f13.net

Once upon a time, The Sims Online and Star Wars Galaxies were looked upon as The Future.  Even if you expected them to suck, you figured they'd make assloads of money.  Well the former tanked miserably and the latter is chugging along in mediocrity, while World of Warcraft conquers the universe.  My question is, why?  The gameplay doesn't seem vastly different than that of the competition, and Warcraft can't be THAT much a better gaming brand for name recognition than Star Wars or Sims.  So why is this game kicking so much financial ass?

I'm going to step in here quick and say:

A number of you are going to view the above question as flamebait.

It's not.

I'd like to see some answers as well.

Familiarity + New and Shiny + Fantasy-based (for whatever reasons, more MMO gamers prefer that to anything else).

edit: Oh, and I'm sure word of mouth (highest rated MMO ever) and mass migration of guilds helped. Also, marketing and details about WoW started the second it went beta.

A lot of reasons:

#1: A huge following of Blizzard fans from Starcraft and Diablo - fans from OUTSIDE the MMORPG universe. SOE has nowhere near that sort of reputation, nor does EA or anyone else. Blizzard is a rare video game company with a large number of they can do no wrong fans.

#2: Lack of negative word of mouth. I say this instead of positive word of mouth because it's more accurate.

#3: The same, only better. Not a lot new, but a lot streamlined, simplified, and presented better. It's refinement.


That said, I think the game is boring and I would never consider playing it. It's not vastly different, but it's improved in many small ways.

And I wouldn't compare to SWG or the Sims Online. Sims online was just a bad idea, taking a God game and removing the God from it. SWG a game and a license joined like Siamese Twins.

Blizzard stuck to a simple formula and polished it slightly.  Then they made it more casual and solo-friendly which appeals to a bigger group of people than the slow grind.  It pretty much comes down to the fact that they had name recognition like Sims and SWG, and they managed to not fuck the game up so badly that it managed to even turn the fanbois away like those two games did.

There is one reason and one reason only that WoW is doing so well.

1. Blizzard made it.

SWG, the game that was supposed to break 1mil subscribers, failed because it wasn't about Star Wars.  I still can't get over how WoW has the EXACT PVP SYSTEM that I advocated daily on the SWG boards (I was one of the first 100 people in beta 1, that's how deranged I was).  This is all I ever wanted- you join up Alliance or Empire, there are a few safe zones for the newblers, you have it out everywhere else, and eventually there are battlegrounds with PvP rewards.  Raph said daily that a PvP MMORPG like that wouldn't work- and now we have WoW, where a MAJORITY of people are on PvP servers.  SWG was an inherently PvP setting, but they blew it.  Shit, I'd love to run the new (or the old) PvP ruleset by one of my law professors.  The only thing that stops me is they'd probably use it as an exam question and I'd fail.

A few other reasons:

1) WoW has lovingly handcrafted zones and SWG had miles and miles of featureless terrain that looked exactly the same- beyond a certain minimum and beyond a certain maximum, nobody cares if you can make an MMO the size of real-life earth.

2)  Crafting was too complex.  Nobody beyond a handful of people enjoy it when its set up like that.  Give me a pick and plop some ore down around the world.  Put a forge in town and let people make stuff.  The real-world economy is not fun.  WoW style economy is. 

3)  Raph is a great guy who cares alot about making great games.  He's a better person then I am, passionate, and brilliant.  But as someone who watched him on those boards for two years, it was obvious that SWG was his "amends" game to PvE posters who had a friend who once heard about someone's miner being killed in 1997 UO and were thus frightened and needed someone to hold them.  Raph made the game to keep the bad Dread Lord from touching the children in a private place.  You could practically see b0n3d00d and plated3wd in the background of every post he made.  That worry simply made him go to far in the opposite direction.           

 

Let's not forget:

WoW is friendly to people who are just getting into the whole ideas of MMOGs.  It's good for catasses too, but it doesn't slap you in the face with "Welcome to the world, start grinding if you ever wanna do anything cool!"

SWG on the other hand... you can't even be a Jedi without tons and tons of commitment.  Who the fuck makes a Star Wars game where you can't be a Jedi?  Hell, I'm going to make a fantasy game where you can't use weapons or magic- you are an armor polisher.

So that basically means people can reommend it to their friends without having a crisis of conscience.

I think this is the key reason, and you could replace "those two games" with "every game made to date".  It's not innovative or revolutionary or robot jesus, but it isn't fundamentally flawed in some way.  It's casual friendly but also has high-end content for the catasses.  When I log out, nine times out of ten I feel like I have accomplished something.

I can see myself playing this game for years, hopping on my high level characters to PvP then leveling some alt at a glacial pace but still feeling like I was getting something done.

"Not innovative but very solid" beats "innovative (or not) with serious design flaws" any day.

Why would they?  Because of the "not vastly different" comment?  Would anyone here really argue that ANY of the big-gun fantasy MMOGs are "vastly" different from one another?

Blizzard had the three main elements which I believe are essential to garner lots of subs in today's MMOG market:

1. A strong retail presence backed with advertising. This means boxes on the shelves, coverage in the magazines, and good word-of-mouth.

2. A fairly high level of graphical quality. This doesn't mean you need to have all the latest and greatest graphical features, nor an insane amount of detail, but the graphics have to look good and have a particular visual style. Note it's possible to create such graphics with low-detail bitmaps, but it's extremely difficult; most artists are not that good.  In WoW's case, its visual *style* is far more important than its actual level of detail.

3. Content, content, content. Your players will eat through content at rates far beyond what you predict. You have to be prepared for that, and maintain a team that's constantly adding new stuff ot the game. Alternatively, you need systems that are complex and varied enough to create their own content -- elements like PvP, random missions/dungeons, and/or complex strategic systems.

In addition, WoW had another very strong element:

4. (Optional) A known brand that has a built-in audience and pre-existing IP. UO and FFXI, for example, built upon previously popular single-player brands. Star Wars and games like The Matrix Online use pre-existing IP known to millions of customers. Even a game like DAoC builds, to a small extent, on the "public domain" IP of Arthurian times. Games like Roma Victor and Imperator Online will be able to use that "generic Roman IP" that audiences are quite familiar with through television and movies.  In WoW's case, this is the bulti-in "Blizzard/Warcraft" fanbase.

From a gameplay design standpoint, none of WoW's systems are particularly innovative.  They took the best parts of all the others games and welded them together; Raph called it a "summation game".  The one particular WoW design element that I think was great was the quest-directed gameplay.  Other games had quests, of course, but for many they seemed to be equal to or less than the addition of new areas, new items, new dungeons, new monsters, etc.  AC2 was the first game I know that had the same kind of heavily quest-directed gameplay, and you've since seen it in CoH, EQ2, and MxO.  WoW really turned it up a notch, though, by making sure there were very few gaps in accessible content at the lower levels (so no tedious levelling to get to the next series of "interesting" quests), and they put the friendly icons and arrows and such on NPCs so you knew where to go and who to talk to.

Bruce

I'd add a big post but it's already been said. Blizzard didn't do anything particularly interested, they just made sure that they did it well. Another good point is "casual friendly". As far as MMOGs go it's pretty accessable and that means more subs.

The people here make the common mistake thinking that originality and brand name recognition is what sells a product.

It doesn't it.

1) Products don't necessarely sell because they have a big brand slapped on it. Brands can attract attention. Brands can help to differentiate. Brands don't actually sell the product though.
Everyone was "interested" in TSO. How many of you actually bought it ? Not many I think, even many Sims fans apparently weren't attracted to the prospect of playing online with others. Brand name helps jack shit if the product itself isn't attractive. There are many brand extensions that completely tanked to prove this point (in fact, TSO is already a prime example).

2) Why would a game sell more if it's original and different from others ?
 Making games is not some kind of art, it's an entertainment business. Your product, above all, is supposed to be fun and to entertain. 
And having enough funding and knowing how to actually market a game helps a lot too of course.

Pretty much all previous MMORPGs scared customers away by trying things like :
- Adding tons of new ideas but never manage to get them to work properly
- Being overly technical ambitious and end in a bugfest
- Being too time-demanding (this is a major one)
- Thinking that all kinds of restrictions and harsh penalties is smart design
- Having a learning curve that is too steep
- Require you to upgrade your PC
- Release with too little content
- Fail to implement PvP properly
etc

Just like with RTS and hack&slash RPGs, Blizzard figured out what kind of MMORPG would appeal to the biggest number of people and created it.

BINGO !

1. It's not because "Blizzard Made It"
2. The game is legitimately casual friendly
3. World is well-crafted, pretty, and fun
4. Appealing crafting system
5. The parts are not incredibly original, but the combined output is a huge leap ahead for the genre.

They made an acceptable treadmill. Long enough for the catasses with uber content dungeons, but short enough for the casuals with the rest system that helps them out.

This is something I can't help but argue. Blizzard isn't about huge leaps. They aren't easy about baby steps. What they've done is effectively grinded to the core of what makes the EQ era MMORPGS fun. They've put those pieces together and we now have World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, it proves to investors that there's still money left in EQ-Style games and the VCs are going to look at it and say, wow, MUST INVEST IN MMORPGS.

Essentially, through no fault of their own and by creating the most successful purely North American MMORPG - they've stagnated the genre by about 3-5 years. They've done this with RTS games as well. If you don't believe me - just take a look at the landscape. Though, it could be argued, the Red Alert series had a hand in that as well.

However, it can also be argued that big companies coming out with big releases of MMOG's that try to take on too much change and fail miserably do evern MORE harm to the industry.

My feeling is that smaller houses should work on completely different elements to the industry and put out small MMOG's to check them out.  With big ideas for new game elements, keep the launch small.  For "more of the same but done a bit better," go for the big launch to keep the industry alive and attractive for more investors.

In my dreamworld, the bigger companies find the smaller ones doing interesting productive things in their small oferrings and buy them up.  Then, they add those small elements a bit at a time until they have a large launch that has just a bit different over all others.  I don't think we can or should expect a huge game like WoW to come out like it did and offer us something completely different.

Is there any other product offered that has done this? (Outside of gaming?)  Hell it can be argued that MMOG's themselves are just now coming into their own market-wise.  UO may have been a huge leap in content for the genre, but with respect to other gaming platforms, it was nothing.

There's no stagnation or setback in building something right and putting a polish and a loving touch on it. WoW is great because of the detail to everything.  They paid for their artists and content writers, and didn't waste too much time on the latest DirectX 10 future-forward graphicial 'innovations' or play designer god and create some kind of self-sufficent virtual world.

God to love a question driven by people just looking to jump over anything you say.  Well, here goes, in no particular order:

1.  It's immersive and pretty.  The world just draws you in with it's unique and distinctive landscapes.   The graphics, while not mindblowing on the number of polys, are the most effective graphics that we've seen to date in any MMORPG.   They make the game just that much better. 

They also don't bring your systems to it's knees.  THIS IS IMPORTANT.  Not many people want to spend 300 bucks upgrading their video card to play a game that they're going to spend $15 x 12 month if they play it for a year.  You're not going to get people shying away or quitting this game over technical issues unless they're really behind the curve.   

The game isn't overly fucking dark at night also.  This is a big boost for those of us that LIKE TO SEE WHAT THE FUCK WE'RE DOING.

2.  The game displays a great sense of humor and uses cultural references greatly to it's benefit.  From the Indiana Jones sequences in the Ulda'man dungeon to the offhand remarks that can found all over the place, it makes you chuckle, wince, or hit the screenshot button to preserve the moment for later.  This is the first MMORPG that has made me laugh serveral times (and not just because of the stupdity of the players.)  I really like games that can hit my funny bone or can be quirky enough to keep me wanting more (see EarthBound).

3.   The class design, IMO, is inspired.  Best classes in any MMORPG I've ever played.  There's very little hit A and make a sandwich (sorry Paladins).    Every class plays different there's opportunity to have a class play any number of ways due to talents. 

4.  A short leveling curve.  Not tiny, but level 60 in under 12 days played isn't bad for this genre.  Plus, it ramps up as you play, but there's no real gigantic leap up in time needed to level.  Plus there's the quests to keep you going.  Lots and lots of quests.  Unlike some other games, there's no real huge gaps in this and you've always got something on your plate to keep you going.  The game is also digestable in hour chunks.  This is big for us casual types (Ok, maybe I'm not so casual as "time starved").

5.  The game is extremely solo friendly while at the sametime providing enough rewards for grouping.  This isn't apparent early on but there's a benefit to playing by yourself on your own time but also having a group of friends that you can count on.

6.  This is a Blizzard product.  They realized this game would hit it big with people that have been on the outside of the genre looking in.  There's a great deal of people for which this is likely their first MMORPG and Blizzard put together a great MMOPRG for beginners.  The game early on, for about the first 20 levels or so, plays as a giant tutorial.    By the time you've hit 20 you've touched upon all of the skills that you'll need throughout the duration of your stay.  It's important to not throw the noobs into the fire or leave them with a half empty skill set like some other games did.

7.  The game isn't overly punishing.  The death penalty is light enough to the point where you don't want to die, but not heavy enough to the point where you're chucking your monitor through the wall. Failed quests can be redone.  An accidentally sold item to a vendor can be bought back.  Being forgiving is something that's needed in a genre where punishment is sometimes billed as challenge.

8.  Three types of servers.  PVP, RP, and regular.  This gets all of the ganking goons off the regular and RP servers, puts the name nazi and RP asswipes together, and keeps the generally retarded non-homicidal lackwit on his own server. 

9.  The game is not a chore.  I don't log in and wonder why I do.  I don't sit in a dungeon entrance for an hour at a time for a group so I can kill the same frog that I killed for 3 hours yesterday for 4 hours today.  I don't need to be up for 16 hours to be on for the window when the mob I need is going to be up so I can compete with 4 other assholes to kill it.   I don't have to babysit my camels or log on every 4 hours to check my vines.   

10. Due to the above, it's hard not to recommend this game to someone.  My gripes are few and won't be hit or even matter to most people.  I'm sure even if it's not getting all positive reviews, the positivie is heavily outweighing the negative.

11.  If it's not revolutionary, than by most of the above you can see why the appeal is wide.  It has refined the suck out of most of what Everquest and it's followers brought to the table.  It took a lot of my major gripes and eliminated them or wrapped them in a tasty coating. 

If it set back the industry 3 years, so be it.  None of those other cockholsters were making anything I want to play or failing so miserably in their execution that they cause me actual pain.  Fuck'em.  Make a good game that does what it does well.  Quit trying to innovate when you can't fucking code a chat interface that doesn't break.  Quit trying to be new and immersive with a combat system that makes Baby Jesus flip off old ladies.   Quit trying to be the next best thing when you're not good enough to be last year's old news.  Quit mangling cherished game licenses into somethat that I can't recommend to their biggest fanboi.  Aim for what you can hit and THEN HIT IT.   Most of all, stop boring me.  If I want to be bored, I'll just load up Everquest and solo with an untwinked warrior.  That part of the market is cornered.   Make a fun game above all else, sprinkle in some "world", and polish the hell out of what you've got.  That's a winner. 

Considering how well the "innovative" mmropgs of late have fared, setting a minimum standard to shoot for may not be a bad thing.  It helps clarify the market to both investors AND developers.  I.e. if you want to have any hope of being successful in this marketplace, there are now some hurdles you had better well clear before you can even begin to talk about what makes your particular title "unique" or "innovative".

Things like a techinically stable platform with a clean GUI, decent graphics, solid gameplay in both inidivual elments and taken as a whole are must haves, as is KNOWING your goddamn MARKET DEMOGRAPHIC!; who are your intended customers and what do THEY want, not what do you want to give them...  Games like horizons, and wish failed to me those minimums.  Eq2 seems to be failing some of them slightly and other hugely (that is Smed's idea of a non hardcore game?). Lineage 2, for all the bashing it gets in NA, seems to have hit it's intended market pretty well.  CoH has passed the bar and they too seem to know their customers.

Others have mentioned the individual design elements that help make it an attractive overall whole: casual friendly but stuff for catasses too, solid performance, useful crafting, understandable setting, etc, plus a metric ton of content.  Somewhere I heard that they have over 2000 quests in there and I tend to believe it, plus the huge amount of STUFF makes it a packrats wet dream (there is something inherently appealing of getting random cool stuff dropping from almost any mob: AC did this well too).

So, what's the big deal?  Wrong question, b/c it's not earthshattering or revolutionary at all.  If original EQ never appealed to you, no reason for you to like WoW.  (that being said, I doubt I'll play this 1.5 years; of course, I doubt i'll play ANY new mmorpg that long again and I suspect im far from alone..being first to market with no real competitors is a huge factor in Eq's success).

My question is more like "So what took so fucking long to do EQ right?"

This is market refinement in action at it's finest.  Some people push the market boundries, others strive to understand the market well enough to become the market leader.  So there you have it, WoW is the Walmart of mmorpgs.  Now go back to your UO boutique you snooty elitist bastard. :)

Xilren

You do realize you are a rabid faboi, right?

Anyway....

I get the feeling that you don't want people to even try making new innovative games. That makes the Shockeye sad.

I would if they'd stop making stuff that was so goddamn shitty.   Innovation without being good is just stapling wings on a dog. 

You do realize you wouldn't have your precious WoW if other games hadn't innovated certain things and failed.

WoW was built upon the successes and failures of previous games in the same genre. Asking game makers to stop trying to innovate UNLESS THEY GET IT RIGHT 100% is silly.

Well, the Sims Online was a failure from the start. The game when I played it was boring, laggy, and bugged. (I played in beta.) I figured the last two could be fixed but the first, well, as we say around here you can't patch in fun.

SWG was innovative in some ways. The three big problems it had was:

1) It wasn't Star Wars. Not by a long shot. Wookiees do not = Star Wars.
2) It was boring on the combat side
3) It had the worst grind I have ever experienced. It was even worse than high level AC2.

I still daydream about what SWG might become over time if the right changes are made...

As for why WoW conquers all my theory is it has several things needed:

1) It's fun. Say anything else about it, the game is fun to alot of people. It's the first game I've ever made multiple characters in because "Hey, Class Y looks fun too" instead of "ok, Class Y is the uber flavor of the week and I'm tired of feeling like a gimp"

2) It's accessible. Easy to get into and all that. It gradually trains you to play at the higher levels. As well you don't have to have a monster computer to play it.

3) It's solo and casual friendly. This is something alot of gamers want these days. Hardcore catassers bitch and whine but it is still true.

4) The grind is largely invisible. Sure I sometimes watch the XP bar but not because I'm bored but because I'm looking forward to my next food pellet.

5) The graphics are artistic and fun to look at. Very colorful and each "zone" has its own feel. Music and ambient sounds contribute as well.

6) Loot is fun, yet crafting is still useful. At high levels the loot outweighs the crafting but still for the most part it still works out well.

7) You always have something to do. When I log on each day I'm not going "I need to find something to do" I'm going "out of my 20 or so options which one do I want to work towards"

8) Content. It has a hell of a lot of content. I have a level 60 human paladin and I still have not seen 3 or 4 instances or done any true raids. As well I have seen very few night elf or dwarf quests. Also I dropped and/or skipped lots of quests. There are entire zones I never set foot into except to pass through. There is some whining at the high end but for now I think it's unfounded. There are 5 instances for 60's level characters I can think of off the top of my head. High level crafting to do. Faction to build. Elite pets to get. Rare drops to farm for. Raid material (Onyxia being the most famous), PvP (which isn't that big a draw to me, but is still something for people to do), and weapon and armor sets to attempt to collect/complete.

There is more but I've said enough for now. Did WoW innovate? No. Does it work and is it fun? Yes. That's good enough for me for now.

They're free to try.  But I'm not going to play or pay for something that sucks because it's trying something different.  When your new and innovative experiment sucks, I'm not going to laud you for it.  And you're making too much of an absolute out of my statements.    I'm not being that black and white; I'm just done paying for crap.  There's little room left in this genre for experiments gone wrong.  The new potato chip on the market that's 100% fat free better not give me furious diarrhea.

The whole MMOG industry is still flawed in making people pay to beta even if they call it "released". Blizzard still has a long way to go to make WoW stable, in my opinion. While the game itself may be a fine piece of cake, the plate is it being served on is being held together with elmer's glue.

Yep, I think you've got it covered here.

It's not that we are asking the innovators to get things 100% right, but just 30% right would be nice, and even then that seems like an impossible task.  If it wasn't for the "innovators" typically being the most inept motherfuckers on the planet when it comes to MMO's, I am guessing I and a good deal of others here would have had a 30%-right game, or greater even, that gave us reason enough to stay instead of finding fun in the shiny of WoW.  But bullshit was released, we were burned too hard.  It's sort of like the old adage about technology, where you can choose between old and reliable or new and unproven, but usually not both.  Right now I'm sticking with the former...

Rasix covered most of it, but just to reiterate-
1) It is extremely casual friendly
2) There is ALWAYS something to do, both quest-wise and character improvement-wise. I constantly have a problem of having too many quests to do, primarlily because I tend to hop around from area to area like a Ritalin-starved Magellan.
3) The loot system- always a chance of something interesting. Almost everything dropped is used by some class or profession.

2 complaints-
1) The avatars are goofy looking. The world is beautiful, but I hate the look of all my characters (trolls being by far the worst).
2) The goddamned random drop quests. I had to kill over 100 yetis this weekend to get Hercular's Rod, while my buddy killed 2. 2!!!!!!!! That kind of shit makes me crazy. Feel free to randomize it, but give me a max #.

I can't believe I am still playing as often as I do. I am enjoying the hell out of it, which is a MAJOR shock to me.

I think part of it is just pure luck. The fact that the quests keep the game fun, and interesting. And IMO the game is just "fun". Thats the only way I can really describe it. I log in, and have fun. Even at higher levels, its doesnt feel like a second job like some of these (A lot) feel like.

It was wierd, I am level 59 right now, with about 3 bars to go to 60. And from lvl 55+ I kept waiting for some horrible long grind to kick in. Where I was just like "just a bit more, I can do it". But no, I have been playing the way I always play, questing and having fun, and all of a sudden I am about to hit 60, and I am supprised at how I didnt feel a big grind.

As a consumer, I sure as hell can ask they at they get it 100% (or even 50%) right. Why would I pay for someone else's garbage?

You also forget, there's been YEARS (20?) of design going into MMO games. If they can't get even a portion of it right, now, then they don't deserve our money or our time. Nothing is ground breaking yet - we're just waiting for someone to do it right. And WoW delivers that to a lot of people.

I almost want to come back to WoW.  Almost.  Spending money on subscriptions to two games seems so wasteful to me though...  I should quit smoking and reward myself with a WoW subscription, I'd be saving money and my lungs...

It's a number of things.

1) Content rich at release - Lots of shit to do, in lots of ways, NONE of which is incredibly complex yet it's still fun, even crafting.
2) Fast-paced, strategic combat, very similar to the feeling you get from CoH combat.
3) Soloability - this is a lot more important than people want to realize, but the ability to log on, do shit without needing others is huge for the casual, time-starved gamer. The fact that you are eased into needing other people, as opposed to reaching a certain point and being troutslapped with the forced grouping keeps casuals in it longer.
4) Strong brand with loyal fanbois, both at the corporate level and the game's setting level.
5) Low system requirements, assuring that even UO players can likely play the game at a decent resolution and have a playable frame rate.
6) Bug-low release - no, it isn't bug-free and yes there have been some bad ones, like the server crashing ones. But it was in no way "wipe the file allocation tables of your hard drive" type bad like AO or SB.EXE SB.EXE SB.EXE like Shadowbane.

EDIT: Because I thought of them later.

7) PVP that wasn't an outright gankfest from the get go, but more like the semi-consensual PVP of DAoC.
8) Little to no harshly punitive death penalty

WoW has parallels to achievements in the design industry. Designers take mundane, everyday objects and work to improve them.

They work on things like usability, user experience, look, functionality. Their job is not to throw away the product and re-invent the wheel.  Every once in a while, a great design magically comes together and makes a splash (see I-Pod).

Great design is a force of improvement and refinement, not stagnation. Invention and innovation are important, but so is design.

Design is nice. A single original idea is nice too though.

I can't get into WoW at all because it doesn't have a single thing I haven't seen in almost exactly the same form someplace else. I'm the type of person that, when I've seen all a game has to offer, I tend to stop playing unless it is REALLY damn good.

I saw all WoW had to offer before it was even in Beta. It doesn't have a single novel element to it. I can just imagine myself playing it rather than actually playing it and save myself some time and money.

If it makes you feel any better, that was my impression as well.  I avoided the beta and resisted both WoW and EQ2 thinking neither would be different enough from EQ/DAoC to warrant playing.  I think largely I was waiting for the other shoe to drop once the games went live, which with mmorpg seems like a safe bet. EQ2 seems to have lived down to my low expectations, but...the worst thing I heard about WoW was the sever downtime, and that seems to have stabilizied.  If people are mad b/c they want to play and can't for technical reasons, thats a far cry different than people being mad they dont want to play the game as designed. 

I even stayed out of the forums here for lack of interest, but since Guild Wars is still a few months out I was looking for something new to play since CoH is something I play sporadically.  I had no real intentions on what, but I noticed the stores i frequent couldn't keep WoW in stock while eq2 was camping the shelf space like it would give them J-boots.  Took me a week and 4 trips just to find a box.  As unscientific as that is, I took that as a postive sign that if the game is good enough for the "timmy's" of the world, they couldn't have screwed it up too badly.

So i used a gift cert and figured if i get a month out of it that was ok.  I've honestly been plesantly surprised.  I am also trying very hard not to spoil the game for myself (i.e. places like thottbot and the like).  It's just easy to pickup and fun to play if you like EQ-style mmorpgs.  It will be just as easy to put down if I decide to play something else; it's a game not a life committment.

So yeah, originality would be nice and all, but alone it makes for short lived success if you can't execute well.  As long as it's fun, i'll pay.

Xilren 

 Sigged!

But as to the rest of it, I think that some of you put too much faith in endlessly innovating.  It's just like movies, TV, or any other art form: you'll have 99% old tried and true formula, sometimes more and sometimes less well executed. That remaining 1% will be impossible to categorize or predict.

I'm not going to relist all the very good reasons people have already posted, instead i'll give you some examples.  Last night in Blackrock Depths our priest decided to start drinking, the more he drank the lower level the mobs conned.  Thats a very, very small detail but its fucking genius and every moment is filled with details like that.  No matter what you are doing they manage to sneak in little tidbits of fun, be it pop culture references (i was shooting ghosts with "egan's blaster" in stratholme last night) to quests that draw you in and even make you care about the NPCs involved (like the darrowshire series which starts as just finding a little girl who happens to be a ghost, then finding her favorite toy, and ends with an epic fight reliving the battle of darrowshire in which you try to change history and keep her father alive quantum leap style).  I know whatever im doing ill have fun, leveling is not work, tradeskills are not work, raiding is not work, they are FUN.

I was doing the darrowshire questline last night. As a little side note. Every time you pick up a quest item of that questline, you get haunter for 10 minutes. What this means is periodiclly a ghost will run up next to you and say some thing like "Please, you have to end our suffering" or some such. No real effect, but It makes you think about the quest and the story behind it a bit more.

More please.

The comments above are very good.  And exhaustive.

So I will offer something "soft".  WoW is charming.  A work of "art" in the broadest sense of the word.  We can talk about specific features in WoW but in the end this misses the point:  the overall experience of this game is more than its component parts, and like art, if you're not responding to it - it's just not for you.  You're reaction is just as valid as anyone else's, even if it is completely the opposite, but this cannot necessarily be reconcialiated in all cases by doing a feature review.

I had forgotten all about the ghosts, it was freaky having a few at a time following me around and cheering me on.  At one point, i believe during the villains of darrowshire part of the quest there are good and evil ghosts fighting around you as you try to recover an item, and you can't affect them in anyway.  Tonight while running blackrock spire during the Rend Blackhand event which consists of fighting wave after wave of orcs + dragon kin while a boss looks on and shouts instructions at them like "Concentrate your attacks on their healer!" and when that didn't work he yelled at the next wave "FOOLS KILL THE ONE IN THE DRESS!!!".  I've been laughing about it for like an hour.

WoW is successful because it is better than Everquest, while the other games that sought to take over from Everquest were simply worse than Everquest was.

The charm/character/atomsphere point is an important part of EQ's success.  Those lovingly handcrafted zones sucked you in right away.  Even those who love to excoriate EQ, like my buddy Sky, will say "damn, some of EQ's zones were just great".
 No other game seems to have realized this was important.  SWG, for example, oozes "we don't give jack or shit about character, art, charm, or atmosphere" from every pore of it's soulless, bloodless, modular, randomly-generated husk of a body.

WoW is the best thing to ever happen to the genre.  It's time to grow up.  Nice ideas with shitty execution get you a pat on the head from your teacher, but they get you fired in real life.  Developers used to make games to get props on mud-dev, and fuck those disgusting peons who buy the product.  No more.  It's time act like grown-ups now, motherbitches.  You work for me, and I expect results.

Agreed.

Now this touches on a more sophisticated point that cuts across industries.  You have a gold standard and you want to beat it (e.g. EQ).  You can take two routes:  try and shoot the lights out with something completely different or tweak the existing game for better performance.  The latter approach has greatly reduced risk through increased ability to execute.  Ideally, you would tweak the game and offer a very few select features that might depart from the gold standard.  In WoW this is likely its pvp system, which is a big leap from EQ (as the standard) while all the other features are just tweaked (overall fit is important too).

In my industry we go through this all the time (investments).  Want to beat the S&P 500 index?  You can have a totally different product portfolio (win big or lose big), or you can tweak the existing one by placing a few bets not in the S&P500 (low risk moderate gain).  Take that as an analogy not a derail.  Carefullly pick what you want to innovate:  tweak most features and offer very few new ones.  This gets back to risk management in any undertaking - whether it be a game, clinical study or investment portfolio. Carefully pick what you want to innovate, since to manage your risk the remaining 95% has to be a tweak.

I'm still amazed that we are all fellating an MMOG so hard. Well except schild and Windup.

Say it with me: Online Gaming is the future of gaming. It's not like some sort of large scale nostradamus outlook. It's merely the obvious. Anything that sets back the progression of online gaming into new and unknown territories pisses me off.

Though, I think Infected for the PSP (http://psp.ign.com/articles/579/579423p1.html) will make enough waves that some interesting shit might happen.

One of its greatest assets is that WoW is EXCEPTIONALLY friendly to the casual player.  When a character is rested, they gain 200% xp on kills.  The more hours they are logged out, the longer the bonus lasts.  The bonus lasts until a certain amount of xp is accumulated, so it basically has the effect of reducing the amount of xp needed to level.  But better than that is that leveling just doesn't take very long, even without the bonus.

This means that new character abilities are always just around the corner, unlike games like EQ, which typically required weeks of hard work (at least to casual players) before they could get their new set of spells.  In WoW, new skills are learned on an almost daily basis, usually with at least three becoming available every other level.  It's not unlike Diablo II, actually.  (Compare that to EQ, which usually made you wait *at least* 4 levels to have anything more to look forward to than extra hp and mana, and usually took well over a week, if not a month.)

Also, Death is almost completely painless.  In fact, the only "punishment" is having to run for 2 - 5 minutes to your corpse.  You don't even have to loot yourself and re-equip.  There is no equipment decay (unless you chose to res at the graveyard for whatever reason), and even better, no xp penalty.  Yes, in games like EQ, all yor hard work could actually result in you having less xp after a playing session than when you started, especially since corpse recovery often left you vulnerable to getting killed several times.

You also get to experience what makes your class unique much sooner than other MORPGs, which tended to give the character classes their big shiny near the end of the threadmill, whereas the WoW character classes are different from the get-go.  And it's not just a case of different spells being called different things but essentially being the same spell.  Even though Warriors and Rogues are both melee characters, they are played in very different ways.

I'm also a big fan of the game's auction system.  What better way to make sure items sell at a realistic market value than seeing how much players are willing to spend?  It's dynamic and very responsive to market trends.  As a newbie, I put a stack of 20 copper bars at a starting bidding price of 5sp, and by the time the 8 hours were up, it had climbed to 40sp, which is what copper was going for at the time.  Maybe it was an unintended asset to the economy, but other online games I've played suffer from players not charging enough for items, because its "understood", "going rate", didn't always reflect market realities.

Actually there is a 10% equipment decay on death, 25% if you use the spirit healer, no penalty at all for pvp deaths though.

I hadn't noticed.  I figured the damage was included in the original ass-whoopin.

You obviously haven't had a sickening chain of deaths in an Elite instance yet!  :x

Yes, but think how different Zork or Wizardry were compared to, say, Daggerfall or KOTOR.  Refined, yes, but at the core, the gameplay has been similar through the history of adventure games.  Once in awhile something hithero unheard of comes along and creates a new genre (Populous), but more often the innovative ones have their uniqueness to rely on, and little else (Fable).

So in sum, say it with me: innovation isn't everything.

If the VCs are not interested in MMOGs, the genre is finished. So kudos to Blizzard. They've hardly stagnated the genre. Games that are not fun to play for one reason or another have stagnated the genre. SW:G is more at fault for holding back virtual worlds by being a chore to play, and Shadowbane is more at fault for ruining the market for PvP by being too buggy to play and for the cost of loss being too high. When somebody makes a fun game that is better than the current model, you can have a point. Until then, you're just part of the bleating class.

I might go back, but keep my UO account open at the same time.  Then I can kill stuff and gawk at the shiny in WoW, and do other stuff in UO when that bores me.

I haven't gone down on WoW in weeks.  I'm fiddling with CoH for a bit.

There's just something not right about that phrasing.

I had two in the Dead Mines.  That was enough for me to say "Fuck it" and let the angel res me.

MMOWhore?

Innovation is not like Moore's Law: you can't guarantee that you'll have twice the innovation every three years or whatever.  The absence of WoW would not have guaranteed innovation, and thus you can't say they've stagnated the genre.  Personally, I think they're keeping the genre afloat (without them, it would have gone the way of the spaceflight sim like Freespace 2, dead), and thus they're allowing innovation to take place, if it can.

Unless I"m being severely camped, or just cannot make it back to an instance entrance for some reason, I will never use the angel res.  All you have to do in an instance is hit the portal, then recall out from inside the instance itself.  All of the ones I've been in so far (not all of them admittedly) have clear drops, so this is the easiest way to avoid taking the bigger 25% hit on res.

And two deaths in an instance run are nothing in the scheme of things, unless you're trying to solo it.  I feel for healers, especially druids.  We were on a BRS run last night in a raid of 10 and the biggest casualty was the druid 3x.

As for the topic at hand, pretty much everything positive that's been said so far.  I like not being able to play for almost a week due to RL and logging in to almost a full bar of blue xp to look forward to.  This past Friday I felt like I was grinding my way through level 52 because I just could not seem to complete any Un'Goro quests, then I had help with a few, got some other things done and BAM!  Suddenly I'm only 4 bars from level 54 and I'm still in the blue.  Talking to a few guildies, it's like they've gotten to 60 almost by accident, where you suddenly realize you only have 6 more bars to max and you didn't even realize it.  That is goodness all around.  I might actually max out a char for the first time in the 6 games (AC1, DAoC, AC2, SB, L2 and WoW) I've played.

I was being severely camped by a named char and about 8 others, as if I were dropping loot for eBay.  They way I died in the first place is that they all popped at once.  I knew I wasn't going to make it out without numerous more deaths.  Even then, it only costed me about 10s to repair my equipment, and I believe it was well worth the saved time.

Death really doesn't matter either way until level 35. At that point the penalties get a little sharper. By the time I was 45, rezzing by angel was not an option with my pocketbook.

When ALL my gear is 100% broken, it costs me at lvl 60, 4 gold to repair. Thats not bad. I never worry about rezzing at the angel. I dont like to, cause its kind of like admitting I cant handle, but I will do it if it saves me a huge run or some thing.

I'm the same way.  With these games, I've learned that I'm a casual and should take all the time advantages I can get.

Well, were you inside the instance or in the outside portion of Deadmines?  I was working under the assumption that you were in the instance itself, in which case you will automatically res once you reach the portal and be back at the beginning of the instance.  But if you were in the outer portions of Deadmines, then I can see why you might have problems ressing in the middle of named mobs.  Still, need to res at the limit of your range and just start running in cases like that.

So in summation, it somehow took the industry half a decade to realize:

Everquest - catass = win   :-D

Well, I suppose.  Speaking as someone who purchased yesterday and spent a couple of hours on it last night with the bruv and wife, I have only one thing to say :

It's a fun online game.

I haven't seen one of those since UO.

   What are some of World of Warcraft's weak areas?   It's not a perfect game, but a lot of the weak areas seem to be technical.

 Server stability is a big one, I gave up playing last night because the login kept hanging on authentication.  Mind you, 3 months post release, things like this still happen regularly.  Serverside lag still happens quite a bit.
 
   The interface, the default one, is rather lacking.  They did give the ability to modify it through code, but that brings up other problems and I'm curious how many support issues they have are directly related to people not knowing how to use addons like cosmos properly.   If the interface wasn't so limited to begin with it would be less an issue.

    The patching system is a step backward, they are treating it like patching a single player game and it doesn't work.  Preloading larger content before a patch release, using more of their own bandwidth, and creating a checksum system similar to other games would go a long way in helping that part.   The torrent based system they have for larger patches is just piss poor.

   Level spread is still a problem, if your friend outlevels you by any significant margin, forget playing with them.
 
   The official forums for wow are down an awful lot (which may be a good thing, if you read it too much you can feel the intelligence being sucked from your mind)
 
    There is no long term plans on the website beyond the next content patch, and so far I haven't seen a real direction in where they want to take the game, so this is a big wildcard.

    Am I missing anything?   The game overall still is great, but it's nowhere near perfect.

I've never seen this problem myself.  I hunt with a friend of mine that is consistently 8 levels higher than me.  I guess it all comes down to how much you are willing to sacrifice in exp for having fun with friends.  If you are all about the powergaming and constantly having to see numbers go up on your stats, exp, damage, etc then, yes, you can't group with high level disparity. 

I do not see this being fixed anytime soon by anyone (even outside of WoW) in an item-centric game.  Yes CoH has side-kicking, but it doesn't have items (just buffs) and can scale accodingly.  I suppose if WoW scaled item drops so that lower level chars being side-kicked up don't get uber drops automatically that might work, but half the fun of taking on high level content is to get the lottery jackpot, so that would come out flat I would think.

Most of the time I hunt with my friend to experience new areas and fill out my maps.  I can heal him and that goes a long way to helping him, and I typically get some experience to reward me somewhat.

I just do not consider this a weakness with WoW.

I agree with your other points though.

I also hear the "end game" it rather lifeless but that doesn't bother me; never been much of a raid game advocate (too damn time consuming).  And it's hard to predict it's longevity as since it is fairly painless to level up, whats to keep people around for years as opposed to months.

Agree overall on the technical issue, but I think it's much easier to work out those than it is to patch fun into your game design (i'm looking at you HAM)  Now there are limits of course (sb.exe sb.exe sb.exe), but on the whole, the fun game part gives you some slack to work out the other issues.  It's not a lifetime pass though, if your sever is consitently hosed you'll eventually either move or quit.

I dont think anyone would say it's perfect, but at the same time I don't think any veteran mmorpgs are deluded enought to expect perfection.  But what it is, is a a great distance away from the other end of the spectrum, "the buggy, unfun, pull-your-hair crap filled mess" one most have come to expect.

It's fun so lots of people play it.  Can't get much simpler than that.

Xilren

It's fun. I've learned to not question things beyond that.

And as others have noted, it's not very tedious nor punitive. The combination of the two is plenty for me.

WoW does some things well, and some things it doesn't do that well, like any other game.  Since enough other posters have covered what it does do well, I'll cover what I didn't like. I personally found leveling to 60 to be something of a grind.  At some points it was better than others.  There were spots that I ran out of quests that I could solo and just grinded on mobs, for instance in the high 40s and again in the high 50s (in the high 50s there were actually a bunch of quests in plaguelands I could have solo'd, which I finally realized at 59, but the quest npcs were spread all over the two zones, not in a nice town where you could go and get all of them, and I don't like exploring that much).   I'm fully aware that this is at least partially a result of me pushing myself to hit the cap, and if I had played more casually I might not have experienced this, but I didn't want to play casually because of pvp considerations (and I'm already "time-starved", limiting me to about 3 hours a night and binges on weekends).

Quest based leveling is an improvement over the camp and kill method, in my opinion, but it's still not what I would call fun.  There's a few select quests in WoW that I enjoyed, but 99% of them are the same old kill x/collect Y quests.  There's nothing particulary fun about killing gnolls in Feralas to complete a quest when I've already killed gnolls in Mulgore to complete a quest.  And I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate collect quests where you need 5 items, but the mobs are uncommon, and the drop % is low.  The witch doctor quest in Stonetalon is a good example of this, because you need 30 eyes from elks, and 5 items each from slimes and panthers. Elks are plentiful and always drop 2 eyes, but the cats and slimes are less plentiful and drop nothing the majority of the time.  It probably evened out with me having to kill about 15 of each, but the panthers and slimes annoyed me, and the elks didn't.  For that matter, I completely prefer kill quests over collect quests; kill quests are group friendly, collect quests are not.  But that's a seperate issue.

Other people may enjoy the diablo-esque loot system where some boss mobs have a 1% drop chance of a super good (i.e. purple) item, or any world mob has a .0000001% chance of droping a blue/purple item, but I personally don't.  If there's an item I want I'd like to be able to work towards it in a reasonable fashion, not kill the same crap over and over and hope I get lucky. 

And then there's the pvp system, which is the reason I'm playing WoW over CoH (which I enjoy more on a purely pve basis).  Battlegrounds may or may not be an improvement (and I hope they are), but right now it's just blah.  There's no point to it.  People don't want to suffer penalties when they die to a higher level player, but right now with no penalties and no rewards there's no bite and there's no gain, it's just there.  Control of leveling areas is impossible, because no matter how often you kill someone they can be back again in 2 minutes rushing you during a pull. That could be somewhat forgiven if the actual fighting was fun.  It can be at times, but often for me it's fairly lackluster. Not to mention that I get a ton of system lag in large scale pvp battles (though I'll have to see how yesterday's patch effected things) making it impossible to effectively melee for me (as a warrior).

This is the single biggest issue in WoW PvP to me.  I have been considering whether faction-controlled graveyards in contested areas would be a good solution, and with some tweaking I think it would.

Yup, hate it. At least they got rid of the EQ style of also having the mob itself being a rare spawn, on top of rare item spawning.

I can't believe I ever played EQ.

Yes, it would be a much better solution. I'm very surprised that they haven't implemented it in some way. It didn't make sense to be in a zone where most of the NPC's were of the opposing faction, yet I ended up in the same graveyard as the other side. Since control of graveyards will be a big part of the Battlegrounds, I'm wondering if it's just that they don't have any mechanism for control of those yards in the non-instanced areas.

Wouldn't bringing back the durability penalty be better?  Make it so that if you kill someone more than -8 levels from you, they don't suffer any penalty.  But if you get killed by anyone lower than you, or anyone +8 higher than you, you suffer 5% durability loss.

This would make it so that after 20 deaths you HAD to go back to your homeland or a friendly place in order to repair.  And don't give me that griefing bullshit, 5% is nothing, 10% is nothing, even 15% durability loss doesn't cost anything.  But it SUCKS to get 0 durability.

Well, not completely.  There are a number of rare grey-elites that have a very good chance of dropping a blue item.  One is Ironeye that drops a good blue lvl 32 sword and the other is General Fangferror in Azshara that drops a very nice blue sword.  Both of these mobs have ridiculously long spawn times but the items they drop are really top notch for the level requirement for them and they drop the blue about 25-50% of the time.  Thus, people are always looking for them to the point of sitting in the exact spot they might spawn at for hours on end.   This isn't a common occurance though, most uber world drops (non instance)  are random.

I tried this last night with the good general.  Actually, the place he hangs out in is great for cash/green item farming (mobs are really easy with relatively painless special abilities).  It's seemingly a lot faster than Western Plaguelands but without the runecloth drops.   I think I spent a couple hours last night doing this and kept getting a lot of alliance visitors.  It was nice that most didn't stick around too long (some resemblence of tact?). The general popped for me once but instead I got a decent green instead of what I was looking for. 

Now, why the hell would I subject myself to this crap?  Well, I want to straight out buy my rogue a mount at 40.  Also, I need something nice for the rogue to dual wield with mr. Bloodrazor. Plus, I don't know, I kind of like the item hunt and mowing through mobs.   It's also one of the few things I can do left with my level 60 shaman.   I don't go out of my way to find groups for instances since I don't particularly like them. I'm also not in an uber guild so that I'd always have a group available (in my own 3 man guild and one of us just quit.. /sigh).   So, being on and doing something, sometimes people will hit you up for a group or help killing a mob, and if I feel up to it, I'll give it a shot.

Gah, I should reserve this rambling crap for the blog, which I never update like the addict I am.

I found that once you get like 45-50, alliance will generally leave you alone.  I think the mount has something to do with that, when you're on your mount, no one really bothers you.

I'm not sure how having Baron Rivendare being a 100% spawn with a 0.1% chance of dropping the Runeblade is an improvement over having the Ghoul Lord being a 25% spawn with a 25% chance of dropping a Short Sword of the Ykesha.  The 5% and under drop rates on BoE items have to go.

In any event, they have some rare spawn guys in instances, for example the guy who drops the arcanite reaper plans.  Not too many though.

I'm assuming that instances start when you enter a portal, in which case, no, I hadn't made it inside the instance.  I was down there with a few groups that I had no association with, cleared everything out, then they are left, I was there by myself, and everything popped back at once.  My corpse was literally at the center of a very large circle of fuck.  Even at the res range borders, I was surounded by mobs as far as the eye could see.  But it doesn't matter because Angel ressing is quick and easy, which was one of my points about WoW being much more considerate of player-playing time than the MMORPGs I have been molested by. 

Corpse recovery in EQ would sometimes take all day long, and several deaths -- or I had to wait for my friends to log in to help.  I've seen some posters call WoW a dumbed-down EQ, but I see it as being smarter.

I didn't say it was an improvement, I said I hated it. I hated EQ's random mob, random drop. WoW removed the random mob part. They are halfway to me liking it.

My hunter, who only has dropped or crafted gear, is in a world of hurt, equipment-wise. I've pretty much stoped playing her, most of her gear is -20 levels (mid 20 gear on a mid 40 character). I don't read thottbot to find where the 'good lewtz' drops outside instances, and I have no intentions on getting involved with the kind of folks that seem to focus on instances. Too bad there is no decent solo alternative to getting decent loot (besides the outrageous AH, I'm also broke, heh, and won't farm for cash). I guess it's better than EQ2, at any rate.

I take it most of the f13 crowd avoids instances.  Are they really so shitty?  I got the part about them talking blocks of several hours to complete, which runs counter to most of WoW's design philosophy of casual gaming, but what are the other reasons instances are so hated?

If I sound like a total noob talking, it's because I am.

Well, there's instances and there's high-end instances.

Low end include places like Deadmines, the Stockades, Blackfathom Depths and so forth.  Those can be done in an hour or two, maybe three if you are working slowly.

I gather the high-end instances like "UBRS" (upper blackrock spire) take much longer.

The instance idea itself is great IMO.  It eliminates camping while keeping the dungeon crawl paradigm intact.  It's also nice on a PvP server that you can go take on dungeons in enemy and contested territory and not have to worry about being ganked if you can just make the instance gate.

Well, there's serveral reasons.  This is mostly going to be pointed at high level instances, because up through Zul Farrak, most of them were just fine. 

1.  You need 5 people.  We did every instance in the game up to Zul'Farak with 3 people.  3 people trying to take on Stratholme, BRD or BRS would get fucking eaten alive.  5 mob+ pulls are unavoidable the later you get into the game.  It's sick.

2.  You need a priest.  A team of a couple support healers could probably handle some that a priest can, but none of them has that handy dandy shield or the aggro management abilities of a priest.  A shaman rarely also has the mana pool of a priest.

3.  You need a lot of tankage. Stuff starts hitting for a LOAD of hp. You should probably have a warrior.  A guild on my server loves to rebuke that they use 3 hunters, a warlock and a priest for most of their instances.  Well, gee whiz, I hope they'd be able to tank stuff with 4 fucking pets.  I feel sorry for that priest, playing a glorified veterinarian.   The thing is, if you can't keep the mobs off your soft targets, you're going to die.  Fast.

4.  They are very time consuming.  Most instances are at least 2 hour affairs.  Some like Mauradon and on up can take much much longer.   I don't like very time consuming dungeon crawls.  I get back EQ flashbacks: "Can't sleep, froglocks will eat me!"  "No, shithead, don't pull Trak there. Ohh fuck, there went the raid. Good job, assneck."   I have at most 3 hours to play each nice. 

Most of the neurological surgeons on my server take at least 30 minutes to an hour to get a group into an instance.  These people can't organize or communicate worth shit.  My 3 man group would take as much time as it took to fly and run to an instance, no more, no less.  No fucking around for 10 minutes and then realizing "ohh geeze, maybe I should hurry the fuck up".   Going from instant organization and great coordinate to the "hell that is other people" just took the damn wind out of my sails.

I'd prefer these instances to be in 1-2 hour chunks.  If it's a longer instance, just divide it up and have multiple entrances like Scarlet Monastery.  This would make the whole experience 100% better for me.  I just can't spend 3+ hours doing anything in this game and I really don't want to. 

5.  It basically boils down to the end game instances being completely antithetical to the previous 50+ levels of the game.  They're for big guilds, 5 man balanced teams, and people with large chunks of playing time devote to nothing but dungeon crawling through the most catasserfic shit designed by man (hyperbole here, I know EQ2 exists). 

I don't like it. I don't like that the best gear comes out of this crap.  I don't like that I'm going to be at a disadvantage in pvp due to the fact that my equipment is going to always suck nuts compared to some no life catasser that's on his 70 run through UBRS.

I don't think they're shitty at all.  In fact, the instances I've been in are damn fun.  However, they do require a fair block of time (we spent 5 hours doing 2 runs of Zul'Farrak last night), and with only 5 people in a group, you gotta be careful who you group with.  Get a few people new to mmorpgs who have soloed a lot, and you're in for a world of hurt in there.  But get a decent group and you can have a ball (and by decent I dont mean holy trinity, just people who have at least double digit IQs.)

If you get a chance - go to Scarlet Monastery in your mid-30s - thats a really fun instances, and you get to kill that damn Scarlet Crusade!

EDIT - And for disclosure, I haven't been to the top-end instances yet - lv51 here, so Zul'Farrak has been my highest.

I'm hoping that my l33t gold farming skillz and learning the ways of speculating on the AH might save me here.  All I have to do is outfit one person after all.  The instance campers can get their nice drops and as long as they sell them once in awhile, hopefully I'll be able to buy them.

Sounds like the trick is to have a well established, 5-person group in play long before reaching the high-end instances.  Clearly, their design goes contrary to what the first 50 levels of WoW would lead you to expect. 

I wouldn't know the first thing about playing my Warlock in a group, as I haven't done it yet.  I was an Enchanter in EQ, so I know how to work as a team -- I just need to get in there and do it, the sooner the better.

BTW, are battlegrounds supposed to provide comperable equipment when they go live?  I guess I should actually read about them.  If they run anything like the AH in Ironforge, though, I don't see how they can do anything but suck.

A large-scale, lag-free gankfest would be ideal for me.

IE: when the game becomes EQ.

Most good, high level, difference making instance drops are bind on pickup, I think.  We'll be suck with hoping some of the random, word drop lvl 55+ blue andpurple make it to the auction house.  There aint a whole lot of it at the moment.

There are alot of misconceptions about instances on this thread so i'll try to clarify what i can:

1: Any instance can take as short as one hour to as long as 5, this is starting with the deadmines all the way through UBRS.  Last night we run UBRS twice, it took one and a half hours each time with 15 people (most people take 20 just to be safe).

2.  You don't have to run any instance 50+ times unless you absolutely must have every single .001% chance purple drop there is.  Alot of catasses plan their characters around things like deathstrikers and then bitch when it doesnt drop in 100 runs.  I've run most of the high end instances between 5-10 times each total and every item on me is of blue quality.

3.  Do expect to run them at least 5 times to finish every quest (where a good chunk of the loot comes from) and get a good assortment of items you want.  Of course the guy running UBRS 70 times is going to have better stuff than you, at least you shower regularly and manage to convince members of the opposite sex to sleep with you once in a while.

4.  Unless you don't mind being a good bit less effective than any other player of your level don't expect to be able to equip yourself on the AH past level 50 or so.  There are some very good blue/purple quality craftable items for people with 300 skill, the plans and usually the materials drop in high end instances so don't expect to equip yourself by crafting either.

5.  You need a guild.  Or at least have enough connections to get invited regularly into efficient, succesful raids.  A good guild is the difference between an  OMG-THIS-FUCKING-BLOWS three and a half hour  Strath Baron run with random Ironforge LFG brain dead idiots that ends with a paladin ninja looting bind on pick up mage set legs (been there, never again) to a 45 minute sweet-i-got-two-pieces-of-set-armor and everyone is happy Strath Baron run.

That last point is really the most important.  This is a MMORPG not a lan party, if you went all the way to 60 with only 3 friends which you already knew from before and expect to enjoy the high end content with random morons who you don't know and will never see again you will NOT have a good time.  I started playing WoW with one friend, we joined a small guild with smart people who play well, my guild couldn't run an instance by themselves but we raid every single night with other small, efficient guilds with competent players.  When ever i log in during the mornings and make the mistake of going on pick up raids i always end up kicking myself for it and wondering why anyone would ever go on them.

I can't imagine not playing in the instances, because typical outdoor hunting is not all that fun or challenging for the most part.  There are spots outdoors where it's worthwhile to have a group, or that push you to your limit as a soloer, but not all that many.  The hard-coded level-based miss/resist rates make it frustrating rather than challenging to fight something over 3 levels ahead of you.  Maybe I never looked hard enough, and mowing down mobs is fun in its own way, but instances have always been the meat of the game for me.

The instances are, for the most part, a lot of fun and require solid play and teamwork to get through at appropriate levels (this is why your average b-net jackmonkey only does instances when they are 5+ levels above the intended range).  They have good character and atmosphere, nice effort vs reward ratios, and some neat scripted encounters.

That said, I agree with Rasix that the final instances need a lot of work.  Doing Scholo without gimping it with 10-15 people is about as fun as pounding your balls with a hammer for 6 hours.  Strat is only slightly better.  That's 2/3 of your high-end 1 group content right there.  Those instances need to have less trash-clearing and they need save points and/or multiple entrances a la Scarlet Monestary, Uldaman, and Mauradon (which could use a second save point itself).  I think these things are more a matter of "the level 55+ game wasn't half done when they released and Blizzard is slow as fuck to do anything" than an intentional thing though.

It is a bit rough on people who come to WoW without friends and who are not particularly social, because the game does not foster community from 1-50 the way forced grouping games do.

edited for tone

This begs the question, just how much does equipment affect your character's ability?  If they made EQ's mistake of your character basically being your equipment, then I can't understand why pvp at max level will suck for any non catasses.

If that turns out to be the case, i expect most players will stick to pve only.

Xilren

In response to Threash:

Yep, I'm going to have to get a connection with the better organized guilds to make a run at some of the UBRS and other stuff. I really think there's only one guild that's doing UBRS on a consistent basis and that's the uber one.  And you're right, most of the longer instance runs I've seen are based purely on the inompetence of the people running the show.  Maybe your server has people that are a little more with it, but people here can't do anything without it taking for-fucking-ever. 

The problem is finding competent people that can do all of this.  I've yet to come across them on this server.  I've got a "friend" (ie some guy that think's we're chummy) that keeps inviting me to instance runs but they're all disasters.  God, I hate pickup groups.

Perhaps in a couple weeks or a month when more of the guilds mature, I'll take a shot at actually joining one that can handle the raids.  I'm not interested really in Molten Core (I hear this one is old school suck) or Onyxwhatever.   I just want to have some fun in 1-2 hour chunks without other people's stupidity having me headbutt my monitor.  If you say that's possible, then maybe I'll try it. 

Aside: For crafting, looks like I'm going to have to ditch my leatherworking and pick up herbalism now if I want to keep in swiftthistle and fadeleaf (my alchemist friend just fucking quit a couple days ago), perhaps even ditch skinning and take alchemy unless I want to start paying through the roof for potions.  I don't think dropping my 276 blacksmithing (I'm going to seriously cry when I delete that skill) or 170ish leatherworking (eh, never spent much on it)  is going to matter much since I won't be able to get the higher level patterns or most of the incredients.   Beyond alchemy, I just don't think crafting is worth it (well, higher level enchants ARE nice). 

I don't think its that much really.  Easy accessible weapons might have a dps of 35 or so, while rare blue instance drops are around 40.  It definitely helps but wether you ambush someone for 1000 or 1200 its going to freaking hurt anyways.

It's going to be a difference.  I'm just not sure how huge. 

For reference, a friend of mine (that just quit) had a "beef" with the uber guild on this server.  He basically was one of the few people that actually would question their "uberness" and pointed out the ridiculousness of some of their strategies, their dumb as hell policies, and their total ineptness in pvp.   So, they all started getting on his case once in Ogrimarr.  Well, what happened next is pure hillarity.  For background, we're horribly, horribly equipped players.  Him maybe a bit more than myself. 

Well, they started tossing down the duel flags.  He beat every single one of them.  Usually in under 30 seconds.  Here are people rolling around in all blue/purple gear getting roasted by a guy that was still using a Force of the Hippogriff as a main hand weapon and had most of it's gear with level reqs barely over 40.   Their GM was talking the most shit and he probably went down in 10 seconds flat. 

I think player skill is going to matter a lot.  But when the majority lack player skill, the equipment sure is going to help.  Some shitty rogue gets a lot better if he's rolling around with a Deathstriker/Alcor Sunrazor combination.  Some unskilled goon is going to have a chance to wack a talented player if they're rolling around in Molten Core set armor wielding an Ironfoe.  I mean, hell, someone in all upper level raid instance gear is just fucking crazy with the stats.  The true difference might be the stam and int off this stuff. 

I just hope, and I've heard this, that the pvp battleground will have some sort of point buy system for comparable gear.  I've seen muds do it and it has a good effect in lessoning the equipment gap between the uber and non.

If you have the patience to deal with arcanite, you can get some nice things made (at least as a warrior, not so sure about other classes).  You can't get a lot of the best recipes, but I bet you could get a crafter to make things for materials + a small fee.  The arcanite reaper, for example, is an awesome weapon for a PvP warrior.  Arcanite is tedious as hell to get in large quantities, however.

Luckily one of the best backstab/ambush daggers available for a rogue is in BRD but soloable at 60 (you can sneak to him and get him solo).  Offhand, I know people keep mentioning this, but.. how do you "reset" an instance?

Ugg, arcanite.  Getting arcane crystals is a pain, nevermind if you don't have someone that's willing to transmute for you.

Invite someone into your group, zone into instance, do your thing, zone out, make other person group leader, disband from group, reinvite same person into your group, zone back in to reset instance.  Changing group leaders always resets an intance also.

Edit:  Bring a partner unless you are a walking bad ass, that guy is not nearly as easy to solo as people make him out to be.  If you have to solo bring healing potions and shadow protection potions.

I have heard that if you enter an instance with a new group leader, it is reset. You can enter it solo, do you evil deeds, exit, have a buddy /invite you from across the world, and then enter again to a reset. Haven't tried it yet, so grain of salt and all that.

Edit- yeah, what Threash said.

I can second this.  Being a 60 rogue myself with not so great gear, I've easily beat everyone I've challenged.  The equipment gap may be bigger for classes that can't dump 2k damage in 2 seconds regardless, but I don't think it's that big a difference anyways.

I have heard the same thing about Battlegrounds.  I bet you need a sick amount of kills though.

Hm. PvP is highly skill dependant because the forces are reasonably balanced and there's lots of maneuvering. So skill can overcome gear. However in the higher end instances the mobs are not at all impressed by "jousting", have HP well in excess of a player and can hit like trucks. I know I'm still smarting over a 2.2K mortal strike from rend dropping me almost instantly. So in those environments you need skill and gear.

The instances are the best I've seen in a MMORPG. They really make it obvious how dull and cookie cutter the design in EQ was. Some of the early EQ zones (Guk, Blackburrow, Seb) were never matched by EQ after, but WoW blows them away. That said it's absolutely true that they mark a distinct change from the 1-60 levels, and they clearly weren't actually finished on release. However, if I read their intention, the continuation for the time starved / soloist players is either PvP or questing (well, grinding, these quests will be very time consuming but not continuous) towards hero classes. Hero classes including suits of gear. And of course neither of these really exist in the current game nor have anything approaching an ETA.

Right now, skill already play a significant part in 1 v 1 dueling, but in 1 v 1 pvp, theres additional skill involved - alertness, reaction speed, ability to use the terrain to your advantage. All which allows the good player with average gear hold his own against the average player in good gear.

A naked priest can kill another player with the best gear possible with the right terrain and abit of surprsie - like mind controlling their opponent off a cliff/into lava. A good warlock can take advantage of their ability to waterbreath by fighting in deeper water, and fearing their opponent when they are desperately surfacing for a breath. A cunning hunter will shoot through aggro mobs at their target, forcing either a wide detour, or a run through aggro in order to chase him/her.

When its group vs group, tactics and cooperation is the next lvl of skill, and I believe that a good team with average gear will easily beat a average team with good gear - by a greater margin than the 1 v 1 example above. A team that works together is force multiplied, while a disorganised group is only as good as 5 solo players attack another team.

Slick.   Note to self - don't piss anyone off...

Well, at least I know when I'll quit. 6 more levels to go. Since I can never hook up with folks from here (in any game, heh), I haven't grouped up since...shit, a defense of the crossroads when I was in my 30s.

But then, my playstyle is invalid and I should be playing single player games  :roll:
100% my line of pvp thinking. The greatest thing about pvp is that you can outsmart the opponent, tough to fool hardcoded AI (or easy depending on how you define the word 'fool'). I was always playing mind tricks on opponents in bf1942.

They will be. There are going to be 14 honor ranks I believe. Each rank opens up more gear for sale on the BG vendor. I dont know if I should say any details, but there will also be a very cheap epic speed BG mount also.

Ooh, looks like I have an in with the local uber guild.  Friend that's quitting played Dark Age with some of their members (plus he's letting me log on his account for free alchemy and transmuting while he's letting it idle, what a guy!).    Now I guess I should go through all of my posts deleting all of the desparaging crap I've said about them incase one of them actually reads the boards.     God, being in an uber guild again (breaking promises to myself is fun!)...  This will be really fucking interesting and probably end very badly.

Morph, thanks for the  good news on the battlerounds. I guess you're in the beta for this or have some nice sources.  Don't get yourself in trouble if you can avoid it. On the subject of mounts, is the epic mount quest for the Horde currently in the game? I don't know a single soul that's completed it.  I've heard it starts in Ungoro, but that's the limit to my knowledge on the subject.

Ravasaur Trainers? Working as intended, they say. The NPCs won't even talk to me at level 60. Even if they did, as with the Winterspring Trainers, who will talk to high level Alliance folks, you'd need the riding skill. That means you'll need to be a Troll for it to be any use.

Interesting, I heard only the top PvP'er gets a chance to get the BG mount.  But I remember your sources in beta, so I trust you more.

I thought the epic mount quest was "just" plunking down 900 gold.  I seem to be missing something.

Ok, maybe I should have used the term lvl 60 mount. Thats the one you plunk down 900 gold for. There is also an "Epic" mount, that you have to be "Exualted" to get the quest for. (I think, ill ask about this). But as it stands right now, you are unable to get your rep to exaulted, due to not having enough quests for faction. Hell, im level 60 and Im not even Revered with any race.

The BG mount will be as fast as the lvl 60 mount (100% run speed), but it will probably take a while fighting in the BGs to get enough honor for one. Also the equipment is REALLY nice. What is great about this, is that you can outfit yourself in really really good top of the line gear, by spending time pvping and having fun in the BGs, and its not neccessary to run the high end instances over and over and over and over to get good enough gear to compete.

From what I have been told (there is only internal beta for BGs) they are really fun and pretty much done. The only problem right now is the insane lag you get when oover 60 or so people gather in one area.

Gotcha. 

All the things that SirBruce said (except content -- I'm not sure WoW really has that much content compared to the competition) and extreme newbie friendliness.

WoW is a polished, simple, highly-accessible game.

The reason why I don't think other games have presented what WoW is is that they didn't have the position in the market that WoW does to pull it off (instead they rely on flashy new ideas to build up player interest) and I think that many would believe that such an easy, unrestricted game lacking in penalties/hardships/challenges would ultimately fail when it comes to subscriber retention.

And it will be interesting to see if they are right on that.  Will WoW be able to keep players for years like other games have?  I used to think it wouldn't at all (I beta'ed and I lost interest in a month, and a lot of beta'ers left with me).  I'm not so sure though.  I think that numbers will definitely fall off but I'm not certain right now if it will die outright or if the numbers will simply fall to what is still an extremely successful number, just not what is currently there.

Gabe.

Gabe I disagree to some degree.

WoW is not just about great execution and simplicity - but style and art.  Their graphics with the low polygon counts would never have been acceptable unless they had the artists that created highly stylized avatars.  If the art here was not compelling - nobody could ignore the low polygon counts.

On style... the game does a great job in providing enormous differentiation among the races and zones.  Compare Thunderbluff (Tauren) to Trisfall (Undead).  The zones differ dramatically.  The quests within them reinforce their respective themes (plains hunters, Necromancy) dramatically.

Certainly what you say is true, but in and of itself insufficient in my view.

I'm not sure how you can say that WoW doesn't have the same amount of content compared to the competition, Gabe? There is a veritable shitton, probably the most content I've seen out of any MMOG at release other than maybe EQ2? I think they beat COH in that regard easily. I cannot think of another MMOG released that had as much content on opening day other than EQ2.

As for style, I guess that is a rather subjective viewpoint.  When it comes to the style of the content I am of the opinion that it really isn't all that important.  I think that gameplay almost always trumps immersive quality.  When I talk about the simplicity I am more talking about the fact that it is a very vanilla MUD, with only a few classes and races, little player customization, a simplistic crafting/economic model, no reason to PvP at launch, etc.

As for content I suppose I say that it doesn't seem to have that much to me because I ran out of it in a month.  I got to the mid-40's where you basically just hang out in Stranglevale and it all seemed incredibly repetitive.  I guess when I talk about content I mean more than just "lots of mobs and places to kill mobs".  I mean different sorts of progressions and engaging game systems.  I think that other MMO's of this generation have problems putting in significant content because they tend to be stretching out in so many directions.  WoW pretty much puts out content of only one sort, i.e. "kill the foozle and collect 8 widgets" style quests.  As such I'm not that impressed by how many of these they have (and it seems to me that EQ2 has both more overall quests and more types of quests).

What Blizzard did is distill down some basic, simple, accessible MUD ideas.  And it made their job much easier I'm sure.  But to me, a hardened MUD'der, it just falls flat.  I need more than just good scripting out of a MUD and I consider this the most important form of "content".

Are we playing the same game? I spent some early 40s in STV (aka alliance central), but I've been over in Feralas a heck of a lot. There are options, you just have to leave the group think and go out and find them. I grew to hate STV, I liken it to Lake of Ill Omen, the place where the uncreative non-explorer types like to sit and level up, just jammed full of people. It does make some quests easier, though.

But over in Feralas, there's plenty of room to hunt (outside a couple quest spots), good skinning, leatherworking quests, and the people are generally nicer and less selfish. In my experience, anyway.
Fun is always a reason.
Again, are we playing the same game? The one that asks you to escort a mechanical chicken through a desert or infect a field of pumpkins with the Plague for the forsaken? There's a lot of basic questing styles, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of cool original quests.
And you're playing mmorpgs why again? They are all basic and simplistic implementations of MUDs, and there are very real reasons they can't do more than they do, which have been run into the ground ad nauseum at sites like this.

So you don't like it. Ok, move on.
Wait. My brain just broke, I can't respond to you any more.

Hi, that's the current MMOG formula, and it's one that Blizzard did effectively. Sure, it's shallow. Have you PLAYED some of the other MMOG's out there? They are the same thing, only Blizzard has at least made the wrapper (the quests) more interesting.


EQ2 may have had as many or more overall quests, but to me, they were of the same type and were MUCH MORE BORING. Like mind-numbingly so. The addition of voiceovers that I wanted to skip through hurt the quests instead of helping them. Different sorts of progression? Well, in WoW, there's crafting and PVP (which has no real 'progression' as yet). In EQ2 there's crafting. Oh yes, and leveling your guild. In DAoC, there's crafting and RVR. I'm not sure what other forms of progression and engaging game systems you are going to find in a MUD that you won't find in an MMOG, other than roleplaying. And roleplaying is entirely dependent on the players not only being given the hooks to do so, but the plaeyrs actually taking the initiative to do so.

Well, that ignores the "get the ammo to some dude and watch as some dwarves practice on a shooting range", it ignores "give this to the prisoner in the cellar and watch him turn into a zombie and fall apart", it ignores "give this potion to the young woman so that she can secretly meet with her lover", it ignores "explore the strange pool in that oasis, then see what it does with these seeds"...

It ignores a lot, simply put.

Read the fucking text instead of just trying to make teh numbers go upp. It's not the game's fault that you don't want a story in your games. Yes, the mechanics are simple, but they work. Right click to interact FTW.

Wow, if I didn't know any better, I'd think World of Warcraft has some of the most interesting gameplay mechanics ever. You guys sound like fanbois (I know you're not).

Even if WoW has introduced some new "patterns" (as Raph would put it) to the MMOG genre, they're still boring compared to games in general. The "pumpkin patch" quests might be pretty neat if all I played was MMO's before -- but seriously, even when an MMOG is doing something new like that, it doesn't excite me. Because it's been done before in countless single player games. And in much better ways at that.

I won't call an MMOG "fun" until it starts really innovating in the multiplayer department, instead of playing catch up to shit that single player games have been doing better for years. Only a few have accomplished that, I think.

edit: goddamn typos

I think people are still confusing mechanics with execution and fun factor.  No mater what game you play, even the venerated pen and paper rpgs, most quests can be boiled down to a very few base mechanics: kill foozles, fed-ex, escort, spy/info type, etc and the like.  There just not that many.

That not important part; what's important is how well they are executed in terms of gameplay, which basically means are the interesting and fun.

Consider you and your fiends in a p&p session doing a tried and true "stop the dragon from rampage our lands" story.  It's basically a typical go here and kill the foozle quest, but what makes it fun is the interactions and plot twiests you have along the way. End result, still go here, kill dragon and shinys for everyone, but with a good DM the story experience transcends the mechanics of the quest.

In EQ, that story line surronding say the Dragon Vox was pratcially invisible.  No story, no immesion, no interesting plot or interactions; just straight go here and kill X.  Hell most quests werent done b/c they were actively unfun (long times, pitiful rewards, uninteresting storylines).

Most quests thus far in WoW are just the opposite.  If you care about such things like story, purpose, timeliness, style and fun factor, they are a very well done rendition of the rpg quest mechanics.

Fer instances, ive been doing the battle of hilsbrad quest line; my last one had me having to find a kill 4 important people, including the town clerk, magistrate, local blacksmith and notable citizen, plus destory the towns charter and steal the town registar.  It's a 4 part kill quest with 2 fedex peices on top.  But, it was a logical escalation of the other mayhem i'd been working in hilsbrad, and being a rogue, i treated it like an assassination mission where i could stealh around and eliminate my targets, steal and destroy stuff, and escape retribution.  I enjoyed it.  Now, I just as easily could have gone with a group to just kill all the people in the entire town and completed the quest by accident that way, but that didn't appeal to me nearly as much.

In short; the mechanics (or patterns) of "quests" in rpgs are the same no matter where you go; that's not what makes them fun or unfun.  It's all about the execution....again.

Xilren

And you people say there's no RP in WoW.  Looks like Xilren didn't get the memo.

They are the same thing, only Blizzard has at least made the wrapper (the quests) more interesting.

It has?  I think that is a very favorable read.  Blizzard has made the wrapper quests very polished certainly.  Interesting?  Umm, how?  How are 99% foozle-killing quests more interesting than the ones we had in text?

EQ2 may have had as many or more overall quests, but to me, they were of the same type and were MUCH MORE BORING.

Umm, err, how much did you play?  Don't get me wrong, EQ2 has it's faults, but I don't see how one could mention quest variety as one of them.  They have flipped over backwards to make interesting sorts of quests for different playstyles.  There are collection quests, guild raids, crafting tasks, guild-leveling tasks, race quests, zone-wide exploration quests, lots of quests that require harvesting/crafting, lore and other book quests, class quests that get their own instances, access quests, epic quests for diehard campers and even epic quests for died-in-the-wool casuals.

WoW is 99% kill-the-foozle-for-bob and are almost all casual in nature (until 60).  I was bored out of my mind with them by Stranglevale (which is also the point in the game where I think the content starts to show as quite thin).

WoW's quest system got a lot of press and fanfare and I'm really left wondering why.  It's polish, polish, and more polish with little innovation or extended gameplay.

As for alternate means of progression there are lots of things that other games have done.  Questing is a big thing.  See the EQ2player metrics and the cool titles you can get in EQ2 for doing heritages, for example.  There is meaningful PvP, see DAoC.  There are game economies that actually work after the first 6 months of the game, see SWG (but don't look to either EQ2 or WoW -- both their economies are pretty much doomed to stagnate, with WoW getting there sooner).  There is social play, guilds that are more than glorified chat channels, etc.  Look at A Tale in the Desert or Puzzle Pirates for a plethora of manners of progression.  Creating static world locations (i.e. houses) is another big form of alternate progression content.

Furthermore, there is simply investing depth into the existing treadmill.  This is a very real form of content.  WoW has a very short treadmill (as does SWG for example).  A lot that has to do with the fact that it simply doesn't have the depth to support a longer treadmill.  If levels didn't wizz by players would be much more apt to realize that zero risk soloing of blues for 60 levels (with occasional breaks to party for quests) wasn't really very deep or meaningful gameplay. 

Look at things from this perspective: why do games fail to deliver lots of content at release?  Ok, art assets and such are an issue, definitely.  But a lot of these games are investing huge amounts of time into the new, amazing systems that they are going to unleash on the world.  WoW went the route of simply deciding not to invest any time at all into any innovative systems whatsoever.  Ok, that's a design choice.  What they got was a really polished, simple, accessible game.  What they lost is a lot of depth to that content.  In the end did they really end up with more content because all of it is fairly 1-dimensional?  I think it better to say that they just lumped all their efforts into one form of content.

---

ell, that ignores the "get the ammo to some dude and watch as some dwarves practice on a shooting range", it ignores "give this to the prisoner in the cellar and watch him turn into a zombie and fall apart", it ignores "give this potion to the young woman so that she can secretly meet with her lover", it ignores "explore the strange pool in that oasis, then see what it does with these seeds"...

If I'm really interested in a good story I'll just pickup a book.  And when I do, I'll likely stay up until 3am reading a couple hundreds pages.  All of that nifty quest dialogue (which sure, is nifty) is tisel probably only about 200 pages worth.

There is a adage about writing that goes like this: "show don't tell".  And it's something that any decent writer needs to learn.  I would say that MUD's/MMO's (the two wards are interchangeable to me) are in the process of learning how to show instead of telling.  WoW tells with reckless abandon.  It tells me that I'm a hero, it tells me that I just saved the day, etc.  And all I really care about is the new quest item I got because eventually I realize that this is all that really matters in the context of the virtual world.  I.e. what matters is what actually happens gamewise, not storywise, because being told that I'm a great hero for the 15th time through some concocted NPC plot loses its charm awfully quick.

What we need, and what I think other games are stumbling to give (to greater and lesser degrees) are games that show you that you are a hero by giving you game reasons to realize your hero-status.  I.e. you are a hero not because npc_01 told you that you are but because you actually did something, in the game, that was heroic in terms of real game actions.

Feeling that way, when I read quest text I will enjoy it -- for about the 15-30s it takes me to read, and then I will move on to what matters, actually playing the game.  What will actually make me feel somewhat heroic is saving someone's ass when they are about to get killed by a mob, pulling off some amazing move that saves my group, capturing a PvP castle, etc. -- stuff that actually involves heroic action instead of  a short grind followed by an NPC's transparent attempts at praise.

I would have to agree here. 95% or so of the WOW quests are of the basic kill X or collect X variety. The cool quest is the exception.

In addition, quest text doesn't get you very far. It's all well and good that the quest text was super-interesting, but in the end I'm still just collecting X tiger hides or Y poison sacs or whatever. As soon as you are done reading the text that's it.

You know what would be cool? If you went on a quest to kill some Centaurs, and the Centaurs said "holy shit, there's the guy who killed my brother let's get him!" and then you quest changed to "live for 5 minutes!" That's showing.

What you guys are talking about is window dressing. The window is the same. Throw a sheet over a shitty couch and it's still a shitty couch. So this time I'm killing 20 centaurs to collect their armbands, and next time it's because they stole some supplies, and the time after that it's because I need some centuar tailes for a potion or some shit. Only the explanatory text is changing.

I have no problem with nice exposition. But that's step 1.
----

I think I'm in the minority here but if I have the choice between killing what I want where I want and doing quests that are just "kill X of Y" I'll take option A and just do what I want. If I feel like collecting those centaur armbands I will, if I don't I'll go do something else. Maybe I'll just go kill some scorpions because I like the look of that zone better.

What if one of the centaurs gave his side of the story, and then asked you to go back and kill the guy who wants them dead?  Then you'd have, you know, a choice.

What if one of the centaurs gave his side of the story, and then asked you to go back and kill the guy who wants them dead?  Then you'd have, you know, a choice.

Then most of the players would just look up the quest and do whatever had the best reward.  Of those who didn't half would get something cool and half would go whine to the forums that they didn't know they were missing out on CoolItemX when by taking the Centaur's side and demand a chance to do the other side of the quest or have it reset (or they'll go play EQ2 of course :wink:).

Flavor text is just flavor.  What matters is anything that actually has a game effect.  I think one of the most common mistakes that players make is thinking that the text actually matters more than that -- to them or to other people.  They think that the world is what someone says it is and not actually what things you can happen in it, i.e. the game mechanics.

StGabe.

I wonder how much you played WoW?  WoW has many of the above:
Collection quests, check.  Guild raids, check. Crafting tasks, check.  Guild-leveling, no, as that concept doesn't exist.  Race quests, check.  Exploration, check.  Harvesting/crafting, check.  Lore, check.  Class, check. Access, I'm not sure what you mean by this.  Epic quests, check (probably not for casuals though, at least not specifically for them).

So let's see, 9/12.  Not too bad.

Being short of time, as to the rest of your post, I'll just say that agree with some of the things you said, but not others.

edit:spelling

Combat system
Diverse combat styles offer unique gameplay. Rogues use combo points. Warriors use rage. Shamen have totems. Talent trees offer real class differentiation (Combat rogue versus assassination rogue; Shadow spec priest versus healing)

Crafting system
Most accessible and fun crafting system that I have seen in this genre.

Don't forget useful - I have shoddy leatherworking skills for my hunter, yet I am able to MAKE better armor than I'm finding.  And then upgrade it with MY OWN armor mods.  I find this to be more than a little cool.

I mentioned another mid 40 level area, Ferelas, that I had been hanging out in. The last few days I've been over in Tanaris. Seeing that you think that the only thing to do for mid40s is hang out in STV, it's easy to see why you think 99% of WoW's quest are kill x mobs.

Because you're a fucking moron.

StGabe, you are starting to sound like one of those assholes who complain in early beta message boards that levelling pace is too quick and that you should "earn" your levels (whatever the fuck that means). If so, stop it. That's one of the main reasons most MMOG's suck, some of the players and designers think that earning the fun is more important than being entertained.

I don't see any of the quests in EQ2 making any more impact on the "world" than WoW. Access quests are just gated content, cockblock moves by game designers who are too lazy to make content challenging or fun, they just want to elongate your subscription. Especially when you meld that access quest to a minimum level.

No, WoW did not innovate. But when you log in, you have things to do that are fairly fun, provided you like the underlying gameplay itself. And unlike most MMOG's at release, it is pretty consistently that way throughout the life of your character's progression. During my time in WoW, I never felt like I needed to go do nothing but sit in one place and kill the same mobs over and over. I always had a quest to do something, and even though at heart, most of them are just "kill x to get y" it was still an assload more interesting than any of the time I spent in EQ2. I saw nothing at all innovative about EQ2, nor do I see anything innovative about WoW.

Well, other than WoW was fun, and EQ2 wasn't.

Oh noes!   :roll:


Except that they were told what each of the rewards would be, prior to making their decision.  And fuck forum whiners.

If so, stop it. That's one of the main reasons most MMOG's suck, some of the players and designers think that earning the fun is more important than being entertained.

No offense, but that is a very unenlightened view of things.  No game designer sets out to make an unfun game.  It's just a stupid idea that wouldn't make any money.  What MUD designers do set out to do, however, is create games that spawn longterm gameplay.  Achievement is fun, well for a large amount of players anyway.  Don't you think that if it really more fun to just give players level 60 at the start and have done with it, that this would have been realized long before muds even got graphical? 

That which is dubbed a treadmill is really a way of setting up a long journey through your game.  While many games can of course make that journey dull and tedious, that is bad design and not some inherent weakness in the treadmill system.  A game that has a shorter treadmill is offering a shorter journey through its world -- i.e. has less content.  Saying that the treadmill is just making you "earn" content is missing the entire point.  What is any RPG (massive or not) but a sequence of challenges that you overcome leading you to the next set of challenges.

A game designer must seek to give his game the depth that will allow players to spend a lot of time "earning" the next step of the system (so that they will actually play longer than they would with a single-player game) without making this boring.  Those that still end up boring are, again, simply examples of bad design.  This is where WoW is relatively weak on content.

And as I said in my original post, the challenge for WoW will be not, "can it sell a lot of boxes".  Blizzard could have sold a lot of boxes of Starcraft2 of what have you, even if it wasn't that great.  It will be: can it keep players around for more than 6 months.  Actually it will probably be a year or more before we know the answer to that as they are still phasing players in.  I mean I doubt they'll lose money either way and I don't actually think it is a bad game.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly -- for about a month and a half.  I just never felt like I was really in a virtual world.  I felt more that I was in an sort of extension of Diablo 2 with no terribly deep gameplay that would keep me after I'd tired of the same copy&pasted foozle-kills.

I mentioned another mid 40 level area, Ferelas, that I had been hanging out in. The last few days I've been over in Tanaris. Seeing that you think that the only thing to do for mid40s is hang out in STV, it's easy to see why you think 99% of WoW's quest are kill x mobs.

I explored to the extent that I could.  I even spent a few hours in the badlands (I think that was it, it's been a while and I could be confused on zone names -- I was one of 3 or fewer people there most hours of the time).  Any argument that is predicated on, "you are just too stupid to find out what is reallly cool about the game" is ultimately not going to be a very successful one.  Especially with a game like WoW that otherwise bends over backwards to cater to its players.

Crafting system
Most accessible and fun crafting system that I have seen in this genre.

Crafting systems that are that simplistic (and thus accessible) existed in text muds 15 years ago.  Every single serious crafter that I knew in Beta quit crafting after a month or two.  Because the crafting system was so simplistic (not to mention inferior to non-craft options 98% of the time) that it was virtually impossible to sustain any longterm gameplay there.  The EQ2 system is slightly better (and has some pretty interesting insights) but is also doomed to stagnate like WoW's -- it will just take longer.

Diverse combat styles offer unique gameplay. Rogues use combo points. Warriors use rage. Shamen have totems. Talent trees offer real class differentiation (Combat rogue versus assassination rogue; Shadow spec priest versus healing)

This drew me to WoW initially, I thought it had a lot of potential.  Unfortunately the boring character customization and the lack of variety in abilities made it still a very shallow system -- in my opinion of course.  I was saddened to find that the resulting system was less interesting than D2's (which had a lot to do with the fact that I actually kept my interest in D2 longer than I kept my interest in WoW).

StGabe.

Except that they were told what each of the rewards would be, prior to making their decision.  And fuck forum whiners.

Then the only impact of your cool flavor is that players get a choice about their reward which is hardly something new.  You are still using static, boring NPC flavor text to attempt to simulate actual choice (which players will ignore and simply take whatever is optimal for their character -- which is the point of my post) instead of creating world-like situations where real choices that actually matter within the physics of the world (i.e. game mechanics) take place.

StGabe.

Don't forget useful - I have shoddy leatherworking skills for my hunter, yet I am able to MAKE better armor than I'm finding.  And then upgrade it with MY OWN armor mods.  I find this to be more than a little cool.

It is.  But it has a very finite window of content.  The higher you climb in levels the less interesting it is (as it becomes easier to simply find better stuff with quests/loot) and when you cap out at 60 you are essentially done with crafting.  It doesn't create any continuing game content like the crafting system of SWG did.

I had a lot of fun blacksmithing until I did everything there was to do.  The market was fun and cool except that what happened over and over again was that the pool of blacksmiths making item X would eventually fill into the point where it became impossible to sell at a profit.  This cascaded up through the levels.  I stayed a little bit ahead of it and so I actually made a profit for a while.  I could sell Jade Serpentblades, for a while, for example, until enough plans for those made it out to different blacksmiths that the market became flooded and it was impossible again to sell at profit (i.e. you couldn't actually buy the components for less than you could sell the item for).

Thus crafting in WoW (and EQ2 and other games) is a source of disposable content, and not a source of sustainable gameplay.  In the end it isn't accomplishing stuff that isn't already done very well in single-player games.  That's not always a bad thing, single-player games can be very fun.  In fact I think it is by channeling successes in single-player games that WoW manages to create an initially very gratifying, polished experience.  The cost however is in the depth of the longterm game.

StGabe.

Ahh, I see the issue. You think content should take months and months and months for even the most hardest of catasses to traverse through. You are a hardcore powergamer.

WoW isn't for you, unless you happen to belong to an uberguild that likes to raid the same shit over and over again until taking down the dungeon is the most scientifically efficient, least fun task ever. WoW is very much meant for someone who doesn't necessarily feel that they HAVE to play every night.

No, it isn't a virtual world, nor was it meant to be. You're one of THOSE types, then. Which means you belong in the group of people that includes Windup Atheist, and should go back to UO or MUD's, because nothing out there is going to satisfy you. Those of us who want to play a game will be over here, playing a game and enjoying it.

WoW has assloads of content, it just doesn't take assloads of time to get through that content.

As for simplistic crafting, it's again crafting for casual players. Anyone can pick it up and make something useful. I think that is a good thing, an improvement over previous iterations of MMOG's, if not an innovation.

Really, if you expected WoW to be innovative, you haven't been paying attention to Blizzard for the last 10 years or so.

Which means you belong in the group of people that includes Windup Atheist, and should go back to UO or MUD's, because nothing out there is going to satisfy you. Those of us who want to play a game will be over here, playing a game and enjoying it.

Uhh, no.  But thanks for trying to uselessly pigeon hole and stereotype me away so that you don't have to talk to me.  The last two MMO's I played lasted me a year and 2 year respectively.  Ultimately I had very rewarding experiences with them and while I realize that these games had significant problems, I think that overall they were a ton of fun.  It just happens that I got bored out of my mind with WoW after only a month and a half and I don't view it with the same bambi eyes that you guys have.

The more I think about it the more I realize that why WoW works is that it is only marginally an MMO.  It is really, 90% a single-player game.  And we know that single-player games can be fun.  But a lot of us want more out of a world.  For all the people who whinge about EQ2 and SWG, they actually are doing pretty well and they do have a large audience.  I love how everyone talks about EQ2's mediocrity at "only" 300k or so subscribers and yet never delves into the real game -- which actually has quite a bit of depth if you look at it.  There is just so much SOE angst out there that people were lined up for blocks ready to say that EQ2 was mediocre before they knew anything about it, and they're still doing it and still don't know that much about it.  I'm not even a fanboy, I stopped playing EQ1 about 5 years ago and I think that EQ2 like all MMO's has it's share of problems.

WoW is a polished, heavily single-player, solo, casual experience.  And I've praised it for what its successes as this.  But let's not kid ourselves here.  Other games don't go for more detailed, sustaining gameplay just because their designers are S&M freaks.  They do it because many players do enjoy complex, sustaining game systems, they do like long, epic-style progressions.

That Blizzard has succeeded through creating this ultimately polished but not very deep experience isn't some huge lesson for the MMO industry (no more than Lineage, with its huge subscriptions, is) or an indictment of EQ2.  Really I think it's just, like I've said, a sort of channeling of single-player successes invested into an MMO to create a sort of extended, more world-like D2.

StGabe.

Really, if you expected WoW to be innovative, you haven't been paying attention to Blizzard for the last 10 years or so.

Where did I ever say that I did?  I  I actually expected something quite a bit like what Blizzard put out.  And I expected it to sell a shitload of boxes -- but always wondered if it could manage good retention (still an open and interesting question).

I think you are replying not to me, but to some stereotype you have of me.

StGabe.

Oops, mispost.

I don't know that how long you played means anything here.  The question is, did you have max-level characters?  Multiple ones? 

WoW is designed for people like me, to wit:  I've had one character.  I've played since release.  He's level 41.  I don't have enough money for a mount.

The question is, did you have max-level characters?  Multiple ones? 

Yes, and no.  And in one of those games, no I didn't hit max level.

StGabe.

I have to agree with others. The only excuse for thinking that STV is the only place to level is not spending any time exploring or even reading the few quests that send you to other zones. Off the top of my head a few other zones in the same level range are, southern thousand needles, desolace, Arathi Highlands, Duskwallow marsh, and the badlands. It's not the game's fault you didn't go looking if you got bored with STV. There are also a few instances geared to the 30+ crowd.

I believe he's talking about EQ2's zone access quests. I think the only comparable thing WoW has is the quests for shortcut/backdoor access to instances. Personally, when I heard you had to quest for access to zones in EQ2 I didn't think much of the idea, but then guild experience sounds pretty lame IMO as well.

After having played EQ fairly steadily over 5 years I'm very impressed with WoW. I find the different play styles required for each class very fun, I think the zone design kicks EQ out of the top spot, and personally I like the questing style, which is just as good as any single player game I've played if you actually read the flavor text rather than just going to thottbot and looking up the answer. Compared to the quests in original EQ, WoW is a breath of fresh air, with no endless camps for rare spawns from rare mobs.

Sadly WoW seems to have a fundamental flaw in it's database architecture which they seem to be trying to fix with the tried and true throw more hardware at it technique. I'm really tired of the loot lag and server crashes.

 

But here's the thing, many of us jaded mmorpg types have come to the realization that a truly deep and dynamic virtual world isn't really what we want, b/c of whole host of issues we're learned about by playing.  And the biggest single problem with the concept is also the one that makes it possible at all; random other people sharing your gamespace.  Having long recognized the absolute assmuchery of 90% or more of the population of ANY such game, the concept of allowing said chuckleheads to have large, meaningful impacts on my game world (b/c it is all about my and only my personal enjoyment after all) is no longer desirable.

That's why in terms of such deep and player responsive worlds, I'm much more interested in seeing something like NWN brought forward; very small population worlds that can be unique with controls on who gets to particiapte in them.  If us lazy bastards would ever put together a persistant mud/NWN world for just the f13 regulars, it would probably be much closer to what you want.

But in terms on a truly large scale (in players) game aimed and the mass market? No way in hell I'm looking for such a virtual world.

I'm settling for a entertaining game that I can play in limited fashion and enjoy.  And thats WoW (and Coh) for now.  I'm not looking for another title i would even WANT to stay subscribed to for 1-2 years and I suspect I'm not alone in that.  Mass market games are all about delivering fun stuff on demand.  So, while I am interested in seeing how subs hold up, I suspect there will be much less bleed off than you expect.  The hardcore gamers will be moving on the next new game anyway (or still raiding new instances and battlegrounds for gear); the non hardcord will probably still be playing along and having fun at their less than meteoric rates.  But make no mistake, the market has spoken; they want GAMES not life commitments.

Makes me wonder what sort of average account lifespan Blizzard was making in their projections.  I would advise thinking you can hold gamers attention (and money) for a full year on average to now be a thing of the past.

Oh yeah, one last thing.  While I would enjoy more varied game mechanics, if given a choice between 1 well executed a fun mechanic and 10 half asses unfinished ones, guess where i'm voting?  Right, for the 1 that works...  Take what works and build on it; in that respect, WoW is a step in the right direction just by getting the "it works!" part done.

Xilren

But here's the thing, many of us jaded mmorpg types have come to the realization that a truly deep and dynamic virtual world isn't really what we want, b/c of whole host of issues we're learned about by playing.  And the biggest single problem with the concept is also the one that makes it possible at all; random other people sharing your gamespace.  Having long recognized the absolute assmuchery of 90% or more of the population of ANY such game, the concept of allowing said chuckleheads to have large, meaningful impacts on my game world (b/c it is all about my and only my personal enjoyment after all) is no longer desirable.

I think the 300k players who played SWG and the 300k players playing EQ2, the however many that play DAoC, all those Lineage and FFX players disagree.  I know I do.  I'd rather just play KotOR, D2, etc., if I want a singleplayer experience.  The appeal of an MMO is entirely in the world aspect for me and I daresay I'm hardly alone.  Some people were just shocked that SWG bombed so bad with achievers.  I am shocked that it did so fricking well without achievers.  It's a game that kept a few hundred thousand players happy with exactly the sort of content you would say is bad.

While many are quick to snidely comment about the mediocrity of EQ2, I think it's clear that it has a very strong niche, that many enjoy it's style of content greatly and that those that truly don't want a dynamic virtual world can go back to more single-player flavoried experiences.  Like I said, WoW isn't some great epiphany about MMO design or an indictment of prior models.  It's just a very restricted, polished, single-player package merged with minimalistic world-like components that does succeed proving the possibility of a merger of two gaming domains if not demonstrating any need for a revolution of some sort in MMO design.

I'm not saying that WoW is a bad game.  Like I said, I thoroughly enjoyed it for at least a month and a half -- which is pretty good if compared to a singleplayer game.  I'm just saying that it should be appreciated for what it is.  I'm also saying that there are two parts of the MMO revenue model: box sales and subs.  And we have yet to see how WoW will do on the latter and I think this is the area that will prove really challenging for what they offer.  I mean the fact that blizzard sold a lot of boxes of a game is really a no-brainer.  What follows out of that is what will actually be interesting.

StGabe.

But make no mistake, the market has spoken; they want GAMES not life commitments.

And naw.  I don't think so.  Like I said, it's a no-brainer that WoW got lots of box sales and initial subs.  So what?  Anecdotally I can say I've already seen players coming back to their other games and it's a process I don't think we have any reason to believe won't accelerate.  And the other MMO's are still doing just fine.  Reports of the death of EQ, et al., have been grossly exaggerated.  Blizzard is still trading heavily on their name, and on a short-term singleplayer game which has brought a lot of non-traditional gamers into the mix -- which is good for Blizzard's bottom line but not necessarily bad for the other MMO's.  If the average WoW player plays 6 months and moves on (but tries another MMO) then it could even be good for those who games who have kept to a more depth-oriented, retention-based model.

StGabe.

That's great. Except XT didn't say that is what he wanted. He (like me, and many others) wants an interesting game experience that can be shared by other people. What I want is to be able to play by myself when I want, play with my friends when I want, and restrict the access to my gameplay experience only to those I deem necessary or deserving. I don't want to play a game that forces me to interact with every single mouthbreathing jackass that subscribes. I want to be able to experience most or all of the content at my leisure, with MY friends.

WoW works for this. You can play it like Rasix- a small group of dedicated friends who adventure together nightly. You can play it like I do- a few friends, some guildmates, several characters, and advancing at my own rate. Sure, I skip some of the instances when they are level appropriate. Why? So I don't have to deal with the fucktardery that is inherent in the vast majority of pickup groups. I wait a couple of extra levels, and do it with my buddies. Or I skip it altogether, then hit it later with another character whose level is more in line with some of the newer guildies.

Just because I don't want to play with hundreds of random assholes a night doesn't mean I want to play a single player game. Multiplayer =! ALL players.

That's great. Except XT didn't say that is what he wanted.

Nor did I deny that he wanted what he said he wanted. *smirk*

What I was arguing against was not his personal preference but rather that WoW's current sub's are not an indidtment against other MMO models.  That WoW created it's own MMO/Singleplayer meld of sorts that created a new audience doesn't mean that there isn't still a huge audience of players interested in the more dynamic, involved styles of MMO play.

In fact it is rather my point that one shouldn't project from the fact that a certain number of players like X to saying that anything that isn't X is bad.

StGabe.

A collection of quotes from me, ranging from when I first posted here, to within the last couple days:




I don't want a virtual world.  I just want a game less linear than Diablo.

I too am interested in what the WoW dev team will do to aid retention.  Their decision to make a highly polished reward based PvP system, is a very good idea for holding interest and aiding the solid base from which the game is to build upwards from.  However, what is to happen afterwards in the following years?  Traditionally, we would see mudflation and more large raid-group encounters.  This isn't a problem for me, as I like that kind of stuff, but it seems to disillusion a lot of the more casual players. 

Blizzard is trying very hard to appeal to both casual and hardcore players alike, and they've broken the mold in a lot of subtle ways to do this, (Rest xp, casual questing and crafting systems) so I think I'll stick around to see what's up their sleeve.

Correct. You do indeed need 5 people for the most part, but a really good team can do even high end instances with 4 sometimes.



Wrong. I've had a priest in umm..maybe 2 instance runs. (They're very rare on my server.) You can easilly run instances without a priest, you just need players of hybrid classes who know what they're doing. Druids make awesome priest replacements. Paladins can do it ok, though you really need 2 to replace one priest.


Our typical instance groups look like this: 2 Paladins, a mage, a rogue, and a druid. We do ok. Sometimes if it gets chaotic things go badly but in general it's alright. Lot of ressing power in that group so it's rarely a party wipe. Sometimes the druid has to go bear form to hold aggro but it all works out. We've gone all the way through umm..everything except Molten Core this way.



Damn straight. Some of the later instances pretty much eat up an entire weekend day.


This is frustrating to me also. The other Pally and the mage and I are usually ready and spend 30 minutes waiting on the druid and rogue.

You think SWG isn't trading heavily on their name? If not for that name, and SOE's marketing muscle, I suspect they would have gone the way of Earth and Beyond long ago.

Also I am not in agreement with this characterization as single-player game.  Solo friendly != single player.  Forced grouping, while it has its good points, isn't the only game in town.  I thought you people were the ones wanting innovation.  Well, solo friendliness is an innovation given what this genre has come up with up until now.

You think SWG isn't trading heavily on their name?

Absolutely it was.  And while that got people into the game it didn't keep them there.  While many concentrate on the failures of SWG (and oh my they are there), that has to be balanced by the fact that they actually did keep a lot of players with what they did offer (which was more than just the SW license).

I thought you people...

You people?  Umm, who are they and why am I one of them.  Whatever you "think" about me is likely wrong.

Also I am not in agreement with this characterization as single-player game. ... Well, solo friendliness is an innovation given what this genre has come up with up until now.

I said that WoW uses successful characteristics from single-player style games heavily and merges them with world-like features.  I didn't say that isn't an innovation of a sort (although I think we have to careful -- mixing two known quantities is a different sort of innovation than trying to tackle completely new problems which is a lot of what some of the edgier games are trying to do).  In short I think we're saying roughly the same thing here.  Genre-mixing of this sort certainly can work.  But mixing genres or making new ones doesn't necessarily reflect or alter the course of the past genres.  That WoW made a more solo-friendly MMO and is at least having an initial success with it doesn't mean that the MMO industry prior to this was a failure or that the MMO industry of the future must mimic Blizzard (which is being implicitly stated by a lot of people who tout WoW over EQ or more "virtual worldy" type games).

I am not saying that WoW is not fun, that people who think it is fun are somehow stupid or wrong to like it, etc.  I am only saying that its successes should be taken with a grain of salt.  Being a different sort of beast, WoW provides different sorts of things, to an audience of players much of whom are new to the MMO scene, and will face different sorts of challenges (like retention).  And it probably won't displace SOE, et al.  It may even help them in the long run by bringing new players into the MMO gaming world who will leave WoW after a while and go on to try out some of the more deep offerings in the field.

Also, EQ2 is actually fairly solo friendly too these days (I made level 20 in 20 hours for example, almost completely solo).  When it comes to the SOE games, everyone seems to want to talk only in absolutes and bring a lot of preconceived notions to the table.  And in so doing they completely avoid actually talking about what these games really have in them.

StGabe.

Well said.

But, as a company, they're still the Devil, right ?

Whoa there, no need to get defensive.  In this case it was more of a sideways crack at Windup, referencing he and my earlier conversations.

I guess there is a good chance that we are saying the same thing.  I definitely don't think all games should be like WoW in the future. And previous MMOGs are certainly not failures, though I think they failed to live up to their potentials for reasons that have been hashed and rehashed here and elsewhere. 

But I do think that WoW's innovative idea of making the game fun from the start, as opposed to having to work to get to the fun, might retain enough new players to expand the space and make it worthwhile for people to spend money making really innovative and interesting new additions to the space.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Most of us bought and played Everquest 2. It did release first, after all, and it had that shiney preview demo. Very few of us made it past the initial month.

It's amusing to see the rise in EQ2 fanboi-ism lately. SOE's patch rate combined with Blizzard's execution problems has really energized their base.

But I do think that WoW's innovative idea of making the game fun from the start, as opposed to having to work to get to the fun

See here's where I think a lot of people get it wrong.

There are a significant number of people who really enjoy the early levels of EQ, et al.  I am one of them, as an example, although I'm trying to speak for more than just my experience.  It's not that these games aren't fun until you get to the end.  It's that these games are not fun to some people who don't feel that they can have fun until they get to the end.

Accessibility just does it for some people.  A greater sense of achievement/challenge does it for others.  EQ shines in the latter, sometimes at a cost to the former.

I think a big problem with discussing these games is that everyone is so plugged into their own conception of what "fun" means that they fail to consider other ways in which other people have fun.  Which is really the whole point.  To those who like WoW, great.  But the "fun" you experience with it isn't somehow a "better" fun than EQ, it is just one that appeals to a different set of people.

StGabe.

It's amusing to see the rise in EQ2 fanboi-ism lately. SOE's patch rate combined with Blizzard's execution problems has really energized their base.

I hope you're not calling me a fanboy -- because if I am I'm probably a Rogue fanboy or a ROM fanboy and certainly not an EQ2 fanboy. 

But the thing is, the patches are helping a lot and have actually removed a lot of the things that people are still complaining about and so those complaints are obsolete.  Solo'ing is a lot better for example (as I referenced in my post).  A lot of the more arbitrary restrictions like access timers are gone.  The stuff remaining is largely there for real game reasons that have to do with balance and challenge and not foisting arbitrary gates on players.

And yes I realize that people played EQ2.  I'm just not sure that they have followed the changes since release or that they were really open to the EQ2 experience even when they were playing it.  There was such a huge willingness/readiness to condemn EQ2 and almost all of the opinions you see about it are extreme and exaggerate greatly.  Just as there was a huge willingness/readiness to embrace anyting Blizzard put out.  I admit that even I got swept up by the latter, I expected to be playing WoW at this point -- but I got into beta and got bored before it was even done.  Even now few people are willing to admit how wrong they were when tthey put forth claims that Blizzard would finally release a bug-free MMO with no release hitches, all the promised content, etc. (huge DB problems, huge queues & downtimes, no meaningful PvP, little character customization, and many other features went missing).

Anyway, there are a ton of misconceptions about EQ2.  You don't have to be a fanboy to point those out.  I think we're seeing a sort of anti-fanboy dynamic creeping up.  Instead of the typical fanboy that cannot fathon that anything about their beloved game is imperfect, the anti-fanboy cannot conceive that anything about a game works or that anything they didn't like actually did have a purpose and might have created fun for a lot of other players or a better longterm game.

StGabe.