It's hilarious. You only have to say something as simple as "I like how WoW does <pick anything>", then watch the war begin.

 

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"This mail system works like WoW"


*Explosion*

 

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WoW's subscriber numbers are global, which wasn't the case with past MMOs. Now, there's nothing wrong with saying that WoW has been very successful ... it's just that the numbers are very misleading unless you understand the individual components that make up the whole.

Also, as much as I've enjoyed WoW, it was a mediocre game when it launched and survived a number of catastrophes through out the 1.x patch cycle. I know that I've received more than a few free days form Blizzard for server downtime.

Over simplified, but WoW survived based on a strong brand and good, but not great gameplay.





Too late. They've set the formula for most new games. CoD/MW is a good example of a game outside the MMO genre using a mindless carrot-on-a-stick reward system where time=accomplishment. Farmville is obviously the WoW game design paradigm to the extreme.

Personally, I think that there's a difference between being rewarded to play and playing for the reward. I would consider questing and achievements (generally) as being rewarded to play and PvP/Dailies/Raiding as playing for the reward. The big question is, are you playing because the game play is fun or because getting virtual rewards are fun? If it's the latter, I suggest you re-evaluate your life.

 

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Realize it is too late for some games. But there's always hope that somebody, somewhere will stop the trend and come out with something fresh that adds to the genre. Won't somebody think of the women and children!


If the game wasn't intrinsically fun, what is the point of playing? It's rather cheap entertainment (with the added benefit of years and years of stories and complaining.)

 

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All you have to do is look at the relatively wild success of single-player sandbox games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress to realize that there's still a huge untapped market in MMOs... it just turns out that every sandbox MMO to come out, with the one exception of Eve Online (which still manages to occupy a fairly small niche), has sucked horribly in virtually all regards. It's not the concept that is failing, it's the execution.

Nonetheless, people keep flocking to new MMOs (and then abandoning them a month or two later), HOPING that they'll provide more depth than WoW... but they ultimately don't even live up to basic standards of polish that Blizzard has made their mantra.

 

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Eventually, within the next year or two or even three, something will come out that will blow us away.

That is how it works.

 

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Unfortunately, it appears like more Blizzard products like Diablo III. But, it's all good to me.

 

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i will say a good 80% of the players that I have played with since Day 1 have quitted the game for good. But kudos to Blizzard, they are still able to constantly attract new players into the game.

In my current raiding guild, there are 6-7 players that only picked up the game in WOTLK, and a good chunk that only started in TBC.

Personally, I felt that one reason WoW is successful is because it provides sufficient challenge to all kind of players.

For the casual, it is to complete a previous tier armor set from doing just 1-2 heroic per evening.
For the raiders, it is to work with 10/25 other people to gain enough gear to clear through the hard mode encounter
For the super-hardcore, there is always the 11.6K achievement points and 78 feat of strength for them to grind.

The other reason is that you can be moderately successful in WoW without investing too much time in the game.

My previous raiding guild only raid 3 days per week at 3 to 3.5 hours each. And yet they are able to "beat" WOTLK by clearing Heroic LK25 before the 4.0 patch.

My current raiding guild does full clear of ICC25 and RS25 HM in one 4 hours session for many weeks now. Majority of the raiders will just AFK for the rest of week, with a handful of hardcore continue to grind their achievement.

In many other MMO, you will feel that you are dropping out from the "competition" if you do not login and clock at least 8-hours a day of grinding.

 

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Its more then just the various challenges and raiding though I think. I played DAoC for 3 years after jumping from mmo to mmo trying to find the niche that I liked. I loved DAoC as soon as I had my first taste of thid. DAoC has many of those acheivement grinding raids and a very big after game in the form of a very well thought out world realm vs realm world. Here's the problem with it though, and the reason that most quit and it continues to slowly die. Bugs, horrible, came changing and unbalancing bugs. Almost every game that has come out has dealt with horrible bugs that make most unplayable or just infuriating to do so. Blizzard has been fast in squashing these bugs. Sure there may be a small amount out there, but they are usually far from game breaking. There patches generally are well done and any bugs are fixed quickly. There are bugs in DAoC that have been around since the game began. Not small bugs either, game inbalancing, breaking bugs.


Next is, as mentioned, hardware. WoW plays on most any machine (within reason) so it more appeals to the masses since they don't have to upgrade. I remember when WoW came out and I was still in DAoC, I had just built an all new computer. A very good computer, not very top of the line but pretty close. Yet, I still had lag even in PvE, and the latest expansion (TOA) had been out for a year already. The next expansion, which came out a month after WoW, was even worse and introduced more bugs. The next year, after having the same lag, I tried out WoW. It played glass smooth at highest settings, in DAoC, I had to go med/high and there were some setting no one was able to turn on because of lag. I shouldn't even have to talk about AoC, though its graphics were amazing.


The openness of the world should probably be discussed as well. Unless I'm the minority, I don't like feeling "closed in" our restrained in an mmo. Most of supposed "WoW killers" that have been released have had unneeded world restraint. AoC has small zones (though some of those are bigger now) but its constant zoning. WAR has the stupid teir thing, which makes the zones feel small. Especially since the zones are longer then they are wide, forcing you down a constraining feeling hallways of a zone. On top of that, there really isn't any raiding to do per say unless you do city raids which are pvp based. Since not everyone wants to be forced to do pvp, that brings the subs way down.