In my opinion, the most important thing WoW brought to the genre was accessibility.
It could be played on just about anything, where it's competition at the time, EQ2, required a pretty hefty rig to play, and even then it didn't run all that well.
Beyond that, the high level content was accessible to people that weren't in LoS, FoH, et all. Since it went live, it's become more accessible, moving from 40 man raids to 10, and 25, man raids.
Simply put, the majority of the people playing MMOs simply want to have some fun, kill some monsters, get some loot. It is not a lifestyle to them, it's just a game. To paraphrase Fight Club, they are not their f**king epics.
They don't want to spend hours waiting to organize a group, or going over the numbers under the hood to eke out another 1.4 dps.
I did the raiding thing back in Velious, and Luclin in EQ. I'll take WoW's endgame over that mess any day of the week. I'm also not in my 20's anymore with all manner of free time to spend playing a game 12 hours a day.
As far as WoW ruining MMOs? Negative, Ghostrider. Greed is what has "ruined" the MMO genre from an investment standpoint. From a development standpoint, it's from trying to copy WoW's success, and failing to understand what made it successful, coupled with god awful development practices. Yes, Sigil, and Mythic, I'm looking at you.
There's also the fact that the genre itself is fairly young. People can't even agree on whether game x is even an MMO, or not. Maybe we should give the genre time to mature before declaring it ruined.
Come on! You know we all miss going into that one instance and pulling a "TRAIN!" of goblins to the top and then zoning out real quick. Leaving the poor sucker resting just inside the instance to get killed! LOL!!
WoW is to MMORPG what MTV is to music and the writer seems to not know the MMO history..Lineage 1 and 2 had millions of players before WoW,2.Funcom invented the"Instance" concept not Blizzard.
And to the guy saying that GW2 would not have existed without WoW you are so wrong.The founders of ArenaNet(Stain,O'brien and Wyatt) left Blizzard for the same very reason because they were not happy with the direction Blizzard was going with their future MMO.
WoW did ruin MMO for the real MMOrpg players like myself and many others by bringing in millions of sheeps who were transformed into cash cows.
In the land of Predators,the lion does not fear the jackals...
Funny how people blame WOW for stagnating the market when, in actuality, WOW was designed with input from huge EQ raiding guilds and EQ in mind. Oh, how do we forget.
No the market stagnated before WOW and as WOW changed the landscape of MMO's (from time sinks to casual players), it proved what successes MMO's could become.
Look at how many MMO's launched in the first 6 years of EQ's existence and in the last 6. The market may not be where a minority of players want it, but its far from stagnant.
Had WOW not come along, then we would have had a stagnant market.
As a relatively new player, I have tried several mmo's (including EQ, Rift, LOTR, and several others) -- not including any of the FPS games --since they are boring to me. After all the trials, I still come back to Wow, because it has every facet of the others and a much more polished interface and help system (including the ability for add-ons) as many do not.
This makes it enjoyable for myself and , obviously, millions of others--- if you don't agree--go play the others and enjoy -- as we do.
I'm going to do 2 x 180's on this and agree on something and really outright just not believe the other stuff. WoW popularized mmo's and helped widen the market interest in the US markets. Having said that I think there are few things people are also forgetting. WoW wasn't a game that came out of no where either; it had a strong fanbase from the original World of Warcraft series. Like the upcoming Diablo, WoW didn't just come along and become a success, its a title that relied more heavily than any other mmo before it on its fanbase. Some people might bring up other mmo's like FF11 but fans of that series knew before hand there really isn't a consistency in the final fantasy series; each title edition is different from the next more or less (and plz let's not get into the "oh what about FF-X and FF-X2'" argument right now as they were both FF 10's..sheesh). Given that the US market and tons of Europe and Canada remained untapped, WoW is the the title that basically tapped into that market built upon the real initial interest of the original PC games for it.
So in hindsight, I think a lot of WoW players forget that, like the upcoming SWTOR and even Star Trek, there was a fanbase already present who would've bought the game. The other thing it hand going for it was timing; it was a market not as saturated with mmo's like it is now.
The third thing I'm probably goign to say is controversial within a finite set: WoW caused a stagnation in creativity and implementation of new ideas but it had the opposite effect on the market. To better qualify this, it just means developers, for one reason or another, did not develop games that dramatically differred from WoW and, much like how WoW utilized other game concepts and ideas, other developers utilized mechanics found in WoW. I know there was an article here last year saying how a developer would have a tougher time putting out an uhntested idea that's too far from the norm and it'd get tossed out because executives and planners don't want to go that far out on ideas. So, in short, a lot more development relied on creating variations of WoW. But given the success of WoW, companies thought putting out an idea/game would be enough. I think off the top of my head the really only dynamically different game to have come out during the years WoW reigned was EvE. Its also one of the games that have defied general rules for mmo predictability growth and the developer/user relation.
So really take it as you want. There wasn't a shortage of games but it seems everyone was trying to get some variant of WoW around and no one wanted to do something different or dramtically novel. I'd probably besides EvE, DAoC would be another (I'm sure there are more) but really its a short list in contrast to what's been released.
Well the first point of bringing many more players into the MMO genre is a double edged sword; Yes it made MMO's mainstream but as the community numbers rose the quality dropped. Now it's impossible to find a good community like existed in the games of old and that is WoW's fault.
I also noticed that you credited Blizzard with instances. Nope, that was Funcom with Ao before WoW was even a twinkle in Blizzards eye.
MMO's used to be aimed more at mature and intelligent players, Blizzard aimed WoW squarely at the 10 - 14 market and because of the success of this strategy every developer and publisher out there rushed for a piece of the pie. So for the past few years we have been subjected to one pathetic failure after another because none of the major developers have been willing to aim a game at 100k - 150k subs. Blizzard didn't create greed but they sure threw fuel on it.
Actually all 3 reason named here are large contributors as to why and how WoW did infact ruin not only Mmorpg games them self , but the community's playing them and the dev's making them .
Yeah, was about to say the ideas outlined actually caused a huge griefing epidemic and all around made the game unenjoyable.
I don't blame Blizzard or WoW for the state that games are now days. I blame the developers of those games. They release games too early, full of bugs, lack of content, looking to sell alot of boxes using an IP, then selling the game or making it f2p later. One of the main reasons for WoW's popularity is the fact that Blizzard went out on a limb and bought primetime advertising spots. I've only ever seen 2 other MMO commercials other than WoW. Rift and Global Agenda. Neither really were in primetime like WoW was, but theys till advertised.
I have to agree with Grav and most of these devs are less talented.
Games Dev need to assemble a dream team to head their productions if they want to have a really good MMO.
MMO's used to be aimed more at mature and intelligent players, Blizzard aimed WoW squarely at the 10 - 14 market and because of the success of this strategy every developer and publisher out there rushed for a piece of the pie. So for the past few years we have been subjected to one pathetic failure after another because none of the major developers have been willing to aim a game at 100k - 150k subs. Blizzard didn't create greed but they sure threw fuel on it.
Lets call them "dedicated" instead of mature. The mature word fits badly with people that spends that much time in a game.
MMOs have become a lot easier and I would blame Wow as well, except the fact that MMOs are not the only genre that have become easier the last 10 years. All friggin genres have become easier now, and that just can't be the fault of a single game no matter how popular.
Am I really the only one who thinks that bringing MMO's to the mainstream public was a bad thing? I liked the way MMO's were before WoW. They were all different and I liked the variety. Up and coming MMO projects were exciting to read about and were different, not just another WoW clone with 1 or 2 new features or twists on existing features. I think there is room in the MMO market for a game like WoW (ie. very linear casual quest hub games), but the success of WoW turned 1 WoW into virtually all releases after WoW into WoW-like games.
Has anything that's gone "mainstream" really been improved? I hate to sound like a hipster but it seems to me that whenever a product goes mainstream, be it games, movies, music- whatever- that the product is then changed in order to bring in as much money as possible and the product then just becomes completely bland. The only good thing is that these trends fade, and I certainly cannot wait until MMOs are no longer a cool thing to do.
Has anything that's gone "mainstream" really been improved? I hate to sound like a hipster but it seems to me that whenever a product goes mainstream, be it games, movies, music- whatever- that the product is then changed in order to bring in as much money as possible and the product then just becomes completely bland. The only good thing is that these trends fade, and I certainly cannot wait until MMOs are no longer a cool thing to do.
There are some exceptions, like HBOs nice serie "Game of thrones".
But sure, trying to fit something for most people do tend to water the thing down. Music and art can actually differ since many atists gets famous after their death and some stuff that were considered extreme at the time are mainstream now.
I am so old that I remember when Iron maiden and AC/DC still were considered niche bands (ok, I wasn't that big at the time), now they are mainstream band that sells millions of CDs/digital downloads.
1) Mass appeal doesn't equal quality, it just means it caters to more people. It does everything ok to decent, nothing "well".
2) This is the worst of all three; I absolutely HATE this one. Cross server battlegrounds were bad enough, but cross server instances and LFG just made an already unsocialable game even less formal. Phasing is even worse, instancing in the world is just the worst idea imaginable to me.
3) This was the last expansion I played and it was by far the worst implementation of the game's life that I experienced. It was fast, it was cheap and it didn't leave a satisfying taste (in fact quite sour). The original game was pretty good. It was a world, it didn't cater to the "give me now" types without being overly time intensive. That being said, I barely played it for 1 month, maybe two, before I was absolutely bored.
I come from a completely different generation of MMO gamer, I actually want depth and complexity with a large world to explore and flesh out. Also, static loot table games were bad in the EQ days, not sure why no game has been able to do Asheron's Call loot system which made -every- kill a potential treasure trove. In fact, I don't understand why more ideas aren't taken from that game, it was so ahead of it's time and we've regressed enough in design I think it's time to revert.
Actually, WoW was not even close to "polished" at launch. I can't believe how many people forget how messed up it was. Blizzard saved themselves by relatively quickly fixing what was wrong, though.
I played 2 years SWG before I started with WoW. And WoW was bugfree and polished compared to SWG, there was not even 1 server rollback where you lost a few hours of gameplay
Seriously...ground up, designed to be time and money sinks. If anything WoW pulled the reigns back on the time portion of that sink. Sounds like it helped to me. You can't really blame it for stagnating the market...the market was barely just born when it hit the field. You could probably count on your hands the number of games in the genre around that time, certainly in the AAA department. Even then, there was stagnation being fostered. All of the mold breaking games that tried to come out during the birthing period of MMO gaming were nearly ignored when compared to the ones that began to follow the EQ model.
Pure drivel, just like Garrett's article. Just because you became aware of MMOs post-WoW doesn't mean that WoW was the only thing that existed. The world wasn't born when you left the birth canal.
Garrett attributes instanced dungeons to WoW, conveniently forgetting that the one game with the most disastrous launch in history, dealt with those problems primarily because of their implementation of....instanced "dungeons". But I guess Anarchy Online didn't exist prior to WoW. Neither did City of Heroes, which also built itself around instanced "dungeons".
Garrett says WoW is responsible for the large MMO populations in China and Korea....conveniently ignoring the fact that Lineage 1 had MILLIONS of players in Korea before WoW was a gleam in Rob Pardo's eye. If I remember correctly, when WoW expanded to China, they did so with an already established MMO company (per China's rules/laws). Gee, how does an MMO company become established if they didn't have an audience prior to WoW?
Gishgeron, you say that there were only a handful of MMOs in existence in 2004? Let's prove that wrong, shall we? Now, MMO gaming has always been more popular in Asia than it was in the West prior to EQ (and later WoW) due largely to the internet cafe phenomenon, so those games count as well (whether you knew about them or not. Remember, birth canal, world existed prior to you). The Realm, Meridian59, UO, EQ, DAoC, AO, Asheron's Call, Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds, Lineage, Legends of Future Past, MapleStory, Ragnarok Online, RuneScape, City of Heroes, Earth & Beyond, Star Wars Galaxies, EVE Online, Motor City Online, The Sims Online, EverQuest Online Adventures, are we at more than a handful yet? And that's largely the Western titles. Korea had over a dozen MMOs running in 2004 (again, owing in large part to the internet cafe).
MMO "gamers" didn't ruin MMOs, the overwhelming desire to make them "accessible" (read: easy, faceroll difficulty, gimme gimme gimme NAO) ruined MMOs. Now, many of them play very much like console games where you don't need to spend any time at all to get to the "top" of the game. I don't begrudge them that since I realize that Joe Casual Gamer with 30 minutes to play a week has money that spends just as well as mine does. However, choking the genre so that's pretty much the ONLY type of game available, isn't good either. And many so-called MMO gamers are just console gamers in disguise since they'd die (literally) if they had to play a game with a slower pace. I've been playing these games since QuantumLink when they charged by the hour so watching the genre progress has been sad in some cases. But people attributing innovations to the game they first became familiar with the features, is wrong. Very much like saying Columbus discovered America (ignoring the fact that there were people already here, that he and his crew spread disease amongst while "trading" with them).
What WoW did best that no one else had done before is take existing features, simplify them to a large degree, and polish it to a fine sheen. They didn't try to overreach (like many games do. Hi WAR), they kept it as simple as possible. WoW brought the term 'polish' into current parlance. They took EQ's raid centric endgame, simplified the hell out of it, tacked on things that non-raiders could do, and made the whole thing quest based. Of course, MMO developers haven't taken those lessons to heart, releasing with as little polish as they can get away with (Rift being an exception), instead choosing to ape features in half-ass fashion. But hey, you can't have everything.
100% true. Your average so called MMO player is nothing more than a whinny little ADD brat on the sugar crazies. I'd say about 50-70% of pc gamers didnt even know what a mmo was till WoW came out. Blizzard put the genre on the map and more importantly kept it there. It wasnt just a flash in the pan.
I've always thought it was funny that people keep on trolling Blizzard instead of the countless devs out there that just keep spamming out crappy games trying to make a fast buck.
Troll all you want and pretend it isnt true, without WoW theres no way we'd see the amount of mmos out that we have over the years. You people really think that companies like Bioware would even be looking at the mmo genre without WoW leading the way? Doubt it. And you could kiss GW2 byebye as well cause without Blizzard/WoW getting everyone and their dog playing mmos you can forget your mass PvP fest.
Anyways, have fun trolling away. Thats what the mmorpg.com forums are all about right? ;P
they didnt ruin the fun u had playing other mmos either. wow is a good game. its not to blame despite all u whiney little people on here who blame blizzard for everything from communism to the fact warhammer came out an incomplete mess of a game and failed
instead of blaming devs who make the games that fail and dont give u what u want u blame blizzard and thats just stupid.
is that an insult maybe will i get warned who cares im tired of the whiney intitled mmo players who think there the only ones whos likes and dislikes matter and everyone elses opinion is stupid
im tired of the so called veterens who whine about how great uo and everquest were and how much better older mmos where.
im tired of that because they dont even play those games themselves anymore. so if u arent playing it why should anyone else.
sandbox games dont get the same kinda population themepark games do but if people who wanted a sandbox actually supported them and gave them time to grow they might succeed and not be a niche market.
want people to make the game u want heres an idea play them when they come out dont test it out quit and whine theres no good mmos to play when there are a ew very good ones from eve to darkfall to wow to god knows how many free 2 play titles that are actualy fun.
MMO’s did not have to be mainstream for us to enjoy them, I don’t remember anyone saying AC and DAOC did not have enough players. I don't remember anyone being worried the MMO genre was going to end unless a game came along which would attract millions of players. We were doing fine up till WoW thanks.
You either work for something or you expect it to be given too you, that’s what happened to grouping. First of all we worked for it, now we expect it on a plate; consequently we don’t know the people we group with as well and don’t form friendships as easily. This was a two edged sword, the benefits it gave us were countered by the deficits.
WoW created a business atmosphere were there was only one way to make a game, that is never going to be healthy. Had it been successful, but not so amazingly successful, we would have a richer, more diverse set of MMO’s today.
We would not hail a solo game that made other solo game genre’s disappear as a positive step for the gaming industry. I liked playing WoW, but don’t have a rose coloured view of it for that reason. It is possible for a game to be good, yet severely harm the genre, people do seem to have a problem getting their head round that.
WoW made MMOs mainstream in the west, but South Korea had million+ subscribing MMOs long before WoW came along. China's MMO market was also much bigger than the west's by the time WoW launched there and is now far bigger than both EU & NA markets combined.
So, please amend your article with the correct facts for that one, WoW did not make MMOs mainstream globally, just in the west.
Yep, the author doesn't seem to be aware that games like Lineage and Lineage II had multi-million subscribers long before WoW.
WoW made MMOs mainstream in the west, but South Korea had million+ subscribing MMOs long before WoW came along. China's MMO market was also much bigger than the west's by the time WoW launched there and is now far bigger than both EU & NA markets combined.
So, please amend your article with the correct facts for that one, WoW did not make MMOs mainstream globally, just in the west.
In support of this: In China, Fantasy Westward Journey had over 20 million registered users when WoW launched.
There is no doubt WoW is one of the top mmo today, but in Asia it has not been influential.
WoW made MMOs mainstream in the west, but South Korea had million+ subscribing MMOs long before WoW came along. China's MMO market was also much bigger than the west's by the time WoW launched there and is now far bigger than both EU & NA markets combined.
So, please amend your article with the correct facts for that one, WoW did not make MMOs mainstream globally, just in the west.
In support of this: In China, Fantasy Westward Journey had over 20 million registered users when WoW launched.
There is no doubt WoW is one of the top mmo today, but in Asia it has not been influential.
You invalidated your entire point when you attempted to use the registered user argument, when anyone who plays these games knows is a meaningless number. Also trying to imply Wow did not greatly impact MMO play in Asia is absurd, a good portion of Wow's numbers were from there.
I don't agree Wow actually destroyed mmorpg genre... I think it's same as everything. You got mainstream stuff that is largely succesful (and have many failed copycats) and you've got smaller stuff, that does things differently, their own way.
There are many servers and games that do it differently, sandboxes, games with completely different battle systems (turn based, RTS). I know even a few original MUDs that are still alive and kicking... They are out there, they are not so massively played, but then, do you want them to turn into second wow?
Just because your game where your favourite hero/environment is, is broken doesn't mean whole mmorpg genre is broken. It kind of reminds me music bussiness.
Comments
In my opinion, the most important thing WoW brought to the genre was accessibility.
It could be played on just about anything, where it's competition at the time, EQ2, required a pretty hefty rig to play, and even then it didn't run all that well.
Beyond that, the high level content was accessible to people that weren't in LoS, FoH, et all. Since it went live, it's become more accessible, moving from 40 man raids to 10, and 25, man raids.
Simply put, the majority of the people playing MMOs simply want to have some fun, kill some monsters, get some loot. It is not a lifestyle to them, it's just a game. To paraphrase Fight Club, they are not their f**king epics.
They don't want to spend hours waiting to organize a group, or going over the numbers under the hood to eke out another 1.4 dps.
I did the raiding thing back in Velious, and Luclin in EQ. I'll take WoW's endgame over that mess any day of the week. I'm also not in my 20's anymore with all manner of free time to spend playing a game 12 hours a day.
As far as WoW ruining MMOs? Negative, Ghostrider. Greed is what has "ruined" the MMO genre from an investment standpoint. From a development standpoint, it's from trying to copy WoW's success, and failing to understand what made it successful, coupled with god awful development practices. Yes, Sigil, and Mythic, I'm looking at you.
There's also the fact that the genre itself is fairly young. People can't even agree on whether game x is even an MMO, or not. Maybe we should give the genre time to mature before declaring it ruined.
true, they japaneesed marketed wow. they had the fundsto do so.
Edgar F Greenwood
WoW is to MMORPG what MTV is to music and the writer seems to not know the MMO history..Lineage 1 and 2 had millions of players before WoW,2.Funcom invented the"Instance" concept not Blizzard.
And to the guy saying that GW2 would not have existed without WoW you are so wrong.The founders of ArenaNet(Stain,O'brien and Wyatt) left Blizzard for the same very reason because they were not happy with the direction Blizzard was going with their future MMO.
WoW did ruin MMO for the real MMOrpg players like myself and many others by bringing in millions of sheeps who were transformed into cash cows.
In the land of Predators,the lion does not fear the jackals...
I'm going to do 2 x 180's on this and agree on something and really outright just not believe the other stuff. WoW popularized mmo's and helped widen the market interest in the US markets. Having said that I think there are few things people are also forgetting. WoW wasn't a game that came out of no where either; it had a strong fanbase from the original World of Warcraft series. Like the upcoming Diablo, WoW didn't just come along and become a success, its a title that relied more heavily than any other mmo before it on its fanbase. Some people might bring up other mmo's like FF11 but fans of that series knew before hand there really isn't a consistency in the final fantasy series; each title edition is different from the next more or less (and plz let's not get into the "oh what about FF-X and FF-X2'" argument right now as they were both FF 10's..sheesh). Given that the US market and tons of Europe and Canada remained untapped, WoW is the the title that basically tapped into that market built upon the real initial interest of the original PC games for it.
So in hindsight, I think a lot of WoW players forget that, like the upcoming SWTOR and even Star Trek, there was a fanbase already present who would've bought the game. The other thing it hand going for it was timing; it was a market not as saturated with mmo's like it is now.
The third thing I'm probably goign to say is controversial within a finite set: WoW caused a stagnation in creativity and implementation of new ideas but it had the opposite effect on the market. To better qualify this, it just means developers, for one reason or another, did not develop games that dramatically differred from WoW and, much like how WoW utilized other game concepts and ideas, other developers utilized mechanics found in WoW. I know there was an article here last year saying how a developer would have a tougher time putting out an uhntested idea that's too far from the norm and it'd get tossed out because executives and planners don't want to go that far out on ideas. So, in short, a lot more development relied on creating variations of WoW. But given the success of WoW, companies thought putting out an idea/game would be enough. I think off the top of my head the really only dynamically different game to have come out during the years WoW reigned was EvE. Its also one of the games that have defied general rules for mmo predictability growth and the developer/user relation.
So really take it as you want. There wasn't a shortage of games but it seems everyone was trying to get some variant of WoW around and no one wanted to do something different or dramtically novel. I'd probably besides EvE, DAoC would be another (I'm sure there are more) but really its a short list in contrast to what's been released.
Well the first point of bringing many more players into the MMO genre is a double edged sword; Yes it made MMO's mainstream but as the community numbers rose the quality dropped. Now it's impossible to find a good community like existed in the games of old and that is WoW's fault.
I also noticed that you credited Blizzard with instances. Nope, that was Funcom with Ao before WoW was even a twinkle in Blizzards eye.
MMO's used to be aimed more at mature and intelligent players, Blizzard aimed WoW squarely at the 10 - 14 market and because of the success of this strategy every developer and publisher out there rushed for a piece of the pie. So for the past few years we have been subjected to one pathetic failure after another because none of the major developers have been willing to aim a game at 100k - 150k subs. Blizzard didn't create greed but they sure threw fuel on it.
Yeah, was about to say the ideas outlined actually caused a huge griefing epidemic and all around made the game unenjoyable.
I have to agree with Grav and most of these devs are less talented.
Games Dev need to assemble a dream team to head their productions if they want to have a really good MMO.
Pardon my English as it is not my 1st language
Lets call them "dedicated" instead of mature. The mature word fits badly with people that spends that much time in a game.
MMOs have become a lot easier and I would blame Wow as well, except the fact that MMOs are not the only genre that have become easier the last 10 years. All friggin genres have become easier now, and that just can't be the fault of a single game no matter how popular.
Has anything that's gone "mainstream" really been improved? I hate to sound like a hipster but it seems to me that whenever a product goes mainstream, be it games, movies, music- whatever- that the product is then changed in order to bring in as much money as possible and the product then just becomes completely bland. The only good thing is that these trends fade, and I certainly cannot wait until MMOs are no longer a cool thing to do.
There are some exceptions, like HBOs nice serie "Game of thrones".
But sure, trying to fit something for most people do tend to water the thing down. Music and art can actually differ since many atists gets famous after their death and some stuff that were considered extreme at the time are mainstream now.
I am so old that I remember when Iron maiden and AC/DC still were considered niche bands (ok, I wasn't that big at the time), now they are mainstream band that sells millions of CDs/digital downloads.
I disagree on all three reasons.
1) Mass appeal doesn't equal quality, it just means it caters to more people. It does everything ok to decent, nothing "well".
2) This is the worst of all three; I absolutely HATE this one. Cross server battlegrounds were bad enough, but cross server instances and LFG just made an already unsocialable game even less formal. Phasing is even worse, instancing in the world is just the worst idea imaginable to me.
3) This was the last expansion I played and it was by far the worst implementation of the game's life that I experienced. It was fast, it was cheap and it didn't leave a satisfying taste (in fact quite sour). The original game was pretty good. It was a world, it didn't cater to the "give me now" types without being overly time intensive. That being said, I barely played it for 1 month, maybe two, before I was absolutely bored.
I come from a completely different generation of MMO gamer, I actually want depth and complexity with a large world to explore and flesh out. Also, static loot table games were bad in the EQ days, not sure why no game has been able to do Asheron's Call loot system which made -every- kill a potential treasure trove. In fact, I don't understand why more ideas aren't taken from that game, it was so ahead of it's time and we've regressed enough in design I think it's time to revert.
I played 2 years SWG before I started with WoW. And WoW was bugfree and polished compared to SWG, there was not even 1 server rollback where you lost a few hours of gameplay
Pure drivel, just like Garrett's article. Just because you became aware of MMOs post-WoW doesn't mean that WoW was the only thing that existed. The world wasn't born when you left the birth canal.
Garrett attributes instanced dungeons to WoW, conveniently forgetting that the one game with the most disastrous launch in history, dealt with those problems primarily because of their implementation of....instanced "dungeons". But I guess Anarchy Online didn't exist prior to WoW. Neither did City of Heroes, which also built itself around instanced "dungeons".
Garrett says WoW is responsible for the large MMO populations in China and Korea....conveniently ignoring the fact that Lineage 1 had MILLIONS of players in Korea before WoW was a gleam in Rob Pardo's eye. If I remember correctly, when WoW expanded to China, they did so with an already established MMO company (per China's rules/laws). Gee, how does an MMO company become established if they didn't have an audience prior to WoW?
Gishgeron, you say that there were only a handful of MMOs in existence in 2004? Let's prove that wrong, shall we? Now, MMO gaming has always been more popular in Asia than it was in the West prior to EQ (and later WoW) due largely to the internet cafe phenomenon, so those games count as well (whether you knew about them or not. Remember, birth canal, world existed prior to you). The Realm, Meridian59, UO, EQ, DAoC, AO, Asheron's Call, Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds, Lineage, Legends of Future Past, MapleStory, Ragnarok Online, RuneScape, City of Heroes, Earth & Beyond, Star Wars Galaxies, EVE Online, Motor City Online, The Sims Online, EverQuest Online Adventures, are we at more than a handful yet? And that's largely the Western titles. Korea had over a dozen MMOs running in 2004 (again, owing in large part to the internet cafe).
MMO "gamers" didn't ruin MMOs, the overwhelming desire to make them "accessible" (read: easy, faceroll difficulty, gimme gimme gimme NAO) ruined MMOs. Now, many of them play very much like console games where you don't need to spend any time at all to get to the "top" of the game. I don't begrudge them that since I realize that Joe Casual Gamer with 30 minutes to play a week has money that spends just as well as mine does. However, choking the genre so that's pretty much the ONLY type of game available, isn't good either. And many so-called MMO gamers are just console gamers in disguise since they'd die (literally) if they had to play a game with a slower pace. I've been playing these games since QuantumLink when they charged by the hour so watching the genre progress has been sad in some cases. But people attributing innovations to the game they first became familiar with the features, is wrong. Very much like saying Columbus discovered America (ignoring the fact that there were people already here, that he and his crew spread disease amongst while "trading" with them).
What WoW did best that no one else had done before is take existing features, simplify them to a large degree, and polish it to a fine sheen. They didn't try to overreach (like many games do. Hi WAR), they kept it as simple as possible. WoW brought the term 'polish' into current parlance. They took EQ's raid centric endgame, simplified the hell out of it, tacked on things that non-raiders could do, and made the whole thing quest based. Of course, MMO developers haven't taken those lessons to heart, releasing with as little polish as they can get away with (Rift being an exception), instead choosing to ape features in half-ass fashion. But hey, you can't have everything.
100% true. Your average so called MMO player is nothing more than a whinny little ADD brat on the sugar crazies. I'd say about 50-70% of pc gamers didnt even know what a mmo was till WoW came out. Blizzard put the genre on the map and more importantly kept it there. It wasnt just a flash in the pan.
I've always thought it was funny that people keep on trolling Blizzard instead of the countless devs out there that just keep spamming out crappy games trying to make a fast buck.
Troll all you want and pretend it isnt true, without WoW theres no way we'd see the amount of mmos out that we have over the years. You people really think that companies like Bioware would even be looking at the mmo genre without WoW leading the way? Doubt it. And you could kiss GW2 byebye as well cause without Blizzard/WoW getting everyone and their dog playing mmos you can forget your mass PvP fest.
Anyways, have fun trolling away. Thats what the mmorpg.com forums are all about right? ;P
wow didnt ruin mmo's...yust the fun ex wow players had while playing other and even better mmo's
https://ashesofcreation.com/r/Y4U3PQCASUPJ5SED
they didnt ruin the fun u had playing other mmos either. wow is a good game. its not to blame despite all u whiney little people on here who blame blizzard for everything from communism to the fact warhammer came out an incomplete mess of a game and failed
instead of blaming devs who make the games that fail and dont give u what u want u blame blizzard and thats just stupid.
is that an insult maybe will i get warned who cares im tired of the whiney intitled mmo players who think there the only ones whos likes and dislikes matter and everyone elses opinion is stupid
im tired of the so called veterens who whine about how great uo and everquest were and how much better older mmos where.
im tired of that because they dont even play those games themselves anymore. so if u arent playing it why should anyone else.
sandbox games dont get the same kinda population themepark games do but if people who wanted a sandbox actually supported them and gave them time to grow they might succeed and not be a niche market.
want people to make the game u want heres an idea play them when they come out dont test it out quit and whine theres no good mmos to play when there are a ew very good ones from eve to darkfall to wow to god knows how many free 2 play titles that are actualy fun.
MMO’s did not have to be mainstream for us to enjoy them, I don’t remember anyone saying AC and DAOC did not have enough players. I don't remember anyone being worried the MMO genre was going to end unless a game came along which would attract millions of players. We were doing fine up till WoW thanks.
You either work for something or you expect it to be given too you, that’s what happened to grouping. First of all we worked for it, now we expect it on a plate; consequently we don’t know the people we group with as well and don’t form friendships as easily. This was a two edged sword, the benefits it gave us were countered by the deficits.
WoW created a business atmosphere were there was only one way to make a game, that is never going to be healthy. Had it been successful, but not so amazingly successful, we would have a richer, more diverse set of MMO’s today.
We would not hail a solo game that made other solo game genre’s disappear as a positive step for the gaming industry. I liked playing WoW, but don’t have a rose coloured view of it for that reason. It is possible for a game to be good, yet severely harm the genre, people do seem to have a problem getting their head round that.
Yep, the author doesn't seem to be aware that games like Lineage and Lineage II had multi-million subscribers long before WoW.
In support of this: In China, Fantasy Westward Journey had over 20 million registered users when WoW launched.
There is no doubt WoW is one of the top mmo today, but in Asia it has not been influential.
Ugh, just reading through this comment section is giving me a headache.
Isn't the hatewagon crowded enough as is?
+1 Good article
Currently Play: ?
Occasionally Play: Champions, Pirates of the Burning Sea, WOW, EVE ONLINE
You invalidated your entire point when you attempted to use the registered user argument, when anyone who plays these games knows is a meaningless number. Also trying to imply Wow did not greatly impact MMO play in Asia is absurd, a good portion of Wow's numbers were from there.
I don't agree Wow actually destroyed mmorpg genre... I think it's same as everything. You got mainstream stuff that is largely succesful (and have many failed copycats) and you've got smaller stuff, that does things differently, their own way.
There are many servers and games that do it differently, sandboxes, games with completely different battle systems (turn based, RTS). I know even a few original MUDs that are still alive and kicking... They are out there, they are not so massively played, but then, do you want them to turn into second wow?
Just because your game where your favourite hero/environment is, is broken doesn't mean whole mmorpg genre is broken. It kind of reminds me music bussiness.