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Is Blizzard just that damn good, or are the rest of the developers just that bad?
bcbully
Member EpicPosts: 11,843
Let me start by sayin I played WoW for five years, with an embarrassing amout of time /played on just my main not to mention my 8 alts. I stopped playing about a year and a half ago, and have no plans to go back. WoW is dated, and was taken in a direction that I could not agree with. Which brought a level of distrust for Blizzard that hasn't eased yet.
With that said, how is it possible that Blizzard can take this old game with an older engine and probably sell more copies of it's 4th expansion than GW2, SwTOR, TSW and RIFT combined?! What does this say about the rest of the developers out there? How is it that Blizzard can make a game where millions of people play for years and these other developers can't make a game where most people want to play 6 months? To be far I did play RIFT for ten months. I tip my hat to the TRION team, but that's a far cry from years.
So which one is it? Blizzard is that good, or does the rest of the industry suck that bad? It's either more of one or the other.
edit - and an "e" to the "on" in the pole....
Comments
Is that a rhetorical question?
/edit haha: a rhetorical poll
Nah man lol. I looking for an answer lol.
It's sorta a little of everything. Blizzard managed to do better than other MMO developers at the time of WoW's release (or maybe they just had better marketing, I dunno for sure), Old and New MMO developers after WoW released started doing worse due to trying to compete with WoW via cloning it, and the only reason why the developers of relatively good MMOs like GW2 and maybe RIFT aren't getting that much is because WoW's fanbase is so heavily invested into their characters on WoW, that trying to convert a lot of them is nigh impossible.
Sorry if this seems like a text wall.
Wow was the first competently coded MMO that apealed to the masses. It surely is or was good, but being the first mainstream MMO meant a lot more for the game.
LOTRO was also a fine game, but it was too close to Wow to do well. Any game trying to outdo Wow must be different enough, and most MMO devs (including Blizzard so far) have been to lazy to really create a totally new game mechanics. Blizzard didnt create it either, but they were the ones who made it famous.
Elvis didnt invent rock'n roll either, yet many people think so.
I dont think either statement are true, just that Wow was the first well made MMO with a large budget (Wow had $60M budget, EQ2 $8,5M). Blizzards great programmers did help a lot as well.
Blizzard is by far the most talented. That doesn't mean they have ALL the talent tho. But they are #1 for a reason, and it isn't because of something stupid like advertising. Advertising may help sell boxes, but it doesn't help retain subs, which Blizzard has done very well over the life of WoW.
You know, to this day I am still wondering how the hell did they retain that many people for so long when they update their game at the pace of a glacier.
No, forcing you to pick a side. It's either more of one or the other. This is serious Eir_S. This is not the time to be on the fense. We need to talk about this lol.
Blizzard is good, but there's always room for improvemetnt
They really did well by me when my account got hacked.
SexuaLobster's Grease Portal
As an ealier poster said, the programmers are very talented. The developers say hey we want this and they do exactly that.
It was a lot of "right time right place". They just happened to hit the nail on the haid for some people and then it spread. They introduced a new form of marketing and wanted nothing more than to expand and it worked out extremely well for them. So I wouldn't say that all the other devs are bad or that Blizzard are inherent geniouses. I will say that they did it right and those that have followed have tried to recreate what has been done but lack the "time and place" element. On another not most games aren't that bad or are better than WoW in a lot of ways, but WoW will always live. There are those who became gamers because of WoW and playing anything else is either too complicated, too stressful, too time consuming, or too hard. They're use to WoW and trying to get them to do anything else is a waste of effort. A good example are some women who weren't gamers until their spouses got them WoW for christmas or just convinced them to play during some sensual pillow talk. "Baby that was great...so this new game came out...."
It did more than just bring a new game to the market it brought new gamers, created new relationships, happy couples (yeah...), brought couples closer together, and vastly expanded the genre. If the landscape of the genre were the same as it were 10-12 years ago today most people would see games like Rift, GW2, and possibly even TOR as godsends to the genre. Now there will be those "Veteran Gamers" who will chime in and disagree, but you cannot deny this...Over the past 10 YEARS your perception has changed. You've become more comfortable with certain things and become against others. Things you use to enjoy no longer satisfy you. You got older...getting older happens to all of us, except me. I'll be young FOREVER!!
Neither.
Blizzard are like Apple they have built up a loyal fanbase who will evangilize the products the ship irrespective of how good they are.
Apple makes ok products but have a massive fanbase who will buy anything Apple shoves down their throat. You only have to look at the latest Iphone to see that, a phone that is worse than 3 others already on the market and by the turn of the year will be worse than 8 on the market yet still breaks pre-order sales again. Apple could put crap in a box put the logo on it and still sell it to blind fanbois at a premium. Oh wait they already do it's called a macbook.
Blizzard are the same, I personally haven't liked a single Blizzard product, I'm not an RTS fan, I didn't think Diablo was anything special and the less I say about WOW the better.
Diablo 3 was a catastrophe of a game yet very little was printed in respect of it because the fans keep it between fans, If EA had shipped Diablo 3 then I guarantee you the internet would have broke
Just take a look at Blizzard and metacritic for what I mean whilst theres the obvious troll reviews I have never seen a set of fans write so many glowing reviews of an inherintly flawed game(s)
For some odd reason Blizzard gets treat with much more patience than most developers, I have only seen 2 other developers be treat in the same manner and that was Bioware pre EA sale and Bethesda. Whilst I'm a fan of Bioware's games I can't understand the Bethesda passion either I've only ever seen them release buggy messes that again if it was an EA or such like title would be absolutely chastised but because it's Bethesda it's perfectly fine for the to ship a half assed game.
Gamers are very double standarded when it comes to development houses with some under the kosh before they even release a title whilst others could ship the biggest pile of ass ever but not receive any criticism for it.
I expect it will outsell. But I'm interested to see what actually happens. I won't be buying in this time.
Blizzard's knack for polishing games and making them appeal to the masses combined with superb marketing prowess is what makes them such a potent force to be reckoned with.... EA's marketing capability behind a veteran developer like bioware was probably the last chance to really put a dent into WOW... and we all know how that ended...poor swtor, didn't stand a chance, t'was a fine lad really... we just expected too much out of him...we just...expected too much...
That beast it just...wouldn't stop...ravishing him...the poor boy, oh god... OH GOD!
Most MMOs are just crap, can't even do basic stuff right like movement and really basic, core combat mechanics. Even the HOLY GRAIL-esque GW2 has this problem - total disconnect from the player/character - IF COMPARED TO WoW.
It's not something most player actively think about when comparing MMOs, most focus on features, some graphics, etc, but this huge, glaring flaw gnaws at you on a subconscious level until you just don't wanna play anymore.
Every MMO I tried suffers from these, either in the form of horrid walking animations, unresponsive skills/movement, wrong movement speeds in relation to your surroundings, even proportions of the character/environment are RARELY done well.
Developers need to focus on core stuff first, content and features later. Rift got this part as close to "good" as anyone, in my opinion, but failed for being too generic (again, in my opinion).
So Blizzard either got very lucky to hit every nail in the core gameplay department, or more likely, are just that damn good.
Wow vanila was an impressive game.Today wow is good in the new zones but the old zones have not been updated and look as crap as mineccraft.
Im not saying that blizzard are bad but they are nearly failing every year.Including their new diablo game they showed us how fail they have become.
As a company they may be successful and earning money because of their old name blizzard but as developers they are failing year by year release by release because their new developers are total crap
I completely disagree that Blizzard is that damn good. Wanna know what has made them as successful as they are. Time, its simple. Most people wont quit WoW because they have spent soo much time on it. ditching their 85's would feel like they are betraying themselves. Take GW2, TSW or hell even SWTOR and give it the same amount of time that Blizzard has had with WoW you will have games in the exact same position.
lets face it, WoW is the king of the last generation. nothing can tople it because its been around too long. The only thing that will take out WoW is WoW. thats not because its amazing, its because its been around so long that its had enough time to gain momentum and turn itself up to 11.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
You can see the disconnect people get when discussing WoW just by reading what they type. Like the guy who said 'the old zones have never been updated'. Yet most of the old-world was updated with Cataclysm. Why doesn't he know this? Or the people who say 'Well they have all that time invested'. Sure, time investment is a great thing, but it hasn't prevented most of us from trying other games. One thing people forget is that more people have tried WoW and quit than people who played it at it's highest sub total (according to a Blizz employee). People talk about GW1 selling 6 million boxes and that being half of WoW...it's not even close. That's more like 24 million boxes (again, presuming the Blizz employee was speaking truth). It's not that we leave other games because they're 'not like WoW'. How can people even say that...then say that every game is a WoW knock-off in the next line?
The core play aesthetics are different. Blizz wanted to reach the players that no one else wanted. Once they had their attention, they offered the most diverse set of options of any game out there, cannibalized the best features from the best new games (often making the features even better), and then topping it with (on average) excellent Customer Service. People don't play WoW for 'the best graphics', 'the best pvp', 'the best grouping', etc. We play WoW because on any given single day, we can do 100 million different things, with different people or alone. Top that with a lore that is very deep (even if some parts are contradictory or redacted occasionally) layered atop gameplay that ranges from intense high-caliber difficulty (like it or not, heroic raids are -hard-) to complete mindless relaxation (fishing, for instance) and -everything- inbetween. The big value of WoW is -choice-, and -no one- offers as much. Not even close to as much. WoW doesn't do any -single- thing better than -everyone- else, they just do -more-, better, than -anyone- else. It's really not hard to understand...but it's very hard to match.
Because a lot of companies try to copy wow to hopefulyl make a ton of cash.. sadly that wont happen.
Copies of things are usually not as good as the origional and that goes for lotso f things in this world not just MMORPGS..
The developers need to realise this and need to start coming up with new ideas...
TSW and GW2 a good examples of companies that have tried to come up with new ideas but they did not go far enough..
Companies also need to look at the average su numbers for mmorpgs before wow and base their games around that not the millions that wow has because thats propally a one off as we have seen over the years..
People dont want WoW clones because people who like WoW well have WoW..