Who cares we can not change what have happen 6 years ago so lets move one and hope some other companys can challenge WoW as it should be, its healthy and some change dont hurt.
Some change don't hurt, but WoW certainly did. I care, my favorite games are no longer being made, and kids who have never played my favorite games try to claim their's are better and I should get over it.
Nothing lasts forever and shouting at everyone "I'm right, you're wrong" isn't going to change anything.
Very easy to say when you're on casual winning side. Listen, you can have all the casual games you want, be happy. But when it takes away what I love, then there's a problem. Do you think the Scottish just "got over it" when the English took their land? Or the native Americans? Do you think someone who got robbed should "just get over it" when the people that robbed them enjoy the riches they stole?
Don't know about the Scottish but I am part Native American (Arapaho) and have read "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and know quite a bit about their history to know that they didn't just lay down and take it and most likely still haven't "gotten over it", but your comparison is utter shit.
You weren't robbed of anything.
I was robbed of an entire genre of unique innovative games that I enjoyed playing. That genre no longer exists.
I don´t think WoW is the worst thing that happened to the MMO gender.
WoW made Mmorpgs popular and because of WoW´s success lots of developers are creating MMos for us to play.
when are you people going to learn? It didn't make MMOs popular. It made WoW popular. WoW's market increased. The MMO market grew more or less as it would have. The people playing WoW aren't going to be playing most other MMOs. They're WoW fans, not MMO fans. Just like Wii didn't bring 100 million new gamers to the table. Those grandmas and house wives are going to play Wii bowling and then keep playing it. They're not going to switch to Counterstrike or Elder Scrolls. And NO more MMOs aren't being made. WoW clones are being made, then quickly dying off, because they're uninspired clones that bring nothing new to the table. Now in the market, you have 2 healthy growing MMOs, and a ton of dying ones. Before, you had at least 6 AAA MMos all vastly different and growing.
I actually think WoW was one of the finest games i´ve ever played. Low standards? Or do you just like Diablo style games instead of MMOS ?
Now it has changed a lot,making it more casual It was always the most casual MMO on the market..that's one of the reasons it did so well...and all automated by LFG tools so you don´t even see people running around the world like they used to. WoW was never a very social game, not like real MMOS were ..
It´s getting old too...6 years for a game are too many Not if a game is good, well maintained, and keeps doing things new. WoW has NEVER done anything new. .But it will always have a piece of my heart since i had great times playing it
But for me the time to move on to other games came a year ago....
Now i´m playing RIFT and will be playing SWTOR & GW2
So now, you're tired of WoW, so you switched to a WoW clone, are awaiting a WoW clone, and a long shot GW2 MMO?
Yes i am enjoying Rift...Yes i am awating for SWTOR and Yes i will be playing GW2....
Is it that hard to understand i don´t dislike WoW? I loved it at the Vanila stage,not now that´s true.
I play video games since Spectrum 64k and i must say i loved WoW...i´m not ashamed of that. Just got tired of it a year ago.
So?
You can like WoW all you want, but you can't claim it was good for the genre when you weren't here before WoW... that's just dumb. To jump back to my invasion analogy, you can't, as an English soldier, sit in colonized Scotland and say "Yeah, this place is so much better now that we're here!"
I used to like wow...not anymore...
And i don´t claim it was good for the genre... i answer to a poll asking if it was "the worst thing that happened to the genre" don´t play with my words plz.
I have played Games since they were in audio cassettes so i was here b4 WoW came out... so don´t call me dumb for giving away my opinion on a game or a poll.
I can give my opinion just as you can, or are you one of those that thinks they are in possesion of the ultimate truth?? o.0
For all those saying WoW wasn't the worst thing to happen to the genre, then what was? You can't say "nuh uh" without giving any supporting argument. Seems that's the only defense WoW is getting, blind "nuh uhs"! by people that weren't even around before WoW was.
If you all endlessly keep replying to replys that say i know it all and my game is best then after 100 or 1000 pages whe still argue about same thing and dont come to a conclusion.
If someone give a constructive reply maybe you should reply back to those with another constructive reply argue why right or wrong, instead endlessly reply your wrong and my game is best and your game sucks hehe.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
At first it was all good wasn't it... a new game, even better a new world to explore based on a beloved rts game.
Then, it just turned into this disease where anywhere you went, if it was mentioned, (even if you weren't feeling it yet) you could *facepalm* before it starts. Just like whenever CoD or some worn-out internet meme (heck even a new but unoriginal, unimaginative but spread like cancer "meme") is mentioned, even SLIGHTLY hinted, you might as well go kill yourself.
So why even bring up what WoW has done to the genre now eh? Just be nerve jerking everyone to bring surface all their unresolved issues. Symptoms of the human race, a F*CKING virus...
The number of players from any suuccesful MMO before WoW equalls the number of players from a failed MMO after WoW...
WoW allowed MMO gaming to take its rightfull place as a poular genre...
The worst thing happening in the MMO industry is all those other companies trying to make a 1 on 1 copy of WoW and loosing their innovative thinking.
And that was directly because of WoW, if WoW hadn't happened then we wouldn't get the clones.
Also, the number of people playing MMOs now is not directly do to WoW, it's just the natural growth of the market. Video games in general have been getting more and more mainstream. WoW didn't bring a ton of new people to the genre, it brought a ton of people to WoW and that's it. The sooner you people realize this, the sooner you can start forming better arguments.
Remember, the Wii and Wiisports didn't bring a ton of people to video games, it brought a ton of people to the Wii. A WoW player wouldn't play UO (generally) and Grandma wouldn't put down Wii bowling for Doom 3.
WoW is an effing copy of every good MMO. It came out just as MMOs were really starting to take off, and now you have all these deutsches who think that because they've played WoW for 7 years they know everything there is to know about MMO's. Honestly, it doesnt really matter. Only think I can think of is that the WoW crowd consists of a bunch of jackasses.. like everyone who drives a mustang is a dipshit, everyone who plays WoW is... blah. I mean EVERYONE who plays wow. E-rageeeeee, whatever.
Id rather play FFXI than WoW. Asheron's call was the best before tinkering! Asherons call had the real time/global/world changing events like guild wars 2 will have, it had great soloing, great questing, in a huge sandbox environment, not to mention the pvp was a blast! Dark age before ToA, i cant even explain how great the rvr was in that game. Try it out!
This might be true if you talk to MMO gamers, in the United States that comes out to be 15% of the population (based on amount of MMO gamers/Population of the United States). Or if you want to push it and say World of Warcarft would be on the list of important things for all gamers, even ones that do not play MMOs, that comes out to be 55% in the United States (based on amount of gamers/population of the United States). That still leaves 45% of the population that does not play video games!
So saying World of Warcraft would be on a list of things that matter, is completely foolish unless you are only talking about gamers.
Without WoW, there wouldn't be WoW clones, without WoW clones, there wouldn't be much games on the mmo market, thus everyone starts playing CoD and its various guns, jumping around on xbox being a d!ck and playing trash music on their speakers.
RESULT 1: Think about it, WoW probably SAVED your gaming life :P
For half the people here who thinks wow is bad, read above, then continue thinking, without Everquest, there wouldn't be WoW, without um.....whatever mmo came before *Ultimo Online*? there wouldn't be Everquest,
RESULT 2: So whatever old school mmo games you loved, it probably saved your gaming life :P
Now the world is happier.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW? As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Without WoW, there wouldn't be WoW clones, without WoW clones, there wouldn't be much games on the mmo market, thus everyone starts playing CoD and its various guns, jumping around on xbox being a d!ck and playing trash music on their speakers.
RESULT 1: Think about it, WoW probably SAVED your gaming life :P
For half the people here who thinks wow is bad, read above, then continue thinking, without Everquest, there wouldn't be WoW, without um.....whatever mmo came before *Ultimo Online*? there wouldn't be Everquest,
RESULT 2: So whatever old school mmo games you loved, it probably saved your gaming life :P
Now the world is happier.
What? It didn't save my gaming life at all. I don't play WoW clones. The MMO market was doing great before WoW came along, there were about 6 big company MMORPGs with heavy growing populations. Now there's 2. So now, I have no AAA MMO to play, they're all gone or they're all WoW clones. It didn't save anything, it ruined everything. There were dozens upon dozens of MMOs on the market before WoW came along. Of course, there weren't as many as we have now, but I'd rather have less, higher quality MMOs, than a thousand useless WoW clones.
In fact, if WoW didn't exist, I'd probably still be playing Middle Earth Online. It had a community unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was a unique sandbox game set in Middle Earth. I only played the alpha for a few months, met the devs two or three times, they were all great people. Then they all got removed so new, younger devs could come in, and turn MEO to LotRO as fast as they could. Not you have a straight WoW clone that almost none of the original MEO crowd enjoyed.
AoC may have been good without WoW. So much of that game was changed during closed beta because they invited large swathes of kids from WoW, and they said everything was too hard. Ahhh 8 directional combat, change it to 3! We can't handle it!
Without WoW, there wouldn't be WoW clones, without WoW clones, there wouldn't be much games on the mmo market, thus everyone starts playing CoD and its various guns, jumping around on xbox being a d!ck and playing trash music on their speakers.
RESULT 1: Think about it, WoW probably SAVED your gaming life :P
For half the people here who thinks wow is bad, read above, then continue thinking, without Everquest, there wouldn't be WoW, without um.....whatever mmo came before *Ultimo Online*? there wouldn't be Everquest,
RESULT 2: So whatever old school mmo games you loved, it probably saved your gaming life :P
Now the world is happier.
What? It didn't save my gaming life at all. I don't play WoW clones. The MMO market was doing great before WoW came along, there were about 6 big company MMORPGs with heavy growing populations. Now there's 2. So now, I have no AAA MMO to play, they're all gone or they're all WoW clones. It didn't save anything, it ruined everything. There were dozens upon dozens of MMOs on the market before WoW came along. Of course, there weren't as many as we have now, but I'd rather have less, higher quality MMOs, than a thousand useless WoW clones.
In fact, if WoW didn't exist, I'd probably still be playing Middle Earth Online. It had a community unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was a unique sandbox game set in Middle Earth. I only played the alpha for a few months, met the devs two or three times, they were all great people. Then they all got removed so new, younger devs could come in, and turn MEO to LotRO as fast as they could. Not you have a straight WoW clone that almost none of the original MEO crowd enjoyed.
AoC may have been good without WoW. So much of that game was changed during closed beta because they invited large swathes of kids from WoW, and they said everything was too hard. Ahhh 8 directional combat, change it to 3! We can't handle it!
Why so serious?
One day I swear i will make sarcasm work on internet, no joke =
But to blame all faults on WoW is simply irresponsible, it wasn't WoW who changed Middle Earth Online into LOTRO, it was the company, (turbine?) who made this change, WoW maybe the catalyst, but certainly not the one to blame?
AOC might have been good without WoW? did WoW called Funcom to command them to change the game to easy mode? If the devs are not able to hold their own, and remember what they were trying to create instead of listening to "swathes of kids" (why is it always kids, is there no older people who plays WoW and tested AoC and thought it was hard?) it was the developers' fault for not accomplishing their vision of the game.
As for WoW clones, if they are clones, they must be very bad clones, since clones usually mean 'exact replica', unable to mimic 1% of WoW success is simply failure.
To say WoW caused the staggering process of evolving gameplay in mmo is just not right, and before you want to call me a WoW fanboi coming to defend the game, I actually never played WoW, but instead really curious in why is it so successful. This arguement is like calling iPhone is the worst thing to happen to the smartphone industry, Roger Federer is the worst thing to happen to Tennis or industrial revolution is the worst thing happened to technologies. These people or idea created a profound impact to their respective area, and certainly no one will say 'they are the worse thing happen to that category', and I can confidently say, no developers will say WoW is the worse thing happened to the genre.
Like it or not, in my view, WoW revolutionzed the MMORPG genre for better or worse, it changed a lot of developers views on how MMORPG should operate, and it stagger the process of innovation. Now people are bored of the WoW concept and waiting for the next step of the evolution to take course, and they have just ran out of patience.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW? As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
According to this data (which of course I just made up ,,, JK*) Most of the Big Popular Games before WOW were not all that big and popular ... except maybe Lineage and Lineage II and a little later Runescape. All the rest never got to 1,000,000 subs.
That does not mean that they were not good games, but it does demonstrate that Post WoW subscriptions to mmo's were exponentialy greater .... course that was mostly WoW subscriptions. It is interesting, to see that the more recent over-hyped games had higher peak subs (for a very short time) than most of the pre WoW Big Popular games.
Conclusion (pulled out of my @%%) ; WoW has done the MMO developers a huge service. They made the MMO popular so now there are gobs more customers out here just drooling for something Ultra-Cool to come along that they can subscribe to.
* Just to make it crystal clear for those whose primary language may not be english, JK means Just Kidding ... ie Joking
I have to be totally honest. I Was a console player for years and WoW was the first MMO I ever played and when I played it I said just that WoW. I really enjoyed WoW up until the point of some changes that have gone totally opposite from what I saw that the consumer was asking for as well as the new expansion not being an RPG at all. I rather enjoyed doing all lore and such on it. Was able to immerse quite well for quite sometime until I figured out that what I was told about there being no end to it was wrong. It ended alright.
Is it the worst thing to happen to MMO's? Well I don't think so it got console players playing more MMO's than console games so that can not be all bad for the industry. However after 3 years I had to take a break. Cause burn out yes it does. Feel like all work yes that too. Feel like I went back and did all the RPG part of it for not at times yes it does. This however was due to lack of innovation it had nothing to do with wasit the worst thing ever.
What I see in WoW is them conforming to one singular group style which is never a good thing. Instead of making enough RPG things to do it has all become about raiding and end game. I can honestly say that out of the entire game that BC was the ex-pansion I as a long time RPG player enjoyed. I enjoyed the quests and they were great. However maybe I am not the best qualified to say this since it was actually my first MMORPG.
But I can honestly say I have gotten out of it's shadow and am moving on but yes I see a lot of people who are not. They seem to think it will get fixed no matter what. I feel differently due to being mature and having a lot of experiences with business who would not listen to their public.
I am now playing and played last fall EQ2 which I think as far as innovation seems to have what best fits me. I think that is what it comes down to. To say one game was the worst thing to happen to an industry or genre is not probably right due to the fact that is actually made the MMO industry bigger than ever.
I believe each individual has to find what suit them for their likes not conform to what everyone else says they should play or even to what the ex-pansions say they have to do.
I am not too sure about comparing WoW to Rift. I tried a free weekend of Rift and said oh my get me off of here. This is not that great.
Not too sure about saying that WoW lacked innovation at first either. They may now but I have to disagree with that.
Without WoW, there wouldn't be WoW clones, without WoW clones, there wouldn't be much games on the mmo market, thus everyone starts playing CoD and its various guns, jumping around on xbox being a d!ck and playing trash music on their speakers.
RESULT 1: Think about it, WoW probably SAVED your gaming life :P
For half the people here who thinks wow is bad, read above, then continue thinking, without Everquest, there wouldn't be WoW, without um.....whatever mmo came before *Ultimo Online*? there wouldn't be Everquest,
RESULT 2: So whatever old school mmo games you loved, it probably saved your gaming life :P
Now the world is happier.
What? It didn't save my gaming life at all. I don't play WoW clones. The MMO market was doing great before WoW came along, there were about 6 big company MMORPGs with heavy growing populations. Now there's 2. So now, I have no AAA MMO to play, they're all gone or they're all WoW clones. It didn't save anything, it ruined everything. There were dozens upon dozens of MMOs on the market before WoW came along. Of course, there weren't as many as we have now, but I'd rather have less, higher quality MMOs, than a thousand useless WoW clones.
In fact, if WoW didn't exist, I'd probably still be playing Middle Earth Online. It had a community unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was a unique sandbox game set in Middle Earth. I only played the alpha for a few months, met the devs two or three times, they were all great people. Then they all got removed so new, younger devs could come in, and turn MEO to LotRO as fast as they could. Not you have a straight WoW clone that almost none of the original MEO crowd enjoyed.
AoC may have been good without WoW. So much of that game was changed during closed beta because they invited large swathes of kids from WoW, and they said everything was too hard. Ahhh 8 directional combat, change it to 3! We can't handle it!
Why so serious?
One day I swear i will make sarcasm work on internet, no joke =
But to blame all faults on WoW is simply irresponsible, it wasn't WoW who changed Middle Earth Online into LOTRO, it was the company, (turbine?) who made this change, WoW maybe the catalyst, but certainly not the one to blame?
AOC might have been good without WoW? did WoW called Funcom to command them to change the game to easy mode? If the devs are not able to hold their own, and remember what they were trying to create instead of listening to "swathes of kids" (why is it always kids, is there no older people who plays WoW and tested AoC and thought it was hard?) it was the developers' fault for not accomplishing their vision of the game.
As for WoW clones, if they are clones, they must be very bad clones, since clones usually mean 'exact replica', unable to mimic 1% of WoW success is simply failure.
To say WoW caused the staggering process of evolving gameplay in mmo is just not right, and before you want to call me a WoW fanboi coming to defend the game, I actually never played WoW, but instead really curious in why is it so successful. This arguement is like calling iPhone is the worst thing to happen to the smartphone industry, Roger Federer is the worst thing to happen to Tennis or industrial revolution is the worst thing happened to technologies. These people or idea created a profound impact to their respective area, and certainly no one will say 'they are the worse thing happen to that category', and I can confidently say, no developers will say WoW is the worse thing happened to the genre.
Like it or not, in my view, WoW revolutionzed the MMORPG genre for better or worse, it changed a lot of developers views on how MMORPG should operate, and it stagger the process of innovation. Now people are bored of the WoW concept and waiting for the next step of the evolution to take course, and they have just ran out of patience.
I wouldn't compare WoW with the industrial revolution or the iPhone simply because those things had new ideas and got recognition based on their innovation. WoW's success is tied up purely in how FEW features it had, combined with the largest marketing budget in the history of MMOs.
Of course WoW didn't mind control devs into changing their games, but it is the root cause, which is what this thread is about. If you remove WoW, we'd still have games like Middle Earth Online. Warhammer probably wouldn't have had its core gameplay compromised and may have been a success. Revolution and evolution generally imply progress, new ideas, innovation. WoW wasn't a new idea. WoW was a collection of simplified old ideas. That's why most core MMORPG gamers scorned it when it came out, because it was just a more broken/emptier version of EverQuest, an already flawed game. It found its market with the housewives and the RTS fans who'd never touched an MMO.
So now, with everyone copying WoW, the core MMO fans are still left with nothing, while dozens of companies compete (and fail to understand why they aren't hooking) WoW fans.
According to this data (which of course I just made up ,,, JK*) Most of the Big Popular Games before WOW were not all that big and popular ... except maybe Lineage and Lineage II and a little later Runescape. All the rest never got to 1,000,000 subs.
Oh boy... ok, many many things wrong with your "theory".
First problem, you weren't there. You're looking at 1/4 of the story based on subs alone without having any understand of the why or how things worked back then.
Second problem, a lot of the sub fall off after WoW came out, in such games like DAoC, was the direct cause of gameplay changing/breaking patches and expansions implemented by Mythic that alienated their player base.
Third problem, you're comparing subscription rates in the modern day over saturated/extremely exposed/internet heavy day, to the very birth of the genre when most people were still on dial up. Look at Ocarina of Time, did it sell as many copies in its first week as Modern Warfare 2? No. Why? Because the market is just bigger now. Videogames are becoming more and more mainstream as time goes on.
Fourth problem, the VAST majority (if not all) current AAA MMORPGs are under 1,000,000 subs, so going by your logic, they're incredible failures compared to how many subs modern games SHOULD have.
Fifth problem, note that the only games you consider successful (Lineage) are Asian games. That's where the bulk of subs come from. 9 million of WoW's players are temp internet cafe players in China.
All things considered, your theory holds no ground.
Is it the worst thing to happen to MMO's? Well I don't think so it got console players playing more MMO's than console games so that can not be all bad for the industry.
Bad for the players AND bad for the industry. It was good for Blizzard, and not anyone else. There are less games with less features with less variety than there used to be, and there are less successful MMORPGs running now than there used to be.
It may have brought console players into WoW, but just like the Wii didn't suddenly make Grandma want to play Doom 3, WoW didn't suddenly make console gamers want to play real MMOs. They play WoW, and that's about it. What about the core MMORPG fans? What if they stopped making all regular video games, and everyone just started making Wiisports clones? It's the best selling game of all time and brought tons of people into "videogames". Would you not consider wiisports to be the worst thing to happen to videogames?
I wouldn't compare WoW with the industrial revolution or the iPhone simply because those things had new ideas and got recognition based on their innovation. WoW's success is tied up purely in how FEW features it had, combined with the largest marketing budget in the history of MMOs.
At the start of this thread, people were saying WoW copied all the good features from existing MMO and now it is "tied up purely in how FEW feautres it had?" One thing WoW produced while other mmo didn't is the idea of user friendliness, the game was simply easy to pick up and play with a few to enjoy, there werent huge amount of learning curve to unerstand the game, some migth say this makes the game shallow, but it tapped into a market no mmo did before, casual gaming, people can jump into the game and playing from an hour to 23 hours and all will still achieve something.
Of course WoW didn't mind control devs into changing their games, but it is the root cause, which is what this thread is about. If you remove WoW, we'd still have games like Middle Earth Online. Warhammer probably wouldn't have had its core gameplay compromised and may have been a success. Revolution and evolution generally imply progress, new ideas, innovation. WoW wasn't a new idea. WoW was a collection of simplified old ideas. That's why most core MMORPG gamers scorned it when it came out, because it was just a more broken/emptier version of EverQuest, an already flawed game. It found its market with the housewives and the RTS fans who'd never touched an MMO.
So what basically this is, I tell you to shoot me, and you shot me, and denying it is your fault since I told you to shoot me. WoW basically provided a game model that was successful at the time, and developers got greedy and wanting to replicate that success. As I said before, WoW was the catalyst, I'm not denying that, but it was the developers who pulled the trigger, so if you do want to blame WoW sa the worst thing to happen to the genre, well, you cant take the developers out of the trial either.
I don't agree with your concept of revolution and evolution generally implying progress, new ideas and innovation, I believe revolution simply defines as refining a certain idea to a a new height, beginning a new era of a certain genre, in this case, MMORPG, on the other hand, innovation is the progress of moving forward, to progress the genre to the next level. Even though most players on this forum wants WoW to die and change for better, we are actually the minority, we might be the 'core MMO fans' not we are certainly not the group that companies earn their money from. We are too smart for that :P
So now, with everyone copying WoW, the core MMO fans are still left with nothing, while dozens of companies compete (and fail to understand why they aren't hooking) WoW fans.
As you say, Everyone copying WoW, so the 'everyone' is the subject of matter here, no WoW, it wsa simply the object in that sentence. Everyone might not realise it, but subtly in their minds, they know WoW was only the catalyst, not the cause, it was the 'everyone' that left the core MMO fans with nothing, but they are simply placing blame on the bigger and more popular product.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW? As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Heh , the worst thing to have happened to the genre isn't the birth of WoW , it's the ammount of idiots who keep posting about how shitty it is instead of playing something else.
Seriously , there's nothing more needed to be added onto this thread besides the fact that casual players will always dominate the MMO market. Like it or not , it's a living breathing fact.
thestatistics are clearmostof Warcraftplayersneverto play anothermmorpgsotheyhave noreasontoleaveor theywould realizehowblizzardwiththe most moneydoes not careof themby throughextensionsempty ofcontentwithoutinnovation.
the next Wow extension 8 dungeons +1 raid and the next too..........thx cow milk for your money.
Heh , the worst thing to have happened to the genre isn't the birth of WoW , it's the ammount of idiots who keep posting about how shitty it is instead of playing something else.
Seriously , there's nothing more needed to be added onto this thread besides the fact that casual players will always dominate the MMO market. Like it or not , it's a living breathing fact.
And theyll be gobbled up by facebook gamers like we were by them.
I say yes because it didn't necessarily have to be WoW that was the one to get people playing MMO's in the first place...clearly another similar PvE theme park could have been the one to get players playing, but at the same time I think we would have gotten more daring attempts from more well-funded devs in the same vein as DAoC or Ultima, or even SWG.
If I had to say the best thing to happen, I'd say Guild Wars. As much as it isn't necessarily an "MMO" in terms of a persistent world, the lack of sub fee brought in almost as many new players to the genre as WoW did, and it didn't burn through your wallet monthly. And it didn't take loads of terrible grinding to get to the fun parts.
No. Wow did somthing right. Simplicity and easy access. People could play it on low end computers who didnt have the money to get a decent one. But what matters most was simplicty. No heavy death penalty which only the machoist gamers seem to love, seriously who enjoys to get tons of nice items and then lose them all due to death, or delvl due to death and cannot use current gear due to the level loss , heck having to retireve your body to keep your stuff and needing many other players to help you get your body back with the chance of them losing their stuff to. Its only a loud minority who deems this as fun.
Simplicity of recovering fast, ease to get groups going ect. Those who say wow is easymode have never taken the challanges what wow has to offer, raids were not easy mode and still are not. If groups do not coordinate it was ciretian death. Wow till this day has the best boss encounters than any other game.
Simplicity has alot to do with it here, Wow is popular because of it. So is apples ipod, utterly simple to use which is why it sold billions and made apple who was sinking with the mammoth of microsoft looming and devoring its competition. They made the zune and it went to hell as the ipod conintued its popularity. Then came the Iphone, which is still the most popular phone in the market. Tons of other phones come out wanting to grab the success trying to add other useless features and make em sound cool.
Does the iphone and ipod which are simple to use be in the same shoes wow is in. were they the worse thing to happen to what they represent.
Now came the ipad, once again, utterly simple that even 2 year olds can use it. heck their are apps for little tykes. Now many are trying to copy that success. But the simplicity of it is what makes the ipad king.
Now lets look further back to gaming. lets look at facebook games, one in particular. yes im talking about farmsville. Here comes a nobody company makes a simplistic, click on this and that game and boom now they are well known for their simple product. That game alone introduced millions of non gamers to what gaming is. Just as wow, it has tons of haters who claim farmville is ruining gaming as we know it. People dig simplicity, after a hard day of work nothing is better than a stress free form of entertainment to get rid of that hectic day.
Simplicity is what made every item and game i mention the most popular in what they represent.
What is bad for the mmorpg genre is what many have mentioned. Greedy investors wanting a piece of pie of what blizzard is enjoting and wanting it quick. Publishers not giving time for game companies to make a polish product. One recent example is the short timeframe given to make star treck online, yet atari rushed it out to see if they could cash in all the trekkies out there.
greedy publishers and investors is what is ruining the genre.
Why would it be? It was extremely fun and innovative for it's time. Now everybody thinks that their some sort of internet hippster if they bag on WoW like it's some sort of disease or plague to the genre.
It's not WoW's fault that it gained the popularity that it did, it could have gone in the complete opposite direction. Now don't get me wrong I'm definately not fanboying here but saying that WoW has somehow corrupted the genre is flatout nonsense imo. What corrupted the genre were other game companies not having the balls to try something new, so they stuck to a WoW design to be safe. Blame it on companies like that that don't have the ability to be innovative, not the company that was innovative in the first place.
[edit] p.s. can't wait for GW2 ;]
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
I will continue crying it, and I'll continue being right. If I sound like an "oldfag" you sound like some 15 year old who never played any of the games you pretend to know so much about. You don't have any perspective. I do. You may not like it but that makes my opinion a bit more valid.
I'm pretty sure 8 years of MMO experience and about 100 online titles played gives me enough perspective. The main difference between us is you crying about how everything is bad, while I'm enjoying my time in such games as LoTRO, Vanguard, AoC.
I enjoyed Vanguard too. AoC, not so much, because all the WoW kids in beta demanded the complexity get toned down. Now its just another WoW clone with boring quest based leveling. I enjoyed Middle Earth Online too, a unique sandbox game, until Turbine decided "Hmm, this needs more WoW" and changed all the game mechanics to be a WoW clone. Then for good measure they changed the name to Lord of the Rings Online.
So if you've been playing MMOs for 8 years, what was your first one? Runescape? Cause anything'll seem good after that.
Your preaching to the choir brother, I gave up long ago trying to talk to this type of crowd , its a shame the site has fallen so far the only topics I see anymore are about is threads like this one or GW2 or TOR vs threads, or F2P , or Why can't I just have everything handed to me in MMO threads, gotten to the point where I just ignore those threads and start posting other gaming news from other sites JUST to give people something actually decent to read..... and btw the worst game to ever hit the gaming industry was E.T.
Comments
Pity.
I used to like wow...not anymore...
And i don´t claim it was good for the genre... i answer to a poll asking if it was "the worst thing that happened to the genre" don´t play with my words plz.
I have played Games since they were in audio cassettes so i was here b4 WoW came out... so don´t call me dumb for giving away my opinion on a game or a poll.
I can give my opinion just as you can, or are you one of those that thinks they are in possesion of the ultimate truth?? o.0
...
For all those saying WoW wasn't the worst thing to happen to the genre, then what was? You can't say "nuh uh" without giving any supporting argument. Seems that's the only defense WoW is getting, blind "nuh uhs"! by people that weren't even around before WoW was.
If you all endlessly keep replying to replys that say i know it all and my game is best then after 100 or 1000 pages whe still argue about same thing and dont come to a conclusion.
If someone give a constructive reply maybe you should reply back to those with another constructive reply argue why right or wrong, instead endlessly reply your wrong and my game is best and your game sucks hehe.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
The number of players from any suuccesful MMO before WoW equalls the number of players from a failed MMO after WoW...
WoW allowed MMO gaming to take its rightfull place as a poular genre...
The worst thing happening in the MMO industry is all those other companies trying to make a 1 on 1 copy of WoW and loosing their innovative thinking.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
At first it was all good wasn't it... a new game, even better a new world to explore based on a beloved rts game.
Then, it just turned into this disease where anywhere you went, if it was mentioned, (even if you weren't feeling it yet) you could *facepalm* before it starts. Just like whenever CoD or some worn-out internet meme (heck even a new but unoriginal, unimaginative but spread like cancer "meme") is mentioned, even SLIGHTLY hinted, you might as well go kill yourself.
So why even bring up what WoW has done to the genre now eh? Just be nerve jerking everyone to bring surface all their unresolved issues. Symptoms of the human race, a F*CKING virus...
LOL
And that was directly because of WoW, if WoW hadn't happened then we wouldn't get the clones.
Also, the number of people playing MMOs now is not directly do to WoW, it's just the natural growth of the market. Video games in general have been getting more and more mainstream. WoW didn't bring a ton of new people to the genre, it brought a ton of people to WoW and that's it. The sooner you people realize this, the sooner you can start forming better arguments.
Remember, the Wii and Wiisports didn't bring a ton of people to video games, it brought a ton of people to the Wii. A WoW player wouldn't play UO (generally) and Grandma wouldn't put down Wii bowling for Doom 3.
WoW is an effing copy of every good MMO. It came out just as MMOs were really starting to take off, and now you have all these deutsches who think that because they've played WoW for 7 years they know everything there is to know about MMO's. Honestly, it doesnt really matter. Only think I can think of is that the WoW crowd consists of a bunch of jackasses.. like everyone who drives a mustang is a dipshit, everyone who plays WoW is... blah. I mean EVERYONE who plays wow. E-rageeeeee, whatever.
Id rather play FFXI than WoW. Asheron's call was the best before tinkering! Asherons call had the real time/global/world changing events like guild wars 2 will have, it had great soloing, great questing, in a huge sandbox environment, not to mention the pvp was a blast! Dark age before ToA, i cant even explain how great the rvr was in that game. Try it out!
WoW biatches need to check deyselvez
This might be true if you talk to MMO gamers, in the United States that comes out to be 15% of the population (based on amount of MMO gamers/Population of the United States). Or if you want to push it and say World of Warcarft would be on the list of important things for all gamers, even ones that do not play MMOs, that comes out to be 55% in the United States (based on amount of gamers/population of the United States). That still leaves 45% of the population that does not play video games!
So saying World of Warcraft would be on a list of things that matter, is completely foolish unless you are only talking about gamers.
Lets just put it this way
Without WoW, there wouldn't be WoW clones, without WoW clones, there wouldn't be much games on the mmo market, thus everyone starts playing CoD and its various guns, jumping around on xbox being a d!ck and playing trash music on their speakers.
RESULT 1: Think about it, WoW probably SAVED your gaming life :P
For half the people here who thinks wow is bad, read above, then continue thinking, without Everquest, there wouldn't be WoW, without um.....whatever mmo came before *Ultimo Online*? there wouldn't be Everquest,
RESULT 2: So whatever old school mmo games you loved, it probably saved your gaming life :P
Now the world is happier.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
What? It didn't save my gaming life at all. I don't play WoW clones. The MMO market was doing great before WoW came along, there were about 6 big company MMORPGs with heavy growing populations. Now there's 2. So now, I have no AAA MMO to play, they're all gone or they're all WoW clones. It didn't save anything, it ruined everything. There were dozens upon dozens of MMOs on the market before WoW came along. Of course, there weren't as many as we have now, but I'd rather have less, higher quality MMOs, than a thousand useless WoW clones.
In fact, if WoW didn't exist, I'd probably still be playing Middle Earth Online. It had a community unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was a unique sandbox game set in Middle Earth. I only played the alpha for a few months, met the devs two or three times, they were all great people. Then they all got removed so new, younger devs could come in, and turn MEO to LotRO as fast as they could. Not you have a straight WoW clone that almost none of the original MEO crowd enjoyed.
AoC may have been good without WoW. So much of that game was changed during closed beta because they invited large swathes of kids from WoW, and they said everything was too hard. Ahhh 8 directional combat, change it to 3! We can't handle it!
Why so serious?
One day I swear i will make sarcasm work on internet, no joke =
But to blame all faults on WoW is simply irresponsible, it wasn't WoW who changed Middle Earth Online into LOTRO, it was the company, (turbine?) who made this change, WoW maybe the catalyst, but certainly not the one to blame?
AOC might have been good without WoW? did WoW called Funcom to command them to change the game to easy mode? If the devs are not able to hold their own, and remember what they were trying to create instead of listening to "swathes of kids" (why is it always kids, is there no older people who plays WoW and tested AoC and thought it was hard?) it was the developers' fault for not accomplishing their vision of the game.
As for WoW clones, if they are clones, they must be very bad clones, since clones usually mean 'exact replica', unable to mimic 1% of WoW success is simply failure.
To say WoW caused the staggering process of evolving gameplay in mmo is just not right, and before you want to call me a WoW fanboi coming to defend the game, I actually never played WoW, but instead really curious in why is it so successful. This arguement is like calling iPhone is the worst thing to happen to the smartphone industry, Roger Federer is the worst thing to happen to Tennis or industrial revolution is the worst thing happened to technologies. These people or idea created a profound impact to their respective area, and certainly no one will say 'they are the worse thing happen to that category', and I can confidently say, no developers will say WoW is the worse thing happened to the genre.
Like it or not, in my view, WoW revolutionzed the MMORPG genre for better or worse, it changed a lot of developers views on how MMORPG should operate, and it stagger the process of innovation. Now people are bored of the WoW concept and waiting for the next step of the evolution to take course, and they have just ran out of patience.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Contention: WoW ruined Many Big Popular MMO's ... for some reason.
Statistics I could find:
Games with peak subs 50,000 - 150,000 http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-3.png
Games with peak subs 150,000 - 1,000,000 http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png
Games with peak subs 1,000,000 - 12,000,000 http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png
According to this data (which of course I just made up ,,, JK*) Most of the Big Popular Games before WOW were not all that big and popular ... except maybe Lineage and Lineage II and a little later Runescape. All the rest never got to 1,000,000 subs.
That does not mean that they were not good games, but it does demonstrate that Post WoW subscriptions to mmo's were exponentialy greater .... course that was mostly WoW subscriptions. It is interesting, to see that the more recent over-hyped games had higher peak subs (for a very short time) than most of the pre WoW Big Popular games.
Conclusion (pulled out of my @%%) ; WoW has done the MMO developers a huge service. They made the MMO popular so now there are gobs more customers out here just drooling for something Ultra-Cool to come along that they can subscribe to.
* Just to make it crystal clear for those whose primary language may not be english, JK means Just Kidding ... ie Joking
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
I have to be totally honest. I Was a console player for years and WoW was the first MMO I ever played and when I played it I said just that WoW. I really enjoyed WoW up until the point of some changes that have gone totally opposite from what I saw that the consumer was asking for as well as the new expansion not being an RPG at all. I rather enjoyed doing all lore and such on it. Was able to immerse quite well for quite sometime until I figured out that what I was told about there being no end to it was wrong. It ended alright.
Is it the worst thing to happen to MMO's? Well I don't think so it got console players playing more MMO's than console games so that can not be all bad for the industry. However after 3 years I had to take a break. Cause burn out yes it does. Feel like all work yes that too. Feel like I went back and did all the RPG part of it for not at times yes it does. This however was due to lack of innovation it had nothing to do with wasit the worst thing ever.
What I see in WoW is them conforming to one singular group style which is never a good thing. Instead of making enough RPG things to do it has all become about raiding and end game. I can honestly say that out of the entire game that BC was the ex-pansion I as a long time RPG player enjoyed. I enjoyed the quests and they were great. However maybe I am not the best qualified to say this since it was actually my first MMORPG.
But I can honestly say I have gotten out of it's shadow and am moving on but yes I see a lot of people who are not. They seem to think it will get fixed no matter what. I feel differently due to being mature and having a lot of experiences with business who would not listen to their public.
I am now playing and played last fall EQ2 which I think as far as innovation seems to have what best fits me. I think that is what it comes down to. To say one game was the worst thing to happen to an industry or genre is not probably right due to the fact that is actually made the MMO industry bigger than ever.
I believe each individual has to find what suit them for their likes not conform to what everyone else says they should play or even to what the ex-pansions say they have to do.
I am not too sure about comparing WoW to Rift. I tried a free weekend of Rift and said oh my get me off of here. This is not that great.
Not too sure about saying that WoW lacked innovation at first either. They may now but I have to disagree with that.
I wouldn't compare WoW with the industrial revolution or the iPhone simply because those things had new ideas and got recognition based on their innovation. WoW's success is tied up purely in how FEW features it had, combined with the largest marketing budget in the history of MMOs.
Of course WoW didn't mind control devs into changing their games, but it is the root cause, which is what this thread is about. If you remove WoW, we'd still have games like Middle Earth Online. Warhammer probably wouldn't have had its core gameplay compromised and may have been a success. Revolution and evolution generally imply progress, new ideas, innovation. WoW wasn't a new idea. WoW was a collection of simplified old ideas. That's why most core MMORPG gamers scorned it when it came out, because it was just a more broken/emptier version of EverQuest, an already flawed game. It found its market with the housewives and the RTS fans who'd never touched an MMO.
So now, with everyone copying WoW, the core MMO fans are still left with nothing, while dozens of companies compete (and fail to understand why they aren't hooking) WoW fans.
Oh boy... ok, many many things wrong with your "theory".
First problem, you weren't there. You're looking at 1/4 of the story based on subs alone without having any understand of the why or how things worked back then.
Second problem, a lot of the sub fall off after WoW came out, in such games like DAoC, was the direct cause of gameplay changing/breaking patches and expansions implemented by Mythic that alienated their player base.
Third problem, you're comparing subscription rates in the modern day over saturated/extremely exposed/internet heavy day, to the very birth of the genre when most people were still on dial up. Look at Ocarina of Time, did it sell as many copies in its first week as Modern Warfare 2? No. Why? Because the market is just bigger now. Videogames are becoming more and more mainstream as time goes on.
Fourth problem, the VAST majority (if not all) current AAA MMORPGs are under 1,000,000 subs, so going by your logic, they're incredible failures compared to how many subs modern games SHOULD have.
Fifth problem, note that the only games you consider successful (Lineage) are Asian games. That's where the bulk of subs come from. 9 million of WoW's players are temp internet cafe players in China.
All things considered, your theory holds no ground.
Bad for the players AND bad for the industry. It was good for Blizzard, and not anyone else. There are less games with less features with less variety than there used to be, and there are less successful MMORPGs running now than there used to be.
It may have brought console players into WoW, but just like the Wii didn't suddenly make Grandma want to play Doom 3, WoW didn't suddenly make console gamers want to play real MMOs. They play WoW, and that's about it. What about the core MMORPG fans? What if they stopped making all regular video games, and everyone just started making Wiisports clones? It's the best selling game of all time and brought tons of people into "videogames". Would you not consider wiisports to be the worst thing to happen to videogames?
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Heh , the worst thing to have happened to the genre isn't the birth of WoW , it's the ammount of idiots who keep posting about how shitty it is instead of playing something else.
Seriously , there's nothing more needed to be added onto this thread besides the fact that casual players will always dominate the MMO market. Like it or not , it's a living breathing fact.
the statistics are clear most of Warcraft players never to play another mmorpg so they have no reason to leave or they would realize how blizzard with the most money does not care of them by through extensions empty of content without innovation.
the next Wow extension 8 dungeons +1 raid and the next too..........thx cow milk for your money.
And theyll be gobbled up by facebook gamers like we were by them.
I say yes because it didn't necessarily have to be WoW that was the one to get people playing MMO's in the first place...clearly another similar PvE theme park could have been the one to get players playing, but at the same time I think we would have gotten more daring attempts from more well-funded devs in the same vein as DAoC or Ultima, or even SWG.
If I had to say the best thing to happen, I'd say Guild Wars. As much as it isn't necessarily an "MMO" in terms of a persistent world, the lack of sub fee brought in almost as many new players to the genre as WoW did, and it didn't burn through your wallet monthly. And it didn't take loads of terrible grinding to get to the fun parts.
I have extremely high hopes for Guild Wars 2.
No. Wow did somthing right. Simplicity and easy access. People could play it on low end computers who didnt have the money to get a decent one. But what matters most was simplicty. No heavy death penalty which only the machoist gamers seem to love, seriously who enjoys to get tons of nice items and then lose them all due to death, or delvl due to death and cannot use current gear due to the level loss , heck having to retireve your body to keep your stuff and needing many other players to help you get your body back with the chance of them losing their stuff to. Its only a loud minority who deems this as fun.
Simplicity of recovering fast, ease to get groups going ect. Those who say wow is easymode have never taken the challanges what wow has to offer, raids were not easy mode and still are not. If groups do not coordinate it was ciretian death. Wow till this day has the best boss encounters than any other game.
Simplicity has alot to do with it here, Wow is popular because of it. So is apples ipod, utterly simple to use which is why it sold billions and made apple who was sinking with the mammoth of microsoft looming and devoring its competition. They made the zune and it went to hell as the ipod conintued its popularity. Then came the Iphone, which is still the most popular phone in the market. Tons of other phones come out wanting to grab the success trying to add other useless features and make em sound cool.
Does the iphone and ipod which are simple to use be in the same shoes wow is in. were they the worse thing to happen to what they represent.
Now came the ipad, once again, utterly simple that even 2 year olds can use it. heck their are apps for little tykes. Now many are trying to copy that success. But the simplicity of it is what makes the ipad king.
Now lets look further back to gaming. lets look at facebook games, one in particular. yes im talking about farmsville. Here comes a nobody company makes a simplistic, click on this and that game and boom now they are well known for their simple product. That game alone introduced millions of non gamers to what gaming is. Just as wow, it has tons of haters who claim farmville is ruining gaming as we know it. People dig simplicity, after a hard day of work nothing is better than a stress free form of entertainment to get rid of that hectic day.
Simplicity is what made every item and game i mention the most popular in what they represent.
What is bad for the mmorpg genre is what many have mentioned. Greedy investors wanting a piece of pie of what blizzard is enjoting and wanting it quick. Publishers not giving time for game companies to make a polish product. One recent example is the short timeframe given to make star treck online, yet atari rushed it out to see if they could cash in all the trekkies out there.
greedy publishers and investors is what is ruining the genre.
Why would it be? It was extremely fun and innovative for it's time. Now everybody thinks that their some sort of internet hippster if they bag on WoW like it's some sort of disease or plague to the genre.
It's not WoW's fault that it gained the popularity that it did, it could have gone in the complete opposite direction. Now don't get me wrong I'm definately not fanboying here but saying that WoW has somehow corrupted the genre is flatout nonsense imo. What corrupted the genre were other game companies not having the balls to try something new, so they stuck to a WoW design to be safe. Blame it on companies like that that don't have the ability to be innovative, not the company that was innovative in the first place.
[edit] p.s. can't wait for GW2 ;]
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
Your preaching to the choir brother, I gave up long ago trying to talk to this type of crowd , its a shame the site has fallen so far the only topics I see anymore are about is threads like this one or GW2 or TOR vs threads, or F2P , or Why can't I just have everything handed to me in MMO threads, gotten to the point where I just ignore those threads and start posting other gaming news from other sites JUST to give people something actually decent to read..... and btw the worst game to ever hit the gaming industry was E.T.