AngryMan said:
Flip the question on it's head: ask "why is WoW so popular?"
That's why WoW is so immensely popular - it's enormous popularity provides it with a sort of "gravity" that draws other players in. The process snowballs, meaning that the bigger the game gets, the bigger the game will continue to get until it finally reaches an equilibrium point where it has already drawn in as many of the lowest common denominator as it can achieve.
I think you're being unfair to Wow, as many are these days- while what you say has some truth, there has to be a reason why the game was popular in the first place. It took what the biggest MMos had done, and gave them polish, made them more forgiving and more fun, and set it in a well realised world with stories to tell.
Wow lacks an over arching plot, something difficult for any MMO to acheieve and exist for longer than a set period of time, but has lots of minature stories to tell, and by creating a very beautiful world which the player can explore, draws the players in that way. From a basic level, the early quick level progression is probably what drew me in- getting more abilities, and also competing with my friends, fighting new quests and going on my first instance, it sucked me in, of this I have no doubt. Crafting provided a distraction, and there was always a new goal to aim for. Goal orientated playing is ultimately what most gamers crave.
Sadly, the problems cropped up. The grind got to me, and advancement slowed down to a crawl as I wondered round, looking sadly for quests to complete that were worth my while- not being the most social of players I had avoided any real structure and had managed to hit level 34 without any real allies, other than my friends, who shared the same computer. So most of the quests available to me at that time were dull, and the interesting ones were far too hard for me to do solo. I no longer had goals I was interested in- level 40 looked fun, for the prescene of a mount, but by this point it occured to me that the reward of going faster wasn't really all that amazing- it was kind of something they should already have.
Pvp briefly sparked my interest with the introduction of battlegrounds, but I was quick to notice that this was not a proper challenge- certain players, by getting epic gear, meant that I could not enjoy these matches- the enemy was just too strong.
So, how to improve? I think it's important to let players play their own way on this kind of experience, and for it to remain fun at all levels. People tell me that the experience at level 70 is great, but I really do wonder if 70 levels of boredom is really worth it to get there. Being in a group is fun, but you need to be online a LOT to maintain that structure if these people aren't real life friends. If I want to play a few times a week, then I'm going to have difficulty forming social groups. I don't mind group playing, and admirably the system for finding groups for instances works quite well, but it's annoying to say the least that often the best quests require two players. If the game is going to do that, it would be helpful to allow people to form groups far more easily.
Pvp needs more balance. For sure, there should be rewards for obssesive playing, and those people can play each other, but an element of matching in battlegrounds would be useful, and make it more fun for people who cannot devote the same amount of time.
A variety of enemies would be nice. As any character specialises, they tend to get into a rut of using exactly the same moves against every enemy they face- it would be nice if there was some more variety that forced you to change your tactics against these people- some spells being more effective than others, perhaps.
