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WoW starting a new trend of "quickie" MMOs
linkeq2002
Member Posts: 58
WoW was fun
For about oh 3 months barely even that once I hit 60 it went downhill and FAST, but that being said WoW has amassed a large following of players and made lots of money, but in the end I think Everquest 2 and Everquest will be more succesful. Why you ask, well simple WoW as of now has 2 million subscribers, but last time the 6 month subscriptions ran out they lost 300kish people, and this is gonna go at an ever increasing drop rate. As you hit the higher levels it just becomes mindless dungeon crawl after crawl no feeling of epic is there, no wow i finally did it comes to mind like in other MMOs where it takes months and months and months to hit the top tier levels and even longer to finish the "uber" dungeons. WoW shortcuted all this allowing max level in just over a month and the finish of the "highest" dungeon Molten Core in 4 months (On kiljaeden). This compared to some dungeons in Everquest that have been only been completed a handful of times in the first year and then slowly as the years went by become beatable by the casual gamer.
Yet all this being said WoW DID make money and lots of it, why? They catered to the casual gamer and it worries me to think that I'll never have my Dark Age of Camelot again where I played for 2 years and Everuqest (2 years as well) where it was near as fun the last couple months of play as it was the first. It worries me to think that all these other MMO makers are gonna make their games like WoW, a short quick little journey able to hold your attention for a couple months, mass some cash and then move on.
"Sony Customer Service is like Santa Clause, people say they've seen them but they don't really exist"
Comments
"As you hit the higher levels it just becomes mindless dungeon crawl after crawl"
Not trying to defend WoW or anything(got bored with it a couple months after release) but all blizzard games are repetetive as hell.
Diablo 2 is an old ass game now, and still has several times more people playing it then other games.... and diablo 2 is king of repetition.
I got bored of EQ2 within a week(but mainly cuz it was beta) Only thing that stopped me from trying it after launch was the fact that its an SOE game....
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As of now WoW has 4 million not 2.
I agree with your other arguements, but not your predictions. Despite many people realising what a grind the end game is it is STILL growing. I don't know why, just that it is. I want them to lose lots of subs, then they'll wake up and smell the coffee, but right now they think everything is all right, so they keep churning the same non-casual end game crap.
And to answer the title of the thread:
Some big companies, SOE, Blizzard, Microsoft, Turbine, are probably motivated purely to make money. They have no interest in innovation, imagination, invention, taking the genre to new levels, breaking new ground, pushing the boundaries.
But not all devs are like this, and hopefully when these new ideas start entering the market, jaded long term mmorpgers will embrace those games and make them a success.
Your post makes no sense. Is it supposed to be some huge secret that businesses are out to make money? This is basic economics. However, saying they have no interest in innovation, "imagination" (wtf??) etc is complete garbage. That is *exactly* how companies set their products apart from other companies - by innovating; by doing things different or better.
Some people like to say Blizzard doesn't innovate, but I think that is BS. WoW might share a lot of things with past MMORPG's but it does what it does better than any other game and it does it with polish and quality. I think if you played WoW with an open mind you could look around and see that a lot of CARE and effort went into it. Players recognize this. That is why there are so many subscribers, and that is why sub-par, poor quality games like SWG and EQ2 are making do with a lot less than they hoped.
Gaming is big business, of course they are only motivated to make money, otherwise they wouldn't be in business.
And in their desire to make money Blizzard and just about every other game company out there has at least attempted to be all of the above.
I'll stick to blizzard because this is a WoW forum. World of Warcraft was innovative, it was the first fantasy based RTS as I recall. WC WCII WCIII Diablo D2 all introduced elements which were first seen in those games, ie imagination, invention, taking the genre to new levels, breaking new ground, and pushing the boundries. Hell, Diablo started a genre, and without the Warcraft and Starcraft series I doubt the RTS genre would be where its at today. WoW is very innovative, they completely broke the mold of the traditional MMORPG.
Give this man a prize, he hit the nail right on the head. This is exactly why WoW is so popular. Every MMORPG before WoW operated on the premise of making it take as long as possible to reach the top teir with many in-game mechanisms to keep leveling to a minimum, ie xp loss for death, forcing players to group at higher levels to get any reasonable XP, ie making players have to waste time finding a group rather than gaining xp. And when you did finally reach the top teir, many MMORPGs, ie EQ/EQ2, it becomes more of a job than a game. Because WoW has implemented so many features never before seen in a MMORPG, ie innovation, imagination, invention, taking the genre to new levels, breaking new ground, pushing the boundaries, they've made a ton of money.
4.5 millsion jaded MMORPGers so far have embraced WoW making it a huge success. Why? Not because its just like every other slow leveling MMORPG out there which is designed to only allow the top 10% to ever even see the end-game content, but because even the casual player can do every instance in the game. I find it a little ammusing that when a MMORPG does finally break the mold and becomes so vastly popular that someone can say the above. New ideas have entered the market, ie rested XP, CTF in a fantasty games, just to name a couple (people liked these features so much that EQ2 had to implement them to help keep their player base). How can anybody possibly argue that WoW isn't innovative?
Your post makes no sense. Is it supposed to be some huge secret that businesses are out to make money? This is basic economics. However, saying they have no interest in innovation, "imagination" (wtf??) etc is complete garbage. That is *exactly* how companies set their products apart from other companies - by innovating; by doing things different or better.
Some people like to say Blizzard doesn't innovate, but I think that is BS. WoW might share a lot of things with past MMORPG's but it does what it does better than any other game and it does it with polish and quality. I think if you played WoW with an open mind you could look around and see that a lot of CARE and effort went into it. Players recognize this. That is why there are so many subscribers, and that is why sub-par, poor quality games like SWG and EQ2 are making do with a lot less than they hoped.
Your post is lacking intelligence. 1) Yes all company's are out there to make a profit, but not all company's are out there to ONLY make a profit. 2) Innovation? Please...If you've played 1 or 2 of the current Fantasy based mmo's...you've played them all. UO was innovation. 3) WoW doesn't have the subscribers it has because "it does it better than any other game" and with "polish and quality", but rather because it appeals to all the kiddies and mmo newbs. WoW was the first MMORPG 3/4 of the people I met in WoW had ever played. I could go on and on, but you get the idea, and im not dissing WoW. It was a decent game...for a short while. But it's definetly not the superstar "best game ever" that you claim.
Your post is lacking intelligence. 1) Yes all company's are out there to make a profit, but not all company's are out there to ONLY make a profit. 2) Innovation? Please...If you've played 1 or 2 of the current Fantasy based mmo's...you've played them all. UO was innovation. 3) WoW doesn't have the subscribers it has because "it does it better than any other game" and with "polish and quality", but rather because it appeals to all the kiddies and mmo newbs. WoW was the first MMORPG 3/4 of the people I met in WoW had ever played. I could go on and on, but you get the idea, and im not dissing WoW. It was a decent game...for a short while. But it's definetly not the superstar "best game ever" that you claim.
--- end quote ---
Um, no. For instance, the depth and ease-of-use (a good combination) of Horizon's crafting system makes it worthy unto itself. Would you, if you'd played "1 or 2 of the current Fantasy based MMOs... you've played them all" get a good taste, then, of a phenomenal crafting system like Horizons offers? Nope. This does, of course, assume an interest in crafting. Or of seeing you (solo or with other players) build a bridge to span that impassable chasm. Or of watching your own unique, non-instanced house being built (or being bulit by you). All things you wouldn't have gotten by sampling "1 or 2... seen them all".
Or AC1's world events over the past few years, where geography has been rewritten, towns destroyed and rebuilt, NPCs killed and new ones introduced, etc.
If you played WoW, you got NONE of that. If you played EQ2, you got NONE of that. If you played...
Point made.
As for WoW itself, it brings literally NOTHING innovative or new to the table, while doing nothing more than taking existing ideas and reducing those to a simplistic level (and throwing out anything that even resembles a complex idea, like a truly deep, dynamic crafting system like Horizon's, or world-altering events like AC1's, or player-BUILT housing as in many games including Horizons). This isn't to bash WoW. It targetted a specific audience, the mass market, which consists primarily of people who haven't tried MMORPGs and/or who played the heck out of Diablo2 and the warcraft games. It hit its mark, and it brought in its fans. Not criticizing it from that perspective in the least. I just find it incredibly amusing when someone tries to hold WoW up as something innovative or "new" or the "best game out there" (though "best" is subjective, of course -- to some, Pong would still be the "best" game, so... shrug).
Put down the crack pipe and step away from the keyboard.
1. I never said companies ONLY are out to make a profit and if you read what I said about Blizzard, they are exactly this kind of company; they are both out to make money but they also have a strict standard of quality that they adhere to. If the game isn't top-notch, its not released. They aren't like so many other MMORPG's out that are shoved out the door to meet release dates and are buggy or worse, largely unfinished.
2. Completely idiotic statement to make that all the current MMORPG's are the same, so I won't even bother going into much detail. WoW did things like put in an auction house which wasn't done in UO or EQ. WoW put in CTF which I haven't seen done either. If you look at each MMORPG out there, they are all unique in some way or another.
3. Why do you think WoW appeals to "noobs"?? Do you think people have been buying Blizzard games because they are festering piles of sh*t? Do you think Blizzard built up such a massive reputation for quality by releasing shoddy products?
ALL of their games, whether you like them or not, are very polished and for the most part, free of major bugs. They have a high level of expectation, and that has resulted in them having the playerbase they do today.
And finally, how was WoW a decent game "for a short while"? Many people have been happily playing it since release and the subscription numbers are still going up, and those numbers have crushed any previous record for subscriptions of any online game. I would call that a runaway success personally.
Your post makes no sense. Is it supposed to be some huge secret that businesses are out to make money? This is basic economics. However, saying they have no interest in innovation, "imagination" (wtf??) etc is complete garbage. That is *exactly* how companies set their products apart from other companies - by innovating; by doing things different or better.
Some people like to say Blizzard doesn't innovate, but I think that is BS. WoW might share a lot of things with past MMORPG's but it does what it does better than any other game and it does it with polish and quality. I think if you played WoW with an open mind you could look around and see that a lot of CARE and effort went into it. Players recognize this. That is why there are so many subscribers, and that is why sub-par, poor quality games like SWG and EQ2 are making do with a lot less than they hoped.
Your post is lacking intelligence. 1) Yes all company's are out there to make a profit, but not all company's are out there to ONLY make a profit. 2) Innovation? Please...If you've played 1 or 2 of the current Fantasy based mmo's...you've played them all. UO was innovation. 3) WoW doesn't have the subscribers it has because "it does it better than any other game" and with "polish and quality", but rather because it appeals to all the kiddies and mmo newbs. WoW was the first MMORPG 3/4 of the people I met in WoW had ever played. I could go on and on, but you get the idea, and im not dissing WoW. It was a decent game...for a short while. But it's definetly not the superstar "best game ever" that you claim.
An expansion of what? Some more dungeons that play the EXACT same and some more mindless PvP where the outcome has no effect on the world and the person who gets the best gear is the one who loots the fastest.
"Sony Customer Service is like Santa Clause, people say they've seen them but they don't really exist"
Please ALL these wonderful "new" concepts that WoW brought us.
Auction House has already been done, Horizons; dec 03, introduced the consigners, offline selling.
CTF. Stolen from online FPS, and they have no place in an RPG. You're supposed be at war, not playing playing silly games.
Do you actually play WoW? If you did, you would see that CTF and the other battleground(s) are implemented well with regards to the roleplaying behind why they are there.
Offline selling isn't what was done in WoW. EQ had a bazaar and offline selling as well, but it's not the same as what you have in WoW. Maybe its been done before in other games, but not in any popular MMORPG's that I know of.
As far as "playing silly games" goes, listen to yourself for a moment. First you try and argue that WoW isn't innovative but then you try and fault Blizzard for putting in a new element into MMORPG's (CTF) in a way that encourages the storyline of conflict between Alliance and Horde. Which is it? Is Blizzard not creative enough or are they too liberal with their creativity?
Do you actually play WoW? If you did, you would see that CTF and the other battleground(s) are implemented well with regards to the roleplaying behind why they are there.
Offline selling isn't what was done in WoW. EQ had a bazaar and offline selling as well, but it's not the same as what you have in WoW. Maybe its been done before in other games, but not in any popular MMORPG's that I know of.
As far as "playing silly games" goes, listen to yourself for a moment. First you try and argue that WoW isn't innovative but then you try and fault Blizzard for putting in a new element into MMORPG's (CTF) in a way that encourages the storyline of conflict between Alliance and Horde. Which is it? Is Blizzard not creative enough or are they too liberal with their creativity?
I claimed that Wow lacked originality. You claimed it was original, and used 2 examples of that. Both your examples are ideas stolen from other games.
So, list all of the ideas in WoW that have never been seen before.
In WoW you can play the silly game of capturing the flag. So what. You capture it 3 times, you win. BG resets, you start all over again. In an FPS people do this for fun. Online FPS games don't have a point.
People play mmorpgs for fun, for the journey, true, but to progress also. Would you keep playing if you never got past level 1? Other, lesser, mmorpgs have added something new. Playable dragons, or world changing events. Some of the new mmorpgs are seeking to do new things, such as Dark and Light, where PvP actually changes the environment. You don't go into an instance, capture a castle, win some points, then leave and it resets. When you capture the castle it STAYS captured. You recieve benefits from owning it, holding onto it. WoW stole ships from EQ, and made them just as empty. Vanguard will have ships, but there will content on them, it will be part of the adventure.
Once again, list ALL the innovative ideas that WoW has added to the genre, not the stuff they plagiarised and polished.
im not over powered! look it took me 10 minutes to kill that guy
Regardless of what Horizons has innovated, where is the game now? On its last legs. Boy, that innovation is paying off in spades=) SB made some amazing strides in PvP castle raiding and ownership....that innovation is paying off incredibly also=) Nice ideas using horrible implimentation does NOT a great game make. By the way, Horizon's Dragons were a complete bust. Cool idea. Badly done. It was no different from playing a Human, only slower & longer. AC had some world changing events. Cool idea, but no one cared. Boy did that attract the masses away from UO and EQ. Um...no it didn't. Dragon Empires was going for city ownership. BUST! AC2 tried no NPCs. BUST!! Wish was going to innovate everything. BUST!!! So, every innovative MMORPG that came out after EQ has been a niche title few even care about or play or a basic failure. So much for blind innovation being a succesful bussiness model.
Smartly, Blizzard decided to take EVERYTHING people enjoyed and made it streamlined and better and took everything people hated and removed it. 2-4 Million subribers soon followed=) Did they try anything that they knew wouldn't sell? Nope. They'll smartly wait and add it later when interest grows.
WOW innovations.
FUN Solo play to max lvl from day 1. Sorry, but thats pretty huge.
Balanced character classes out of the gate and no character destroying nerfs. Basic rock, paper, scissors, rules apply, but anyone can beat anyone. No uber templates. No gimps. No BEST ANYTHING. Tweaking is still needed, but nothing compared to the madness of neverending balancing like DAOC and EQ. All the nerf cries on the WOW boards are from really BAD players. Everyone who knows what they're doing understands that every class is effective. Thats also pretty impressive.
Lots of different mounts and traveling methods, all AT RELEASE! Kinda cool you know.
Battlegrounds based on FPS rulesets with PvP ranks and Reputation. Still repetative eventually, but everything in a MMORPG is. For those of us who love FPS, its not too bad. Too bad Blizzard can't force people to organize=)
Ladder based rankings instead of a simple alternative lvling curve to prevent everyone from being UBER at the same time. Not available to everyone but lots of people are fighting for those upper rankings.
A death penalty that doesn't make you pull your hair out or quit for the night. A very welcome innovation. COH did it well also, but it isn't really a full blown MMORPG.
Working Auction House on day 1=)
4 Million subscribers=)
Warrior Charge and Intercept. Never seen that before, but then I haven't touched some former MMORPGs in a while and don't know what they're added in expansions.
Shaman Totems done correctly. AC2 had them, but WOW does it a lot better.
A Priest class that actually can kill people. Check that. Cleric's in DOAC were brutal. See above for character destroying nerfs, hehe.
Theres other class related innovations but I'm getting tired...
PvP and PvE actually blended together in a GOOD way. DOAC did it, but WOW does it all better. Not innovative, but better.
Graphics that look pretty damn good on low spec system and really amazing on high end systems. EQ2 looks like A$$ unless you've got a major box. Even then the animation is terrible and stiff.
I'll take a fun MMORPG that improves on and adds what we like rather than innovation that leads to bad gameplay mechanics, mass concelations and un-fixable, game breaking bugs. Sue me for wanting to have fun.
So, we have Vangaurd coming out and Dark & Light. Both are trying some new ideas, both will have limited subscribers sue to those ideas, but they're still in alpha/beta and games further along have been cancelled. Theres still no real sense of knowing if the concepts are functional even. We've got DDO thats trying a few new things but within the safety of what people like. We've got a LOTR MMORPG, but it looks to be just like WOW, but grittier. Not sure about any innovation. I'll have to read up on it.
Blizzard didn't try to be completely immovative and it sure hurt them, didn't it? Somehow they managed to make a really fun MMORPG that most people can play for 3+ months, long enough to make a proft. Innovation and success sometimes don't go hand in hand.
The thing that sucked for me about WoW is it was & still is a carebear game, I just don't get it Blizzard made both WoW & Deablo 2. In WoW you lose nothing when pked, in Deablo 2 you permantly die!!!!! Why didn't they just make these games meet in the middle, at least make raiding have a freaken point, now it is just a big fight where you fight to fight. Raiding should turn a town to your side if your group wins.
Edward, if towns or graveyards could be controlled, how long do you think it would take for almost every Horde side on every server to quit in frustration? Your game just failed. Thats why the battlegrounds exist. A later patch will actually add some persistant capturable areas. I'm sure it'll be very DOAC-keep like. The sad part is , the Alliance will just roll over and zerg the Horde to death in those areas. It'll be a great idea that'll become pretty un fun due to population advantages.
I play on a PvP server and if every time I was Pked, I lost an item, I never would've started playing. A fun time doesn't revolve around finding a group of 10, so you can not be perma camped by bored players out to ruin your play time. Losing items is NOT fun. All solo activity in the game would cease and all those quests would be near impossible to do. PvP servers would dwindle, just like in every MMORPG prevoiously. Its no accident the Blizzard doesn't allow corpse looting. The vast majority of players HATE it.
Players can kill quest NPCs but they're too carebear to face the consequences. The game isn't carebear at all. WHats carebear are the l33t PvPers who want to annoy everyone but not have to face consequences for that annoyance. Remember when UO made a server that allowed for no corpse looting. EVERYONE left for that server and subscriptions increased. Theres a good reason why.
Your post makes no sense. Is it supposed to be some huge secret that businesses are out to make money? This is basic economics. However, saying they have no interest in innovation, "imagination" (wtf??) etc is complete garbage. That is *exactly* how companies set their products apart from other companies - by innovating; by doing things different or better.
Some people like to say Blizzard doesn't innovate, but I think that is BS. WoW might share a lot of things with past MMORPG's but it does what it does better than any other game and it does it with polish and quality. I think if you played WoW with an open mind you could look around and see that a lot of CARE and effort went into it. Players recognize this. That is why there are so many subscribers, and that is why sub-par, poor quality games like SWG and EQ2 are making do with a lot less than they hoped.
Have you ever played a game in which you don armor and equip a sword, walk up to something, and then hit it until it dies to get experience or loot? OMIGOSH!!! OF COURSE YOU HAVEN'T!! WoW completely redefines the genre and gives a whole new innovative world for people to enjoy!
See? World of Warcraft did nothing but make another cookie-cutter "advance this class to maximum and fight stuff" RPG. Nothing special at all except for it's name, which is probably why people still flock to it... but have you ever seen anybody come back more than twice?
I played it last year through Christmas into late February and gained three level 60s (a Hunter, a Mage, and a Warrior). It was thrilling the first time, learning new things and absorbing the atmosphere as I went along in my quest to become the best. After hitting 60 three times, I quit and came back a month later when my friends wanted to play. Same story and they also regret having spent the time and money on a very unimpressive game.
Now tell someone (who played it to 60 and did everything there is to do for both sides) that Blizzard is a very innovative and creative company, and I'll laugh with them.
Your post makes no sense. Is it supposed to be some huge secret that businesses are out to make money? This is basic economics. However, saying they have no interest in innovation, "imagination" (wtf??) etc is complete garbage. That is *exactly* how companies set their products apart from other companies - by innovating; by doing things different or better.
Some people like to say Blizzard doesn't innovate, but I think that is BS. WoW might share a lot of things with past MMORPG's but it does what it does better than any other game and it does it with polish and quality. I think if you played WoW with an open mind you could look around and see that a lot of CARE and effort went into it. Players recognize this. That is why there are so many subscribers, and that is why sub-par, poor quality games like SWG and EQ2 are making do with a lot less than they hoped.
Have you ever played a game in which you don armor and equip a sword, walk up to something, and then hit it until it dies to get experience or loot? OMIGOSH!!! OF COURSE YOU HAVEN'T!! WoW completely redefines the genre and gives a whole new innovative world for people to enjoy!
See? World of Warcraft did nothing but make another cookie-cutter "advance this class to maximum and fight stuff" RPG. Nothing special at all except for it's name, which is probably why people still flock to it... but have you ever seen anybody come back more than twice?
I played it last year through Christmas into late February and gained three level 60s (a Hunter, a Mage, and a Warrior). It was thrilling the first time, learning new things and absorbing the atmosphere as I went along in my quest to become the best. After hitting 60 three times, I quit and came back a month later when my friends wanted to play. Same story and they also regret having spent the time and money on a very unimpressive game.
Now tell someone (who played it to 60 and did everything there is to do for both sides) that Blizzard is a very innovative and creative company, and I'll laugh with them.
innovative, creative or not...they still have 4 millon subscribers. I find it fun, others find it fun and really thats all that matters.
I've played since beta and am still playing... well... kinda... MC/BWL with my guild.
I take it you haven't played many MMORPG's? This game IS cookie-cutter...
Are you blind?
Blah blah blah......
Yeah yeah, yadda yadda WOW sucks and you could make a better game with a box of matches and a party hat, you are so good and developers are so bad blah blah blah.. Move on to your other "amazing" game you play this month, maybe even next month... then whine about that and move on yet again....
Bye bye
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"