A View From the Road: World Without Warcraft

[Eldarion]

Haha, okay.

So, first lesson: Don't flame people on our forums. We welcome disagreements, we welcome discussions, as long as they're respectful. But flaming and personal attacks are absolutely uncalled for.

Second Lesson: Mod/staff sass. Don't do it.

Third Lesson: Especially don't flame people who have the power to ban you. That's like asking a police officer if he wants to come along when you hit up the convenience store across the street.

BRING THE HAMMER DOWN!!!!!

Makes my day when I see trash get banned.

Anyway, I agree with the article for the most part.

Wow is a casual mmo players dream game with enough hardcore content to satisfy huge numbers f end game raiders.

Leveling my first char to 80 right now, blood elf warlock level 77 and it has been a long crazy ride with its ups and downs but it has never stopped being fun.

Exept when you goddamn allies corpse camp me five on one, seriously not cool!

 

[snowman6251]

I actually just wrote an essay on WoW for my English class where the task was to take an artifact or phenomena and use it as a metaphor for something in society. I used WoW as our need for escapism as people choose to live out their lives as a pretend badass while their real lives dwindle away before them.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm very critical of the game. I played for about a year and a half and I didn't quit so much as I got bored. After one weekend of non stop arena matches I was like "screw this, I don't feel like playing, I'm going to go do something else" and that wasn't meant to be permanent at the time but I looked around and said to myself "what the hell was I doing"?

Looking at my /played was horrendously embarrassing once I had stepped back and looked at the game and my time with it objectively. Yes I had found some "friends" in my guildmates but they weren't really my friends. I didn't know most of their real names.

While I like the teamwork that went into raids and stuff it just becomes too much. Meeting a raid schedule that demands you be on virtually all night every night. Arguing over loot. Losing the argument. Having the person who got the loot leave the guild the next day. It got old.

As for the not playing other games thing. Totally true. I barely touched my consoles while I was playing WoW.

Anyway long story short, used to play, quit, my life is much better off, WoW is evil.

 

[warbaloon]

Talking about how WoW changed the mmo industry makes me miss shartuul, eternally broken (each time in a new way) as it was. It was a full fledged boss fight that most players overlooked but was a real step forward in rewarding players that could complete complicated tasks without a group.

Rerolling(for the 5th time ><) and I curse the lack of healers available to do heroics with and the lack of soloable things that have any real difficulty. Beating 4 champions with 60% hp left is boring.

It also annoys me that Blizz has gotten progressively lazier about not homogenizing characters.

 

[soundoflights]

It would be a world where all my buddies that used to be great at shooters would still be great a shooters. WoW is the great Noobifier it doesn't matter how good you are as soon as you play it your never the same gamer again. It's the blight of PC gaming and while I commend it for taking so many noobs out of competitive play I loath it for destroying so many gamers that actually had potential.

 

[Veylon]

It probably wouldn't be all that much different. Taking a look at MMOGChart.com [http://www.mmogchart.com/], we'd probably be playing Lineage II and talking about what a dark and terrible place it would be without it leading the way. And whether LofRO could beat it. And whether it has a monopoly on the market, stifling competition by luring all of 6 million people with it's siren song every night. Will an MMO ever hit 10 million?

 

[TwistedLogic]

If WoW hadn't been eh?

World of Warcraft was a typically average mmo that didn't excel in anything much and did a few things worse than many other mmorpgs. What it did have is a huge potential to be yet another gathering place for those who play games that they HATE. Its not so much the game that people have a problem with, its some of the players and on that note, getting back to the topic, if WoW never existed, many many gamers would be vigorously defending another average mmo with the typical zealotry that plagues the gaming community.

Although an interesting scenario, its a bit like asking "what if cigarettes weren't invented", the answer is obvious: "a lot more people would be addicted to something else"

( Note: if you read the first line and reached for the 'quote' button to flame, guess what, your a fan-boy. )

 

[skathe]

If wow hadn't been made we wouldn't have had a lot of good times during classic and BC, and even the beginning parts of WotLK. But we also wouldn't have the incredible let down of post-Ulduar WotLK and what is essentially a giant rehash of 5 year old content in Cataclysm.

I liken it to doing cocaine. The first rail or two is AMAZING, but pretty soon you're doing line after line just to maintain, spending way more money on it than you originally intended, and in the end you're going to have the inevitable crash; during this miserable downward spiral, you find yourself contemplating why you even started doing it to begin with, when you knew when you started what the consequences would be. You're disappointed in yourself and everyone who encouraged this behavior, and that feeling is reciprocal with your similarly dejected peers. The end result: you're a few hundred dollars poorer with next to nothing to show for it and the stories you are able to relay from the experience are completely divergent from anyone who wasn't involved. You slowly creep back into "sobriety" and realize the only thing left to do is drink some coffee, take a shower, put on some clean clothes, and get back to being a somewhat productive individual while trying to block out the fuzzy memories of your highly regrettable actions.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

If WoW didn't exist?

Well, for one thing, a lot of gamers I know would probably be a lot thinner than they currently are.

(Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! But it's true!)

 

[Jiki]

Wow, what a pointless article. I have nothing against the existence of WoW and if somebody truly enjoys it, well, have fun, but in an article like this one would expect it to be written by somebody with at least some grasp of objectivity, but instead we get a fanboy's love letter.

Well, whatever. Like this article would have mattered one way or another.

 

[Doug]

Interesting article, and you're right; without WoW, the idea of a massively popular MMO would be looked on as laughable. I am curious though - where does this figure of 24-to-36 million subscribers come from for WoW? I heard 12 million most recently, and on top of that, many of those will be alternative accounts for people who multi-box and so forth.

A View From the Road: World Without Warcraft

What if World of Warcraft had never been made?

Read Full Article

Also, on page 2, what game is that picture from?

 

[Azmael Silverlance]

Yes the MMORPGs wouldnt be as popular today if WoW didnt exist. And even after Blizzard took all the previous ideas polished them and then dressed em in diamonds its still...after 5 years...impossible for other companies to even copy it and be at least 50% as good as wow.
Fact remains WoW for all the haters around (and even my guildmates whine about the game) was and still is the best online game. And Blizzard keeps adding new stuff and making them great. They may not exactly invent new stuff but what they do rly good is re-inventing old ideas and making them good.

I think if wow didnt exist today`s MMORPGs would suck even more. . .but i rly hope something better comes someday. I mean wow is great but i wanna see progress. The tech has evolved alot too. Sigh how i wish to see a Town in a MMORPG to be as big as a irl city :O That will be the day when MMORPGs rly hit the mark :> Imagine 1mil ppl online in a single realm whooah thats massive

 

[Tears of Blood]

Personally, I think it'd be a better place in general.

I may sound like the son of Jack Thompson here or something, but there are certain things about the Internet that just mess with people's heads. WoW is one of them, and along with WoW is 4Chan and a number of other places as well.

I'll admit, a vast majority of us are strong-minded enough to use WoW in moderation, responsibly, however, WoW and 4Chan are a couple of those things that takes some people's minds and gives them a good brainwashing.

The worst part is that it's not just some screwed up, biased opinion I have here. I actually know or knew people that have had this happen to them! I used to know people who were completely normal, started to visit 4Chan regularly, and now I can't have a normal conversation with them anymore! I also knew people who started playing World of Warcraft, and they get so wrapped up in it, and possibly the friends they make on it, to hold a real conversation with me (if it's an Internet friend), or they just never want to hang out anymore.

Then there's the people who just lose so much sleep and all the time from it, become less productive or less social after they begin playing.

And again, I realize this probably isn't a majority of players, but it's a shame that these things happen to these people. What makes this whole thing even worse, is that I think it happens mostly to intelligent people. People who could be spending their time on such a more worthy endeavor than the grind that is an MMO.

Lastly, it's not just WoW I despise for this. It's all MMOs. I know how tempting the whole thing is, I have tried a particular MMO (Ragnarok Online to be specific. I owned a *censored* that other people played on.) before, and now I know to stay away from them.

EDIT: I'd like to say that I don't disagree with anything but the last sentence in the article. I think everything you said was right. However, to me, those things seem small and insignificant in comparison. I suppose that is a small personal bias, though.

 

[Ryuk2]

It would be a better place for all of us. There's so much time wasted in there, they could have anything else at that time, like finding cure for cancer or something.

 

[obliterate]

It would definetely be a plus because let's see...it's because of the lives of those idiots playing that piece of...let me put it this way the game is awesome and is a solid tittle and has changed the face the gaming blah blah blah...IT HAS RUINED LIVES !!! That's the only thing I will say I haven't experienced it but many frinds have...The world would be a better place

 

[Hyper-space]

Warhammer online would be more succesful, and therefore the world is better

no, warhammer online pretty much follows up on the WoW formula so therefore warhammer online would have never been made in a WoW-less world.

on the other hand, warcraft 4 would be EPIXSH*TZLEGENDARY

 

[Nemu]

If anything, I'd prolly not be online as much. I doubt I'd have kept playing CoH/CoV for equally as long.

I only started playing WoW because my ex gf kept pestering me to. I hated it at first but when i took a break from CoH, I picked it back up and have been playing ever since.

I only started gaming online because I work nights and hate television, plus console games were starting to bore me.

If anything, had WoW never been made, I'd likely be the owner of an X-Box which, up to this point, I've resisted buying. WoW is basically just something to do when I'm home alone after work. *shrug*

 

[Rock 'n' Soul]

I would have had a lot more money for things that mattered... like books for college, food, or gas!

 

[Nemu]

Also, on page 2, what game is that picture from?

The one of the gryphon flying over the harbor?

It's from WoW, in Grizzly Hills above the southern PVP area.