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Why is WoW the most popular MMORPG?
jmoneys
Member Posts: 3
Hey everyone, I am currently enrolled in a writing class at the University of Denver focused on World of Warcraft. I am currently sending out this survey to find out why World of Warcraft is the most popular MMORPG to fulfill my qualitative analysis requirement. The survey is really quick. I would appreciate it if you guys would fill it out.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dFJmcWhuclU3VmZDU2ttbWQzZXVMOGc6MQ
Thanks guys!
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Comments
Free beer.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
McDonald's
Very simple. Everyones computer can run it.
That's one of the industry secrets that everyone on the planet seems to know and understand... except developers.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I'm currently studying statistics and just as a suggestion your better off to use more close ended questions so it is easier to tabulate and infer from the data. The questions you used, particularly at the beginning would be very difficult to infer from. I can imagine that many people would generally say the same thing but in different ways, and thus would be hard to measure.
As they say, open-ended questions are a statisticians worst nightmare
Good luck though.
People need somewhere to throw their money?
Free beer you say?
World of Warcraft is such a commercial success because it appeals to the masses. They made the game based on an existing IP with a huge fan base. Blizzard stream lined the MMORPG experience using a new type of leveling system (questing) which allowed players to level solo or grouped with equal results. The Cartoonish graphics not only appealed to the whole family but made the game available to many more consumers due to low system requirements. Then of course their marketing campaign which included, TV Ads, Celebrity endorsements, Product placement, Joint Ad campaigns with Mt. Dew, hell they even did a super bowl ad with Toyota.
There are endless reasons to why World of Warcraft became such a huge success but in the end it came down to releasing a polished product that appealed to the masses, that was backed up with a huge marketing campaign.
Thepwnblog.com - MMORPG blog
To the OP; just ask yourself why McDonalds probably has more customers than a lot of other chains combined. It was a simple cheap product marketed to the masses, trying to please the most number of people at a time, rather than going after a niche market, and trying to excel at quality rather than quantity.
Back to the restaurant analogy, try comparing McDonald's to like say your favorite non-chain-franchise Mexican/Chinese/Greek (insert your favorite ethnic food here) restaurant. McDonald's features cheap prices, bland foods (that don't nessesarily taste awesome, but don't offend most people). Combine that with massive marketing, peer pressure and the like.
Also, since MMO's (well, real MMO's anyway that fit the definition) have to be "Massively" multiplayer, which tends to create in of itself a sheep herding-like phenomenom. The thought process goes something like "Well, everyone else is playing WoW, it's what all the kewl kidz are doing, so I'm going to go give it a look myself". Once there in WoW, of course you will eventually find some buddies, friendships develope etc, and then it becomes very hard to put it down. "All my friends play WoW, so I guess I will too".
Another reason for WoW's enormous sucess is it's a very well done SkinnerBox
Edit: Also some good reading here.
Timing
Advertising(Blizzards name and the biggest marketing budget of an MMO ever)
Simplicity, ease, and design aimed at people with ADD
low system reqs
momentum
Done.
honestly, I think this has something to do with it. (and I was one of em...)
It's a proven historical fact that beer saved humankind.
Lol, but is it the most popular? According to this site MapleStory has 50mil members..5x or so WoW, but who knows how they count these things.
That's world wide, Blizzard only counts the number of players in America.
I dont think so, the 12 mill is a world wide number. Notice the source is says 'around the globe.'.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/10/07/world-of-warcraft-reaches-12-million-players/
Blizzard counts the world, when it suits them. When they lost 8 million from China they didn't tell anyone. Who knows how Blizzard counts their stuff, doubt its any more legit than Maple Story.
WRONG!!!!!!!
Correct, and approximately 1/2 of those are in China, where most players play in an internet cafe type system, and pay by the hour so it's difficult to track the accurate number of accounts. They don't have "subs" like NA or EU. That 12 million they claim breaks down into about 6 million for China/Asia (Korean has a lot of subs too), 2 million in NA, 3 million in Europe and 1 million in Oceania (AU + NZ). That being said, not all 12 million are active accounts, and not all 12 million accounts are individual users. When you subtract out the multi-boxers or people with multiple accounts to get around the 10 toon limit per server, and then take out the 100's of accounts that belong to corporate/business (gold sellers, farmers, spammers and powerleveling services come to mind); that real number of people actively playing WoW becomes MUCH smaller. Also I could subtract from that 12 million the 5 million or so claimed for China, they don't even have Cataclysm yet.
I myself have 3 dormant WoW accounts, and I know a lot of people who have 2 accounts (mostly for taking advantage of the recruit-a-friend thing for faster alt leveling, and the cool mount reward etc)
Edit: There's no way that 50 million figure for an old game like Maplestory is even close to correct, I'm thinking you have Maplestory confused with something like Farmville (what are they up to now, 60 million? Lawl)
tahts not true anymore..... as they have updated the graphics.... my brother cant play it on his pc ( it only runs with lowest graphics settings and it lags so much its depressing)
Looks like I was wrong, thanks for telling me
I'm not very fond of maple either way, so.
Just pulled the numbers from the intro on the mmorpg.com site. No idea how correct it is, but even at 50% u still end up higher. So pretty good probability its higher than WoW. Dont know anything about Farmville, but there u go that drops WoW down to 3rd?
Yah, Farmville is one of those terribad Facecrook games, and there is at least 5x as many people playing that craptastic Farmville as WoW.
In reality, the reason WoW is such a massive success is because it's a massive success.
In vanilla, WoW appealed to Blizzard fans (such as my father, who played Diablo and Diablo II religiously for years) and EverQuest fans. This got the game it's first massive population influx.
Due to it's population and cultural presence, lots of people started to know about WoW. People played it's free trial and gained at least a passing knowledge of the game. This includes a lot of my friends, my girlfriend, HER friends etc.
WoW's far more casual and solo-orientated nature kept these players around for longer than EverQuest and other earlier games did. A decent tutorial helped, too.
That's pretty much it, really.
Here are a few reasons that WoW is so successful.
1) It is accessible both in terms of the hardware that is required to play it and in terms of the video game experience/skill and the related learning curve needed to succeed at it. Thus many people play WoW do not play a lot of other video games.
2) WoW has had a rather large marketing capaign backing it up for years.
3) Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft are some fo the most commercially successfull games ever made for relatively little (compared to others in their respective genres). Blizzard has a rather large fan base and significant experience in making smash hits.
4) It has a high price point, you have to pay a monthly subscription plus buy each expansion. This is significant to its success because these campaigns cost relatively little to make so that Blizzard can spend more money on advertising/buying yachts.
-EDIT- I want to reiterate that number one is the most important aspect of the game's success. It is easy to play, easy to learn and readily available on nearly any computer.
Its a Prius, thats all that needs to be said on this topic. If you fall for those kinds of things, well then its a great game isnt' it....what color is your Prius?
Blizzard has the most popular mmorpg because Blizzard is the only one who tried to have most popular mmorpg. That's all.
WOW is still the most popular because no one has tried to be more popular.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.