Is WoW a positive or negative for future MMORPGs?

[Deris]

One thing you all completely fucking forget (Schatze) is the amount of localization that has to go into each and every patch to seamlessly (or attempt to) roll out all of these patches all at once in 6? Languages.

And by all accounts WoW's localized versions have set the bar for games.

Also stop acting like people who play MMO's play for 2 years +, that shit is the tiniest, stupidest (us) minority. The *majority* of people will play for 6 months at best, and then maybe occasionally come back to it. We're an ADD society, and our attention span is very short. I bet the vast, vast majority of the WoW playing community has never looked on a single message board, and could care less about this shit. They're having fun with their 15$ a month - and ultimately isn't that what games are for?

[Magnum PI]

Originally Posted by Deris

One thing you all completely fucking forget (Schatze) is the amount of localization that has to go into each and every patch to seamlessly (or attempt to) roll out all of these patches all at once in 6? Languages.

And by all accounts WoW's localized versions have set the bar for games.

Also stop acting like people who play MMO's play for 2 years +, that shit is the tiniest, stupidest (us) minority. The *majority* of people will play for 6 months at best, and then maybe occasionally come back to it. We're an ADD society, and our attention span is very short. I bet the vast, vast majority of the WoW playing community has never looked on a single message board, and could care less about this shit. They're having fun with their 15$ a month - and ultimately isn't that what games are for?

QFT.

Only a miniscule percentage of people actually care about getting to AQ40 and beyond in an MMO. Most couldn't care less. Most people are like me and have 0 desire to put in any significant time to get anything from the MMO's besides a couple hours of relaxing enjoyment. I will NEVER get a single piece of even 0.5 armor/weapons that are no drop, I need to be able to walk away from my computer at a seconds notice and take care of my infant daughter whenever she needs me. Do I care that my character dies? Nope, my death penalty is nil and I will come back to the game 5 hours or 4 days later and pick up again. Real life is where the majority of WoW subscribers live. They don't give a rip about hardcores and what they feel the content needs to be and when it needs to be etc. You know what we do when there are massive queues? We log off and come back in a couple of days or a week later to play for an hour or two.

WoW is a phenomenal business model, if I was making a game like an MMO I would shamelessly copy them down to the font they use, and I wouldn't have message boards, I wouldn't troll FoH's site, and I would put out content at a leisurely pace as 98% of my customer base would be happy with what we put out.

The most upsetting thing for anyone on this board is the realization that absolutely no one at WoW who is in significant command cares at all about what FoH'ers think or want from their game. If you don't like it you can all leave and they will never ever care or lose a seconds sleep over your departure. Some of you guys find that a capital offense and it causes you no end of misery.

[Man0warr]

absolutely no one at WoW who is in significant command cares at all about what FoH'ers think or want from their game

I dont know about that, Tigole is pretty far up there, and the owner of this board is a designer as well, and I sure as hell know any exploit that gets posted on this site gets fixed in 2 minutes. I'm sure they atleast read and consider some things

[Dyscord]

They do pay more attention to us than people give them credit for.

BWL, AQ40, Naxx. Three huge zones and over a years worth of development time spent on the tiny 5% (if even that) raid side of the game. If they didn't care about top end raiders, BWL would have been a 10 man instance, AQ40 would have been a battleground, and Naxx would be the next Zul Gurub.

I'm pretty sure the devs have 'envisioned' WoW to be a raiding game. A haven for us. A game where you can 'hardcore' raid 4 hours a night.

Plus... some people say they couldn't give a crap about raiders. They're happy playing super casual. But I'd bet my left nut almost no casual doesn't feel a hint of desire, a pang of "i'd like to do that one day" when they see a warrior run by in full Dreadnaught. The top 5% keep the other 95% playing in a small way, because we're the ultimate carrot. The possibility of being more powerful than some guy in Wildheart could possibly imagine.

[Magnum PI]

Originally Posted by Man0warr

I dont know about that, Tigole is pretty far up there, and the owner of this board is a designer as well, and I sure as hell know any exploit that gets posted on this site gets fixed in 2 minutes. I'm sure they atleast read and consider some things

Tigole is a player God bless him, but I'm always talking about the suits who have the face-to-face meetings with the stockholders/investors when I mention those in command. WoW for them is about subscriptions which equal reveunes. If that wasn't the vision they would have made it an EQ1 clone and that would have meant forced grouping, super long leveling curves, impossible soloing etc.

FoH and high end guilds are used to the EQ1 mega grind/headaches...no one in their right mind who wants to make mega $$$$$$ in an MMO would ever subject their audience base to EQ1 mechanics/timesinks, it's just not condusive to the playing abilities of most real world players and would castrate your broad spectrum player base leaving you with a nitch market and a serious loss in revenue.

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Tancred

When the extra content is totally free of charge I'm not going to complain about the rate at which it arrives.
How many servers actually encounter problems? I dunno - never affected me.
Class balance problems in WoW have always been minor. No class has ever been really broken, just in need of some tinkering. I know millions of pussies of every class will rant on about how shit they are but that's nothing new in WoW or in MMOs in general.

Extra content that (for the mostpart) was stated as being ready for release, then later "shortly" after release - is OK to wait 2 years on?

Waiting TWO years to rebalance class issues around from day one is apparently not that big of a deal either...

Utter shit my arse. At its worst WoW is only as bad as any other MMO ever released.

He was talking about it on a area by area basis - are you so myopic that you'd claim that there is NOTHING that WoW has fucked up on?

Queues and server stability for starters, I think you'd be hard pressed to claim that they're "No worse than any MMO out there" for those topics. Maybe not the absolute worst, but bottom 20% no doubt - which is usually enough for an "utter shit" designation on a topic.

I lol'ed here. One persons "released at a good rate" is another's "OMG another half finished expansion i'm paying to beta WTF SOE OMG". And of course you pay for those expansions rather than getting them free of charge.

This comes down to a bit of a philosophical question - would you rather have a CD to install 20 new zones tomorrow that has 18 finished and 2 that need some work to finish still or would you rather wait until all 20 are finished?

There will be plenty of people that would answer each way - I'd tend to feel the softcore majority would rather do the 18/20 method from what I've seen - but this forum isn't exactly a haven for that type of gamer.

Different to any other MMO how? Stable membership in MMO guilds has always been the exception not the rule. AQ40 was arguably a mistake though as a lot of guilds lost member who weren't prepared to go through that much effort for minor side-grades.

Never play EQ1? Only time I ever saw serious numbers leave EQ1 was either another MAJOR MMO being released (for example DAoC) or GoD era... or the slow decay into WoW and EQ2 that later happened after SIX years.

Hell, looking at my last EQ1 guild - there's still after all those factors TWENTY TWO (not counting bots) people in the guild that were there from the first month or two I formed the guild almost three years ago.

Then it sounds like you're finished with the game. I'm sure VUG's much-vilified business model only anticipates retaining players for 12 months maximum. When it's no fun any more STOP PLAYING. It's a game not a way of life.

When you stop enjoying a sport IRL do you just say fuck those people and disappear? Or any other social sort of game?

Hell, my friends from work that don't enjoy bowling (or in my case - can't bowl due to temp medical stuff) still come to our Friday evening at the lanes most weeks just to hang out and spend some time - often spending more than the others of us just to hang out and have fun chatting.

Same sort of phenomena happened in EQ1 often for my guilds as well - someone would be tired of playing but still stay subbed just to keep in touch.

You complain endlessly about them not producing enough content AND want to bitch about them producing content? Will you be the Blizzard equivalent of Utnayen in the years to come?

So predicting the future of a current product based on a repeated truth is the same as presuming the future of a incomplete product with no official release?

Are you on dope?

[buttface]

I don't like wow endgame because it's no different from EQ which I already did years ago. I don't feel a need to spend my evenings raiding in an attempt to slowly build up my character through gear. It all feels completely pointless to me.

Now, an MMO where the entire goal is to advance the world or your/your guilds part of the world, that would be awesome. I don't care about getting bigger numbers on my characters anymore though, and I doubt I ever will again.

[Man0warr]

I don't feel a need to spend my evenings raiding in an attempt to slowly build up my character through gear.

Thats not a good reason to raid.

[Tancred]

Originally Posted by Vaclav

Extra content that (for the mostpart) was stated as being ready for release, then later "shortly" after release - is OK to wait 2 years on?

Waiting TWO years to rebalance class issues around from day one is apparently not that big of a deal either...

I wasn't aware that BWL, AQ etc were "promised" at launch. Everyone bought the game a launch and either found it acceptable or they didn't - where were the angry hordes cancelling their subs due to the lack of delivery? Nowhere.

And again, none of the "class issues" were sufficiently serious to leave a calss broken, or drive away lots of players. I'd say they got the priority they deserved.

He was talking about it on a area by area basis - are you so myopic that you'd claim that there is NOTHING that WoW has fucked up on?

Queues and server stability for starters, I think you'd be hard pressed to claim that they're "No worse than any MMO out there" for those topics. Maybe not the absolute worst, but bottom 20% no doubt - which is usually enough for an "utter shit" designation on a topic.

How many of the 500 servers are affected by queues? A handful of US ones? Sure it must suck but the VAST majority of people are either (a) unaffected or (b) clever enough to move to a stable server. Yeah, maybe it could have been handled better but it wasn't sufficently bad to stop people playing - they just pony up the subs and complain all the louder.
But as I say it's never affected me so all my comments refer only to the content of the game.

This comes down to a bit of a philosophical question - would you rather have a CD to install 20 new zones tomorrow that has 18 finished and 2 that need some work to finish still or would you rather wait until all 20 are finished?

There will be plenty of people that would answer each way - I'd tend to feel the softcore majority would rather do the 18/20 method from what I've seen - but this forum isn't exactly a haven for that type of gamer.

18/20 was the EQ method and caused no end of bitching.
20/20 is the WoW way and causes no end of bitching.
I don't care much either way - there's either enough content to keep me playing or there isn't. If there isn't I play something else rather than developing a persecution complex.

Never play EQ1? Only time I ever saw serious numbers leave EQ1 was either another MAJOR MMO being released (for example DAoC) or GoD era... or the slow decay into WoW and EQ2 that later happened after SIX years.

Hell, looking at my last EQ1 guild - there's still after all those factors TWENTY TWO (not counting bots) people in the guild that were there from the first month or two I formed the guild almost three years ago.

Played EQ from July 1999 to early '03 thanks. I'm really very happy for your old guild but one example hardly refutes my point.

When you stop enjoying a sport IRL do you just say fuck those people and disappear? Or any other social sort of game?

Hell, my friends from work that don't enjoy bowling (or in my case - can't bowl due to temp medical stuff) still come to our Friday evening at the lanes most weeks just to hang out and spend some time - often spending more than the others of us just to hang out and have fun chatting.

Same sort of phenomena happened in EQ1 often for my guilds as well - someone would be tired of playing but still stay subbed just to keep in touch.

If you're only staying for the social contact then the content of the game is a secondary consideration, surely? Or do your medically-restricted guys spend hours complaining that there isn't enough effort put into providing bowling-related content for them? You're touching on something here that's quite a long way removed from the question of whether WoW is good or bad for the future of MMOs.

So predicting the future of a current product based on a repeated truth is the same as presuming the future of a incomplete product with no official release?

Are you on dope?

What?

The guy spent half the post bitching about the lack of new content then the other half complaining that they weren't fixing things cos they are working on new content. You can't have it both ways - unless you're having an emoplosion of scattergun whinging because a games company has failed to provide you with everything you ever wanted, whenever you wanted it.

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Tancred

I wasn't aware that BWL, AQ etc were "promised" at launch. Everyone bought the game a launch and either found it acceptable or they didn't - where were the angry hordes cancelling their subs due to the lack of delivery? Nowhere.

And again, none of the "class issues" were sufficiently serious to leave a calss broken, or drive away lots of players. I'd say they got the priority they deserved.

"For the mostpart" - look at how many zones were added - the majority was stated to be there for release - BWL I'm hazy on (they mentioned briefly the portal would be usable I know - but don't recall if they put a timeframe on it)

1-2 zones of many added after launch were truly "free content" when the rest was supposed to be there at launch, and some of what was supposed to be there at launch STILL ISN'T...

By the same token you could say the same thing about EQ - but I could be mistaken you condemned them for class issues a while ago....

How many of the 500 servers are affected by queues? A handful of US ones? Sure it must suck but the VAST majority of people are either (a) unaffected or (b) clever enough to move to a stable server. Yeah, maybe it could have been handled better but it wasn't sufficently bad to stop people playing - they just pony up the subs and complain all the louder.
But as I say it's never affected me so all my comments refer only to the content of the game.

A handful of the US ones? EVERY US server I've played on to date - and since I alt a TON when I am playing, that's probably close to half of the servers by now - have all been afflicted by queues at least 3-4 days out of the week - most every single night.

I'm sick of you moronic Euros that thing the server stability stuff that the US players go through is somehow overblown and exaggerated - yea, queues aren't 55+ min anymore, but its still not uncommon to see a 15-20 min one.

Played EQ from July 1999 to early '03 thanks. I'm really very happy for your old guild but one example hardly refutes my point.

Even EQ guilds in general never had a churn as fast as WoW guilds - I've seen an entire WoW guild turnover all but 5-10 people in a matter of months - quickest I ever saw an EQ guild do that was around 1 1/2 years.

Are you daft enough to actually try to convince people that WoW doesn't suffer greater turnover than other games?

Even worse is that it seems the WoW people just have no attachment to their guild and continue to play a new alt/whatever - alot of the time in EQ people focused on 1-2 characters and stuck with guilds for the long haul.

If you're only staying for the social contact then the content of the game is a secondary consideration, surely? Or do your medically-restricted guys spend hours complaining that there isn't enough effort put into providing bowling-related content for them? You're touching on something here that's quite a long way removed from the question of whether WoW is good or bad for the future of MMOs.

I'm a "medically restricted guy" now? Been playing EQ for around 8 years, not counting breaks - been temporarily "medically restricted" for about 8 weeks now....

And the point was that people have no freaking attachment to the game at all, they don't feel involved at all - its like playing Double Dragon at the arcade or whatever - fun while you're doing it, take a step away and POOF who cares about it anymore.

[Man0warr]

And the point was that people have no freaking attachment to the game at all, they don't feel involved at all - its like playing Double Dragon at the arcade or whatever - fun while you're doing it, take a step away and POOF who cares about it anymore.

They shouldn't, IT'S A GAME.

[Dyscord]

wtf, it should fucking matter. Machine Gun Willy punched my girlfriend in the stomach, right in front of my Trans Am. This will not stand.

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Man0warr

They shouldn't, IT'S A GAME.

That's a philosophical point - different levels of enjoyment from different levels of commitment to something.

To alot of people something they don't have some degree of passion about is boring.

Which means a voluntary "joblike" commitment - not because you have to, but because you enjoy it and feel passionately about the game you play.

Hell, my father in his retirement works more hours a week on his hobbies than he ever did at his real job.

I'm sorry for you that you are so far divorced from enjoying something that you think that having some degree of passion for something you enjoy is a bad thing - the ladies must love you.

[Man0warr]

Eh? Who said I wasn't passionate about the game, I enjoy it very much and have since alpha, but not everyone is like us, the hardcore people you want in your guild are still there, they are just spread out among 150 servers instead of 20.

You can't expect everyone to be as passionate about the game, and expecting that much from everyone in your guild, well you will just be let down.

My guild has less than 15 people left from the day we formed back in Feb 2005, we have gotten another 15 people similar to us. 30 of us hardcore type guys who love the game, the other 15-20 spots in guild are usually in a 6 month turnover cycle, its just how it is in a game with such a huge population.

[Maxxius]

Comeon let's do a little reality check here. Nothing wrong with being passionate about certain things within reason, but we are still talking about a computer "video" game. Yeah, from a "hardcore" player's point of view, WOW content has been slow in coming (and it has), but from a casual player's point of view this doesn't matter, since it is afterall free and they aren't burning through content anyway.

Eq really did require major time commitment by the nature of it's design. Vanguard seems to indicate that will be true for it as well, if not even moreso than EQ. WOW does not. Personally I like the WOW mode more, but will not denegrate others' preference for EQ type time commitment games.

I want more WOW type games now. But they are still too slow in coming heheh.