More content is great i love all the idea the game is fun.But how the hell do they expect too put a expansion with tons of new content when they still have freaking problems with server stability its annoying.They need to fix these stability issues they arnt big issues anymore but they will get alot worse if a expansion comes out before then.
Originally posted by bluejaye99 Interesting article, but utlimately pointless. I've been playing WOW from the beginning and have loved every minute of it... but, I have a job, I have friends, I go out to eat, I play other games and see movies, and basically lead a normal life. As a result, the 'what about all my level 60 characters' question isn't a buring one for me because I don't have any. My three characters that I play regularly (and by regularly I mean way way way less than a lot of other people) are between the high twenties and high forties - I've got lots of content to go. For those gamers out there that have been camping for purple items for so long that they are almost resentful of an expansion... I kind of feel like they should get a life. For those people that are like, 'man, all that experience has been wasted, now I've got to start over to get to level 70...' well guess what, that time is only wasted if you weren't having fun. And isn't that the goal? I think WOW is a blast, I love the people I game with, and absolutely none of us have complained or mentioned anything re: the burning crusade but with anticipation. And let's be honest with ourselves a second, if blizzard puts out a bad expansion (which will pretty much be a first for the company) or if they make some decisions regarding experience and equipment that some players don't like (which is pretty much a given) will it really be that big a deal?? Just have fun. If you don't like it, don't play it. If you don't approve of changes, don't buy the expansion. I will say this though... If I were at level 60 and had racked up some extra xp just goofing around, and get the expansion, and whammo, I'm level 70 at boot up with all that xp turned in... I'd be disappointed to missed those other nine level up 'dings'. Great job guys @MMORPG & Blizzard
mmm i think u will find m8 that there is no build up of xp, when the crusade comes out,
and on your points about weather its fun or not...without question its fun, but your argment about weather folks go mad raping instances for purples....i dont agree with that m8,
take me, been playng since beta, i have only 1, 60 and that has no purples at all, because i cant be done with the countless hours you have to spend in instances, or the "again",countless hours queing for bg's
for gods sake is a joke, oh and dont get me started on the fact some folk even have to que just to get ingame....should never happen with the cash these guys are making....
finally thow m8 i think what the arguments here are, the sheer fact that there is no endgame to speak of no matter how u play the game, and i also think now more and more folk are coming round to this fact to
....and also now put that along with the probable months that the crusade is going to be before it comes out, that also will get rid of a hell of a lot of players through boredom alone.
and all in all, i think here to, the content of the expansion, is in my opinion, very very very poor, just more of the exact same things,
and its that what i dont like ...there offering nothing brand new, just i think they are being very presumtious, to think we are all gonna jump stright out and buy the expansion the minute it comes out......you see i think blizz are in for a sharp shock, when this finally comes out....to many folks will be bored, and only the diehards will want it i think........
but i do see were u are coming form as regards the fun aspect...i just feel a game of this magnitude, and all its proffit...the expansion is a bit of a cop out......could have , and should have been very differant.
Thats a first of July release date and a $40 price tag. My biggest complaint is if they don't intend to release the thing for 7 months (again EB isn't known for it's accuracy on Release dates/pricing) why the hell did they release any info about it now? Wait till at least you are ready for beta testing before you start extolling the virtue of all the new content. All Blizzard is doing letting out all this info so early is setting themselves up for a fall when BC finally goes live and everyone is already gone playing all new MMOs that will come out before it.
I can understand hyping a new MMO two years in advance of release to build momentum and a fan base. That is good business sense, it makes people excited about the product and creates industry buzz. But this is only an expansion pack to a pre existing game why the hell are they announcing content for it almost a year ahead of any possible release date? They are just asking for things like this forum tread. There has been so much speculation about almost every aspect of what little they did announce that by the time it actually goes on shelves and is playable it will be nothing but a disappointment.
Blizzard's attitude is a rather odd one really, they play on the 'don't be harsh on us it's our first MMO, we are learning' line and yet ignore their playerbase which have had at times more experience at least playing MMOs. That is not to say that they should listen to every whiner on their forums, good god no, but still.....they have ignored so much. ________________ They struggle with Content and yet ignore requests asking for player created/driven content. PVP is an example of when good content can last a long time because the players drive it rather than the devs, instead the devs had to make sure that they controlled it down to the n'th degree. Hence pathetic Battlegrounds and Honour Grind. Player created quests, PVP/Raid Noticeboards, Player/Guild Housing, Guild Aliances, Taverns that are fun with mini-games (dice/checkers/darts/poker) and maybe with chairs that you could actually sit in, with many many more options for content that could be driven by players rather than devs. The devs seem to think that they can drive this game into the ground and that in my opinion is what they are doing, if they ever woke up and realised that the best resource any MMO company has is its players then maybe we would see something stunning. Until that time comes, i'll be waiting for Vanguard thnxvrymch.
I'll admit that I haven't read every post in this thread and that there are tons I could have quoted, but this one was last, so I'll use it as an example.
Have any of you looked at Hero's Journey yet? I know its not yet released, but Simutronics is being extremely innovative in their creation of the game. Yes, its their first graphical MMO, but they have text-based MMO's that have been around something like 15 years. They know their MMORPGs. And, they listen.
You mentioned, bobo, that the player base is the best resource any MMO company has and yet most ignore their requests. Simu went a step above and beyond in my opinion. They've gathered leaders from other MMO's and put them in a closed-forum discussion with the developers themselves. Both sides are free to ask questions and I've yet to see a time where a developer hasn't stepped in and answered a question posted. Heck, they even have weekly screenshots here and devs answer questions here as well.
There have also been times when the players in the closed forum have suggested things and the developers have taken it into serious consideration, coming back with more questions on details of how the players would like to see something implemented.
As for those who say they're tired of games where they can't make an impact on the world, read up on Hero's Journey. They're implementing a new system that gives players much more freedom and choices on how their journey unfolds. Families (clans) can form guilds and ally with other clans and guilds. Enough influence in the guilds, and the leading faction can change. Its very dynamic.
As far as crafting goes, sure, it has to be limited in some aspects because of the programming details, but you won't find cookie cutter patterns for everything like in Warcraft. You'll be much more free and likely able to make things pretty much as you please.
There's also plans for guild and player housing. Player-driven content is a high priority for them. Their text-based games are a prime example. There will also be much more GM interaction than the average player is used to. Their GMs have an interface that allows them to continually add new areas, critters, etc. as they wish so the world will be ever-changing. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of GM-run invasions either. They're quite popular in the text-based games they run now.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is...For those of you who are bored with WoW and looking for something with more depth, where the developers listen to what the players want and actually do something about it, take a look around. There's a thread here with links to all the pertinent information and screenshots and Q&A's answered right from the developers. Hero's Journey might just be what you're looking for.
When PoP came out in EQ, it made the Luclin content seem obsolete to some people, though to other guilds it remained a point ot interest on the way to gearing up for planar progression .... and yes both expansions involved a LOT of grind, though people still enjoyed it ( and still do ) -- the same pattern repeated with each new expansion geared towards end-game content, especially when there would be a level cap increase.
How do you approach making level 60 farming / gear still viable once the level cap goes up to 70 ?
Its simple -- you make it necessary to have the 'uber' level 60 gear to be able to have much of a chance of fighting your way up to 70, which I have no doubts will be the case in WoW once the expansion is released.
Though since the thread is more of a question of what people will likely be doing once the expansion goes live ... that's a simple one as well !!!
As we all know, balance is key to game mechanics ---
And now that the Horde will have their very own sexy elven race, they too can have just as many naked dancing elves in their cities and outposts !!!
What will people be doing then when the expansion is released ?? Creating a level 1 Blood Elf and having a naked dance party in Oggrimar , of course !!!
( the sad thing being, though that's a wee bit of sarcasm on my part, we all know it's inevitable .... )
Originally posted by IFRINN Don't know how accurate this is but this is what EBgames says about the xpac. http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/259896.asp Thats a first of July release date and a $40 price tag. My biggest complaint is if they don't intend to release the thing for 7 months (again EB isn't known for it's accuracy on Release dates/pricing) why the hell did they release any info about it now? Wait till at least you are ready for beta testing before you start extolling the virtue of all the new content. All Blizzard is doing letting out all this info so early is setting themselves up for a fall when BC finally goes live and everyone is already gone playing all new MMOs that will come out before it. I can understand hyping a new MMO two years in advance of release to build momentum and a fan base. That is good business sense, it makes people excited about the product and creates industry buzz. But this is only an expansion pack to a pre existing game why the hell are they announcing content for it almost a year ahead of any possible release date? They are just asking for things like this forum tread. There has been so much speculation about almost every aspect of what little they did announce that by the time it actually goes on shelves and is playable it will be nothing but a disappointment.
~~ Releasing info on the expansion this far in advance is no different than how they handled BG's , which were meant to be a part of the game's launch ... so it doesn't suprise me in the least ...
~~ For what it's worth, I see the tons of threads on the forums speculating on what will or won't be a part of the expansion as a good thing. If release truely is that far off yet, I have no doubts that ideas will be implemented directly out of some of those same threads. Just look at any UI changes that have come into the game since launch -- I can't think of one that wasn't directly inspired by player's custom mods ( aka the player base did a lot of dev. work for the UI teams )
i have a lvl 60 feral druid (alliance) as my main. ive been feral since beta testing for the most part and will lvl him to 70. depending on the new gear that drops will determine if i continue the pvp grind to get the best feral gear in the game at this point (the epic pvp set). if blizz doesnt implement better feral gear than the pvp set then i will continue 2 do the samething i have been doin for months, grinding honor 4 rank. i hope though that they do put in some new gear for us ferals, that way i dont just experience one part of the game like i have been doing lately either way i am looking forward 2 the expansion just for the chance to participate in battles from the wc series from caverns of time. and 2 check out outlands. however after i get 70 on my feral, and lvl my main alt warrior to at least 65, i might make a new alt with the new alliance race depending on what it is. i hope they still plan 2 do hero classes though, sometime in the future
Originally posted by boboslave Originally posted by Finduilas I'll answers your questions. Firstly, what's wrong with WoW? This is a two part question, because you must ask, what's wrong with BC, since the expansion is supposed to address problems with game content. First part. WoW is a great game, and much of it is right. So what is wrong?....WoW has had no real competition, so it has flourished. In 2006 that will change.
Nicely said Fin, pretty much sums up what i have thought was off about WoW. Blizzard's attitude is a rather odd one really, they play on the 'don't be harsh on us it's our first MMO, we are learning' line and yet ignore their playerbase which have had at times more experience at least playing MMOs. That is not to say that they should listen to every whiner on their forums, good god no, but still.....they have ignored so much.
Couple of points.
In a game designed around grouping and raiding in the end-game, where the fek is the LFG or LFRaid tool. They already had a LFG tool in use in beta, and removed it cause they said no one was using it, of course they didn't actually tell anyone it was there either, and then created meeting stones. /boggle.
Guild tools are woeful, and make it hard to manage a guild properly. For an end-game that forces you to run big raid guilds, they really don't help at all there.
They balance classes to a point where players clearly state that they simply don't enjoy playing the class, and Blizzard claims that it was that they intended. Why the hell would any company want to create a class that no-one wants to play.
They struggle with Content and yet ignore requests asking for player created/driven content. PVP is an example of when good content can last a long time because the players drive it rather than the devs, instead the devs had to make sure that they controlled it down to the n'th degree. Hence pathetic Battlegrounds and Honour Grind.
Player created quests, PVP/Raid Noticeboards, Player/Guild Housing, Guild Aliances, Taverns that are fun with mini-games (dice/checkers/darts/poker) and maybe with chairs that you could actually sit in, with many many more options for content that could be driven by players rather than devs.
The devs seem to think that they can drive this game into the ground and that in my opinion is what they are doing, if they ever woke up and realised that the best resource any MMO company has is its players then maybe we would see something stunning. Until that time comes, i'll be waiting for Vanguard thnxvrymch.
I agree with a lot of what you have to say, Boboslave. This mmorpg is not "player friendly" in terms of players making a difference in-game. In my opinion, a true mmorpg should have the capability for player-driven content, economy, society. WOW is a golden-road already laid out for thr players, and you get what Blizz gives you, and that's it!
Being one of the 5m sheep who are easily satisfied I am certain that some extra characters and levels are bound to keep me occupied for another eternal lifetime.
Some gerenal points. 1.With 39 characters at the last count the one thing I would most appreciate is the upper limit of characters removed. Only allowing 9 (or was it 10) per server is annoying, limiting the total number is just plain rude.
2. Allowing guilds to create bank accounts as well as just players is an essential requirement IMHO, relying on the guild banking character to be on line to move stuff around sucks!
3. Quicker instances are definatley needed! I dont mind the occasional 4 hour foray but I gave up golf as it took half a day to get round!
4. Flying Mounts = sign me up
5. Ability to climb -> definatlely needed, can anyone get to those pretty waterfalls in Elwyn forest you see from the Griffon?
6. Shades (Sunglasses), ok without retraining for engineering, I need a smooth set to go with my Tux.
7. New races. Come on I have 39 characters already, gimmee gimmeee
8. Professions... ok small point but here goes. To wear a full set of Dark Iron Armour you need to be armoursmith, to get Thunderfury you need to be weaponsmith... There needs to be a way that guildies can make for their own guild or something, its just silly! (or Damn expensive to completely retrain to get the kit).
9. New lands... can I swim there please ;-)
10. Ability to jump of Griffons mid flight would be handy
ah I see this turned into wish list...
ok then one more Can someone else make a decent MMORPG for Apple Mac's ;-P
I love how people who are not inside a demographic have contempt for those within it. "So what if 5 million people like it? They're easily amused idiots!" Elitist snobs who are unable to see beyond the end of their own hedonistic noses.
WoW is my 25th MMO, and IMHO one of the best to date. The word "best" however is a misnomer. Does it have the best combat? No, other games have done that better. Best crafting? Again, some have done it better. So why is it best? Because it does ALL of them very well.
No MMO to date has "end game content". EQ? Expansion-pack-du-jour, come look at new graphics, fight different-looking mobs for pointless loot. SWG? Puh-lease. CoH? I'm listening, but I'm not hearing any other MMO that does "end game content" any better then WoW.
Patch 1.9 came out today, with a TON of fixes, adjustments, and 2 new zones. Typically, I tend to get burned out after a year and retire from an MMO, usually because I'm in some alpha/beta of another MMO (yes, I'm an addict, sue me). WoW is the first to truly hook me. Each expansion pack that comes out brings something that piques my interest, and this is where Blizzard truly shines for me.
In every MMO, there seems to come a time when the devs go "You know what? I really hate this game and these players. Let's release a patch to TRULY screw up the game and offend everyone, make them go away and we can work on something else!" SWG, CoH, EQ, pick one, and Sony is the absolute worst for this. Global sweeping patches to piss off 10,000's of folks and make them go away.
Blizzard seems genuinely interested in building on the content and community in the game with each patch. Power gamers who hit 60th in a week of release are going to be bored and leave...they always do, every MMO, there is no pleasing them and no point in trying. WoW is 5 million players strong and growing (6 new shards this week). All the power gamers are gone and yet the game grows, imagine that
About the expansion, I can't wait to see it. They give us free content and instances in patches, what a purchased expansion pack will contain only boggles the mind
I hate the rumor that the Pandarians were the new Alliance race and the Chinese protested so it was removed, though it kinda makes sense. I, for one, would like to see a large, ugly Alliance race just to balance the field. I don't want a new class, but I'd really like to see a swap of classes...Blood Elves can be Paladins, and the new Alliance race can be Shaman. The concept of having a Shaman AND a Paladin on a raid is like Xmas !
Edit: Just had to add this...What's wrong with Blizzard? They don't listen to their customers? LOL, too funny. Every patch, every fix, every adjustment is about Blizzard's customers. What people don't seem to understand is that there are FIVE MILLION OF THEM!!! Five Million. You and the 100 people you know for a fact have your exact same problem represent approximately .002% of the people Blizzard has to listen to. You go write up a petition with your little problem and get 100,000 people to sign it and you're still .2%. That is LESS than statistically insignificant, but forum posters can't see that...I am the customer, I am right, and Blizzard is an idiot for not seeing it my way!!!! Right.
Every patch is about fixing problems. Every patch is about player complaints and issues. You personally don't know Five Million People, so you couldn't possible understand the scope of managing that kind of customer base. Just because your personal little quirk (even if you know 10,000 folks that have it) isn't fixed does not mean Blizzard isn't listening. < 15% of all MMO players post on forums, so Blizzar is getting over 4.5 million people's worth of input from channels you can't see.
And, for your information, the expansion pack is next to nothing about fixing things. You don't charge money to fix things, you fix them for free, which is what Blizzard does. Expansion packs are about making money and attracting new customers, plain and simple. Blizzard is a business, and as such has as much of a responsibility to its stock holders as it does to it's customers. You don't like it? Vote with your dollar. 5 million have.
Originally posted by MacAllen Edit: Just had to add this...What's wrong with Blizzard? They don't listen to their customers? LOL, too funny. Every patch, every fix, every adjustment is about Blizzard's customers. What people don't seem to understand is that there are FIVE MILLION OF THEM!!! Five Million. You and the 100 people you know for a fact have your exact same problem represent approximately .002% of the people Blizzard has to listen to. You go write up a petition with your little problem and get 100,000 people to sign it and you're still .2%. That is LESS than statistically insignificant, but forum posters can't see that...I am the customer, I am right, and Blizzard is an idiot for not seeing it my way!!!! Right. Every patch is about fixing problems. Every patch is about player complaints and issues. You personally don't know Five Million People, so you couldn't possible understand the scope of managing that kind of customer base. Just because your personal little quirk (even if you know 10,000 folks that have it) isn't fixed does not mean Blizzard isn't listening. < 15% of all MMO players post on forums, so Blizzar is getting over 4.5 million people's worth of input from channels you can't see. And, for your information, the expansion pack is next to nothing about fixing things. You don't charge money to fix things, you fix them for free, which is what Blizzard does. Expansion packs are about making money and attracting new customers, plain and simple. Blizzard is a business, and as such has as much of a responsibility to its stock holders as it does to it's customers. You don't like it? Vote with your dollar. 5 million have.
Hi Mac, I loved playing World of Warcraft, it was a great game. I have however, voted with my dollar and quit playing, mainly because I feel that the direction they are taking the game is more to do with their Vision rather than the customers who are paying them to be entertained and have fun.
Waiting in Queues - is not fun. Mindless Grinding - is not fun. Honour Grind - is not fun. Raiding - not fun for many, fun for others. plus more features that are not fun.
Now i do understand that people can see these things as fun, and i say more power to them. All that means is they, like you said, are easily amused.
What channels that i don't see are they getting input from? Many of these people who aren't present on the forums would most likely not email blizzard, and even if they did there is no email for suggestions only the forums. I haven't seen Blizzard take any polls/votes, the only feedback they've asked for has been through the forums. So whilst it is correct to say a small percentage of the population is on the forums, it is also correct that they are the only ones able to provide constructive/negative feedback (apart from quitting).
Issues that have been around since Beta are yet to be addressed, Oceania customers are treated poorly (6 new shards and not one for the bloated over populated oceania servers), very little has been done by blizzard to foster community. No LFG Tool, Poor Guild Management Tools, No Guild Alliances, No Guild Bank, Poor Raid Toolset, No Gameplay apart from raiding/PVP grind at end-game. They seem to take the lazy attitude of 'meh, let's just let them mod it'.
You are right that every patch is about customers complaints and issues, usually about the LAST Patch! You are also right that I couldn't understand the scope of managing that size of playerbase, I would think you'd have to do more than what they are doing though. The level of interaction between Blizzard and the community is miniscule, with changes being made without explanation why, many players no longer even trust the devs. Talk to Paladins!
The expansion has EVERYTHING to do with fixing things, Casual Gamers have been told sorry no content for you, wait till expansion. It might not be about fixing particular bugs, but it is ALL about fixing the things that LACK in the game. As it is, i ain't buying the expansion, they can go screw themselves. Yes Blizzard is business, but there are many ways of making money and IMO Blizz has gone about it in a way that i cannot respect. I don't blame them for wanting to make money, but they've already made a crap load of money and yet refuse to do things that would make portions of the playebase happy with the excuse 'it's to hard, it takes time, wah wah wah'.
Blizzard does listen, but it's a little too selective.
...and yet 100,000's of new people join every day.
If you were ragging on Horizons or The Matrix Online, games who's evidence supports your concerns, I'd agree with you. What you are doing is standing at the finish line as Lance comes across it for the 6th time and shouting at him why he's a loser.
Blizzard has done what no other MMO developer in the history of the market has done. Let me rephrase that...Blizzard has done more than ALL MMO's every made, anywhere, ever, combined. If you add up the populations (pretend they are discreet and not the same folks in diff games) and added them up, you would not hit 5 million people. This, from a developer who has never done an MMO.
What does this mean? It means that, with 1/3 the experience in MMO's of Sony, they have created a game 20x larger then anything they could conceive of. Why am I arguing with you? Because you are arguing from a position of idealism. Let me see if I can't get us on a level playing field...
Give me an example of an MMO that has done all that you are looking for. There isn't one, or you'd still be playing it. OK, how about half the things you're looking for? EQ? EQ2 still has problems I saw in EQ1's beta. SWG? Don't make me laugh. No one has done what you want, so why should Blizzard be expected too? No MMO has what you are looking for, or you'd still be playing it and not here bitching, so what you are looking for does not exist.
Given that, I'll make matters worse by pointing out, as bad as you think Blizzard's model is, it is going to get MUCH worse before it's over. Why? Because they are doing what they are doing and making a FORTUNE doing it, so why change?
One of my biggest frustrations about EQ was that it sucked so badly, yet did so well, that most games after it tried to mimic that model to capture some of that success....which is the "right" thing to do, commercially, but the 'wrong" thing to do because it propagates such a poor system. Blizzard has blown Sony out of the water you can not only expect Blizzard to continue doing exactly what they're doing, expect others to do the same.
I guess what I'm saying is, standing outside of McDonalds, looking in the windows, wishing the served steak while millions are inside enjoying burgers means you aren't a WoW customer, so why post criticisms in a thread about an expansion pack you have no intention of ever buying? Why aren't you off to the next MMO disappointment?
BTW, for those waiting on Vanguard and DDO...*scoff* OMFG, are those 2 games AWEFUL! DDO will never break 150k accounts, and if Vanguard sees 100k, I'll be surprised. "Oh, but the number of customers doesn't reflect how good it is!" LOL, OK, but the number of customers certainly reflects:
1. how long the game will be around 2. how much energy the developers will invest into it to keep it going 3. how much high-end content will eventually be in it instead of scrapping it for something else shiny
Blizzard's money is in returning customers. Sony's is in expansion packs to provide crap, and starting new games instead of fixing the old one. WTF was the justification for making EQ2 when EQ was running "fine"? Why do what they did to SWG?
When you have a dev company to hold up and say "THIS is how it should be done!" I'll understand your position, but you don't. You have an ideal that no MMO dev has ever done, nor will they ever now that Blizzard has coated their model in Platinum.
Originally posted by MacAllen Blizzard has done what no other MMO developer in the history of the market has done. Let me rephrase that...Blizzard has done more than ALL MMO's every made, anywhere, ever, combined. If you add up the populations (pretend they are discreet and not the same folks in diff games) and added them up, you would not hit 5 million people.
Actually, you might find that there would be more considering the playing population in the asian countries such as Korea, i don't have any stats to back me up, but then again...neither do you!
Yes...5 Million is a big number. Congrats to them, i never said it wasn't an achievement, and i thank them most heartily for expanding the market. I'm going to use McDonalds as an example cause...well you did it first. :P
It's like someone who has never tried food before (hypothetical of course) and was introduced to Big Mac, they loved and enjoyed it. So much that they ran off and told all their other friends who'd never tried food before to come get some. They came, they enjoyed it too. Now as enjoyable as Macca's is for them, someone introduces them to..burgers that are made with real steak, and lots of...well...you know..the lot. The burger is the size of their head, and it tastes so VERY FREAKING GOOD! So now many of those initial macca lovers are like, given the choice, i'll go for the 'size of my head' burger please.
This, from a developer who has never done an MMO. What does this mean? It means that, with 1/3 the experience in MMO's of Sony, they have created a game 20x larger then anything they could conceive of.
Ah...ok. But is WoW successful because it is a fantastic MMO or is it because it's a fantastic game? I know that sounds pedantic, but you can't treat blizzard as if they have no experience in making games, and you also can't believe that their success is based purely of their game design without taking their history and marketing powers into consideration.
Why am I arguing with you? Because you are arguing from a position of idealism.
yeah, guilty as charged. I know i'm an idealist at times, but if no one argues for better then guess what....we don't get any better. WoW is a great game, and i'd say a well polished MMO, but i will never call it the best or greatest MMO (i don't care how many subs Blizz can wave in my face) because it lacks the things that IMO give the genre the greatest potential.
Give me an example of an MMO that has done all that you are looking for. There isn't one, or you'd still be playing it. OK, how about half the things you're looking for? EQ? EQ2 still has problems I saw in EQ1's beta. SWG? Don't make me laugh. No one has done what you want, so why should Blizzard be expected too?
I can't give you an example, cause no one has done it yet. How is that an excuse however, to not push these companies to strive towards that kind of goal? Why on earth would we want more McDonalds when we could push for something more meaty?
Why should Blizzard be expected to? Because they're in the best position to do so. They are the most successful MMO company to date and yet take no risks, they have made a bucket load of money and can afford to investigate more avenues and yet they still bring out more burgers that look exactly like the old ones and call them new. Perhaps it is unfair to expect too much from Blizzard, companies with far less resources are the ones that should take all the risks right?
No MMO has what you are looking for, or you'd still be playing it and not here bitching, so what you are looking for does not exist. Given that, I'll make matters worse by pointing out, as bad as you think Blizzard's model is, it is going to get MUCH worse before it's over. Why? Because they are doing what they are doing and making a FORTUNE doing it, so why change?
Why Change? How bout because people change, your customers change and eventually you have to adapt or perish. It is easy for Blizzard to look at their success and think exactly what you have said, and i believe if anything that has the biggest potential for their downfall. WoW has brought many many gamers into the MMO fold, gamers that haven't a clue what the genre can offer, and right at the moment WoW is not offering all that much. What it does offer is very well done and quite enjoyable, but its also very very small. Will there be a WoW Killer of a game, LOL, doubt it. New Games will be released though, and although they won't have 5-million players, they won't need them to be a success, and they also won't need that many to at least chip away from WoW. I know countless numbers of people who play WoW atm because there isn't anything better, which is true. There will be though, and that is what the problem is.
Blizzard has blown Sony out of the water you can not only expect Blizzard to continue doing exactly what they're doing, expect others to do the same.
I'd suggest that Sony blew itself out of the water, and Blizzard waded in. I can see them doing exactly that Mac, which is why i whinge, i don't want Blizz to end up just being another Sony.
I guess what I'm saying is, standing outside of McDonalds, looking in the windows, wishing the served steak while millions are inside enjoying burgers means you aren't a WoW customer, so why post criticisms in a thread about an expansion pack you have no intention of ever buying? Why aren't you off to the next MMO disappointment?
Actually it's like standing outside of McDonalds and wishing they served a healthy alternative to their burgers, or perhaps wishing that they had more variety of choices in the restaurant. And ya know what, McDonalds did just that. Salads Plus etc. Why did they do it? Shrug, perhaps healthier alternatives like Subway started eating at their profits?
Why post criticisms? Cause i like WoW, and i'd love to see it get better. As i said, it's a great game, but i'd like to see someone explain why they think its a great MMO when it lacks so much. Here's the thing, some of things that it lacks, CAN BE ADDED. MMOs change, and develop. The problem is priorities, Blizzard's priorities see them adding more of the same plain horrible tasting burgers and giving it shiny marketing. There is potential for so so much more. They have the money, they just don't see the point in spending when they can get people to swallow the same old crap wrapped differently.
oh, i actually did initially intend on buying the expansion, my will to do so has recently been eroded by the latest efforts at community relations by Blizzard. I guess i'm kinda using the space as rant space, so my apologies.
BTW, for those waiting on Vanguard and DDO...*scoff* OMFG, are those 2 games AWEFUL! DDO will never break 150k accounts, and if Vanguard sees 100k, I'll be surprised.
I hope you are surprised, as it is a bleak future for this genre if all we've got is McDonalds, cause then all we'll get is the Burger Kings, etc, etc. Unless you're in Vanguard BETA, i fail to see how you could even know if it is aweful or not, not enough info is known about implementation to know how things are going to work, so i think that's a bit pre-emptive and pointless. Also, as Brad from Sigil pointed out, they are not trying to have 5-million customers, as they don't need that to be a success.
1. how long the game will be around 2. how much energy the developers will invest into it to keep it going 3. how much high-end content will eventually be in it instead of scrapping it for something else shiny Blizzard's money is in returning customers. Sony's is in expansion packs to provide crap, and starting new games instead of fixing the old one. WTF was the justification for making EQ2 when EQ was running "fine"? Why do what they did to SWG?
Considering you've already pointed out how all the other MMOs didn't have the population of WOW, then it is silly to think that population can answer your points so precisely. EQ and it's ilke had people playing for 4-5 years and are still going, WoW is a year old, i think we'll have to wait and see if your points are actually valid.
PLEASE NOTE:
AN MMO DOES NOT NEED 5-MILLION SUBS TO BE SUCCESSFUL AND TO BE LONG RUNNING!
When you have a dev company to hold up and say "THIS is how it should be done!" I'll understand your position, but you don't.
There are many companies that have the potential, Sigil is one, but the product of their efforts is not even released yet.
2006 will see my friend, it will see. Or, it'll at least be interesting.
You have an ideal that no MMO dev has ever done, nor will they ever now that Blizzard has coated their model in Platinum.
THAT BUD, IS MY GREATES FEAR. Why anyone would think that is a good situation is ultimately beyond me.
I am on the same page as Bobo. If WoW is the McDonalds burgers of the MMO's then Vanguard is the IN-N-Out burgers of the MMO's. I'll eat IN-N-Out burgers anyday over McDonalds burgers. I'll take quality over quantity any time. I am not saying that WoW doesn't have any quality, but they seem content with what they got, and don't plan on changing anything. And WoW could use a major overhaul of new ideas to improve their game from their players. The potential WoW has is amazing, but they're not using their resources to make it better.
I am beta testing DDO right now (have been since alpha) and you may be right, MacAllen, that they may not see 150k, but that's ok. Personally, it's not my kind of MMO, but to others it's great. But, I have too disagree with you on Vanguard. It's the one MMO I am waiting for to come out. And Brad has stated that he's fine with 100k sub, he doesn't want a WoW, he has his money from EQ1, he just wants a great game he can play. Again personally, I think he's going to get at least 5x that amount. You'll be surprised!
Sorry for the delay, was up raiding in WoW all night
Actually, you might find that there would be more considering the playing population in the asian countries such as Korea, i don't have any stats to back me up, but then again...neither do you!
Actually I do. There have been a number of smaller asian games, but the only one to break a million was Lineage, and it never made it to 2 million (at least as of 2 years ago) and Lineage II is nowhere near as popular. Lineage + EQ + SWG + UO + EQ2 + CoH, all at their highest, isn't even 3 million players.
Yes...5 Million is a big number. Congrats to them, i never said it wasn't an achievement, and i thank them most heartily for expanding the market. I'm going to use McDonalds as an example cause...well you did it first. :P
Actually, I stole the McDonalds comparison from earlier in the thread, I don't see WoW like that at all. It isn't trying to be all things to all people, it caters to a very specific demographic and, in doing so, does an excellent job.
It's like someone who has never tried food before (hypothetical of course) and was introduced to Big Mac, they loved and enjoyed it. So much that they ran off and told all their other friends who'd never tried food before to come get some. They came, they enjoyed it too. Now as enjoyable as Macca's is for them, someone introduces them to..burgers that are made with real steak, and lots of...well...you know..the lot. The burger is the size of their head, and it tastes so VERY FREAKING GOOD! So now many of those initial macca lovers are like, given the choice, i'll go for the 'size of my head' burger please.
The problem with your analogy is that 100,000's of those 5 million have played another MMO, so they've tasted food. And, if the other 4 million had "never tasted food", why is it that Sony, NCSoft, and Origin suck so bad that they can't lure starving people in off the street for a bite, but Blizzard can? And keep them? Raph Koster publicly stated, in the first year of SWG, that they were suffering a 25% turnover rate, and he was quoted as saying "that is an acceptable rate of churn." 25% of your people so unhappy that they leave and that's acceptable? No wonder the Sony games suck.
Ah...ok. But is WoW successful because it is a fantastic MMO or is it because it's a fantastic game? I know that sounds pedantic, but you can't treat blizzard as if they have no experience in making games, and you also can't believe that their success is based purely of their game design without taking their history and marketing powers into consideration.
Fantastic games don't last 6 months. According to EBWorld, the average shelf life of a game, no matter how good it is, is 4 months. You buy it, you play it out, and within 4 months it's on your shelf and you're on to something else. People have been playing WoW for a year...how many games have you played for a year or more? More importantly, these people PAY, every month, to play this game, well after the 4 month shelf life of a game.
People who make great games do not always make great MMO's. Origin. Sony. Microsoft. All make great games, all suck at MMO's. Making a great game is easy.
So, what is a great MMO? In the scope of this conversation, I'm using the following definition: 1. The devs do not alienate the customers - indicator of success: people stay, population grows, does not shrink 2. The game has a sense of community - indicator of success: LOTS of people come, stay, and continue paying to play 3. The game is engaging and continues to challenge people - indicator of success: people buy the game, pay to continue playing it, well after the standard shelf life of a game
Now, you may not agree with those points, so for you WoW was not a success. However, that puts you in a very small minority. Why do I say that? Because in 2003, the MMO market was estimated at an MMO dev conference as being 1.2 million players, the sum total of people in the US who would spend money on an MMO on a monthly basis. Well, WoW has 1.9 million US customers, which means that 158% of the known MMO market is playing WoW. Since you're in that market, but not playing WoW, that puts you in the statistically insignificant part of the now 1.9 million people who play MMO's but not WoW.
yeah, guilty as charged. I know i'm an idealist at times, but if no one argues for better then guess what....we don't get any better. WoW is a great game, and i'd say a well polished MMO, but i will never call it the best or greatest MMO (i don't care how many subs Blizz can wave in my face) because it lacks the things that IMO give the genre the greatest potential.
I am so right there with you. I stood on my pulpit in SWG and wept tears of blood at Sony. I have been in 18 alpha/beta's of MMO's (I'm a sick addict, sue me) and in each one I was the whining, screaming person who KNEW it could be better and watched something I loved die horribly.
You say WoW's not the best, but you have none better. The handsomist guy in a room of ugly fellows is still the handsomest, my friend. WoW is the best MMO in history, but I am with you that there is a great deal of room for improvement. The list of things I'd add to WoW is pages and pages long.
I can't give you an example, cause no one has done it yet. How is that an excuse however, to not push these companies to strive towards that kind of goal? Why on earth would we want more McDonalds when we could push for something more meaty?
You're not pushing the companies, you're complaining on a fan forum. Blizzard will not hear nor care about what you're saying over the ring of the cash register. This is like sitting in your living room and yelling at the football team on TV to do something different, and feeling justified in doing it because you might make a difference. The only other people who'll see you here are fanbois like us.
You want to make a difference? Do it yourself. I have 3 MMO's on my shelf that I'd love to make. If I ever secure the capital, I will, but I realized long ago that my yelling was for my own benefit and the best use of my energy was in infiltrating the games and communities, seeing what they did "wrong" (IMHO) and noting how I'd do it "right".
Why should Blizzard be expected to? Because they're in the best position to do so. They are the most successful MMO company to date and yet take no risks, they have made a bucket load of money and can afford to investigate more avenues and yet they still bring out more burgers that look exactly like the old ones and call them new. Perhaps it is unfair to expect too much from Blizzard, companies with far less resources are the ones that should take all the risks right?
Risks? Are you out of your mind? Look at SWG. They took a "risk", and their population HALVED! When you are the most successful is the LAST time you take risks. Coke was #1, they changed their recipe and got TRASHED! When you are #1, you do EXACTLY what you're doing to KEEP you at #1.
Risks are what people on the bottom take, to try to find an edge. It has nothing to do with resources and everything to do with momentum. Believe it or not, at least in my opinion, WoW's success is VERY fragile. All it would take would be one major change, one alienation of a sector of the population (like EQ's making Shadowknights useless) and it would come down like a house of cards.
Every risk they take should be carefully measures, publicly presented and > 95% approved by the players.
Why Change? How bout because people change, your customers change and eventually you have to adapt or perish. It is easy for Blizzard to look at their success and think exactly what you have said, and i believe if anything that has the biggest potential for their downfall. WoW has brought many many gamers into the MMO fold, gamers that haven't a clue what the genre can offer, and right at the moment WoW is not offering all that much. What it does offer is very well done and quite enjoyable, but its also very very small. Will there be a WoW Killer of a game, LOL, doubt it. New Games will be released though, and although they won't have 5-million players, they won't need them to be a success, and they also won't need that many to at least chip away from WoW. I know countless numbers of people who play WoW atm because there isn't anything better, which is true. There will be though, and that is what the problem is.
It's funny how fanbois can say "it doesn't need 5 million players to be a success". Working as I have from the inside, I am well aware about the realities of the MMO business and nothing could be further from the truth. To create an MMO, you need 3 things: a concept, a developer, and a publisher. Before EQ, mom-and-pop shops would push together MMO's (M59, Jumpgate, Shattered Galaxy) and be happy with 25k players. EQ and it's 300k subscribers blew that model out of the water, and in the subsequent 4 years I registered with the forums of no less than 8 MMO's that never made it past the concept stage because the publisher pulled out, considering the project "not capable of EQ numbers".
Here, let me put it in business terms...WoW is not a complex game, it's a cartoon, in an already established genre. Given WoW's about the size of EQ2's world, and the graphics are not as complex, would you say that WoW cost more to make then EQ2? I'm going to assume you'd agree with me that EQ2 probably cost more to make, or at least on par. Let's throw a number out there...let's say 3 million dollars is how much it took to make.
Now, you're a publisher, an investor, in the market for an MMO. You have 2 offerings on the table. One is a really complex, well written and designed idea that fulfills all the needs of the fanbois, and could easily attract 100k customers. The other is a simple design that, while it is not the caviar of games, it will attract a broad market and bring in 5 million customers.
Where would you put your money?
"Oh, it won't happen that way!" It did. That is EXACTLY what EQ did to the MMO market when it came out, and WoW is doing exactly the same thing. Heck, even Asheron's Call 2 died last year due to it being a poor investment.
I'd suggest that Sony blew itself out of the water, and Blizzard waded in. I can see them doing exactly that Mac, which is why i whinge, i don't want Blizz to end up just being another Sony.
I can't argue that point, I'm afraid. Blizzard will never be another Sony, because Blizzard is in the market of getting millions of customers and keeping them, while Sony considers a 25% turnover rate "acceptable". Having worked directly with Sony customer support, I can tell you with personal experience, Sony hates it's customers.
I'm not saying Blizzard is perfect or a saint, they are a monolithic monster who only listens to the masses, but I'd rather that then a cynical developer who hates me.
Actually it's like standing outside of McDonalds and wishing they served a healthy alternative to their burgers, or perhaps wishing that they had more variety of choices in the restaurant. And ya know what, McDonalds did just that. Salads Plus etc. Why did they do it? Shrug, perhaps healthier alternatives like Subway started eating at their profits?
Yes, but how long after they opened did they do it? Decades. Where there people standing outside wishing they had healthier food? Yup, but not enough. When you have billions served, hundreds/thousands/millions are insignificant. And yet, here McDonalds is, still #1.
Why post criticisms? Cause i like WoW, and i'd love to see it get better. As i said, it's a great game, but i'd like to see someone explain why they think its a great MMO when it lacks so much. Here's the thing, some of things that it lacks, CAN BE ADDED. MMOs change, and develop. The problem is priorities, Blizzard's priorities see them adding more of the same plain horrible tasting burgers and giving it shiny marketing. There is potential for so so much more. They have the money, they just don't see the point in spending when they can get people to swallow the same old crap wrapped differently.
Now we're back the handsomest man in a room of ugly guys. In the context of the room (MMO games on the market or in development) the guy (WoW) is the handsomest (best). Could he use some exercise, plastic surgery, a bath and a new wardrobe? Sure, and maybe they'll come, but until a handsomer man walks into that room, any woman in there gets to swoon for the least ugly
oh, i actually did initially intend on buying the expansion, my will to do so has recently been eroded by the latest efforts at community relations by Blizzard. I guess i'm kinda using the space as rant space, so my apologies.
Don't apologize, this is fun I enjoy debating such issues with articulate posters such as yourself
I hope you are surprised, as it is a bleak future for this genre if all we've got is McDonalds, cause then all we'll get is the Burger Kings, etc, etc. Unless you're in Vanguard BETA, i fail to see how you could even know if it is aweful or not, not enough info is known about implementation to know how things are going to work, so i think that's a bit pre-emptive and pointless. Also, as Brad from Sigil pointed out, they are not trying to have 5-million customers, as they don't need that to be a success.
I love people who set their expectations low enough that they're guaranteed to be successful I'm going to enter the tour de france and set my success indicator that I come in last..woot! I won!
I can neither confirm nor deny that I'm in any alpha/beta tests. I can tell you that Vanguard makes EQ2 look pretty, and DDO makes Vanguard look pretty, and I consider EQ2 to be NASTY. Brad makes games that he wants to play...then sells them for a buck and goes onto the next game. That is not someone making games they want to play, that is someone getting their way and making a buck. DDO will be pushed later and later, eventually come out, stall at 150k folks, and WotC will pull the plug. Vanguard will be pushed, come out, trickle, and fade away. Neither of them have the strength to capture or hold the attention of any significant portion of the MMO market, certainly not away from WoW.
Considering you've already pointed out how all the other MMOs didn't have the population of WOW, then it is silly to think that population can answer your points so precisely. EQ and it's ilke had people playing for 4-5 years and are still going, WoW is a year old, i think we'll have to wait and see if your points are actually valid.
True that.
PLEASE NOTE:
AN MMO DOES NOT NEED 5-MILLION SUBS TO BE SUCCESSFUL AND TO BE LONG RUNNING!
Not if it's 3 guys in a garage, running it off of their servers, like the classic MUD's of old. If you want to make a game that you and your buddies play, and that's your definition of success, then enjoy, but that is not an MMO....the first M is MASSIVE. Neverwinter Nights is more up your alley, just fix all the bugs and it's perfect.
A successful MMO is massive, vast, broad, and long lasting.
There are many companies that have the potential, Sigil is one, but the product of their efforts is not even released yet.
2006 will see my friend, it will see. Or, it'll at least be interesting.
I've already seen many of the early versions of 2006 offerings and I'm not impressed, but I definately agree that it will be interesting.
THAT BUD, IS MY GREATES FEAR. Why anyone would think that is a good situation is ultimately beyond me.
I'm right there with you
Now, to share 2 secrets with you....
I was in the betas for CoH and EQ2, wrote the Prima guide for CoH and some of the EQ2 one, when WoW was coming out. I looked at the screenshots and press and considered it a childs toy, cartoony and not worth my time, because I was a SERIOUS MMO player. Maxxed in EQ2 and grew bored, maxxed in CoH and grew bored, and was not playing an MMO at all for awhile there. I was at my girlfriend's house when I saw her son playing some game. I stood over his shoulder and watched enraptured as he played, quested, did PvP, etc. After a bit I asked him what it was and he told me WoW. I was stunned. He gave me his free pass (masterful marketing by Blizz) and his CD's, I installed it at home and started playing...I was hooked. After playing it for a short while, I came to a conclusion, one that still sticks today...Blizzard designed WoW to be fun. I know that sounds obvious, but go with me on this.
I was sitting on a hill in EQ, back in the alpha when there were only 7 zones, and Brad was asking me how I liked it so far. I told him that I seemed to be dying a lot, and he shrugged and said "dying is a part of life in EQ, it's supposed to be hard." Being an old fart even at that time, I nodded sagely and agreed with him. Now, however, I know...he was wrong.
Dying is not fun. Failing is not fun. Losing is not fun. Everything worth having does not necessitate spending hours of trial and error until you succeed. Sometimes easy can be fun too. Even now, I'll be going along playing WoW and spot something that just stands out and shouts that it was designed by the developers to be fun. When you're young, you seek out hard things to be good at, things no one else can do, just so you can say you're the best. As you mature, it becomes less and less important to do hard things for their own sake, and just to enjoy what you're doing. This is the first secret of WoW.
The second secret of WoW? Women. Do you realize that WoW's female population is an order of magnitude higher then any other MMO in history? We're talking double digits of percentages of female players. Why? Because of 2 things: the first secret of WoW (see above), and the pretty factor. WoW is a BEAUTIFUL game. EQ2/DDO/Vanguard is drab, dark, and plastic. They will never draw female players in any significant amounts.
Why is that a big deal? A friend of mine who plays WoW stopped playing for a week or so to play something else, but his wife kept playing WoW because she had no interest in that other game. Within 2 weeks, my friend was back in WoW. Why? Because his wife got into WoW to be with him, she enjoyed the time they spent together, and she wasn't going to another game, especially one she didn't like.
Vanguard will come out, guys will go play, their girlfriends will either stay in WoW or quit playing all together, then resent the time their guys play in another game, without them, and they'll leave Vanguard. Women form relationships in the game, real friendships, that have nothing to do with 40-man raids and grinding faction. Women form a core of customers that will stay with WoW for YEARS, and they bring with them a shackled, captive audience that will play WoW, even if they'd like another game more, just to spend time with their loved ones in a game.
Just my 2 copper, for what they are worth. Again, thanks for the spirited debate
Hope you play a class that has to do more than mash 1-2 buttons repeatedly for hours!
Originally posted by MacAllen Actually I do. There have been a number of smaller asian games, but the only one to break a million was Lineage, and it never made it to 2 million (at least as of 2 years ago) and Lineage II is nowhere near as popular. Lineage + EQ + SWG + UO + EQ2 + CoH, all at their highest, isn't even 3 million players.
Well fine, use stats then, ya lousy bum!
It isn't trying to be all things to all people, it caters to a very specific demographic and, in doing so, does an excellent job.
What specific demographic do you think it targets? Cause they advertised the game to casual players, made the game fun, and then backflipped at endgame and now reward only those with large consistant amounts of time to play. According to a lot of their PR fluff they are trying to cater to all the different playstyles, just not very well.
The problem with your analogy is that 100,000's of those 5 million have played another MMO, so they've tasted food. And, if the other 4 million had "never tasted food", why is it that Sony, NCSoft, and Origin suck so bad that they can't lure starving people in off the street for a bite, but Blizzard can? And keep them? Raph Koster publicly stated, in the first year of SWG, that they were suffering a 25% turnover rate, and he was quoted as saying "that is an acceptable rate of churn." 25% of your people so unhappy that they leave and that's acceptable? No wonder the Sony games suck.
I never said they were starving lol, it's a hypothetical situation where they don't actually need food to live. Why Sony, NCSoft and Origin suck so bad, who knows, I'm not overly concerned why they suck, hehe. Blizzard has always been better at the polish and lure, there is no doubt about that. lol @ Raph, yes No wonder Sony games suck!
Fantastic games don't last 6 months. According to EBWorld, the average shelf life of a game, no matter how good it is, is 4 months. You buy it, you play it out, and within 4 months it's on your shelf and you're on to something else. People have been playing WoW for a year...how many games have you played for a year or more? More importantly, these people PAY, every month, to play this game, well after the 4 month shelf life of a game.
I'd actually say that they do, but not all of them. It depends on the genre of game doesn't it, First Person Shooters are likely gone as soon as a better one comes along, they are subject to the FAD syndrome. There is also the issue of replayability, as many good/great games END! MMOs of course are different, by design they wish to not have that. Non-MMOs can also have a greater shelf life than what you suggest, and a couple come to mind. Guess who made em? .......that's right....Blizzard! Diablo and Warcraft series have continued to be played and sold years after they were released. Blizzard makes great games, ones that are very replayable for a number of factors but one that i think we can agree on.....they're FUN!!! I definately think WoW is fun, i just don't think it's a good MMO. I also don't think that WoW needs to be a good MMO to be fun and successful, as i believe that is part of what makes Blizzard a good games developer.
People who make great games do not always make great MMO's. Origin. Sony. Microsoft. All make great games, all suck at MMO's. Making a great game is easy.
lol, i'd say that they don't always make great games either, but that just depends on what you think makes a game great. Looking at the stinking piles of crap that the industry has pushed on us in the last few years, i tend to not believe you that making a great game is easy, making it look pretty is easy, but a little thing called gameplay seems to be missing from many pictures. Besides, if it was easy, i would think that there would be more great games.
So, what is a great MMO? In the scope of this conversation, I'm using the following definition:1. The devs do not alienate the customers - indicator of success: people stay, population grows, does not shrink2. The game has a sense of community - indicator of success: LOTS of people come, stay, and continue paying to play3. The game is engaging and continues to challenge people - indicator of success: people buy the game, pay to continue playing it, well after the standard shelf life of a gameNow, you may not agree with those points, so for you WoW was not a success. However, that puts you in a very small minority. Why do I say that? Because in 2003, the MMO market was estimated at an MMO dev conference as being 1.2 million players, the sum total of people in the US who would spend money on an MMO on a monthly basis. Well, WoW has 1.9 million US customers, which means that 158% of the known MMO market is playing WoW. Since you're in that market, but not playing WoW, that puts you in the statistically insignificant part of the now 1.9 million people who play MMO's but not WoW.
Ok, key word in your figures is ESTIMATE. Most people in the industry agree that they didn't forsee the success, hell even blizzard didn't. I disagree with the assertion that i am in a very small minority, due to the fact that we lack the data to calculate how many people are unhappy with those 3 points. Blizzard, smartly, hasn't released any information on how many people have quit playing WoW, and they also have not conducted any polls to find out how the playerbase feels about relatively unpopular decisions. We also don't know if population has gone down in certain world areas and up in others, as we only get the total figure now. No US Pop compared to China Pop, etc.
I agree with your 3 points, but you are right that i don't agree that WoW is completely fullfilling them.
1. Blizzard has alienated Oceania customers with lack of support, Non-Raiders have been alienated by direction of content at end-game, many classes have been alienated by lack of communication regarding perceived roles and styles of play. I don't think they have lost a significant number of players yet to this, but it's like a kettle that will soon boil i think. This is actually the reason why i quit playing WoW, i'm an oceania customer who played a druid and a mage. BAD CHOICE. lol.
2. WoW community is known widely to be horrible, with a large playerbase of immature teenagers (B.net kiddies) and general scum and villany. Server communities are better (some of em), but i think that Blizzard's lack of communication is turning the community into a very negative one. I can say i never truly felt that Blizzard was part of the community, rather that they were outside it trying to control it. People coming, staying and playing though is not necessarily about the community as a whole, i'd definately say that it can be about the smaller social groups and friends that you make, but i'd also say that you have to consider that in combination with the fact that Blizzard made a fun great game. People don't stay and play in my opinion because it has fantastic MMO design, rather that it has simple polished fun game design with lots of novelty to keep people amused.
3. I do think that WoW is engaging, but i don't think that it is challenging. Perhaps as challenging as a carrot dangled in front of me. One thing i will say though, that the world design is something special. The environments are far more engaging, even though blocky and cartoony, than many of the screenshots of the more 'realistic' games that are coming out. I think that is something that these newer games need to realise, having trees look like trees is fine, but if the world itself looks stark and uninviting people won't want to be there.
I am so right there with you. I stood on my pulpit in SWG and wept tears of blood at Sony. I have been in 18 alpha/beta's of MMO's (I'm a sick addict, sue me) and in each one I was the whining, screaming person who KNEW it could be better and watched something I loved die horribly. You say WoW's not the best, but you have none better. The handsomist guy in a room of ugly fellows is still the handsomest, my friend. WoW is the best MMO in history, but I am with you that there is a great deal of room for improvement. The list of things I'd add to WoW is pages and pages long.
lol, but does this handsome guy have the personality of a plague carrying rat? I've personally seen the most ugly guy in the room pick up the chicks, cause he didn't sound like a moron when he talked to them. Pretty aint everything!
You're not pushing the companies, you're complaining on a fan forum. Blizzard will not hear nor care about what you're saying over the ring of the cash register. This is like sitting in your living room and yelling at the football team on TV to do something different, and feeling justified in doing it because you might make a difference. The only other people who'll see you here are fanbois like us.
I s'pose you're right there. I'm not just complaining on a fan forum though, this site is about the MMO genre and as such is a community a little seperate from the games themselves. I can't push the companies myself no, but we as a community and more importantly as a customer base have wants, likes, and dislikes. I guess in reality i'm trying to push other players to not roll over and except that every MMO they play is going to be all shine no substance. WoW was actually my first MMO, which may for some make me ignorable, but it introduced me to the genre and now i love it, but i want more than WoW. It's like a fantastic entree, that leaves me looking forward to the main course (which is taking its freaking time to get here).
You want to make a difference? Do it yourself. I have 3 MMO's on my shelf that I'd love to make. If I ever secure the capital, I will, but I realized long ago that my yelling was for my own benefit and the best use of my energy was in infiltrating the games and communities, seeing what they did "wrong" (IMHO) and noting how I'd do it "right".
I'd love to, but it's easier said than done obviously. I have few ideas myself about what might make a fun and interesting MMO, i think we all do. If anything WoW should demonstrate to other MMO makers that you can't be all substance no fun, but i also hope they don't think they should be all fun no substance.
Risks? Are you out of your mind? Look at SWG. They took a "risk", and their population HALVED! When you are the most successful is the LAST time you take risks. Coke was #1, they changed their recipe and got TRASHED! When you are #1, you do EXACTLY what you're doing to KEEP you at #1. Risks are what people on the bottom take, to try to find an edge. It has nothing to do with resources and everything to do with momentum.
lol, my eyes bleed when i look at SWG, please don't make me. Sorry, what i meant was there are small risks and then there are the 'wtf were they thinking' risks. SWG completely redid their game and totally screwed everyone who was loyal to them, that is not so much a risk but fundamentally stupid. Blizzard don't take risks with their priorities, they devalue certain aspects of their game that if improved upon (read - already in game) would make a wonderful difference. Taverns with something to do in them would be a start.
A poster on the WoW forums came up with some fake patch notes some months ago that posed a new world event that sounded simple, fun and excited the population heaps. It was a robot building competition that had players build little goblin machines and face them off against each other in gadgetzan, would have been so much fun and would have given players content that whilst repeatable was still fun. Blizz laughed and said that it was a good idea, and then went ahead and put more events that only ever resulted in more grinding. Why can't Blizzard, one of the most successful game companies with top quality dev talent, produce content that garners the same reaction from the playerbase?
Believe it or not, at least in my opinion, WoW's success is VERY fragile. All it would take would be one major change, one alienation of a sector of the population (like EQ's making Shadowknights useless) and it would come down like a house of cards. Every risk they take should be carefully measures, publicly presented and > 95% approved by the players.
Completely agree dude. I'm suggesting that Blizz is already doing many things that alienate players, and whilst the population figures say otherwise, i think they are getting close to a very dangerous position. I like WoW and don't want to see the house of cards fall, but i also don't want to spend my money on it when everything they push is IMO not fun and a little against the original spirit of the game.
It's funny how fanbois can say "it doesn't need 5 million players to be a success". Working as I have from the inside, I am well aware about the realities of the MMO business and nothing could be further from the truth. To create an MMO, you need 3 things: a concept, a developer, and a publisher. Before EQ, mom-and-pop shops would push together MMO's (M59, Jumpgate, Shattered Galaxy) and be happy with 25k players. EQ and it's 300k subscribers blew that model out of the water, and in the subsequent 4 years I registered with the forums of no less than 8 MMO's that never made it past the concept stage because the publisher pulled out, considering the project "not capable of EQ numbers". Here, let me put it in business terms...WoW is not a complex game, it's a cartoon, in an already established genre. Given WoW's about the size of EQ2's world, and the graphics are not as complex, would you say that WoW cost more to make then EQ2? I'm going to assume you'd agree with me that EQ2 probably cost more to make, or at least on par. Let's throw a number out there...let's say 3 million dollars is how much it took to make. Now, you're a publisher, an investor, in the market for an MMO. You have 2 offerings on the table. One is a really complex, well written and designed idea that fulfills all the needs of the fanbois, and could easily attract 100k customers. The other is a simple design that, while it is not the caviar of games, it will attract a broad market and bring in 5 million customers. Where would you put your money?
I can see your point Mac, but success is only true by how you measure it. I actually read that WoW cost a stupid amount of money to make, i'm not sure on the comparison with EQ2 but I think it is silly to think that it would be easily repeatable, even by blizzard. Now, considering Blizzard and Vivendi expected numbers between 500k to 1mil in the first year, that says to me that the publisher would have been happy with those figures. If the industry thinks that 5mil customers is the benchmark to judge other games, we will be in a very very dire situation. Mainly, because i think that MORE than just MMO/Game design attributes to WoW's success, and whilst it may be possible to copy or mimic some of it, i think it is folly for publishers to think they could make another WoW easily. I guess i'm saying that it is easy said, but difficult to prove, that another game on paper could easily bring in 5-Million customers. Then again, Publishers have been known for stupid decisions so we will have to see. According to Sigil, Microsoft's expectations are similar, perhaps a little lower, than the expectations that blizz had for WoW initially, which is fine. If they get more than that then they are happy, if they get less then not happy, but at least they aint expecting the 5-Mill.
Heck, even Asheron's Call 2 died last year due to it being a poor investment.
Yes, but that doesn't tell us WHY it was a poor investment. Matrix Online is another example of a poor investment, and yet it is based on a very popular franchise. There are many factors that unfortunately we, as members of a forum board, are not all aware of. Which limits us a fair bit to just speculation, but we need to remember that there are mulitple factors and it seems a little silly to me to just pick one and say THAT is why it failed and doesn't have 5-million customers.
I can't argue that point, I'm afraid. Blizzard will never be another Sony, because Blizzard is in the market of getting millions of customers and keeping them, while Sony considers a 25% turnover rate "acceptable". Having worked directly with Sony customer support, I can tell you with personal experience, Sony hates it's customers. I'm not saying Blizzard is perfect or a saint, they are a monolithic monster who only listens to the masses, but I'd rather that then a cynical developer who hates me.
I hope you're right Mac, i like Blizzard but it seems that the studio changed a fair bit after Vivendi bought them, with a lot of very good talent jumping ship.
Yes, but how long after they opened did they do it? Decades. Where there people standing outside wishing they had healthier food? Yup, but not enough. When you have billions served, hundreds/thousands/millions are insignificant. And yet, here McDonalds is, still #1.
Decades yes, but it took a while for someone to offer a decent alternative, which is why in the case of MMOs i hope that such an alternative is offered sooner rather than later. Maccas is still popular but it is obvious just looking at all the changes that they have made over the years, that they do feel threatened by the healthier alternatives. That IMO opinion is a good thing, as it not only gives people who don't like Maccas somewhere else to go, but it also improves Maccas for the better as well. Which is why i hope something similar happens here, as WoW has room to improve i just don't think Blizzard values highly those avenues. They need that alternative to make them see that i think.
Now we're back the handsomest man in a room of ugly guys. In the context of the room (MMO games on the market or in development) the guy (WoW) is the handsomest (best). Could he use some exercise, plastic surgery, a bath and a new wardrobe? Sure, and maybe they'll come, but until a handsomer man walks into that room, any woman in there gets to swoon for the least ugly
hehe, and we also come back to Mr. Stinky personality. If that handsome guy is sitting there wondering why all the chicks are over chatting with buttface, i might tell him that he probably shouldn't treat women in the way that he does. Now changing that in himself is harder to do than cosmetic stuff, but it is still possible.
I enjoy debating such issues with articulate posters such as yourself
Right back at ya.
I love people who set their expectations low enough that they're guaranteed to be successful I'm going to enter the tour de france and set my success indicator that I come in last..woot! I won! I can neither confirm nor deny that I'm in any alpha/beta tests. I can tell you that Vanguard makes EQ2 look pretty, and DDO makes Vanguard look pretty, and I consider EQ2 to be NASTY. Brad makes games that he wants to play...then sells them for a buck and goes onto the next game. That is not someone making games they want to play, that is someone getting their way and making a buck. DDO will be pushed later and later, eventually come out, stall at 150k folks, and WotC will pull the plug. Vanguard will be pushed, come out, trickle, and fade away. Neither of them have the strength to capture or hold the attention of any significant portion of the MMO market, certainly not away from WoW.
It's not about setting your expectations low enough, it's about NOT setting them too high. I'm not a Brad fanboy (never played EQ), i like the fact that he sticks with what he believes in, even if it ends up being flawed. I'm interested in Vanguard because of a number of things, and others make me think i might not like it. You probably know Brad better than I do, but i can say that what they are trying to do it very interesting, but trying does not mean succeeding. I will however, support people willing to try rather than just give in and make another WoW. Sigil may not be able to do it, i hope they can, but ultimately we need a dev to combine the FUN of WoW, with the depth that the Genre can offer. Hasn't been done yet, but i applaud those willing to try to get there.
Not if it's 3 guys in a garage, running it off of their servers, like the classic MUD's of old. If you want to make a game that you and your buddies play, and that's your definition of success, then enjoy, but that is not an MMO....the first M is MASSIVE. Neverwinter Nights is more up your alley, just fix all the bugs and it's perfect. A successful MMO is massive, vast, broad, and long lasting.
Yes, and there have already been successful MMOs that have been massive, vast, broad and long lasting and yet didn't have 5-Million players. I'm just saying that future games can be all that and more, and still don't need the same numbers.
I've already seen many of the early versions of 2006 offerings and I'm not impressed, but I definately agree that it will be interesting.
Key phrase = early versions. I do hope that things improve for you, and i hope this year has something for me also otherwise i'll just play other genres i guess. I actually wish i could still play WoW, but Blizz's priorities is what irks me most there, and i can't see them changing rapidly any time soon.
I was sitting on a hill in EQ, back in the alpha when there were only 7 zones, and Brad was asking me how I liked it so far. I told him that I seemed to be dying a lot, and he shrugged and said "dying is a part of life in EQ, it's supposed to be hard." Being an old fart even at that time, I nodded sagely and agreed with him. Now, however, I know...he was wrong.
I think you'll find that even Brad thinks he was off the mark back then. I think he still thinks that dying should be more painful than say in WoW, but i think he is aiming for something different for Vanguard. No sure though, i'll have to wait and see.
Dying is not fun. Failing is not fun. Losing is not fun. Everything worth having does not necessitate spending hours of trial and error until you succeed. Sometimes easy can be fun too. Even now, I'll be going along playing WoW and spot something that just stands out and shouts that it was designed by the developers to be fun. When you're young, you seek out hard things to be good at, things no one else can do, just so you can say you're the best. As you mature, it becomes less and less important to do hard things for their own sake, and just to enjoy what you're doing. This is the first secret of WoW.
I do agree with you here Mac, and i do think that it does add up to be one of the secrets of WoW. I'd add though that i think it is also a potential downfall. Dying is not fun, Failing is not fun, Losing is not fun, Yes i agree. However, if i don't care if I die, fail, lose because it doesn't matter all that much to me, then the fun of succeeding is diminished also. It is a balance that is needed. I think WoW is too far in the easy direction, and i think Brad might push Vanguard too far in the opposite. Games to me are most enjoyable when you do get stuck and have to figure out a way around it, it is up to good game design to make sure that the solution is not too obscure to make the sticking point make me give up playing. I remember the games i used to play where i'd get stuck, and i'd go to bed thinking about a solution to the problem and then wake in the morning with something that i was dying to try, BAM it worked. GOD THAT FELT GOOD! WoW doesn't give that.
Content is: - zergable for loot (10-man in 5-man dungeon), and designed with perfect group flaw (must have priest to shackle undead or screwed, etc.). WoW teaches people that if they can't do something, it's just cause you don't have the perfect group so quit and come back with the right one. It's not about having the right players, it's about having the right classes. I'd like a game personally that puts more emphasis on the players.
The second secret of WoW? Women. Do you realize that WoW's female population is an order of magnitude higher then any other MMO in history? We're talking double digits of percentages of female players. Why? Because of 2 things: the first secret of WoW (see above), and the pretty factor. WoW is a BEAUTIFUL game. EQ2/DDO/Vanguard is drab, dark, and plastic. They will never draw female players in any significant amounts. Why is that a big deal? A friend of mine who plays WoW stopped playing for a week or so to play something else, but his wife kept playing WoW because she had no interest in that other game. Within 2 weeks, my friend was back in WoW. Why? Because his wife got into WoW to be with him, she enjoyed the time they spent together, and she wasn't going to another game, especially one she didn't like. Vanguard will come out, guys will go play, their girlfriends will either stay in WoW or quit playing all together, then resent the time their guys play in another game, without them, and they'll leave Vanguard. Women form relationships in the game, real friendships, that have nothing to do with 40-man raids and grinding faction. Women form a core of customers that will stay with WoW for YEARS, and they bring with them a shackled, captive audience that will play WoW, even if they'd like another game more, just to spend time with their loved ones in a game.
Holy CRAP what a good point MAC!!! I'd never thought of that. The female component will be very telling for future games, and mainly cause of what you point out. Women, in my limited understanding of them, thrive on the social and novelty aspects of the game, two things that WoW has in abundance. Games that have more realism might appeal to men, but it will be an extreme challenge to make it also appealing to women in the same way that WoW has. I know so many girls that play WoW, that come to think of it wouldn't enjoy many of the games that i'm thinking of playing, for various reasons. I can't believe i haven't considered this before, it makes an incredible amount of sense. Pehaps all MMO design now should feature the (G)irl Factor more than ever, which all up is probably a good thing for our female gaming companions.
The PvP was and still is as meaningless as in any other game.
i fail to agree with this comment. PVP is not meaningless in all mmo games. for example, imo, Dark Age of Camelot has the best and most intense PVP system to date. i can only wish that all mmos would adopt this style of PVP, but wishing is wanting and as end users, we never get what we want.
Hope you play a class that has to do more than mash 1-2 buttons repeatedly for hours!
Warrior and a Hunter, though (unlike EQ), the raids I go on have a great deal more to do then hit 2 buttons
Well fine, use stats then, ya lousy bum!
*grin*
What specific demographic do you think it targets? Cause they advertised the game to casual players, made the game fun, and then backflipped at endgame and now reward only those with large consistant amounts of time to play. According to a lot of their PR fluff they are trying to cater to all the different playstyles, just not very well.
It is a shortcoming of people in one demographic to fail to see the needs of the other. WoW is a HUGE success among the casual MMO players. There are 2 aspects to any MMO that must be addressed: 1. What do you do with the power gamers who bolt to the end game and immediately bitch about no content when the power curve (avg lvl of most players) is still 6 months behind them? 2. What do you do with the casual gamers who are not there to beat the game but to enjoy it?
#1 is easy...you throw them crumbs and ignore them, because they will never be pleased, ever, no matter what you give them. They are there to beat the game and when they've beaten it they will move on. You can spend 90% of your development resources trying to please this 4% of the population and still never make them happy. Let them go, wave good bye to them, and focus on the other 96%.
#2 is where the challenge is, and where WoW excells. The crafts are immersive without being overly complex and tedius (a la SWG/EQ2) and the quests are engaging and complex without being overly linear and monotonous (a la CoH).
You only see raiding because you fall into category #1. While > 50% of all players on my server have 60th lvl toons, < 50% has been into an epic raiding zone. I have several friends who simply have no desire to go, don't enjoy that playing style, and just love playing the game, working on factions, crafting for friends, making money, gathering loot, etc.
In short, just because it doesn't have what you enjoy doesn't mean it's not enjoyable...again, obviously, pointing at 5 million folks paying monthly to be there.
I never said they were starving lol, it's a hypothetical situation where they don't actually need food to live. Why Sony, NCSoft and Origin suck so bad, who knows, I'm not overly concerned why they suck, hehe. Blizzard has always been better at the polish and lure, there is no doubt about that. lol @ Raph, yes No wonder Sony games suck!
*nod*
I'd actually say that they do, but not all of them. It depends on the genre of game doesn't it, First Person Shooters are likely gone as soon as a better one comes along, they are subject to the FAD syndrome. There is also the issue of replayability, as many good/great games END! MMOs of course are different, by design they wish to not have that. Non-MMOs can also have a greater shelf life than what you suggest, and a couple come to mind. Guess who made em? .......that's right....Blizzard! Diablo and Warcraft series have continued to be played and sold years after they were released. Blizzard makes great games, ones that are very replayable for a number of factors but one that i think we can agree on.....they're FUN!!! I definately think WoW is fun, i just don't think it's a good MMO. I also don't think that WoW needs to be a good MMO to be fun and successful, as i believe that is part of what makes Blizzard a good games developer.
There will always be exceptions. I played Civ 3 up until Civ 4 came out, for example. I do disagree with a couple of your points...
You might think that MMO's aren't designed to be short lived, but Sony does that. Sony designs it's MMO's to get a good RoI, then starts working on the next project. They move the older one to the second string team and the good devs move to the "new and shiny". I don't mean to keep using Sony as an example, but they have more experience at MMO's then any other dev out here, even if they are in 2nd place
If WoW were free, I'd agree that it wouldn't need to be a good MMO for people to keep playing it, but Guildwars is free and has < 75k people playing it. If Diablo or Warcraft cost $19/month to keep playing, I guarantee you people would have stopped playing them years ago...they're good, but they're not that good. For an MMO to attract as many people as it has, and keep them, it is good by that very definition. Again, you're trying to use some aristocratic definition of good here, like some indie movie critic saying "yes, I know only 4 people went to see that movie, but I STILL think it was the best movie this year!" The purpose of an MASSIVELY multiplayer online game is to attract lots of people and keep them. The measure of success in that is the amount of people it attracts and keeps, period. Everything else is sour grapes.
"Just because everyone likes it does not make it good". Yes, it does, in a business market. MMO's are a business, and business is about making money. If MMO's were a hobby and money was not involved, the number of people playing would STILL be the measure of success. Let's take the M, M, and O out and just focus on one piece...game. What is a game?
Game - n, An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime
So, a game is an activity to provide amusement. How do you know if you've amused the people you made your game for? They play it. If they play it once and never again, are you a success? No. Twice? No. If they can't put it down? Yes. If they tell their friends and THEY can't put it down? Hell yes.
If I make a game that has 5 million people paying me regularly to play it, and you make a game that has 100,000 people playing it, my game is better than yours, just like if you and I are running a foot race and I cross the finishline before you. You may say "you know what, I'm content with last place", but objectively, you still lost, you've just set your expectations so low they're met by anything. You're happy with that, and we're all proud of you, but objectively is where it matters, because objectively is where venture capitalists look, and only games that get capital go get made. If you don't believe me, go play Twilight War.
lol, i'd say that they don't always make great games either, but that just depends on what you think makes a game great. Looking at the stinking piles of crap that the industry has pushed on us in the last few years, i tend to not believe you that making a great game is easy, making it look pretty is easy, but a little thing called gameplay seems to be missing from many pictures. Besides, if it was easy, i would think that there would be more great games.
Looking pretty doesn't fly any more. It used to, but nowadays, it needs to be beautiful just to get onto the shelves, as publishers are vying for shelf space with merchants, and merchants are only going to stock games that will move.
Ok, key word in your figures is ESTIMATE. Most people in the industry agree that they didn't forsee the success, hell even blizzard didn't. I disagree with the assertion that i am in a very small minority, due to the fact that we lack the data to calculate how many people are unhappy with those 3 points. Blizzard, smartly, hasn't released any information on how many people have quit playing WoW, and they also have not conducted any polls to find out how the playerbase feels about relatively unpopular decisions. We also don't know if population has gone down in certain world areas and up in others, as we only get the total figure now. No US Pop compared to China Pop, etc.
Of course it's an estimate, no way to know exactly who will play what, and you're absolutely right that no one, including blizzard (and me for that matter) could have predicted in their wildest dreams WoW's success. However, we may not know who's unhappy with those 3 points, but we know who is happy with them...5 million people. Why do I say that? Because only a true idiot pays $15/month to do something they don't enjoy. People flake out and bail MMO's for the strangest, slighest things, so 5 million people staying in must mean they enjoy it.
I agree with your 3 points, but you are right that i don't agree that WoW is completely fullfilling them.
No game does. No game can. But WoW is doing it more then anyone has.
1. Blizzard has alienated Oceania customers with lack of support, Non-Raiders have been alienated by direction of content at end-game, many classes have been alienated by lack of communication regarding perceived roles and styles of play. I don't think they have lost a significant number of players yet to this, but it's like a kettle that will soon boil i think. This is actually the reason why i quit playing WoW, i'm an oceania customer who played a druid and a mage. BAD CHOICE. lol.
Oceania customers are a small percentage of the global customer base, and they're issues are being addressed, just not quickly. See above, Blizzard could not have predicted the success, especially globally, so resources HAD to be strained in trying to meet the demand.
My daughter is a non-raider and loves the game, plays it all the time. No clue what you mean about roles and styles of play.
Not only is that kettle not about to boil, WoW is about to grow in size again and will very likely be 7 million customers by the end of 2006. The new AQ events have redefined how MMO's create events, it's bloody amazing.
2. WoW community is known widely to be horrible, with a large playerbase of immature teenagers (B.net kiddies) and general scum and villany. Server communities are better (some of em), but i think that Blizzard's lack of communication is turning the community into a very negative one. I can say i never truly felt that Blizzard was part of the community, rather that they were outside it trying to control it. People coming, staying and playing though is not necessarily about the community as a whole, i'd definately say that it can be about the smaller social groups and friends that you make, but i'd also say that you have to consider that in combination with the fact that Blizzard made a fun great game. People don't stay and play in my opinion because it has fantastic MMO design, rather that it has simple polished fun game design with lots of novelty to keep people amused.
Nonsense. The MMO community as a whole is known widely to be horrible, with a large playerbase of immature teenagers and general scum and villany. I have done 25 MMO's worth of forums, trust me, WoW is no different, more or less. More importantly, what you call the WoW community doesn't reflect the actual WoW community, because most people don't ever hit the forums. Inside the game is where the communities are, massive guilds of people who are working together to help each other, on the same server and on other servers.
Just as with any other MMO, people will not play where they do not feel comfortable, especially if they have to pay to do it. They'll by the game, sample the content, feel bad, and leave, and that is not happening in WoW. Not only that, but as we mentioned above, WoW is making NEW customers, people who'd never played an MMO before, many of them women, and none of them thick skinned enough to be able to take the normal jerk MMO community can dish out. My daughter hated EQ, SWG, and CoH for those reasons, yet has found a home in WoW, with tons of friends.
3. I do think that WoW is engaging, but i don't think that it is challenging. Perhaps as challenging as a carrot dangled in front of me. One thing i will say though, that the world design is something special. The environments are far more engaging, even though blocky and cartoony, than many of the screenshots of the more 'realistic' games that are coming out. I think that is something that these newer games need to realise, having trees look like trees is fine, but if the world itself looks stark and uninviting people won't want to be there.
Maybe because not everyone needs to be challenged every moment...again, because you are in group #1 and needed to be gone anyway. My daughter doesn't need it to be hard. My girlfriend doesn't need it to be difficult and complex. What you want is not necessarily what everyone wants. WoW offers what 5 million people want *shrug*
lol, but does this handsome guy have the personality of a plague carrying rat? I've personally seen the most ugly guy in the room pick up the chicks, cause he didn't sound like a moron when he talked to them. Pretty aint everything!
It helps, though Throw one handsome idiot in the room and the girls will flock to him and away from the charming ugly guy.
I s'pose you're right there. I'm not just complaining on a fan forum though, this site is about the MMO genre and as such is a community a little seperate from the games themselves. I can't push the companies myself no, but we as a community and more importantly as a customer base have wants, likes, and dislikes. I guess in reality i'm trying to push other players to not roll over and except that every MMO they play is going to be all shine no substance. WoW was actually my first MMO, which may for some make me ignorable, but it introduced me to the genre and now i love it, but i want more than WoW. It's like a fantastic entree, that leaves me looking forward to the main course (which is taking its freaking time to get here).
True dat, which is why I'm jumping in and debating with you The problem is, of those 5 million people playing WoW, likely 100,000 of them read this forum and forums like it. Know what that means? MMO devs would much rather hear the opinions of 4.9 million people then a vocal 100k who want perfection.
I'd love to, but it's easier said than done obviously. I have few ideas myself about what might make a fun and interesting MMO, i think we all do. If anything WoW should demonstrate to other MMO makers that you can't be all substance no fun, but i also hope they don't think they should be all fun no substance.
True dat. I know for a fact the games I want t make won't pull in 5 million folks, but they're games I'd want to play, and that's a start
If you want to truly understand the MMO industry, you have but to look at the movie industry. 1,000's of indie scripts die in discussions with producers and publishers every day, because the industry wants blockbusters. Making $1 million a movie means you can continue making $1 milllion a movie forever. Making $100 million a movie means you can make fewer movies and eventually maybe get around to that artsy fartsy project you've always wanted to do.
It's all about the Benjamins, baby.
lol, my eyes bleed when i look at SWG, please don't make me. Sorry, what i meant was there are small risks and then there are the 'wtf were they thinking' risks. SWG completely redid their game and totally screwed everyone who was loyal to them, that is not so much a risk but fundamentally stupid. Blizzard don't take risks with their priorities, they devalue certain aspects of their game that if improved upon (read - already in game) would make a wonderful difference. Taverns with something to do in them would be a start.
Again, I have a huge list of things I'd love to see added, many of which would appeal to folks who already love the game. EQ2's housing, for example, was one of the few things I felt they did right and would fit PERFECTLY into WoW. My daughter would LOVE a lil aptmt in a tree in Teldrassil! Little stuff that would enrich so much. They'll get around to them.
A poster on the WoW forums came up with some fake patch notes some months ago that posed a new world event that sounded simple, fun and excited the population heaps. It was a robot building competition that had players build little goblin machines and face them off against each other in gadgetzan, would have been so much fun and would have given players content that whilst repeatable was still fun. Blizz laughed and said that it was a good idea, and then went ahead and put more events that only ever resulted in more grinding. Why can't Blizzard, one of the most successful game companies with top quality dev talent, produce content that garners the same reaction from the playerbase?
Honestly? I think it's because they have a HUGE story to tell, and that is one of the most fundamental reasons WoW is the success it is, IMHO.
When people first log into EQ and make a dark elf, they call it a Drow. Why? Because that's what dark elves are. What's a Teir'dal? No clue and don't care. Who the heck is Innoruuk? No clue, I worship Lloth. Why? Because that's what dark elves do. EQ generated a massive world history (I even helped with some of the fictional content) and 1% of it trickled down to the players. As a Guide, every day I'd hear players baffled as to why things were happen, but eventually not caring because no one had the answers. They created their own mythology but the players were not immersed into it...in fact, they were barely even exposed to it.
In WoW, there's this Orc hunter NPC with his bear (Misha), both like 60 elites, that walk from Desolace to Feralas, along the road. My son and I were running along at around 40th lvl when he saw him. He immediately ran up to him and got eaten (we were Alliance, duh), but the entire time he was shouting about how cool it was to meet the guy, because he KNEW him! He knew all about him and was rattling off history, accomplishments, personality, heck he knew what the bear liked to eat!
The Blood Elves are coming with this exansion and we KNOW them. Heck, the area to where they will be has been in the game since day 1, a blocked off valley, and we knew it was there and why it was blocked off. In EQ, they "add a zone" and suddenly it's there. Where was it before? Why wasn't it there? This wall didn't look like this before. It wasn't there, then it was, and we don't care because we never knew anything about anything anyway.
There are 45 different such spots in WoW, and we (the players) know the history behind each one, know what's behind them, and are pretty sure we'll eventually get into them. We know why they're not open now, what's going on behind them, and what it will mean to the world when they're opened. We are about to open the gates of An'Qiraj, as a concerted, server-wide effort. Every guild on the server is mobilized to this effort, horde and alliance, to launch the assault against this threat. Yes, it's a grind, but it's a grind the likes of which I've never seen before in any MMO, anywhere.
There's this huge story to tell, so much content to get into the game, and so many people to make sure it works for, that the little tweaks become less important. Again, just my theory.
Completely agree dude. I'm suggesting that Blizz is already doing many things that alienate players, and whilst the population figures say otherwise, i think they are getting close to a very dangerous position. I like WoW and don't want to see the house of cards fall, but i also don't want to spend my money on it when everything they push is IMO not fun and a little against the original spirit of the game.
Alienated, yet stay. EQ nerfs monks, and loses 15% of their population, instantly, that never come back. WoW redefines the entire hunter tree and opens 5 more servers for the new people flooding in. Exactly how "alienated" are these people? Again, you can't use the forum monkeys as examples because they represent < 1% of the population of the game and ALWAYS are bitching about something.
I can see your point Mac, but success is only true by how you measure it. I actually read that WoW cost a stupid amount of money to make, i'm not sure on the comparison with EQ2 but I think it is silly to think that it would be easily repeatable, even by blizzard. Now, considering Blizzard and Vivendi expected numbers between 500k to 1mil in the first year, that says to me that the publisher would have been happy with those figures. If the industry thinks that 5mil customers is the benchmark to judge other games, we will be in a very very dire situation. Mainly, because i think that MORE than just MMO/Game design attributes to WoW's success, and whilst it may be possible to copy or mimic some of it, i think it is folly for publishers to think they could make another WoW easily. I guess i'm saying that it is easy said, but difficult to prove, that another game on paper could easily bring in 5-Million customers. Then again, Publishers have been known for stupid decisions so we will have to see. According to Sigil, Microsoft's expectations are similar, perhaps a little lower, than the expectations that blizz had for WoW initially, which is fine. If they get more than that then they are happy, if they get less then not happy, but at least they aint expecting the 5-Mill.
Blizz and Viv thought 500k would be successful because that was just over the highest ever done. Now that 5 million is the highest ever done, that becomes the mark. That's been true of every business venture since the invention of money. I go into business and sell to 10 people, I'm a success because no one has ever done that. You show up and sell to 100...heck, I suck now. I start a business that sells to 20, I still suck. Why? Because obviously it's POSSIBLE to sell to 100, but I just can't make it.
My favorite example for this is runners. Go back to the Olympic records over the last 150 years and look at how fast the mile has been run. A 7 minute mile was amazing, omg, he's so fast. Remember the 6 minute mile? OMG, he's uber fast. These day's it's being run in what, 4 minutes? So, is a 7 minute mile still fast?
Again, if you enter a race and say "5th place is fine with me" then you're successful in your own terms, but not in the objective ones. "I won my little race". Congratulations from the rest of the pack, who were in front of you
Why do I seem to be so focused on "winning"? Because MMO's that aren't "winning" suck. MMO's that hit their flatline static point, where they are no longer growing and are only moderately profitable, do not get the full energy of the development team. The moment an MMO hits this point, devs start leaving to more glamorous projects, and producers start looking ahead to new ways to make the company money. As long as the game is shiny, as long as the amount of customers coming in is > then the amount of the one's leaving, the devs and producers will pour resources into the cash cow to keep it rolling, and that means the game gets more and more fun to play.
Yes, but that doesn't tell us WHY it was a poor investment. Matrix Online is another example of a poor investment, and yet it is based on a very popular franchise. There are many factors that unfortunately we, as members of a forum board, are not all aware of. Which limits us a fair bit to just speculation, but we need to remember that there are mulitple factors and it seems a little silly to me to just pick one and say THAT is why it failed and doesn't have 5-million customers.
OMG, I beta'd that monstrousity and was part of the group writing the strat guide...day 1 of the beta I wanted to claw my eyes out. That was the worst game I had ever experienced, ever, and it never got better. That was a case of a great concept that was completely butchered by clueless devs. The original Middle Earth Online (not this current one, and not the 2 most recent failures, but the one before that) was another example of a game that died on the drawing board.
Star Trek Online is yet another. Here is an amazing franchise that is being BUTCHERED on the design board, and every day, every design decision pushes it closer and closer to disaster. "We decided to use 2D space combat because they never really used 3D space combat in the series." *whimper*
I hope you're right Mac, i like Blizzard but it seems that the studio changed a fair bit after Vivendi bought them, with a lot of very good talent jumping ship.
Only time will tell.
Decades yes, but it took a while for someone to offer a decent alternative, which is why in the case of MMOs i hope that such an alternative is offered sooner rather than later. Maccas is still popular but it is obvious just looking at all the changes that they have made over the years, that they do feel threatened by the healthier alternatives. That IMO opinion is a good thing, as it not only gives people who don't like Maccas somewhere else to go, but it also improves Maccas for the better as well. Which is why i hope something similar happens here, as WoW has room to improve i just don't think Blizzard values highly those avenues. They need that alternative to make them see that i think.
You say they feel threatened, I say they see a larger market to capture, potential customers who they weren't serving. They didn't change what they had (Bic Mac is still a Big Mac), they just added more. They weren't going to lose people if they didn't do it, they just weren't getting all the money they could.
hehe, and we also come back to Mr. Stinky personality. If that handsome guy is sitting there wondering why all the chicks are over chatting with buttface, i might tell him that he probably shouldn't treat women in the way that he does. Now changing that in himself is harder to do than cosmetic stuff, but it is still possible.
You're either very single, or very young That, or the girls we're talking about are much much older. In a room of teen/young twenties, they're all around the pretty guy, talking to each other, not him, so they don't notice his personality anyway
Right back at ya.
Mutual Admiration 4tw!
It's not about setting your expectations low enough, it's about NOT setting them too high. I'm not a Brad fanboy (never played EQ), i like the fact that he sticks with what he believes in, even if it ends up being flawed. I'm interested in Vanguard because of a number of things, and others make me think i might not like it. You probably know Brad better than I do, but i can say that what they are trying to do it very interesting, but trying does not mean succeeding. I will however, support people willing to try rather than just give in and make another WoW. Sigil may not be able to do it, i hope they can, but ultimately we need a dev to combine the FUN of WoW, with the depth that the Genre can offer. Hasn't been done yet, but i applaud those willing to try to get there.
He doesn't stick to what he believes in. He does "just enough", then hands it off, takes his check and hits the door. He gets what he needs and moves on. Vanguard will come out, do "adequately", and he'll hand production to someone else and start on another game, "learning from his mistakes". I don't know Brad well at all, especially any more. However, I was there to read his press for EQ, and what I see from Sigil is more of the same. "We're here to revolutionize the MMO genre...and this time, we mean it!" Vanguard looks like EQ2, only ugly. My daughter looked at it and was very very sad.
The only type of expectation that is "too high" is one that is unachievable. If I say I'm going to create an MMO that will pull in 10 million customers in 2 years, that's too high, because it's never been done. As for "fun", Brad's version of fun is in EQ. Death = lost exps, lost work, and punishment. Success can only be gained by long long hours of grinding at the impossible, and only achieved by throwing enough stuff at it. The concept of 100-person raids is right up their alley. That's one of the reasons I love the cap on WoW's raids...if you can't do it with 40 people, then don't try, because you can't bring more.
Yes, and there have already been successful MMOs that have been massive, vast, broad and long lasting and yet didn't have 5-Million players. I'm just saying that future games can be all that and more, and still don't need the same numbers.
This goes back to the 7 minute mile They were successful then, but would they be considered so now? When MacDonalds opened, it was "100's served!" Can a fast food restaurant open now and say that that is a measure of success?
Key phrase = early versions. I do hope that things improve for you, and i hope this year has something for me also otherwise i'll just play other genres i guess. I actually wish i could still play WoW, but Blizz's priorities is what irks me most there, and i can't see them changing rapidly any time soon.
When you've been kicking around as long as I have, you learn to see through the alpha/beta haze and into the design decisions. Noobs will see graphics glitches and complain, but I make a character that can not complete an objective, contact a dev and they say "oh, well, there are always going to be ridiculous combinations that are dead ends, just delete and restart." I'm sorry, but a dev telling me that it's acceptable for someone to create a toon and invest hours into it, then find out that it is not physically possible to complete an objective others are doing easily, then be told to delete the hours spend and start over....I did half of that...deleted the toon and game, and went on my way.
I think you'll find that even Brad thinks he was off the mark back then. I think he still thinks that dying should be more painful than say in WoW, but i think he is aiming for something different for Vanguard. No sure though, i'll have to wait and see.
Not from what I've seen of Vanguard. Diku is still at the core. Death = You were stupid and a failure and should be punished. I actually think WoW's death system is on of the best out there, as it is the least interruptive and the most flexible.
I do agree with you here Mac, and i do think that it does add up to be one of the secrets of WoW. I'd add though that i think it is also a potential downfall. Dying is not fun, Failing is not fun, Losing is not fun, Yes i agree. However, if i don't care if I die, fail, lose because it doesn't matter all that much to me, then the fun of succeeding is diminished also. It is a balance that is needed. I think WoW is too far in the easy direction, and i think Brad might push Vanguard too far in the opposite. Games to me are most enjoyable when you do get stuck and have to figure out a way around it, it is up to good game design to make sure that the solution is not too obscure to make the sticking point make me give up playing. I remember the games i used to play where i'd get stuck, and i'd go to bed thinking about a solution to the problem and then wake in the morning with something that i was dying to try, BAM it worked. GOD THAT FELT GOOD! WoW doesn't give that.
The biggest problem about what you're asking for is that it is 100% subjective. My daughter wants to succeed, but doesn't want to be punished if she fails. For many people the pleasure of success is not helped by the punitiveness of failure. If you look at Extreme sports nuts, the cost of failure is death or major injury, so success tastes that much sweeter. I'm not like that. I enjoy success in it's own right, and don't need to have the threat of major punishment upon failure to make it enjoyable.
Everyone likes different things, so WoW chose a vanilla path down the center. Success is fun and rewarding, failure is inconvenient, please try again. One has but to point to that lovely 5 million number to see where the "majority" likes it
Content is: - zergable for loot (10-man in 5-man dungeon), and designed with perfect group flaw (must have priest to shackle undead or screwed, etc.). WoW teaches people that if they can't do something, it's just cause you don't have the perfect group so quit and come back with the right one. It's not about having the right players, it's about having the right classes. I'd like a game personally that puts more emphasis on the players.
Most of the zerging has been fixed, especially for quests. Most quests you can't do as a raid, you can't hack/cheat around them, and zones like DM simply don't let > 5 folks in. I'd agree with you about WoW teaching you to change and come back, but there is no perfect group. I have 3 manned LBRS to the bottom, and been in all hunter UBRS raids. WoW does not have optimum configurations, of toons or parties. It has options, and the better geared you are, the better you play your class, the more options you have.
Holy CRAP what a good point MAC!!! I'd never thought of that. The female component will be very telling for future games, and mainly cause of what you point out. Women, in my limited understanding of them, thrive on the social and novelty aspects of the game, two things that WoW has in abundance. Games that have more realism might appeal to men, but it will be an extreme challenge to make it also appealing to women in the same way that WoW has. I know so many girls that play WoW, that come to think of it wouldn't enjoy many of the games that i'm thinking of playing, for various reasons. I can't believe i haven't considered this before, it makes an incredible amount of sense. Pehaps all MMO design now should feature the (G)irl Factor more than ever, which all up is probably a good thing for our female gaming companions.
Bingo. I live in utter fascination every day of my female playmates in games, talking with them and finding out what they enjoy, and realizing it is rarely what I enjoy, but I enjoy being with them, so there I am This is a new thing for us, a very new thing, and a truly an evolution of the genre. As more Grrls come to play, they will shape the market.
Bottom line, if you found a girl (or your wife, or whathaveyou) that played MMO's, but wanted to play WoW, wouldn't you play WoW just to play with her? And if you didn't, and she was forced to play alone, there are a million guys just like me that would seduce her away from you in game while you were huddled over your terminal, playing your challenging game.
To quote Larry Miller..."While you're in the gym working out, I'm at a bar with your girlfriend. I may not be big, but I'm....there."
i fail to agree with this comment. PVP is not meaningless in all mmo games. for example, imo, Dark Age of Camelot has the best and most intense PVP system to date. i can only wish that all mmos would adopt this style of PVP, but wishing is wanting and as end users, we never get what we want.
WoW has 6x more people on dedicated servers playing PvP then DaoC had playing the entire game, at it's peak. I question your use of the word "best" in this context, as obviously more people prefer WoW's over DaoC's.
I'll start off Mac by saying that just because blizz can wave 5-million in our face does not mean that everyone of them is happy.
Why would someone play WoW if they are unhappy with the game?
1. Social Concerns - friends,guild and as you pointed out - girlfriend/spouse. 2. Likes playing MMOs but no other one interests atm. 3. Addicted to the grind - these games are very addictive and it can be hard to kick (it was for me). 4. Plus many more possible reasons.
We are all aware of the figures, i just don't think you can use them so much to justify the actions and decisions of Blizzard. Perhaps their decisions, unlike Sony's haven't yet been bad enough to brake the camels back in regards to these points. They did for me, so i quit. I know many friends that are close, they still play and PAY for the game even though they hate much about it. There are things they still like, so they hold onto those for dear life trying to justify their playtime. Also, Blizzard designed a better GAME than Sony, so perhaps it is easier to continue paying for something you don't like things about, as long as there is something there still to amuse you. 'Oh look, i got a panda pet, woot!!' It's smart, and i think blizzard's GAME design is very good for that.
Originally posted by MacAllen It is a shortcoming of people in one demographic to fail to see the needs of the other. WoW is a HUGE success among the casual MMO players. There are 2 aspects to any MMO that must be addressed:1. What do you do with the power gamers who bolt to the end game and immediately bitch about no content when the power curve (avg lvl of most players) is still 6 months behind them?2. What do you do with the casual gamers who are not there to beat the game but to enjoy it? #1 is easy...you throw them crumbs and ignore them, because they will never be pleased, ever, no matter what you give them. They are there to beat the game and when they've beaten it they will move on. You can spend 90% of your development resources trying to please this 4% of the population and still never make them happy. Let them go, wave good bye to them, and focus on the other 96%. #2 is where the challenge is, and where WoW excells. The crafts are immersive without being overly complex and tedius (a la SWG/EQ2) and the quests are engaging and complex without being overly linear and monotonous (a la CoH).
Yes it can be a shortcoming. I am a casual player, and have been since forever and i enjoyed WoW immensely. As we agree, FUN is subjective. The crafts are not immersive IMO, and i know that they aren't to a lot of other people (i realise that others might find it otherwise). How is sitting watching a bar go zip zip zip immersive? The best items you can make are all locked up in Raid instances, and if you are casual (don't have time for raids) or simply just don't like them and don't want to be apart of the UBER RAID GUILD, then you have little to make that is worth a dime. Quests i'll agree a great, and i loved them, but they died at end-game as they are now pretty much useless. I think our definition of linear and monotonous differs, hehe. But hey man, that's kewl.
You only see raiding because you fall into category #1. While > 50% of all players on my server have 60th lvl toons, < 50% has been into an epic raiding zone. I have several friends who simply have no desire to go, don't enjoy that playing style, and just love playing the game, working on factions, crafting for friends, making money, gathering loot, etc.
Actually my toon is part of raiding guild that i helped create, i gathered together 3 aussie guilds to form a larger guild in order to take part in the end-game content. We've been pretty successful in ZG and have taken down Luci on the second attempt with less than 40, i'm so proud of em. I just hate large person raiding, i don't mind the smaller ones like UBRS and at max ZG, but not MC, BWL or AQ40. Did I put together the guild so that i could be happy? NO, so that i'd have something to bloody DO!
You're friends Mac are obviously easily amused, working on factions (grinding), crafting for friends (dude can you make me blah i have mats? sure, trade+click done - fun stuff), making money (grinding), gathering loot (grinding instances that give far inferior loot meaning that they better not wish to PVP at all, otherwise they'll be screwed and what do they do when they have all the blues?).
Grinding = Monotonous and Repetitive. Now, i do understand that some people actually enjoy that (which is kewl, more power to them), but I believe that there is a point where people who tolerate it will get fed up. I'm suggesting that if blizzard doesn't so something soon, then it will BE soon. All it will take will be a decent alternative to make their bubble go bust, of course we may not actually get that alternative which will be good for Blizz.
There will always be exceptions. I played Civ 3 up until Civ 4 came out, for example. I do disagree with a couple of your points... You might think that MMO's aren't designed to be short lived, but Sony does that. Sony designs it's MMO's to get a good RoI, then starts working on the next project. They move the older one to the second string team and the good devs move to the "new and shiny". I don't mean to keep using Sony as an example, but they have more experience at MMO's then any other dev out here, even if they are in 2nd place
Why on earth do you keep referring to Sony? We both agree they SUCK and i never said you COULDN'T design an MMO to be short lived. They provide us with an example of what NOT to do, we shouldn't let that define the genre for us. MMORPG's generally need to keep people playing in order to be successful, how they do this is not set in stone as the reasons why someone would play a game for years and years vary greatly. I am suggesting here that in the case of WoW, it is my opinion that if we see people playing for years and years, it won't necessarily be because they admire the MMO design, it will be because of good GAME design. i know i sound pedantic but i'm making the seperation because i think most of what makes WoW good does not have anything to do with the MMO genre, but rather the talent and skills that Blizzard has in making games in general. What is there of MMO genre is well done and polished well, but I think there are other attributing factors.
If WoW were free, I'd agree that it wouldn't need to be a good MMO for people to keep playing it, but Guildwars is free and has < 75k people playing it.
Guild Wars is a poor example, as it is not even considered by many to be a MMO. The makers even labelled it differently as a CORPG - Co-operative Online Role Playing Game. It is also designed to be PVP centric game, catering to subset rather than MMO whole.
If Diablo or Warcraft cost $19/month to keep playing, I guarantee you people would have stopped playing them years ago...they're good, but they're not that good.
Yes, but we weren't talking about that, we talking about the shelf life of games. MMOs are different, they place importance on progression. Progression of character, world and content. Those games are good, but they are about competition, and as such don't fall into the same sphere. Also, people pay MMOs and expect (wrong or rightly) to actually get something for their money, in the example of Diablo and Warcraft people generally wouldn't wish to pay money if they did not receive anything in return. Poor example.
The purpose of an MASSIVELY multiplayer online game is to attract lots of people and keep them. The measure of success in that is the amount of people it attracts and keeps, period. Everything else is sour grapes.
Sure, but HOW does it attract them. I've seen crap films do well because of the stars in them, the marketing around it, history before it if it is a franchise, etc. 5-Million people playing a game, makes it a successful game. WoW happens to be a MMO game, grats to them! I still don't think that it is very good MMO game, considering what potential the genre has. In fact, WoW's success is in part what i don't like about the game, it robs us of any potentional for dynamic epic world content.
"Just because everyone likes it does not make it good". Yes, it does, in a business market. MMO's are a business, and business is about making money. If MMO's were a hobby and money was not involved, the number of people playing would STILL be the measure of success. Let's take the M, M, and O out and just focus on one piece...game. What is a game? Game - n, An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime So, a game is an activity to provide amusement. How do you know if you've amused the people you made your game for? They play it. If they play it once and never again, are you a success? No. Twice? No. If they can't put it down? Yes. If they tell their friends and THEY can't put it down? Hell yes. If I make a game that has 5 million people paying me regularly to play it, and you make a game that has 100,000 people playing it, my game is better than yours, just like if you and I are running a foot race and I cross the finishline before you. You may say "you know what, I'm content with last place", but objectively, you still lost, you've just set your expectations so low they're met by anything. You're happy with that, and we're all proud of you, but objectively is where it matters, because objectively is where venture capitalists look, and only games that get capital go get made. If you don't believe me, go play Twilight War.
A foot race is not the same as a business making a product and attempting to sell it. Do shareholders get antsy when a company that made large profits tells them that they didn't make AS MUCH profit as some other company? NO, they go 'WOOT - PROFITS!!!' It only rings true if you are looking at market share, but as has been proven by WoW, it is difficult to even estimate the size of the market.
Because only a true idiot pays $15/month to do something they don't enjoy. People flake out and bail MMO's for the strangest, slighest things, so 5 million people staying in must mean they enjoy it.
WoW is different to this i think MAC. What you say maybe true for the 100,000 old timers who know the game industry, but you just effectively called most of my friends idiots. SHAME ON YOU!!! lol WoW's success comes from not getting all the people who have played MMO's their whole life, but the people like me who never even tried it before. Was it like a new drug to me, oh my yes. Was it addictive as hell, definately. Did i flake out and bail for strangest slightest things, NOPE! I played the game for almost a year, longer than any game i've ever played previously. I just go righteous over the oceania thing, and i played a class that the devs didn't seem to know what to do with, so i just got frustrated. It also took so much of my life, my real life suffered, so I made a decision to help my mental health and quit the game. I'm a reformed addict. lol
Oceania customers are a small percentage of the global customer base, and they're issues are being addressed, just not quickly. See above, Blizzard could not have predicted the success, especially globally, so resources HAD to be strained in trying to meet the demand. My daughter is a non-raider and loves the game, plays it all the time. No clue what you mean about roles and styles of play.
I won't argue about oceania customers, they are not as small as what people assume. Blizzard is not so much addressing but throwing a bone to try to silence them, and it is mildly insulting. Is your daughter level 60? Does she want more from a game then having a Panda pet?
Classes! Talk to Palidans. Talk to Druids. Talk to Water Vendors (i mean mages).
The new AQ events have redefined how MMO's create events, it's bloody amazing.
Yep, needing stupid amounts of bandages and other such materials is certainly amazing. It is the biggest grind any MMO has ever seen, with the hope that something interesting will happen at the end of it.
My daughter hated EQ, SWG, and CoH for those reasons, yet has found a home in WoW, with tons of friends.
Never said that you couldn't make friends, and most people in game a quite nice. Outside of the game is different. Now you can easily just point out a conveniant percentage of people use the forum, but that is the ONLY way people can talk to blizzard. It is also the only way that Blizzard talks to the community. If you judge people to be happy with their class, game, etc. Just cause they don't want to have anything to do with the official forum, then that is a poor idea indeed. Those forums are horrible, and have been made worse and worse by the actions of blizzard. I could fully understand your daugthter wanting nothing to do with the forums, any sane person would want to think twice before going on there. I love the convo we are having, even if we don't agree on things, we are still polite to each other, that is a distant dream on their forums. How is blizzard in touch with it's playerbase, if all it has to go by is the official forums and the 'I Quit' page in account management?
Maybe because not everyone needs to be challenged every moment...again, because you are in group #1 and needed to be gone anyway. My daughter doesn't need it to be hard. My girlfriend doesn't need it to be difficult and complex. What you want is not necessarily what everyone wants. WoW offers what 5 million people want *shrug*
nod, understood. I understand that people want different things. I'm not talking about hard, i'm not talking about difficult and complex, they are the other extreme. I'm going to be philosophical here, but our society today wants everything easy. Jobs lie unfilled because people think they're too good for it, and sit unemployed. If something goes wrong, it's someone else's fault. Why do you want your daughter fed 'if it's too hard, quit and play somewhere else? When does hard = any challenge? Mac, i'm not an EQ fanboy. I like WoW, but i also like games that provide SOME challenge. Now you might think that WoW is challenging, in which we will just agree to disagree. It doesn't have to be hard, complex or difficult for me, but i would like it to encourge me to THINK! Games are losing an aspect of them that initially i think was eductional, they required you to THINK, SOLVE challenges. They tought various methods of thinking, and encouraged you to think outside the box. If you want games to lose that so that your daughter can enjoy her panda pet, then you are losing more than you are gaining my friend. At least in my humble opinion.
Throw one handsome idiot in the room and the girls will flock to him and away from the charming ugly guy.
True dat. If the girls are also idiots then they will stay, if they have half a brain they'll realise that it's more fulfilling to talk to the wall that the pretty idiot.
The problem is, of those 5 million people playing WoW, likely 100,000 of them read this forum and forums like it. Know what that means? MMO devs would much rather hear the opinions of 4.9 million people then a vocal 100k who want perfection.
and yet, blizzard is doing nothing to hear the opinion of the 4.9 million. As they don't use the forums. So....doesn't that sound a little dangerous and misguided for them then?
Making $1 million a movie means you can continue making $1 milllion a movie forever. Making $100 million a movie means you can make fewer movies and eventually maybe get around to that artsy fartsy project you've always wanted to do.
Agreed, which is why there are studios that do that. Big studios yes, they make the summer blockbuster. There quite a few successful indie studios that continue to produce smaller films and make less, but that is what they set out to do and as such are successful. Blizzard is the Big Studio, they only care about the Blockbuster. I just think that we as a community should support the indie guys as well, as they DO NOT need the blockbuster, as they are not even trying to make one!
They'll get around to them.
Easily said Mac, hard to prove. I don't think they will, as they have stated that such things they don't value highly. Unless priorities change, then no they won't.
Honestly? I think it's because they have a HUGE story to tell, and that is one of the most fundamental reasons WoW is the success it is, IMHO.
Which funnily enough has nothing to do with their MMO design now does it? It is a legacy of a talented man, Mr. Metzen. One which will eventually be destroyed by Blizzard making everything interesting in the lore of the game, raidable for loot. Illidan? WTF? I swear if they make him grindable for loot it will be the end of Warcraft. They are going take everything good in WoW and make it bashable by 40 peopld in a borefest. WOOT!!
There are 45 different such spots in WoW, and we (the players) know the history behind each one, know what's behind them, and are pretty sure we'll eventually get into them. We know why they're not open now, what's going on behind them, and what it will mean to the world when they're opened. We are about to open the gates of An'Qiraj, as a concerted, server-wide effort. Every guild on the server is mobilized to this effort, horde and alliance, to launch the assault against this threat. Yes, it's a grind, but it's a grind the likes of which I've never seen before in any MMO, anywhere. There's this huge story to tell, so much content to get into the game, and so many people to make sure it works for, that the little tweaks become less important. Again, just my theory.
It's a nice theory, but NO there is no lore reason why we can't get into these places. They are just not in the game yet. lol, why on earth would you commend the biggest grind you've every seen? GEEEZ!! I guess i look at the past MMO games, and go Meh the genre can do and offer more. I look at WoW and i see the past buffed and shined and go, 'nice'. I look at the future, and i see more than just GRIND! Why is it set in stone that the MMO Genre = Grind. It is the most flawed and stupid idea of i've ever heard, and it is the single thing that limits the genre most IMO.
Alienated, yet stay. EQ nerfs monks, and loses 15% of their population, instantly, that never come back. WoW redefines the entire hunter tree and opens 5 more servers for the new people flooding in. Exactly how "alienated" are these people? Again, you can't use the forum monkeys as examples because they represent < 1% of the population of the game and ALWAYS are bitching about something.
Refer to my previous point about why people will play a game they aren't happy with. As to why new people are coming into the game. Humans = Sheep at times. If everyone i knew was playing WoW, guess what i'd play? (and did) You can't possibly suggest that the hunter changes are WHY new people come to the game? and where are the figures that say how many people left? Also 5-million equals SUBS, not people. What about regional brakedown? How many oceania customers have left? or North America? Subs work differently in the asian countries apparently, and so is supposed to be misleading as the way it works is based more around use in net cafes. (I could be misled on that one though)
Blizz and Viv thought 500k would be successful because that was just over the highest ever done. Now that 5 million is the highest ever done, that becomes the mark. That's been true of every business venture since the invention of money. I go into business and sell to 10 people, I'm a success because no one has ever done that. You show up and sell to 100...heck, I suck now. I start a business that sells to 20, I still suck. Why? Because obviously it's POSSIBLE to sell to 100, but I just can't make it. My favorite example for this is runners. Go back to the Olympic records over the last 150 years and look at how fast the mile has been run. A 7 minute mile was amazing, omg, he's so fast. Remember the 6 minute mile? OMG, he's uber fast. These day's it's being run in what, 4 minutes? So, is a 7 minute mile still fast? Again, if you enter a race and say "5th place is fine with me" then you're successful in your own terms, but not in the objective ones. "I won my little race". Congratulations from the rest of the pack, who were in front of you Why do I seem to be so focused on "winning"? Because MMO's that aren't "winning" suck. MMO's that hit their flatline static point, where they are no longer growing and are only moderately profitable, do not get the full energy of the development team. The moment an MMO hits this point, devs start leaving to more glamorous projects, and producers start looking ahead to new ways to make the company money. As long as the game is shiny, as long as the amount of customers coming in is > then the amount of the one's leaving, the devs and producers will pour resources into the cash cow to keep it rolling, and that means the game gets more and more fun to play.
Again with runners? lol. Let's look at a different way, you've already mentioned indie films and the like. Let's suggest that there is a differentiation in product. Two fruit growers sell their wares, one grows apples the other grows oranges. They both sell fruit, but wouldn't really compare their results with each other now would they. You'd compare the sales of people selling apples to those selling apples, and likewise with the oranges. What i'm saying is that in the MMO Genre, if you as a producer are setting out to make a Blockbuster, then yes you have to try to beat WoW's 5-mill. If you are setting out to produce something more 'indie', then NO you don't have to try to beat WoW. It would be stupid to try to say that you should. As your product is not designed to be something that it's not, and a blockbuster is not what your aim was in the first place.
World of Warcraft is the first Blockbuster for the world of online entertainment. Will it be the last, probably not, does it mean that people should only attempt to make blockbusters? PLEASE GOD NO!!
Star Trek Online is yet another. Here is an amazing franchise that is being BUTCHERED on the design board, and every day, every design decision pushes it closer and closer to disaster. "We decided to use 2D space combat because they never really used 3D space combat in the series." *whimper*
Good. God. No. Really? Mac, nothing stops these devs from making stupid decisions, but they can be a success if what they are trying to achieve is logically linked with the customers that they are aiming at. Wow @ STO, i was actually interested in seeing where they would take that, but man that's bad! World of Warcraft can't possibly be everything to everyone, I am an example. Before playing WoW, i was NOT an MMO customer. Not part of the stats at all, i didn't play or wanted to play. Now I am thanks to WoW, but I am also now looking for somthing with more depth of gameplay, and with a bit more challenge. There are many like me, and i cannot see how you can make assumptions on our numbers to the lack of any precedence. WoW has brought in more than any other, no one can know what these gamers (who haven't spent 4 years playing a game before and who usually get bored quickly) will do in the future of the game. Everyone i play with is first timers to WoW, and everyone i play with is getting bored and starting to look for something else to do. This is my experience, and it may well differ from yours. But i'd suggest assumptions are bad about the future of WoW my friend.
You're either very single, or very young That, or the girls we're talking about are much much older. In a room of teen/young twenties, they're all around the pretty guy, talking to each other, not him, so they don't notice his personality anyway
Lol, HARSH!! I'm not very young, and i am currently single, wouldn't call me VERY single though. Teen/Twenties? Oh god, you didn't say that we were only talking about THAT age group, that's unfair! I'm surprised they can notice anything but themselves at the best of times, let alone someone else's personality. I'm glad i'm not that age i can tell ya!
He doesn't stick to what he believes in. He does "just enough", then hands it off, takes his check and hits the door. He gets what he needs and moves on. Vanguard will come out, do "adequately", and he'll hand production to someone else and start on another game, "learning from his mistakes". I don't know Brad well at all, especially any more. However, I was there to read his press for EQ, and what I see from Sigil is more of the same. "We're here to revolutionize the MMO genre...and this time, we mean it!" Vanguard looks like EQ2, only ugly. My daughter looked at it and was very very sad. The only type of expectation that is "too high" is one that is unachievable. If I say I'm going to create an MMO that will pull in 10 million customers in 2 years, that's too high, because it's never been done. As for "fun", Brad's version of fun is in EQ. Death = lost exps, lost work, and punishment. Success can only be gained by long long hours of grinding at the impossible, and only achieved by throwing enough stuff at it. The concept of 100-person raids is right up their alley. That's one of the reasons I love the cap on WoW's raids...if you can't do it with 40 people, then don't try, because you can't bring more.
Well you can make your predictions there Mac, and you might be correct. Until he does do what you are suggesting then i'll give him the benefit of the doubt, as he purpoting something different. Also, perhps your daughter is someone that he is NOT aiming the game at, and as such it isn't surprising that she would be uninterested. Though that does say that all the female characters in Vanguard will be played by men, 'sigh'. Most of those details are not known about Vanguard yet, so we won't know till later. I'm not interested in 100 person raids, i'm not even interested in 40 person raids, so meh.
This goes back to the 7 minute mile They were successful then, but would they be considered so now? When MacDonalds opened, it was "100's served!" Can a fast food restaurant open now and say that that is a measure of success?
RUNNERS! lol. I haven't seen any restaurant advertise numbers of people served for many years, you are perhaps older than me. If you are going to compete with a blockbuster (McDonalds), then you need to advertise on their terms. If you aren't then you don't, simple as that. Did Subway advertise how many people they had served? Nope. Did they demonstrate how much healthier they are compared to McDonalds, in a period of human history where obecity is becoming a real problem in western youth? My word they did! Did they get the same numbers as McDonalds? Who knows, Who cares. Are they are success? Indeed they are!
I'm sorry, but a dev telling me that it's acceptable for someone to create a toon and invest hours into it, then find out that it is not physically possible to complete an objective others are doing easily, then be told to delete the hours spend and start over....I did half of that...deleted the toon and game, and went on my way.
Ouch, no accounting for stupid devs Mac. I've seen Blizzard say some pretty stupid things, but nothing as bad as that i think. It all adds up though bud. If a dev says minor stupid things but says them all the time, you'll get fed up eventually it will just take longer.
Not from what I've seen of Vanguard. Diku is still at the core. Death = You were stupid and a failure and should be punished. I actually think WoW's death system is on of the best out there, as it is the least interruptive and the most flexible.
I'm not sure how harsh Vanguard will be, so i'm not overly sure. I'm pretty active on the Vanguard forum and in the community and if anything i've seen Brad say that Death = Something to be avoided, not something to frustrate and make you quit playing the game. It's not about punishing, it's about NOT rewarding lazyness. Do you realise that there is a large portion of WoW content that can be completed by 'death running', I myself have completed many a quest by rez'ing creatively to complete a quest without having to have completed any challange. If i feared death, even a little, i wouldn't do that. Now, it can get harsher, like 'ironman' which is permadeath, but that doesn't interest me either. I just want to care a little more about dying, as at the moment in WoW i couldn't care less.
I remember the games i used to play where i'd get stuck, and i'd go to bed thinking about a solution to the problem and then wake in the morning with something that i was dying to try, BAM it worked. GOD THAT FELT GOOD! WoW doesn't give that.
The biggest problem about what you're asking for is that it is 100% subjective. My daughter wants to succeed, but doesn't want to be punished if she fails. For many people the pleasure of success is not helped by the punitiveness of failure.
You make it sound like the punishment is a whipping by cat of nine-tails. If Brad and Vanguard take it too far, then i won't enjoy it. But, having it slightly more inconveniant to prevent un-caring or mis-use IMO is GOOD! Why does everyone want to succeed without any risk at all. I'm not an extreme sports nut either, but there risk is high. I'm not talking about having a HIGH risk at all, that would be permadeath. I'm talking about some RISK, as in MORE than NONE! WoW has no risk, it doesn't matter, you don't care. Take off your armour and nudey death run it to get somewhere you should have had to face a challege for, is that the kind of thing you want your daughter to be learning? Take no risks to succeed doesn't seem like a very good life lesson. On a side note, sorry Mac about referring to your daughter, i'm only doing so cause you brought her up, forgive me for any personal stuff, not wanting to seem like i'm making a personal attack.
Most of the zerging has been fixed, especially for quests. Most quests you can't do as a raid, you can't hack/cheat around them, and zones like DM simply don't let > 5 folks in. I'd agree with you about WoW teaching you to change and come back, but there is no perfect group. I have 3 manned LBRS to the bottom, and been in all hunter UBRS raids. WoW does not have optimum configurations, of toons or parties. It has options, and the better geared you are, the better you play your class, the more options you have.
Quests are pointless at 60, lewt is all there is. DM is the only instance locked to 5, yet half the content is skippable by the design of the place. People doing 15 minute boss runs to kill 3 bosses for loot without facing any other content does not seem like it well designed to me. Try doing every Scholo boss without a priest (5-man), possible but extremely difficult and not worth the effort for most. What armor do you have? You say you raid so i'm assuming you got some nice purples for your effort? Dungeons are designed for certain criteria, armour is one of them. If you go into a pre-60 instance wearing gear from 60 raids, then you ARE zerging it! and of course IN that situation you don't need the perfect group, because you are zerging.
To quote Larry Miller..."While you're in the gym working out, I'm at a bar with your girlfriend. I may not be big, but I'm....there."
Another important point that I think you both are missing about WHY WoW is so successfull over other MMOs....You don't need a top-of-the line computer/graphics card to play it, allowing most average computer users to play it. I think this is one of the most fundamental and also one of the most underlooked reasons why WoW has the tremendous success that it does. I play on a 1.7Ghz Pentium LAPTOP computer with 64MB of video ram (certainly not even close to top of the line), and the game runs GREAT on my computer. So many other developers are so concerned with being able to see threads of hair on a character's head, but at the very least you need a computer that is NO MORE than one year old to play them.
EQ2 and Vanguard certainly look impressive, but no one in their right mind will go out and buy a new computer to try them out! Blizzard, ingeniously, has stuck to a formula that allows for great looking games without needing much of a hardware change. Look at the differences between the original Warcraft 3, which was released THREE years ago, and WoW...the graphics have hardly changed at all! This allows people like you Mac to go buy a new computer for yourself, and let your wife/kid use the old computer and still be able to play. Even with the expansion, you see no mention of graphics upgrades, but it still makes people drool and look forward to seeing the beauty of something unknown and undiscovered.
Oh and I for one am in bobo's pool of players that has stopped my subscription. But I would LOVE to start it up again if Blizzard would implement some changes that myself and everyone I know from the game (albeit a small percentage) of a HUGE community of pvpers would like to see. Bobo I believe this is similar to what you're looking for and similar to what you described (going to bed thinking about a puzzle then solving it): a game that takes skill and ingenuity! Something that isn't mindless!
Originally posted by Relapse Another important point that I think you both are missing about WHY WoW is so successfull over other MMOs....You don't need a top-of-the line computer/graphics card to play it, allowing most average computer users to play it. I think this is one of the most fundamental and also one of the most underlooked reasons why WoW has the tremendous success that it does. I play on a 1.7Ghz Pentium LAPTOP computer with 64MB of video ram (certainly not even close to top of the line), and the game runs GREAT on my computer. So many other developers are so concerned with being able to see threads of hair on a character's head, but at the very least you need a computer that is NO MORE than one year old to play them.
Good Point. I'd been thinking about that myself, and it does make a difference. I think it was a very good decision on Blizzard's behalf, but also one that they've made in the past with the likes of Warcraft 3. They are very good at making their games accessible to as many people as they can. You're right that no matter how pretty or good Vanguard or other games are, if someone can't run it they won't play it. WoW should show devs that they shouldn't set the bar too high on specs, or they'll lose out.
Oh and I for one am in bobo's pool of players that has stopped my subscription. But I would LOVE to start it up again if Blizzard would implement some changes that myself and everyone I know from the game (albeit a small percentage) of a HUGE community of pvpers would like to see. Bobo I believe this is similar to what you're looking for and similar to what you described (going to bed thinking about a puzzle then solving it): a game that takes skill and ingenuity! Something that isn't mindless!
Yep, pretty much it. I'm seeing Blizz take the game further and further away from where myself and many others (albiet not 4.9mill Mac :P) want it to be. I don't want them to make the game into a different game though, just focus on giving more of what is ALREADY in the game, instead of adding more content that in my opinion ruins the initial spirit of the game that I loved and got hooked on.
World PVP - PVP that rewards PVP, rather than AFK against challenges and own noob grind. Less Grind - Most content they add these days seems to be a form of grind, whilst the initial game was pretty good in it's Grind content. It was still there, but it had a bit of variety. Now it's kill million of mob X to get rep with Faction Y, so that i can get Blah. Spend all of life in BG grinding CP to just KEEP rank and give up wife/girlfriend/children/home/etc to GAIN rank.
IMO Inital Game = Fun, Since Then = Slowly Less Fun.
I'll start off Mac by saying that just because blizz can wave 5-million in our face does not mean that everyone of them is happy.
I'm not concerned if they are happy, and neither is Blizzard. You can't make people happy, you can only provide a space for them to make themselves happy. If they stay, that's great, if not, you've failed.
Why would someone play WoW if they are unhappy with the game?
1. Social Concerns - friends,guild and as you pointed out - girlfriend/spouse. 2. Likes playing MMOs but no other one interests atm. 3. Addicted to the grind - these games are very addictive and it can be hard to kick (it was for me). 4. Plus many more possible reasons.
I'll re-iterate...it doesn't matter. If I want me to give you $20/month, and I give you $20/month, your goals have been met. It doesn't matter WHY I give you they money, or if I'm happy, or if I'm socially satisfied...I give you the money, and don't give it to someone else, ergo you are successful in your goal of getting my money. The reasons people stay and play are irrelevant, because they're the reasons they stay and play anywhere, for anything, and can't be coded or designed around...they're subjective and human. All of the reasons you can give for someone staying in WoW, I can give for someone else staying in EQ2...but people AREN'T staying in EQ2, they're leaving in droves.
In short, no MMO dev can program to the things you've listed, because they're human factors. Just like no dev can code to intentionally create a community, and I laugh my butt off everyone one claims too. Communities are fragile, unique, and random. They create themselves, if the conditions are right.
We are all aware of the figures, i just don't think you can use them so much to justify the actions and decisions of Blizzard. Perhaps their decisions, unlike Sony's haven't yet been bad enough to brake the camels back in regards to these points. They did for me, so i quit. I know many friends that are close, they still play and PAY for the game even though they hate much about it. There are things they still like, so they hold onto those for dear life trying to justify their playtime. Also, Blizzard designed a better GAME than Sony, so perhaps it is easier to continue paying for something you don't like things about, as long as there is something there still to amuse you. 'Oh look, i got a panda pet, woot!!' It's smart, and i think blizzard's GAME design is very good for that.
Sony has a history of making bad decisions, Blizzard does not. Sony has been making bad decisions for a decade, while Blizzard was making games during that time and luring in 10's of millions of players. I really don't see Blizzard making any mistake of the scale or scope Sony has made or is capable of making.
You did not leave due to a bad decision, at least from what we've said here. You left due to neglect, and not enough good decisions happening fast enough. Correct me if I'm wrong. I left SWG (three separate times) over ATROCIOUS decisions that drove me away, instantly. For you, it sounded more like a gradual erosion of your enjoyment.
And don't underestimate the power of cuteness, the panda pets are adorable The newest craze is a glowing slime that makes you glow and reduces your defense by -30...people can't get enough of them
Yes it can be a shortcoming. I am a casual player, and have been since forever and i enjoyed WoW immensely. As we agree, FUN is subjective. The crafts are not immersive IMO, and i know that they aren't to a lot of other people (i realise that others might find it otherwise). How is sitting watching a bar go zip zip zip immersive? The best items you can make are all locked up in Raid instances, and if you are casual (don't have time for raids) or simply just don't like them and don't want to be apart of the UBER RAID GUILD, then you have little to make that is worth a dime. Quests i'll agree a great, and i loved them, but they died at end-game as they are now pretty much useless. I think our definition of linear and monotonous differs, hehe. But hey man, that's kewl.
You never played EQ2 or SWG I'm going to bet, if you think WoW crafts were tedious. I'm a crafter, and for the record, no MMO has gotten it right. WoW's crafting is the least tedious and frustrating of the MMO implementations out there (EQ2's crafting can kill you, literally).
The best items are actually faction based and not found in the high-end raids...at least not yet
By linear and monotonous, I'll use CoH's quests as an example...you go to a guy, you get a quest, you go to a location, you kill some colourful npcs, you come back to the same guy, you get a new quest, you go kill npc's with a different color, you return, ad nauseum. WoW's quest aren't always kill, move you around the world, show you every aspect of the game, and are different for each race. In CoH, if you're a Mutant Blaster, you do the same quests then if you were a Cyborg Tanker, with the same guys giving them and the same colourful npc's being killed.
Actually my toon is part of raiding guild that i helped create, i gathered together 3 aussie guilds to form a larger guild in order to take part in the end-game content. We've been pretty successful in ZG and have taken down Luci on the second attempt with less than 40, i'm so proud of em. I just hate large person raiding, i don't mind the smaller ones like UBRS and at max ZG, but not MC, BWL or AQ40. Did I put together the guild so that i could be happy? NO, so that i'd have something to bloody DO!
If you hate large person raiding, then you likely should just move away from MMO's entirely. EQ started it with their "bring as many folks as you can" raids. SWG followed suit. AC had them. CoH had them. WoW has them but limits them (which I like a lot). Every MMO of note has them and every new one will have them. Why? That's an interesting story that I have a theory on...
I've been playing PnP RPG's since '76 or so, so I've literally played 10,000's of games as GM or player. In PnP (paper and pencil, if you didn't know the acronym), the "challenge" to the players is 100% in the hands of a subjective game master, a guy who is there and can custom tune the content to match your abilities and ensure you don't cake walk through his content (for the purposes of this story, assume the GM is compentent and flexible). So, as you advance through his campaign world, you gain more power, and he adjusts the world to compensate for your power, in a myriad of ways...and that's the most important part of this theory. At 5th lvl, you may fight guys with 100hp. At 10th, you may fight a guy with 300hp, or you may fight a guy with 100hp who is just played differently, has different abilities, specifically designed to counter yours. The world is open to the GM, and he knows all your weaknesses, so a good GM keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Now, imagine this GM has to deal with 2 people who are advancing together, with drastically different abilities. It becomes more of a challenge. The creature now has to possess not only abilities that match your weaknesses, but also your partner's. If many of those balance each other out (you're a caster, he's melee, so you're weak ac is countered by his high one, etc), then the enemies start to become a bit more generic, with dmg output and hit points being the things that go up most commonly.
10 people? At this point, it is nearly impossible for a GM to create a balanced encounter to specifically challenge each person in the team, so he must start looking at the team as a unit, as a sum of all their abilities, and in the end, the players get something with lots of hp and lots of dmg thrown at them.
Now, imagine the same situation with 100,000 people and a GM who is not actually there but must script the encounter to be as challenging as possible. What you end up with is the end-all-be-all crutch of MMO developers..."if you give something enough hit points, it will be unkillable". It's ugly, it's lazy, and it's pathetic, but every MMO in history has done it, because, and I quote any number of community managers or developers on countless forums "it is impossible for a developer to script an encounter that truly offers a complex and personalized challenge, and the more complex the script is, the easier it is to exploit, making it exponentially harder still to develop...it is a resource nightmare and not worth the RoI."
In short, it takes too much work to provide personalized entertainment, so here you go, have LOTS of generic entertainment. This is not going to change. Now, in the MMO's that I want to write, they won't have these types of encounters, but we've already discussed how my MMO won't be 5 million folks anyway
You're friends Mac are obviously easily amused, working on factions (grinding), crafting for friends (dude can you make me blah i have mats? sure, trade+click done - fun stuff), making money (grinding), gathering loot (grinding instances that give far inferior loot meaning that they better not wish to PVP at all, otherwise they'll be screwed and what do they do when they have all the blues?).
No need to be mean, we're not easily amused at all. The crafting is a thing we do while socializing. I don't find my job entertaining either, it's a thing I do while interacting with my co-workers and writing long forum posts to my friends like you
What do you do when you have all the blues? Make another toon. Go get some purples. Go do PvP. Go farm some faction to increase your abilities.
Grinding = Monotonous and Repetitive. Now, i do understand that some people actually enjoy that (which is kewl, more power to them), but I believe that there is a point where people who tolerate it will get fed up. I'm suggesting that if blizzard doesn't so something soon, then it will BE soon. All it will take will be a decent alternative to make their bubble go bust, of course we may not actually get that alternative which will be good for Blizz.
LOL. I forget, but is this your first MMO? EVERY MMO has grinding. Period. There is not a single MMO in existence that does not have lots and lots and lots and lots of grinding. Grinding is what people do in MMO's, above and beyond everything else. It is the fundamental cornerstone of all MMO's. You grind for level. You grind for skill. You grind for faction. You grind for gear. From the moment you log in until you log out, you are grinding. The AQ patch is the largest grind in the history of MMO's and people are coming out of the woodwork to participate in it, as it's a grind that 1st lvl players can help 60th lvl players complete for the entire world.
On my last SWG attempt, I was an entertainer, and I had a blast doing so, and it was the only time in 15 years of MMO's that I wasn't grinding. What I did served no purpose, did not advance my toon in any way, did not make me more powerful, did not accomplish a single thing. It was exactly, in every way, like going to a bar every thing in real life and hanging with my friends. The only difference was that I was a hot female twi instead of a big, burly engineer Sony, of course, hated us for finding a way to have fun that wasn't grinding and killed us all and all our fun, but the point is to tell you that, while it is possible to have non-grinding in a game, the people who enjoy it (< 1% of the server population in the case of SWG) is so small as to be insigificant.
People log into MMO's to grind. What is Diablo if it's not grinding? You can't tell me people RP'd in Diablo
Why on earth do you keep referring to Sony? We both agree they SUCK and i never said you COULDN'T design an MMO to be short lived. They provide us with an example of what NOT to do, we shouldn't let that define the genre for us. MMORPG's generally need to keep people playing in order to be successful, how they do this is not set in stone as the reasons why someone would play a game for years and years vary greatly. I am suggesting here that in the case of WoW, it is my opinion that if we see people playing for years and years, it won't necessarily be because they admire the MMO design, it will be because of good GAME design. i know i sound pedantic but i'm making the seperation because i think most of what makes WoW good does not have anything to do with the MMO genre, but rather the talent and skills that Blizzard has in making games in general. What is there of MMO genre is well done and polished well, but I think there are other attributing factors.
Because Sony is #2, and we're debating Blizzard, which is #1. Who else can we use? We both agree that no one has done it right, so there's no one to hold up and say "they should do it like these people do".
Have you heard of Ultima Online? Did you know that, after < 10 years, this game is still running? The game SUCKS. It sucked 10 years ago and it sucks now, yet people still play it. Why? I can tell you this, it isn't because of the game. The people that will be playing WoW after 3 years will not be doing so because of WoW, it will be because of the communities they've formed, which is something no dev can design for or predict, as I mentioned above. Creating a community is like creating life...you throw together the right elements and pray for that "spark" to occur. As long as WoW doesn't Sony-ize their game with hideously huge and alienating decisions like "we've decided it was a mistake for paladins to wear plate, so we're removing it" or "shaman totems can now be affected by aoes, so a paladin with consecrate can completely neutralize a shaman toe-to-toe", WoW will be around forever.
Guild Wars is a poor example, as it is not even considered by many to be a MMO. The makers even labelled it differently as a CORPG - Co-operative Online Role Playing Game. It is also designed to be PVP centric game, catering to subset rather than MMO whole.
LOL. You can't take my examples away, because they're valid. Guild Wars is a massive (> 10,000 players) multiplayer online game, by definition And yes, I acknowledge that it's PvP centric, but how do you explain that so few folks play that free version when millions play on WoW dedicated PvP servers, which are also PvP centric?
Yes, but we weren't talking about that, we talking about the shelf life of games. MMOs are different, they place importance on progression. Progression of character, world and content. Those games are good, but they are about competition, and as such don't fall into the same sphere. Also, people pay MMOs and expect (wrong or rightly) to actually get something for their money, in the example of Diablo and Warcraft people generally wouldn't wish to pay money if they did not receive anything in return. Poor example.
Nonsense. MMO's don't place any more importance on progression then a game. What is Diablo about if it's not progression? What else is there to do in Diablo but progress....socialize? Besides, everyone in WoW is 60, where else is there to progress? Everyone is done and should just move on, right?
The point was that people keep playing a game for a variety of reasons, but the moment they have to pay to keep playing, their expectations go way up. Diablo was a good game, and sold millions of copies, and people still play it, but is it good enough to keep the same amount of people playing if Blizzard charged them to play? WoW gained and is holding 5 million people in thrall, so obviously it's doing the job.
Sure, but HOW does it attract them. I've seen crap films do well because of the stars in them, the marketing around it, history before it if it is a franchise, etc. 5-Million people playing a game, makes it a successful game. WoW happens to be a MMO game, grats to them! I still don't think that it is very good MMO game, considering what potential the genre has. In fact, WoW's success is in part what i don't like about the game, it robs us of any potentional for dynamic epic world content.
Pretty box art, great reputation of the dev, engagement of the content, marketing. However, all of that only helps the first weekend. WoW didn't START with 5 million people, it picked them up over the year, and there's only one explanation for that...word of mouth. That crap film doing well on the first weekend can be explained by what you said, but it's gone in 3 weeks. The Incredibles didn't have a great opening weekend, but was in the theatres for 8 months, which is unHEARD of in this day and age of 3-week movie lives. You can only blame marketing and fluff for how it starts, not staying power.
A foot race is not the same as a business making a product and attempting to sell it. Do shareholders get antsy when a company that made large profits tells them that they didn't make AS MUCH profit as some other company? NO, they go 'WOOT - PROFITS!!!' It only rings true if you are looking at market share, but as has been proven by WoW, it is difficult to even estimate the size of the market.
Stop nerfing my examples A footrace is an example of a linear contest Do shareholders get antsy when a company that made large profits tells them they didn't make as much profit as some other company? In the same industry? With the same resources? Absolutely. You have to make it apples and oranges.
SOE reports it's earnings to it's shareholders. SOE is a huge company with years of experience in MMO's. Blizzard comes along, a much smaller company (at least it was when WoW was starting) and blows SOE's marketshare and stock value down the crapper. Are SOE stockholders now antsy that, maybe, they were backing the wrong horse? If you owned stock in SOE and saw a smaller company come and show you how incompetant you were, would you still have faith in them?
WoW is different to this i think MAC. What you say maybe true for the 100,000 old timers who know the game industry, but you just effectively called most of my friends idiots. SHAME ON YOU!!! lol WoW's success comes from not getting all the people who have played MMO's their whole life, but the people like me who never even tried it before. Was it like a new drug to me, oh my yes. Was it addictive as hell, definately. Did i flake out and bail for strangest slightest things, NOPE! I played the game for almost a year, longer than any game i've ever played previously. I just go righteous over the oceania thing, and i played a class that the devs didn't seem to know what to do with, so i just got frustrated. It also took so much of my life, my real life suffered, so I made a decision to help my mental health and quit the game. I'm a reformed addict. lol
I didn't call anyone an idiot, don't be so dramatic I pay $30/month to a gym I never visit. I'm an idiot. Why am I an idiot? Because I'm throwing my money away on something I never use, on the off chance that I might one day get the energy and drive to use it. Paying for a game I don't play makes me an idiot, so if I'm paying, I'm playing. If I don't enjoy it, I don't play, and I don't pay. All MMO's out there keep your characters for a while, so it's possible to stop paying and come back later without losing anything, so if people are paying, they're playing, and it really doesn't matter if they SAY they enjoy it or not. That better?
I won't argue about oceania customers, they are not as small as what people assume. Blizzard is not so much addressing but throwing a bone to try to silence them, and it is mildly insulting. Is your daughter level 60? Does she want more from a game then having a Panda pet?
Compared to the Asian and US markets, they are small. I'm not saying down under isn't important, just that Blizzard's resources are very likely still constrained from the growing pains. My daughter has 8 characters, ranging from 15 to 45, and doesn't have a panda pet (something she reminds me of regularly). She does herbalism and tailoring, raids with her friends and sits in Stormwind for hours, chatting with her buds. She'll delete a toon and make a new one just because she met a new low-lvl friend and wants to play with them.
Classes! Talk to Palidans. Talk to Druids. Talk to Water Vendors (i mean mages).
The spigots (mages) are happy as clams right now, thanks to the 10 water/summon fix Paladins just got lots of loving too Talk to any individual paladin on the forums and they'll bitch, because that's what forum campers do. We have 10 paladins in our guild and the only one who's not happy is so because she can't taunt
Yep, needing stupid amounts of bandages and other such materials is certainly amazing. It is the biggest grind any MMO has ever seen, with the hope that something interesting will happen at the end of it.
It is server-wide, both factions, with HUGE content changes that affect the whole server. The top 5 guilds on our server, who always talked crap to each other and were generally competitive, are now working as one to make this happen, and the same is happening on other servers. It is the first time I've ever seen anything like it, and it's amazing to watch.
Never said that you couldn't make friends, and most people in game a quite nice. Outside of the game is different. Now you can easily just point out a conveniant percentage of people use the forum, but that is the ONLY way people can talk to blizzard. It is also the only way that Blizzard talks to the community. If you judge people to be happy with their class, game, etc. Just cause they don't want to have anything to do with the official forum, then that is a poor idea indeed. Those forums are horrible, and have been made worse and worse by the actions of blizzard. I could fully understand your daugthter wanting nothing to do with the forums, any sane person would want to think twice before going on there. I love the convo we are having, even if we don't agree on things, we are still polite to each other, that is a distant dream on their forums. How is blizzard in touch with it's playerbase, if all it has to go by is the official forums and the 'I Quit' page in account management?
My kids aren't allowed on the forums. I know 100's of people who've never been to the forums. The forums are so full of crap and noise that NO ONE gets anything useful out of them. And they are certainly not the only way to get things to Blizzard. I submit suggestion tickets, talk to GM's, email blizzard, and talk to people I know who work there. I never post on the forums because there's no point. That said, I swear to you, those forums are no different then any other MMO forums, just to scale. You take the SWG/CoH/EQ forums and multiplay the # of folks registered by 50 and you'll see exactly the same things. Heck, take any forum or alt. newsgroup and add that many folks and you'll see the same thing. That is forums in general, and the internet, not WoW. I've been online in BBS's and forums for 20+ years and trust me, the WoW forums are just like any newsgroup or forum out there, for anything, at that size.
nod, understood. I understand that people want different things. I'm not talking about hard, i'm not talking about difficult and complex, they are the other extreme. I'm going to be philosophical here, but our society today wants everything easy. Jobs lie unfilled because people think they're too good for it, and sit unemployed. If something goes wrong, it's someone else's fault. Why do you want your daughter fed 'if it's too hard, quit and play somewhere else? When does hard = any challenge? Mac, i'm not an EQ fanboy. I like WoW, but i also like games that provide SOME challenge. Now you might think that WoW is challenging, in which we will just agree to disagree. It doesn't have to be hard, complex or difficult for me, but i would like it to encourge me to THINK! Games are losing an aspect of them that initially i think was eductional, they required you to THINK, SOLVE challenges. They tought various methods of thinking, and encouraged you to think outside the box. If you want games to lose that so that your daughter can enjoy her panda pet, then you are losing more than you are gaining my friend. At least in my humble opinion.
I can answer one of your questions very quickly..."Why do I want my daughter fed 'if it's too hard, quit and play somewhere else'?" Because it's a GAME. When she's at school, and it's too hard, she plows through. When she's on the softball field and it's too hard, she swings away. Life sucks, but there needs to be places where it isn't, especially places where I PAY to PLAY.
As a guide in EQ, I had an issue where someone got mind controlled and dropped down to an area like 30 lvls over their head and died. They couldn't get their body and lost all their possessions, and no one would help them. I got called in, and my policies were not to help unless it was a bug, and this obviously wasn't, he was just where he shouldn't be. We escalated it to a GM, and the GM said to this person, to his face "I'm sorry, sometimes life is hard, and I guess you just get to start over." WTF? The guy was beside himself, facing losing hours and hours of work to get his gear. So, after the GM left, I summoned the guy's body to the door so he could loot it. The guy was beside himself with joy and was so thankful.
Life is hard? Duh. We wll know this. We play games to escape it. We should not have our mortality thrust into our face in a game. Sometimes people fail at doing things. Duh. Sometimes failure has a steep price attached. Duh. All of these are lessons we learn by the time we're 3 years old, I don't need to pay $15/month to be reminded of it.
And WoW isn't "too easy", it's just not punitive. You want that cool thing? You need to succeed. You don't succeed, you don't get it. Simple. In EQ, if you don't succeed, you FAIL!!! Here's your punishment, the loss of a week's worth of hard earned experience!!!!! Loser! In CoH, you don't succeed, you FAIL! Here's some debt so you're literally getting half of a reward for everything you do for a week! Loser!
Most MMO's focus on the failure. What is the price of failure? How can we punish you for failing? The steeper the possible reward, the greater the punishment needs to be.
WoW focuses on success. What kind of reward can we give them for working this out? What is the price of not succeeding? You don't get the reward. That's it. You're not slapped down, nothing is taken from you. It's simple behaviourism, positive vs negative focus, and IMHO is one of the main reasons WoW has 5 million people and Sony doesn't have 1 million across all it's games, combined.
True dat. If the girls are also idiots then they will stay, if they have half a brain they'll realise that it's more fulfilling to talk to the wall that the pretty idiot.
I'm going to carefully step away from the girl bashing part of that reply
and yet, blizzard is doing nothing to hear the opinion of the 4.9 million. As they don't use the forums. So....doesn't that sound a little dangerous and misguided for them then?
You don't know that.
During my divorce, I learned something very important about communications...if you and I are discussing something, just because I don't act like you want me to act, or I don't agree with you, does not mean I don't understand your point.
Just because Blizzard is not doing what you want them to, or what you think they should do, does not mean they can't hear you or aren't listening. They are listening, and people are talking. They get 1,000's of suggestions/day via the in-game communication systems, a GM told me that a few weeks ago, in response to one of my suggestions.
Agreed, which is why there are studios that do that. Big studios yes, they make the summer blockbuster. There quite a few successful indie studios that continue to produce smaller films and make less, but that is what they set out to do and as such are successful. Blizzard is the Big Studio, they only care about the Blockbuster. I just think that we as a community should support the indie guys as well, as they DO NOT need the blockbuster, as they are not even trying to make one!
Blizzard was actually the small studio, and if you watch the small studios, they all work hard to become big studios so they don't HAVE to gamble with the indies. So many of the big studios today were small indie ones 5 years ago. Even Spike Lee, the poster child for angry indie, has a big studio name now.
Easily said Mac, hard to prove. I don't think they will, as they have stated that such things they don't value highly. Unless priorities change, then no they won't.
*shrug* Only time will tell, I'm afraid.
Which funnily enough has nothing to do with their MMO design now does it? It is a legacy of a talented man, Mr. Metzen. One which will eventually be destroyed by Blizzard making everything interesting in the lore of the game, raidable for loot. Illidan? WTF? I swear if they make him grindable for loot it will be the end of Warcraft. They are going take everything good in WoW and make it bashable by 40 peopld in a borefest. WOOT!!
It has everything to do with designing an MMO. An MMO with no content dies inside 5 years, because no one cares about the game. It becomes a MUSH, a chat room that people hang out in until something better comes along, distilling down to 10,000 people who represent the core target audience and the servers are moved to some guy's house where he runs the game from there to cut costs.
Illidan will indeed be in the game, way down the road when the lvl cap is 100 I'm sure. And they have to put the content into the world, that's why we're playing it...to live it. I WANT to fight Illidan! I want to fight Arthas! I don't care how often I die, I want to be a part of that, because the cool factor is beyond belief!
Now, ask someone why they fight the boss in the plane of time in EQ, and they will rattle off loot drops. Ask us why we fight Arthas and be prepared for the story
It's a nice theory, but NO there is no lore reason why we can't get into these places. They are just not in the game yet. lol, why on earth would you commend the biggest grind you've every seen? GEEEZ!! I guess i look at the past MMO games, and go Meh the genre can do and offer more. I look at WoW and i see the past buffed and shined and go, 'nice'. I look at the future, and i see more than just GRIND! Why is it set in stone that the MMO Genre = Grind. It is the most flawed and stupid idea of i've ever heard, and it is the single thing that limits the genre most IMO.
There are lore reasons why we c an't get in to Quel, it was destroyed during the war. I understand that it's a convenient excuse to cover it not being developed yet, but I'd MUCH rather have that then a hole suddenly appearing and a zone being on the otherside, full of stuff we know nothing about, including why there's a hole there, beyond "there is a hole there because I spent $50 to put a hole there by buying the expansion."
See above, if you don't like grinding, you don't like games. What are you doing in Diablo/NWN/EQ/CoH/CS if not grinding? What is grinding? Doing the same thing over and over again for little or no gain. Show me a game where you're not grinding.
Refer to my previous point about why people will play a game they aren't happy with. As to why new people are coming into the game. Humans = Sheep at times. If everyone i knew was playing WoW, guess what i'd play? (and did) You can't possibly suggest that the hunter changes are WHY new people come to the game? and where are the figures that say how many people left? Also 5-million equals SUBS, not people. What about regional brakedown? How many oceania customers have left? or North America? Subs work differently in the asian countries apparently, and so is supposed to be misleading as the way it works is based more around use in net cafes. (I could be misled on that one though)
I disagree. Humans = Sheep explains why WoW opened big. No MMO continues to grow at the rate WoW is after a year, because players are posting how it "really is" and that word of mouth kills the growth. That's not happening here.
Here's a number I'd love to see...how many of WoW's free trial tickets turn into subscriptions? I know mine did, as did my kids. THAT would be the key statistic there.
Again with runners? lol. Let's look at a different way, you've already mentioned indie films and the like. Let's suggest that there is a differentiation in product. Two fruit growers sell their wares, one grows apples the other grows oranges. They both sell fruit, but wouldn't really compare their results with each other now would they. You'd compare the sales of people selling apples to those selling apples, and likewise with the oranges. What i'm saying is that in the MMO Genre, if you as a producer are setting out to make a Blockbuster, then yes you have to try to beat WoW's 5-mill. If you are setting out to produce something more 'indie', then NO you don't have to try to beat WoW. It would be stupid to try to say that you should. As your product is not designed to be something that it's not, and a blockbuster is not what your aim was in the first place.
You leave my runners alone
I totally understand your point, and as I mentioned, my own MMO wouldn't have the 5 million man mass appeal. My point is, I'm not going to get funding for my indie, any more than venture capitalists fund indie projects, because there's no money in it. So how do indie movies get made? Philantrhopists with too much money, like Cameron and Spielgerg, throw money at it because they like the project. Beyond the Blair Witch Project, very very very few indie projects get off the ground with a handful of guys that have $1000 and a dream
World of Warcraft is the first Blockbuster for the world of online entertainment. Will it be the last, probably not, does it mean that people should only attempt to make blockbusters? PLEASE GOD NO!!
Actors used to be paid < $1 million/movie, and movies used to cost < $10 million to make. Someone stepped up and made a $100 million dollar movie (at the time a mortal sin) and it make hundreds of millions of dollars. Now 100 million is the standard and Kong costs almost 300 million. An actor demanded $20 million/movie and got it, now all actors want it and it's the benchmark.
People want what is possible, and will go for the max that they can get. Will people still make indie MMO's? Maybe. You know what's killing the indie movie market? DvD's. People don't have enough money to go to the theatre to see a bunch of movies, so they only go to see a small handful, and those typically are the blockbuster "event" movies that are best suited to the big screen...a romance or drama can be seen on my TV.
The number of people who pay for an MMO is obviously in the millions. How many pay for 2? I would wager that that is < 1 million, though I have no way of knowing. How many pay for 3? Changing MMO's is a huge pain, because you start over at the bottom and have nothing, when you're a demi-god in the one you're leaving.
What does this mean? People typically only play 1 MMO at a time, and only change when it becomes intolerable. For the 5 million staying in WoW, how many will fork over cash monthly to "try" another? How many will they try? How much of a chance will they give it?
The best indie MMO gets to compete not only with blizzard, but an even greater opponent...human apathy.
Good. God. No. Really? Mac, nothing stops these devs from making stupid decisions, but they can be a success if what they are trying to achieve is logically linked with the customers that they are aiming at. Wow @ STO, i was actually interested in seeing where they would take that, but man that's bad! World of Warcraft can't possibly be everything to everyone, I am an example. Before playing WoW, i was NOT an MMO customer. Not part of the stats at all, i didn't play or wanted to play. Now I am thanks to WoW, but I am also now looking for somthing with more depth of gameplay, and with a bit more challenge. There are many like me, and i cannot see how you can make assumptions on our numbers to the lack of any precedence. WoW has brought in more than any other, no one can know what these gamers (who haven't spent 4 years playing a game before and who usually get bored quickly) will do in the future of the game. Everyone i play with is first timers to WoW, and everyone i play with is getting bored and starting to look for something else to do. This is my experience, and it may well differ from yours. But i'd suggest assumptions are bad about the future of WoW my friend.
True enough, but WoW is indoctrinating them into the "standards" of MMO's in grand fashion Again, only time will tell, but I'm wagering that WoW's hit a critical mass and will at least hold here for 2006, if not grow due to Burning Crusade.
Lol, HARSH!! I'm not very young, and i am currently single, wouldn't call me VERY single though. Teen/Twenties? Oh god, you didn't say that we were only talking about THAT age group, that's unfair! I'm surprised they can notice anything but themselves at the best of times, let alone someone else's personality. I'm glad i'm not that age i can tell ya!
LOL I'm an old man, I can say things like that
Well you can make your predictions there Mac, and you might be correct. Until he does do what you are suggesting then i'll give him the benefit of the doubt, as he purpoting something different. Also, perhps your daughter is someone that he is NOT aiming the game at, and as such it isn't surprising that she would be uninterested. Though that does say that all the female characters in Vanguard will be played by men, 'sigh'. Most of those details are not known about Vanguard yet, so we won't know till later. I'm not interested in 100 person raids, i'm not even interested in 40 person raids, so meh.
I love the 40-man raids, it's like the extreme sports of MMO's Life on the edge, failure not an option, etc
And not aiming at my daughter and her friends is a huge fiscal mistake, as they are the future, quite literally. My daughter's boyfriend will want to play an MMO when she gets one. Which one will he play? How many of us have wished they had a mate who played with them? When you get one, are you then going to dictate what she plays, or just go with the great luck that she plays at all?
RUNNERS! lol. I haven't seen any restaurant advertise numbers of people served for many years, you are perhaps older than me. If you are going to compete with a blockbuster (McDonalds), then you need to advertise on their terms. If you aren't then you don't, simple as that. Did Subway advertise how many people they had served? Nope. Did they demonstrate how much healthier they are compared to McDonalds, in a period of human history where obecity is becoming a real problem in western youth? My word they did! Did they get the same numbers as McDonalds? Who knows, Who cares. Are they are success? Indeed they are!
I'm ancient And no, Subway's numbers aren't a shadow of McD's, but they're content with their niche. The difference with food is, you can make daily choices with no momentum. You buy McD's today, you have no investment in it tomorrow so you're free to choose again. In MMO's, you pay monthly, then invest 100's of hours of time, so you develop momentum. You make friends, more momentum. New content is coming that you're working towards, more momentum. It's hard to break free of, even if you want too.
Ouch, no accounting for stupid devs Mac. I've seen Blizzard say some pretty stupid things, but nothing as bad as that i think. It all adds up though bud. If a dev says minor stupid things but says them all the time, you'll get fed up eventually it will just take longer.
"Working as intended" is my favorite Blizz line For me, because he was a dev and not some min wage GM, it had more of an impact.
I'm not sure how harsh Vanguard will be, so i'm not overly sure. I'm pretty active on the Vanguard forum and in the community and if anything i've seen Brad say that Death = Something to be avoided, not something to frustrate and make you quit playing the game. It's not about punishing, it's about NOT rewarding lazyness. Do you realise that there is a large portion of WoW content that can be completed by 'death running', I myself have completed many a quest by rez'ing creatively to complete a quest without having to have completed any challange. If i feared death, even a little, i wouldn't do that. Now, it can get harsher, like 'ironman' which is permadeath, but that doesn't interest me either. I just want to care a little more about dying, as at the moment in WoW i couldn't care less.
We fear death in real life, why is it so important to do so in a game? Were the quests you completed doing that giving you uber l33t l3wt, or just experience? I've done the same, but all of the truly worthwhile quest rewards require hard work that can't be cheated. Failure is it's own reward, and requires no help from an MMO dev to make it more unpleasant. If I spend 45 min trying to do something and die, I don't need yet another punishment slapped on top of the 45 min I just lost.
Again, simple behaviourism. Why do you care if someone else zerged a quest that you completed "correctly"? What is it about the punitive nature of those games that provides satisfaction to the ones that completed it that, not only did they complete it, but others were hurt because they didn't? It's not enough to complete the quest, one must also know that others tried, failed, and suffered for it. More then laziness, I dislike that trend in online games...the need to make sure others are not having an easier time then me.
I remember the games i used to play where i'd get stuck, and i'd go to bed thinking about a solution to the problem and then wake in the morning with something that i was dying to try, BAM it worked. GOD THAT FELT GOOD! WoW doesn't give that.
Yup, and Wow gives me that all the time, on a myriad of scales. Be it a single encounter I just can't beat, or a boss our 40-man can't overcome. Again, I don't need to be slapped in the head everytime I don't succeed to be driven to find the right solution, the solution itself is enough of a motivator.
You make it sound like the punishment is a whipping by cat of nine-tails. If Brad and Vanguard take it too far, then i won't enjoy it. But, having it slightly more inconveniant to prevent un-caring or mis-use IMO is GOOD! Why does everyone want to succeed without any risk at all. I'm not an extreme sports nut either, but there risk is high. I'm not talking about having a HIGH risk at all, that would be permadeath. I'm talking about some RISK, as in MORE than NONE! WoW has no risk, it doesn't matter, you don't care. Take off your armour and nudey death run it to get somewhere you should have had to face a challege for, is that the kind of thing you want your daughter to be learning? Take no risks to succeed doesn't seem like a very good life lesson. On a side note, sorry Mac about referring to your daughter, i'm only doing so cause you brought her up, forgive me for any personal stuff, not wanting to seem like i'm making a personal attack.
Why do you care if people don't care about death? Why is it important how other people solve the problem? If I work 2 hours on something and fail, that is harsh. If, in turn, I lose another 2 hours of experience, that is intolerable. I don't NEED to be reminded by a pimply faced dev that life is hard, death is inevitable, etc, and I sure as HELL don't want to pay $15/month to have to experience it. I don't want it easy either...the failure itself is it's own punishment.
To use the extreme sports analogy (because you hate the runners), you're going to try a skateboard jump, and if you fail it likely will hurt...that's the price of failure. However, if you fail, I'm going to shoot you in the leg, which will incapacite you for a few months as a demotivator to failure. That is what CoH does. For a period of time, you now learn half as fast, because you were stupid and failed. Oh, and if you try it again while you're wounded, I'm going to shoot you again...and again...and again. You can stack level upon level of experience debt upon yourself until you spend the next several months earning half experience.
Or lets say you're playing EQ. You use your $200 skateboard to try the jump and fail. You hurt yourself, and I take your hard-earned skateboard away. You have to go earn a new one and try again, and I'm going to take something from you that you earned every time you fail.
Failure is it's own punishment, it does not require an extra layer of demotivation added to it because someone feels failure is simply not hard enough.
Quests are pointless at 60, lewt is all there is. DM is the only instance locked to 5, yet half the content is skippable by the design of the place. People doing 15 minute boss runs to kill 3 bosses for loot without facing any other content does not seem like it well designed to me. Try doing every Scholo boss without a priest (5-man), possible but extremely difficult and not worth the effort for most. What armor do you have? You say you raid so i'm assuming you got some nice purples for your effort? Dungeons are designed for certain criteria, armour is one of them. If you go into a pre-60 instance wearing gear from 60 raids, then you ARE zerging it! and of course IN that situation you don't need the perfect group, because you are zerging.
Many of the best quest pieces in the game fall from quests at 60. You can no longer boss-run DM, it's been fixed. No-priest runs to Scholo are fun I'm all epic armor, tier 1 right now. Zerging is throw enough folks at it to make it trivial, which we don't do. We don't 15 man UBRS, we 5-man it because of our gear. There's a group of people who have 10-manned Onyxia, and she's a 40 man instance. Because of the limits, people find new ways to challenge and push the envelope
Originally posted by MacAllen I'm not concerned if they are happy, and neither is Blizzard. You can't make people happy, you can only provide a space for them to make themselves happy. If they stay, that's great, if not, you've failed.
ok, i was more pointing out that the 5-mill figure can't really be used to say everyone is happy with the game.
The reasons people stay and play are irrelevant, because they're the reasons they stay and play anywhere, for anything, and can't be coded or designed around...they're subjective and human. All of the reasons you can give for someone staying in WoW, I can give for someone else staying in EQ2...but people AREN'T staying in EQ2, they're leaving in droves.
I agree, but I also think that reasons more specific to WoW devalidate the use of '5-million subs' as a reason to suggest that people are happy with the game and blizzard is obviously doing something right. This is a point I was disputing from your previous post. WoW is a better game than Sony's crap, and WoW fills the social scene in the game with more fun and novelty. I'm suggesting that even though someone might hate raiding, hate PVP, hate [insert random forum hate] they might continue to play the game. The addictive nature of WoW plays a part as well, though i can't comment how addictive sony games are. So, when we talk about Blizzard's decisions, i don't think it's so easy as to point to the subs and say they're doing it right, when there is more to it than that.
Sony has a history of making bad decisions, Blizzard does not. Sony has been making bad decisions for a decade, while Blizzard was making games during that time and luring in 10's of millions of players. I really don't see Blizzard making any mistake of the scale or scope Sony has made or is capable of making. You did not leave due to a bad decision, at least from what we've said here. You left due to neglect, and not enough good decisions happening fast enough. Correct me if I'm wrong. I left SWG (three separate times) over ATROCIOUS decisions that drove me away, instantly. For you, it sounded more like a gradual erosion of your enjoyment. And don't underestimate the power of cuteness, the panda pets are adorable The newest craze is a glowing slime that makes you glow and reduces your defense by -30...people can't get enough of them
Oh I don't underestimate the power of cuteness, i just don't call it good MMO gameplay. It's fluff, nice fun fluff, but it's still fluff. Not saying it should have no fluff though, it's just blizzard is really good at using fluff to make their games more appealing than what they probably would have been. Multiple Clicking units in Warcraft comes to mind! It's smart, and it's another reason why they are successful.
Blizzard may not have a history of making monumentally bad decisions, but they are making that history though WoW though. I wasn't driven away by ONE bad decision, i'm not that fickle. It was countless decisions, that were obviously flawed and yet blizzard argued for ages over their merits before finalling conceding that they were a bad idea. Meeting Stones, PVP equipment un-usable after rank, plus many more. I guess it just felt that when the community responded negatively to Blizzard, their response was 'tuff, we know better, it's our game'. Whilst that is mostly true, it still does nothing to show the players that they are being listened to. I haven't seen a Pally wear Lightforge Helmet since they changed the graphic, doesn't that tell them that maybe they should have listened to the seemingly large % of people saying it made them look like Burger boys?
You never played EQ2 or SWG I'm going to bet, if you think WoW crafts were tedious. I'm a crafter, and for the record, no MMO has gotten it right. WoW's crafting is the least tedious and frustrating of the MMO implementations out there (EQ2's crafting can kill you, literally).
I'm not overly concerned if other MMO's crafting was MORE tedious, it doesn't change the fact that crafting in WoW means very little.
The best items are actually faction based and not found in the high-end raids...at least not yet
Not that i found. Most of the best patterns are in Molten Core and require Core Leather or Fiery Core, etc. Fraction patterns are not too bad, but they aren't all that and a bag of chips.
By linear and monotonous, I'll use CoH's quests as an example...you go to a guy, you get a quest, you go to a location, you kill some colourful npcs, you come back to the same guy, you get a new quest, you go kill npc's with a different color, you return, ad nauseum. WoW's quest aren't always kill, move you around the world, show you every aspect of the game, and are different for each race.
That's funny, many quests felt like that for me in WoW. True, i'll say that they did move you around a bit, but that was sometimes more annoying that anything else. I did enjoy the quests though, i just wish that questing happened more after 60. There are many many interesting and exciting quest lines that are left deadended cause Blizz reckons they'll 'get around to it'. I wish they'd stop cranking out 40 person dungeon after 40 person dungeon, and put more of the stuff that made the earlier game great in, you guys might enjoy the raiding endgame which is fine - I don't. At the same time I don't expect to find an MMO that doesn't have raiding in it, it's just that why on earth it is the ONLY thing in the end-game that equals exciting content i don't know. I don't think it has to be, but others think it does. It's easy to say that non-raiding content is 'too hard', but all that does is stifle imagination and creativity, oh well. Idealist again! If i was going to suggest any content that was non-raiding for end-game it would be stuff that was driven by players rather than the devs, that way they don't have to do much except for tweak and most of the content is provided by the players themselves.
Why? That's an interesting story that I have a theory on...It's ugly, it's lazy, and it's pathetic, but every MMO in history has done it, because, and I quote any number of community managers or developers on countless forums "it is impossible for a developer to script an encounter that truly offers a complex and personalized challenge, and the more complex the script is, the easier it is to exploit, making it exponentially harder still to develop...it is a resource nightmare and not worth the RoI." In short, it takes too much work to provide personalized entertainment, so here you go, have LOTS of generic entertainment. This is not going to change. Now, in the MMO's that I want to write, they won't have these types of encounters, but we've already discussed how my MMO won't be 5 million folks anyway
Yep, too hard basket. I'd play your MMO Mac! To be Honest, the next MMO i play i DON'T want millions of people playing it. WoW's success is something that means that they don't have the resources to say to GM guided events like other games have had, the epic events do so very little. Even the epic grind only opens up an instance to be used, which opens by itself anyway after a certain amount of time, as insulting as that would be to the server that had it (i imagine low pop servers are going to feel that).
No need to be mean, we're not easily amused at all. The crafting is a thing we do while socializing. I don't find my job entertaining either, it's a thing I do while interacting with my co-workers and writing long forum posts to my friends like you What do you do when you have all the blues? Make another toon. Go get some purples. Go do PvP. Go farm some faction to increase your abilities.
Sorry Mac, wasn't trying to be mean. You mentioned in an earlier post about people being easily amused, and those things you mentioned that your friends were enjoying outside of raids are pretty un-exciting. Another toon - make one too many and you start to hate the start areas, one thing I was looking forward to in the xpac was new starting areas. PVP - won't advance you very far, and well organised raid-equipped teams roll you in 5-seconds for lasting fun and enjoyment. Purples - if not raiding then you are either praying for a rare world drop, or grinding faction and or mats. Farm Fraction to increase abilities? How does that happen?
LOL. I forget, but is this your first MMO? EVERY MMO has grinding. Period. There is not a single MMO in existence that does not have lots and lots and lots and lots of grinding. Grinding is what people do in MMO's, above and beyond everything else. It is the fundamental cornerstone of all MMO's. You grind for level. You grind for skill. You grind for faction. You grind for gear. From the moment you log in until you log out, you are grinding. The AQ patch is the largest grind in the history of MMO's and people are coming out of the woodwork to participate in it, as it's a grind that 1st lvl players can help 60th lvl players complete for the entire world.
Oops, my bad. I understand that every MMO has grinding, but there is a difference between when that grinding features challenging and exciting content to when it is boring repetitive and un-challenging. Every game has a grind and that's fine. What i do not like, is when a blatant boring grind is passed off as exciting new content. 'ROLL UP ROLL UP, FABULOUS NEW ITEMS AWAITS YOU ADVENTURER, ALL YOU MUST DO IS KILL 1,000,000 OF THAT THEM RABBITS AND YOU SHALL HAVE A NEW SHINY HELMET'. Fraction Grind is stupid, and everytime they choose a way of making it easier, they screw up another material for a tradeskill. How's the prices for all those bits and pieces from the AQ grind at the AH on your server? Economy is going haywire on most servers, and materials that used to be traded to lower levels, require a serious amount of twinking now to be able to afford. I would hate to start playing WoW now! It would suck in that regard.
On my last SWG attempt, I was an entertainer, and I had a blast doing so, and it was the only time in 15 years of MMO's that I wasn't grinding. What I did served no purpose, did not advance my toon in any way, did not make me more powerful, did not accomplish a single thing. It was exactly, in every way, like going to a bar every thing in real life and hanging with my friends. The only difference was that I was a hot female twi instead of a big, burly engineer Sony, of course, hated us for finding a way to have fun that wasn't grinding and killed us all and all our fun, but the point is to tell you that, while it is possible to have non-grinding in a game, the people who enjoy it (< 1% of the server population in the case of SWG) is so small as to be insigificant.
Man, that sounds fun! DAMN SONY, DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!!!
People log into MMO's to grind. What is Diablo if it's not grinding? You can't tell me people RP'd in Diablo
Nod, i understand that. In Diablo though, it was always about getting to hell and killing diablo, and it got harder on the way. Some grinds are fun and exciting, others like faction grind don't get harder and harder (in terms of challenge) they just get more and more annoying. Faction Grind is one aspect of WoW that has turned me off the game since release, as it wasn't overly needed in the 1-60 game, and now it is all most of us bloody have.
Because Sony is #2, and we're debating Blizzard, which is #1. Who else can we use? We both agree that no one has done it right, so there's no one to hold up and say "they should do it like these people do".
But Mac, i'm an idealist. I don't need to hold up anyone and say 'they should do it like these people'. I'm theorising a future AFTER WoW, using WoW as a launchpad for ideas and direction. I would come back and play WoW in a heartbeat if I could do something, anything in WoW that wasn't either raids or a mindless grind. It can be a grind, i don't care. Just as long as it isn't mindless.
As long as WoW doesn't Sony-ize their game with hideously huge and alienating decisions like "we've decided it was a mistake for paladins to wear plate, so we're removing it".
Lol, you realise that they basically have said that, not in so many words but might as well have. Paladins have been told that they are now a healer, and as such most of the talents have been pushed into the Holy tree to force the pallies into that. Yet itemisation for plate healing gear is not optimal, it's much more effective for the pally to wear cloth! lol. Most of the Healadins in my guild wear quite a few cloth items, as the plate options are not as good. Besides, if they are standing in the back and healing (note with some of the least aggro generating heals in the game), why do they need plate anyway?
LOL. You can't take my examples away, because they're valid. Guild Wars is a massive (> 10,000 players) multiplayer online game, by definition And yes, I acknowledge that it's PvP centric, but how do you explain that so few folks play that free version when millions play on WoW dedicated PvP servers, which are also PvP centric?
hehe, i can and will take your examples away Mac. I dont' think this one is valid, cause it ignores the persistant nature of MMO's that forms part of the social attraction in games like WoW. Guild Wars is just a multi-player game with a 3D Lobby IMO. It is massive but in the same way that countless number of people play Battlefield 2 or Counter-Strike Source, it doesn't make them an MMO now does it. WoW is not PVP centric in the same way, the classes are balanced for PVE first and then for PVP considerations. An example would be Dispell and Purge, necessary abilities for PVE but overpowered in PVP, especially with the use of the raid mods. They upped the Mana Cost recently, but it still is a problem for them. Guild Wars has everything balanced for PVP to begin with, PVE is secondary. That is the difference i was pointing out.
Nonsense. MMO's don't place any more importance on progression then a game. What is Diablo about if it's not progression? What else is there to do in Diablo but progress....socialize? Besides, everyone in WoW is 60, where else is there to progress? Everyone is done and should just move on, right?
Oops. Yes you progress the character, what i was trying to get at is that MMO's have an evolution of the game that isn't present (to the same degree) as say in Diablo. Every game is about progressing, of course it is. However, in Diablo and Warcraft they generally keep playing the game cause their focus is on competing with each other, PVP. Blizzard smartly as progressed the game as well, but only in the same way as any other game is progressed by patches. In MMO's the game progresses as well as the characters, 'A continuing stream of adventures'. That is what people pay for (even if it isn't spelled out that that is what they are paying for).
The point was that people keep playing a game for a variety of reasons, but the moment they have to pay to keep playing, their expectations go way up. Diablo was a good game, and sold millions of copies, and people still play it, but is it good enough to keep the same amount of people playing if Blizzard charged them to play? WoW gained and is holding 5 million people in thrall, so obviously it's doing the job.
agreed. If diablo was getting a continuing stream of adventures then yes i think people would pay, but no-one has done that so i can't say what would be needed to make it work. Bioware is a company that i reckon could probably pull that off, but that's a different topic.
Pretty box art, great reputation of the dev, engagement of the content, marketing. However, all of that only helps the first weekend. WoW didn't START with 5 million people, it picked them up over the year, and there's only one explanation for that...word of mouth. That crap film doing well on the first weekend can be explained by what you said, but it's gone in 3 weeks. The Incredibles didn't have a great opening weekend, but was in the theatres for 8 months, which is unHEARD of in this day and age of 3-week movie lives. You can only blame marketing and fluff for how it starts, not staying power.
K, agreed. That crap film maybe gone in 3 weeks, but it still made millions and is considered a success. Increcibles was awesome, loved that flick. That's the point though Mac, Blizzard didn't release everywhere at once, and as such the numbers have grown since release cause the've added a few mill along the way by releasing into other areas. Marketing does have something to do there. I do agree though that it is mainly present at a release, and thereafter it's something else.
Stop nerfing my examples A footrace is an example of a linear contest :pDo shareholders get antsy when a company that made large profits tells them they didn't make as much profit as some other company? In the same industry? With the same resources? Absolutely. You have to make it apples and oranges. SOE reports it's earnings to it's shareholders. SOE is a huge company with years of experience in MMO's. Blizzard comes along, a much smaller company (at least it was when WoW was starting) and blows SOE's marketshare and stock value down the crapper. Are SOE stockholders now antsy that, maybe, they were backing the wrong horse? If you owned stock in SOE and saw a smaller company come and show you how incompetant you were, would you still have faith in them?
I just don't think it is so linear. Blizzard is not a small company, and since being bought by Vivendi, How can you call them small? I understand your point though, i'd be pretty bum'd if i'd placed my bets on SOE. Both SOE and Blizzard went out to make a Blockbuster, SOE with EQ2 and Blizz with WOW. WoW won that race. I'm just trying to suggest that not every race features SOE and WoW. In todays world of big multi-conglomerates, sometimes it's best to find your niche and go for it, and you know what, i'm happy to be in that niche if someone (such as yourself) wants to make such an MMO. *crosses fingers*
I didn't call anyone an idiot, don't be so dramatic I pay $30/month to a gym I never visit. I'm an idiot. Why am I an idiot? Because I'm throwing my money away on something I never use, on the off chance that I might one day get the energy and drive to use it. Paying for a game I don't play makes me an idiot, so if I'm paying, I'm playing. If I don't enjoy it, I don't play, and I don't pay. All MMO's out there keep your characters for a while, so it's possible to stop paying and come back later without losing anything, so if people are paying, they're playing, and it really doesn't matter if they SAY they enjoy it or not. That better?
Lol, actually you did. "Because only a true idiot pays $15/month to do something they don't enjoy." I was pointing out that many of my friends are paying for something that they don't enjoy, perhaps not entirely (due to their being some stuff they probably like), but they still don't enjoy much of it. Hence how you managed to call my friends true idiots. Between you and me though, that's not that far from the truth.
Compared to the Asian and US markets, they are small. I'm not saying down under isn't important, just that Blizzard's resources are very likely still constrained from the growing pains. My daughter has 8 characters, ranging from 15 to 45, and doesn't have a panda pet (something she reminds me of regularly). She does herbalism and tailoring, raids with her friends and sits in Stormwind for hours, chatting with her buds. She'll delete a toon and make a new one just because she met a new low-lvl friend and wants to play with them.
yeah, compared to Asian and US markets it is small, but nevertheless it is rather insulting to purchase a product in your country to find the service favours someone else. A little consideration wouldn't have cost much and would have helped a lot, but helping people doesn't always make business sense apparently. Sounds like your daughter has found a new version of MSN. :P
The spigots (mages) are happy as clams right now, thanks to the 10 water/summon fix Paladins just got lots of loving too Talk to any individual paladin on the forums and they'll bitch, because that's what forum campers do. We have 10 paladins in our guild and the only one who's not happy is so because she can't taunt
Lol, mages happy with water, i'll tell my guild mate that he's supposed to be happy. If you have paladins in your guild who wanted to be just a healer in plate, then yep they'll be happy. If you have friends like I do that played a paladin because of what Blizzard advertised the class to be initially then they are disappointed. From Manual. "...geared towards physical battle more than spellcasting prowess." "The Paladin is a tough melee fighter with great health, excellent protection and very strong buffs." Can you perhaps see why many don't want to be up the back in cloth!
It is server-wide, both factions, with HUGE content changes that affect the whole server. The top 5 guilds on our server, who always talked crap to each other and were generally competitive, are now working as one to make this happen, and the same is happening on other servers. It is the first time I've ever seen anything like it, and it's amazing to watch.
lol, and they couldn't have done an event without using a giant grind that inflates the prices of many tradeskill components?
I submit suggestion tickets, talk to GM's, email blizzard, and talk to people I know who work there.
Suggestion tickets go to who? GM's are not DEVS! I've emailed blizzard as well and the reply was try the suggestion FORUM! LOL, not everyone can know someone who works there.
I can answer one of your questions very quickly..."Why do I want my daughter fed 'if it's too hard, quit and play somewhere else'?" Because it's a GAME. When she's at school, and it's too hard, she plows through. When she's on the softball field and it's too hard, she swings away. Life sucks, but there needs to be places where it isn't, especially places where I PAY to PLAY.
Nod. I definately concede that point Mac. Death penalties and punishment for failure is perhaps not what we should expect from our entertainment. I'd like to try a game that gives me such fear, but i dont' know if i'll enjoy it or not. It is kind of like doing extreme sports, but in the end you are not risking anything as extreme as your life. Nevertheless, WoW rarely rewards skill over time spent, and mostly rewards peoples attendance, which is what i want less in my games. Initially we all thought that there was some trick, something in the lore that we needed to find out in order to find the secret to beating Onyxia. I loved that, sounded cool and exciting that we had to search through the rich lore of Warcraft to find the big dragon's weakness. NOPE! Came down to where people stand, and what ledge they need to jump on!
"True dat. If the girls are also idiots then they will stay, if they have half a brain they'll realise that it's more fulfilling to talk to the wall that the pretty idiot."
I'm going to carefully step away from the girl bashing part of that reply
hmm....it is kinda harsh. I move to stricken latent teenage angst from the record! >_<
"and yet, blizzard is doing nothing to hear the opinion of the 4.9 million. As they don't use the forums. So....doesn't that sound a little dangerous and misguided for them then?"
You don't know that.
I don't know that they are either! Why don't they show us how they are listening to us, rather than let us form a negative opinion on the other. If they are silent, yes we can read that they are listening, but all we are doing is assuming. Any conversation requires acknowledgement from both sides, and yet Blizz is being quiet about it. I don't think that is smart, but then again i don't have a major in communications so maybe they have some magic esp device that works it all out for them, who knows! Looking at stats and figures on their servers doesn't tell them how people feel about the content, just that they are doing it.
During my divorce, I learned something very important about communications...if you and I are discussing something, just because I don't act like you want me to act, or I don't agree with you, does not mean I don't understand your point. Just because Blizzard is not doing what you want them to, or what you think they should do, does not mean they can't hear you or aren't listening. They are listening, and people are talking. They get 1,000's of suggestions/day via the in-game communication systems, a GM told me that a few weeks ago, in response to one of my suggestions.
Sorry to hear about divorce. Yes, it doesn't mean you don't understand my point, but if you make no effort to show that you do then the communication is a little pointless. Or if you act contrary to what what was said then we must conclude that you didn't understand. We want Bananas blizzard!! Here ya go folks, some apples for ya cause ya asked for em! Um....but we didn't ask for apples, we wanted Bananas. No you didn't, you asked for apples and you got them. 'sigh'. Meeting Stones and Dishonourable Kills are examples of this.
Blizzard was actually the small studio, and if you watch the small studios, they all work hard to become big studios so they don't HAVE to gamble with the indies.
Blizzard = Vivendi Universal which hardly makes them a small studio. They started out small yes, but so did most others. Yeah, you're right about small wanting to be big, but i'd also say they regret it in some degress later. Look at how many people have left blizzard since Vivendi took over. I've read recently the sad saga that was Origin's dealings with Sony. I think we need more people wanting to throw money at MMOs without controlling them!!
Only time will tell, I'm afraid.
I hope you're right Mac, cause then i can play WoW again! WOOT!
It has everything to do with designing an MMO. An MMO with no content dies inside 5 years, because no one cares about the game. It becomes a MUSH, a chat room that people hang out in until something better comes along, distilling down to 10,000 people who represent the core target audience and the servers are moved to some guy's house where he runs the game from there to cut costs. Illidan will indeed be in the game, way down the road when the lvl cap is 100 I'm sure. And they have to put the content into the world, that's why we're playing it...to live it. I WANT to fight Illidan! I want to fight Arthas! I don't care how often I die, I want to be a part of that, because the cool factor is beyond belief! Now, ask someone why they fight the boss in the plane of time in EQ, and they will rattle off loot drops. Ask us why we fight Arthas and be prepared for the story
I agree, but the same thing we are talking about would have had just as much an effect if we were playing Warcraft 4 rather the WoW. Warcarft Lore is rich and diverse and it is a large boon for WoW, it is another added element that makes the game last for people after they no longer find the 'game' part any fun! Illidan IS in the game and will be the final boss for the expansion. Not lvl 100, but 70. You may want to fight Illidan, but if you kill him you kill one of the best characters in the lore, and then eventually nobody cares why you are killing him but what loot he drops. Very few players i encounter in the game care two short **** about the lore, all they care about is what lewt he drops. Why will we be fighting Arthas? Cause he's there, and blizz has to feed the hungry mouths. Arthas is the penultimate bad guy, everyone loves him. Most people who are experts on WoW lore dread the day he is turned into another lewt grind. Everyone loves Illidan as well, he is the world's most famous shit-stirer, i don't want to grind him for lewt. In Warcraft games, you play AS the heroes, here we are just peons who got together and think we can bash our betters with our pitchforks. To me, it's actually insulting if we just raid Illidan. I think he shouldn't be killable but that we, as players serve is a different purpose, in that we must return him to sanity as lately he has lost it. But NO, MMOs are all about the stupid freaking lewt, so most likely wouldn't happen. I wait to see what blizzard does next to slowly kill off everything fun and interesting in their lore, but hey it's there to mess with as they wish.
There are lore reasons why we c an't get in to Quel, it was destroyed during the war. I understand that it's a convenient excuse to cover it not being developed yet, but I'd MUCH rather have that then a hole suddenly appearing and a zone being on the otherside, full of stuff we know nothing about, including why there's a hole there, beyond "there is a hole there because I spent $50 to put a hole there by buying the expansion." See above, if you don't like grinding, you don't like games. What are you doing in Diablo/NWN/EQ/CoH/CS if not grinding? What is grinding? Doing the same thing over and over again for little or no gain. Show me a game where you're not grinding.
Yes but lore never said the way was blocked! In fact, according to lore it SHOULDN'T be blocked, but Blizz made stuff up to suit it's purpose. In saying that however, i am glad that they did think to make stuff up rather than what you mention in EQ, however lame the excuse may be.
Sorry, my bad on generalising on the grind. If you are grinding interesting challenging content then that is what I would call fun. If you are doing an activity which features no challenge, is about as interesting as picking on kids smaller than you, then i don't find that fun or a reasonable excuse for content.
Here's a number I'd love to see...how many of WoW's free trial tickets turn into subscriptions? I know mine did, as did my kids. THAT would be the key statistic there.
Yep, and considering the early parts of the game are the most fun, then i wouldn't be surprised if that figure was high. Compared to other games (as far as i'm aware), WoW is easy to lvl to end-game, and it is there where things need to hold interest or people won't stay. At the start of the game you can play with friends that you know and like, at the end of the game you HAVE to deal with people who don't like or wouldn't normally deal with just to have something to do. The group of people i played with were fantastic, i made friends with quite a few people from all over Australia, NZ and the United States, and yet we as a group of about 15 people couldn't progress in the game. We've had to get more and more people so that we have a chance of anything in the end-game, and with that has come more and more people that quite frankly we would have preferred to do with out. But unfortunately, we don't have a choice as the number of people available at our playtimes is limited.
I totally understand your point, and as I mentioned, my own MMO wouldn't have the 5 million man mass appeal. My point is, I'm not going to get funding for my indie, any more than venture capitalists fund indie projects, because there's no money in it.
I think there is more potential money in it than people currently think, due thankfully to the sudden increase in people playing MMOs (thanks WoW). It's actually people like Brad McQuaid who've done the big boy thing, that now have the opportunity to step out and get funding for more risky niche stuff. (I know you don't overly like what he's doing, but he's at least doing something)
The best indie MMO gets to compete not only with blizzard, but an even greater opponent...human apathy.
True, but i reckon that all an MMO has to achieve is to be better than EQ2 & Others in order to get enough subs to be self-sustaining. It doesn't have to tackle WoW directly, it's too goliath now and as you pointed out human apathy is also a problem. If someone can make an MMO that targets a different market than WoW and is better than the other MMOs, then I think we'll have something that will still last a decent time hopefully, as long as it delivers on what it promises.
LOL I'm an old man, I can say things like that
Still wasn't fair. :P
And not aiming at my daughter and her friends is a huge fiscal mistake, as they are the future, quite literally. My daughter's boyfriend will want to play an MMO when she gets one. Which one will he play? How many of us have wished they had a mate who played with them? When you get one, are you then going to dictate what she plays, or just go with the great luck that she plays at all?
Perhaps. I'm hoping companies are capable of accepting such 'fiscal mistakes' though, as i don't want all my gaming saturated with fluffy bunnies and panda pets thank you very much!
"Working as intended" is my favorite Blizz line
What The? I hate that line, it explains nothing. If you intended something, FINE! Help us understand the Why so we aint so shitty at you!! I can't believe you'd like that sort of communication, it irk'd me so much!
It's not enough to complete the quest, one must also know that others tried, failed, and suffered for it. More then laziness, I dislike that trend in online games...the need to make sure others are not having an easier time then me.
Fair enough. Though that attitude is propagated by the raiders who think that no one should get anything in any other way then the way they get it. I love the whinge "If people could progress without raids, then no one would raid!". I don't know about you, but that says to me that an alternative solution to raids would be considered more fun! Which is what WoW is all about now isn't it? 1-60 - FUN | 60+ - Boring (For Me)
Yup, and Wow gives me that all the time, on a myriad of scales. Be it a single encounter I just can't beat, or a boss our 40-man can't overcome. Again, I don't need to be slapped in the head everytime I don't succeed to be driven to find the right solution, the solution itself is enough of a motivator.
I should have said that these games don't have it anywhere the same degree that games used to. How does it challenge YOU in your 40 man if you are not the one deciding the strategies. In raids people are told where to stand, who to heal/kill, and pretty much what button to press. You might enjoy it, but that bores me to tears. The other point i should have made Mac is that the game is not designed to reward those that creatively solve a problem or solve it in a more challenging way. The loot isn't any better when you 5-man, so do it in 10 if all you're after is loot. Sure you can complete quests in 5-man, but considering there are only a handful of them that don't give much for a highlvl character then why bother. WoW does have it to a certain degree (more in raids), but in no way near what i'm talking about. It rarely challenges the mind unless your attempting something outside of the box, which is not rewarded anyway.
Many of the best quest pieces in the game fall from quests at 60. You can no longer boss-run DM, it's been fixed. No-priest runs to Scholo are fun I'm all epic armor, tier 1 right now. Zerging is throw enough folks at it to make it trivial, which we don't do. We don't 15 man UBRS, we 5-man it because of our gear. There's a group of people who have 10-manned Onyxia, and she's a 40 man instance. Because of the limits, people find new ways to challenge and push the envelope
Which quests are those? Do you mean the collect lots of mats and give me 50 gold quests? You 5-man UBRS, awesome. How does the game reward you for that? They 10-manned Onyxia! I noticed that, that's freaking awesome. Once again, how does the game reward them for their efforts. Does the game care? You could do no priest runs in scholo if you're all epic!
I guess i would like a game that rewards people that challenge themselves, that think beyond the box to complete something very difficult. WoW doesn't do that. Onyxia doesn't care if you bring 40 or 10, she's gonna do the same damn crap she'd done every other time and so is ultimately predictable. If she wasn't so predictable, I doubt that 10 would ever be able to do that. But unfortunately, WoW is not that game. In the end, i don't really expect it to be, but it is a hope for future games that come hereafter that don't just rely on being a clone of WoW in a bid for the mulah, and go for something dynamic with depth and yet still....FUN!
Comments
mmm i think u will find m8 that there is no build up of xp, when the crusade comes out,
and on your points about weather its fun or not...without question its fun, but your argment about weather folks go mad raping instances for purples....i dont agree with that m8,
take me, been playng since beta, i have only 1, 60 and that has no purples at all, because i cant be done with the countless hours you have to spend in instances, or the "again",countless hours queing for bg's
for gods sake is a joke, oh and dont get me started on the fact some folk even have to que just to get ingame....should never happen with the cash these guys are making....
finally thow m8 i think what the arguments here are, the sheer fact that there is no endgame to speak of no matter how u play the game, and i also think now more and more folk are coming round to this fact to
....and also now put that along with the probable months that the crusade is going to be before it comes out, that also will get rid of a hell of a lot of players through boredom alone.
and all in all, i think here to, the content of the expansion, is in my opinion, very very very poor, just more of the exact same things,
and its that what i dont like ...there offering nothing brand new, just i think they are being very presumtious, to think we are all gonna jump stright out and buy the expansion the minute it comes out......you see i think blizz are in for a sharp shock, when this finally comes out....to many folks will be bored, and only the diehards will want it i think........
but i do see were u are coming form as regards the fun aspect...i just feel a game of this magnitude, and all its proffit...the expansion is a bit of a cop out......could have , and should have been very differant.
Don't know how accurate this is but this is what EBgames says about the xpac.
http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/259896.asp
Thats a first of July release date and a $40 price tag. My biggest complaint is if they don't intend to release the thing for 7 months (again EB isn't known for it's accuracy on Release dates/pricing) why the hell did they release any info about it now? Wait till at least you are ready for beta testing before you start extolling the virtue of all the new content. All Blizzard is doing letting out all this info so early is setting themselves up for a fall when BC finally goes live and everyone is already gone playing all new MMOs that will come out before it.
I can understand hyping a new MMO two years in advance of release to build momentum and a fan base. That is good business sense, it makes people excited about the product and creates industry buzz. But this is only an expansion pack to a pre existing game why the hell are they announcing content for it almost a year ahead of any possible release date? They are just asking for things like this forum tread. There has been so much speculation about almost every aspect of what little they did announce that by the time it actually goes on shelves and is playable it will be nothing but a disappointment.
I'll admit that I haven't read every post in this thread and that there are tons I could have quoted, but this one was last, so I'll use it as an example.
Have any of you looked at Hero's Journey yet? I know its not yet released, but Simutronics is being extremely innovative in their creation of the game. Yes, its their first graphical MMO, but they have text-based MMO's that have been around something like 15 years. They know their MMORPGs. And, they listen.
You mentioned, bobo, that the player base is the best resource any MMO company has and yet most ignore their requests. Simu went a step above and beyond in my opinion. They've gathered leaders from other MMO's and put them in a closed-forum discussion with the developers themselves. Both sides are free to ask questions and I've yet to see a time where a developer hasn't stepped in and answered a question posted. Heck, they even have weekly screenshots here and devs answer questions here as well.
There have also been times when the players in the closed forum have suggested things and the developers have taken it into serious consideration, coming back with more questions on details of how the players would like to see something implemented.
As for those who say they're tired of games where they can't make an impact on the world, read up on Hero's Journey. They're implementing a new system that gives players much more freedom and choices on how their journey unfolds. Families (clans) can form guilds and ally with other clans and guilds. Enough influence in the guilds, and the leading faction can change. Its very dynamic.
As far as crafting goes, sure, it has to be limited in some aspects because of the programming details, but you won't find cookie cutter patterns for everything like in Warcraft. You'll be much more free and likely able to make things pretty much as you please.
There's also plans for guild and player housing. Player-driven content is a high priority for them. Their text-based games are a prime example. There will also be much more GM interaction than the average player is used to. Their GMs have an interface that allows them to continually add new areas, critters, etc. as they wish so the world will be ever-changing. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of GM-run invasions either. They're quite popular in the text-based games they run now.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is...For those of you who are bored with WoW and looking for something with more depth, where the developers listen to what the players want and actually do something about it, take a look around. There's a thread here with links to all the pertinent information and screenshots and Q&A's answered right from the developers. Hero's Journey might just be what you're looking for.
-Lihai
When PoP came out in EQ, it made the Luclin content seem obsolete to some people, though to other guilds it remained a point ot interest on the way to gearing up for planar progression .... and yes both expansions involved a LOT of grind, though people still enjoyed it ( and still do ) -- the same pattern repeated with each new expansion geared towards end-game content, especially when there would be a level cap increase.
How do you approach making level 60 farming / gear still viable once the level cap goes up to 70 ?
Its simple -- you make it necessary to have the 'uber' level 60 gear to be able to have much of a chance of fighting your way up to 70, which I have no doubts will be the case in WoW once the expansion is released.
Though since the thread is more of a question of what people will likely be doing once the expansion goes live ... that's a simple one as well !!!
As we all know, balance is key to game mechanics ---
And now that the Horde will have their very own sexy elven race, they too can have just as many naked dancing elves in their cities and outposts !!!
What will people be doing then when the expansion is released ??
Creating a level 1 Blood Elf and having a naked dance party in Oggrimar , of course !!!
( the sad thing being, though that's a wee bit of sarcasm on my part, we all know it's inevitable .... )
~~ Releasing info on the expansion this far in advance is no different than how they handled BG's , which were meant to be a part of the game's launch ... so it doesn't suprise me in the least ...
~~ For what it's worth, I see the tons of threads on the forums speculating on what will or won't be a part of the expansion as a good thing. If release truely is that far off yet, I have no doubts that ideas will be implemented directly out of some of those same threads. Just look at any UI changes that have come into the game since launch -- I can't think of one that wasn't directly inspired by player's custom mods ( aka the player base did a lot of dev. work for the UI teams )
Nicely said Fin, pretty much sums up what i have thought was off about WoW. Blizzard's attitude is a rather odd one really, they play on the 'don't be harsh on us it's our first MMO, we are learning' line and yet ignore their playerbase which have had at times more experience at least playing MMOs. That is not to say that they should listen to every whiner on their forums, good god no, but still.....they have ignored so much.
Couple of points.
In a game designed around grouping and raiding in the end-game, where the fek is the LFG or LFRaid tool. They already had a LFG tool in use in beta, and removed it cause they said no one was using it, of course they didn't actually tell anyone it was there either, and then created meeting stones. /boggle.
Guild tools are woeful, and make it hard to manage a guild properly. For an end-game that forces you to run big raid guilds, they really don't help at all there.
They balance classes to a point where players clearly state that they simply don't enjoy playing the class, and Blizzard claims that it was that they intended. Why the hell would any company want to create a class that no-one wants to play.
They struggle with Content and yet ignore requests asking for player created/driven content. PVP is an example of when good content can last a long time because the players drive it rather than the devs, instead the devs had to make sure that they controlled it down to the n'th degree. Hence pathetic Battlegrounds and Honour Grind.
Player created quests, PVP/Raid Noticeboards, Player/Guild Housing, Guild Aliances, Taverns that are fun with mini-games (dice/checkers/darts/poker) and maybe with chairs that you could actually sit in, with many many more options for content that could be driven by players rather than devs.
The devs seem to think that they can drive this game into the ground and that in my opinion is what they are doing, if they ever woke up and realised that the best resource any MMO company has is its players then maybe we would see something stunning. Until that time comes, i'll be waiting for Vanguard thnxvrymch.
I agree with a lot of what you have to say, Boboslave. This mmorpg is not "player friendly" in terms of players making a difference in-game. In my opinion, a true mmorpg should have the capability for player-driven content, economy, society. WOW is a golden-road already laid out for thr players, and you get what Blizz gives you, and that's it!
That is why, I am also waiting for Vanguard!
Being one of the 5m sheep who are easily satisfied I am certain that some extra characters and levels are bound to keep me occupied for another eternal lifetime.
Some gerenal points.
1.With 39 characters at the last count the one thing I would most appreciate is the upper limit of characters removed. Only allowing 9 (or was it 10) per server is annoying, limiting the total number is just plain rude.
2. Allowing guilds to create bank accounts as well as just players is an essential requirement IMHO, relying on the guild banking character to be on line to move stuff around sucks!
3. Quicker instances are definatley needed! I dont mind the occasional 4 hour foray but I gave up golf as it took half a day to get round!
4. Flying Mounts = sign me up
5. Ability to climb -> definatlely needed, can anyone get to those pretty waterfalls in Elwyn forest you see from the Griffon?
6. Shades (Sunglasses), ok without retraining for engineering, I need a smooth set to go with my Tux.
7. New races. Come on I have 39 characters already, gimmee gimmeee
8. Professions... ok small point but here goes. To wear a full set of Dark Iron Armour you need to be armoursmith, to get Thunderfury you need to be weaponsmith... There needs to be a way that guildies can make for their own guild or something, its just silly! (or Damn expensive to completely retrain to get the kit).
9. New lands... can I swim there please ;-)
10. Ability to jump of Griffons mid flight would be handy
ah I see this turned into wish list...
ok then one more
Can someone else make a decent MMORPG for Apple Mac's ;-P
I love how people who are not inside a demographic have contempt for those within it. "So what if 5 million people like it? They're easily amused idiots!" Elitist snobs who are unable to see beyond the end of their own hedonistic noses.
WoW is my 25th MMO, and IMHO one of the best to date. The word "best" however is a misnomer. Does it have the best combat? No, other games have done that better. Best crafting? Again, some have done it better. So why is it best? Because it does ALL of them very well.
No MMO to date has "end game content". EQ? Expansion-pack-du-jour, come look at new graphics, fight different-looking mobs for pointless loot. SWG? Puh-lease. CoH? I'm listening, but I'm not hearing any other MMO that does "end game content" any better then WoW.
Patch 1.9 came out today, with a TON of fixes, adjustments, and 2 new zones. Typically, I tend to get burned out after a year and retire from an MMO, usually because I'm in some alpha/beta of another MMO (yes, I'm an addict, sue me). WoW is the first to truly hook me. Each expansion pack that comes out brings something that piques my interest, and this is where Blizzard truly shines for me.
In every MMO, there seems to come a time when the devs go "You know what? I really hate this game and these players. Let's release a patch to TRULY screw up the game and offend everyone, make them go away and we can work on something else!" SWG, CoH, EQ, pick one, and Sony is the absolute worst for this. Global sweeping patches to piss off 10,000's of folks and make them go away.
Blizzard seems genuinely interested in building on the content and community in the game with each patch. Power gamers who hit 60th in a week of release are going to be bored and leave...they always do, every MMO, there is no pleasing them and no point in trying. WoW is 5 million players strong and growing (6 new shards this week). All the power gamers are gone and yet the game grows, imagine that
About the expansion, I can't wait to see it. They give us free content and instances in patches, what a purchased expansion pack will contain only boggles the mind
I hate the rumor that the Pandarians were the new Alliance race and the Chinese protested so it was removed, though it kinda makes sense. I, for one, would like to see a large, ugly Alliance race just to balance the field. I don't want a new class, but I'd really like to see a swap of classes...Blood Elves can be Paladins, and the new Alliance race can be Shaman. The concept of having a Shaman AND a Paladin on a raid is like Xmas !
Edit: Just had to add this...What's wrong with Blizzard? They don't listen to their customers? LOL, too funny. Every patch, every fix, every adjustment is about Blizzard's customers. What people don't seem to understand is that there are FIVE MILLION OF THEM!!! Five Million. You and the 100 people you know for a fact have your exact same problem represent approximately .002% of the people Blizzard has to listen to. You go write up a petition with your little problem and get 100,000 people to sign it and you're still .2%. That is LESS than statistically insignificant, but forum posters can't see that...I am the customer, I am right, and Blizzard is an idiot for not seeing it my way!!!! Right.
Every patch is about fixing problems. Every patch is about player complaints and issues. You personally don't know Five Million People, so you couldn't possible understand the scope of managing that kind of customer base. Just because your personal little quirk (even if you know 10,000 folks that have it) isn't fixed does not mean Blizzard isn't listening. < 15% of all MMO players post on forums, so Blizzar is getting over 4.5 million people's worth of input from channels you can't see.
And, for your information, the expansion pack is next to nothing about fixing things. You don't charge money to fix things, you fix them for free, which is what Blizzard does. Expansion packs are about making money and attracting new customers, plain and simple. Blizzard is a business, and as such has as much of a responsibility to its stock holders as it does to it's customers. You don't like it? Vote with your dollar. 5 million have.
Hi Mac, I loved playing World of Warcraft, it was a great game. I have however, voted with my dollar and quit playing, mainly because I feel that the direction they are taking the game is more to do with their Vision rather than the customers who are paying them to be entertained and have fun.
Waiting in Queues - is not fun.
Mindless Grinding - is not fun.
Honour Grind - is not fun.
Raiding - not fun for many, fun for others.
plus more features that are not fun.
Now i do understand that people can see these things as fun, and i say more power to them. All that means is they, like you said, are easily amused.
What channels that i don't see are they getting input from? Many of these people who aren't present on the forums would most likely not email blizzard, and even if they did there is no email for suggestions only the forums. I haven't seen Blizzard take any polls/votes, the only feedback they've asked for has been through the forums. So whilst it is correct to say a small percentage of the population is on the forums, it is also correct that they are the only ones able to provide constructive/negative feedback (apart from quitting).
Issues that have been around since Beta are yet to be addressed, Oceania customers are treated poorly (6 new shards and not one for the bloated over populated oceania servers), very little has been done by blizzard to foster community. No LFG Tool, Poor Guild Management Tools, No Guild Alliances, No Guild Bank, Poor Raid Toolset, No Gameplay apart from raiding/PVP grind at end-game. They seem to take the lazy attitude of 'meh, let's just let them mod it'.
You are right that every patch is about customers complaints and issues, usually about the LAST Patch! You are also right that I couldn't understand the scope of managing that size of playerbase, I would think you'd have to do more than what they are doing though. The level of interaction between Blizzard and the community is miniscule, with changes being made without explanation why, many players no longer even trust the devs. Talk to Paladins!
The expansion has EVERYTHING to do with fixing things, Casual Gamers have been told sorry no content for you, wait till expansion. It might not be about fixing particular bugs, but it is ALL about fixing the things that LACK in the game. As it is, i ain't buying the expansion, they can go screw themselves. Yes Blizzard is business, but there are many ways of making money and IMO Blizz has gone about it in a way that i cannot respect. I don't blame them for wanting to make money, but they've already made a crap load of money and yet refuse to do things that would make portions of the playebase happy with the excuse 'it's to hard, it takes time, wah wah wah'.
Blizzard does listen, but it's a little too selective.
...and yet 100,000's of new people join every day.
If you were ragging on Horizons or The Matrix Online, games who's evidence supports your concerns, I'd agree with you. What you are doing is standing at the finish line as Lance comes across it for the 6th time and shouting at him why he's a loser.
Blizzard has done what no other MMO developer in the history of the market has done. Let me rephrase that...Blizzard has done more than ALL MMO's every made, anywhere, ever, combined. If you add up the populations (pretend they are discreet and not the same folks in diff games) and added them up, you would not hit 5 million people. This, from a developer who has never done an MMO.
What does this mean? It means that, with 1/3 the experience in MMO's of Sony, they have created a game 20x larger then anything they could conceive of. Why am I arguing with you? Because you are arguing from a position of idealism. Let me see if I can't get us on a level playing field...
Give me an example of an MMO that has done all that you are looking for. There isn't one, or you'd still be playing it. OK, how about half the things you're looking for? EQ? EQ2 still has problems I saw in EQ1's beta. SWG? Don't make me laugh. No one has done what you want, so why should Blizzard be expected too? No MMO has what you are looking for, or you'd still be playing it and not here bitching, so what you are looking for does not exist.
Given that, I'll make matters worse by pointing out, as bad as you think Blizzard's model is, it is going to get MUCH worse before it's over. Why? Because they are doing what they are doing and making a FORTUNE doing it, so why change?
One of my biggest frustrations about EQ was that it sucked so badly, yet did so well, that most games after it tried to mimic that model to capture some of that success....which is the "right" thing to do, commercially, but the 'wrong" thing to do because it propagates such a poor system. Blizzard has blown Sony out of the water you can not only expect Blizzard to continue doing exactly what they're doing, expect others to do the same.
I guess what I'm saying is, standing outside of McDonalds, looking in the windows, wishing the served steak while millions are inside enjoying burgers means you aren't a WoW customer, so why post criticisms in a thread about an expansion pack you have no intention of ever buying? Why aren't you off to the next MMO disappointment?
BTW, for those waiting on Vanguard and DDO...*scoff* OMFG, are those 2 games AWEFUL! DDO will never break 150k accounts, and if Vanguard sees 100k, I'll be surprised. "Oh, but the number of customers doesn't reflect how good it is!" LOL, OK, but the number of customers certainly reflects:
1. how long the game will be around
2. how much energy the developers will invest into it to keep it going
3. how much high-end content will eventually be in it instead of scrapping it for something else shiny
Blizzard's money is in returning customers. Sony's is in expansion packs to provide crap, and starting new games instead of fixing the old one. WTF was the justification for making EQ2 when EQ was running "fine"? Why do what they did to SWG?
When you have a dev company to hold up and say "THIS is how it should be done!" I'll understand your position, but you don't. You have an ideal that no MMO dev has ever done, nor will they ever now that Blizzard has coated their model in Platinum.
Yes...5 Million is a big number. Congrats to them, i never said it wasn't an achievement, and i thank them most heartily for expanding the market. I'm going to use McDonalds as an example cause...well you did it first. :P
It's like someone who has never tried food before (hypothetical of course) and was introduced to Big Mac, they loved and enjoyed it. So much that they ran off and told all their other friends who'd never tried food before to come get some. They came, they enjoyed it too. Now as enjoyable as Macca's is for them, someone introduces them to..burgers that are made with real steak, and lots of...well...you know..the lot. The burger is the size of their head, and it tastes so VERY FREAKING GOOD! So now many of those initial macca lovers are like, given the choice, i'll go for the 'size of my head' burger please.
Ah...ok. But is WoW successful because it is a fantastic MMO or is it because it's a fantastic game? I know that sounds pedantic, but you can't treat blizzard as if they have no experience in making games, and you also can't believe that their success is based purely of their game design without taking their history and marketing powers into consideration. yeah, guilty as charged. I know i'm an idealist at times, but if no one argues for better then guess what....we don't get any better. WoW is a great game, and i'd say a well polished MMO, but i will never call it the best or greatest MMO (i don't care how many subs Blizz can wave in my face) because it lacks the things that IMO give the genre the greatest potential. I can't give you an example, cause no one has done it yet. How is that an excuse however, to not push these companies to strive towards that kind of goal? Why on earth would we want more McDonalds when we could push for something more meaty?Why should Blizzard be expected to? Because they're in the best position to do so. They are the most successful MMO company to date and yet take no risks, they have made a bucket load of money and can afford to investigate more avenues and yet they still bring out more burgers that look exactly like the old ones and call them new. Perhaps it is unfair to expect too much from Blizzard, companies with far less resources are the ones that should take all the risks right?
Why Change? How bout because people change, your customers change and eventually you have to adapt or perish. It is easy for Blizzard to look at their success and think exactly what you have said, and i believe if anything that has the biggest potential for their downfall. WoW has brought many many gamers into the MMO fold, gamers that haven't a clue what the genre can offer, and right at the moment WoW is not offering all that much. What it does offer is very well done and quite enjoyable, but its also very very small. Will there be a WoW Killer of a game, LOL, doubt it. New Games will be released though, and although they won't have 5-million players, they won't need them to be a success, and they also won't need that many to at least chip away from WoW. I know countless numbers of people who play WoW atm because there isn't anything better, which is true. There will be though, and that is what the problem is. I'd suggest that Sony blew itself out of the water, and Blizzard waded in. I can see them doing exactly that Mac, which is why i whinge, i don't want Blizz to end up just being another Sony.Actually it's like standing outside of McDonalds and wishing they served a healthy alternative to their burgers, or perhaps wishing that they had more variety of choices in the restaurant. And ya know what, McDonalds did just that. Salads Plus etc. Why did they do it? Shrug, perhaps healthier alternatives like Subway started eating at their profits?
Why post criticisms? Cause i like WoW, and i'd love to see it get better. As i said, it's a great game, but i'd like to see someone explain why they think its a great MMO when it lacks so much. Here's the thing, some of things that it lacks, CAN BE ADDED. MMOs change, and develop. The problem is priorities, Blizzard's priorities see them adding more of the same plain horrible tasting burgers and giving it shiny marketing. There is potential for so so much more. They have the money, they just don't see the point in spending when they can get people to swallow the same old crap wrapped differently.
oh, i actually did initially intend on buying the expansion, my will to do so has recently been eroded by the latest efforts at community relations by Blizzard. I guess i'm kinda using the space as rant space, so my apologies.
I hope you are surprised, as it is a bleak future for this genre if all we've got is McDonalds, cause then all we'll get is the Burger Kings, etc, etc. Unless you're in Vanguard BETA, i fail to see how you could even know if it is aweful or not, not enough info is known about implementation to know how things are going to work, so i think that's a bit pre-emptive and pointless. Also, as Brad from Sigil pointed out, they are not trying to have 5-million customers, as they don't need that to be a success. Considering you've already pointed out how all the other MMOs didn't have the population of WOW, then it is silly to think that population can answer your points so precisely. EQ and it's ilke had people playing for 4-5 years and are still going, WoW is a year old, i think we'll have to wait and see if your points are actually valid.PLEASE NOTE:
AN MMO DOES NOT NEED 5-MILLION SUBS TO BE SUCCESSFUL AND TO BE LONG RUNNING!
There are many companies that have the potential, Sigil is one, but the product of their efforts is not even released yet.2006 will see my friend, it will see. Or, it'll at least be interesting.
THAT BUD, IS MY GREATES FEAR. Why anyone would think that is a good situation is ultimately beyond me.Cheers Mac
I am on the same page as Bobo. If WoW is the McDonalds burgers of the MMO's then Vanguard is the IN-N-Out burgers of the MMO's. I'll eat IN-N-Out burgers anyday over McDonalds burgers. I'll take quality over quantity any time. I am not saying that WoW doesn't have any quality, but they seem content with what they got, and don't plan on changing anything. And WoW could use a major overhaul of new ideas to improve their game from their players. The potential WoW has is amazing, but they're not using their resources to make it better.
I am beta testing DDO right now (have been since alpha) and you may be right, MacAllen, that they may not see 150k, but that's ok. Personally, it's not my kind of MMO, but to others it's great. But, I have too disagree with you on Vanguard. It's the one MMO I am waiting for to come out. And Brad has stated that he's fine with 100k sub, he doesn't want a WoW, he has his money from EQ1, he just wants a great game he can play. Again personally, I think he's going to get at least 5x that amount. You'll be surprised!
Sorry for the delay, was up raiding in WoW all night
Actually I do. There have been a number of smaller asian games, but the only one to break a million was Lineage, and it never made it to 2 million (at least as of 2 years ago) and Lineage II is nowhere near as popular. Lineage + EQ + SWG + UO + EQ2 + CoH, all at their highest, isn't even 3 million players.
Actually, I stole the McDonalds comparison from earlier in the thread, I don't see WoW like that at all. It isn't trying to be all things to all people, it caters to a very specific demographic and, in doing so, does an excellent job.
The problem with your analogy is that 100,000's of those 5 million have played another MMO, so they've tasted food. And, if the other 4 million had "never tasted food", why is it that Sony, NCSoft, and Origin suck so bad that they can't lure starving people in off the street for a bite, but Blizzard can? And keep them? Raph Koster publicly stated, in the first year of SWG, that they were suffering a 25% turnover rate, and he was quoted as saying "that is an acceptable rate of churn." 25% of your people so unhappy that they leave and that's acceptable? No wonder the Sony games suck.
Fantastic games don't last 6 months. According to EBWorld, the average shelf life of a game, no matter how good it is, is 4 months. You buy it, you play it out, and within 4 months it's on your shelf and you're on to something else. People have been playing WoW for a year...how many games have you played for a year or more? More importantly, these people PAY, every month, to play this game, well after the 4 month shelf life of a game.
People who make great games do not always make great MMO's. Origin. Sony. Microsoft. All make great games, all suck at MMO's. Making a great game is easy.
So, what is a great MMO? In the scope of this conversation, I'm using the following definition:
1. The devs do not alienate the customers - indicator of success: people stay, population grows, does not shrink
2. The game has a sense of community - indicator of success: LOTS of people come, stay, and continue paying to play
3. The game is engaging and continues to challenge people - indicator of success: people buy the game, pay to continue playing it, well after the standard shelf life of a game
Now, you may not agree with those points, so for you WoW was not a success. However, that puts you in a very small minority. Why do I say that? Because in 2003, the MMO market was estimated at an MMO dev conference as being 1.2 million players, the sum total of people in the US who would spend money on an MMO on a monthly basis. Well, WoW has 1.9 million US customers, which means that 158% of the known MMO market is playing WoW. Since you're in that market, but not playing WoW, that puts you in the statistically insignificant part of the now 1.9 million people who play MMO's but not WoW.
I am so right there with you. I stood on my pulpit in SWG and wept tears of blood at Sony. I have been in 18 alpha/beta's of MMO's (I'm a sick addict, sue me) and in each one I was the whining, screaming person who KNEW it could be better and watched something I loved die horribly.
You say WoW's not the best, but you have none better. The handsomist guy in a room of ugly fellows is still the handsomest, my friend. WoW is the best MMO in history, but I am with you that there is a great deal of room for improvement. The list of things I'd add to WoW is pages and pages long.
You're not pushing the companies, you're complaining on a fan forum. Blizzard will not hear nor care about what you're saying over the ring of the cash register. This is like sitting in your living room and yelling at the football team on TV to do something different, and feeling justified in doing it because you might make a difference. The only other people who'll see you here are fanbois like us.
You want to make a difference? Do it yourself. I have 3 MMO's on my shelf that I'd love to make. If I ever secure the capital, I will, but I realized long ago that my yelling was for my own benefit and the best use of my energy was in infiltrating the games and communities, seeing what they did "wrong" (IMHO) and noting how I'd do it "right".
Risks? Are you out of your mind? Look at SWG. They took a "risk", and their population HALVED! When you are the most successful is the LAST time you take risks. Coke was #1, they changed their recipe and got TRASHED! When you are #1, you do EXACTLY what you're doing to KEEP you at #1.
Risks are what people on the bottom take, to try to find an edge. It has nothing to do with resources and everything to do with momentum. Believe it or not, at least in my opinion, WoW's success is VERY fragile. All it would take would be one major change, one alienation of a sector of the population (like EQ's making Shadowknights useless) and it would come down like a house of cards.
Every risk they take should be carefully measures, publicly presented and > 95% approved by the players.
It's funny how fanbois can say "it doesn't need 5 million players to be a success". Working as I have from the inside, I am well aware about the realities of the MMO business and nothing could be further from the truth. To create an MMO, you need 3 things: a concept, a developer, and a publisher. Before EQ, mom-and-pop shops would push together MMO's (M59, Jumpgate, Shattered Galaxy) and be happy with 25k players. EQ and it's 300k subscribers blew that model out of the water, and in the subsequent 4 years I registered with the forums of no less than 8 MMO's that never made it past the concept stage because the publisher pulled out, considering the project "not capable of EQ numbers".
Here, let me put it in business terms...WoW is not a complex game, it's a cartoon, in an already established genre. Given WoW's about the size of EQ2's world, and the graphics are not as complex, would you say that WoW cost more to make then EQ2? I'm going to assume you'd agree with me that EQ2 probably cost more to make, or at least on par. Let's throw a number out there...let's say 3 million dollars is how much it took to make.
Now, you're a publisher, an investor, in the market for an MMO. You have 2 offerings on the table. One is a really complex, well written and designed idea that fulfills all the needs of the fanbois, and could easily attract 100k customers. The other is a simple design that, while it is not the caviar of games, it will attract a broad market and bring in 5 million customers.
Where would you put your money?
"Oh, it won't happen that way!" It did. That is EXACTLY what EQ did to the MMO market when it came out, and WoW is doing exactly the same thing. Heck, even Asheron's Call 2 died last year due to it being a poor investment.
I can't argue that point, I'm afraid. Blizzard will never be another Sony, because Blizzard is in the market of getting millions of customers and keeping them, while Sony considers a 25% turnover rate "acceptable". Having worked directly with Sony customer support, I can tell you with personal experience, Sony hates it's customers.
I'm not saying Blizzard is perfect or a saint, they are a monolithic monster who only listens to the masses, but I'd rather that then a cynical developer who hates me.
Yes, but how long after they opened did they do it? Decades. Where there people standing outside wishing they had healthier food? Yup, but not enough. When you have billions served, hundreds/thousands/millions are insignificant. And yet, here McDonalds is, still #1.
Now we're back the handsomest man in a room of ugly guys. In the context of the room (MMO games on the market or in development) the guy (WoW) is the handsomest (best). Could he use some exercise, plastic surgery, a bath and a new wardrobe? Sure, and maybe they'll come, but until a handsomer man walks into that room, any woman in there gets to swoon for the least ugly
Don't apologize, this is fun
I enjoy debating such issues with articulate posters such as yourself 
I love people who set their expectations low enough that they're guaranteed to be successful
I'm going to enter the tour de france and set my success indicator that I come in last..woot! I won!
I can neither confirm nor deny that I'm in any alpha/beta tests. I can tell you that Vanguard makes EQ2 look pretty, and DDO makes Vanguard look pretty, and I consider EQ2 to be NASTY. Brad makes games that he wants to play...then sells them for a buck and goes onto the next game. That is not someone making games they want to play, that is someone getting their way and making a buck. DDO will be pushed later and later, eventually come out, stall at 150k folks, and WotC will pull the plug. Vanguard will be pushed, come out, trickle, and fade away. Neither of them have the strength to capture or hold the attention of any significant portion of the MMO market, certainly not away from WoW.
True that.
Not if it's 3 guys in a garage, running it off of their servers, like the classic MUD's of old. If you want to make a game that you and your buddies play, and that's your definition of success, then enjoy, but that is not an MMO....the first M is MASSIVE. Neverwinter Nights is more up your alley, just fix all the bugs and it's perfect.
A successful MMO is massive, vast, broad, and long lasting.
I've already seen many of the early versions of 2006 offerings and I'm not impressed, but I definately agree that it will be interesting.
I'm right there with you
Now, to share 2 secrets with you....
I was in the betas for CoH and EQ2, wrote the Prima guide for CoH and some of the EQ2 one, when WoW was coming out. I looked at the screenshots and press and considered it a childs toy, cartoony and not worth my time, because I was a SERIOUS MMO player. Maxxed in EQ2 and grew bored, maxxed in CoH and grew bored, and was not playing an MMO at all for awhile there. I was at my girlfriend's house when I saw her son playing some game. I stood over his shoulder and watched enraptured as he played, quested, did PvP, etc. After a bit I asked him what it was and he told me WoW. I was stunned. He gave me his free pass (masterful marketing by Blizz) and his CD's, I installed it at home and started playing...I was hooked. After playing it for a short while, I came to a conclusion, one that still sticks today...Blizzard designed WoW to be fun. I know that sounds obvious, but go with me on this.
I was sitting on a hill in EQ, back in the alpha when there were only 7 zones, and Brad was asking me how I liked it so far. I told him that I seemed to be dying a lot, and he shrugged and said "dying is a part of life in EQ, it's supposed to be hard." Being an old fart even at that time, I nodded sagely and agreed with him. Now, however, I know...he was wrong.
Dying is not fun. Failing is not fun. Losing is not fun. Everything worth having does not necessitate spending hours of trial and error until you succeed. Sometimes easy can be fun too. Even now, I'll be going along playing WoW and spot something that just stands out and shouts that it was designed by the developers to be fun. When you're young, you seek out hard things to be good at, things no one else can do, just so you can say you're the best. As you mature, it becomes less and less important to do hard things for their own sake, and just to enjoy what you're doing. This is the first secret of WoW.
The second secret of WoW? Women. Do you realize that WoW's female population is an order of magnitude higher then any other MMO in history? We're talking double digits of percentages of female players. Why? Because of 2 things: the first secret of WoW (see above), and the pretty factor. WoW is a BEAUTIFUL game. EQ2/DDO/Vanguard is drab, dark, and plastic. They will never draw female players in any significant amounts.
Why is that a big deal? A friend of mine who plays WoW stopped playing for a week or so to play something else, but his wife kept playing WoW because she had no interest in that other game. Within 2 weeks, my friend was back in WoW. Why? Because his wife got into WoW to be with him, she enjoyed the time they spent together, and she wasn't going to another game, especially one she didn't like.
Vanguard will come out, guys will go play, their girlfriends will either stay in WoW or quit playing all together, then resent the time their guys play in another game, without them, and they'll leave Vanguard. Women form relationships in the game, real friendships, that have nothing to do with 40-man raids and grinding faction. Women form a core of customers that will stay with WoW for YEARS, and they bring with them a shackled, captive audience that will play WoW, even if they'd like another game more, just to spend time with their loved ones in a game.
Just my 2 copper, for what they are worth. Again, thanks for the spirited debate
Mac
Raiding hey?
Hope you play a class that has to do more than mash 1-2 buttons repeatedly for hours!
Well fine, use stats then, ya lousy bum! What specific demographic do you think it targets? Cause they advertised the game to casual players, made the game fun, and then backflipped at endgame and now reward only those with large consistant amounts of time to play. According to a lot of their PR fluff they are trying to cater to all the different playstyles, just not very well. I never said they were starving lol, it's a hypothetical situation where they don't actually need food to live. Why Sony, NCSoft and Origin suck so bad, who knows, I'm not overly concerned why they suck, hehe. Blizzard has always been better at the polish and lure, there is no doubt about that. lol @ Raph, yes No wonder Sony games suck! I'd actually say that they do, but not all of them. It depends on the genre of game doesn't it, First Person Shooters are likely gone as soon as a better one comes along, they are subject to the FAD syndrome. There is also the issue of replayability, as many good/great games END! MMOs of course are different, by design they wish to not have that. Non-MMOs can also have a greater shelf life than what you suggest, and a couple come to mind. Guess who made em? .......that's right....Blizzard! Diablo and Warcraft series have continued to be played and sold years after they were released. Blizzard makes great games, ones that are very replayable for a number of factors but one that i think we can agree on.....they're FUN!!! I definately think WoW is fun, i just don't think it's a good MMO. I also don't think that WoW needs to be a good MMO to be fun and successful, as i believe that is part of what makes Blizzard a good games developer.
lol, i'd say that they don't always make great games either, but that just depends on what you think makes a game great. Looking at the stinking piles of crap that the industry has pushed on us in the last few years, i tend to not believe you that making a great game is easy, making it look pretty is easy, but a little thing called gameplay seems to be missing from many pictures. Besides, if it was easy, i would think that there would be more great games.Ok, key word in your figures is ESTIMATE. Most people in the industry agree that they didn't forsee the success, hell even blizzard didn't. I disagree with the assertion that i am in a very small minority, due to the fact that we lack the data to calculate how many people are unhappy with those 3 points. Blizzard, smartly, hasn't released any information on how many people have quit playing WoW, and they also have not conducted any polls to find out how the playerbase feels about relatively unpopular decisions. We also don't know if population has gone down in certain world areas and up in others, as we only get the total figure now. No US Pop compared to China Pop, etc.
I agree with your 3 points, but you are right that i don't agree that WoW is completely fullfilling them.
1. Blizzard has alienated Oceania customers with lack of support, Non-Raiders have been alienated by direction of content at end-game, many classes have been alienated by lack of communication regarding perceived roles and styles of play. I don't think they have lost a significant number of players yet to this, but it's like a kettle that will soon boil i think. This is actually the reason why i quit playing WoW, i'm an oceania customer who played a druid and a mage. BAD CHOICE. lol.
2. WoW community is known widely to be horrible, with a large playerbase of immature teenagers (B.net kiddies) and general scum and villany.
Server communities are better (some of em), but i think that Blizzard's lack of communication is turning the community into a very negative one. I can say i never truly felt that Blizzard was part of the community, rather that they were outside it trying to control it. People coming, staying and playing though is not necessarily about the community as a whole, i'd definately say that it can be about the smaller social groups and friends that you make, but i'd also say that you have to consider that in combination with the fact that Blizzard made a fun great game. People don't stay and play in my opinion because it has fantastic MMO design, rather that it has simple polished fun game design with lots of novelty to keep people amused.
3. I do think that WoW is engaging, but i don't think that it is challenging. Perhaps as challenging as a carrot dangled in front of me. One thing i will say though, that the world design is something special. The environments are far more engaging, even though blocky and cartoony, than many of the screenshots of the more 'realistic' games that are coming out. I think that is something that these newer games need to realise, having trees look like trees is fine, but if the world itself looks stark and uninviting people won't want to be there.
lol, but does this handsome guy have the personality of a plague carrying rat? I've personally seen the most ugly guy in the room pick up the chicks, cause he didn't sound like a moron when he talked to them.
Pretty aint everything!
I s'pose you're right there. I'm not just complaining on a fan forum though, this site is about the MMO genre and as such is a community a little seperate from the games themselves. I can't push the companies myself no, but we as a community and more importantly as a customer base have wants, likes, and dislikes. I guess in reality i'm trying to push other players to not roll over and except that every MMO they play is going to be all shine no substance. WoW was actually my first MMO, which may for some make me ignorable, but it introduced me to the genre and now i love it, but i want more than WoW. It's like a fantastic entree, that leaves me looking forward to the main course (which is taking its freaking time to get here). I'd love to, but it's easier said than done obviously. I have few ideas myself about what might make a fun and interesting MMO, i think we all do. If anything WoW should demonstrate to other MMO makers that you can't be all substance no fun, but i also hope they don't think they should be all fun no substance. lol, my eyes bleed when i look at SWG, please don't make me.A poster on the WoW forums came up with some fake patch notes some months ago that posed a new world event that sounded simple, fun and excited the population heaps. It was a robot building competition that had players build little goblin machines and face them off against each other in gadgetzan, would have been so much fun and would have given players content that whilst repeatable was still fun. Blizz laughed and said that it was a good idea, and then went ahead and put more events that only ever resulted in more grinding. Why can't Blizzard, one of the most successful game companies with top quality dev talent, produce content that garners the same reaction from the playerbase?
Completely agree dude. I'm suggesting that Blizz is already doing many things that alienate players, and whilst the population figures say otherwise, i think they are getting close to a very dangerous position. I like WoW and don't want to see the house of cards fall, but i also don't want to spend my money on it when everything they push is IMO not fun and a little against the original spirit of the game.I can see your point Mac, but success is only true by how you measure it. I actually read that WoW cost a stupid amount of money to make, i'm not sure on the comparison with EQ2 but I think it is silly to think that it would be easily repeatable, even by blizzard. Now, considering Blizzard and Vivendi expected numbers between 500k to 1mil in the first year, that says to me that the publisher would have been happy with those figures. If the industry thinks that 5mil customers is the benchmark to judge other games, we will be in a very very dire situation. Mainly, because i think that MORE than just MMO/Game design attributes to WoW's success, and whilst it may be possible to copy or mimic some of it, i think it is folly for publishers to think they could make another WoW easily. I guess i'm saying that it is easy said, but difficult to prove, that another game on paper could easily bring in 5-Million customers. Then again, Publishers have been known for stupid decisions so we will have to see. According to Sigil, Microsoft's expectations are similar, perhaps a little lower, than the expectations that blizz had for WoW initially, which is fine. If they get more than that then they are happy, if they get less then not happy, but at least they aint expecting the 5-Mill.
Yes, but that doesn't tell us WHY it was a poor investment. Matrix Online is another example of a poor investment, and yet it is based on a very popular franchise. There are many factors that unfortunately we, as members of a forum board, are not all aware of. Which limits us a fair bit to just speculation, but we need to remember that there are mulitple factors and it seems a little silly to me to just pick one and say THAT is why it failed and doesn't have 5-million customers. I hope you're right Mac, i like Blizzard but it seems that the studio changed a fair bit after Vivendi bought them, with a lot of very good talent jumping ship. Decades yes, but it took a while for someone to offer a decent alternative, which is why in the case of MMOs i hope that such an alternative is offered sooner rather than later. Maccas is still popular but it is obvious just looking at all the changes that they have made over the years, that they do feel threatened by the healthier alternatives. That IMO opinion is a good thing, as it not only gives people who don't like Maccas somewhere else to go, but it also improves Maccas for the better as well. Which is why i hope something similar happens here, as WoW has room to improve i just don't think Blizzard values highly those avenues. They need that alternative to make them see that i think. hehe, and we also come back to Mr. Stinky personality. If that handsome guy is sitting there wondering why all the chicks are over chatting with buttface, i might tell him that he probably shouldn't treat women in the way that he does. Now changing that in himself is harder to do than cosmetic stuff, but it is still possible. Right back at ya.Content is: - zergable for loot (10-man in 5-man dungeon), and designed with perfect group flaw (must have priest to shackle undead or screwed, etc.). WoW teaches people that if they can't do something, it's just cause you don't have the perfect group so quit and come back with the right one. It's not about having the right players, it's about having the right classes. I'd like a game personally that puts more emphasis on the players.
Holy CRAP what a good point MAC!!! I'd never thought of that. The female component will be very telling for future games, and mainly cause of what you point out. Women, in my limited understanding of them, thrive on the social and novelty aspects of the game, two things that WoW has in abundance. Games that have more realism might appeal to men, but it will be an extreme challenge to make it also appealing to women in the same way that WoW has. I know so many girls that play WoW, that come to think of it wouldn't enjoy many of the games that i'm thinking of playing, for various reasons. I can't believe i haven't considered this before, it makes an incredible amount of sense. Pehaps all MMO design now should feature the (G)irl Factor more than ever, which all up is probably a good thing for our female gaming companions.
Cheers
-Bobo-
Warrior and a Hunter, though (unlike EQ), the raids I go on have a great deal more to do then hit 2 buttons
*grin*
It is a shortcoming of people in one demographic to fail to see the needs of the other. WoW is a HUGE success among the casual MMO players. There are 2 aspects to any MMO that must be addressed:
1. What do you do with the power gamers who bolt to the end game and immediately bitch about no content when the power curve (avg lvl of most players) is still 6 months behind them?
2. What do you do with the casual gamers who are not there to beat the game but to enjoy it?
#1 is easy...you throw them crumbs and ignore them, because they will never be pleased, ever, no matter what you give them. They are there to beat the game and when they've beaten it they will move on. You can spend 90% of your development resources trying to please this 4% of the population and still never make them happy. Let them go, wave good bye to them, and focus on the other 96%.
#2 is where the challenge is, and where WoW excells. The crafts are immersive without being overly complex and tedius (a la SWG/EQ2) and the quests are engaging and complex without being overly linear and monotonous (a la CoH).
You only see raiding because you fall into category #1. While > 50% of all players on my server have 60th lvl toons, < 50% has been into an epic raiding zone. I have several friends who simply have no desire to go, don't enjoy that playing style, and just love playing the game, working on factions, crafting for friends, making money, gathering loot, etc.
In short, just because it doesn't have what you enjoy doesn't mean it's not enjoyable...again, obviously, pointing at 5 million folks paying monthly to be there.
*nod*
There will always be exceptions. I played Civ 3 up until Civ 4 came out, for example. I do disagree with a couple of your points...
You might think that MMO's aren't designed to be short lived, but Sony does that. Sony designs it's MMO's to get a good RoI, then starts working on the next project. They move the older one to the second string team and the good devs move to the "new and shiny". I don't mean to keep using Sony as an example, but they have more experience at MMO's then any other dev out here, even if they are in 2nd place
If WoW were free, I'd agree that it wouldn't need to be a good MMO for people to keep playing it, but Guildwars is free and has < 75k people playing it. If Diablo or Warcraft cost $19/month to keep playing, I guarantee you people would have stopped playing them years ago...they're good, but they're not that good. For an MMO to attract as many people as it has, and keep them, it is good by that very definition. Again, you're trying to use some aristocratic definition of good here, like some indie movie critic saying "yes, I know only 4 people went to see that movie, but I STILL think it was the best movie this year!" The purpose of an MASSIVELY multiplayer online game is to attract lots of people and keep them. The measure of success in that is the amount of people it attracts and keeps, period. Everything else is sour grapes.
"Just because everyone likes it does not make it good". Yes, it does, in a business market. MMO's are a business, and business is about making money. If MMO's were a hobby and money was not involved, the number of people playing would STILL be the measure of success. Let's take the M, M, and O out and just focus on one piece...game. What is a game?
Game - n, An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime
So, a game is an activity to provide amusement. How do you know if you've amused the people you made your game for? They play it. If they play it once and never again, are you a success? No. Twice? No. If they can't put it down? Yes. If they tell their friends and THEY can't put it down? Hell yes.
If I make a game that has 5 million people paying me regularly to play it, and you make a game that has 100,000 people playing it, my game is better than yours, just like if you and I are running a foot race and I cross the finishline before you. You may say "you know what, I'm content with last place", but objectively, you still lost, you've just set your expectations so low they're met by anything. You're happy with that, and we're all proud of you, but objectively is where it matters, because objectively is where venture capitalists look, and only games that get capital go get made. If you don't believe me, go play Twilight War.
Looking pretty doesn't fly any more. It used to, but nowadays, it needs to be beautiful just to get onto the shelves, as publishers are vying for shelf space with merchants, and merchants are only going to stock games that will move.
Of course it's an estimate, no way to know exactly who will play what, and you're absolutely right that no one, including blizzard (and me for that matter) could have predicted in their wildest dreams WoW's success. However, we may not know who's unhappy with those 3 points, but we know who is happy with them...5 million people. Why do I say that? Because only a true idiot pays $15/month to do something they don't enjoy. People flake out and bail MMO's for the strangest, slighest things, so 5 million people staying in must mean they enjoy it.
No game does. No game can. But WoW is doing it more then anyone has.
Oceania customers are a small percentage of the global customer base, and they're issues are being addressed, just not quickly. See above, Blizzard could not have predicted the success, especially globally, so resources HAD to be strained in trying to meet the demand.
My daughter is a non-raider and loves the game, plays it all the time. No clue what you mean about roles and styles of play.
Not only is that kettle not about to boil, WoW is about to grow in size again and will very likely be 7 million customers by the end of 2006. The new AQ events have redefined how MMO's create events, it's bloody amazing.
Nonsense. The MMO community as a whole is known widely to be horrible, with a large playerbase of immature teenagers and general scum and villany. I have done 25 MMO's worth of forums, trust me, WoW is no different, more or less. More importantly, what you call the WoW community doesn't reflect the actual WoW community, because most people don't ever hit the forums. Inside the game is where the communities are, massive guilds of people who are working together to help each other, on the same server and on other servers.
Just as with any other MMO, people will not play where they do not feel comfortable, especially if they have to pay to do it. They'll by the game, sample the content, feel bad, and leave, and that is not happening in WoW. Not only that, but as we mentioned above, WoW is making NEW customers, people who'd never played an MMO before, many of them women, and none of them thick skinned enough to be able to take the normal jerk MMO community can dish out. My daughter hated EQ, SWG, and CoH for those reasons, yet has found a home in WoW, with tons of friends.
Maybe because not everyone needs to be challenged every moment...again, because you are in group #1 and needed to be gone anyway. My daughter doesn't need it to be hard. My girlfriend doesn't need it to be difficult and complex. What you want is not necessarily what everyone wants. WoW offers what 5 million people want *shrug*
It helps, though
Throw one handsome idiot in the room and the girls will flock to him and away from the charming ugly guy.
True dat, which is why I'm jumping in and debating with you
The problem is, of those 5 million people playing WoW, likely 100,000 of them read this forum and forums like it. Know what that means? MMO devs would much rather hear the opinions of 4.9 million people then a vocal 100k who want perfection.
True dat. I know for a fact the games I want t make won't pull in 5 million folks, but they're games I'd want to play, and that's a start
If you want to truly understand the MMO industry, you have but to look at the movie industry. 1,000's of indie scripts die in discussions with producers and publishers every day, because the industry wants blockbusters. Making $1 million a movie means you can continue making $1 milllion a movie forever. Making $100 million a movie means you can make fewer movies and eventually maybe get around to that artsy fartsy project you've always wanted to do.
It's all about the Benjamins, baby.
Again, I have a huge list of things I'd love to see added, many of which would appeal to folks who already love the game. EQ2's housing, for example, was one of the few things I felt they did right and would fit PERFECTLY into WoW. My daughter would LOVE a lil aptmt in a tree in Teldrassil! Little stuff that would enrich so much. They'll get around to them.
Honestly? I think it's because they have a HUGE story to tell, and that is one of the most fundamental reasons WoW is the success it is, IMHO.
When people first log into EQ and make a dark elf, they call it a Drow. Why? Because that's what dark elves are. What's a Teir'dal? No clue and don't care. Who the heck is Innoruuk? No clue, I worship Lloth. Why? Because that's what dark elves do. EQ generated a massive world history (I even helped with some of the fictional content) and 1% of it trickled down to the players. As a Guide, every day I'd hear players baffled as to why things were happen, but eventually not caring because no one had the answers. They created their own mythology but the players were not immersed into it...in fact, they were barely even exposed to it.
In WoW, there's this Orc hunter NPC with his bear (Misha), both like 60 elites, that walk from Desolace to Feralas, along the road. My son and I were running along at around 40th lvl when he saw him. He immediately ran up to him and got eaten (we were Alliance, duh), but the entire time he was shouting about how cool it was to meet the guy, because he KNEW him! He knew all about him and was rattling off history, accomplishments, personality, heck he knew what the bear liked to eat!
The Blood Elves are coming with this exansion and we KNOW them. Heck, the area to where they will be has been in the game since day 1, a blocked off valley, and we knew it was there and why it was blocked off. In EQ, they "add a zone" and suddenly it's there. Where was it before? Why wasn't it there? This wall didn't look like this before. It wasn't there, then it was, and we don't care because we never knew anything about anything anyway.
There are 45 different such spots in WoW, and we (the players) know the history behind each one, know what's behind them, and are pretty sure we'll eventually get into them. We know why they're not open now, what's going on behind them, and what it will mean to the world when they're opened. We are about to open the gates of An'Qiraj, as a concerted, server-wide effort. Every guild on the server is mobilized to this effort, horde and alliance, to launch the assault against this threat. Yes, it's a grind, but it's a grind the likes of which I've never seen before in any MMO, anywhere.
There's this huge story to tell, so much content to get into the game, and so many people to make sure it works for, that the little tweaks become less important. Again, just my theory.
Alienated, yet stay. EQ nerfs monks, and loses 15% of their population, instantly, that never come back. WoW redefines the entire hunter tree and opens 5 more servers for the new people flooding in. Exactly how "alienated" are these people? Again, you can't use the forum monkeys as examples because they represent < 1% of the population of the game and ALWAYS are bitching about something.
Blizz and Viv thought 500k would be successful because that was just over the highest ever done. Now that 5 million is the highest ever done, that becomes the mark. That's been true of every business venture since the invention of money. I go into business and sell to 10 people, I'm a success because no one has ever done that. You show up and sell to 100...heck, I suck now. I start a business that sells to 20, I still suck. Why? Because obviously it's POSSIBLE to sell to 100, but I just can't make it.
My favorite example for this is runners. Go back to the Olympic records over the last 150 years and look at how fast the mile has been run. A 7 minute mile was amazing, omg, he's so fast. Remember the 6 minute mile? OMG, he's uber fast. These day's it's being run in what, 4 minutes? So, is a 7 minute mile still fast?
Again, if you enter a race and say "5th place is fine with me" then you're successful in your own terms, but not in the objective ones. "I won my little race". Congratulations from the rest of the pack, who were in front of you
Why do I seem to be so focused on "winning"? Because MMO's that aren't "winning" suck. MMO's that hit their flatline static point, where they are no longer growing and are only moderately profitable, do not get the full energy of the development team. The moment an MMO hits this point, devs start leaving to more glamorous projects, and producers start looking ahead to new ways to make the company money. As long as the game is shiny, as long as the amount of customers coming in is > then the amount of the one's leaving, the devs and producers will pour resources into the cash cow to keep it rolling, and that means the game gets more and more fun to play.
OMG, I beta'd that monstrousity and was part of the group writing the strat guide...day 1 of the beta I wanted to claw my eyes out. That was the worst game I had ever experienced, ever, and it never got better. That was a case of a great concept that was completely butchered by clueless devs. The original Middle Earth Online (not this current one, and not the 2 most recent failures, but the one before that) was another example of a game that died on the drawing board.
Star Trek Online is yet another. Here is an amazing franchise that is being BUTCHERED on the design board, and every day, every design decision pushes it closer and closer to disaster. "We decided to use 2D space combat because they never really used 3D space combat in the series." *whimper*
Only time will tell.
You say they feel threatened, I say they see a larger market to capture, potential customers who they weren't serving. They didn't change what they had (Bic Mac is still a Big Mac), they just added more. They weren't going to lose people if they didn't do it, they just weren't getting all the money they could.
You're either very single, or very young
That, or the girls we're talking about are much much older. In a room of teen/young twenties, they're all around the pretty guy, talking to each other, not him, so they don't notice his personality anyway 
Mutual Admiration 4tw!
He doesn't stick to what he believes in. He does "just enough", then hands it off, takes his check and hits the door. He gets what he needs and moves on. Vanguard will come out, do "adequately", and he'll hand production to someone else and start on another game, "learning from his mistakes". I don't know Brad well at all, especially any more. However, I was there to read his press for EQ, and what I see from Sigil is more of the same. "We're here to revolutionize the MMO genre...and this time, we mean it!" Vanguard looks like EQ2, only ugly. My daughter looked at it and was very very sad.
The only type of expectation that is "too high" is one that is unachievable. If I say I'm going to create an MMO that will pull in 10 million customers in 2 years, that's too high, because it's never been done. As for "fun", Brad's version of fun is in EQ. Death = lost exps, lost work, and punishment. Success can only be gained by long long hours of grinding at the impossible, and only achieved by throwing enough stuff at it. The concept of 100-person raids is right up their alley. That's one of the reasons I love the cap on WoW's raids...if you can't do it with 40 people, then don't try, because you can't bring more.
This goes back to the 7 minute mile
They were successful then, but would they be considered so now? When MacDonalds opened, it was "100's served!" Can a fast food restaurant open now and say that that is a measure of success? 
When you've been kicking around as long as I have, you learn to see through the alpha/beta haze and into the design decisions. Noobs will see graphics glitches and complain, but I make a character that can not complete an objective, contact a dev and they say "oh, well, there are always going to be ridiculous combinations that are dead ends, just delete and restart." I'm sorry, but a dev telling me that it's acceptable for someone to create a toon and invest hours into it, then find out that it is not physically possible to complete an objective others are doing easily, then be told to delete the hours spend and start over....I did half of that...deleted the toon and game, and went on my way.
Not from what I've seen of Vanguard. Diku is still at the core. Death = You were stupid and a failure and should be punished. I actually think WoW's death system is on of the best out there, as it is the least interruptive and the most flexible.
The biggest problem about what you're asking for is that it is 100% subjective. My daughter wants to succeed, but doesn't want to be punished if she fails. For many people the pleasure of success is not helped by the punitiveness of failure. If you look at Extreme sports nuts, the cost of failure is death or major injury, so success tastes that much sweeter. I'm not like that. I enjoy success in it's own right, and don't need to have the threat of major punishment upon failure to make it enjoyable.
Everyone likes different things, so WoW chose a vanilla path down the center. Success is fun and rewarding, failure is inconvenient, please try again. One has but to point to that lovely 5 million number to see where the "majority" likes it
Most of the zerging has been fixed, especially for quests. Most quests you can't do as a raid, you can't hack/cheat around them, and zones like DM simply don't let > 5 folks in. I'd agree with you about WoW teaching you to change and come back, but there is no perfect group. I have 3 manned LBRS to the bottom, and been in all hunter UBRS raids. WoW does not have optimum configurations, of toons or parties. It has options, and the better geared you are, the better you play your class, the more options you have.
Bingo. I live in utter fascination every day of my female playmates in games, talking with them and finding out what they enjoy, and realizing it is rarely what I enjoy, but I enjoy being with them, so there I am
This is a new thing for us, a very new thing, and a truly an evolution of the genre. As more Grrls come to play, they will shape the market.
Bottom line, if you found a girl (or your wife, or whathaveyou) that played MMO's, but wanted to play WoW, wouldn't you play WoW just to play with her? And if you didn't, and she was forced to play alone, there are a million guys just like me that would seduce her away from you in game while you were huddled over your terminal, playing your challenging game.
To quote Larry Miller..."While you're in the gym working out, I'm at a bar with your girlfriend. I may not be big, but I'm....there."
As always, the honour is mine
Mac
I'll start off Mac by saying that just because blizz can wave 5-million in our face does not mean that everyone of them is happy.
Why would someone play WoW if they are unhappy with the game?
1. Social Concerns - friends,guild and as you pointed out - girlfriend/spouse.
2. Likes playing MMOs but no other one interests atm.
3. Addicted to the grind - these games are very addictive and it can be hard to kick (it was for me).
4. Plus many more possible reasons.
We are all aware of the figures, i just don't think you can use them so much to justify the actions and decisions of Blizzard. Perhaps their decisions, unlike Sony's haven't yet been bad enough to brake the camels back in regards to these points. They did for me, so i quit. I know many friends that are close, they still play and PAY for the game even though they hate much about it. There are things they still like, so they hold onto those for dear life trying to justify their playtime. Also, Blizzard designed a better GAME than Sony, so perhaps it is easier to continue paying for something you don't like things about, as long as there is something there still to amuse you. 'Oh look, i got a panda pet, woot!!' It's smart, and i think blizzard's GAME design is very good for that.
Yes it can be a shortcoming. I am a casual player, and have been since forever and i enjoyed WoW immensely. As we agree, FUN is subjective. The crafts are not immersive IMO, and i know that they aren't to a lot of other people (i realise that others might find it otherwise). How is sitting watching a bar go zip zip zip immersive? The best items you can make are all locked up in Raid instances, and if you are casual (don't have time for raids) or simply just don't like them and don't want to be apart of the UBER RAID GUILD, then you have little to make that is worth a dime. Quests i'll agree a great, and i loved them, but they died at end-game as they are now pretty much useless. I think our definition of linear and monotonous differs, hehe. But hey man, that's kewl.
Actually my toon is part of raiding guild that i helped create, i gathered together 3 aussie guilds to form a larger guild in order to take part in the end-game content. We've been pretty successful in ZG and have taken down Luci on the second attempt with less than 40, i'm so proud of em. I just hate large person raiding, i don't mind the smaller ones like UBRS and at max ZG, but not MC, BWL or AQ40. Did I put together the guild so that i could be happy? NO, so that i'd have something to bloody DO!You're friends Mac are obviously easily amused, working on factions (grinding), crafting for friends (dude can you make me blah i have mats? sure, trade+click done - fun stuff), making money (grinding), gathering loot (grinding instances that give far inferior loot meaning that they better not wish to PVP at all, otherwise they'll be screwed and what do they do when they have all the blues?).
Grinding = Monotonous and Repetitive. Now, i do understand that some people actually enjoy that (which is kewl, more power to them), but I believe that there is a point where people who tolerate it will get fed up. I'm suggesting that if blizzard doesn't so something soon, then it will BE soon. All it will take will be a decent alternative to make their bubble go bust, of course we may not actually get that alternative which will be good for Blizz.
Why on earth do you keep referring to Sony? We both agree they SUCK and i never said you COULDN'T design an MMO to be short lived. They provide us with an example of what NOT to do, we shouldn't let that define the genre for us. MMORPG's generally need to keep people playing in order to be successful, how they do this is not set in stone as the reasons why someone would play a game for years and years vary greatly. I am suggesting here that in the case of WoW, it is my opinion that if we see people playing for years and years, it won't necessarily be because they admire the MMO design, it will be because of good GAME design. i know i sound pedantic but i'm making the seperation because i think most of what makes WoW good does not have anything to do with the MMO genre, but rather the talent and skills that Blizzard has in making games in general. What is there of MMO genre is well done and polished well, but I think there are other attributing factors. Guild Wars is a poor example, as it is not even considered by many to be a MMO. The makers even labelled it differently as a CORPG - Co-operative Online Role Playing Game. It is also designed to be PVP centric game, catering to subset rather than MMO whole. Yes, but we weren't talking about that, we talking about the shelf life of games. MMOs are different, they place importance on progression. Progression of character, world and content. Those games are good, but they are about competition, and as such don't fall into the same sphere. Also, people pay MMOs and expect (wrong or rightly) to actually get something for their money, in the example of Diablo and Warcraft people generally wouldn't wish to pay money if they did not receive anything in return. Poor example. Sure, but HOW does it attract them. I've seen crap films do well because of the stars in them, the marketing around it, history before it if it is a franchise, etc. 5-Million people playing a game, makes it a successful game. WoW happens to be a MMO game, grats to them! I still don't think that it is very good MMO game, considering what potential the genre has. In fact, WoW's success is in part what i don't like about the game, it robs us of any potentional for dynamic epic world content. A foot race is not the same as a business making a product and attempting to sell it. Do shareholders get antsy when a company that made large profits tells them that they didn't make AS MUCH profit as some other company? NO, they go 'WOOT - PROFITS!!!' It only rings true if you are looking at market share, but as has been proven by WoW, it is difficult to even estimate the size of the market. WoW is different to this i think MAC. What you say maybe true for the 100,000 old timers who know the game industry, but you just effectively called most of my friends idiots. SHAME ON YOU!!! lol WoW's success comes from not getting all the people who have played MMO's their whole life, but the people like me who never even tried it before. Was it like a new drug to me, oh my yes. Was it addictive as hell, definately. Did i flake out and bail for strangest slightest things, NOPE! I played the game for almost a year, longer than any game i've ever played previously. I just go righteous over the oceania thing, and i played a class that the devs didn't seem to know what to do with, so i just got frustrated. It also took so much of my life, my real life suffered, so I made a decision to help my mental health and quit the game. I'm a reformed addict. lol I won't argue about oceania customers, they are not as small as what people assume. Blizzard is not so much addressing but throwing a bone to try to silence them, and it is mildly insulting. Is your daughter level 60? Does she want more from a game then having a Panda pet?Classes! Talk to Palidans. Talk to Druids. Talk to Water Vendors (i mean mages).
Yep, needing stupid amounts of bandages and other such materials is certainly amazing. It is the biggest grind any MMO has ever seen, with the hope that something interesting will happen at the end of it. Never said that you couldn't make friends, and most people in game a quite nice. Outside of the game is different. Now you can easily just point out a conveniant percentage of people use the forum, but that is the ONLY way people can talk to blizzard. It is also the only way that Blizzard talks to the community. If you judge people to be happy with their class, game, etc. Just cause they don't want to have anything to do with the official forum, then that is a poor idea indeed. Those forums are horrible, and have been made worse and worse by the actions of blizzard. I could fully understand your daugthter wanting nothing to do with the forums, any sane person would want to think twice before going on there. I love the convo we are having, even if we don't agree on things, we are still polite to each other, that is a distant dream on their forums. How is blizzard in touch with it's playerbase, if all it has to go by is the official forums and the 'I Quit' page in account management? nod, understood. I understand that people want different things. I'm not talking about hard, i'm not talking about difficult and complex, they are the other extreme. I'm going to be philosophical here, but our society today wants everything easy. Jobs lie unfilled because people think they're too good for it, and sit unemployed. If something goes wrong, it's someone else's fault. Why do you want your daughter fed 'if it's too hard, quit and play somewhere else? When does hard = any challenge? Mac, i'm not an EQ fanboy. I like WoW, but i also like games that provide SOME challenge. Now you might think that WoW is challenging, in which we will just agree to disagree. It doesn't have to be hard, complex or difficult for me, but i would like it to encourge me to THINK! Games are losing an aspect of them that initially i think was eductional, they required you to THINK, SOLVE challenges. They tought various methods of thinking, and encouraged you to think outside the box. If you want games to lose that so that your daughter can enjoy her panda pet, then you are losing more than you are gaining my friend. At least in my humble opinion. True dat. If the girls are also idiots then they will stay, if they have half a brain they'll realise that it's more fulfilling to talk to the wall that the pretty idiot. and yet, blizzard is doing nothing to hear the opinion of the 4.9 million. As they don't use the forums. So....doesn't that sound a little dangerous and misguided for them then? Agreed, which is why there are studios that do that. Big studios yes, they make the summer blockbuster. There quite a few successful indie studios that continue to produce smaller films and make less, but that is what they set out to do and as such are successful. Blizzard is the Big Studio, they only care about the Blockbuster. I just think that we as a community should support the indie guys as well, as they DO NOT need the blockbuster, as they are not even trying to make one! Easily said Mac, hard to prove. I don't think they will, as they have stated that such things they don't value highly. Unless priorities change, then no they won't. Which funnily enough has nothing to do with their MMO design now does it? It is a legacy of a talented man, Mr. Metzen. One which will eventually be destroyed by Blizzard making everything interesting in the lore of the game, raidable for loot. Illidan? WTF? I swear if they make him grindable for loot it will be the end of Warcraft. They are going take everything good in WoW and make it bashable by 40 peopld in a borefest. WOOT!! It's a nice theory, but NO there is no lore reason why we can't get into these places. They are just not in the game yet. lol, why on earth would you commend the biggest grind you've every seen? GEEEZ!! I guess i look at the past MMO games, and go Meh the genre can do and offer more. I look at WoW and i see the past buffed and shined and go, 'nice'. I look at the future, and i see more than just GRIND! Why is it set in stone that the MMO Genre = Grind. It is the most flawed and stupid idea of i've ever heard, and it is the single thing that limits the genre most IMO. Refer to my previous point about why people will play a game they aren't happy with. As to why new people are coming into the game. Humans = Sheep at times. If everyone i knew was playing WoW, guess what i'd play? (and did) You can't possibly suggest that the hunter changes are WHY new people come to the game? and where are the figures that say how many people left? Also 5-million equals SUBS, not people. What about regional brakedown? How many oceania customers have left? or North America? Subs work differently in the asian countries apparently, and so is supposed to be misleading as the way it works is based more around use in net cafes. (I could be misled on that one though) Again with runners? lol. Let's look at a different way, you've already mentioned indie films and the like. Let's suggest that there is a differentiation in product. Two fruit growers sell their wares, one grows apples the other grows oranges. They both sell fruit, but wouldn't really compare their results with each other now would they. You'd compare the sales of people selling apples to those selling apples, and likewise with the oranges. What i'm saying is that in the MMO Genre, if you as a producer are setting out to make a Blockbuster, then yes you have to try to beat WoW's 5-mill. If you are setting out to produce something more 'indie', then NO you don't have to try to beat WoW. It would be stupid to try to say that you should. As your product is not designed to be something that it's not, and a blockbuster is not what your aim was in the first place.World of Warcraft is the first Blockbuster for the world of online entertainment. Will it be the last, probably not, does it mean that people should only attempt to make blockbusters? PLEASE GOD NO!!
Good. God. No. Really? Mac, nothing stops these devs from making stupid decisions, but they can be a success if what they are trying to achieve is logically linked with the customers that they are aiming at. Wow @ STO, i was actually interested in seeing where they would take that, but man that's bad! World of Warcraft can't possibly be everything to everyone, I am an example. Before playing WoW, i was NOT an MMO customer. Not part of the stats at all, i didn't play or wanted to play. Now I am thanks to WoW, but I am also now looking for somthing with more depth of gameplay, and with a bit more challenge. There are many like me, and i cannot see how you can make assumptions on our numbers to the lack of any precedence. WoW has brought in more than any other, no one can know what these gamers (who haven't spent 4 years playing a game before and who usually get bored quickly) will do in the future of the game. Everyone i play with is first timers to WoW, and everyone i play with is getting bored and starting to look for something else to do. This is my experience, and it may well differ from yours. But i'd suggest assumptions are bad about the future of WoW my friend.
You make it sound like the punishment is a whipping by cat of nine-tails. If Brad and Vanguard take it too far, then i won't enjoy it. But, having it slightly more inconveniant to prevent un-caring or mis-use IMO is GOOD! Why does everyone want to succeed without any risk at all. I'm not an extreme sports nut either, but there risk is high. I'm not talking about having a HIGH risk at all, that would be permadeath. I'm talking about some RISK, as in MORE than NONE! WoW has no risk, it doesn't matter, you don't care. Take off your armour and nudey death run it to get somewhere you should have had to face a challege for, is that the kind of thing you want your daughter to be learning? Take no risks to succeed doesn't seem like a very good life lesson. On a side note, sorry Mac about referring to your daughter, i'm only doing so cause you brought her up, forgive me for any personal stuff, not wanting to seem like i'm making a personal attack.I remember the games i used to play where i'd get stuck, and i'd go to bed thinking about a solution to the problem and then wake in the morning with something that i was dying to try, BAM it worked. GOD THAT FELT GOOD! WoW doesn't give that.
Quests are pointless at 60, lewt is all there is. DM is the only instance locked to 5, yet half the content is skippable by the design of the place. People doing 15 minute boss runs to kill 3 bosses for loot without facing any other content does not seem like it well designed to me. Try doing every Scholo boss without a priest (5-man), possible but extremely difficult and not worth the effort for most. What armor do you have? You say you raid so i'm assuming you got some nice purples for your effort? Dungeons are designed for certain criteria, armour is one of them. If you go into a pre-60 instance wearing gear from 60 raids, then you ARE zerging it! and of course IN that situation you don't need the perfect group, because you are zerging.
Lol.Cheers
/Salute.
Another important point that I think you both are missing about WHY WoW is so successfull over other MMOs....You don't need a top-of-the line computer/graphics card to play it, allowing most average computer users to play it. I think this is one of the most fundamental and also one of the most underlooked reasons why WoW has the tremendous success that it does. I play on a 1.7Ghz Pentium LAPTOP computer with 64MB of video ram (certainly not even close to top of the line), and the game runs GREAT on my computer. So many other developers are so concerned with being able to see threads of hair on a character's head, but at the very least you need a computer that is NO MORE than one year old to play them.
EQ2 and Vanguard certainly look impressive, but no one in their right mind will go out and buy a new computer to try them out! Blizzard, ingeniously, has stuck to a formula that allows for great looking games without needing much of a hardware change. Look at the differences between the original Warcraft 3, which was released THREE years ago, and WoW...the graphics have hardly changed at all! This allows people like you Mac to go buy a new computer for yourself, and let your wife/kid use the old computer and still be able to play. Even with the expansion, you see no mention of graphics upgrades, but it still makes people drool and look forward to seeing the beauty of something unknown and undiscovered.
Oh and I for one am in bobo's pool of players that has stopped my subscription. But I would LOVE to start it up again if Blizzard would implement some changes that myself and everyone I know from the game (albeit a small percentage) of a HUGE community of pvpers would like to see. Bobo I believe this is similar to what you're looking for and similar to what you described (going to bed thinking about a puzzle then solving it): a game that takes skill and ingenuity! Something that isn't mindless!
Hi Relapse,
Good Point. I'd been thinking about that myself, and it does make a difference. I think it was a very good decision on Blizzard's behalf, but also one that they've made in the past with the likes of Warcraft 3. They are very good at making their games accessible to as many people as they can. You're right that no matter how pretty or good Vanguard or other games are, if someone can't run it they won't play it. WoW should show devs that they shouldn't set the bar too high on specs, or they'll lose out. Yep, pretty much it. I'm seeing Blizz take the game further and further away from where myself and many others (albiet not 4.9mill Mac :P) want it to be. I don't want them to make the game into a different game though, just focus on giving more of what is ALREADY in the game, instead of adding more content that in my opinion ruins the initial spirit of the game that I loved and got hooked on.World PVP - PVP that rewards PVP, rather than AFK against challenges and own noob grind.
Less Grind - Most content they add these days seems to be a form of grind, whilst the initial game was pretty good in it's Grind content. It was still there, but it had a bit of variety. Now it's kill million of mob X to get rep with Faction Y, so that i can get Blah. Spend all of life in BG grinding CP to just KEEP rank and give up wife/girlfriend/children/home/etc to GAIN rank.
IMO Inital Game = Fun, Since Then = Slowly Less Fun.
The Burning Crusade is just another patch and Blizzard makes the people pay for it as a change.
afaik there won't be any new graphics, the same crappy 3 year old graphics all over again...
I'm not concerned if they are happy, and neither is Blizzard. You can't make people happy, you can only provide a space for them to make themselves happy. If they stay, that's great, if not, you've failed.
I'll re-iterate...it doesn't matter. If I want me to give you $20/month, and I give you $20/month, your goals have been met. It doesn't matter WHY I give you they money, or if I'm happy, or if I'm socially satisfied...I give you the money, and don't give it to someone else, ergo you are successful in your goal of getting my money. The reasons people stay and play are irrelevant, because they're the reasons they stay and play anywhere, for anything, and can't be coded or designed around...they're subjective and human. All of the reasons you can give for someone staying in WoW, I can give for someone else staying in EQ2...but people AREN'T staying in EQ2, they're leaving in droves.
In short, no MMO dev can program to the things you've listed, because they're human factors. Just like no dev can code to intentionally create a community, and I laugh my butt off everyone one claims too. Communities are fragile, unique, and random. They create themselves, if the conditions are right.
Sony has a history of making bad decisions, Blizzard does not. Sony has been making bad decisions for a decade, while Blizzard was making games during that time and luring in 10's of millions of players. I really don't see Blizzard making any mistake of the scale or scope Sony has made or is capable of making.
You did not leave due to a bad decision, at least from what we've said here. You left due to neglect, and not enough good decisions happening fast enough. Correct me if I'm wrong. I left SWG (three separate times) over ATROCIOUS decisions that drove me away, instantly. For you, it sounded more like a gradual erosion of your enjoyment.
And don't underestimate the power of cuteness, the panda pets are adorable
The newest craze is a glowing slime that makes you glow and reduces your defense by -30...people can't get enough of them 
You never played EQ2 or SWG I'm going to bet, if you think WoW crafts were tedious. I'm a crafter, and for the record, no MMO has gotten it right. WoW's crafting is the least tedious and frustrating of the MMO implementations out there (EQ2's crafting can kill you, literally).
The best items are actually faction based and not found in the high-end raids...at least not yet
By linear and monotonous, I'll use CoH's quests as an example...you go to a guy, you get a quest, you go to a location, you kill some colourful npcs, you come back to the same guy, you get a new quest, you go kill npc's with a different color, you return, ad nauseum. WoW's quest aren't always kill, move you around the world, show you every aspect of the game, and are different for each race. In CoH, if you're a Mutant Blaster, you do the same quests then if you were a Cyborg Tanker, with the same guys giving them and the same colourful npc's being killed.
If you hate large person raiding, then you likely should just move away from MMO's entirely. EQ started it with their "bring as many folks as you can" raids. SWG followed suit. AC had them. CoH had them. WoW has them but limits them (which I like a lot). Every MMO of note has them and every new one will have them. Why? That's an interesting story that I have a theory on...
I've been playing PnP RPG's since '76 or so, so I've literally played 10,000's of games as GM or player. In PnP (paper and pencil, if you didn't know the acronym), the "challenge" to the players is 100% in the hands of a subjective game master, a guy who is there and can custom tune the content to match your abilities and ensure you don't cake walk through his content (for the purposes of this story, assume the GM is compentent and flexible). So, as you advance through his campaign world, you gain more power, and he adjusts the world to compensate for your power, in a myriad of ways...and that's the most important part of this theory. At 5th lvl, you may fight guys with 100hp. At 10th, you may fight a guy with 300hp, or you may fight a guy with 100hp who is just played differently, has different abilities, specifically designed to counter yours. The world is open to the GM, and he knows all your weaknesses, so a good GM keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Now, imagine this GM has to deal with 2 people who are advancing together, with drastically different abilities. It becomes more of a challenge. The creature now has to possess not only abilities that match your weaknesses, but also your partner's. If many of those balance each other out (you're a caster, he's melee, so you're weak ac is countered by his high one, etc), then the enemies start to become a bit more generic, with dmg output and hit points being the things that go up most commonly.
10 people? At this point, it is nearly impossible for a GM to create a balanced encounter to specifically challenge each person in the team, so he must start looking at the team as a unit, as a sum of all their abilities, and in the end, the players get something with lots of hp and lots of dmg thrown at them.
Now, imagine the same situation with 100,000 people and a GM who is not actually there but must script the encounter to be as challenging as possible. What you end up with is the end-all-be-all crutch of MMO developers..."if you give something enough hit points, it will be unkillable". It's ugly, it's lazy, and it's pathetic, but every MMO in history has done it, because, and I quote any number of community managers or developers on countless forums "it is impossible for a developer to script an encounter that truly offers a complex and personalized challenge, and the more complex the script is, the easier it is to exploit, making it exponentially harder still to develop...it is a resource nightmare and not worth the RoI."
In short, it takes too much work to provide personalized entertainment, so here you go, have LOTS of generic entertainment. This is not going to change. Now, in the MMO's that I want to write, they won't have these types of encounters, but we've already discussed how my MMO won't be 5 million folks anyway
No need to be mean, we're not easily amused at all. The crafting is a thing we do while socializing. I don't find my job entertaining either, it's a thing I do while interacting with my co-workers and writing long forum posts to my friends like you
What do you do when you have all the blues? Make another toon. Go get some purples. Go do PvP. Go farm some faction to increase your abilities.
LOL. I forget, but is this your first MMO? EVERY MMO has grinding. Period. There is not a single MMO in existence that does not have lots and lots and lots and lots of grinding. Grinding is what people do in MMO's, above and beyond everything else. It is the fundamental cornerstone of all MMO's. You grind for level. You grind for skill. You grind for faction. You grind for gear. From the moment you log in until you log out, you are grinding. The AQ patch is the largest grind in the history of MMO's and people are coming out of the woodwork to participate in it, as it's a grind that 1st lvl players can help 60th lvl players complete for the entire world.
On my last SWG attempt, I was an entertainer, and I had a blast doing so, and it was the only time in 15 years of MMO's that I wasn't grinding. What I did served no purpose, did not advance my toon in any way, did not make me more powerful, did not accomplish a single thing. It was exactly, in every way, like going to a bar every thing in real life and hanging with my friends. The only difference was that I was a hot female twi instead of a big, burly engineer
Sony, of course, hated us for finding a way to have fun that wasn't grinding and killed us all and all our fun, but the point is to tell you that, while it is possible to have non-grinding in a game, the people who enjoy it (< 1% of the server population in the case of SWG) is so small as to be insigificant.
People log into MMO's to grind. What is Diablo if it's not grinding? You can't tell me people RP'd in Diablo
Because Sony is #2, and we're debating Blizzard, which is #1. Who else can we use? We both agree that no one has done it right, so there's no one to hold up and say "they should do it like these people do".
Have you heard of Ultima Online? Did you know that, after < 10 years, this game is still running? The game SUCKS. It sucked 10 years ago and it sucks now, yet people still play it. Why? I can tell you this, it isn't because of the game. The people that will be playing WoW after 3 years will not be doing so because of WoW, it will be because of the communities they've formed, which is something no dev can design for or predict, as I mentioned above. Creating a community is like creating life...you throw together the right elements and pray for that "spark" to occur. As long as WoW doesn't Sony-ize their game with hideously huge and alienating decisions like "we've decided it was a mistake for paladins to wear plate, so we're removing it" or "shaman totems can now be affected by aoes, so a paladin with consecrate can completely neutralize a shaman toe-to-toe", WoW will be around forever.
LOL. You can't take my examples away, because they're valid. Guild Wars is a massive (> 10,000 players) multiplayer online game, by definition
And yes, I acknowledge that it's PvP centric, but how do you explain that so few folks play that free version when millions play on WoW dedicated PvP servers, which are also PvP centric?
Nonsense. MMO's don't place any more importance on progression then a game. What is Diablo about if it's not progression? What else is there to do in Diablo but progress....socialize? Besides, everyone in WoW is 60, where else is there to progress? Everyone is done and should just move on, right?
The point was that people keep playing a game for a variety of reasons, but the moment they have to pay to keep playing, their expectations go way up. Diablo was a good game, and sold millions of copies, and people still play it, but is it good enough to keep the same amount of people playing if Blizzard charged them to play? WoW gained and is holding 5 million people in thrall, so obviously it's doing the job.
Pretty box art, great reputation of the dev, engagement of the content, marketing. However, all of that only helps the first weekend. WoW didn't START with 5 million people, it picked them up over the year, and there's only one explanation for that...word of mouth. That crap film doing well on the first weekend can be explained by what you said, but it's gone in 3 weeks. The Incredibles didn't have a great opening weekend, but was in the theatres for 8 months, which is unHEARD of in this day and age of 3-week movie lives. You can only blame marketing and fluff for how it starts, not staying power.
Stop nerfing my examples
A footrace is an example of a linear contest 
Do shareholders get antsy when a company that made large profits tells them they didn't make as much profit as some other company? In the same industry? With the same resources? Absolutely. You have to make it apples and oranges.
SOE reports it's earnings to it's shareholders. SOE is a huge company with years of experience in MMO's. Blizzard comes along, a much smaller company (at least it was when WoW was starting) and blows SOE's marketshare and stock value down the crapper. Are SOE stockholders now antsy that, maybe, they were backing the wrong horse? If you owned stock in SOE and saw a smaller company come and show you how incompetant you were, would you still have faith in them?
I didn't call anyone an idiot, don't be so dramatic
I pay $30/month to a gym I never visit. I'm an idiot. Why am I an idiot? Because I'm throwing my money away on something I never use, on the off chance that I might one day get the energy and drive to use it. Paying for a game I don't play makes me an idiot, so if I'm paying, I'm playing. If I don't enjoy it, I don't play, and I don't pay. All MMO's out there keep your characters for a while, so it's possible to stop paying and come back later without losing anything, so if people are paying, they're playing, and it really doesn't matter if they SAY they enjoy it or not. That better?
Compared to the Asian and US markets, they are small. I'm not saying down under isn't important, just that Blizzard's resources are very likely still constrained from the growing pains. My daughter has 8 characters, ranging from 15 to 45, and doesn't have a panda pet (something she reminds me of regularly). She does herbalism and tailoring, raids with her friends and sits in Stormwind for hours, chatting with her buds. She'll delete a toon and make a new one just because she met a new low-lvl friend and wants to play with them.
The spigots (mages) are happy as clams right now, thanks to the 10 water/summon fix
Paladins just got lots of loving too 
Talk to any individual paladin on the forums and they'll bitch, because that's what forum campers do. We have 10 paladins in our guild and the only one who's not happy is so because she can't taunt 
It is server-wide, both factions, with HUGE content changes that affect the whole server. The top 5 guilds on our server, who always talked crap to each other and were generally competitive, are now working as one to make this happen, and the same is happening on other servers. It is the first time I've ever seen anything like it, and it's amazing to watch.
My kids aren't allowed on the forums. I know 100's of people who've never been to the forums. The forums are so full of crap and noise that NO ONE gets anything useful out of them. And they are certainly not the only way to get things to Blizzard. I submit suggestion tickets, talk to GM's, email blizzard, and talk to people I know who work there. I never post on the forums because there's no point. That said, I swear to you, those forums are no different then any other MMO forums, just to scale. You take the SWG/CoH/EQ forums and multiplay the # of folks registered by 50 and you'll see exactly the same things. Heck, take any forum or alt. newsgroup and add that many folks and you'll see the same thing. That is forums in general, and the internet, not WoW. I've been online in BBS's and forums for 20+ years and trust me, the WoW forums are just like any newsgroup or forum out there, for anything, at that size.
I can answer one of your questions very quickly..."Why do I want my daughter fed 'if it's too hard, quit and play somewhere else'?" Because it's a GAME. When she's at school, and it's too hard, she plows through. When she's on the softball field and it's too hard, she swings away. Life sucks, but there needs to be places where it isn't, especially places where I PAY to PLAY.
As a guide in EQ, I had an issue where someone got mind controlled and dropped down to an area like 30 lvls over their head and died. They couldn't get their body and lost all their possessions, and no one would help them. I got called in, and my policies were not to help unless it was a bug, and this obviously wasn't, he was just where he shouldn't be. We escalated it to a GM, and the GM said to this person, to his face "I'm sorry, sometimes life is hard, and I guess you just get to start over." WTF? The guy was beside himself, facing losing hours and hours of work to get his gear. So, after the GM left, I summoned the guy's body to the door so he could loot it. The guy was beside himself with joy and was so thankful.
Life is hard? Duh. We wll know this. We play games to escape it. We should not have our mortality thrust into our face in a game. Sometimes people fail at doing things. Duh. Sometimes failure has a steep price attached. Duh. All of these are lessons we learn by the time we're 3 years old, I don't need to pay $15/month to be reminded of it.
And WoW isn't "too easy", it's just not punitive. You want that cool thing? You need to succeed. You don't succeed, you don't get it. Simple. In EQ, if you don't succeed, you FAIL!!! Here's your punishment, the loss of a week's worth of hard earned experience!!!!! Loser! In CoH, you don't succeed, you FAIL! Here's some debt so you're literally getting half of a reward for everything you do for a week! Loser!
Most MMO's focus on the failure. What is the price of failure? How can we punish you for failing? The steeper the possible reward, the greater the punishment needs to be.
WoW focuses on success. What kind of reward can we give them for working this out? What is the price of not succeeding? You don't get the reward. That's it. You're not slapped down, nothing is taken from you. It's simple behaviourism, positive vs negative focus, and IMHO is one of the main reasons WoW has 5 million people and Sony doesn't have 1 million across all it's games, combined.
I'm going to carefully step away from the girl bashing part of that reply
You don't know that.
During my divorce, I learned something very important about communications...if you and I are discussing something, just because I don't act like you want me to act, or I don't agree with you, does not mean I don't understand your point.
Just because Blizzard is not doing what you want them to, or what you think they should do, does not mean they can't hear you or aren't listening. They are listening, and people are talking. They get 1,000's of suggestions/day via the in-game communication systems, a GM told me that a few weeks ago, in response to one of my suggestions.
Blizzard was actually the small studio, and if you watch the small studios, they all work hard to become big studios so they don't HAVE to gamble with the indies. So many of the big studios today were small indie ones 5 years ago. Even Spike Lee, the poster child for angry indie, has a big studio name now.
*shrug* Only time will tell, I'm afraid.
It has everything to do with designing an MMO. An MMO with no content dies inside 5 years, because no one cares about the game. It becomes a MUSH, a chat room that people hang out in until something better comes along, distilling down to 10,000 people who represent the core target audience and the servers are moved to some guy's house where he runs the game from there to cut costs.
Illidan will indeed be in the game, way down the road when the lvl cap is 100 I'm sure. And they have to put the content into the world, that's why we're playing it...to live it. I WANT to fight Illidan! I want to fight Arthas! I don't care how often I die, I want to be a part of that, because the cool factor is beyond belief!
Now, ask someone why they fight the boss in the plane of time in EQ, and they will rattle off loot drops. Ask us why we fight Arthas and be prepared for the story
There are lore reasons why we c an't get in to Quel, it was destroyed during the war. I understand that it's a convenient excuse to cover it not being developed yet, but I'd MUCH rather have that then a hole suddenly appearing and a zone being on the otherside, full of stuff we know nothing about, including why there's a hole there, beyond "there is a hole there because I spent $50 to put a hole there by buying the expansion."
See above, if you don't like grinding, you don't like games. What are you doing in Diablo/NWN/EQ/CoH/CS if not grinding? What is grinding? Doing the same thing over and over again for little or no gain. Show me a game where you're not grinding.
I disagree. Humans = Sheep explains why WoW opened big. No MMO continues to grow at the rate WoW is after a year, because players are posting how it "really is" and that word of mouth kills the growth. That's not happening here.
Here's a number I'd love to see...how many of WoW's free trial tickets turn into subscriptions? I know mine did, as did my kids. THAT would be the key statistic there.
You leave my runners alone
I totally understand your point, and as I mentioned, my own MMO wouldn't have the 5 million man mass appeal. My point is, I'm not going to get funding for my indie, any more than venture capitalists fund indie projects, because there's no money in it. So how do indie movies get made? Philantrhopists with too much money, like Cameron and Spielgerg, throw money at it because they like the project. Beyond the Blair Witch Project, very very very few indie projects get off the ground with a handful of guys that have $1000 and a dream
Actors used to be paid < $1 million/movie, and movies used to cost < $10 million to make. Someone stepped up and made a $100 million dollar movie (at the time a mortal sin) and it make hundreds of millions of dollars. Now 100 million is the standard and Kong costs almost 300 million. An actor demanded $20 million/movie and got it, now all actors want it and it's the benchmark.
People want what is possible, and will go for the max that they can get. Will people still make indie MMO's? Maybe. You know what's killing the indie movie market? DvD's. People don't have enough money to go to the theatre to see a bunch of movies, so they only go to see a small handful, and those typically are the blockbuster "event" movies that are best suited to the big screen...a romance or drama can be seen on my TV.
The number of people who pay for an MMO is obviously in the millions. How many pay for 2? I would wager that that is < 1 million, though I have no way of knowing. How many pay for 3? Changing MMO's is a huge pain, because you start over at the bottom and have nothing, when you're a demi-god in the one you're leaving.
What does this mean? People typically only play 1 MMO at a time, and only change when it becomes intolerable. For the 5 million staying in WoW, how many will fork over cash monthly to "try" another? How many will they try? How much of a chance will they give it?
The best indie MMO gets to compete not only with blizzard, but an even greater opponent...human apathy.
True enough, but WoW is indoctrinating them into the "standards" of MMO's in grand fashion
Again, only time will tell, but I'm wagering that WoW's hit a critical mass and will at least hold here for 2006, if not grow due to Burning Crusade.
LOL
I'm an old man, I can say things like that 
I love the 40-man raids, it's like the extreme sports of MMO's
Life on the edge, failure not an option, etc 
And not aiming at my daughter and her friends is a huge fiscal mistake, as they are the future, quite literally. My daughter's boyfriend will want to play an MMO when she gets one. Which one will he play? How many of us have wished they had a mate who played with them? When you get one, are you then going to dictate what she plays, or just go with the great luck that she plays at all?
I'm ancient
And no, Subway's numbers aren't a shadow of McD's, but they're content with their niche. The difference with food is, you can make daily choices with no momentum. You buy McD's today, you have no investment in it tomorrow so you're free to choose again. In MMO's, you pay monthly, then invest 100's of hours of time, so you develop momentum. You make friends, more momentum. New content is coming that you're working towards, more momentum. It's hard to break free of, even if you want too.
"Working as intended" is my favorite Blizz line
For me, because he was a dev and not some min wage GM, it had more of an impact.
We fear death in real life, why is it so important to do so in a game? Were the quests you completed doing that giving you uber l33t l3wt, or just experience? I've done the same, but all of the truly worthwhile quest rewards require hard work that can't be cheated. Failure is it's own reward, and requires no help from an MMO dev to make it more unpleasant. If I spend 45 min trying to do something and die, I don't need yet another punishment slapped on top of the 45 min I just lost.
Again, simple behaviourism. Why do you care if someone else zerged a quest that you completed "correctly"? What is it about the punitive nature of those games that provides satisfaction to the ones that completed it that, not only did they complete it, but others were hurt because they didn't? It's not enough to complete the quest, one must also know that others tried, failed, and suffered for it. More then laziness, I dislike that trend in online games...the need to make sure others are not having an easier time then me.
Yup, and Wow gives me that all the time, on a myriad of scales. Be it a single encounter I just can't beat, or a boss our 40-man can't overcome. Again, I don't need to be slapped in the head everytime I don't succeed to be driven to find the right solution, the solution itself is enough of a motivator.
Why do you care if people don't care about death? Why is it important how other people solve the problem? If I work 2 hours on something and fail, that is harsh. If, in turn, I lose another 2 hours of experience, that is intolerable. I don't NEED to be reminded by a pimply faced dev that life is hard, death is inevitable, etc, and I sure as HELL don't want to pay $15/month to have to experience it. I don't want it easy either...the failure itself is it's own punishment.
To use the extreme sports analogy (because you hate the runners), you're going to try a skateboard jump, and if you fail it likely will hurt...that's the price of failure. However, if you fail, I'm going to shoot you in the leg, which will incapacite you for a few months as a demotivator to failure. That is what CoH does. For a period of time, you now learn half as fast, because you were stupid and failed. Oh, and if you try it again while you're wounded, I'm going to shoot you again...and again...and again. You can stack level upon level of experience debt upon yourself until you spend the next several months earning half experience.
Or lets say you're playing EQ. You use your $200 skateboard to try the jump and fail. You hurt yourself, and I take your hard-earned skateboard away. You have to go earn a new one and try again, and I'm going to take something from you that you earned every time you fail.
Failure is it's own punishment, it does not require an extra layer of demotivation added to it because someone feels failure is simply not hard enough.
Many of the best quest pieces in the game fall from quests at 60. You can no longer boss-run DM, it's been fixed. No-priest runs to Scholo are fun
I'm all epic armor, tier 1 right now. Zerging is throw enough folks at it to make it trivial, which we don't do. We don't 15 man UBRS, we 5-man it because of our gear. There's a group of people who have 10-manned Onyxia, and she's a 40 man instance. Because of the limits, people find new ways to challenge and push the envelope 
As always, a pleasure
Mac
Blizzard may not have a history of making monumentally bad decisions, but they are making that history though WoW though. I wasn't driven away by ONE bad decision, i'm not that fickle. It was countless decisions, that were obviously flawed and yet blizzard argued for ages over their merits before finalling conceding that they were a bad idea. Meeting Stones, PVP equipment un-usable after rank, plus many more. I guess it just felt that when the community responded negatively to Blizzard, their response was 'tuff, we know better, it's our game'. Whilst that is mostly true, it still does nothing to show the players that they are being listened to. I haven't seen a Pally wear Lightforge Helmet since they changed the graphic, doesn't that tell them that maybe they should have listened to the seemingly large % of people saying it made them look like Burger boys?
I'm not overly concerned if other MMO's crafting was MORE tedious, it doesn't change the fact that crafting in WoW means very little. Not that i found. Most of the best patterns are in Molten Core and require Core Leather or Fiery Core, etc. Fraction patterns are not too bad, but they aren't all that and a bag of chips. That's funny, many quests felt like that for me in WoW. True, i'll say that they did move you around a bit, but that was sometimes more annoying that anything else. I did enjoy the quests though, i just wish that questing happened more after 60. There are many many interesting and exciting quest lines that are left deadended cause Blizz reckons they'll 'get around to it'. I wish they'd stop cranking out 40 person dungeon after 40 person dungeon, and put more of the stuff that made the earlier game great in, you guys might enjoy the raiding endgame which is fine - I don't. At the same time I don't expect to find an MMO that doesn't have raiding in it, it's just that why on earth it is the ONLY thing in the end-game that equals exciting content i don't know. I don't think it has to be, but others think it does. It's easy to say that non-raiding content is 'too hard', but all that does is stifle imagination and creativity, oh well. Idealist again! If i was going to suggest any content that was non-raiding for end-game it would be stuff that was driven by players rather than the devs, that way they don't have to do much except for tweak and most of the content is provided by the players themselves. Yep, too hard basket. I'd play your MMO Mac! To be Honest, the next MMO i play i DON'T want millions of people playing it. WoW's success is something that means that they don't have the resources to say to GM guided events like other games have had, the epic events do so very little. Even the epic grind only opens up an instance to be used, which opens by itself anyway after a certain amount of time, as insulting as that would be to the server that had it (i imagine low pop servers are going to feel that). Sorry Mac, wasn't trying to be mean. You mentioned in an earlier post about people being easily amused, and those things you mentioned that your friends were enjoying outside of raids are pretty un-exciting. Another toon - make one too many and you start to hate the start areas, one thing I was looking forward to in the xpac was new starting areas. PVP - won't advance you very far, and well organised raid-equipped teams roll you in 5-seconds for lasting fun and enjoyment. Purples - if not raiding then you are either praying for a rare world drop, or grinding faction and or mats. Farm Fraction to increase abilities? How does that happen? Oops, my bad. I understand that every MMO has grinding, but there is a difference between when that grinding features challenging and exciting content to when it is boring repetitive and un-challenging. Every game has a grind and that's fine. What i do not like, is when a blatant boring grind is passed off as exciting new content. 'ROLL UP ROLL UP, FABULOUS NEW ITEMS AWAITS YOU ADVENTURER, ALL YOU MUST DO IS KILL 1,000,000 OF THAT THEM RABBITS AND YOU SHALL HAVE A NEW SHINY HELMET'. Fraction Grind is stupid, and everytime they choose a way of making it easier, they screw up another material for a tradeskill. How's the prices for all those bits and pieces from the AQ grind at the AH on your server? Economy is going haywire on most servers, and materials that used to be traded to lower levels, require a serious amount of twinking now to be able to afford. I would hate to start playing WoW now! It would suck in that regard. Man, that sounds fun! DAMN SONY, DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!!! Nod, i understand that. In Diablo though, it was always about getting to hell and killing diablo, and it got harder on the way. Some grinds are fun and exciting, others like faction grind don't get harder and harder (in terms of challenge) they just get more and more annoying. Faction Grind is one aspect of WoW that has turned me off the game since release, as it wasn't overly needed in the 1-60 game, and now it is all most of us bloody have. But Mac, i'm an idealist. I don't need to hold up anyone and say 'they should do it like these people'. I'm theorising a future AFTER WoW, using WoW as a launchpad for ideas and direction. I would come back and play WoW in a heartbeat if I could do something, anything in WoW that wasn't either raids or a mindless grind. It can be a grind, i don't care. Just as long as it isn't mindless. Lol, you realise that they basically have said that, not in so many words but might as well have. Paladins have been told that they are now a healer, and as such most of the talents have been pushed into the Holy tree to force the pallies into that. Yet itemisation for plate healing gear is not optimal, it's much more effective for the pally to wear cloth! lol. Most of the Healadins in my guild wear quite a few cloth items, as the plate options are not as good. Besides, if they are standing in the back and healing (note with some of the least aggro generating heals in the game), why do they need plate anyway?
hmm....it is kinda harsh. I move to stricken latent teenage angst from the record! >_<"True dat. If the girls are also idiots then they will stay, if they have half a brain they'll realise that it's more fulfilling to talk to the wall that the pretty idiot."
"and yet, blizzard is doing nothing to hear the opinion of the 4.9 million. As they don't use the forums. So....doesn't that sound a little dangerous and misguided for them then?"
I don't know that they are either! Why don't they show us how they are listening to us, rather than let us form a negative opinion on the other. If they are silent, yes we can read that they are listening, but all we are doing is assuming. Any conversation requires acknowledgement from both sides, and yet Blizz is being quiet about it. I don't think that is smart, but then again i don't have a major in communications so maybe they have some magic esp device that works it all out for them, who knows! Looking at stats and figures on their servers doesn't tell them how people feel about the content, just that they are doing it. Sorry to hear about divorce. Yes, it doesn't mean you don't understand my point, but if you make no effort to show that you do then the communication is a little pointless. Or if you act contrary to what what was said then we must conclude that you didn't understand. We want Bananas blizzard!! Here ya go folks, some apples for ya cause ya asked for em! Um....but we didn't ask for apples, we wanted Bananas. No you didn't, you asked for apples and you got them. 'sigh'. Meeting Stones and Dishonourable Kills are examples of this. Blizzard = Vivendi Universal which hardly makes them a small studio. They started out small yes, but so did most others. Yeah, you're right about small wanting to be big, but i'd also say they regret it in some degress later. Look at how many people have left blizzard since Vivendi took over. I've read recently the sad saga that was Origin's dealings with Sony. I think we need more people wanting to throw money at MMOs without controlling them!!Sorry, my bad on generalising on the grind. If you are grinding interesting challenging content then that is what I would call fun. If you are doing an activity which features no challenge, is about as interesting as picking on kids smaller than you, then i don't find that fun or a reasonable excuse for content.
Yep, and considering the early parts of the game are the most fun, then i wouldn't be surprised if that figure was high. Compared to other games (as far as i'm aware), WoW is easy to lvl to end-game, and it is there where things need to hold interest or people won't stay. At the start of the game you can play with friends that you know and like, at the end of the game you HAVE to deal with people who don't like or wouldn't normally deal with just to have something to do. The group of people i played with were fantastic, i made friends with quite a few people from all over Australia, NZ and the United States, and yet we as a group of about 15 people couldn't progress in the game. We've had to get more and more people so that we have a chance of anything in the end-game, and with that has come more and more people that quite frankly we would have preferred to do with out. But unfortunately, we don't have a choice as the number of people available at our playtimes is limited. I think there is more potential money in it than people currently think, due thankfully to the sudden increase in people playing MMOs (thanks WoW). It's actually people like Brad McQuaid who've done the big boy thing, that now have the opportunity to step out and get funding for more risky niche stuff. (I know you don't overly like what he's doing, but he's at least doing something) True, but i reckon that all an MMO has to achieve is to be better than EQ2 & Others in order to get enough subs to be self-sustaining. It doesn't have to tackle WoW directly, it's too goliath now and as you pointed out human apathy is also a problem. If someone can make an MMO that targets a different market than WoW and is better than the other MMOs, then I think we'll have something that will still last a decent time hopefully, as long as it delivers on what it promises. Still wasn't fair. :P Perhaps. I'm hoping companies are capable of accepting such 'fiscal mistakes' though, as i don't want all my gaming saturated with fluffy bunnies and panda pets thank you very much! What The? I hate that line, it explains nothing. If you intended something, FINE! Help us understand the Why so we aint so shitty at you!! I can't believe you'd like that sort of communication, it irk'd me so much! Fair enough. Though that attitude is propagated by the raiders who think that no one should get anything in any other way then the way they get it. I love the whinge "If people could progress without raids, then no one would raid!". I don't know about you, but that says to me that an alternative solution to raids would be considered more fun! Which is what WoW is all about now isn't it? 1-60 - FUN | 60+ - Boring (For Me) I should have said that these games don't have it anywhere the same degree that games used to. How does it challenge YOU in your 40 man if you are not the one deciding the strategies. In raids people are told where to stand, who to heal/kill, and pretty much what button to press. You might enjoy it, but that bores me to tears. The other point i should have made Mac is that the game is not designed to reward those that creatively solve a problem or solve it in a more challenging way. The loot isn't any better when you 5-man, so do it in 10 if all you're after is loot. Sure you can complete quests in 5-man, but considering there are only a handful of them that don't give much for a highlvl character then why bother. WoW does have it to a certain degree (more in raids), but in no way near what i'm talking about. It rarely challenges the mind unless your attempting something outside of the box, which is not rewarded anyway. Which quests are those? Do you mean the collect lots of mats and give me 50 gold quests? You 5-man UBRS, awesome. How does the game reward you for that? They 10-manned Onyxia! I noticed that, that's freaking awesome. Once again, how does the game reward them for their efforts. Does the game care? You could do no priest runs in scholo if you're all epic!I guess i would like a game that rewards people that challenge themselves, that think beyond the box to complete something very difficult. WoW doesn't do that. Onyxia doesn't care if you bring 40 or 10, she's gonna do the same damn crap she'd done every other time and so is ultimately predictable. If she wasn't so predictable, I doubt that 10 would ever be able to do that. But unfortunately, WoW is not that game. In the end, i don't really expect it to be, but it is a hope for future games that come hereafter that don't just rely on being a clone of WoW in a bid for the mulah, and go for something dynamic with depth and yet still....FUN!
- Bobo -