Let's face it boyz...

Kopogero · August 2016

MMO's are hard to make which is why WOW: Legion is still kickin butt vs everything else that came in this genre over these last 12 years.
There is clearly something flawed in the approach of game design in this genre for this to remain for so long especially how WOW itself has allowed others to capitalize on its very poor performance in its last 1-2 expansions yet no one took that opportunity to present a superior product.

The End.

H0urg1ass · August 2016

The only way to directly compete with WoW would be to spend 15+ years developing the game. There's a vast amount of content to explore / complete and that kind of content doesn't spring up in five years of development. You simply cannot drop "Vanilla WoW" on the market in 2016 and have it succeed. Just look how poorly Wildstar fared.

All that most MMO's can hope to do is have enough content to take a slice of WoW's pie. The better games will attempt enough of a divergent path from WoW's mechanics that people will play them and overlook the fact that they have far less to do.

Aelious · August 2016

Robokapp said:

ever noticed how league of legends is highly cooperative yet it's super-popular? just saying

As much as I hate to admit it, because I very much want a persistent MMORPG world to "park" in, no other title has had my attention more often in the past year and a half as LoL. Only about 32 regular matches, almost all ARAM.

Iwaylo · August 2016

It's not that it's hard to make a MMORPG, but most western companies make single player games or some quick cash grabs. For something to compete with World of Warcraft the developers need to be part of a big name for example if Valve develops MMORPG i sure as hell will give it a try no matter what. Big name behind a game does miracles. WoW also had it's run for very long time, i imagine if it was made from not so famous company and it was released recently it would be as popular as any other MMORPG. Btw World of Warcraft lore is probably my favourite gaming lore ever, usually that alone sells the game for me.

Albatroes · August 2016

Too many factors as to why WoW was successful, even though its not AS successful as it used to be (still higher numbers than most though). Time of release helped alot. Advertising was its biggest things imo since it was honestly almost everywhere in mainstream media. You saw the typical 'gaming nerd' in shows usually playing it. Advertised around major events. Supported by various famous celebrities (who doesn't want to play a game with Chuck Norris?!?!). WoW is a highly publicized game that isn't really successful because of its gameplay but heavy marketing.

nerovergil · August 2016

make a WOW 2, i would definately buy it! But this 12 years old wow, no no

wow theme is good, the race are good

just the arts are bad...outdated...

Sovrath · August 2016

DMKano said:

There's a significant % of WoW players who have no interest of playing anything besides WoW,

There's a truth to this. The majority of World of Warcraft players I have met (or know) are "World of Warcraft players. They are not mmo players.

I think some people believe that World of Warcraft has millions of players and they just need to be lured away to other mmo's but in fact they are not necessarily interested in other mmo's.

CrazKanuk · August 2016

Albatroes said:

Too many factors as to why WoW was successful, even though its not AS successful as it used to be (still higher numbers than most though). Time of release helped alot. Advertising was its biggest things imo since it was honestly almost everywhere in mainstream media. You saw the typical 'gaming nerd' in shows usually playing it. Advertised around major events. Supported by various famous celebrities (who doesn't want to play a game with Chuck Norris?!?!). WoW is a highly publicized game that isn't really successful because of its gameplay but heavy marketing.

While marketing is a big deal, sunk cost is probably another, but gameplay is also a huge deal. WoW simply plays better than most.

Antiquated · August 2016

Every game producer in the universe wants that 'superior product' lightning to strike.

I suspect it's largely a function of Brand Loyalty.

"That last game they did was so cool, this next one has got to be terrific!"

Problem lies in getting that ball rolling. Then delivering with the follow-up game(s).

And that's exactly when most companies fail.

Kyleran · August 2016

Antiquated said:

Every game producer in the universe wants that 'superior product' lightning to strike.

I suspect it's largely a function of Brand Loyalty.

"That last game they did was so cool, this next one has got to be terrific!"

Problem lies in getting that ball rolling. Then delivering with the follow-up game(s).

And that's exactly when most companies fail.

Blizzard, too big to fail.

Aeander · August 2016

I'm not sure what kind of discussion you're expecting here. "Insert one of 10 generic replies to the thousandth thread on the same cynnical topic by the same poster."

But you know what. I'll humor you. Your metric is misguided. Success isn't defined by being the best. It's not even defined in the millions. Success is relative to scope. How many players are expected for the size of the game and how many players are needed to keep the community functioning and servers running?. For an indy MMO, 10,000 players could be beyond that developer's wildest dreams. For the standard MMO, maintaining 100k+ active players is likely definable as success.

These so-called failures of yours are generally doing well for themselves. Just because every genre has its Call of Duty (World of Warcraft) on the throne doesn't mean that the Halos and Unreal Tournaments (Guild Wars 2's and ESO's) aren't major success stories.

Kyleran · August 2016

Meh, when you already have great MMORPGs like EVE who needs anything new?

Seriously, more interesting MMOs than WOW are on the near horizon.

centkin · August 2016

>You simply cannot drop "Vanilla WoW" on the market in 2016 and have it succeed. Just look how poorly Wildstar fared.

Vanilla WoW would actually do quite well.

Wildstar on the other hand is NOT vanilla WoW. I tried Wildstar and did not like it, and I have liked many MMOs.

Siveria · August 2016

H0urg1ass said:

The only way to directly compete with WoW would be to spend 15+ years developing the game. There's a vast amount of content to explore / complete and that kind of content doesn't spring up in five years of development. You simply cannot drop "Vanilla WoW" on the market in 2016 and have it succeed. Just look how poorly Wildstar fared.

All that most MMO's can hope to do is have enough content to take a slice of WoW's pie. The better games will attempt enough of a divergent path from WoW's mechanics that people will play them and overlook the fact that they have far less to do.

Your forgetting though, each time they have an expansion almost all of the old content is pretty much null and void since there is no reason to do it anymore. In wow you can usually get higher item level gear off the mobs in the new expansion area than in the previous xpacs top end raid. Thouhjg if you have the raid gear from the top end place in the last xpac it'll prob take about halfway thru the new one before you'll replace it with greens.

Octagon7711 · August 2016

There are visionaries who come along every once in a great while. They put some things together in a way that hasn't been done in awhile. They add some new things into the game that people in the industry say won't work because it's never been done that way. They stick to their guns and refused to let their dream be compromised. If one of these people want to make an MMO instead of a cutting edge physics theory or a new technological discovery we'll have a great MMORPG, or maybe want to do all three, who knows?

H0urg1ass · August 2016

Siveria said:

H0urg1ass said:

The only way to directly compete with WoW would be to spend 15+ years developing the game. There's a vast amount of content to explore / complete and that kind of content doesn't spring up in five years of development. You simply cannot drop "Vanilla WoW" on the market in 2016 and have it succeed. Just look how poorly Wildstar fared.

All that most MMO's can hope to do is have enough content to take a slice of WoW's pie. The better games will attempt enough of a divergent path from WoW's mechanics that people will play them and overlook the fact that they have far less to do.

Your forgetting though, each time they have an expansion almost all of the old content is pretty much null and void since there is no reason to do it anymore. In wow you can usually get higher item level gear off the mobs in the new expansion area than in the previous xpacs top end raid. Thouhjg if you have the raid gear from the top end place in the last xpac it'll prob take about halfway thru the new one before you'll replace it with greens.

I understand what you're saying and I agree to a certain extent. Yeah, you don't ever have to do any of the old content anymore, but you can, right? What I'm saying is that there's no real reason to be bored in a game with 10+ years worth of content.

For instance, if I were to start playing for the first time today, then I'd love to go see what all bosses and zones were like not just the latest.

IAmMMO · August 2016

WOW is the Mc Donald's of MMO's.

nerovergil · August 2016

IAmMMO said:

WOW is the Mc Donald's of MMO's.

problem is, most wow players are ignorant.. they still happy playing outdated mmo....

most of them were merican..thats why they still voting for hobama and hillary...waiting ww3 to trigger, no mmo gg

ceratop001 · August 2016

Strange times we live in. Personally I don't like anything out right now including WoW. I'm always waiting it seems. I have a trick to playing games that I don't really like. Just Drink heavy amounts of Bourbon and magically the games is sorta fun.

xyzercrime · August 2016

Robokapp said:

IAmMMO said:

WOW is the Mc Donald's of MMO's.

cheap and delicious?

they'll give you cholesterol.

monochrome19 · August 2016

H0urg1ass said:

The only way to directly compete with WoW would be to spend 15+ years developing the game. There's a vast amount of content to explore / complete and that kind of content doesn't spring up in five years of development. You simply cannot drop "Vanilla WoW" on the market in 2016 and have it succeed. Just look how poorly Wildstar fared.

All that most MMO's can hope to do is have enough content to take a slice of WoW's pie. The better games will attempt enough of a divergent path from WoW's mechanics that people will play them and overlook the fact that they have far less to do.

Disagree. When FFXIV relaunched it didnt have half the features of WoW but its still doing fine. The only thing creators need to do is make a quality game that people like, that has room to improve and expand, and people will support it.

Horusra · August 2016

IAmMMO said:

WOW is the Mc Donald's of MMO's.

A foolish comparison. More like the premium package of an otherwise free cable service.

Kyleran · August 2016

coretex666 said:

Sovrath said:

DMKano said:

There's a significant % of WoW players who have no interest of playing anything besides WoW,

There's a truth to this. The majority of World of Warcraft players I have met (or know) are "World of Warcraft players. They are not mmo players.

I think some people believe that World of Warcraft has millions of players and they just need to be lured away to other mmo's but in fact they are not necessarily interested in other mmo's.

When there was one of the "wow killers" to be released, I always asked in my WoW guild, which used to be pretty huge back then, if the guys are going to play the game or even leave WoW for it. Mostly the answer was "I never heared of that game. I only play WoW".

So yeah, I can confirm this based on my experience with interacting with Warcraft players.

This is likely true in every game. I'm always telling my friends in my EVE corp about new games, most recently the revival of Dark and Light and I'm frequently met with "huh?"

Just the other night a corpmate asked if anyone had heard of NMS, and I was the only one familiar with it.

I think many gamers focus on only the current title they are playing and don't follow news about the genre or other games on a regular basis.

khameleon · August 2016

Kopogero said:

MMO's are hard to make which is why WOW: Legion is still kickin butt vs everything else that came in this genre over these last 12 years.
There is clearly something flawed in the approach of game design in this genre for this to remain for so long especially how WOW itself has allowed others to capitalize on its very poor performance in its last 1-2 expansions yet no one took that opportunity to present a superior product.

The End.

WOW legion is doing well because of addiction. Its not that the games are any good. People that buy every expansion since launch are the majority of players in WOW that pay monthly that are not botters/gold sellers.

Blizzard has many addicts, especially mostly in WOW. Any game they release will always have an instant 10 million players or so at launch, even when they use technology from the 90s, poor UI, poor environmental graphics, poor combat, it doesn't matter, addicts will be addicts.

Vermillion_Raventhal · August 2016

H0urg1ass said:

The only way to directly compete with WoW would be to spend 15+ years developing the game. There's a vast amount of content to explore / complete and that kind of content doesn't spring up in five years of development. You simply cannot drop "Vanilla WoW" on the market in 2016 and have it succeed. Just look how poorly Wildstar fared.

All that most MMO's can hope to do is have enough content to take a slice of WoW's pie. The better games will attempt enough of a divergent path from WoW's mechanics that people will play them and overlook the fact that they have far less to do.

Or pickup UO/SWG torch and try something new.

I have almost 0 interest in doing generic task that pass for content in themepark MMORPG.

Cybersig211 · August 2016

you cant compete with wow, look at all the dead mmorpgs that tried. its a fluke. it had a built in population given its time frame and how it started, and more precisely, when it started. it caught a giant wave of popularity at the right time, and did so with a product good enough to keep many of its players. From there it just kept building on the game, even when the graphics got dated which is a major issue for many mmorpgers...it just kept on trucking...well past the point where any other developer would have brought out a failed sequel, it didn't, blizzard just kept on trucking.

mmorpgs are very hard to make, even harder to make well. the mmorpg fan base was the worst set of people ive ever encountered, seemingly full of millions of players who demanded a personalized game just for them and were unable to enjoy anything that didn't fit their very specific mold of mmorpg. I watched with my own eyes great games destroyed by the very people who played them...all seemingly upset over lack of their personal preferences being catered to as well as a level of anger that the game isn't beating wow....which was a silly obsession everyone had.

bottom line, the money isn't in mmorpgs, investors will not throw hundreds of millions at mmorpgs anymore. no big games on the horizon. its over.

perhaps down the road some indy developer will do something drastically different and revive the industry....but I have to ask why? Mmorpgs are so insanely expensive and difficult to make, why would anyone choose to make one when they can make just as much on a mobile game, a moba, a co-op shooter, or a single player rpg.

its always about money, mmorpgs are far too expensive to warrant their creation given the market and demographics in the genera.

It wouldn't have mattered if WOW made awful expansions and ended up dying 10 years ago, those gamers would have migrated to another blizzard game, or another game type. The mmorpg industry was catering to a crowd of wow players who just weren't going to play another mmorpg for longer than a month, and that is why the industry is littered with expensive dead games, many of which were kinda solid apart from some issues at launch.

I'm not sure if I can blame anyone more than the nature of the beast being so expensive and difficult to make well or the players who reveled in the death of expensive mmorpgs....which in turn made investors bail to calmer waters and better returns. either way, enjoy the mmorpgs that exist, cherish them. I feel in another 10 years there wont be any mmorpgs other than a few novelties perhaps, sort of like how Everquest was still around though irrelevant for a while, and ultima.

Also if a surprise mmorpg is made, with a budget, and its not 100% a scam, maybe this time the players should support it and enjoy it for what it is, might not be another one on the horizon if it fails. Money tends to flee failure and the mmorpg industry is littered with failure, even the decent ones that still live failed to do what they set out to do. Only one exists that wasn't trying to do anything other than be a good game, that one everyone hated for doing well...and maybe its why it did so well?

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV