SmugFrog said:
ironfist86 said:
Nah, you can't blame WoW for this. I mean, you can, but it is AoC's fault for being a broken pile. should have waited and done things right.
Was it that bad? It had some good reviews. Anarchy Online was a horribly broken mess when it released; probably worse than any MMORPG there has been. In the end though, when they patched it up, it was a very enjoyable game.
Grey, dishwater graphics; half the features promised unplayable on release; pretty much WoW gameplay just in a grey, grimmer shell; bad design choices, as I mentioned before.
As for Anarchy online, they've never really recovered from that initial "crap period", and subscription remains low. It's an undeserved reputation now, but its stuck in people's minds, it seems.
SmugFrog said:
Fearzone said:
No, WoW just set a expection that an MMO ought to be good if you first pay $50 for the game, and then $15/month. Making a game like WoW but better is indeed a daunting task, but a good MMO is not an impossible standard.
Definitely a daunting task - and you have to pull all of those WoW players away from WoW long enough to get an established fan base. If they go back to WoW, your game is going to be looked at as a "loss". My biggest fear is that an awesome MMORPG will come out that has so many awesome things to do, but it will get overlooked and not pull as many subscriptions as the developer wanted.
Maybe they could, I don't know, try and do their own thing? Like Eve online has, or now Second Life and Everquest are different?
SmugFrog said:
I think a big part of the problem with WoW (or at least players going back to it) is that it establishes a high level of nostalgia and attachment to your characters. Players don't want to cancel their WoW account because of the amount of work they have put into it. So when you're playing another MMO (AoC, EQ2, or some other one), and taking some time off from your WoW account, if you get a bit bored you go back to something you had fun with. If you've spent some time away from WoW, you're going to have a good time once again with it - and there's always an expansion pack on the way to add new content to it so that's another draw.
True...true. It'll certainly take work to ween people off of WoW and onto other MMO's. BUT the thing is, its doable, and frankly, if the competition keep trying to clone WoW, they'll never manage it. Add to that, the expansion packs actually do represent a real increase in the world-size, showing that they are maintaining it well.
I do have to wonder if WoW 2 could exist. After all, it'll have to compete with WoW 1!
SmugFrog said:
Like I said before, we probably won't see a MMO that can top WoW for 3-4 years - and by then Blizzard will probably have World of Starcraft or something on the edge of release. Blizzard could very well turn out to be the EA Sports of MMO's - and that's a sad thing, because once 1 developer has that foothold it is hard for other wonderful ideas to surface. Imagine if the FPS market was dominated by only Halo. I'm not a Halo fanboy, but I don't dislike it either - but Halo is not the perfect FPS IMO. I enjoy the game, but if I couldn't have my Call of Duty 4, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress, Portal, and so many others (yeah, I'm a hardcore Valve fan)... Man, what experiences we would be missing out on! Imagine if Halo was the only FPS choice we had. That's the way the MMO market is going now because of WoW.
I can see what you're saying, but there are other, successful MMO's out there, as you mentioned yourself. EVE, Everquest, City of Heros/Villains, etc. Ok, so they've not got the sheer volume of WoW, but it would be mad to assume that ever game could achieve that position.
With a normal game, you normally consider it excellent news if you can shift 1 million units of the game. Age of Conan managed to shift AT LEAST 700,000(!) and yet it's still in trouble. Frankly, they did not plan it well. THIS is the common mistake all these new MMO's are making : trying to take on WoW straight off the bat. Age of Conan, on release, was not all that good. And MMO players aren't known for their patience, see? So, by the time its all fixed, most of them would have returned to WoW and forgotten about AoC.
If a game starts small, like Eve, irons out its bugs, and then grows, using word of mouth/blogs/online magazines (cough the Escapist cough), and shifts with a free trail period, you CAN compete with WoW. But "Fun"com screwed it up. Badly! They thought they could get 10 million subscribers and keep them. That was just idiocy to work from, and they ain't gonna keep their heads above water now.
WoW will survive, even in the current economic difficulties, because they understand the market, and crafted their game according, and now have a comfortable buffer zone. Even if half their subscribers cancelled, they could keep going methinks.
Anywho, if your interested in MMO, MUD, or even just general world design in games, have a looky at "Designing Virtual Worlds" by Richard Bartle. Richard Bartle is the guy who invented MUD, the first ever persistent world game (I think), the forerunner to the MMO. He recently said that he'd close down WoW if he had the power, not because he thinks its bad, but simply because he feels the same way that you do - that it kills off competition and invention. I have read a fair wack of the book and its good reading.
