So now if we go back to the fact that WoW actually cloned the EQ game concept and improved upon it and other games failed to do this adequately enough. EQ released back in 1999. Using your argument then every game since then, and even WoW, has either had success or little success in copying and improving upon the model that was first done by a game released in 1999, it is now 12 years later.

Let's move away from the MMO genre for a second and go with another genre, the first person shooter. This genre got started when you had iD release Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. I will go with Doom as it had a larger impact on the genre than Wolf 3d did. When Doom exploded on the scene there were plenty of other games that all of a sudden came out and copied Doom. The basics of gameplay was to escape a level by finding keys so you could move onto the next level. Even when Quake came out in 1996 this was the basics of gameplay.

A year later though Quake 2 releases and instead of running around trying to find keys and the exit, it added various mission objectives that needed to be completed. In the early years of the FPS everybody was playing catch up to iD and what they were doing in with the genre. Now that is what you were supposed to be doing in the game as far as actual game play goes. Yet, how the games actually controlled eventually evolved as well. With the early FPS shooters you were stuck on the X axis and had to shoot your enemies and you were stuck to the ground. Eventually, the Y Axis was added and you had the ability to jump. Then eventually the Z axis gets added as well and even further abilities to game play get added.

Now, the entire FPS genre could be stated that it is still a clone of the initial game that made the genre popular in the first place, Wolf 3d and Doom. I mean the basics of the gameplay are the same, shoot and kill things, yet with out actually evolving what players were actually doing in the game and how they did, the genre wouldn't now be probably the most popular and successful genre currently in games. If all games still played like Wolf 3d and Doom, copying that model for 12 years, the genre would have died out quickly.

Now, the basis for your argument is that the only reason other MMOs haven't succeeded like WoW is because they haven't been able to copy the 12 year old Model of EQ and actually improve upon it or refine it like WoW was able to succeed in doing. In this you are wrong. It isn't the failure of a company in how well they actually improved upon the model or lack of it. It is the 12 year old model itself and if WoW and its success at having successfully achieved the improvement of the model, than the success of WoW has in many ways stagnated the genre. The reason being that every body has been trying to capture that same success found with WoW, all based on a 12 year old game model.

I'm surprised the damn genre has lasted as long as it has if this is the case. The entire genre has become a stagnated pile of crap then if everything is based on a game model of 12 years. The genre can't survive if it continues trying to copy a 12 year old game model, just like how the FPS genre wouldn't have survived if the games still played like Doom. No wonder other games in the genre have only been able to find marginal success at best. The genre for all intents and purposes hasn't evolved one bit in 12 years basically. It needs a good kick in the nuts and thankfully it looks like Guild Wars 2 is actually providing that swift kick the genre sorely needs.

 

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....or the game is 7 YEARS OLD..and people even get tired of banging the same hot chick for 7 looong years. After 7 years of the same thing it gets old..suddenly her left foot over your shoulder and her right toe in your ear is actually annoying... her great lasagna eventually tastes ..eh..ok. Her Jennifer Aniston hairdo only fits in while she is actually watching "friends". Things get old..oh well.

PS ..honey..this wasn't about you.

As someone with no vested interest in the raid-vs-casual debate these days, that sounds like it came from a person terminally afflicted with raid-or-die myopia. Hyperbole doesn't increase the validity of a position. Also, what exactly was your point? That up through WotLK, said "monkey" mode was not a good business model for the game, generally? Or that you personally didn't like it?

 

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Several points are being overlooked in this discussion.

1. "What everyone else is doing"...

When you go to buy any game, one of the first thins that comes into play is if you know anyone else that has it, or is planning on getting it. When AC met with the mass exodus, I know I didn't give a rats ass about what 'model' Warcraft followed. The only options at the time were WOW or Vanguard, and what mattered was who(and how many) was/were playing what.

I knew Blizzard. I knew them from SC, and Diablo, and my computer at the time met the req's for WOW. Vanguard was a completely different story, and many of my friends and colleagues thought the game had promise, but also knew we were not going to buy completely new PC's to play a $50.00 game that we may or may not like and stick with.

I chose WOW, and it had absolutely nothing to to with the model. I enjoy PVP, and WOW offered the most potential targets. Coupled with the computer requirements, It was the easy choice.


2. More computer users than ever.

I've said this before, and I will say it again. You add an exponential amount of computer users compared to previous years, and after they complete their e-mail and instant messaging, they start looking for something else to do. Refer back to number 1, and the MMO player-base explodes exponentially to the numbers we see today. It has much much more to do with computers becoming cheaper and becoming a part of every household than it has to do with WOW.

WOW benefited from this, but did not cause this. Again, absolutely nothing to do with the game model.

3. With the two main factors out of the way, lets discuss "model", and player retention. You have this "new" genre of MMO players, many of which started their MMO careers with WOW, a game which requires very little "skill" as far as dexterity goes, and is gear based.

You jump through the hoops to acquire the gear, you win. End of story. You are higher level than a mob (or player), you win, End of story.

The problem with the games that have tried to take a slice of the MMO pie from WOW, is that they follow the same model. The new genre of MMO player already has that in WOW, why give up the time vested to do the same thing under a different game title?


Blizzard was in the right place at the right time. They already had an immense server backbone from Diablo and Starcraft, and were ready to handle the influx of this "new" mmo player-base. They offered a low system requirement, low skill game, and were in the position to meet the demand of the group described in 1 and 2 above, in addition to the "original" group of mmo players that came from EQ, UO, AC and the like as those games began to show their age, and petered out.


Now that the "new" MMO players have been exposed to the no skill, gear based model, it is going to take a completely different model to pull them away from WOW. Something like AC would probably be too complicated for most of them, but with the success of FPS such as MWF and others on consoles, perhaps we don't give them enough credit in that aspect. Perhaps the masses are looking for a skill based, open loot table, sandbox MMO, and they just won't know it until they play one.

Unfortunately, they can't play one until one is developed.

 

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Good post Gutter on the how and why of Blizzard's success and WoW's climb to the top.

 

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With social networking being an ingrained part of life to the newest generation, maybe the time of MMO's has past, and we are just all old enough to have been there during their rise and fall (kind of like the cowboys of the "old west", which in reality, was only about a 15 year period in history, then was gone forever, yet immortalized and romanticized as if it has lasted for generations) o.0

 

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I think you fail to properly credit with Blizzard bringing out a game at a level of polish that had not really been seen before in the MMO genre. I went through UO (and even some half assed attempts at MMOs before - when massive was still less than 100), AC, EQ, and such, but nothing matched the polish evident in WOW. Hell far too many games still feature shadow boxing instead of the fluid if not visceral melee that you find in WOW encounters. No, they not only showed up at the right time they were loaded for bear.

 

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Spot on:
- They showed at a time where people where looking for something to replace their first gen MMO.
- They delivered quality.

And the second point is what almost every MMO after WoW failed to deliver. WoW set a new quality standard. It was not perfect, mind you, but still way better than any other MMORPG before, and even after it.

 

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Yea, WoW was very polishes at launch, if you could:

1) Log in

2) stay logged in


Other than that, sure the game was awesome. Funny how you forget about them literally giving away days and sometimes a week of free time due to downtime.

 

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polished*

 

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