Five Reasons Why The Old Republic Can?t Touch WoW

[Deathfish15]

To be honest, I'm not particularly interested in WoW vs TOR. WoW will be dethroned sooner or later, but the way things are looking now, it'll be later, not sooner. The thing with WoW is that it's become pretty much an entire segment of the market on it's own. There's WoW players, and there's people who play other MMOs. The WoW players won't move away from their Warcrack en masse anytime soon, so it's those other people who determine which games become 'best of the rest'.

Because of that, I'm far more interested in The Old Republic vs Star Trek Online. Two promising-looking new sci-fi MMOs, both based on world-famous fan-favourite franchises, it'd seem that they're going to be fighting over pretty much the same group of players.

Just don't tell any Trekkies or Warsies that I just lumped them together in one group. They might not approve.

I wouldn't even want to put either of those games in the same sentence to compare them. They're in completely different leagues and are incomparable. Star Trek Online is aiming to be a niche game with low, close population: it shows in their server architecture and their short lived development cycle (seriously, less than 2 years?!). Star Wars The Old Republic is getting a normal (or extended) development time of 5 years, 6 possible; it's also getting more work done to it's story and the details which the other game is severely lacking.

I really just want WoW to still be successful and for TOR to become a giant in its own right, both games being equally good for different reasons and both player bases enjoying themselves, even if they are playing two different games.

Of course, I'm sure that 90% of TOR's player base, much like another former heralded WoW Killer, Warhammer Online, will be made up of disgruntled WoW players who proclaim WoW is for babies and that Warhammer Onl...I mean TOR is for manly men.

Look, I enjoy World of Warcraft. Warhammer Online has its pluses and minuses, but the biggest one is a fanbase made entirely of assholes, jerkasses and dickheads who will NEVER say anything nice about World of Warcraft, like that the classes or locations were varied and interesting. I bring this up because I don't want the player base of The Old Republic to be like that. Like it or loathe it, World of Warcraft is a great MMO, and there is room on the internet for WoW and The Old Republic to coincide and be equally respected by each others' player base. Could TOR be the next Warcraft and garner a nice big chunk of player base? Absolutely. Will it be the heralded WoW killer and cause the game to be utterly ignored for TOR? Absolutely not. Why? Because even if diminished by another game's player base, WoW will always have a player base, and Blizzard will support that player base.

You have some of that in the TOR community where there are players that cannot say anything nice about WoW, however there are just as many (if not many more than the other) that keep mentioning that they want X feature and Y systems similar to WoW, but with a Star Wars/Bioware flavor.

Too many times have these other developers tried to do something "different" and "non-WoW", yet because of that they've failed to find the essence of being an MMO in their product. The FLUFF stuff that is in WoW is one thing that players love, for example, and usually gets put on the back-burner in other games so that they can do "core mechanics" of combat and boring quests just to push the game out the door. In-game events, non-combat pets, fishing, cooking, drinking, sitting (ya, many games come out without a /sit emote), killing squirrels and chickens, shooting off fireworks, listening to tavern bands (Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain was added in TBC at an in-game fair for WoW), wearing in-game costumes and dress cloths, doing a /dance emote (barely any new games have had this in or even attempt to want to put it in)....all this stuff on top of the combat fighting and quests/missions are what as a whole makes the product fun to stay at and play for extended periods of time.

 

[MmmFiber]

I think you missed a reason:

Restraining Order

Blizzard doesn't want filthy EA to get anywhere near it, let alone touch it. Even though, those hands that touch it might be the hands of the sexy Bioware(commence the drooling).

 

[Beltaine]

WoW's popularity has to do with it being a single-player MMO.

Look at what was around when it released.

Ultima Online - unless you stayed in towns protected by guards, you needed to have friends and people to watch your back lest you get killed by another player out in the wilds and have all your belongings stolen.

Everquest - the crown jewel of massive MULTIplayer. You didn't get ANYWHERE without a group in Everquest, OR you simply killed the same 2-3 mob spawn about 5 levels lower than you but still gave experience over and over and over again. Questing for experience? Pah! We'll have none of that!

Dark Age of Camelot - Something a little more solo friendly, but with the added meta-game of 3 competing factions. DAoC actually did fairly well subscription-wise until Mythic decided to kill it in-house with an expansion.

Final Fantasy XI - Everquest a grind? Don't like to group with other players? Find something else besides Final Fantasy XI.

The MMO genre was still a niche. Most people didn't want to depend on other players to enjoy a game. The going trend was you needed to have 30+ people on at once, working together to see the top content, which only a pithy 3-7% of subscribers ever got to see.

At release, WoW banked on being a fix for Everquest's model by introducing quest-driven gameplay and instanced dungeons. You didn't just hang out in a level-appropriate zone and kill things until you were big enough to move on, you actually were guided by questgivers, given rewards and experience for completing their menial tasks, and, most of the time, never had to so much as look at any other players to do it. You also never had to compete for loot spawns in dungeons because each group of players got their own dungeons to play in. They threw in DAoC's faction fighting between the Horde and Alliance for fun. Then gave all the raiding guilds something to do by having 40-man raid content. They topped it all off with silly things to do during down time. Pets, fireworks, emotes, even dancing for crying out loud.

Over the course of the game's lifespan Blizzard has expanded on their original plan of taking what irritated MMO players and finding a way to fix it. Characters can be leveled from 1 to cap completely without interaction from any outside players. "Classes" are no longer one trick ponies as most can be configured to fill more than one role in a party. 40-main content has given way to 25-man, then to 10-man, and finally having all content contain 5, 10, and 25 player versions. Want to see Arthas defeated but don't have 24 friends? No problem, you can do it with only 9 others, and don't worry about not being equipped to handle it, because you can earn tokens to exchange for great gear just by doing the piddly 5-man dungeons over and over.

You can't have an MMO these days and included the second "M". People want a massive single-player game that plays online with an option to get together and play with other gamers.

This is why WoW is mainstream and anything else that doesn't follow the formula exactly is "crap" and becomes niche. People complaining about Champions Online not having "phasing" is a prime example of this mentality.

***Wall of Text crits you for 9999***

 

[GonzoGamer]

I never got the feeling that they were trying to be direct competition.
They're two completely different genres: not to mention it's a licensed IP, so even if it is outstanding so half of the scifi nerds will be holding out for the trek mmo anyway.
Besides, I haven't been that impressed yet. I knew the game wouldn't look like that e3 cutscene but what I've seen looks a little dated.

 

[Dhatz]

I initially wanted to write that it's not for the same audience asWOw, but both games will attract gamers who wanna play more characters.

 

[tehroc]

I cant read Mr. Funk's article without a grain of salt. He demonstrated time and time again that he is clearly biased towards World of Warcraft, as it's the current source of his addiction.

IMO WOW's time is beginning to wane many long time players are leaving permanently, as many learn its just a giant treadmill to keep you grinding away for some intangible reward in order to maintain your paying subscription. The next expansion will be more of the same, level your worgen quickly, gear it up with easy badges and then raid, chasing that carrot yet again.

 

[John Funk]

The fault with MMOs released since WoW is that they needed to be more like WoW. Maybe they offered interesting improvements over WoW in some particular narrow area--maybe they addressed a focal problem in a way that was different and better--but the overall experience suffered majorly when you compare it to WoW in ways that were easily identifiable.

The only game that will have any chance against it is the one where you say: "this needs to be less like WoW."

I agree. I think it's a double-edged sword, though. WoW did a lot of things right that just make sense from a game design point of view, and not having those things might be seen by some as a mark that your game is 'backward.'

I've never once denied that - in fact, I was talking about that same thing back in August [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/view-from-the-road/6479-A-View-From-the-Road-If-You-Cant-Beat-Em].

It's all relative: Does WoW have a Black Hole effect in terms of the population as a whole? Absolutely not, not in the same way that, say, Facebook does. But in terms of the gaming population - and especially the MMOG population - it absolutely does. It's had over 24 million subscribers over it's lifetime; that's a HUGE number considering the total number of gamers.

A MMOG that takes the new crown from WoW is going to have to do to WoW what WoW did to EQ et al - expand the market drastically, because there ARE so many people playing FarmVille and Mafia Wars. I've never tried to argue otherwise.

Then I fail to see the relevance in the article itself. Are you merely dispelling the very misguided speculation that The Old Republic is a potential WoWkiller? A noble purpose, I suppose, except that it probably is falling on deaf ears. Even if you get through to those making such unrelated speculation, it's still more important that they realise just how big a potential audience there is out there, if it just gets expanded.

But, I'm glad that you agree. It's good to see that the right ideas are flying around the MMO world about how you have to expand the gaming audience itself.

The purpose was just to have a two-part discussion on what TOR has going for it and what it has going against it as it enters the MMOG market to face Blizzard's juggernaut - fun, hopefully thought-provoking, and one that gets people to discuss (which, judging by this comment thread and the one from last week, is a success).

The gaming audience needs to be expanded. The MMOG that beats WoW is going to be the one that channels Facebook.

TOR doesn't interest me at all, naturally being set in the Star Wars universe. Bleh.

It would take hours to write up every little thing that turns me off about WoW, but point #4 is the one of the biggest: It's a cartoon that uses all of eight colors. I find it insulting, to be honest. Then there's the Warcraft setting, which I find about as appealing as Star Wars. Instancing. Forced grouping. Etc.

So, I'm still waiting for a real MMO to come along.

You want to play a "real MMO" that doesn't have instancing and forced grouping? Huh?

(I think you'll find that WC uses a biiiit more than eight colors, amigo Honestly, Blizzard's art direction is really just some of the best in the biz, IMO).

I see another problem unique to TOR - the innovative MMO storytelling mechanics. Specifically, the choices you're supposed to be making as you Adventure! around the Galaxy. While on paper this looks like a wondrous merger of the best of both MMO and Single-Player worlds, there are some concerns.

1. In order for the choices to Matter (tm) at all, they must be persistent. Are you only allowed to do each event once and that's it for the character? Or are you forced to repeat the original choice each time you re-run the instance/event/adventure/quest for that elusive [+5 Lightsaber of the Space Whale] drop from the Jedi Master Pinn Atta?

2. This brings us to another question - how do you handle the decisions when you're in a party? Bob the Sith Lord wants Admiral McFailure dead, but Tim the Bounty Hunter wants him alive to get the best-in-slot [Blaster Rifle of Stormtrooper Accuracy] from his quest. Party splits up and you have to find replacements that want to do it your way. Of course, if the decision matters for the current run only, no problem, just run it again. What was the point of choices again?

3. Otherwise, you run into another issue common to single-player games. The content, however varied and plentiful (and incredibly fantastic) eventually runs out. If - thanks to the Choices - you can't repeat the fun parts of the game, you're reduced to hanging out in Coruscant waiting for the next content patch. Or making alts to check out the different paths. Until you've seen it all, much like a single player game.

The "Fully voiced cutscenes" clause also puts a limit on content. There's only so much voice acting in only so many languages you can create before you run out of dev time, budget, disk space, voice actors, etc. Unless half the game is wookies gargling subtitled nonsense in your face.

P.S. Oh, and how do you skip cutscenes in a party, especially ones with player-selected responses? Unskippable cutscenes get old in about... one view. I'm sorry, Arthas. I can't watch you do this.

All very good points, and actually one that was hammered home this last weekend because of ... Army of Two: 40th Day. But that was a column I was planning on writing in a few weeks, so shhhh!

Blizzard has made some cutscenes skippable (Brann in Halls of Stone, for instance) so it's interesting that they don't just make ALL of them skippable.

I cant read Mr. Funk's article without a grain of salt. He demonstrated time and time again that he is clearly biased towards World of Warcraft, as it's the current source of his addiction.

IMO WOW's time is beginning to wane many long time players are leaving permanently, as many learn its just a giant treadmill to keep you grinding away for some intangible reward in order to maintain your paying subscription. The next expansion will be more of the same, level your worgen quickly, gear it up with easy badges and then raid, chasing that carrot yet again.

Perhaps once upon a time, sure. I log into WoW once or twice a week, these days, only to really raid with the guild. There's plenty of other games worth my time, and I no longer have the time to be "addicted" to a game anymore.

It doesn't change my respect for Blizzard, nor my belief that it's probably the best single MMOG on the market right now. You can call it a treadmill, you can call it a carrot on a stick but it doesn't make doing it any less entertaining for millions.

Nevertheless, I feel my points are pretty factual whether you like WoW OR you hate it. There's nothing about "BECAUSE IT IS TEH BESTEST GAEM EVAR!!!1" in there.

 

[Aurgelmir]

As long as people have the same mentality as Bill Roper has. The "They have been out for 5 years" mentality, then of course they can never beat wow.
Hell Bill Roper used to work for Blizzard, if anyone should have been able to lead an MMO to victory it should have been him.

The fact that wow has been out for 5 years means everyone else have had just as long to learn from the game, and to see what makes it tic.

When a game like Champions Online cant even compete against wow on something as simple as opening all of your bags at the same time, something wow had from the get go, then its no wonder they cant compete....

Another problem I see in newer MMOs is that they do not want to copy wow it seems. Every new mmo wants to be special. Sure they need to be special, but they still need to have everything that makes wow a great game, or else they will fail.

Lets look at Champions Online again, it had so many cool concepts, and could have been a very good mmo, but it lacked a purpose. All I did in the game was make super hero upon superhero, but I had no reason to level him. The game lacked a drive for me to get better. When I played there was a lack of any endgame content. The instances that was in the game was so friggin run of the mill tank and spank that it hurt.

Now lets look at WoW. IT has a purpose, I want to get strongerm so my Paladin can get better gear, and play the cool endgame content. I get to play massive unique looking instances and raids, where I fight memorable bosses. There is a purpose, and there is a great story.

That is just some of what you need to become THE NEXT mmo...

 

[geldonyetich]

Predicting the future in technology is never particularly easy. However, as far as predictions go, that WoW will not be beaten is probably one of the easier ones considering it (or rather, how popular it has become) is a very unique singularity amongst MMORPGs.

 

[achilleas.k]

I agree with 4 of the reasons and I have stated them every time an MMO is announced (Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online ... that spacey other one no one remembers anymore...), but the one I don't agree on is the requirements.
I did use the requirements argument as well, back in the day, but I think this point has turned on its head. The fact is that the engine powering WoW has seen so many modifications and has had so many extra stuff bolted onto it that it's starting to crawl. I have had worse framerates in WoW at max settings than any other game on my computer (again at max settings) and that includes games that have been released "yesterday". I believe that with Cataclysm this will only get worse. While new games have the ability to optimise their engines from the ground up, WoW can only go so far any more. It's no longer true that you can play WoW with a PC that could play it when it was first released. This was very apparent in Shattrath and it only got worse in Dalaran. I remember people who could play pre-BC fine and in Outland had their home set in Nagrand because hearthstoning to Shattrath took 5 minutes to load and gave them 3 FPS.

 

[snow]

There's always the Night Elf Mohawk.

Even though I can't stand that commercial.. I got a good lawl out of this... Very nice!

As for the review.. (or whatever you want to call it? Blog?) I must say I hated how people compared AoC to WoW when it first came out, for that very same reason that was mentioned above... You shouldn't compare a fresh out of development game to an older game that has had plenty of time to work out the kinks, but it still happens, and it's sad...

I've always figured that if AoC and WoW came out at the same exact time.. AoC would have killed the competition... That is to say if it weren't for the fact that AoC can be a pain to run, even with my super computer that's just a few models short of being the t-1000 itself..
I feel it would have held attention a lot better in the eyes of the masses than it did..

Of course... One can only dream up such situations and realize that's just the way life works...

Before anyone flames me for actually liking AoC... Just remember that All mmorpgs suck, it just comes down to which one sucks the least for you that counts, and for me that just happened to be AoC.

 

[Flash787]

The only company that can actually "kill" WoW is Blizzard. They could lose the cheese on their collective crackers and do something epic to the game that would drive players away in droves, much like SOE did with Galaxies.

I think the biggest point for BioWare is gonna be the hardware specs. WoW has the big advantage of not being a hardware-intensive game. If BioWare can shoot for a lower threshold than many MMOs have been hitting, they'll gain some of the more casual playing folks that don't run out and upgrade their computer just to play games. If they stay higher, how many people that already have a high end computer will play that don't already play two or three other games? The top end number for this group of people isn't as big as people think it is, and that's where the fighting is the most fierce for people's attention.

If the gameplay is solid and deep enough from launch to satisfy most everyone, they should have no problem becoming number 2, and keep that ranking for as long as BioWare is willing to put the effort in to keep it there.