What went wrong?

[tmp]

The whole questing thing took off as a way to try and inject story and lore into mmo gameworlds because nobody gave a fuck about reading books or even what npcs had to say.

I thought main reason Blizzard built the whole game around the quest chains was, they figured people find the game a better experience when they are given list of stuff to do and places to visit ... rather than come up with activities on their own. I.e. not for the story/lore that no one reads anyway (still), but rather as the response to ever-present "ok, so what am i supposed to be doing now?"

I'm using Blizzard here because that's probably the one thing WoW brought to the table that really shifted the paradigm.

[cevik]

Having exp in mmo is the root problem of why they suck. Well, right after the thousands of people. Look at the massive pile of great ideas that didn't go over because it wasn't an expedient way to 'xp'

Just admit you're there for epeen and to watch the progress bar fill up and not for the story, let the devs deliver on that for you. Maybe it could be a new Vegas venture, a slot machine that dispenses gear.

The whole questing thing took off as a way to try and inject story and lore into mmo gameworlds because nobody gave a fuck about reading books or even what npcs had to say.

It's pathetic and the main reason I don't bother with mmo much. I'll milk the few good single player rpgs that come out every year and let the masses waste their time and money in mmo.

I think this board is the most horrible place to start a "where it went wrong" thread, and I pray to fucking god no one ever puts a focus group of you guys together to discuss mmogs.  You all hate them, there is a large market for mmogs (see:  Blizzard) but you guys are the anti-mmog people.

...
I was blaming you for the original release of SWG.  It's the virtual world you guys claim you want.  It sucked.

See, I was originally going to go search for links to prove my point back there on page 2, but then I decided "ehh, why fucking waste the time?  Someone will eventually come along and prove your point for you."

This people worth listening to on this board are mostly people who were sick of mmogs by the time WoW was released.  They don't like the games and they want something new and different and very niche.  Some of them realize that (like Sky here) and stay away from most of the games, the rest of them think they are mmog experts and can solve all the world's problems by forcing their favorite little niche game idea onto the rest of us if only the developers would listen to them and give them a Focus group.  And the developers totally should do it because they are experts who know what is wrong with every mmog.

What those people fail to see is that they bitch about every mmog that releases, including WoW way back when, because they hate all mmorpgs.  And just because some games do fail it doesn't make them experts, because if you come here just after the release of any mmog there will be some large segment of you bitching about that mmog.

[cevik]

I thought main reason Blizzard built the whole game around the quest chains was, they figured people find the game a better experience when they are given list of stuff to do and places to visit ... rather than come up with activities on their own. I.e. not for the story/lore that no one reads anyway (still), but rather as the response to ever-present "ok, so what am i supposed to be doing now?"

I'm using Blizzard here because that's probably the one thing WoW brought to the table that really shifted the paradigm.

I think you have it right.  People like diversity but they hate risk just for the sake of risk.  When you go around grinding new things you risk not making much progress or not being as efficient at it as you were at the last place, so without some potential reward you won't do it (see: Everquest).  Blizzard understood this and gave you quest experience as a reward for giving yourself variety in what you kill.  The quest experience covers travel time and just a little bonus to cover the risk you take for going to the new place.

[Morfiend]

I thought main reason Blizzard built the whole game around the quest chains was, they figured people find the game a better experience when they are given list of stuff to do and places to visit ... rather than come up with activities on their own. I.e. not for the story/lore that no one reads anyway (still), but rather as the response to ever-present "ok, so what am i supposed to be doing now?"

I'm using Blizzard here because that's probably the one thing WoW brought to the table that really shifted the paradigm.

I think you have it right.  People like diversity but they hate risk just for the sake of risk.  When you go around grinding new things you risk not making much progress or not being as efficient at it as you were at the last place, so without some potential reward you won't do it (see: Everquest).  Blizzard understood this and gave you quest experience as a reward for giving yourself variety in what you kill.  The quest experience covers travel time and just a little bonus to cover the risk you take for going to the new place.

I think this is the most on target thing you have said in this thread. I completely agree.

[lamaros]

That's "go there and kill shit. with bombs".

Exactly. It's pretty dumb, and pretty fucking simple. But even something as simple as that requires a whole lot of time to implement. How much harder then to make something more involved and interesting.

We were talking of how easy it is to invent quests that are actually different. So surely, if it's so easy and if it's just me that's mentally handicapped to the point i can't think of such quests immediately ... it should be easy to either provide numerous examples of such quests already done, or invent a few here on the spot?

The point was to illustrate how much time it takes to make even sort of unique shit that uses existing game mechanics. Which I did.

Do you play games? Have you ever done interesting quests in them? Why would you think, "oh, well people making quests in MMOs would never think of stuff like that"? People making quests in MMOs can borrow, steal, and imagine whatever they want, drawing from wherever they want, but what they can actually put into the game is dictated by the constraints of the game.

And yet all you did was just provide me with more of the same old. And a weak imo argument that the only reason we don't see these awesome ideas the designers come up with all the time... is because it requires extra code. Well, everything in MMO requires extra code. If the developers cannot allocate some of their code-writing time to enhance range of available quests (the core of MMO nowadays) ... then i'd have to conclude that's just poor planning on their part and really no excuse anymore.

Where did the stupid bug bite you?

You're basicly saying "well of course those things take more time, but they should spend it!". The point is that it's not worth it for them to spend it because the return they get from that time is better in other areas, not making a couple of quests that half the people wont read or even do. They prefer to spend their time coding things like bombing runs, because that means they can churn out a whole lot of bombings quests to go with the killing and escoting quests.

Why would you spend time and money doing one thing when you could spend it on another and get a better reward. Why pay 20 guys to do a job (invent quest, code quest) when you can just pay one guy (pick generic quest, change names/mobs/rewards)? Because of the odd individual like you who is too silly to realise that if you don't like going around killing shit repetitivly then you should be playnig something other than a MMO?

When it comes to what came first, the game mechanics or the quests, you're not picking the quests. Quest limitation in MMOs is dictated by the limitations of the MMOs. To suddenly expect quests of be wildly original and exciting, but still being in those same MMOs, is just stupid. Go play a single player game, or wait for a MMO with different gameplay.

It's pathetic and the main reason I don't bother with mmo much. I'll milk the few good single player rpgs that come out every year and let the masses waste their time and money in mmo.

Sky isn't dumb, learn from Sky.

[Hoax]

Sky's pretty dumb, this thread has just set the bar really really low..
Also  I agree with the post cevik quoted of Sky's, fucking exp/diku bullshit is the problem, the solution isn't making a diku that does blah.  Wich is basically what all you tards going on about WoW seem to want.

PS The avg f13 poster is too old and too young to actually play MMO's anymore.  If you dont get that, well I look forward to when you do.  Fuckwits.

 
 

Ok tired of smileys, do I get credit for being drunk?
  *note I edited out bad drunk typos because I hate people who pretend they dont notice them just cuz they are buzzed*

[Falconeer]

What those people fail to see is that they bitch about every mmog that releases, including WoW way back when, because they hate all mmorpgs.  And just because some games do fail it doesn't make them experts, because if you come here just after the release of any mmog there will be some large segment of you bitching about that mmog.

This is so true. So true. It's dangerous to generalize but some naysayers are just scary. Everything is wrong, everything is dull, everything is broken, everything is a trainwreck and while they maybe played the skeptical act at WoW's release too, now that's their only omnipresent and subtle message, that World of Warcraft is your only god. Anything that is not WoW is broken/unfun/crap.

Lots of things went wrong with Age of Conan, I wrote about it extensively in the first page of this thread. But the snarky cheap hostility paired with generic burnout make for some awful discussions.

[amiable]

I'm not sure why all the vitriol is bubbling up in this thread.  I think folks are looking at it from several different perspectives:

1.  Is it fun?
2.  Is it commercially viable?
3.  Does it buy me dinner and then make sweet, gentle love to me?

For the folks interested in (1), which I think is most of the gaming public, they will make their decision based on how much they enjoy the game, period.  I think it is perfectly fair to compare the game to WoW in that respect and argue that if the game does not have at least most of the functionality of WoW and little something extra most of the casual folks are going to say "Screw this, I'm going to play WoW."  Sure a Model T was great 50 years ago, but I'm not going to argue that a newly produced model T by a different company should be driven because "Ford's first car wasn't as good as this model T."  Screw that, I need to drive a car that is modern by today's standards (unless it is super, super cheap i.e. free games).  Say what you want about WoW, but when it was released it was a huge leap forward in the genre, not necessarily because the ideas were new, but because they implemented so many diverse ideas so well.  (Full disclosure: I don't even play WoW, I play EvE and Lotro).

For folks interested in (2) launch and server stability become much more important.  Every design decision is evaluated through the lens of how it affects subscriber numbers.  Things like launch numbers and retention are important.  This is a disproportionate number of folks on this board because many people here have direct ties to the industry.

As for 3... Those folks are just crazy and are rightly ridiculed, but I think that is a smaller percentage of the people in this thread than some people are implying.

[Sky]

Sky's pretty dumb

Also  I agree with the post cevik quoted of Sky's

Dumb and correct. I can live with that. It's as close to a compliment as I'd ever get from ya, Hoax. Feelin' the love.

[tmp]

You're basicly saying "well of course those things take more time, but they should spend it!". The point is that it's not worth it for them to spend it because the return they get from that time is better in other areas, not making a couple of quests that half the people wont read or even do. They prefer to spend their time coding things like bombing runs, because that means they can churn out a whole lot of bombings quests to go with the killing and escoting quests.

I get that point, but i'm questioning if it's really true. That is, if we can agree to presume that quests are the main way to deliver content to the player in the modern MMO, and that the "been there, done that" syndrome is the thing that hurts longevity of your game (becaues people get bored out of their skull and unsub after 5th quest to collect wolf pelts) ... then the return you get from coding more of the same old is imo absolutely no better than enhancing the base code, to allow the content makers to then deliver greater variety of quests. Also, why in your example these new mechanics would be used to make couple of quests that few people do, while at the same time exactly just as new mechanics are to be used to churn out whole lot of bombing runs? That's skewing the argument.

Why would you spend time and money doing one thing when you could spend it on another and get a better reward. Why pay 20 guys to do a job (invent quest, code quest) when you can just pay one guy (pick generic quest, change names/mobs/rewards)? Because of the odd individual like you who is too silly to realise that if you don't like going around killing shit repetitivly then you should be playnig something other than a MMO?

Not because of silly individual like me. Because of numbers of silly individuals who after a month realize that they had it up to here with the all-alike kill quests, and who do in fact unsub. While were they provided a more varied experience, they'd play longer and bring in extra revenue.

Using your argument, a fast food provider for example has absolutely no reason to pay 20 guys to come up with new things to put on the menu, ever. They'd get much better reward from having just one guy rename that same old hamburger each month. And if someone doesn't like the hamburger each day? Oh well, they can go elsewhere... but how exactly is it better for your bottom line, when the potential extra income from the mass market way outweights that money you have to invest in salaries of 20 people rather than 1?

[Sky]

I like the fast food reference.

[lamaros]

Not because of silly individual like me. Because of numbers of silly individuals who after a month realize that they had it up to here with the all-alike kill quests, and who do in fact unsub. While were they provided a more varied experience, they'd play longer and bring in extra revenue.

Everyone is quitting WoW? Huh?

I understand your perspective, and I'd like better quests too (I hate quests, I think they are fucking stupid), but the fact is that it isn't a big deal, but it is a big deal to try and change things. So they go with what they have and then code in some new quest types for the expansions to give those who play MMOs for the quests something 'new'.

Supposedly bombing quests are a huge success, so they're making a whole lot more of them in the WotLK expansion. I expect they'll introduce another couple of new things and flog them to death too.

Your fast food example is an excellent one. Fast food chains have absolutly no reason to make recipies for individual stores. They come up with generic recipies and flog them off at every store at once. They don't go "hmm, let's put a couple of recipie a here, and a few recipie b there, and get some guys working on 300 more recipies so each store has a unique one, to keep things intresting for the consumers". They have the same fucking product list everwhere.

If you want something that's got a whole lot fo variety then you go to a good resturant that has a real chef that changes the specials all the time, or you go to a different resturant every time you go out. You don't go to the same fucking fast food join and complain because they're not putting different lettuce into your burger.

Fast food stores (mmos) are good for some things, but quality and variety of food (quests) are not it. It's just stupid to think that going to a fast food store and complaining about that lack of quality is a decent point. It's a fucking fast food store.

Bombing quests = new recipie for fast food store. Still shit because the basic foundations of the meal are shit. Don't expect anything better from a fast food store. You want a quality meal go to a fucking real resturant.

[tmp]

Everyone is quitting WoW? Huh?

Well, i suspect like with any other MMO there's a churn rate at which people do eventually quit WoW  and get replaced with newcomers, yes    They're actually interesting subject in this regard, because given their size even small changes like being able to keep interest of say, 1% of playerbase for another month cycle... can result in extra income that dwarfs associated development costs.

On the fast food analogy thing, i guess we see it a bit different. That is, i'll certainly agree that the provider doesn't bother with detailed offer, but rather pushes the new dish/quest type (if any) to whole chains/servers. However my point was more along the lines, there's still incentive for the provider to vary their one-for-all-and-same-across-the-servers menu ... because if they neglect that entirely, the competiton who doesn't will draw that extra profit and customer base from them. And so a game that has nothing but kill quests (burgers) even in a dozen of slightly different variants, is likely to lose part of the players who prefer more options (burger one day and chicken sandwich another i.e. kill quests and something else?) ... if another provider appears that offers them such choice.

But that's the limitation of analogy really and yeah, i can see it from the point of view you list there too. So guess can leave it at that.

[photek]

Everyone is quitting WoW? Huh?

Well, i suspect like with any other MMO there's a churn rate at which people do eventually quit WoW  and get replaced with newcomers, yes   

Hmm.. I'm not sure on this part. Half of me says it is possible this happends if somebody releases an MMO which will feed everything and another part of me says WoW is the CounterStrike of MMOs. Its already deep establishment, availability and high population will make it never die nor really substantially lose a huge amount of customers. I'm seeing 14 year old girls in Norway playing WoW and its certainly following the popularity of CounterStrike. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

EDIT : Eventually the only proper replacement might be itself, meaning a second WoW. If that.

[tmp]

Hmm.. I'm not sure on this part. Half of me says it is possible this happends if somebody releases an MMO which will feed everything and another part of me says WoW is the CounterStrike of MMOs. Its already deep establishment, availability and high population will make it never die nor really substantially lose a huge amount of customers. I'm seeing 14 year old girls in Norway playing WoW and its certainly following the popularity of CounterStrike. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Ahh but that's a different thing from what i talk about, at least if i read you correctly. What you talk about is the overall size of playerbase that is a sum of fresh people coming and bored people leaving, while i'm thinking about 'lifecycle' of individual player -- comes fresh and doe-eyed, plays the game for some months, reaches the endgame or maybe even not and eventually one day quits having realized the game just isn't fun enough to keep paying for it, anymore. For some this lifecycle can be longer than others and it'll obviously vary from game to game too (average 'lifespan' of EVE player was said by devs to be ~8 months, e.g) ... but i think there's no reason to consider WoW as free of this pattern.

[mutantmagnet]

After reading many complaints about how AoC goes wrong someone provides a fresh perspective.

Anyone feel he's wrong in his assessment?

It's this blogger's opinion that much of the criticism of AoC's later game can be traced to this abrupt loss of a sense of side-taking after Tortage. The player goes from being a hero of the Resistance to being an aimless mercenary rattling about in an enormous, indifferent environment.

[Miasma]

Anything that starts with "It's this blogger's opinion" is automatically wrong.

[pxib]

Anyone feel he's wrong in his assessment?

The Tortage levels also focus on the player, whereas later ones don't. The change can be surprising. Returning to your homeland throws you out of a city where the story so far has been all about you, into a much larger area where you're just one of thousands of similar characters.

After level 20, when you return to your homeland, you don't stand for anything in particular any more. The quest contacts approach you not as a potential hero or ally, but as a runner of errands.

He's not wrong, but these are problems with the medium, not the game. You are a runner of errands, not a potential hero. You're running those errands alongside thousands of similar characters, and even when the story is about you it's not a story anybody else wants to hear ... because it already happened to them. Heroism is, almost by definition, unusual; making everyone a hero makes it feel like nobody is. The civilians in CoH add a level of casual heroism to the player's actions -- they are a terrified, grateful, and visible majority in the world -- but they never completely disguise the fact that you're just an average, everyday superman in a world of supermen. The reality of MASSIVELY-multiplayer games requires it!

To an extent this falls under a larger gripe I've had with the whole DIKU framework as it's been established. You start off more powerful than you finish -- not in terms of skills available or damage done but in terms of the tasks required of you. In the beginning you fight alone against overwhelming odds, and succeed! By the end you're grouped up with forty other people and a single slip-up can (and does!) get everyone killed. Isn't the hero supposed to develop the opposite way? Their tales start with a string of near-failures, they gather a group of companions and, after a great struggle, accomplish the impossible by means of cleverness and cooperation. After many such adventures, and finally in their prime, they stride through waves of enemies like vengeful gods. They fight alone, occasionally with as many as two other heroes (VERY rarely more), or lead armies of their inferiors (to distract the minions of the opposition) while they do the REAL fighting against the commanding forces of darkness.

That's how the stories go, right?

So, do factions add to quests' sense of purpose? Sure.
Does PvP feel more meaningful when it's not arbitrary? Absolutely.

But while the exit from Tortage into a the massively-multiplayer game may have been a uniquely poignant betrayal, it's just part of the generic MMOG bait-and-switch. The dream is sold as "Be a Hero" but the reality is faceless, undifferentiated army. Flaws specific to AoC lie elsewhere.

[Sir T]

In other words, in MMOs, the real hero is bicycle repair man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxfzm9dfqBw

[Lantyssa]

That's how the stories go, right?

There is a reason I like sandboxes over diku.  Everyone laughed at the existance of Sim-Beru though.

[cevik]

That's how the stories go, right?

There is a reason I like sandboxes over diku.  Everyone laughed at the existance of Sim-Beru though.

They are two different genres, and if we could convince everyone the only thing that dikus and sandboxes have in common is that they both have a lot of simultaneous players then the world would be a better place.

In the meantime, you sandbox people keep getting your shitty "games" in my dikus and I hate you for it.

[rk47]

HAHAH that blogger is too funny. Seriously I just had a bust up with a friend over the same thing. I didn't play the grind quest anymore and he msn'ed me to come back

"Why aren't you playing anymore?"
"I'm bored of the grind man"
"Dude your class will rock at 65"
"I'm only 35 , fuck off. I'm tired of this grind shit, if I want to feel special I'd rather go play Single Player games, if I want to be a super hamster on a treadmill watching other fat asses gasping for air on the other treadmills next to me , I'd rather go to a gym"
There was a long awkward silence before he just mused "So..if you're not playing anymore, can I have your stuff?"

 

[Falconeer]

Not sure if he's talking about things that went wrong or right, but there's a Erling Ellinsen's puzzling interview at Massively with interesting insights and "behind the scenes" like this one:

Q: Do you have any recollections from launch day, any memories that stand out?

A: We had a huge screen set up in the office that tracked the number of people logging in across the servers. We sat there, all dressed up and watching the numbers rise will drinking champagne. "Oh, the US just woke up." It was a magical experience.

[Jarnis]

In this day and age an MMO gamer should always have a full quest log at ANY level.  Solo or grouped.  If there is only one story line to follow or one quest line to pursue, the game still needs work. 

Better yet, they should have many more quests than they can ever do (WoW is like this), so they have to pick and choose. Much better for replayability.

This is one fairly large reason why MMO budgets are exploding into the stratosphere. World of Warcraft has set the benchmark pretty high; if you're going to do an MMO like WoW, you're going to need to deliver a *lot* of content.

(*digs up old bit of this thread - apologies*)

But... should you pull it off - congratulations, you just got a license to print money. Hundreds of millions of it. Heck, even billions.

You need to invest big, but the potential returns are just as big. There are investors willing to pony up hundreds of millions for all kinds of enterprises that have a rather modest (%) return for the investment. Why not MMOs?

The problem with today's MMOs (recently released and upcoming) is that almost every single one is woefully underfunded and understaffed to make any remotely realistic attempt to dethrone Blizzard. Teams of idealistic people with great ideas, trying to pull off something that needs 10x the resources to develop and polish up.

I can't wait until we get one that truly makes a dent at WoW - competition is good, and I think the lack of it is making Blizzard a bit lazy. They were never known for being daring or innovative, and in the current MMO market, they don't need to. They dominate, partly because they have a clue, but mostly because with MMOs right now it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

AoC showed that there are tons of people eager to jump ship for something else... *anything* else. AoC's shiny newbie island and few "exclusive" paid (or clueless) hype-reviews sold close to a million game boxes, but sadly no amount of marketing will make people to subscribe to a turd in the long term - and it's the long term interest that allows you to print all that money.

What I'm afraid of is a potential trend - package a piece of turd in a shiny box, polish up a newbie island and do some marketing, sell a million boxes to all those jaded WoW players who buy it all, hook - line - sinker. Then leave the game on minimal life support while you laugh all the way to the bank with all the cash you made from those million boxes... Fool all those people enough times, and they'll permanently attach to Blizzard for their digital addiction.

[Jarnis]

Oh geezus, give me a break. The game is a trainwreck. It has a very innovative combat system, but it is broken like no major release since SWG AO.

Srsly guys, it's Funcom. AO, see?

f13 does rock, though. Sit back and wait to see the 'What went wrong?' thread. Profit.

To bad it's not even REMOTELY comparable to AO's launch.  But of course I see very few names around here from when AO was launched (yes, I know you were there Sky) so I suspect that for the most part it's not hyperbole but simply newbs that weren't around at the time.

Either that or everyone around here has suffered some form of major brain trauma in the meantime and you are really as delusional as you sound.

*shakes the walking stick*

I tell you kids... I was there, at the launch of Anarchy Online. Waited outside the local game store at 10AM for the doors to open on the launch day, bought the box straight from the cardboard box as the staff was unpacking them, took the day off and ran home only to find out that the servers were not up yet. Waited as things were delayed, first by an hour, then by two more hours... Then early afternoon, watched it all melt down when Funcom finally flicked that switch...

Age of Conan was a perfect launch compared to AO. It's still one of the worst western MMOs in the recent years, but it's launch was perfect compared to the utter horror that was the launch of Anarchy Online. People yell Epic Fail this and that, but Anarchy Online was EPIC FAIL before the whole term was invented.

With AO, NOTHING worked. The registration page to make your account didn't work. Billing didn't work. Game client didn't work, Servers didn't work, Zoning from the tiny instanced newbie area didn't work... it was months before you could actually play the game long enough to determine that, yes, even the gameplay under all that fail sucked.

Still, Funcom did manage to pull out of that death spiral. Somehow. AO is still around. It hasn't aged very well, but it's still there, and they are actually planning to retrofit it with a new graphics engine.

For a time - around 2002-2003, after the Shadowlands expansion, during the years before WoW and all these "unrealistic expectations" of shine and polish, it was a passable MMO. Sure, it was mostly about running up and down the edges of high end Shadowlands zones while grinding Hecklers. Or hunting for blueprint bits (with ridiculously low drop rates) required to summon pocket bosses that in turn dropped symbiants ("epic" implants), or grinding Redeemed/Unredeemed faction. But it was something you could play for a few months, while having some fun.

At least Funcom learned one thing from AO launch - AoC account creation, billing and game servers stayed up. Of course they messed up with the product keys printed for the collectors edition boxes, but that was possibly a piece of fail out of their hands.

Maybe for their next MMO, they figure out the need to have a fully fleshed out game, all ready to go when the boxes go out of the door. Hey, the newbie area was pretty good...

[Morfiend]

I agree with the lurker.

AoC's launch had NOTHING on AO. AO was a clusterfuck of epic proportion. AoC was just an unfinished game, with a dev team that still seems unable or unwilling to actually test the patches they are releasing.

[Sir T]

Maybe they rely on people logging onto test servers to test stuff rather than logging on to find bugs they can exploit.

[Morfiend]

Maybe they rely on people logging onto test servers to test stuff rather than logging on to find bugs they can exploit.

Ahhh so its the players fault. Nice.

[Sir T]

Yeah. I was reading from the programming depts notes for the next management meeting   

[Tale]

With AO, NOTHING worked. The registration page to make your account didn't work.

Also, the registration page to make your account was not secure (no HTTPS). They put up a standard HTTP page where you were asked for credit card details.

[Ingmar]

This thread is funny with all of its 'omg WoW had this and didn't have this and this and that and the other thing at launch omg'.

The thing is, very little of that matters at all.

When it released, the first time you sat down to play WoW, was it the best MMO you had ever played to that point? For many (most?) people the answer is 'yes'.

How many people are answering that question 'yes' for AoC? If they're not answering 'yes', and they're not crazy multi-subscription people (I suspect most MMO players are not) why wouldn't they go back to whatever game is stopping them from being able to say 'yes' to that question for AoC?

[Nebu]

How many people are answering that question 'yes' for AoC?

I'd say that a surprising number are saying yes.  The more interesting question is why don't they feel that way a couple of weeks later?

[Evildrider]

How many people are answering that question 'yes' for AoC?

I'd say that a surprising number are saying yes.  The more interesting question is why don't they feel that way a couple of weeks later?

It's like that new car smell.. once it's gone, you never get it back.

[Signe]

When does this game hit the graveyard? 

[Threash]

This thread is funny with all of its 'omg WoW had this and didn't have this and this and that and the other thing at launch omg'.

The thing is, very little of that matters at all.

When it released, the first time you sat down to play WoW, was it the best MMO you had ever played to that point? For many (most?) people the answer is 'yes'.

How many people are answering that question 'yes' for AoC? If they're not answering 'yes', and they're not crazy multi-subscription people (I suspect most MMO players are not) why wouldn't they go back to whatever game is stopping them from being able to say 'yes' to that question for AoC?

Because ive played that other game for going on four years? It doesn't really matter that one game is better than another, you can't play the same game forever.  I think wow is a great game, much much better than aoc, i simply dont want to play it anymore and im having trouble getting into warhammer because its too similar to wow, even if its also better than aoc.