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World of Warcraft: What is a WoW Killer?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
This week's WoW Factor touches on a oft-discussed topic. Everyone is always looking for that game that will be a "WoW Killer" but what exactly does that mean? We take a look at the elusive "WoW Killer". See what we think and then weigh in with your own thoughts in the comments.
Last week’s article caused quite a stir in the comments section and many of you derided the piece as either a roundabout method of talking about SWTOR or just a bit of bait for the community to start fighting the good fight. While many of your comments and opinions were a bit depressing to me (as this is an editorial, i.e. an opinion piece, and the content of each article is subject to me and me alone) I am glad with the discussion that sprouted around the last WoW Factor, explicitly in the talk about what constitutes a “WoW Killer.” So this week I’m going to display my outline and framework for what this mythical being must be to fulfil all of our speculation.
Read more of Joe Sanicky's The WoW Factor: What is a “WoW Killer?”
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I don’t envy whoever it is that writes the dictionary…poor bastards!
Comments
Yeah. There won't be any WoW-killer. Both players and industry should stop once and for all to 'look' for game that will replace WoW. There won't be one.
No mmorpg in prediciable future will replace WoW as single hegeomon looking at small fishes from big mountain.
WoW will continue to lose subscribers and eventually WoW will be forced to stop (at least ffor a while) milking WoW-players for server transfers and just close / merge some servers.
There will be few games more popular than rest though so big difffrence like WoW vs. everyone else won't happen again.
Besides WoW-like themepark model is seeing it's demise. It still have power to gain players ,but this gameplay model with "end-game" and instance grind will have less and less power to keep playerbase occupied.
That's why initial flood of players and mass quits after few months.
If that does not change mmorpg's genre will lose overall number of players - most to other mmos / games , some might leave gaming completly. Freemium / f2p won't be able to stop that if games won't be more diverse.
Besides imho mmorpg popularity already peaked and will be in decline for some years ahead.
Some playerbase already migrated to MOBA games, some will migrate to MMOFPS / MMORTS , normal multiplayer games or single player games, casual games or leave completly.
Oversaturation of mmorpg genre, halt of playerbase growth (if not redution of playerbase size) and recession in west that always sooner or later hit 'entertaiment spending'.
Think some studios will have (some already did) to change from producing mmorpg's to produce diffrent kind of games , some will have to close, etc
That playerbase that will stay will require product more suit to their tastes and bit less casual.
Bubble is bursting and imo genre need this.
What is a “WoW Killer?”
Blizzard.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Well, with SWTOR just released, Guild Wars 2, Archeage, The Secret World, Firefall, Planetside 2, TERA all being teased to come out within the next year or two, and WoW already on the decline with last year's subscription number drop, I can't imagine our era of the death of WoW is too far away...
Swtor grabbed a piece, Rift, and when GW2 releases there is yet another piece of the WoW pie removed.
A game that goes back to the roots (no clone) or brings new mechanics that work would be a WoW killer
UO, Meridian 59 and Everquest are all still up and running.
The only true death of Wow this side of 2025 would be if Blizz released Wow 2 and at the same time closed down the oldWow servers to get the players to move. That is not likely but not impossible either.
Wow will be dethroned as the king of MMOs pretty soon but it wont die. It will in fact be one of the larger MMOs for years unless Blizz really f***s up those pandas.
My bet is that Wow will lose 15-20% of the players each year like it have the last year which means it will be a game with millions of players a long while yet.
How to be a WoW killer...
Stop being a WoW imitator.
If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, "Wow is already good at being WoW". People who truly love like WoW will NOT choose your game over WoW because WoW is closer to WoW than your WoW clone can ever be. The best you can hope for is to pick up WoW's scraps that have either become burnt-out on WoW, or didn't like WoW much to begin with.
It would be a game that like WoW is a fluke in the industry. it would congeal angry players like WoW did when SWG revamped and 250k very angry gamers seen that to destroy sony and the people behind the combat upgrade,we needed to move to WoW and make WoW reviews stellar even though in truth it was just another crappy grind fest.
it was all about timing as well. in time WoW will suffer the sony revamp syndrom like SWG did and it will die away by it's own hand in time.
Of course it will have it's die hards like the NGE folks but not many years from now blizzard will roll out it's own WoW killer and the old gal will go the way of 2 servers and full free to play.
it's ironic but age happens.
WoW killer? Thats easy
Greg "the scrub" Street
definitively not SWTOR ...
MoP is a WoW killer
!!!!
Old age/time.......Thats about it for WoW....I mean UO is still kicking....It will happen.
Well.. no one's asking for permadeath here right?! Just a good, HUMBLING pwning ^.^ Even WoW isn't the best at their own arena and I think there is potential for a build that can put up a good fight and outmatch WoW in the collective and competitive world of MMOs. ~V~
This.
^^
Blizzard will eventually produce its own 'WoW killer'. The expansion of WoW through many years of patches and releases has produced many undesirable side effects. The amount of time a new player takes to reach end-game has been kept constant across all major releases resulting in a dumbing down of previous releases. For example, with each release after BC, Blizzard must dumb down the leveling through BC (levels 61-70) in order to keep the total leveling time a constant. This dumbing down process creates large continents in which many zones can be entirely skipped in the leveling process. Leveling from 61-70 in BC can presently be accomplished without ever setting foot in half the zones. It will only get worse with each new release of WoW in order to maintain that constant leveling time. This is only one of many undesirable side effect of expansions. As such Blizzard will eventually have to create a new MMORPG and allow its WoW player base to migrate to the new MMORPG. The new Blizzard MMORPG would have to take care not to lose old WoW players in the process while attracting new WoW players.
IMHO a "WOW Killer" is not a game or a company that will definetelly close the game forever. There are a lot of older games that still have their player base playing actively and still got some updates.
To me, a "WOW Killer" is a game that will make its' own fame and gather so much attention that it starts beeing the game to be comparable with all the times people talk about MMORPGs. A "WOW Killer" is the one game that everyone talks about because it brought so many new players to the genre and, at the same time, builded a community of "newbie-haters" only because that game was the first one those new players started playing as if it was the first done in the genre. A "WOW Killer" is also a game that players will always say it's perfect because it has X of player base and the flaws are what makes the game a good game, while other players say that game is bulshit because it has the same flaws saw before and it got nothing new or nothing good in it besides one or 2 things.
In other words, a "WOW Killer" is THE game that will take all the reputation given to WOW, good and bad, making WOW a game with only a few active player-base and some new players trying it, where the only have reputation it has is about the good things it had when it was famous and forgetting about all the bad things after 2-3 years.
We are all going to die, and as our society matures away from religion, we are all starting to realize that when we die, we have nothing but an eternity of black nothingness to look forward to. This is depressing , and can consume you if you dont control it somehow. The best method of control, is to occupy your mind to ignore the truth of whats coming.
The next game that will kill wow needs to be a major feat of programming that can encompass more than just a few continents with dungeons raids and bla bla bla. It will need to merge genres.
Take Eve Online's space game, Wowlike ground game, Tera's political game, with some open world sandbox+theme park concepts - then do the impossible and make it all ACCESABLE to all types of gamers like World of Warcraft has so elegently accomplished.
Dont ever forget to focus on society to find the true key to building a game thats lets people escape real life. And never forget the vocal minority replys to threads and starts threads and voices their strong opinions. The silent majority , you dont hear.
Wrath of the Lich King did it for me
The therm is taken too literally, it simply means an MMORPG which will topple WoW as the king of P2P MMORPGs.
And honestly I dont think that such a game can exist because for that too happen Blizzard has to screw up and screw up the game so much that a substantial number of people leaves the game. So the only one that can "kill" WoW is Blizzard or time, eventually the game will become so old that the majority of people will simply move on. However after 7 (?) years that still havent happened yet.
And finally No. SW:TOR will not topple WoW, not by a long shot.
My gaming blog
WoW killer? Blizzard management. But perhaps not as one might be thinking.
I think the transition process to a WoW 2.0 is already started. Speed runs of randoms over and over is now the fastest progression in the game. Once at cap, it's heroics then raids.
Given that Blizzard could nerf dungeon runs as the primary leveling choice, and has not, I can only assume that this as the optimal form of leveling is intentional.
Grind for XP is gone. Questing for XP is nearly gone. WoW 2.0 is (or will be) a lobby based dungeon grinder.
disclaimed: gross generalizations are never absolutely true. Just my opinions based on what I've seen in game.