What's the appeal of WoW?

[Arnoxthe1]

The appeal is that it's an entire world to explore, see, and interact with in a lot of ways.

However, it's not all a basket of roses. Here's my long winded speel on the main negatives of WoW.

WoW Needs Improvement, Not A Replacement

A lot of MMO's love to advertise themselves openly or subtly as the next WoW killer. Some of the reasoning behind this is that WoW has a stale formula that isn't relevant anymore in today's gaming. I oppose this, having just gotten my hands on playing it (finally) and seeing it in action as a high-level player.

It can't be argued against that WoW has revolutionized the MMO world since it first came out. It did a lot of things still copied today in other MMO's because they simply work and work well. The game is still attracting a lot of players even now. Every time I have heard about it, it's all about how completely mind-blowingly awesome it is and how it's just too good. Blah-de-blah-deblahblah...

So, when I first logged in and got into the game, it was with a LOT of disappointment that I discovered the truth of it all. You see, while WoW does a lot of things right, there are some major things, IMO, holding it back. For one, the game is running off of a VERY antiquated graphics engine. Now, I normally wouldn't care so much about this but for reasons detailed, it blows hard. It's slowing down a PC that can play UT2004, an Unreal Engine 2.0 game I might add, with most everything at max setting without a hitch. Why, for the love of all that is holy, is it beginning to slow down when I switch over to a character who is in a snowy region? Why is it even slowing down at all? This game is older than the hills by gaming standards and yet, max settings is a bit too much to handle for a computer that can run Doom 3 without any problems. This is ridiculous.

Secondly, naming a Character is WAY too restrictive. Why do I have to confine my name to these Communistic rules in a game with such a huge population when Guild Wars, a game with no subscriptions whatsoever and one of the top contenders to WoW, has it much more lenient? People don't want to have to generate some generic fantasy name for their character that will be overlooked by most anyone. They want what they want and making it this bad for seemingly no reason is not something I can get behind at all.

Thirdly, the lack of any sort of tutorial is just extremely poor design. WoW is a complex game. In fact, one of the more complex ones you can get. So WHY is there no tutorial for such a game? Was it so hard to write one? Did they run out of time for even that when they released it? And here's the thing. Starting out wouldn't have been HALF as bad for me if they put in a tutorial to slowly walk you through most of the things that the game has to offer. It's fine to leave some things out for players to discover but a complete lack of almost ANYTHING but the 'configure keys' menu to guide you through the game is just... yeah.

And lastly, and DEFINITELY not the least, in fact, probably the worst of it all, the massive grinding required for most anything good just BLOWS. Can you hear me, Blizzard? It B L O W S. It's gay. It sucks. It bites the big one. I hate it. Don't tell me they couldn't have designed it any better. And while we're at it, The boring quests blow and the lack of accurate waypoints for specific things blows as well. Being so INCREDIBLY weak and ineffectual at the early levels blows. All of that blows. It blows so much, it could blow the Empire State Building off of its supporting pillars. It could blow 50,000 guys and all of them would feel satisfied. My dad plays this game and he thinks it blows as well.

And here we are now. There are some other things I could whine about but those four points are, by far, the worst and the ones deserving of any and all attention. So what was the point to all of that complaining, you ask? Well, simply to address the point that WoW could be SO much more if it fixed even just the fourth point. What I'm trying to say in the end is that that the time is ripe for a sequel to WoW. Something that would improve upon all these points. WoW isn't obsolete. It needs improvement. If I was going to make an MMO that would be designed to knock WoW off its throne of past contending MMO corpses, I would simply improve the old formula. Because that's all that is needed, I believe.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

Yeah but you made it sound like anyone who enjoyed WOW was a zombie tard and they couldn't possibly be having fun.

 

[Rblade]

It´s a rpg with like 6 different character races, 8 completely different character classes all with a wide array of skills. There is hundreds of hours of content in lore and quests. It has several tiers of challanging battles and lots of cool challenges. Even if your not addicted to it and going through the motions but just play every quest and dungeon once I´m pretty sure there is hundreds of hours of great content.

the game is 8 years old. It´s a great game, it´s hardly surprising that it has gone a little stale by now but it has been the standard for how you make a good MMORPG.

Think of it what you may but in it´s genre it has been and still is a great game, I only quit because I pretty much exhausted the 5 man content (after like I said, countless hour, or more like days) and didn't have time enough in the day to pick up serious guild raiding

 

[Cowabungaa]

To me it was the aesthetics and atmosphere, that really kept me playing when I was done with the hardcore stuff. There is so much to see and do. It's all so lovingly crafted with so much attention to detail. NPC's doing their thing in cities, bears fishing in rivers, little touches that made the world feel incredibly alive and immersive. All that complicated by that amazing score, I mean oh lawd the music:

The chilly yet promising frontier of Grizzly Hills:

The fresh, tranquil forests of Elwynn signaling a new beginning:

The haunted halls of Karazhan:

The pompous, decadent city of Silvermoon:

And of course, the craziness that is the battle for Gnomergan:

No matter how old the actual game is, no matter how outdated the graphical engine is Blizzard still manages to create damn near works of art. They really are masters of atmosphere and environmental design.

Damn, listening to those tunes... Man that makes me nostalgic. Who knows, I might go back for a month just to re-visit all those places again.

The appeal is that it's an entire world to explore, see, and interact with in a lot of ways.

However, it's not all a basket of roses. Here's my long winded speel on the main negatives of WoW.

snip

How old is that little breakdown? Because a lot of those things have been improved quite a lot already.

 

[Yureina]

The appeal for me was an interest in the game's world itself, since I had played the RTS games. It was very cool to actually "live" in a game world I had fought over for years. So right from the start I had an interest in the game that went beyond the game's mechanics.

Later on I ended up joining guilds and making friends that I wanted to play with. Also, as with so many other things, having developed an interest in the game, I sought to become the best I could possibly be, which only fueled even more aggressive playing. This, at times, got me into serious trouble with people that I played with, but it also brought triumphs that few other players ever achieved. In time, connecting with people I liked and seeking to be a top player drove my playing more than anything about the actual game itself. Indeed, the novelty of the game wore off after a few months, and so it was my pursuit of metagame goals that kept me playing as long as I did.

And... that also explains why I stopped playing shortly before Cataclysm came out. By then, I had opened AQ, beaten every piece of content in the game, and had run an economic machine that was the envy of a server. In other words, there was little more I could "beat" unless I wanted to try to get involved with top-ranked guilds. That was not something I wanted though, since I had been there for a time and found the people less than pleasant to spend time with. Having effectively conquered the game's content, it became social connections that became most important to me. And... when those connections disappeared due to people quitting, falling outs, or other stuff like that, my desire to play greatly weakened. Eventually, the only thing that was keeping me playing was to finish one last in-game goal (getting the Achievement mount from Icecrown Citadel 25). Once I had gotten that, there was nothing left to keep me playing unless I wanted to spend another two years going for more in-game goals that I no longer really cared for. I quit for good within a week or so of getting that mount, and, aside from checking up on some old friends, I have not looked back since.

That's why I played. Obviously other people would have different stories and motivations. I am driven very much by metagame goals and a desire to excel that is very hard for me to ignore. I think that the enjoyment I got from in-game successes in that MMO setting is what ended up getting me to get back into the MMO scene in the form of Eve. And so, for better or worse, the party has started once again.

Though... this time the party is different. Eve's metagame is a far bigger part of the game than it ever was in WoW. I have a feeling that I will be playing that one for a very long time, since there is far more for me to do. WoW doesn't have conquerable territories, an economy that is vital to gameplay, and corporation/guild mechanics and issues that are almost certain to bring out the best, and worst, parts of my personality as conflict is not against NPC monsters, but other players. It's... a bit frightening... but in the end I enjoy this sort of thing.

- Rei

 

[Palademon]

I got forced to do the trial when it was only up to lvl 10, and it didn't sell me. It wans't until it became free up to 20 that I started having fun. You settle into your character, and actuall feel like a role.

But mostly the game appeals to the OCD list checker in me.

 

[AlexWinter]

If you start it with a bunch of real world friends and only play it together than it can be pretty fun.

For the long time addicts though I guess it's the false sense of achievement that comes with the recreation.

I don't mean that to sound disparaging. I mean, it's better then drugs, right?

 

[Ryotknife]

The people who start playing and keep playing are generally the ones who make friends while they play and get inducted into a questing/raiding group. The gameplay perpetuates itself using the players demand that their friends also be playing when they play.

Beware making any friends or obligations within an MMO. That shit WILL ruin you.

sums up why i stuck around in wow for so long.

I did not want to disappoint my raiding guild or cut contact with the friends that i made. As for the game itself, i could easily quit at any time.

That said, it really was a fantastic world. Still, i finally made it out and im not going back.

 

[Raioken18]

Lol... I was considered an asshole for not prioritizing my raiding guild over my social life. I really don't understand feeling obligated to raid and stuff. Most members are easily interchangeable.

The thing that gets me is my friends and I keep in touch over Skype while gaming so there is a constant stream of ("oh that's amazing", "I love this game", "This item has Amazing stats"... etc) which makes me want to play even knowing that it's a trap.

Also this means that eventually my friends want me to stop talking about whatever game I'm playing and to talk only about WoW.

At the moment I'm playing Minecraft and they are dual MMO ing with TSW and WoW... it's like $30 a month and +$40 a year for expansions I couldn't possibly justify spending that much on games... and before TSW it was SWTOR. The thing is... they HATED SWTOR but still paid for a monthly subscription just incase...

But back to WoW and the non economic side of things... I like dungeons, I like knowing the mechanics and being able to play them perfectly. I'm a jack of all trades master of none type player. (each class at 85, but never bothers seriously raiding because it's too much of a time sink).

And I have one golden rule when playing MMO's...

If you have something else to do, you must do it first! Playing comes last.

 

[sinterklaas]

Compulsion, social circle, comfort.
First they get you on the old skinner box trick, for every ever so stupid action they give you a little reward that will tickle you and have you come back for more, then they progressively put the next reward further out of reach so you are wasting more and more time.

Now as you grind away for those rewards thousands upon thousands of hours with one part of your mind screaming "moar rewards!" and the other "oh god oh god please kill me and let this horror end!" you sooner or later resort to finding comfort in others who share your suffering.
And as the social circle builds they can become the replacement for those inconvenient real social interactions, which compels you to the game even further, because that is where the people who understand you are at.

Finally as you spent an unimaginable ammount of time in the game it becomes your comfort place, there is always shit to do, the shit is seemingly meaningful, there are friends who share your addiction, ... just feels right to keep it going.

Complete and utter bullshit.

WoW is simply one of the best MMO's out there. As with all MMO's, the first three levels will never captivate you. Higher levels is where the fun stuff is. The truth is, some people are just not made to enjoy MMO's. Nothing wrong with that.

Actually that is fairly spot on how the psychology of it works, its just that some peoples minds skip the "oh god kill me" part while other peoples minds kick in the "oh god kill me" part before the skinner box can really get them hooked.

Just because you like it (And there is nothing wrong with that) doesnt mean that the assessment of the psychological tricks it uses is any less accurate.

You and the other poster I quoted make it sound like it's a bad thing. Every form of entertainment employs some mechanic that pushes our buttons. If you want to be killed while playing you simply stop playing. MMO's don't have this magical property that make people into addicted zombies unable to stop playing. If you get addicted to a game, it's your deeper lying problems that cause it, not the game itself.

Every MMO has to employ the same reward mechanic otherwise they would simply be unable to keep people playing. That's how multiplayer games like this work. By disguised grinds with a reward at the end. Some people like that (I do), others don't.

To feed into the juvenile desire to flaunt dressed up characters in an attempt to gain some kind of online "cred" or gain attention from players with inferior equipment.

Because real life is any different, right?

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

I'll just weigh in with my experiences. I tried a couple of MMO's, but not WoW. A number of them were WoW clones like WAR and RF Online, they just lost their appeal after perhaps a week. WAR was maybe a month as I thought that I may as well play up until my sub ran out. The only MMO to truly interest me is EVE Online, as it is fairly unique in the grand MMO-sphere and, I think, has one of the best end games seen in an MMO to date. Despite the fact it is just internet space-ships and spreadsheets.

I don't know what it is about MMO's, but in their current form, they just don't entice me. It's the repetition I think, daily's etc. Give me a persistent world MMO that's basically Skyrim in gameplay and looks, with unique quests being made fresh constantly, with shifting world politics driven by the players, and you've got me as a customer. But unfortunately, the resources to create that would be untenable for an MMO, until the industry begins to improve on procedurally generated quests that aren't just recycled "go fetch"/"go kill" things. Also, maintaining a persistent game with Skyrim graphics would just be such a mountain of work, you'd be charging $60/mo just to keep maintenance up.

I went off topic there, onto MMO's in general. Back to WoW, to me it's just another MMO and has as much appeal to me personally as all the others, very little.

 

[miketehmage]

I started playing WoW with a friend, and we found it amazing, we were part of this world, that we could explore together and interact with other people. It was fantastic.

We were 12 at the time and we were absolutely terrible at the game, but who cares? our level 19 night elf rogues with +2 beast slaying on our weapons looked so cool.

Anyway, my friend quit a while after Burning crusade released. But I was hooked into a guild, and started on a cycle of making friends, watching them quit, and making new friends.

Throughout the end of BC and WOTLK I was a raider. This was when i started to get bored with the game. At 16, I was starting to find the game very easy. I had 4 years of experience, I looked up tactics and builds and raiding was just repeating the same process over and over. Now don't get me wrong, I loved raiding in Wrath but it was starting to lose it's magic.

Towards the end of wrath, due to the fact that there was only like 3 decent guilds on my realm and they were all impossible to get into, I stopped raiding and switched to PvP.

PvP was amazing. It was so much harder than raiding. Arenas were by far the best part of that game, they were a fantastic challenge and you still get your cooperative play fix as you are part of a team that you need to communicate with constantly. Really fantastic gameplay.

I played arenas throughout cata and quit roughly 2 months ago. The game had turned into sitting in stormwind waiting for the queue to pop, playing in the arena, back into stormwind, rinse and repeat. There was a whole world out there that i simply didn't care about anymore.

 

[kortin]

I played WoW for 6 years, and you know what? I don't regret a moment of it. Every raid, every battleground, every quest was fun. They were all entertaining in their own way, and no, I wasn't addicted to it. There are very few people who are actually addicted to a video game and those people probably need help. I was just playing until one day I decided that I didn't want to play anymore, so I quit. Pretty simple, really. The game was enjoyable, the friendships were great, and even the rivalries were as well.

People always treat WoW as some sort of demon that they wasted their life with, but I really don't understand their hatred. They had fun when playing the game, otherwise they would have quit. It seems to me that it's more like a knee-jerk reaction, like people do in public when someone asks them if they play WoW: "What? No, why would I play that nerdy game?". It just sickens me that someone will deny that they enjoyed the time they spent and treat quitting as if they are "breaking free" from some sort of completely imaginary bonds (ones that only they could have put there, not WoW, not Blizzard).

//Rant over.

 

[Dendio]

Its really about the people you play with. Find fun people and its great. Blizzard did a great job creating a virtual play pin with many things you can do with friends.