Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Argument: that WoW's success in came from the IP of previous Warcraft RTS games
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Argument: that WoW's success in came from the IP of previous Warcraft RTS games.
I heard it many times. I wont try to argue on what lead to WoW's success, but this above argument is what I want to discuss.
Looking at the reaction that I recently seen from people over the new Pandaren race, many people have said Blizzard was copying Kung Fu Panda the Dreamworks movie. Many people said this wasnt in the lore, and stuff like that.
what I conclude from this is that, most of the people making these statements, truly dont know the Non-WoW part of the Warcraft lore. Which would likely translate to the theory that most of these players actually Never played a Post WoW warcraft game, nor the RPGs DnD Warcraft games.
Blizzards faults are on the fact that in WoW, from Vanilla on up to present, Blizzard left out details on many pass lore events. So for those that dont know anything Non-WoW about the Warcraft IP, they simply wont be informed on those details from WoW.
Really post WoTLK/TBC/CATA,,, who is Arthas? Who is Deathwing? Whats a Illidan? Whats a Draenei? Arthas has a Sister? Whats a Outlands?
Blizzard leaves stuff like this open, so they can detail it in x-pacs. But if I never played WC3, how would I know Pandaren was something in the Warcraft IP, and not Kung Fu Panda clone?
Conclusion: most WoW players never played the RTS, and dont know anothing about the Warcraft IP, which means something else had to have lead to WoW's success.
thats just my theory. you welcome to have your own
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
I played every WC PC game.
WC. WC2. WC3. WoW.
i only bought WoW because i loved the RTS games.
Back in the day, on WoW maintenence days, i would go back to WC3, and TONS of people in the WC3 channels talk about how WoW was down for the night, so like me, they were playing WC3.
In WoW, i commonly talked with players of the RTS series.
Your theory is incorrect. WoW became huge because WC had a HUGE fanbase. Using the panda uproar as proof that WoW players never played WC3 is flawed because-
1- many people have already moved on.
2- sooo many people on these threads are pointing out that the panda was in WC3.
3- a lot of people complaining hate Blizzard, hate WoW, and only hate on it because they are bandwagon riders who like to follow the crowd. or, more to the point, they DON"T EVEN PLAY WOW!!
Initial (Vanilla) population of World of Warcraft was in quite a big percentage imo a fans of Warcraft RTS'es.
Some people might not rememeber how huge Warcraft rts, especially how inanely popular Warcraft 3 and it's expansions was.
So while NOW many people playing WoW might not be Warcraft 3 fans, back in the days of Vanilla alot of WoW playerbase was.
As for Panda - first of all. Many W3 fans know the W3 story but not necesarly knew detailed Warcraft lore and pandarens were VERY side story. Second thing pandarens were shown ONLY by ONE extra hero that you could OPTIONALLY "hire" in muliplayer game.
So... Imho initial success of WoW was "allowed" by previous Warcraft games.
Would WoW be a such big success without previous Warcraft games? No idea, but I think it would be a success but not as big and especially it would take much longer to get decent playerbase.
Well anyway - it is alot if IF this, IF that.
We will never be sure about this and there can be IF's.
Unless Blizzard actually had a survey done on this issue back when WoW first came out, we cannot be really sure either way.
I was a Warcraft RTS fan but it had very little to do with why I bought WoW at release. I was mainly just looking for a new MMORPG after SWG and CoH proved unsatisfactory for me and many of my guildies. We still kept in touch so we all decided on a WoW server and started playing there. Most of my guildies were MMORP players and not RTS players.
You do realize that the answer really can be "Both" don't you?
Sure, the pandas ARE part of the lore. But that doesn't mean that the decision to finally bring them into WoW wasn't driven by the fact that they could use it to cash in on Kung Fu Panda.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
WoW's success is more the fact it was the first mmo to have what is has. NOTE: In no way shape or form am I even hinting that WoW was the first mmo or the original mmo. But it was the first (in my experience) to have fedex quests, linear gameplay, almost all group content instanced, hot button rotation spamming, you know all those things that are plagueing mmos in developement nowadays. Somehow, WoW managed to take the minds of young people and warp them into wanting to be the first at everything instead of enjoying a game that was paid for. Yet somehow, some would consider that wow is a success at all just because of sub numbers, when, in fact, WoW has crumbled the mmo genre for years now, and most likely years to come.
In the first paragraph I think you mean "pre-wow" warcraft game.
Otherwise I absolutely agree with you. Most of the mmo players that i know play wow. Of those people only one of them actually played the Warcraft RTS games. Now, that isn't proof in and of itself but when I see a small subset of players who I ran across in real life who don't know each other and who come from varying backgrounds and they all play wow but dont' know warcraft then that tells me that the warcraft series might have helped cement some die hard fans but didn't lead to the millions it eventually gathered.
Long sentence but "there it is".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It's an incomplete picture. While true to some degree--since b.net definitely contributed to the initial boom--its far from the only factor.
Simple answers to complex questions always fail to some degree.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Warcraft 3 didnt sell 11 million boxes before wow was released. I dont have hard evidence of this .. so I'll preface that by saying "I don't think" ..
Ive never actually heard the argument that wow is popular because of the RTS games. It certainly didn't hurt initially, but what made wow popular was that back in a time before facebook, it was an avatar driven chat box environment that just about anyone could figure out how to navigate without too much trouble. Least that is my belief, and it will likely never happen again, because A. Facebook / Facebook games .. B. The MMO market is too saturated now.
I suppose someone could come along and somehow completely revolutionalize the industry making every other MMO out there look like Candy Land .. but I wouldn't hold my breath.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Greg (Ghostcrawler): Pandaren were added as an April Fools joke for Warcraft 3 years and years ago... It’s something that we’ve brought back every now and then as a joke -- never a main part of the game... every time we ask “hey, what new features would you like to see in World of Warcraft?” it’s “Pandas! Bring the pandas back”.
...
Greg: No, in fact we had already started work on a totally different idea for 5.0 and then we started to say “you know, I think we could really do something with the Pandarens”. And as soon as we started talking about that with the team, everyone was immediately “yes, that’s it! Gotta do that”
AusGamers: Can you talk about what the other idea was before this one came in?
Greg: [laughs] Not really, because we may still need to use it at some point.
http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3141194
Pure bumbling and no market testing. Sure some may have been vocal about Panderan. This is not the same thing as do you want an expansion about nothing than the Panderan.
It's no wonder, about 50% dislike the expansion, and due to hubris and not following sound business practices, they will end up paying for this.
But look at the bright side, you may still get the 'worse' idea in the next expansion.
yeah maybe you are right. I dont know for sure.
only have that to go by
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Its less to do with fans of the RTS series purely, more that over the years Blizzard has built up a large fanbase that will buy pretty much anything they make. It was the same with Starcraft 2 and will be the same with Diablo 3, people that have never played these series will buy them because they are Blizzard games.
Obviously I can't speak for the 4 million North American players, but in the group I played in (20 people or so) the Warcraft RTS had nothing to do with people playing WoW. It spread from person to person by word of mouth. Then we all played.
It didn't even have anything to do with Blizzard. Compared to anything else out there to play, WoW was different and better.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You fail to understand true meaning of your argument. It's not details but boarder meaning. Warcraft was huge name before WoW came. Who cares if they didn't knew details, they still knew Warcraft and Blizzard.
Then again history shows that it's not enough. SWG was disaster and so was WAR because they were poor games. I think argument is partly valid meaning that WoW wouldn't been so big if it wasn't based on well know IP.
No one can say early on what degree it had to do with it, it has been out a long time, I would guess that the percentage of players during the first year that played the RTS were higher than the 2nd...than the 3rd...and so on..
So I imagine now , not so much, but the first year is your make or break, and even if it was 10-15-25% of a boost, it could be argued that, that was enough to warrant more money being put into it, and to out shine their opponents.
Having a quality/great game to base your mmo off of, sure didn't hurt it, I think everyone can agree on that. I played the beta and never subbed the game, but I would say that.
Having a name doesn't always work, you still have to have a decent game, as many have seen.
I would agree that the pre wow games were not the sole reasoon for the popularity of the game, yet i would add that not all people played all of the wc games either with varyinng degrees of expansion knowledge to a players. Like you said some did not know about main features or people, yet that is not to say that seeing blizzard with a wc ip did not propted sc players to play it since it was a less rts styled game that they might enjoy over the wc versions. Also bliz has butched the lore of the game over and ver again to suit their plots as well as plans for it, which rubs hardcore wx lore-buffs who afterawhile leave for antoher game not wanting to see what they do next expantion. I would say wc-lore is both a prime reasn you see a influx in and out of players in the game, yet also i would add most people in mmos do not research anything at all. I would also add that it was not a huge group of people that did not knpw who asked about such thign or said they were going with a trend, but a small group of players, as such it would support thaat many people more then this small group knoew the ip well and so were atleast brought to wow by it.
I tried WOWs open beta because I loved WC2, WC3 and D2. I think a fair number of vanilla purchasers were fans of Blizzards past games. But the immense growth is due to other factors,
A bunch of people already posted my opinion, but I guess I'll just add another vote to it.
I think that, initially, a lot of WoW's success was from the warcraft lore following, but as time went on, just basic advertisement and word of mouth brought in more sales.
Being easily accessible and playable by many computer, connections, and knowledge of them, has been a huge reason why it has done so well after the initial surge of Warcraft fans.
Warcraft - 1994
WC2:TD - 1995
WC2:BDP - 1996
Diablo - 1996
SC - 1998
SC:BW - 1998
WC2:BNE - 1999
D2 - 2000
D2:LD - 2001
WC3:RC - 2002
WC3:FT - 2003
World of Warcraft - 2004
Yes, I would make the case that part of WoW's initial success came from what they had done with Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo.
You also have to keepp in mind the significant increase in home broadband that took place between 2004 and 2005. However, even with that increase in home broadband - without the marketing base from their previous products - Blizzard's WoW would not have been as initially successful as it was.
SWTOR is not getting the hype it is because it is being made by Acme Games, LLC. It's because BioWare's name is attached to it.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Starcrap RTS playerbase + Warcraft RTS playerbase + Diablo 1 playerbase + Diablo 2 playerbase + 70% of EQ1's population = WoW's vanilla population
I had never touched a warcraft game until WoW beta, I have since played them all. I was into diablo 1 then 2 then LOD in a big way
slybacongaming.blogspot.com
You should try War3, it's pretty decent.
I don't care for multiplayer, personally, but the SP was great.
This.
Before WoW came out, the Warcraft 3 (and later Frozen Throne) community site had a little writeup on Panderans. It described them as these super secretive race that came from this mystical land. Heck they were so rare, you had to go through so much trouble to even see a relaxation area of theirs in Warcraft 3.
And now, you're gonna have the whole of Azeroth and Outland crawling with them. I know that Blizz has butchered Warcraft lore since WoW's release time and again, but this is something else.
I think the news of the expansion would have gone down much easier if they kept the Monk class but made panderans non-playable.
"It is my opinion, that my opinions are always right"
"starcrap" alone had a huge player base
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Best_selling_Blizzard_games
StarCraft including Brood War expansion (9.5 million), 2006 sales figures
the first 5 months of WOW, March 2005, wow subs were only 1.5 million
(this included North America / Europe / Korea)
http://www.gamershell.com/companies/blizzard_entertainment/219363.html
China was added in summer 2005, bringing the total to 3.5m
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=5989
wow didnt reach 8 million until Jan 2007 (BC launched the same month)
http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?id=2443765
WOW was successful for many reasons,
Blizzard's preexisting franchises being only one of the reasons
EQ2 fan sites
Oh, wow.
That wasn't intended to be a "hard total" of the figures, but having those pools to draw from is the key to the majority of the games' success.
The already established IP was one reason why WoW succeeded.
Sure many fans of the Warcraft series went on to play the MMORPG a few other reasons was its accessability on low end computers, the fact that it was much more polished and convenient than other MMO's of the time and its features. It also has a stronger advertising campaign than any other MMO which has led to its mention in pop culture, television and the news. Think about the numerous stories that have been on tv about people getting addicted to it because its such a great game in their eyes, that wouldn't discourage viewers from playing, it would probably encourage them, especially if they were gamers.