Why is WoW THE MMORPG? - Page 3

The beta was a bug filled mess. So was the launch. The fighting was fun when it worked as it was a fluid game of RPS essentially.

This was my experience as well. I was never able to hold my interest past the beta stage though, the fighting was pretty, but once you did it a dozen times or so you've pretty much seen everything. I have no idea what the end game might have been like though so maybe it was great once you got past the dull lower levels.

Lets just say the coolest part of the game for me was going into a new zone to see all the textures resolves from that streaming matrix code. Not the greatest basis for spending fifteen bucks a month.

I just wanted to chime in and say I have also been in the Champions beta. It looks and plays pretty fun. I have not played that much (same as the other guy on work and personal life getting in the way), but what I have played seemed like a leap above CoH. Customization was great, it looked great, and seemed to have a good progression of questing. It was not the non stop 'run to a door and fight in a cave, office building, etc' that CoH had. Combat also seemed pretty cool. Off what I have seen, I would recommend it.

No crafting. Gathering professions all the way. Stacks of leather, herbs and cloth pretty much exclusively paid for my mounts and for my shopping sprees at the AH.

Indeed. The original, huge CH nerfs are what killed it for me, but even then, it wasn't all bad until the Combat Upgrades.

I'm playing SWG via a program called SWGEMU. A bunch of guys are trying to re-create SWG pre-CU. Still lots of work to be done, but it's playable and brings back many, many fond memories. Best of all, it's free.

Sorry RD, definitely no Age Of Conan on a two year old laptop.

And this thread is actually a good indication of the reasons for WOW's success. As you could tell from all the point jumping that the conversation did, there are a million different things, of varying difficulty and time commitment that you can do. And in periods were money is tight or there are no new games to play WOW can take over your gaming time easily.

One final thing. I play WOW intermittently now, a couple of moths here, a couple of months there and I've found that when I activate my subscrition again there are always new toys for me to play with. New skills, new quests, new mechanics, everything is in flux.

Tooled around Age of Conan for a bit with my old character and a new one, and I was still experiencing some graphics issues and frame rate problems. And it still doesn't look pretty enough to justify the high system reqs. Pass.

But it has boobies!

And I have to admit that I PAID for the Matrix Online. Yes, I know. I'm still in therapy. I bought the game for around $50 and then paid for 2 months of service. It sucked. Fighting was a blast but everything else was lousy. The inventory and clothes were atrocious. You could only get certain buffs from clothes but you couldn't tell what sex could wear what clothes (I blame Larry/Lana for this). And the missions were BORING.

I'm up and running again on City of Heroes if anyone wants to run it for a little while. I don't think I'll be on it for more than a few months but it'll pass the time for now. I usually run on the "Protector" server and I have a couple of alts so far.

I think it's interesting the way WoW's success has turned into a sort of positive feedback loop. It's so expensive to polish and continually maintain something as large, fluid, and unpredictable as an MMO that no freshly launched game could ever compete with WoW, which drives more players to WoW, which uses their money to grow even larger and more polished, and so on. It's simply never going to be challenged, at least by an MMO offering a similar, highly structured experience.

On the other hand, games where much of the content and most of the objectives are user-generated (my old favorite EVE comes to mind) still have a nice niche to fill. But they'll never be as successful as WoW, because the reality is that without a bit of hand-holding, 90% of people will end up role-playing nobodies who slave away for a pittance of game currency. EVE actually demonstrates this perfectly - in the PVP areas, you had huge player-created empires with centrally controlled economies, intelligence services, and shockingly complex internal organization. They would rise and fall, betray each other, form alliances, fight massive escalating wars, split apart in civil wars, be hijacked by coups - EVE's low-security areas were basically 15th century Europe combined with the Wild West. And if you got to participate in it as a diplomat or a spy or fleet commander or whatever (I did briefly), it was incredibly engaging. But as a newcomer it was far more likely that you'd just be some unknown grunt following orders, if you were even lucky enough to find your way into an alliance. Or you'd spend your days shooting NPC ships in the game's overfilled trade hub system, providing the minerals your in-game betters would use to build their ships and fight in epic battles that you only got to hear about through bulletins on the start-up screen.

The 11 million subscribers number they like to trot out sounds much more impressive than it is financially speaking. The majority of their subscribers are in China where they have a different fee structure and ultimately pay less than a dollar a month from what I've read. You might be right about your estimated number, but I'm sure there are other markets which have different fee structures as well.

Planetside didn't remotely suck. It was one of the best MMO I'd played when it launched. If anything, it was too ambitious for it's own good given the technology of the time. Planetside had the massive base battles that lots of games promise but almost nobody delivers. It was actually the game that caused me to upgrade my computer back when it launched, I tried playing it on my POS and there was so much information trying to get to my computer in a massive base siege that it froze everybody in place and let me walk around as a harmless observer. I left our base and walked around the trees outside our base counting about 250 enemies. Some were in vehicles, some were not, but it was at that moment that I realized I had to upgrade my computer to play this game.

Unfortunately, Sony treated the game like a red-headed stepchild. As the game started to improve very slowly (they left a real skeleton crew of developers to work on PS) Sony made the obvious cash grab and made an expansion that added mechs to the battles. These were ungodly overpowered, ridiculously easy to rack up kills in and weren't properly nerfed for 4-5 months after launch at which point everybody who cared had already left.

With today's standard internet connections, I hope for some sort of successor to Planetside to actually come out. The frustration of client side hit detection would be minimized and if a smart company put it together they could really have a hit. The only thing I don't know is if FPS games can sustain monthly fees anyhow. We're all too spoiled by games like TF2 where you get all the new content for free.

Dungeons and Dragons Online is going to a free-to-play model with optional purchasable content. They say the best gear will still be available in-game, that the microtransactions are for cosmetic and convenience items, but they also mention that free content will become "sparser" at higher levels. Meaning that you'll probably have to buy quests at higher levels if you want to keep playing.

Late to this thread, but to me one of the real keys to WoW, something it does better than any other game is really making itself a game for all players. If you're a hardcore, end-game gamer, who wants to spend your life raiding and getting uber gear, there is tons of content for you, tons of "hard modes" and tons of challenge.

If you're a casual gamer who just wants to pass the time or collect non-combat pets, or just fish, you can do that too.

And the big one -- If you're a casual player who wants to experience some of the end-game, you can even do that now. WoW has basically accomplished the impossible job of making their tough content reasonable for non-hardcore players, while still challenging for die-hards.

People quibble about the push towards casual gamers in recent expansions, but all but the most insane gamers should still find plenty of challenge.

WoWs player numbers has hit a plateau since the WotLK-Expansion, and now their servers in China had to shut down. Make of that what you will, but something didnt go that well with the latest expansion. At least it seems the period of growth has come to an end.

For anyone interested, Aion is looking quite hot indeed, if you arent fed up with normal MMORPG gameplay yet. It has already hit over 4 Million Subscribers in Korea and China alone, and I had the luck of being in a beta preview weekend for the North American/European version, which is actually an 8 months old client... and its amazingly well done.
Most of all, its technologically ahead of basically anything the western market has produced because it almost looks as good as Age of Conan, but runs smoother than WoW on my machine (a mediocre, 2-years old one, with a 8800 GT card, so nothing hot at all) with over 100 players on screen at once (yeah, the starter zone was packed).
While it may not be everyones taste, it seems to be a very good one at last.

Not to come off like a fanboy, but you're very, very, very wrong. During Burning Crusade WoW hit 9-10million subscribers. Since WOTLK it has gained another 2 million subscribers. 2 million people signing up in the last, 9 months or so, since WOTLK launched is NOT a plateau.

And the servers in China did not "have to shut down." They have changed their licensing agreement with the company that runs the Chinese servers, and are transferring all data to the new company. In order to do this, and not lose data in the process, they are temporarily freezing the servers while the changeover happens.

Still doing Lotro. Dwarves pretty much evicted all evil scum from Moria; on to Dol Guldur!

I thought also there was something with the xpac either not going to China or being delayed a ton, but that might be related to what you're talking about.

At this point any MMO that uses "We're huge in Korea" as a selling point is an instant no from me. Add in what I've seen of Aion from a friend in the beta and I really couldn't care less about that one.

There was some issuing with licensing WOTLK in China, and getting it approved through whatever the Chinese ESRB is. A big part of that responsibility falls on the license holder for the territory, in this case being The9. They didn't, and Blizz got pissed, and did not renew them. A decent sized contingent has moved over to the Taiwan servers though, and had full access to WOTLK.

This is 100% false. Like not even a little bit correct.

No skin off my nose one way or the other, but it's just bad information top to bottom.

The big issue with the latest expansion in China is that the whole death/zombie theme of it just isn't culturally acceptable there. Blizzard were apparently told they can't include Death Knights and it's going to require a ton of work to get the rest of it approved for release. Can't say I know the precise details but skeletons and the like are something of a no-no in China, see also the changes to Scourge and Forsaken models with the vanilla release.

I heard it was because of all the foods and drinks in the game, there was no General Tso's chicken or wink wink nudge nudge Chinese brews in there which is considered a cultural no no. Also, as you tour these great lands in the game, you can't take pictures with a camera. I hear that's considered gauche over there.

What the fuck, man?

Well according to Blizz themselves, after the high point of 11.6 million (see Guiness Book) which was immediately after the Release of Wrath of the Lich King, they didnt reach another Landmark, and listed their active subs, before this China thing, as 11.5 Mio. I never saw the number 12 Mio. in any reputable source at all.

The China thing is, according to a friend of mine working there currently, a bit more complicated, but basically until Blizzard secures a new deal, The9, their previous partner there, isnt hosting the servers. The problems started, as others above me said, with the problems of WotLK not being released in China due to cultural sensitivities.

But one way or the other, we ll see how it goes. The competition has been just plain asleep at the wheel until this year.

EDIT: Checked my sources, it seems the China thing is pretty ugly. Their new partner Netease will try to get the entire character data, but it ll be several weeks, and apparently there is some confusion about left-over gametime being refunded or not, and whether the new servers will even have TBC... and certainly no WoTLK.

Also, the first mention of 11.5 Mio. Subs was late Nov. last year, with no Blizzard-confirmed Statement about 12 Million yet. So, even if they are on the rise still, they are growing slower than ever before. Never has there been 7 Months in WoWs lifetime with not even 500k added players worldwide. But yeah, technically, they may be at 11.999.999
Mind you, I dont care either way, but that stuff has been around a lot of boards lately.

You know, I've been hearing since Blizzard passed 3 million that subscription numbers are dropping. People usually make that claim because Blizzard doesn't make regular subscription announcements. So far, people have been wrong every single time. Eventually people will be right when they claim subscription numbers are dwindling and they'll act like they're incredibly smart even though they just got lucky with a guess. Basing an opinion on things you've read on "a lot of boards lately" and the fact that Blizzard hasn't made a recent announcement is really quite foolish though.

What's funny is that Blizzards numbers are still so far above and beyond anybody else that it's like playing with imaginary numbers. Games get released that can survive if they can somehow keep 500k subscriptions and they end up dying within a year. This cash cow isn't close to being dead yet.

Exactly. Some dimensional warp could open up and suck up half of WoW's subscriber base, and they'd still be the most popular MMO by a mile.

Ah you really do misunderstand me. "Hitting a plateau" doesnt mean dropping, dwindling or anything. It means that the rate at which they are gaining new/returning players approaches the rate at which they lose, so in the end, it remains balanced, neither dropping nor growing. Blizzard has announced every couple of months when they hit the next million in the last years, by the way. This isnt opinions, you can look that up easily.
So either they inexplicably stopped telling everyone and are still growing hugely, or well, they arent growing at the same rate and dont want to tell. I am a Blizzard Fan for most of their games, but even I found announcing 11.5 Million a bit weird. 11 Million? Sure. 12 Million ? Sure. But why the .5 ?

Of course this juggernaut isnt going to die. That isnt even on the table for years now. I mean, EQ1 isnt dead yet, and its 12 years old.
All I was talking about is that according to known numbers and announcements by Blizzard themselves, for the first time since its release WoWs growth seems to have hit a plateau. I dont know why so many people are instantly jumping to WoWs defense when someone just states a few facts. Its not like they are going anywhere anytime soon.

Meanwhile, an interesting statistic about this China thing is that whereever you look, it seems its more than 3 million so-called subs (system works differently in China, obviously, since they dont have pay-by-month accounts there) currently on ice. Plus a lawsuit (thats likely not going anywhere) too. Weird situation for your prime market.

You say "jumping to it's defense", I say "tired of everybody jumping to wild conclusions". I don't really have a horse in this race. I play WoW because there's nothing better right now, and will drop WoW the instant something piques my interest. I really wanted it to be LOTRO, which I played for a month and lost interest. I really wanted it to be Warhammer, which I played for 2 months and lost interest.

A lot of games have made improvements over pieces of WoW. Warhammer, for instance, had a grouping system (and reward for grouping) that is so superior to WoW it isn't even funny. The public quests there were fun, and a fairly revolutionary idea that made grinding feel a lot less like grinding. It's just that most games are trying so hard to "improve" so many areas that they end up making the overall game worse instead of better when those improvements fail.

Here's an article about it, dear:

"The JL McGregor article cites a report by the popular Chinese news portal Sohu, in which an unnamed source claims that Wrath of the Lich King has been rejected on multiple occasions by Chinese officials due to "a city raid and skeleton characters" -- difficult to avoid in an expansion that focuses on armies of the living dead. The story also claims that, because of these sensitivities to reanimated skeletal remains, the version of the expansion presented to the government lacked the new Death Knight player class entirely."

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173210

Yes, it's an unamed source so there can be an element of doubt but it's a fact that the Forsaken models had to be reworked to pass the censors for the original game's release and it's hardly a stretch to conclude the UNDEAD ARMY theme of the expansion is causing problems.

Then I guess it's really ironic that the zombie apocalypse is going to start in China. If that Brooks guy is to be believed...

Wow, I've been discussing the pros and cons of wow with folks recently.

Keep in mind I'm a 'casual' gamer, and an RPer. It makes sense to me that if I'm playing an elf in a virtual world, I better have a backstory as to why this elf is playing.

One of the things that WoW does better than other MMOS...and I"ve played Warhammer and LotRO, is the relative ease of actually playing the game. The User Interfaces for WAR and LotRO are nigh ridiculous and complicated, and the relative ease of communication in WoW blows the UIs in the other games away. There's also the "something for everyone" as well as various other points people have brought up.

Now, WoW is an anomaly. Nothing like WoW will ever happen again, I think. Just the sheer numbers and successes accumulated by Blizzard inregards to the MMO won't be seena gain for a while. It was a fluke. It was the right place, the right time.

I also personally ascribe to the theory that WoW's style is part of the appeal. Not necessarily the artwork, but WoW seems to have a rather 'generic' (and I don't mean this in a negative way) high fantasy appeal. Warhammer and LotRO and AoC are niche games for niche audiences. You'll find more people playing the latter three games because of their love for the property, I promise. They have a history and legacy that Warcraft (although a great series of RTS) doesn't have. This history is a blessing and a curse-people who aren't familiar will be deterred, but those that do play based on the fact that you get to be involved in these settings will be playing for a LONG time.

At least, in my opinion.

Also, WoW is incredibly easy to get back into if you've been away for a while. Takes all of a minute or two to get re-accustomed to the interface.

The depth of World of Warcraft is so obscene that even those who spend every waking moment within it are bound to miss enormous chunks of the experience. At this point, I can’t imagine there being a form of play that isn’t rewarding, though, I will say that going solo on a PvP server would probably lead to a less than fun experience.

I played as a loner cause I have a real job. I still was able to max out my levels and gear and accumulated a large quantity of gold. Wow allows you to play whatever strategy you want.

Solo you don't get to see all the dungeons, and there are certain quests and quest chains that would be impossible by yourself. Other than that, nothing you'd miss.

Yeah it's totally viable going solo. Most of my game time was played that way. Some classes are better than others. It sucks being a healer if you are alone. Also, two classes (Warlock and Hunter) have pets, so it's like you are a two man team with your AI pet.

The quests, which are the main things to do in the game, are mostly (80%?) focussed around a single player experience.

The better equipment comes from teaming up with others and tackling dungeons, but a lot of that can be substituted with equipment at the auction house.

So it's not missing the point of the experience. There are bits you won't see, but at the extreme, there's bits nobody sees unless they have 39+ extremely dedicated friends.