Why is WoW THE MMORPG? - Page 2

If you're looking for something different, give it a shot. You can pick up the game along with all of the expansions for almost nothing now, and that will be your only expense (there isn't a monthly fee involved). I'd get the main 'Prophecies' game along with 'Eye of the North' first; the other expansions will really only be necessary if you want to try out the additional character classes that come with them (although 'Nightfall' was a really solid game in and of itself).

OK, I need to ask, bc I too have never played a single MMORPG. But what exactly is the point? I am a huge fan of RPG's from table top DND to video game rpg's, but they all have self-contained stories that have a beginning, middle, and end.

WoW seems to me like a alternate reality landscape that you would just wander around, beat stuff up, and steal treasure. Is there an underlying story objective to this game? How do you figure out what you're supposed to do,etc?

I pushed hard on CoH several years ago. Got my character into the 40s and realized there's really no end game, just more of the same and then the core dev team I think gave up. Because I came back and my character was broken. The dev team monkeyed with the power set too much. So I quit that.

Now the dev team that created CoH is working on Champions. I'm not sure I am ready for more of the same. Or maybe finally you can truly mix and match powers like the original CoH was supposed to be.

Those walls are still there, however they've improved the mini-mapping system somewhat. PM me if you're seriously thinking of re-joining.

That's pretty much it for any MMORPG. They are glorified role playing systems built into a virtual world.

The game itself will have a main storyline that you pretty much NEED to follow, but you can generally follow it at your own pace. There are plenty of side quests that you can (and should) do in order to flesh out the main story and gain loot and experience. Most games are designed for players to be able to 'solo' through, but you really should group up with other players in order to hit the more difficult play areas.

Once you're 'done' with the main storyline, you're pretty much free to explore whatever endgame content is available. For some games, that will involve raiding large dungeons or crafting items to sell. It really depends upon what you want to do.

Yeah, if you want it to end, then it does end. The main story does conclude. If you don't want it to end, you just keep on playing and doing PVP and high level raiding.

Oddly enough, I found single player RPG's pointless. I mean, i grew up with them, but I hated that after spending 50 hours leveling characters, the game ends and you've got nothing more to do. Felt like a waste. When MMO's came on, it was like I could have the single player experience via quests and following the main story, but it would also never end so i could continually use my character until I decided it was time to go, not the game.

People also enjoy leveling multiple characters, since in many cases, the story is different depending on your class, race, and/or alignment.

MMOs are really designed for teams, though. The fun comes from putting together the right class mix for large scale dungeons:

- Tanks need to know what they're doing.
- DPS units need to know when to enter the fray and when to back off
- Healers need to be on task.

Figuring out the strategies necessary to coordinate 24 players towards a common goal is alot of fun. When it all comes together successfully, you truly feel like you've accomplished something.

See, for me, it's more fun to find a couple of people who need help on the same quest and form a little band to take care of it. Having a guild getting an instance on farm status doesn't strike me as the best of times, but I've had a blast coming up on two or three players getting their hats handed to them by a mob and bailing them out with a heal or an attack when they needed it. Then we form a pick-up group and finish the quest. Those small-scale interactions feel more organic and exciting to me than waiting around for the fifth cleric to show up so you can 25-man a dungeon.

I won't disagree with you at all, Richard. Quick PUGs, especially when you actually kick ass, are a blast. You tend to add alot of cool players to your 'friends' list that way, too.

The fact that the game runs on anything and still looks good due to artstyle is a big, big reason.

Also, it's the best combination of everything that makes up an MMO (raiding, loot, questing & dungeons, world PvP, queued PvP, storyline, balance, race/class diversity, overall amount of content) without being "the best" in any one area. Maybe you can play another game with better PvP or character/class customization, but that game won't have the lore and content of endgame raids in WoW. That's its biggest strength.

For those who never tried City of Heroes/Villains but are curious, or for those who played in the past but were having pangs of nostalgia, you can play free for two weeks. Just create an account with an email address, download the client (which contains both CoH & CoV) and fuck around for two weeks without paying. When the trial expires you can shell out money or just create a new account with a different email address and log in using that, no need to re-download the game. Your characters are account-specific, so you'll have to make new ones every time, but the game is still pretty shallow so you probably won't be heartbroken by losing that level 8 Mastermind.

It's great for players who tire of the game easily and have the most fun at the early levels, just fine-tuning the look of their characters and exploring new powersets. It's still pretty shallow gameplay so it bores me after a while, but you can't beat the price.

WHY I USED TO PLAY

1. WOW saved me a ton of cash...

I was really bad with purchasing games I would never play or play infrequently. And not just video games, tabletop and roleplaying games too. I used to buy all of this stuff just to read the rules or have the little dudes that came with the games on my shelf, but I would rarely be able to coordinate an actual games day or consecutive time to play. When I was playing WoW, I had a great immersive game that fit into my weird schedule when I wanted it too, and when I had time to game, it usually got spent playing WoW. Happily, many of my friends did that too, and we RP'ed and gamed within the WoW environment instead of having to assemble all of the time. We still try and do the board game thing once a month, but I was not and am still not spending new money on games.

The same thing sort of happened with DVD expenditures too. Now my wife and I only buy movies that we know we will watch more than once, rather than just a bevy of new releases every Tuesday like we used too.

2. WOW satisfied my collecting fetish...

I used to be terrible with spending money on collectables, whether it was toys, card games, whatever. I put that fetish to use in WoW for Profession and Secondary Skill recipes. Oddly, I found that just as satisfying, and I would quite often do research on where to find rare ones, etc. before playing.

3. I could play WOW by myself...

I've done both the guild thing and the solo thing, and I loved that I could actually do stuff in the game without other people. This facilitated my ultra-casual play style. I was afraid at first I wouldn't be able to really enjoy playing after hearing about raiding, etc. I basically decided I didn't really care if I did the whole raid thing, I was still having grand fun. The most grouping I would do would be pick-up groups for the occasional instance, or with friends, nothing big. BG stuff for me was almost as cool as playing Battlefront, and that can be done very casually too.

4. I felt like I was immersed in a different place when playing WOW...

I really appreciated the lengths that the developers went to to make the game look good and be detailed and interesting enough to hold my interest. RP'ing in this environment was fabulous, because as a DM 85% of your work is done for you. And yes, I did like to RP.

I found the stress-relief inherent in escaping into Azeroth a very real thing for me as well, as super-nerdy as that sounds.

5. WOW 'forced' me to be more disciplined with my time

I didn't watch nearly any TV after I started playing this game, which I think is a great thing. We as a family will watch things together, and my wife and I watch shows together, but if I have free time when everyone else is asleep in the house or my wife is doing her thang, the TV never factored in for random viewing, as I found WOW more compelling.

WHY I QUIT

The first time I quit it was to help a friend get over the game, as she was really struggling with managing her time spent playing and couldn't do it on her own. I started playing again a year later (go figure), and finally quit early this year.

I realized that ultimately, World of Warcraft can be a barrier to being successful in life. Every person I talk to who plays justifies it by saying things like “It’s just my hobby” or “I do WoW instead of watching T.V.” or even “It’s my lifestyle.” No one plays this game truly casually. I got up to 25 hrs a week at my worst!! The game itself is set up to make it very difficult to do anything useful in a single hour of play, and there is in fact no “winning” World of Warcraft. The more you play, the more successful you will be in-game. It is adept at making you feel like you have accomplished a great deal, when really all you have done is played for a long time.

Real life achievements take a lot of time and trying to achieve something doesn’t always result in success. In World of Warcraft, you WILL be successful at ANYTHING in the game world, just as long as you spend enough time playing. No chance of failure makes the real world seem boring and difficult by comparison. But I realized I wanted more out of my life than WoW. This is the essence as to why WoW is as successful as it is; Blizzard has come up with the perfect marriage of the illusion of acomplishment and decent game play. Hats off too them, but this game is not a good thing for me. EDITED TO ADD: I am not in the minority for problem gaming, apparently.

I do find it kind of sad that a website like this exist http://www.wowdetox.com/

I could never get into WoW, I was more into Everquest, but I had to quit because I was failing both College and my relationship at the time.

Funny enough my wife plays Wow... I tend to stick with Left 4 Dead or TF2, games you can play for about an hour and be done with. Looking for to spending long hours with Diablo 3 though..

That is until that new Star Trek MMORPG comes out.

I'd like to think that The Old Republic is going to be the second coming of MMORPGs next year.

QFT, wow, Planetside pretty much sucked. But it sounded oh so cool!

I really hope so, I played Galaxies during a week free trial..wow some good ideas but damn did that game BLOW.

Same crap over and over, and I pretty much had to repair my land speeder after every mission.

Yeah, you need to make sure that the MMO that you're playing doesn't take over your life. I've got coworkers that, quite literally, play WoW every night after work from 7pm until around 2am or so. I play for 8 hours a week at the most.

Everyone already gave excellent answers so I don't have much to add on the pros and cons of WoW. I especially agree with those who think WoW is an abnormality. It is. I really don't think any developer has a chance to knock Blizzard off unless Activision gets lazy and stupid and pulls back on the resources/talent they spend on WoW. Thats the only way Blizzard will lose serious ground in WoW. Other MMORPGs can be successful like LOTRO but they are niche players. There is still money to be made there but it will always be the red-headed stepchildren of the MMORPG market.

I think the only thing that can beat Blizzard is Blizzard. I'm very curious from a business aspect on how they plan on transitioning to their next MMORPG. How do they set aside the necessary funds and resources to (oh let's happily hope this is true) StarCraft Online without alienating and killing the golden goose?

I've said it multiple times on my podcast, but I'd fucking kill for a good Shadowrun MMO.

I'd play that, absolutely.

I'd also kill for a good Western MMO, something with the look and feel of 'Gun' or the upcoming 'Red Dead Redemption'.

Seriously, you think 25 hours is your worst? Lord, when I was GM of my guild in Classic WoW, I was working 8 hours a day, then working on WoW another 10 hours a day during the week, and spending 12-18 hours a day on days off. I play about 15-20 hours a week now, and it's so extremely casual I don't even realize I've put the time in, while also doing tons of other things in real life.

That's a great idea, although I wonder what kind of weaponry would exist outside of guns?

Revolvers, shotguns, rifles, gatling guns, canon, knives, swords, tomahawks, bow/arrow, dynamite, and fists. You'd have upgrades to improve the load time, accuracy, range, etc as appropriate.

I'd love to do a bank robbery or a train robbery raid.

So how much does WoW pull in for Blizzard? I've heard about 1.8 billion..but hell, could be more once Diablo 3 and Star Craft 2 hits.

If there was a Shadowrun MMORPG, they'd find my dessicated husk in front of the computer.

Yeah, 25 hours a week is only about 3 1/2 hours a day. I remember spending 8 hours on a single task force mission in CoH, with about an hour before and after for prep and recovery.

There's, what, 11 million subscribers, each paying $14.99 a month? Even if there's some fishy accounting going on and there's only half that many active subscribers, that's still around $80 million coming in every month.

Well, by using the 25 hours a week for other things other than WoW, I have been able to:

- get a better job (as a programmer here for Red River College)
- grab better, more lucrative frelance work
- take Tae Kwon Do lessons and achieve my yellow belt (so far; I've been at it for 3 months now :P )

Think of what could be done with even more than 25 hours worth of extra time. It's up to the individual, of course, what they want to do with their time. But I have ZERO regrets using my WoW time to focus more on real life.

I can't say I've ever truly 'quit'; but there have been long stretches where I didn't play a lot or at all, but I keep coming back to it. Not as much now (heck, I'm only level 75 half a year after Lich King! I call that progress) because it's a very social game if you want it to be. Every Wednesday a bunch of us get together and play because, well, it's cheaper than driving up to Mass or New Hampshire every week to hang out. It's kept friendships going and even created a few new ones.

Was I ever addicted? A little, I guess. But life has a way of getting in the way of shit, like when you have to eat, but don't have any money; guess what's going down the drain?

At this point, I think it's become an unstoppable singularity, it's gone over the tipping point and it just amasses more and more users on a daily basis.

QFT. This is how I thought SWG was going to be. But if I could take my old pen and paper character (Nails Sehguh- Street Samurai with "Betty" his trusty Panther Cannon with custom silencer) and remake him in a MMO, oh man.

What do you guys think of crafting? To me, it's a time sink I mostly ignore. I remember playing a Chosen -- basically a walking tank -- in Warhammer Online and thinking, "Why on earth would a guy who is bred to smash the living hell out of people take time out to make potions?" I didn't sign up to be a chemist or a haberdasher. I mean, I can see the appeal for some people, and I guess there's a monetary advantage to making stuff instead of buying it, but in the time it takes to get all the components and make the stuff, I could probably quest and earn them money to buy it outright, and get XP in the process (I'm a total auction house whore).

I hate crafting. Always have.

Crafting is too much like work. I'm there to play the game, not gather resources.

My buddy in SWG did nothing but that, but since you could open your own stores essentially, his store was always sold out of the best weapons in the game. But yeah, watching him fill out an xcel spreadsheet of materials and times to harvest and shit, confused the shit out of me. Why do all that work?

I've got guildmates who spend hours and hours gathering resources and crafting shit. God bless em, they sell me what I need at cost. They're also 'rich' in terms of the game economy, but who really cares?

I'm not a crafter either. I tried it once and felt like I was missing out on something. My friends are running around having advantures and I'm making 200 metal bars so I can create a lame sword.

Somebody one day will have to explain what is "fun" about these games. I just don't get it at all.

I beta tested Everquest for PS2 a long time ago, and didn't get the appeal at all. It hardly seemed to qualify as a minimal game. Even staring at a screensaver looks like more fun than this.

EQ for PS2 was shit.

I got bored and leveled mining/JCing on my death knight in about two days. Now I can't be bothered to spend 10 minutes a day to the do the daily to collect recipes. And people that fish or cook are masochists, but god love em, they bring the feasts.

Didn't know that PS2 had Everquest!

You guys are probably going to laugh at me, but I loved crafting. I haven't played WoW for years, but it was always my favorite part of the game. Gathering herbs, creating potions. My absolute favorite pasttime would be selling said potions on the market. Once I became rich enough I would simply buy the harder to find herbs then turn them around and sell the potions for a tidy profit...it was like playing the stock market. It was such an easy way to make money, especially after I got my (potion?) skill up to 300. I would have lvl 60s emailing me, wanting me to sell them the high-end specialty potions. It was a great way to get into any guild because I brought something to the table. I would also have lvl 60s come to my aid if I was ever in any danger.

As mentioned, the best thing about MMO's is the many different ways to play it. I chose to be an economy guy. I bought and sold stuff on the auction house for profit and I harvested and gathered and built stuff for sale. Being rich was my goal in the game and that's how I played it. That's what I found fun. Being wealthy gave me a sense of satisfaction.

Being wealthy also allowed me to pay people to fight for me in the areanas or go along on raids for gear. I basically purchased all my epic items as I do not have the skill to earn them. My skills lie in crunching numbers and I applied them to the game. I and a minority like me play differently, but it's still fun as hell for us. We do the gathering so you don't have to!

Edit: I see bob up there and I played similarly.

Yes and it was horrible, at least the beta copy I had.

And boy was it boring. I also didn't really know how to play it. I'll never forget the time I ventured into another city ... with my character walking for an eternity while nothing happened around me. Yay, fun!

Its just a nice feeling to know that you can buy absolutely anything you want in the game, and I could do so at a relatively low level. I had enough coin to completely fund several characters. It was my intention to deck out one of each type (tank, magic user, priest), but I never got even close to that.

I think much of the early success of WoW was due to the fact it took place in a universe that already existed, and people had been dying to explore outside of the RTS framework. From there it just built on word of mouth and a fun game play experience (if you don't take it too seriously and play it like it's a, you know, video game).

I'm a crafter as well. I generally horde all the crap you pick up anyway and being able to manipulate that into goods that people need was something I enjoyed. Besides, I almost always play as a magic user of some kind and it made sense to me that this type of character would dabble in potions, herbs, crafts, etc.

One of my favorite things to do in WoW was use the Auction. I made a ton of money buying and selling goods which allowed me to really max out some rare items for my characters. I also loved conning people by selling simple rocks and blocks of useless ore for thousands of gold pieces by manipulating the markey or just making the object seem fantastic. Good times.

SWG had one of the better crafting systems back before the NGE killed it. Most of the resource collection was automated by droids and you could sell stuff in a player created store. Not the most exciting activity in the world but it made for a more creatively fulfilling experience(designing and maintaining the store) to me than most other MMOs Ive played. Ive not played WoW in quite awhile so Im not really clear on how that one works anymore but it seemed to be the weakest aspect of an otherwise great game when I quit(just after battlefields came out).

Was the Matrix Online game as terrible as everyone says it is?

Crafting pre-BC was a bit tiresome, but I really got into it once BC was out and you could craft your own epic items. That, and websites like Crafter's Tome made it easy to see where every single recipe was. I was a total scavenger hunter during my time in the game, and I blew most of my time either finiding easter eggs in the game (Dwarven Airstrip in Dun Morogh was the weirdest, but the Thandol Span super-brew quest was pretty werid too. The Legend of Zelda questline gave my Paladin his only ranged weapon), or recipes for cooking and tailoring. Cooking is the easiest thing to level along with fishing; quite easy to get up to 300 in 4 hours.

I didn't know of anyone who played The Matrix Online. Not a single soul, actually!