1. Incredibly responsive movement (push a key and your toon moves...how novel!)
2. Seemless maps (god I hate instanced games)
3. Beautifully crafted bugs (i.e. World bosses that could be kited into Stormwind, secret Dev islands that players found, explorable instances that were not ready or never were implemented [the one in the gy at Kara])
4. Ability to swim underwater and die from lack of O2
5. Open world ganking/camping and more ganking
6. Player created raids (remember Tauren Mill?)
7. Quirky events like the disease spreading from Patch 1.1(?) that left everyone dead and spread like wildfire so fast, that Centers for Disease Control actually called up Blizzard and asked them for their code to replicate real life outbreaks.
8. Humor, humor and more humor
9. Infinite stealth class
10. Unbalanced and non-homogenized classes (remember how much you hated Warlocks? remember the Horde not having Pallys? what about that shaman you absolutely NEEDED for raids?)
I could go on forever, but those are my top ten (in no specific order). The only thing I begged for the entire time I played (7-8 years) was for real-time developer intervention. How hard is it to pop onto a server and drop dragon in Goldshire? Hell, we all know certain STD infested RP servers would have benefited from a good, old-fashioned burning of Goldshire!
To be honest, there was one other thing I wanted and it made me quit right after Burning Crusade came out. As a Warlock, I searched endlessly for secret texts about the Dark Portal. I wanted to be THE Warlock that figured out the secrets to the Dark Portal. I searched and combed every instance I came across for books, tomes and artifacts....hell, I even just looked at every statue and every note that dropped in my backpack to see if there were any Easter eggs to tell me how to open the damned thing. I was certain that in the weeks leading up to expansion, some sign would appear to all warlocks and we would somehow be summoned to the gate to perform so grisly ritual. Nah...my server crashed hours before release and I have no fucking clue what happened. Yay me!
1. Incredibly responsive movement (push a key and your toon moves...how novel!)
2. Seemless maps (god I hate instanced games)
3. Beautifully crafted bugs (i.e. World bosses that could be kited into Stormwind, secret Dev islands that players found, explorable instances that were not ready or never were implemented [the one in the gy at Kara])
4. Ability to swim underwater and die from lack of O2
5. Open world ganking/camping and more ganking
6. Player created raids (remember Tauren Mill?)
7. Quirky events like the disease spreading from Patch 1.1(?) that left everyone dead and spread like wildfire so fast, that Centers for Disease Control actually called up Blizzard and asked them for their code to replicate real life outbreaks.
8. Humor, humor and more humor
9. Infinite stealth class
10. Unbalanced and non-homogenized classes (remember how much you hated Warlocks? remember the Horde not having Pallys? what about that shaman you absolutely NEEDED for raids?)
I could go on forever, but those are my top ten (in no specific order). The only thing I begged for the entire time I played (7-8 years) was for real-time developer intervention. How hard is it to pop onto a server and drop dragon in Goldshire? Hell, we all know certain STD infested RP servers would have benefited from a good, old-fashioned burning of Goldshire!
To be honest, there was one other thing I wanted and it made me quit right after Burning Crusade came out. As a Warlock, I searched endlessly for secret texts about the Dark Portal. I wanted to be THE Warlock that figured out the secrets to the Dark Portal. I searched and combed every instance I came across for books, tomes and artifacts....hell, I even just looked at every statue and every note that dropped in my backpack to see if there were any Easter eggs to tell me how to open the damned thing. I was certain that in the weeks leading up to expansion, some sign would appear to all warlocks and we would somehow be summoned to the gate to perform so grisly ritual. Nah...my server crashed hours before release and I have no fucking clue what happened. Yay me!
This made me chuckle, and you raise a lot of good points. A lot of the things that went wrong in its early days, were actually interesting and generated positive publicity (such as the disease outbreak).
Now a days, bugs games have are bosses not spawning or dropping loot, bosses respawning after you killed them and wiping the raid. hitting an ability and watching your global cooldown activate but your ability never went off....yes, im looking at your SWTOR for all of these.
Everything you want in in an MMO was done fairly well in WoW, but I wouldn't consider any of those features to be the best in the market. It was just reasonably well rounded so you can satisfy most people for a while at least.
However, I think the biggest contributor to it's success is that it went international. Most games focused solely on the Asian market or North American/European market. Blizzard did both and more. That is what keeps it alive.
Originally posted by doodphace "only successful sub"? EVE and SWTOR would like to have a word with you...
You may be on to something, however.
Brand Loyalty and Defending the One True Faith are both signs of successful games, are they not?
SOE fans have been steadily condescending to the rest of the world since at least 2000, based on far less commercial success.
You could build that premise up to a working thesis, but....
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.
Originally posted by Madimorga Same reason Microsoft dominates operating systems in the US and commands ridiculous sums of money every few years for the next one. It's what people know. It's a well-established, familiar name that people recognize.
While WoW is a decent game, it's success has MUCH more to do with its timing than its gameplay.
It came out when there was pretty much 0 competition, had a developer with a good name (at the time), and had an aggressive ad campaign that continues to this day.
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2
Originally posted by Madimorga Same reason Microsoft dominates operating systems in the US and commands ridiculous sums of money every few years for the next one. It's what people know. It's a well-established, familiar name that people recognize.
While WoW is a decent game, it's success has MUCH more to do with its timing than its gameplay.
It came out when there was pretty much 0 competition, had a developer with a good name (at the time), and had an aggressive ad campaign that continues to this day.
I don't know about that. I can't speak about most people, but I only really baought WoW in 2007/8, after my stint in AO/SWG.
At first, I though it was really well made, but wasnt my cup of tea setting wise (high fantasy). I therefore went back to SWG, NGE and all...
Then AoC came out....got to 80 (after quite a bit of grinding), found very little to do at endgame, and all my friends left. The raids were epic in presentation, but they left me wanting a more fleshed out and participated by many experience (i had not raided a day in my life before AoC). Then WAR came out....i played it for a bit, really liked the PVP, started doing some of the 5 man dungons and had a blast with the people I met online. This got me wanting to check out LOTRO (still not wanting to give WoW a second chance). So, i played Lorto for a bit, but i guess due to the server I was on, was unable to experiance the same fun that I had in WAR's 5 mans (i laughed just now while writing that too). After that was done, i literally thought to myself "heck, if PvE/Dungons is what I want...why not give wow a second chance".
So by this time, Wotlk is in full swing. I max my toon out just in time for the dungon finder to get released. Now im in heaven, the exact thing i wanted has been made super easy to obtain. yada yada yada, few months later im in a really big, really good raiding guild. From there, i was hooked.
Fast forward to tier 11/12. By this time, im getting a little tired of wow, so I literally tried everything from Rift, to DCUO, to SWTOR, to TSW, maxing out toons and trying out endgame in all of them, and let me tell you, they all at endgame left a feeling of "wow, this isnt as polished or fun as WoW"...so now im back to WoW...
WoW was just one of those things that took off. It was the first MMO for most people. Thus, most everyone acts differently towards their first MMO, e.g., excitement, spreading the word, etc. It appealed to everyone, e.g., the nerd, the hottie, the jock, the mom, the dad, the kid, the doctor, the bum.
My friend just started playing Neverwinter. It's his first MMO. He's so excited about it. When I play the game, I yawn and consider cutting the grass early.
If there was a MMORPG which played better than WOW, I'd have ditched it to play that game. Sadly there are none.
I have very little brand loyalty, but when no superior games appear I'm stuck playing the same game for a while (which isn't to say I don't play plenty of different non-MMORPGs, but when it comes to MMORPGs I try all sorts of games each year only to return to WOW for being the most polished and elegant design.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There are several thingsI like about WoW it runs very well, there is a lot to do, it is somewhat pleasing to the eye (although a bit cartoony), flight, shape changing, hunter pets...
However I also like crafting, they are too limited on that, getting to max in a day is too simple. I also like to make usefull things crafting at all levels, not just a dozen or so over the entire crafting process.
I like housing which a lot of varied styles (at minimum) or brick and board building.
This may sound bad but I also want to be powerfull. I want to be the tank mage. Wow is too limiting. So everytime I come back I play less and less. Lasted about 2 days a month ago.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
WoW was just one of those things that took off. It was the first MMO for most people. Thus, most everyone acts differently towards their first MMO, e.g., excitement, spreading the word, etc. It appealed to everyone, e.g., the nerd, the hottie, the jock, the mom, the dad, the kid, the doctor, the bum.
My friend just started playing Neverwinter. It's his first MMO. He's so excited about it. When I play the game, I yawn and consider cutting the grass early.
But not for me. WOW is probably my fourth or fifth MMO. It is a much better game, for me, than the ones before. So i gave WOW subs for a few years.
WoW was just one of those things that took off. It was the first MMO for most people. Thus, most everyone acts differently towards their first MMO, e.g., excitement, spreading the word, etc. It appealed to everyone, e.g., the nerd, the hottie, the jock, the mom, the dad, the kid, the doctor, the bum.
My friend just started playing Neverwinter. It's his first MMO. He's so excited about it. When I play the game, I yawn and consider cutting the grass early.
But not for me. WOW is probably my fourth or fifth MMO. It is a much better game, for me, than the ones before. So i gave WOW subs for a few years.
^This.
I didnt get into WoW until I had a high level toon in AO, a 90 in SWG, an 80 in AoC, a 40 in WAR, and god knows what level toon in LORTO.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
WoW is the only game that still have 8M+ of them. Tell me, is there another game that has even half that number of subs?
The only reason WoW has 8mil subs still is because groups of people are dumb. People will follow whatever is popular with the times. smoking, bell bottoms, daisy dukes, iphones, etc. WoW was popular, and because it has this massive sub number, it just keeps people staying subbed. I know people who are still subbed and dont even play the game. Not saying the game is terrible, but those 8mil subs only show how dumb people can be. But there are other games with the p2p sub model and still are surviving.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
WoW is the only game that still have 8M+ of them. Tell me, is there another game that has even half that number of subs?
The only reason WoW has 8mil subs still is because groups of people are dumb. People will follow whatever is popular with the times. smoking, bell bottoms, daisy dukes, iphones, etc. WoW was popular, and because it has this massive sub number, it just keeps people staying subbed. I know people who are still subbed and dont even play the game. Not saying the game is terrible, but those 8mil subs only show how dumb people can be. But there are other games with the p2p sub model and still are surviving.
Yup, thats the only reason, it has nothing to do with it being the themepark with the most things to do at endgame, and the most polished at that.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
WoW is the only game that still have 8M+ of them. Tell me, is there another game that has even half that number of subs?
The only reason WoW has 8mil subs still is because groups of people are dumb. People will follow whatever is popular with the times. smoking, bell bottoms, daisy dukes, iphones, etc. WoW was popular, and because it has this massive sub number, it just keeps people staying subbed. I know people who are still subbed and dont even play the game. Not saying the game is terrible, but those 8mil subs only show how dumb people can be. But there are other games with the p2p sub model and still are surviving.
LOL .. so only YOUR entertainment is "smart". How condescending? We are talking about games here.
Don't make it sound like playing a game is a real achievement, and needs intelligence.
If there was a MMORPG which played better than WOW, I'd have ditched it to play that game. Sadly there are none.
I have very little brand loyalty, but when no superior games appear I'm stuck playing the same game for a while (which isn't to say I don't play plenty of different non-MMORPGs, but when it comes to MMORPGs I try all sorts of games each year only to return to WOW for being the most polished and elegant design.)
Pretty much this.
Plus the arenas and the ganking/world pvp never get old.
At this point, I've been playing it for so long that even if I take a break here and there, I will probably always come back just to see it through.
blizzard does a great job at targeting young teens, don't get me wrong adults do play, but you always hear about these adults playing with their kids. Bliz understands that their game attracts that 8-15 market and if they do not have the money their parents will pay for them same way they pay for their cell phone.
FFXI launched before WoW did and started with a subscription and remains with one. It's also their most profitable game to date. Just because they don't have 8 million subs doesn't make the game unsuccessful.
It isn't the only success, plenty of MMOs had subs and made money, and kept consumers. WoW was just the only break away success in the sub market which capitolized on a moment of opportunity.
If someone else had offered an accessible MMO before WoW, they would have had that success, and if WoW came out today, it would be another clone and go F2P.
If you compare most MMOs to the following and success of MMOs before WoW, they are doing better than many. It's this one record breaking success which the industry has a fixation with, which does not need to be achieved to be successful. People are just blinded by WoW.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, if they get angry, they'll be a mile away... and barefoot.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
Ooooh?
WOW is the ONLY sub mmo that has success?
Just a guess, OP is playing WOW fanatically and has only knowledge of the existance of this mmo?
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
WoW is not the only game thats still sub. FFXI is still sub to play after all these years. There are actually quite a few others. Rift was, but soon will be f2p.
WoW is the only game that still have 8M+ of them. Tell me, is there another game that has even half that number of subs?
The only reason WoW has 8mil subs still is because groups of people are dumb. People will follow whatever is popular with the times. smoking, bell bottoms, daisy dukes, iphones, etc. WoW was popular, and because it has this massive sub number, it just keeps people staying subbed. I know people who are still subbed and dont even play the game. Not saying the game is terrible, but those 8mil subs only show how dumb people can be. But there are other games with the p2p sub model and still are surviving.
LOL .. so only YOUR entertainment is "smart". How condescending? We are talking about games here.
Don't make it sound like playing a game is a real achievement, and needs intelligence.
All im saying, is that WoW is/was a giant hype train. Hell, even i would probably play the game if i heard it had 5million subs. I did play the game lol. Not because of the subs numbers, but because i actually played the beta and thought it was good. MY main point is that out of those 8mil subs, how many are active players who are playing the game because they actually enjoy it. Take away the people who have subs that arent active, or are mules, or are gil sellers. What we have left is what i would consider active players. I mean just look at the subcription numbers over the years. It has slowly climbed up in the millions. Some of those are because the game was/is good, other were just to see what all the hype was about. And it just kept escalating. WoW has 1mil subs (worldwide) another mil more sub worldwide. WoW has 2mil subs! another 1mil sub worldwide. This pattern just kept repeating and repeating capping at around 12mil subs.
Im not saying my entertainment is smart, but im also not some idiot who is going to start playing a game or keep playing a game simply because the vast majority of people do it. Thats what i mean by dumb! Its a giant psychological game and people cant help but fall into its trap.
Scientists at the University of Leeds believe they may have found why humans flock like sheep and birds, subconsciously following a minority of individuals.
Researchers discovered that it takes a minority of just five per cent to influence a crowd’s direction – and that the other 95 per cent follow without realizing it.
The findings could have major implications for directing the flow of large crowds, in particular in disaster scenarios, where verbal communication may be difficult.
Do the research please. Read up on it. This has been happening for years and companies use it as a marketing ploy which is highly effective. Prime example would be the iphones.
Not trying to take the topic out of context, but i just wanted to open peoples mind a little bit when they talk about the massive amount of subs wow has.
We have our WoW bashers and lovers. I go back every once in awhile. I can only take it for a week. lol
Out of all these games released after. With no cash shop and still a sub. How do they stay the best? All the rest of the games have to fall to f2p or launch at f2p.
Just another opinion I like to add. I am hoping Wildstar is the next game to stay strong as a sub.
Ooooh?
WOW is the ONLY sub mmo that has success?
Just a guess, OP is playing WOW fanatically and has only knowledge of the existance of this mmo?
Or the OP is feeling insecure about WoW's sub numbers dropping, therefore they create a thread basically calling it the only success. Its the same thing that happens when GW2 players create threads about box sales when active player decline discussions happen.
Some feel the need to distort reality to feel secure, regardless which MMO they play.
Comments
Simply put, WoW has / or has had:
1. Incredibly responsive movement (push a key and your toon moves...how novel!)
2. Seemless maps (god I hate instanced games)
3. Beautifully crafted bugs (i.e. World bosses that could be kited into Stormwind, secret Dev islands that players found, explorable instances that were not ready or never were implemented [the one in the gy at Kara])
4. Ability to swim underwater and die from lack of O2
5. Open world ganking/camping and more ganking
6. Player created raids (remember Tauren Mill?)
7. Quirky events like the disease spreading from Patch 1.1(?) that left everyone dead and spread like wildfire so fast, that Centers for Disease Control actually called up Blizzard and asked them for their code to replicate real life outbreaks.
8. Humor, humor and more humor
9. Infinite stealth class
10. Unbalanced and non-homogenized classes (remember how much you hated Warlocks? remember the Horde not having Pallys? what about that shaman you absolutely NEEDED for raids?)
I could go on forever, but those are my top ten (in no specific order). The only thing I begged for the entire time I played (7-8 years) was for real-time developer intervention. How hard is it to pop onto a server and drop dragon in Goldshire? Hell, we all know certain STD infested RP servers would have benefited from a good, old-fashioned burning of Goldshire!
To be honest, there was one other thing I wanted and it made me quit right after Burning Crusade came out. As a Warlock, I searched endlessly for secret texts about the Dark Portal. I wanted to be THE Warlock that figured out the secrets to the Dark Portal. I searched and combed every instance I came across for books, tomes and artifacts....hell, I even just looked at every statue and every note that dropped in my backpack to see if there were any Easter eggs to tell me how to open the damned thing. I was certain that in the weeks leading up to expansion, some sign would appear to all warlocks and we would somehow be summoned to the gate to perform so grisly ritual. Nah...my server crashed hours before release and I have no fucking clue what happened. Yay me!
This made me chuckle, and you raise a lot of good points. A lot of the things that went wrong in its early days, were actually interesting and generated positive publicity (such as the disease outbreak).
Now a days, bugs games have are bosses not spawning or dropping loot, bosses respawning after you killed them and wiping the raid. hitting an ability and watching your global cooldown activate but your ability never went off....yes, im looking at your SWTOR for all of these.
Everything you want in in an MMO was done fairly well in WoW, but I wouldn't consider any of those features to be the best in the market. It was just reasonably well rounded so you can satisfy most people for a while at least.
However, I think the biggest contributor to it's success is that it went international. Most games focused solely on the Asian market or North American/European market. Blizzard did both and more. That is what keeps it alive.
You may be on to something, however.
Brand Loyalty and Defending the One True Faith are both signs of successful games, are they not?
SOE fans have been steadily condescending to the rest of the world since at least 2000, based on far less commercial success.
You could build that premise up to a working thesis, but....
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.
While WoW is a decent game, it's success has MUCH more to do with its timing than its gameplay.
It came out when there was pretty much 0 competition, had a developer with a good name (at the time), and had an aggressive ad campaign that continues to this day.
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2
I don't know about that. I can't speak about most people, but I only really baought WoW in 2007/8, after my stint in AO/SWG.
At first, I though it was really well made, but wasnt my cup of tea setting wise (high fantasy). I therefore went back to SWG, NGE and all...
Then AoC came out....got to 80 (after quite a bit of grinding), found very little to do at endgame, and all my friends left. The raids were epic in presentation, but they left me wanting a more fleshed out and participated by many experience (i had not raided a day in my life before AoC). Then WAR came out....i played it for a bit, really liked the PVP, started doing some of the 5 man dungons and had a blast with the people I met online. This got me wanting to check out LOTRO (still not wanting to give WoW a second chance). So, i played Lorto for a bit, but i guess due to the server I was on, was unable to experiance the same fun that I had in WAR's 5 mans (i laughed just now while writing that too). After that was done, i literally thought to myself "heck, if PvE/Dungons is what I want...why not give wow a second chance".
So by this time, Wotlk is in full swing. I max my toon out just in time for the dungon finder to get released. Now im in heaven, the exact thing i wanted has been made super easy to obtain. yada yada yada, few months later im in a really big, really good raiding guild. From there, i was hooked.
Fast forward to tier 11/12. By this time, im getting a little tired of wow, so I literally tried everything from Rift, to DCUO, to SWTOR, to TSW, maxing out toons and trying out endgame in all of them, and let me tell you, they all at endgame left a feeling of "wow, this isnt as polished or fun as WoW"...so now im back to WoW...
I imagine I am not the only one...
WoW was just one of those things that took off. It was the first MMO for most people. Thus, most everyone acts differently towards their first MMO, e.g., excitement, spreading the word, etc. It appealed to everyone, e.g., the nerd, the hottie, the jock, the mom, the dad, the kid, the doctor, the bum.
My friend just started playing Neverwinter. It's his first MMO. He's so excited about it. When I play the game, I yawn and consider cutting the grass early.
If there was a MMORPG which played better than WOW, I'd have ditched it to play that game. Sadly there are none.
I have very little brand loyalty, but when no superior games appear I'm stuck playing the same game for a while (which isn't to say I don't play plenty of different non-MMORPGs, but when it comes to MMORPGs I try all sorts of games each year only to return to WOW for being the most polished and elegant design.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There are several thingsI like about WoW it runs very well, there is a lot to do, it is somewhat pleasing to the eye (although a bit cartoony), flight, shape changing, hunter pets...
However I also like crafting, they are too limited on that, getting to max in a day is too simple. I also like to make usefull things crafting at all levels, not just a dozen or so over the entire crafting process.
I like housing which a lot of varied styles (at minimum) or brick and board building.
This may sound bad but I also want to be powerfull. I want to be the tank mage. Wow is too limiting. So everytime I come back I play less and less. Lasted about 2 days a month ago.
But not for me. WOW is probably my fourth or fifth MMO. It is a much better game, for me, than the ones before. So i gave WOW subs for a few years.
^This.
I didnt get into WoW until I had a high level toon in AO, a 90 in SWG, an 80 in AoC, a 40 in WAR, and god knows what level toon in LORTO.
The only reason WoW has 8mil subs still is because groups of people are dumb. People will follow whatever is popular with the times. smoking, bell bottoms, daisy dukes, iphones, etc. WoW was popular, and because it has this massive sub number, it just keeps people staying subbed. I know people who are still subbed and dont even play the game. Not saying the game is terrible, but those 8mil subs only show how dumb people can be. But there are other games with the p2p sub model and still are surviving.
Yup, thats the only reason, it has nothing to do with it being the themepark with the most things to do at endgame, and the most polished at that.
LOL .. so only YOUR entertainment is "smart". How condescending? We are talking about games here.
Don't make it sound like playing a game is a real achievement, and needs intelligence.
Pretty much this.
Plus the arenas and the ganking/world pvp never get old.
At this point, I've been playing it for so long that even if I take a break here and there, I will probably always come back just to see it through.
Define successful.
FFXI launched before WoW did and started with a subscription and remains with one. It's also their most profitable game to date. Just because they don't have 8 million subs doesn't make the game unsuccessful.
If someone else had offered an accessible MMO before WoW, they would have had that success, and if WoW came out today, it would be another clone and go F2P.
If you compare most MMOs to the following and success of MMOs before WoW, they are doing better than many. It's this one record breaking success which the industry has a fixation with, which does not need to be achieved to be successful. People are just blinded by WoW.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, if they get angry, they'll be a mile away... and barefoot.
Ooooh?
WOW is the ONLY sub mmo that has success?
Just a guess, OP is playing WOW fanatically and has only knowledge of the existance of this mmo?
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
All im saying, is that WoW is/was a giant hype train. Hell, even i would probably play the game if i heard it had 5million subs. I did play the game lol. Not because of the subs numbers, but because i actually played the beta and thought it was good. MY main point is that out of those 8mil subs, how many are active players who are playing the game because they actually enjoy it. Take away the people who have subs that arent active, or are mules, or are gil sellers. What we have left is what i would consider active players. I mean just look at the subcription numbers over the years. It has slowly climbed up in the millions. Some of those are because the game was/is good, other were just to see what all the hype was about. And it just kept escalating. WoW has 1mil subs (worldwide) another mil more sub worldwide. WoW has 2mil subs! another 1mil sub worldwide. This pattern just kept repeating and repeating capping at around 12mil subs.
Im not saying my entertainment is smart, but im also not some idiot who is going to start playing a game or keep playing a game simply because the vast majority of people do it. Thats what i mean by dumb! Its a giant psychological game and people cant help but fall into its trap.
Scientists at the University of Leeds believe they may have found why humans flock like sheep and birds, subconsciously following a minority of individuals.
Researchers discovered that it takes a minority of just five per cent to influence a crowd’s direction – and that the other 95 per cent follow without realizing it.
The findings could have major implications for directing the flow of large crowds, in particular in disaster scenarios, where verbal communication may be difficult.
http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/02/15/herd-mentality-explained/1922.html
Do the research please. Read up on it. This has been happening for years and companies use it as a marketing ploy which is highly effective. Prime example would be the iphones.
Not trying to take the topic out of context, but i just wanted to open peoples mind a little bit when they talk about the massive amount of subs wow has.
Came out at the right time and was properly advertised. Only MMO i've even seen TV-adverts for.
It's by far not the only successful sub-MMO out there, but it became and remains the 'biggest' (in term of subscribers).
EQ (went F2P to some extent this year?), AQ, UO and EVE are all successful subscriber games and they're all older than WoW.
Or the OP is feeling insecure about WoW's sub numbers dropping, therefore they create a thread basically calling it the only success. Its the same thing that happens when GW2 players create threads about box sales when active player decline discussions happen.
Some feel the need to distort reality to feel secure, regardless which MMO they play.
The warcraft IP and blizzard has lots of fans as well.
Not only that but polished gameplay and stuff to do at endgame.
"Negaholics are people who become addicted to negativity and self-doubt, they find fault in most things and never seem to be satisfied."
^MMORPG.com