play MMO has no chance what so ever, contentwise or the longeviity of gameplay against a pay to play MMO.
you will eat those words my friend. The Buy to Play model works and what GW2 is doing is what the MMO market needs GW2 will be played based on a fun-factor not on a grind for gear reward system that makes players re-do content over and over. and due to this content will have to be quality and come out faster then patches of P2P games.
Like the list. I would've stuck Archeage somewhere in the Top 6-10, however.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
@ ;needalife214
I dunno. I'm not sure about that. Warcraft, which I think will still be #1 in playerbase in 2012, has similar mechanics to swtor. I think part of it comes down to frustration aswell. Rage quiting. I see swtor being less frustrating than wow. So if anything, swtor will take a huge percentage of their playbase perminanently. Plus all the ones from swg, and any number of new players aswell. I just don't think gw2 can compete with that.
To answer your pink statement, Aion was developend and published by NCSoft, NOT Arena-net. Arena-net is owned by NCsoft, and NCsoft is the "publisher". The equivalent in SWTOR terms is saying SWTOR is an EA game because EA owns Bioware. Or that SWTOR will fail because EA-Mythic made WAR, which is regarded as a "fail".
The blue statement is much easier to answer, and i can answer red at the same time. The "Repetitiveness" in GW2 needs more elaboratation, but ill answer in several categories off the top of my head that you could mean.
Combat: The combat is very action-y, the dodge is almost OP based on what i've been able to see so far (look up the A-Net vs Boon Control GW2 PvP match. epic.) giving you a GUARANTEED evade. There are no "Magic arrows" that track down moving opponents, making movement EXTREMELY valuable. To top it off, they're putting in bosses all throughout the world (as in NOT INSTANCED) with mechanics on par with raids in other games. Not only that, the removal of the holy trinity makes the combat much more interesting.
Re-rolling: Lets face it, people love alts, i love alts, and it sounds like you do. Sure, in SW:TOR your going to have different stories for each class, and depending on what choices you make theres either a neutral path, a light path or a dark path for each class on each world, so lets say theres a good 25 worlds, which i believe is pretty reasonable at launch, thats 50 ways to play through the game, if you make two of each class just to see it all. In GW2, the stories are not just by class but by race, and the 7 questions they ask you during creation, and the choices you make. So lets see, 5 races times 8 classes times 7 questions times the Evil or Good path is a whopping 560 choices. This is, of course, excluding if you played every role of every dynamic event in the game, which is an even bigger number.
for all those worried about the pay to win model, in the alpha they already have the costume system in place, they're called town clothes
TL;DR: the F2P is a plus because unlike you paying 60 dollars + 15 dollars a month, i can play a game with much more diversity, and much more potential. Have fun emptying your wallet while all i have to pay for is expansions and some town clothes that i can show off to my friends. (Oh and BTW, for those that forget, SW:TOR will make you pay for any expansion too, especially following the blizzard model ((ALA BC, WOTLK, CATA)) so have fun!
)
I do agree that TOR will take away from WoW as well as bring in more players hwo havent played an MMO yet. However from a gamer perspective GW2 will be a good investment. TOR will play every similar to WoW, but have a different quest structure. TOR will feel as if you are playing a single player and if you are not invested into the story then you will be skiping all the VO, the main cost of the game. TORs end game will be repeating space combat missions, battleground PvP (as i have yet to see world PvP with any real objectives as side from the pleasure of killing player) and raiding for those pieces of gear, OR playing another class for their story (but i assume there are side quests in the game which will be the same across all classes for that side, wihich will bring repeated content).
P.S those who play SWG, for more then just Star Wars will not go to TOR, they will flock to ArcheAge or Fallen Earth (the latter being just a guess as its free to play now so I can assume that many will shy away)
NOW with GW2, you have the loyal GW fans (that of which i am apart of , no surpise but still hear me out ), those people who are sick of the same old combat system and moving only when boss machinics force them too, these are the people looking for more of an active combat role and more of an action game. The B2P model is simply a good thing, pay ONCE play forever (now i am not stupid and i know of the cash shop as i have played GW1 since launch but I trust Arenanet to keep the shop in check and understand how to keep the "pay to win" items away and I have seen what has been done with the GW1 shop and I was there when it came out). The game has a Story Mode with Player housing (I Have yet to see TOR bring anything custom on the spaceship that you get) A story by Jeff Grub and the rest of the Arenanet writters, which you know cant be bad. Dynamic Content in the fact that a zone can litterally be DIFFERNT the next time you walk through it. WvWvW PvP that will be about server pride with castle sieges very similar to to best part of DAoC. OHH and dont let me forget the Dungeons, the Dungeons that change once you finish it once, the dungeons that have 3 different paths after you finish story mode, and the dungeons that have random events that trigger like an old school D&D dungeon crawl.
I Like what i see from TOR, dont get me wrong, but GW2 has such a better showing and changing the way MMOs are played. Now I have done my research, hell i made the first post in the first thread in the entire GW2 fourm here. The two game TOR and GW2 will the top spot in 2010 and you will see WoW hurting if they dont bring in some heavy hitting patches (now this wont be the downfall of bilzzard as D3 will be huge and Titan im sure will be good and polished and a great MMO) Im sure a huge amount of people will play both GW2 and TOR but in the end which icon are they clicking on their desktop more? which game will have more play time?
Except for AoC and Tera's reticle mechanic, all I see are gear-dependent-heavy games. Gear dice-rolls and grinding for more gear for the stats are soooooo yesterday. We want more interaction in all aspects of a game. Numbers controlling the outcome of most of the action removes the "human" aspects of the game.
IMHO this list is just a WoW-Clonish Top List of 2012. WoW-clone because I see WoW as the leader in making quality mmorpg respectable in terms of the BASICS. Stripped down to the basic form of how mmorpgs should be made and presented. Adding a few ingredients here in there doesn't make it a breakthrough game and raise it to a level of complex the new crowd demands.
I'm a Tekken and FPS/TPS fan and all I want is more of that twitch action and better controls!!! Damnit! Anarchy Online and Dark Age of Camelot will beat the crap out of the top 2 by just updating the graphics.
Interesting list.
I know that I'll be playing GW2, SWTOR, Secret World, DUST, Skyrim, Kingdom of Amalur, TERA, and Diablo III in the next 12 months from now. So many new games in a short time...a gamer's paradise.
i find it interesting the GUild Wars 2 is listed. seeing the fact that Arena.Net themselves has stated that the Guild Wars Franchise isnt a MMO. THey have stated time and time again that the Guild Wars Franchise is a CORPG(Competittive Online ROle PLaying Game).
"Possibly we humans can exist without actually having to fight. But many of us have chosen to fight. For what reason? To protect something? Protect what? Ourselves? The future? If we kill people to protect ourselves and this future, then what sort of future is it, and what will we have become? There is no future for those who have died. And what of those who did the killing? Is happiness to be found in a future that is grasped with blood stained hands? Is that the truth?"