The problem with ‘accessibility’ being a positive is that it leads to dumbing down and making MMO’s for people who only play a game for one or two months. In seeking to widen the demographic as much as possible all the innovation, complexity, and exploration has been removed. MMO’s are now made for solo players to increase the ‘accessibility’ so we hardly group. Positive for sales, but not positive for the genre. Just bringing in more people to anything in life does not make it somehow magically better. Oh and ‘accessibility’ is another name for maximising profit, readers got that right?
The ‘death and loss’ positive was a mixed bag. Yes it showed that you did not need extreme death penalties, but it started the ball rolling to no penalties worth mentioning, which is where we are now.
When we come to the third positive I agree, UI customization was championed by WoW and rightly led to an expectation that this was now going to be the norm.
The Negatives
The celestial steed issue: it made two million dollars in four hours. Read that again. Now you know why MMO’s have changed so drastically for the worse. MMO’s were developed by enthusiasts who wanted to make a new genre and make a mint themselves. Now they are run by suits who have no interest in gaming. Last years VP of Haagen-Dazs is this years president of a gaming company near you.
As players we have seen many issues raised by the advent of WoW but there is one overriding fact that drowns all others out – KERCHING! The money is rolling in…players not happy with the Celestial Steed?.... KERCHING!....players not happy with no penalty for death…. KERCHING!...players not happy with anything…<insert credit card being swiped noise here>….they don’t care.
The money is rolling in with each new phase of accessibility/profit maximisation, so a few old players leave, why should they give a damn?
Some people just dont understand. He wasn't saying a harsh dp is a bad thing, Just that most players dont want or need one. Sure u have the nitche group of players who want harsh dp but the truth is the majority of people playing mmo;s dont
To each there own but in the end the truth is part of the allowing people who arent computer geniuses or hard core gamers who spend 150 hrs a week playing games access is that it also made it so players didnt need to spend 5 hrs finding there body and didnt have to re do every thing to get there gear ack cause they were to late getting to there body so they lost it all.
I am saying that not everyone likes what u like, And a harsh dp is a very minority gamer group. Id say 90 pct of mmo players dont want or need a harsh dp to play a game, just because it gets some persons heart beating rapidly doesnt mean it does everyones
Really in the end wow and every other mmo is a game, That means they should be fun and not a frustrating punishment that gets 2 pct of the population off on the harsh dp.
I'd say then that 90% of the mmo players don't realize what's good for them.
Sort of like those piano lessons your parents used to make you do when you didn't know any better.
But one day they'll likely come to understand why having consequences for losing is important when playing a MMO.
I disagree with some points of the OP, but overall there's no doubt, WOW brought MMO's to the masses, for better or worse depending on what sort of gameplay mechanics you personally prefer.
As someone else said, eventually some smart Dev is going to take a chance and have a resonably successful hit that doesn't follow the standard theme park model and we'll start to see some diversity.
Probably in small steps, rather than giant leaps, so perhaps GW2, ArchAge, TSW will be the sort of titles that start inching us back in another direction.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Notice how he never mentions content updates taking upwards of 6+ months to release or charging for expansions of $60+ after 3 patches as a negative. People are so brainwashed in the genre it is not funny.
Microtransactions I beyond agree with and the #1 reason I listed when I quit WoW back in Sept 09'. Also listing LFG as a negative obviously proves you never played on a dead server back in 2009.
This is taking the high road after something has already happened. Back in 09' guilds were being dicks and pugs outside of being a tank were impossible to get into. Then add the fact that if you wanted to leave your crappy server it cost you $25 PER CHARACTER from those bloodsuckers over at Blizzard who justified the charge with some mysterious figure who sits in a room who has to manually transfer your character.
People forget this crap on how Blizzard blatantly lied and said they had to charge because it was a time intensive process to transfer a character. Come to find out this was bull crap and the entire process was automated.
My opinion. The faster this game dies the faster the genre can catch up from being 10 years behind the Koreans. Hell even the Chinese are pulling past us.
The WoW effect or as I like to call it, "limited competition and using other ideas from other games to improve their own" effect. I hate hearing WoW being used as some holy graal of originality when in the end if it came out today it wouldn't reach remotely close to its numbers in the past.
Don't get me wrong, it is (or was really) a great game, but it gets way to much credit where it really doesn't deserve it for a lot of its features.
seriously? the "it was around before!" argument? that's standard programming, take what works, make it yours, improve it. and if you are creative, invent, but hell, what has been invented in gaming the last 10 years? any news?
we had shooter before, we had RTS before, we had sims before.
i'ts "just" getting better and better. it's really hard to invent a new genre; even the MOBA is just a warmup again... funny part now they program a moba with mobs! and call it new! back to RTS i guess :P
inventive games i remember: doom (or rather wolfenstein), pacman, pong, zack mackracken, castles of dr doom, commando, heart of africa, black and white, populus, fable, elite, and a few more i drugged out i guess... anyway, point being, since the 90s it's being called developing, not inventing :P
gaming was kinda new some decades ago (that's actually nothing your grand parents or maybe even parents grew up with), therefor it's obvious it had to come to a stagnation of inventive factors, and a focus more on the developing factor.
that's nothing bad, that's just the way it works ^^ everywhere.
and it's not only for games, music, movies ain't too inventive anymore lately either :P
ps: forgot portals in the list up there! *G*
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Artarus was right about exploration in WoW, that was one of the preWoW values they held too. They are not going to shrink the size of their MMO now to maximise profit. But add on a cash shop, simplified combat, add more quests so you can just avoid any hard ones and still get to max level, they have done all that.
Something people seem to always forget: Popularity does not equate to quality.
It equates to being shallow enough that mainstream society can gobble it up with a stupid look on their face then move on to the next thing they 'LUV OMG'.
You can see this in any medium, from music to movies to games. People like things because they're perceived as being popular. This is literally all the marketing business does and it runs people's lives.
For those saying Ford did not invent the automobile, it was Benz...it was not the same thing. The 3 wheel, four-stroke cycle engine, with open half carriage was nothing more than a different engine on the steam powered automobile created 100 years earlier and THAT was just an upgraded version of the one invented in the 1600s in China. And if we really want to be techincle about it, the ancient Greeks invented the automobile...Comparing the thing we call automobiles today to what the early designs were is like comparing MMORPGs to RPGs.
This is the heart of the problem with the article, bad analogies only they are based on not knowing the history of MMORPGs.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
For those saying Ford did not invent the automobile, it was Benz...it was not the same thing. The 3 wheel, four-stroke cycle engine, with open half carriage was nothing more than a different engine on the steam powered automobile created 100 years earlier and THAT was just an upgraded version of the one invented in the 1600s in China. And if we really want to be techincle about it, the ancient Greeks invented the automobile...Comparing the thing we call automobiles today to what the early designs were is like comparing MMORPGs to RPGs.
This is the heart of the problem with the article, bad analogies only they are based on not knowing the history of MMORPGs.
Ford created the assembly line, not the automobile.
A well-written, interesting, and fairly balanced article which I enjoyed reading. I do always intend to read all the replies, but once the rants start, meh, cba.
For myself, I have very mixed feelings about WoW. I'm currently playing again after a long break in which I tried just about every major mmorpg up to and including Rift (except Eve, which doesn't appeal). I returned to WoW out of desperation really, and didn't except to enjoy it as much as I am doing.
The dungeon finder tool is a real double edged-sword for me; I played WoW shortly after Vanilla, and despite lots of breaks, got as far as Northrend, but I couldn't get a single character to lv 85 until this time, when I used that tool because I was so tired of the quest grind.
The downside, as Victor says, is that some players do not learn how to play their class well, nor how to play well as a team member. The speed which some groups race through the dungeons made me dizzy at first (old-timer here, lol). I used to ask folks to slow down, but got so much verbal abuse, including one player who, when I said I was an older player needing a slightly slower pace, told me to play online chess if I couldn't keep up! lmao.
Anyway, I've adapted, just had to, either that or give up. I've even rolled a paladin healer, and that is a challenge trying to keep up with folks who have no concept of needing to stay in range of healing spells. Around 60% of the pug's I've been in using dungeon finder tool have ranged from abysmal to challenging, but the 40% which are good groups are such a pleasure.
Yes, it would be great to find a group of friends to level with, but that doesn't seem to happen; folks want to level at their own pace (I don't play that much and therefore level slowly), and tend also to value levelling over forming social bonds in-game. That gets me down a bit sometimes, but slowly I'm learning to accept it, because I've no choice.
The end-game stuff I can't comment on from personal experience because I've never made it, but I know I would hate being caught in a loop of needing certain gear to do certain things to get certain gear to ... ad infinitum. I also hate the whole e-peen number crunching stuff of "your dps (or whatever) isn't high enough". What a shame there isn't a meter which measures whether a person is a decent player of their class, a good team mate, friendly, polite etc.
So, although I'm currently playing and enjoying WoW, I too have a mixed reaction towards it. But then, I never did expect a game to be perfect and ranting about its imperfections seems pointless. Which isn't to say that constructive criticism leading perhaps to some positive change isn't helpful, what I don't get is how angry and venemous people get about what are, after all, just games.
Holy crap Victor...do you know ANYTHING about the history of MMORPGs?
Everything you credited WoW for was done by OTHER games first...and if you fall back on "WoW popularized it" you are basically saying something along the lines of Ford didnt invent the automobile because someone else sold more.
Ford did not invent the automobile.....it is generally accepted that Karl Benz (of Mercedes-Benz) invented it.
Ford popularized it by making it accessible to all......
Just like WoW
And see how important popularization is compared to invention....you thought Ford invented it, just like many gamers feel WoW 'invented' some of its features, when really they just popularized them.
For those saying Ford did not invent the automobile, it was Benz...it was not the same thing. The 3 wheel, four-stroke cycle engine, with open half carriage was nothing more than a different engine on the steam powered automobile created 100 years earlier and THAT was just an upgraded version of the one invented in the 1600s in China. And if we really want to be techincle about it, the ancient Greeks invented the automobile...Comparing the thing we call automobiles today to what the early designs were is like comparing MMORPGs to RPGs.
This is the heart of the problem with the article, bad analogies only they are based on not knowing the history of MMORPGs.
Looking up automobile in wikipedia won't change the fact that you put your foot in your mouth. Ford did not invent the automobile. And that is what you said. Ford Popularized it. Just like WoW. You cannot undo the fact that you proved the article's point by your first post. If you are saying that what Ford did made such an impact that stating that he 'invented' the automobile is not false, by the same logic WoW 'invented' all those features - which humorously is what you are trying to disprove.
To the author, did you ever do Sunwell? Heroic Ragnaros? Lady Sinestra? To say that WoW's encounters are all simplified is a falacy. It's the same idea that just because leveling and 5-man dungens are easy, the whole game is easy. The real concept behind WoW, as expressed from the developers themselves, is "easy to play, hard to master".
Before you go on saying how encounters are so simplified, you should experience the more complicated ones. You know, Spine of Deathwing, for example, took one of the most hardcore gaming guilds in the planet more than 300+ attempts to defeat.
+10
i second the motion.. 10+
I agree in spirit, however I do have to say that WoW certainly made it far easier to access the more challenging content. You didn't have to have 175 people to take down Lady Sinestra. You didn't have to do a 5 hour corpse run if you failed at Ragnaros. You didn't have to compete with every other guild for the spawn.
In that since, WoW made the challenging encounters much more simple to accomplish. Although the bosses themselves were definitely tough battles.
You forgot perhaps the biggest negative that I can think of - WoW's apeal to the simpleton mainstream also brought with it a sesspool of selfish, self-righteous, and self-serving players that turned the gaming community from a respectable group of courteous, hospitable, helpful and respectful people into a community full of rude, arrogant, what can you do for me, self-entitled whiners that think the world owes them something and believe that Blizzard's WoW invented everything you can think of from fire to electricity. Matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see some WoW fanbois start arguing with some of you, that WoW invented the automobile.
Other than that, not a bad article.
Oh, almost forgot..."Can I have some gold?"
My text is green because my posts are created with Willpower!
My one issue in this article is the corpse run comment. Everquest 2, which released two weeks before WoW, had a fairly mild death penalty also, which included the 'rez sickness' debuff and a temporary penalty to xp gain, which went away if you ran back to your death marker. You didn't even need to collect your equipment, it was all still on your character.
You forgot perhaps the biggest negative that I can think of - WoW's apeal to the simpleton mainstream also brought with it a sesspool of selfish, self-righteous, and self-serving players that turned the gaming community from a respectable group of courteous, hospitable, helpful and respectful people into a community full of rude, arrogant, what can you do for me, self-entitled whiners that think the world owes them something and believe that Blizzard's WoW invented everything you can think of from fire to electricity. Matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see some WoW fanbois start arguing with some of you, that WoW invented the automobile.
Other than that, not a bad article.
Oh, almost forgot..."Can I have some gold?"
WoW did invent the automobile, more to the point goblins did.
The Ford analogy is a fair one as long as you remember the quality that WoW brought into certain areas of the genre. There the analogy breaks down as Ford had little in the way of quality. The zone design, quests, humour, all were great and formed a themic whole.
Wow have a full seamless continent for exploration.
Instances are not seamless so i have to disagree with it.
He said "continent", as in landscape/landmass, not "dungeon" or content.
The point is relevant because what he/she is referring to is an instanced paradigm at every zone entry, versus what WoW and others did which was to restrict zoning to major landmasses.
Encounter spaces of course MUST be instanced. You do understand why that is don't you? Your only exception would be a location intended as a public instance.
Otherwise, yeah, you instance dungeons that have boss/farming/quest goals for a group/raid.
Apologies for the delay in repying to some of the comments here. Based on what some have said, above, I'd just like to say that this particular DA article was brought on mostly by my reminiscing and current discussions with people regarding WoW.
I wanted to highlight some of the salient cultural changes that have become part of game culture as a result of WoW's popularity. As some may have noticed, this is not meant to be a historical document that describes who did what first. Instead, it is an examination of "What does WoW have" that has grown into its own cultural phenomenon in terms of consumer interests or game design.
That said, I do want to apologize to those folks who feel slighted by my saying that Raiding was simplified. I did not mean to disrespect raiders of all sorts here as I spent a short time raiding back in Vanilla WoW. When I referred to simplification, I was hoping to bring out the idea that encounters are retooled in such a way that more people are able to access and complete certain content. They are hard still, yes, but are made more manageable when compared to their very first iterations.
Thank you for reading, and I wish you all well.
A writer and gamer from the Philippines. Loves his mom dearly.
You seem to miss the main thing WoW did. Why so many people forget about questing is beyond me. MMOs before WoW didn't rely on quests to level up. And no the 100 quests EQ had doesn't count. You just killed mobs whereas WoW started with over 3000 quests. Which other MMO had that many quests before it? Which other MMO relied on questing to level up? Yet soooooooooooooooooooo many MMOs (99.99999999999%?) AFTER WoW rely on questing to level up.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I think the greatest effect WOW had is the sheer amount of people it brought to MMO's, I read somewhere between 10mil active and 25mil overall counting former players. These crowds that are burned out of the traditional theme park mmo (=WOW) and have tried some of the variations to find nothing new (WAR, LOTRO, AOC, SWTOR), are now a demanding audience that pushes the gaming studios to do better and better.
One way or the other we are all grateful to WOW for bringing us to where we are now.
WOW created a market and still keeps doing its job, pushing hordes of new players through it's grind so that eventually they will become former WOW'ers in search of THAT awesome uber post WOW game that has not arrived yet. The way WOW keeps running and the numbers it pulls also attracts studios to develop better and innovative games by helping those studios attract investors.
The MMO market so far can be summarized as UO, EQ, WOW, WOW clones and EVE.
Appologies if I am missing out on a few important things, but it's the way it looks to me.
I certainly agree with your first point. WoW brought them in their hordes (no pun intended :P). I never played UO and though I tried EQ I never really got into it. I stuck with co-ops and single player or console games up until the point I played WoW. Though I LOVED it at first, I did not really play that long. Probably 4 or 5 months. The closer I got to max level the more I realised the end game wasn't really something I wanted to get into so I moved on. I've gone back for all expansions to level up again from the get go, stopped again at end game. I know people either love wow or love to hate wow and I think I fall into neither catagory. But credit where credit is due. It obviously brought SOMETHING to the masses that EQ and UO did not bring. And maybe some of what that brought has been BAD for the genre as a whole regarding expectations of those who were maybe not gamers before having played it.
I would probably disagree with your later point, that it attracts studios to develop better and innovative games since wow. Maybe at first, but not so much lately. It's pretty easy to know if the WoW killer DOES come along. You will probably know instantly. It hasn't yet. Until then, because of WoW I see the entire MMO genre as having become somewhat disposable as far as some companies are concerned and that is pretty sad.
P.S. I've not touched on EVE because again I haven't played it. I think it's shere longevity speaks for itself and I love sandbox games to death. So I think in many ways, it stands in a league of it's own quite apart from WoW anyway..
To the author, did you ever do Sunwell? Heroic Ragnaros? Lady Sinestra? To say that WoW's encounters are all simplified is a falacy. It's the same idea that just because leveling and 5-man dungens are easy, the whole game is easy. The real concept behind WoW, as expressed from the developers themselves, is "easy to play, hard to master".
Before you go on saying how encounters are so simplified, you should experience the more complicated ones. You know, Spine of Deathwing, for example, took one of the most hardcore gaming guilds in the planet more than 300+ attempts to defeat.
+10
i second the motion.. 10+
+10 more.
people say WoW is easy, yet, most of them don't even play, and if they do/did they use so many addons in a raid that the game plays itself, then blame the game for being easy.
Blizzard did not design mods like DBM, that hold your hand during raid encounters, or healbot, so healers can just complain instead of be busy playing, or tank mods that allow tanks to pull aggro from group members without even having to pay attention to who it is gettiing aggro, where they are at, or WHY they are even taking the aggro in the first place.
don't get me wrong. i love mods like 'bartender4' or 'altoholic', because they are great UI additions. they do not play my game for me. i have always hated DBM though.
when these people who call WoW easy can prove that they clear raids in WoW without addons, only then do they have any ground to stand on.
as far as the leveling content is concerned, IMO that is for the RPG aspect of the game, and difficulty leveling is up to you. like a challenge? only do red quests, and over-pull everytime you fight. it is an option. hate the quests? grind red mobs. you don't like the XP cut you get from it? quit crying about EVERYTHING, and find ways to have fun in a game, or don't play it. pretending WoW is the antichrist of gameing is silly. if anything, i would accuse other companies for not trying to make good games, not a company that actualy does a great job at pleasing the 2 demographics that the game is aimed at. both casual (most of the game) and hardcore (raiding/arena).
before ANY of you say raiding/arena is not 'hardcore', please prove to me that you cleared every raid in the game (without dbm), and/or that you have a consistently high-ranked arena team. if you don't have that, nothing you could POSSIBLY say has any merit to this particular aspect of the 'WoW argument".
Holding up the 1% to maybe 5% of the content / challenges in the game as representative of the Rule isn't accurate or truthful. I don't think that anyone would argue that the FEW top end Instance and end-game challenges are racked up hard by Blizzard.
It's the global experience that tells a clearer tale.
I played WoW for five years, basically the Ony/Molten Core/Blackwing Lair era. Generally speaking, when Burning Crusades released there was a distinct trend in the game overall:
Nerf content and mobs so people can levell faster into Outland. Now, on paper that makes a lot of sense I guess. New content, you want to PUSH people into Outland asap, happy-happy-joy-joy!
The inevitable result however was a clearly visible increase, and ongoing metastisizing trend in players buying the game for the first time entering an environment where you had to about TRY to be killed to die or lose (in PvE).
The result is a great increase in:
One approach to mobs and mob-pack take down - face first zerg fest, mash buttons both heal/DPS. This has spread to other games to my disbelief, because you almost never see anyone anymore even friggen THINK for 5 seconds before engaging mob packs anymore. In any game I've played in the past five years. Exceptions? Sure. Once in a while you find SOMEONE who is an actual combatant. Otherwise: Seez the MobZoorZ runzors at it zorzs mashitymashitymashity . . . WIPE! Ah, you all suck, cya, GL nubs imma find a real groupzors!
Assuming we do see exceptions, we've still seen a great increase in the following game and team play dynamics in MMOs IMHO:
Peeling. No one even CONSIDERS a tactic as old as warfare itself: Divide and Conquer by PEELING selected mobs from a pack.
Pulling. I'm a TANKZORS! Tankzors don't pull-zors! We RUSH head FIRST into stuffzors!
Kiting. Why move your feet to get out of AoE or get behind LOS to STOP the damage about to kill you? That would be cheesing it I guess cause it's OP. Gaming companies MUST put a 5 min CD on FEET before you'd consider using them I guess.
Stay with the Group. Why bother doing that?
Buffing. Zone in and everyone is INSTANTLY running off down the hallway. No buffs, nothing.
I don't have to play WITH anyone, I need to dominate everyone around me. Seen all the time. No buffs, no protecting healers, no CC of mobs heading for healers, NO team play. Just DPS gerbils focussed on DPS meters with glassy eyes and drooling mouths, fappityfappity-fap-fap-fap.
Placement. Why bother taking 10 seconds to set the group up in an advantageous spot to take that pack down? What a waste of time. JUST ZERG-ZORS IT! (fappityfappity-fap-fap-fap - wipe)
CC - Wut's that? Mobs buzzing through the group taking people out like weed-whackers through dandelions . . . and no CC seen. Lots of fappity-fap-fap-fap though as people get mowed down.
CC - Wut's that, Part Deux? People claiming a given Elite mobs is impossible to take down solo (at a given level/gearage/stat level), with the strat displayed "proving" the point is: Face First Flat Footed Zerg-zors! (fappity-fappity-fap-fap-fap - wipe).
No kiting. No CC, No technique of any kind. Just the ONE strat many MMOs have trained players to expect, and practice at as stated at the beginning of this post: Flat footed face first button mashing hoping it all works out . . . based on stats.
I try (this was a real occurrance). I'm on a Mage. I pull, nuke shot, DoT, SLOW/CC, then start to Kite. Pop shots, kite, SILENCE it, pop shots, DoT, shield myself, Slow, etc., etc.
I kill the thing with like 10% HP left. During the fight I had someone LOL, "Why don't you stand still and try it, lolol" . . . . /smackhead
You always had goof-balls who didn't get it "in the day". There were always people who had L2P issues. It's not a knock at anyone, anything could be the cause of that.
But yeah, generally speaking, the trend with MMOs making content EASY through early levels, mid levels, etc., has MAXIMIZED the number of players who don't know how to do anything else but see red, run at it, and start FAPPING away at the buttons mindlessly.
Because the games allow it to too high a degree. Don't require thought and tactical planning as much as they should anymore (excepting the 1% to maybe 5% of end-game/instance bosses).
The reason that's a problem? People, humans, are creatures of habit.
People do what they practise, and practice what they do.
Comments
The Positives
The problem with ‘accessibility’ being a positive is that it leads to dumbing down and making MMO’s for people who only play a game for one or two months. In seeking to widen the demographic as much as possible all the innovation, complexity, and exploration has been removed. MMO’s are now made for solo players to increase the ‘accessibility’ so we hardly group. Positive for sales, but not positive for the genre. Just bringing in more people to anything in life does not make it somehow magically better. Oh and ‘accessibility’ is another name for maximising profit, readers got that right?
The ‘death and loss’ positive was a mixed bag. Yes it showed that you did not need extreme death penalties, but it started the ball rolling to no penalties worth mentioning, which is where we are now.
When we come to the third positive I agree, UI customization was championed by WoW and rightly led to an expectation that this was now going to be the norm.
The Negatives
The celestial steed issue: it made two million dollars in four hours. Read that again. Now you know why MMO’s have changed so drastically for the worse. MMO’s were developed by enthusiasts who wanted to make a new genre and make a mint themselves. Now they are run by suits who have no interest in gaming. Last years VP of Haagen-Dazs is this years president of a gaming company near you.
As players we have seen many issues raised by the advent of WoW but there is one overriding fact that drowns all others out – KERCHING! The money is rolling in…players not happy with the Celestial Steed?.... KERCHING!....players not happy with no penalty for death…. KERCHING!...players not happy with anything…<insert credit card being swiped noise here>….they don’t care.
The money is rolling in with each new phase of accessibility/profit maximisation, so a few old players leave, why should they give a damn?
RIP Orc Choppa
Good article, well thought out and balanced signifying objectivity.
Thanks.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Instances are not seamless so i have to disagree with it.
I'd say then that 90% of the mmo players don't realize what's good for them.
Sort of like those piano lessons your parents used to make you do when you didn't know any better.
But one day they'll likely come to understand why having consequences for losing is important when playing a MMO.
I disagree with some points of the OP, but overall there's no doubt, WOW brought MMO's to the masses, for better or worse depending on what sort of gameplay mechanics you personally prefer.
As someone else said, eventually some smart Dev is going to take a chance and have a resonably successful hit that doesn't follow the standard theme park model and we'll start to see some diversity.
Probably in small steps, rather than giant leaps, so perhaps GW2, ArchAge, TSW will be the sort of titles that start inching us back in another direction.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Notice how he never mentions content updates taking upwards of 6+ months to release or charging for expansions of $60+ after 3 patches as a negative. People are so brainwashed in the genre it is not funny.
Microtransactions I beyond agree with and the #1 reason I listed when I quit WoW back in Sept 09'. Also listing LFG as a negative obviously proves you never played on a dead server back in 2009.
This is taking the high road after something has already happened. Back in 09' guilds were being dicks and pugs outside of being a tank were impossible to get into. Then add the fact that if you wanted to leave your crappy server it cost you $25 PER CHARACTER from those bloodsuckers over at Blizzard who justified the charge with some mysterious figure who sits in a room who has to manually transfer your character.
People forget this crap on how Blizzard blatantly lied and said they had to charge because it was a time intensive process to transfer a character. Come to find out this was bull crap and the entire process was automated.
My opinion. The faster this game dies the faster the genre can catch up from being 10 years behind the Koreans. Hell even the Chinese are pulling past us.
seriously? the "it was around before!" argument? that's standard programming, take what works, make it yours, improve it. and if you are creative, invent, but hell, what has been invented in gaming the last 10 years? any news?
we had shooter before, we had RTS before, we had sims before.
i'ts "just" getting better and better. it's really hard to invent a new genre; even the MOBA is just a warmup again... funny part now they program a moba with mobs! and call it new! back to RTS i guess :P
inventive games i remember: doom (or rather wolfenstein), pacman, pong, zack mackracken, castles of dr doom, commando, heart of africa, black and white, populus, fable, elite, and a few more i drugged out i guess... anyway, point being, since the 90s it's being called developing, not inventing :P
gaming was kinda new some decades ago (that's actually nothing your grand parents or maybe even parents grew up with), therefor it's obvious it had to come to a stagnation of inventive factors, and a focus more on the developing factor.
that's nothing bad, that's just the way it works ^^ everywhere.
and it's not only for games, music, movies ain't too inventive anymore lately either :P
ps: forgot portals in the list up there! *G*
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Artarus was right about exploration in WoW, that was one of the preWoW values they held too. They are not going to shrink the size of their MMO now to maximise profit. But add on a cash shop, simplified combat, add more quests so you can just avoid any hard ones and still get to max level, they have done all that.
Something people seem to always forget: Popularity does not equate to quality.
It equates to being shallow enough that mainstream society can gobble it up with a stupid look on their face then move on to the next thing they 'LUV OMG'.
You can see this in any medium, from music to movies to games. People like things because they're perceived as being popular. This is literally all the marketing business does and it runs people's lives.
For those saying Ford did not invent the automobile, it was Benz...it was not the same thing. The 3 wheel, four-stroke cycle engine, with open half carriage was nothing more than a different engine on the steam powered automobile created 100 years earlier and THAT was just an upgraded version of the one invented in the 1600s in China. And if we really want to be techincle about it, the ancient Greeks invented the automobile...Comparing the thing we call automobiles today to what the early designs were is like comparing MMORPGs to RPGs.
This is the heart of the problem with the article, bad analogies only they are based on not knowing the history of MMORPGs.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Ford created the assembly line, not the automobile.
A well-written, interesting, and fairly balanced article which I enjoyed reading. I do always intend to read all the replies, but once the rants start, meh, cba.
For myself, I have very mixed feelings about WoW. I'm currently playing again after a long break in which I tried just about every major mmorpg up to and including Rift (except Eve, which doesn't appeal). I returned to WoW out of desperation really, and didn't except to enjoy it as much as I am doing.
The dungeon finder tool is a real double edged-sword for me; I played WoW shortly after Vanilla, and despite lots of breaks, got as far as Northrend, but I couldn't get a single character to lv 85 until this time, when I used that tool because I was so tired of the quest grind.
The downside, as Victor says, is that some players do not learn how to play their class well, nor how to play well as a team member. The speed which some groups race through the dungeons made me dizzy at first (old-timer here, lol). I used to ask folks to slow down, but got so much verbal abuse, including one player who, when I said I was an older player needing a slightly slower pace, told me to play online chess if I couldn't keep up! lmao.
Anyway, I've adapted, just had to, either that or give up. I've even rolled a paladin healer, and that is a challenge trying to keep up with folks who have no concept of needing to stay in range of healing spells. Around 60% of the pug's I've been in using dungeon finder tool have ranged from abysmal to challenging, but the 40% which are good groups are such a pleasure.
Yes, it would be great to find a group of friends to level with, but that doesn't seem to happen; folks want to level at their own pace (I don't play that much and therefore level slowly), and tend also to value levelling over forming social bonds in-game. That gets me down a bit sometimes, but slowly I'm learning to accept it, because I've no choice.
The end-game stuff I can't comment on from personal experience because I've never made it, but I know I would hate being caught in a loop of needing certain gear to do certain things to get certain gear to ... ad infinitum. I also hate the whole e-peen number crunching stuff of "your dps (or whatever) isn't high enough". What a shame there isn't a meter which measures whether a person is a decent player of their class, a good team mate, friendly, polite etc.
So, although I'm currently playing and enjoying WoW, I too have a mixed reaction towards it. But then, I never did expect a game to be perfect and ranting about its imperfections seems pointless. Which isn't to say that constructive criticism leading perhaps to some positive change isn't helpful, what I don't get is how angry and venemous people get about what are, after all, just games.
Ford did not invent the automobile.....it is generally accepted that Karl Benz (of Mercedes-Benz) invented it.
Ford popularized it by making it accessible to all......
Just like WoW
And see how important popularization is compared to invention....you thought Ford invented it, just like many gamers feel WoW 'invented' some of its features, when really they just popularized them.
Looking up automobile in wikipedia won't change the fact that you put your foot in your mouth. Ford did not invent the automobile. And that is what you said. Ford Popularized it. Just like WoW. You cannot undo the fact that you proved the article's point by your first post. If you are saying that what Ford did made such an impact that stating that he 'invented' the automobile is not false, by the same logic WoW 'invented' all those features - which humorously is what you are trying to disprove.
I agree in spirit, however I do have to say that WoW certainly made it far easier to access the more challenging content. You didn't have to have 175 people to take down Lady Sinestra. You didn't have to do a 5 hour corpse run if you failed at Ragnaros. You didn't have to compete with every other guild for the spawn.
In that since, WoW made the challenging encounters much more simple to accomplish. Although the bosses themselves were definitely tough battles.
You forgot perhaps the biggest negative that I can think of - WoW's apeal to the simpleton mainstream also brought with it a sesspool of selfish, self-righteous, and self-serving players that turned the gaming community from a respectable group of courteous, hospitable, helpful and respectful people into a community full of rude, arrogant, what can you do for me, self-entitled whiners that think the world owes them something and believe that Blizzard's WoW invented everything you can think of from fire to electricity. Matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see some WoW fanbois start arguing with some of you, that WoW invented the automobile.
Other than that, not a bad article.
Oh, almost forgot..."Can I have some gold?"
My one issue in this article is the corpse run comment. Everquest 2, which released two weeks before WoW, had a fairly mild death penalty also, which included the 'rez sickness' debuff and a temporary penalty to xp gain, which went away if you ran back to your death marker. You didn't even need to collect your equipment, it was all still on your character.
WoW did invent the automobile, more to the point goblins did.
The Ford analogy is a fair one as long as you remember the quality that WoW brought into certain areas of the genre. There the analogy breaks down as Ford had little in the way of quality. The zone design, quests, humour, all were great and formed a themic whole.
He said "continent", as in landscape/landmass, not "dungeon" or content.
The point is relevant because what he/she is referring to is an instanced paradigm at every zone entry, versus what WoW and others did which was to restrict zoning to major landmasses.
Encounter spaces of course MUST be instanced. You do understand why that is don't you? Your only exception would be a location intended as a public instance.
Otherwise, yeah, you instance dungeons that have boss/farming/quest goals for a group/raid.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Hi folks,
Apologies for the delay in repying to some of the comments here. Based on what some have said, above, I'd just like to say that this particular DA article was brought on mostly by my reminiscing and current discussions with people regarding WoW.
I wanted to highlight some of the salient cultural changes that have become part of game culture as a result of WoW's popularity. As some may have noticed, this is not meant to be a historical document that describes who did what first. Instead, it is an examination of "What does WoW have" that has grown into its own cultural phenomenon in terms of consumer interests or game design.
That said, I do want to apologize to those folks who feel slighted by my saying that Raiding was simplified. I did not mean to disrespect raiders of all sorts here as I spent a short time raiding back in Vanilla WoW. When I referred to simplification, I was hoping to bring out the idea that encounters are retooled in such a way that more people are able to access and complete certain content. They are hard still, yes, but are made more manageable when compared to their very first iterations.
Thank you for reading, and I wish you all well.
A writer and gamer from the Philippines. Loves his mom dearly.
Can also be found on http://www.gamesandgeekery.com
You seem to miss the main thing WoW did. Why so many people forget about questing is beyond me. MMOs before WoW didn't rely on quests to level up. And no the 100 quests EQ had doesn't count. You just killed mobs whereas WoW started with over 3000 quests. Which other MMO had that many quests before it? Which other MMO relied on questing to level up? Yet soooooooooooooooooooo many MMOs (99.99999999999%?) AFTER WoW rely on questing to level up.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I certainly agree with your first point. WoW brought them in their hordes (no pun intended :P). I never played UO and though I tried EQ I never really got into it. I stuck with co-ops and single player or console games up until the point I played WoW. Though I LOVED it at first, I did not really play that long. Probably 4 or 5 months. The closer I got to max level the more I realised the end game wasn't really something I wanted to get into so I moved on. I've gone back for all expansions to level up again from the get go, stopped again at end game. I know people either love wow or love to hate wow and I think I fall into neither catagory. But credit where credit is due. It obviously brought SOMETHING to the masses that EQ and UO did not bring. And maybe some of what that brought has been BAD for the genre as a whole regarding expectations of those who were maybe not gamers before having played it.
I would probably disagree with your later point, that it attracts studios to develop better and innovative games since wow. Maybe at first, but not so much lately. It's pretty easy to know if the WoW killer DOES come along. You will probably know instantly. It hasn't yet. Until then, because of WoW I see the entire MMO genre as having become somewhat disposable as far as some companies are concerned and that is pretty sad.
P.S. I've not touched on EVE because again I haven't played it. I think it's shere longevity speaks for itself and I love sandbox games to death. So I think in many ways, it stands in a league of it's own quite apart from WoW anyway..
the poster formerly known as melangel :P
+10 more.
people say WoW is easy, yet, most of them don't even play, and if they do/did they use so many addons in a raid that the game plays itself, then blame the game for being easy.
Blizzard did not design mods like DBM, that hold your hand during raid encounters, or healbot, so healers can just complain instead of be busy playing, or tank mods that allow tanks to pull aggro from group members without even having to pay attention to who it is gettiing aggro, where they are at, or WHY they are even taking the aggro in the first place.
don't get me wrong. i love mods like 'bartender4' or 'altoholic', because they are great UI additions. they do not play my game for me. i have always hated DBM though.
when these people who call WoW easy can prove that they clear raids in WoW without addons, only then do they have any ground to stand on.
as far as the leveling content is concerned, IMO that is for the RPG aspect of the game, and difficulty leveling is up to you. like a challenge? only do red quests, and over-pull everytime you fight. it is an option. hate the quests? grind red mobs. you don't like the XP cut you get from it? quit crying about EVERYTHING, and find ways to have fun in a game, or don't play it. pretending WoW is the antichrist of gameing is silly. if anything, i would accuse other companies for not trying to make good games, not a company that actualy does a great job at pleasing the 2 demographics that the game is aimed at. both casual (most of the game) and hardcore (raiding/arena).
before ANY of you say raiding/arena is not 'hardcore', please prove to me that you cleared every raid in the game (without dbm), and/or that you have a consistently high-ranked arena team. if you don't have that, nothing you could POSSIBLY say has any merit to this particular aspect of the 'WoW argument".
The other side of the coin Zairu:
Holding up the 1% to maybe 5% of the content / challenges in the game as representative of the Rule isn't accurate or truthful. I don't think that anyone would argue that the FEW top end Instance and end-game challenges are racked up hard by Blizzard.
It's the global experience that tells a clearer tale.
I played WoW for five years, basically the Ony/Molten Core/Blackwing Lair era. Generally speaking, when Burning Crusades released there was a distinct trend in the game overall:
Nerf content and mobs so people can levell faster into Outland. Now, on paper that makes a lot of sense I guess. New content, you want to PUSH people into Outland asap, happy-happy-joy-joy!
The inevitable result however was a clearly visible increase, and ongoing metastisizing trend in players buying the game for the first time entering an environment where you had to about TRY to be killed to die or lose (in PvE).
The result is a great increase in:
One approach to mobs and mob-pack take down - face first zerg fest, mash buttons both heal/DPS. This has spread to other games to my disbelief, because you almost never see anyone anymore even friggen THINK for 5 seconds before engaging mob packs anymore. In any game I've played in the past five years. Exceptions? Sure. Once in a while you find SOMEONE who is an actual combatant. Otherwise: Seez the MobZoorZ runzors at it zorzs mashitymashitymashity . . . WIPE! Ah, you all suck, cya, GL nubs imma find a real groupzors!
Assuming we do see exceptions, we've still seen a great increase in the following game and team play dynamics in MMOs IMHO:
Peeling. No one even CONSIDERS a tactic as old as warfare itself: Divide and Conquer by PEELING selected mobs from a pack.
Pulling. I'm a TANKZORS! Tankzors don't pull-zors! We RUSH head FIRST into stuffzors!
Kiting. Why move your feet to get out of AoE or get behind LOS to STOP the damage about to kill you? That would be cheesing it I guess cause it's OP. Gaming companies MUST put a 5 min CD on FEET before you'd consider using them I guess.
Stay with the Group. Why bother doing that?
Buffing. Zone in and everyone is INSTANTLY running off down the hallway. No buffs, nothing.
I don't have to play WITH anyone, I need to dominate everyone around me. Seen all the time. No buffs, no protecting healers, no CC of mobs heading for healers, NO team play. Just DPS gerbils focussed on DPS meters with glassy eyes and drooling mouths, fappityfappity-fap-fap-fap.
Placement. Why bother taking 10 seconds to set the group up in an advantageous spot to take that pack down? What a waste of time. JUST ZERG-ZORS IT! (fappityfappity-fap-fap-fap - wipe)
CC - Wut's that? Mobs buzzing through the group taking people out like weed-whackers through dandelions . . . and no CC seen. Lots of fappity-fap-fap-fap though as people get mowed down.
CC - Wut's that, Part Deux? People claiming a given Elite mobs is impossible to take down solo (at a given level/gearage/stat level), with the strat displayed "proving" the point is: Face First Flat Footed Zerg-zors! (fappity-fappity-fap-fap-fap - wipe).
No kiting. No CC, No technique of any kind. Just the ONE strat many MMOs have trained players to expect, and practice at as stated at the beginning of this post: Flat footed face first button mashing hoping it all works out . . . based on stats.
I try (this was a real occurrance). I'm on a Mage. I pull, nuke shot, DoT, SLOW/CC, then start to Kite. Pop shots, kite, SILENCE it, pop shots, DoT, shield myself, Slow, etc., etc.
I kill the thing with like 10% HP left. During the fight I had someone LOL, "Why don't you stand still and try it, lolol" . . . . /smackhead
You always had goof-balls who didn't get it "in the day". There were always people who had L2P issues. It's not a knock at anyone, anything could be the cause of that.
But yeah, generally speaking, the trend with MMOs making content EASY through early levels, mid levels, etc., has MAXIMIZED the number of players who don't know how to do anything else but see red, run at it, and start FAPPING away at the buttons mindlessly.
Because the games allow it to too high a degree. Don't require thought and tactical planning as much as they should anymore (excepting the 1% to maybe 5% of end-game/instance bosses).
The reason that's a problem? People, humans, are creatures of habit.
People do what they practise, and practice what they do.
Wherever you go, there you are.