Why, specifically, do you think that World of Warcraft is the most successful MMORPG?

[VoidWanderer]

WoW is successful because they managed to get the game well balanced using established lore. The game was colourful, and the areas were well detailed.

Since the company that made the game knew the lore, that is part of why it was so successful.

While I firmly believe WoW will not get dethroned using the subscription based MMOs, should TOR go free-to-play, the subscription numbers would most likely plummet drastically.

 

[Reggie Rock]

I liked the warcrafts but refused to play WoW. Blizzard hadn't done me any wrong (yet, I'm looking at you diablo 3, starcraft 2) but i never got into MMOs. My friend however adores them and keeps telling me it's the greatest.

Blizzard draws my hate now for one thing. I was watching my friend play WoW the other day and he insisted he show me "the greatest quest ever, in any game". He then proceded to play "The day deathwing came" A quest where you play as a dwarf and punch the main cataclysm villain in the face. They've just given up on any seriousness.

 

[Random Fella]

They made MMORPG's huge
The advertisement of the game along with it coming from the Warcraft series, and having people from the Diablo series play it aswell
It was so good when it first came out, that it was worth the money
But as it aged, they released new content, the new content didn't meet peoples standards, and people started to complain
The game is already decreasing in subscriptions, but I don't see it dying completely for another few to ten years from now.
I could see the LoL (League of legends) game overtaking it sometime in the future, as it is growing very rapidly, which is quite ironic as the game is based from a user made map type from Warcraft 3 names DoA {Defense of the Ancients)

 

[Jaeke]

Already had a huge fanbase from Warcraft...
Already had a shitload of money...
And, well... it was a lot of fun back then.
Then years later when other MMO's tried to get out, WoW had already had such a big fanbase and had set such a large standard that anything else ended up just taking 90% of the elements from it.
It only took 7 years for it to finally be realized as outdated, and it may take longer still to get over it.

 

[Yopaz]

I guess WoW was the best MMORPG at the time it was released and that it had a fanbase because of WarCraft and because it has grown into the biggest MMORPG it's also the one people are likely to start with because when they get recommendations the majority of MMORPG players are playing WoW.
It's also been around for a long time letting people use the character they started with years ago.

In short: luck.

 

[Robert Ewing]

It had a massive story.

A massive explorable world.

Engaging characters.

And already large fanbase from Warcraft.

It has incredibly high replayability.

It would keep you occupied for forever and a day.

It would constantly expand, with all the patches and expansion packs.

It had competitive elements, with things such as the PvP and competitions.

The community is lovely, if a bit childish.

Never nothing to do.

The very scale of this game, and the universe it was set in was an event. I remember when I first joined it was so vast and intimidating, that I would of given up within the first month. The only reason I didn't was because I had nothing else to do. My first character was spent just learning the ropes, getting to know the geography of the world, so I could actually figure out what the hell I was supposed to do. My second character was the bomb, It was the best time I had ever spent in a game. I have so many memories of my thousands of adventures, touring through the amazingly detailed world of Azeroth. I remember the first time I went through the dark portal, I was drunk, and ran into an army of demons on the way through. I remember the horribly long grind quests that I bloody glad to see the back of, I remember the first time I went to Northerand, I remember my first boss, my first raid, my first guild, EVERYTHING.

It was some seriously good times that I look back on fondly. Yes, I acknowledge the game may be boring and unengaging to some people. It was to me, when I first played it I thought it was okay, but not particularly brilliant. I certainly got extremely bored, wanted to just quit. But I didn't, I started again, and loved every second of it. I don't play it now, and haven't for years, as I just can't find the time, or the money. I am fully aware that I really didn't explore as much of the game as I wanted. I know there are still incredibly large aspects of the game I still haven't done. WoW was an amazing experience, you just need to give it a chance, as it's not very good at sucking in new players.

 

[SciMal]

Pandaria did not start out as an April Fool's joke (though that was when it got its most publicity)...

http://www.wowwiki.com/Pandaren

"The pandaren started as a creation of the Blizzard artist Samwise Didier and an April Fool's joke..."

Sorry mate, you're wrong on this one.

...nor is its focus as the expansion avoiding the story. I really don't get why so many people assume that because they can't guess what the story is going to be, there must be no story at all.

I didn't say there wasn't a story, I said it didn't continue the Warcraft story. WC1: Orcs and Humans fight. WC2: Same. WC3 - you have Malfurion in the Dream, you have Proudmoore trying to broker peace, you have Arthas on his throne.

Out of the three, one has been thoroughly addressed by an expansion, one has been pseudo-addressed in some ways (it will never be fully closed, since the franchise would die), and one is hinted at throughout the entirety of the original WoW - but has yet to remain addressed in any significant fashion.

Instead, you do get to see space-Russians crash land onto Azeroth at the behest of magical, sentient crystals with questionable ethics.

And now, instead of - say, making an Emerald Dream expansion (the most obvious choice for an expansion if there ever was one) - you have things like Cataclysm, where an old dragon remakes Vanilla Wow. You also have Pandaria - a joke turned into a real thing to be sold to people.

My main point is that they're shuffling their feet in a bunch of directions trying to avoid continuing the WC3-turned-WoW plot, and even find a way to avoid the big plots in WoW as well. Instead they introduce new villains out of their butts, cobble together some way to make them a threat (return of the Burning Legion - lols?), and offer that up.

I, for one, saw their focus on throwing a guy from a previous WC game in as the last boss with damn near no explaination as a stagnation of story, while moving on to a new continent (which they did in WC3) can open up all sorts of new fresh ideas. Just because the story isnt moving in the very narrow direction you want it to move doesn't mean that it's gone to shit.

I'd agree if they were telling a single story with each new expansion; but they're not. They're going, "What will the players think is cool?"

It's also worth noting I'm not saying I hated all the storylines introduced, and I didn't hate all that the expansions had to offer - but Blizzard is really spinning its wheels and going nowhere.

Also, Malfurion was one of the biggest focuses of patch 4.2, so there you go.

You're right. Who cares if it took them several years to continue the storyline - it'll happen, just keep playing?

Yeah, that's pretty much what Blizzard wants, too.

Hey, if you like fighting recycled foes from Vanilla WoW and honestly enjoy the efforts by Blizzard, more power to you. You're obviously happy with the product. I was not.

To be fair, it should be noted that the story is objectively the biggest and most inexcusable failing of WoW - 90% of it happens in books you have to go out of your way to buy and read, which couldn't be further from the accessibility model that got them to be as successful as they are. They often say they want to fix this, but never do.

The story in the books was also mostly in the previous games; all of which I played. I knew the story fairly well when I went into WoW, and it was supremely frustrating to see the designers creep forward on that story while throwing out dozens of other storylines to build instances around in some attempt to make it look like the plot was progressing.

WC3 ends with Arthas as the obvious, super-powerful primary villain - the shadow ready to overwhelm Azeroth. It took two expansions and FOUR YEARS before you meet the antagonist who was set-up at the end of the previous game. During that time you're killing off Kel'Thuzad, an Elder God, the Prince of Flame, two conniving dragons trying to screw with Stormwind, etc. etc. etc. Some were good, others were okay, all (perhaps save Kel'Thuzad) were time-killers until Blizzard presented Arthas.

And now... Instead of finally addressing the Emerald Dream - which is, again, perhaps the most obvious expansion in all of MMO history - they're giving you drunk pandas who started out in life as a complete joke and trying to pass it off as serious.

Again, if you like that - if you like how Blizzard has run WoW and find enjoyment out of it, fantastic. Props. I can't, and when I saw the Pandaren expansion being portrayed as an actual "thing" which is going to exist instead of the April Fool's joke it was for the previous 6 years, I knew I could never play another Warcraft game again.

To me, Blizzard has really gone downhill. Diablo 3 looks good, but it doesn't seem like the leap it should have been from Diablo 2 (could be wrong, but I want more info). They're doing the same thing to Starcraft that they did with WoW - stretch the storyline the fuck out to make people pay more. Yeah, they say it's to assure us some level of quality, but fuck me if SC2:WoL isn't 90% pure, distilled stereotype with characters so bland and a story so completely uninteresting I honestly cannot remember more than a handful of missions. You knew the SC2:WoL story was going to suck after you started playing because the complete mofo badass in the trailer - the trailer which had Blizzard fans worldwide orgasming in their pants - played a sidekick to a protagonist who was about as three-dimensional as a piece of cardboard.

Why? Why the fuck wasn't the Terran campaign mostly about Tychus? Why was it about Raynor - the man who couldn't display a single fucking emotion as he literally watched the woman he loved almost die? Why was there more camaraderie expressed between the scientists working for Raynor than Tychus and Raynor, the man he rescued from prison? Why the fuck wasn't it about Tychus? Why wasn't it about an internal struggle for ethical redemption leading up to a point where you, as Raynor's most trusted friend, have a decision between shooting the threat to the human race and the woman your best friend loves, or letting her live and risking the consequences? Why do you play what is so obviously an amalgamation between John Wayne and Clint Eastwood "in spaaaace!", an outdated and outmoded character concept next to the likes of Firefly and Battlestar Galactica - who exhibit not only the human capacity to become paralyzed over moral dissonance, but do so in an atmosphere filled with tension? Seriously, why the fuck wasn't it about Tychus?

I'm sorry for the rant, but Blizzard used to at least play the stereotypes well; make them endearing despite the fact you knew you'd seen it before. Their art design is still top notch, as are their cinematics and basically everything else besides their plots and characters.

 

[lionsprey]

someone probably already mentioned it but i think its because of the variety of stuff to do in the game it's not the best at everyhing it does but it does it all good enogh and there's a lot to choose from. example IMO WAR has/had better PvP but for its PvE and dungeon content it was really lacking.