f13.net

Details here. (http://www.blizzard.com/press/031705-worldwide.shtml)

Impressive.   I'm going to preempt some people here by saying the following.:

- Fix <insert server name here>.
- Nerf shaman, rogues, and everyone else.
- Hire some more devs.  Hire more coders.  Common, throwing more resources at a problem always works!
- Nerf Koreans.
- That's good but fix <insert bug here>. 

Ok, see THAT'S the way to release subscriber numbers, you bitches. Over 1.5 million SUBSCRIBERS. Not registered users, not boxes sold, not concurrent users online nightly, fucking subscribers.

THAT is a number you can chart, motherfuckers.

Woot!

Good to see.

Now if the sub numbers for CoH could increase a bit.

As discussed elsewhere - this also brings new hope for the industry.  I would love to know how many subscribers are new to MMORPGs in this number.  This expanded base for the entire industry can only foster more game development, more products and ultimately more competition.

(Happy B-day Rasix!)

Since I forgot to add it:

Everquest Pwned.

That's amazing, particularly considering the fact that the game is not doing that well in Korea.

I am now confident that WoW really has saved online gaming from Star Wars Galaxies.

Viva la Everquest Clones!  :cry:

Lessons of WoW:

1) Graphics do not have to be cutting edge realistic, just interesting
2) Quests for exp, motherfucker!


What else?

The presence of controlled, consensual PVP does not turn off the majority of gamers.

EDIT: More gamers prefer a quest treadmill to a camp treadmill.

Koreans don't play anything that doesn't require 50 hours of grinding per level. I mean, how are they going to shank eachother in net cafes over a game where a day or two of play can place you equal with your "rival"?

I replaced PvP with "sex" in my head and laughed my ass off.

No particular order
1. Seamless world is nice
2. Travel is not a headache; enough to make a decision to go to zone X a deliberate one, but even pre mount the hearthstone plus windriders/zeps/boats make getting around palatable even for time constrained folks.
3.  Tradeskills are all useful and doable out of the box for everyone; any toon can be a crafter.  Just playing they will see resources to collect for use; you'd be nuts not to pick up a skill or 4 b/c it's painless
4.  Loot system has tons of shinies for people to jones over, but not at the expense of balance.  So far.
5.  Rest system is really well thought of; helps casuals without hurting catasses
6.  Death penalty that is very minor
7.  Which means pvp doesn't automatically turn people off
8.  Tons of quests to keep people moving around and doing stuff; any game that lets you get a quest from a beer keg is ok by me :)

Again, not revolutionary, just well done.  Now lets see if they can manage to keep all these folks subscribed beyond 3 months.  Im guessing yes.

Xilren

Noticed something about PvP deaths the other day:

There is a consequence of dying, the more you die in a certain amount of time, the longer it will take for your respawn timer to wear off.

If you die multiple times in a row, it WILL take you longer to rez.

You suck at PVP Mr Hat. :P

- You guys forgot one: A large chunk of the potential playerbase does not appreciate forced grouping.

The most obvious and unfortunate one:

Name-recognition is the #1 reason people buy games, by far.

We've known this rule for some time, but for some reason I thought it didn't apply to MMORPGs.

Up to Star Wars: Galaxies, I'd believe with you. After that one ticked off all the people it did, I don't think name recognition really flies much in this sector of the industry. WoW got an unbelievable amount of press and exposure and the no NDA thing really paid off. I don't think name recognition will really impact their sales all that much. Particularly due to it's lackluster showing in Korea at the moment.

There are more people masturbating to Slave Girl Leia porn right this very second than there are people who have ever heard of Azeroth in their entire lives.

On WoW's numbers, the real test for WoW will be retention.  There's no doubt that WoW has 300-400 hours of A+ content for powergamers and casual gamers alike.  There's some doubt as to how many of those people Blizzard can keep up with after the release content is burnt through.

Unruly and overpowered epic monsters at the end of raids may get an A+ for effort, but A+ content? Please. It was done decades ago in MUDs.

WHen I think of A+ content, or AAA content as it were, they are the things that create shock and awe. Like the first time you ride one of the vehicle animals and go from one town to another without loading.

Ragefire Chasm, the low level horde instance was not shock and awe. It was annoy and frustrate. I'm pinning 10-20 hours of actual AAA content. As far as entertaining content goes, depending on how easily amused you are, I guess you could extrapolate it to 300-400 hours. But even then you'd have to count every time you mine copper, skin an animal or use the auction house as "content."

This all applies to every MMOG. There are no innocents here. Every online game out right now commits this crime. CoH does it with repetitive mission layouts. EQ2 does it with...a lot. I just realized I was about to go through every game out there right now. But then I'd get to Neocron and FoM and other games, and just get depressed. I'm not in the mood to be depressed. Let's just say, 300-400 hours of content is a smelly pile of bullshit.

"A+" is a bit strong, but the overwhelming majority of people I have spoken to have enjoyed WoW from 1 through 60+ doing some of the level 60 instances.  That takes 300-400 hours to do.  It is after that point where the complaints seem to begin in earnest.  You are right that there isn't 300 hours of "Jesus that's awesome" content like taking your first griffon ride or fighting Archaedus the first time, but I don't think it's realistic to expect that on a sustained basis.  A good single player game like KOTOR has about 6 minutes of A+ content if that is your standard.

Now I understand that there are some people who hate it because it isn't UO 1998 with new skins, isn't MMOCounterstrike, and/or doesn't have a /blowjob command.  It is, however, a game that most people think is better than EQ (at least for 300+ hours).  AC, AC2, EQ2, DAoC, SB, UO, AO, CoH, SWG et al all failed to acheive that; the numbers just don't lie.  While the hip, cynical position around here is that WoW is a shitty game that just so happens to be less shitty than all the other games, I think that the relative failures of those games demonstrates that making a MMOG is just plain hard.

It isn't about being hip or cynical. It's about WoW giving us what we expect. Nothing new frosted with the same flavor boredom. New and Improved with 5 months of being incapable of fixing database issues.

And yes, making an MMOG is just plain hard and I don't think it's going to get easier until a developer says: A. To hell with experience and levels, B. To hell with non-twitch gaming, C. To hell with narrowband users.

The last of which may bring along reason to actually fix A and B.

3. Thematics (race cultures e.g. Thunderbluff, Undead zone etc.); Alliance vs. Horde

4.  Good Class system.  A minor improvement on EQ - a dramatic improvement on EQ2.

5.  Good use of a license.  A tremendous job in translating War Craft III into first person perspective.

6.  Ample solo content (that provides meaningful exp and reward).

7.  Decisions in character development.  e.g. Talents - you can't have them all - so pick carefully.

8.  Quests and NPC events. (Centaur NPCs attacking orc outpost we can participate in; humorous quests e.g. like waking peons with a foreman bat so they resume wood chopping).

9.  PvP... more to come with Battlegrounds.  Even the current PvP system is interesting with the attack on gaurds - bringing you into pvp - is incorporated into some quests.

I think it is, because WoW didn't give me what I expected.  What I expected was AC2 or SWG quality entertainment, because I really thought that this was all the industry could give.  In my deepest, most shameful fantasies, I thought maybe, just maybe, WoW could deliver EQ quality entertainment.  That's all I thought possible going in, whereas you still seem to think /blowjob was on the table.  We just went from The Great Train Robbery to The Jazz Singer and you are complaining that it isn't The Wizard of Oz.  We have a looooong wait for that.

On your A/B/C, I agree with C, disagree with B and probably on A, which makes me suspect that your The Wizard of Oz may be more like Too Fast Too Furious, but that is at least 2 different threads worth of material there.

That was your mistake. I never expect AC2 (particularly not AC2!) or SW:G from anything. First of all, looking at the pre-release design docs, WoW and SW:G aren't even REMOTELY alike. All the way down to money denominations and base crafting skills. They share nothing of value in common.

Though I wouldn't have minded SW:G's resource system and the pre-urbanization economy. But then, I'd also like the housing system of SW:G in a somewhat controlled environment. I like decorating houses in a "Kill all Alliance" sort of way.


This is surely a case of you simply not being good at twitch gaming. It's not that you disagree with it, it's that it's *too hard.* And if it's not, I've no clue why you'd want to keep this same drab hotkey ridden shit combat we're stuck with right now.

Levels suck. I'd prefer leveling up my items (mod-style, Deus Ex) to leveling up my character. Removing non-twitch gaming would be the first step to removing levels.

I already had this number from GDC, but had I charted it, HaemishM wouldn't have believed it.  Funny how that works.

Bruce

You aren't Blizzard. Picking fights is stupid. Don't be stupid.

I don't die much.  A warlock mentioned it to me.

I refuse to play World of Warcraft because it is all the slot machines in Vegas distilled down into a single drop of exquisite ambrosia explosion (AKA a giant fucking crack rock in the biggest crack pipe this side of the Rio Grande). I don't hate it but I know I can't play it because it is too good at what it does. I would rather not be party to a 400 hour orgy of pull the lever for the blinky lights.

IN YOUR OPINION.

Would you please, for the love of God, learn that we are all different little snowflakes and that we all have different opinions.  Your constant 'stone tablets from the mountainside' way of posting is really starting to grate.

Fact is, WoW is fantastic, in my opinion.  A stunningly impressive and fun distraction for me, the wife and the bruv from what would otherwise be a brutal and short little life.

Stop pissing on everyone else from a great height please.  Thx.

Way to go ignoring the other 3 posts I made and picking one of the replies out of the middle. Would have been a lot easier to just say "I agree." For future reference, the word WoW in your quoted bit could have been replaced with anything post EQ1. Hell, anything post Tele-arena and many early muds (short of the narrowband bit).

Don't be daft.  I've read all your posts in this thread and they pretty much say the same damn thing :

1 - WoW is just an everquest clone.
2 - Name recognition doesn't matter
3 - WoW compares unfavourably with Muds.  Ragefire was somehow bad.  Mining/skinning/auction housing is not fun.
4 - Wow didn't give us what we 'expect'.  Boredom and database issues.  STUPID A.B.C list.
5 - 'Drab hotkey ridden piece of shit'.  LEVELS SUCK OMG.


And, do you know, I disagree with pretty much everything that you posted in this thread ?  Really, pretty much the only thing you and I agree on is that SWG sucks the marrow of the earth.  And hey, that's not really news.  Check every post I've ever made on the subject of SWG...

My point, which I think you're missing, is that I disagree with you.  And, so far, another 1.5 million subscribers are getting something out of it too.  What really fucks me off is the way you piss on it every time and, as far as I can tell, you don't even play it anymore because it's 'not for you'.

Well, gee, that's great.  Stop bloody haunting the WoW Forum then ?  Just a thought ? 

There's a fuckton of people on this board at the moment that are banging out their own drums too bloody loud.  From 'UO was great and nothing has even approached it' to 'WoW just sucks' to, yes, I'll admit it 'SWG is BLOODY AWFUL.'  It's just reasoning that you can't argue with nor get to grips with.  I KNOW that Big Gulp, for example, is sick fed up of fantasy and liked CoH a lot.  That's cool.  What he doesn't do so much is come into every fantasy thread and say 'it sucks and CoH was better'.  Well, not much anyway.

I'd just like a little more signal in my noise and I can't get it for all the people screaming things down.  I'd also like the 'mememememe' centric amongst us to please stop.  I know that you're looking for the 'next best thing' and I know that you've been sorely dissappointed so far.  But, hey, don't you have a job in the industry ?  Go to it, young man, and good luck !  Get these negative posts to the game development and turn them into positives.
Turn that frown upside down !!!  Or summat.

That's all.  Please ?

Less trolling, kthxbye.

Bruce

I received "SWG quality entertainment" from a kidney stone once.  Funny that the design docs for a kidney stone and SWG have nothing to do with one another. 



This is surely a case of you having no idea what you are talking about.  It's like you are channeling Captain Ebolter & crews' "the only possible reason people don't want unrestricted PvP are ones who suck at it."  I don't dislike twitch because I suck at them.  I used to be pretty good, but not great, at them and could presumably become so again if I ever saw a twitch game that I wanted to play.  Actually, I still play fairly twitchy console sports sims at a pretty decent level.  I don't want a twitch MMOG because I think the idea is fucking stupid.  Punch the monkey is fucking stupid.  Down-Down-Forward-Back-X-what-the-fuck-ever for Liu Kang to turn into a dragon for TEH FATALITY is fucking stupid.  "The quality of the game is directly proportional to the button mashes per minute" is a fucking stupid design mantra (and one the EQ2 team appears to have taken to heart with its crafting and heroic opportunity systems, both of which suck monkey balls).  Hell, DDR is the twitchiest game ever invented and it's the stupidest thing I have ever seen in my life.
 
Civilization is the best series of games ever made, and they have no twitch.  Adding some twitch "punch the monkey to win the battle" mechanic would have made it a joke.  Ditto the great single player RPG's, which have little to no twitch.  Give me a little bit of thinking over MASH MASH MASH WHERES TEH RED BULL MOMMY !!1?!1 MASH MASH I CAN'T FEEL MY THUMB ANYMORE !!11! MASH MASH any day.  Do I think there is room in the market for a MMOFPS-style "Planetside done right"?  Yeah I do.  But saying every MMO should aspire to become that game is misguided.


I suspected that this was what you might mean, hence the "probably" caveat.  As long as there is some form of character advancement, I don't care what they call it.  But I think your quibble with level based games is trivial.  Level advancement and equipment advancement could have the exact same effects, so it seems rather silly to think this is a major issue.  Neither has anything to do with twitch gaming.  It's just a minor matter of flavor.

I love me the WoW, but would also love to see someone attempt to do a twitch based MMORPG. Controls of Soul Calibur or even Ninja Gaiden in an online peristant world would be pretty damn interesting imo.

Name recognition doesn't mean shit for a subscription. It might get you to buy the box, but it won't get you to stay if the game is refried ass.

Also, note that WoW is close to 4 months old in North America and still has 800,000 SUBSCRIBERS. Do the math. At $14.95 per month, that is $11,960,000 DOLLARS PER MONTH in revenue. If only 1% of that was profit (and I'm sure they make more than 1% of the sub fee as profit), that's $119,600 PROFIT per month. JUST FROM NORTH AMERICA.

I fully expect to see all Blizzard employees wearing hats made of money at e3.

Another thing to bear in mind is that everyone seems to be saying 'I just wonder how they retention figures will go.'  Well, to be honest, they're released a MMOG that wins an award for 'most likely to be mistaken for a single player game'.  They've also managed, through clever marketing technique to bring the whole raft of Battle net morons on their side.  You know, the guys that are STILL PLAYING FUCKING STARCRAFT ONLINE.  It's also, as stated, an exceptionally polished and fun game in it's own right.

I can't believe with this in mind anyone has any long term concerns about retention.  Indeed, the way I see it, it can only be a massive moneyspinner for them, since in order to retain they just need to keep sticking in more content and if there's one thing that Blizzard have a proven record on, it's smashing out the 'next gen' expansion pack.

They're just damn, damn, damn good drug dealers and I think they'll keep the crack whores on this game for quite some time.

Call me a troll one more time and I swear to god, I will set your stringy shitty hair on fire at E3. If you haven't noticed, the first thing you did in this thread was fucking troll. Goddamn, you truly are f13's retard.

See now we aren't discussing WoW. We're discussing the chances of people not getting bored with an mmorpg. Warcraft III, II, and Starcraft have the ultimate staying power they have because of a host of reasons over which Blizzard has done little. They've created good STRATEGY GAMES. All of which I happen to own, because they really are rather incredible streamlined experiences. And take skill. That's right, skill. I would not be surprised in 6-8 months if many of the people who left Starcraft and Warcraft III went back to them because they miss the pure competition of a good 15 minute skirmish. Quite simply, it's a different experience, one that isn't really repeated in the industry. It's closest competition is shit (Armies of Exigo, Battle for Middle Earth, DoW - comparatively speaking), and the only people who are going to create a game to supercede them is Blizzard.

I expect a large amount of cannibalization this time next year (or whenever) Starcraft II comes out. Either that or there won't be any cannibalization if Blizzard managed to not grab many of their b.net kiddies. Which is looking more like what's going on given the number of people that still play on b.net.

I do however think that Blizzard will be able to hover above the 1million subscriber mark and not have a problem. Assuming, of course, that servers don't really start imploding. They're dealing with forces right now that are quite out of their control. And in retrospect, the whole bittorrent thing might not have been a bad idea. Given how much server hammering goes on in the game, some people might still be trying to get the launch day patch if not for bittorrent.  :evil: But really, I don't think it's about player retention, all they have to do is keep the number of new players higher than or equal to their churned players. That probably won't be a problem.

I like WoW. There I said it.

It's not a fantastic game. It IS Everquest done better. In case no one noticed, Everquest had the best retention figures in the industry this side of Korean Lineage style games. So why the fuck would anyone be worried about retention? And why is anyone questioning WoW's retention? It's 4 months and counting in the US people, and they shattered EQ1's subscriber numbers by almost double. They could lose almost half of their entire player base tomorrow and STILL have a more commercially successful MMOG than any other one released in the U.S. Also, I have no idea why people still think CoH is not successful at retention. Last reports are that it is still above 100k (more like 120k) in the U.S. alone. That's without a paid expansion, and only one new SKU at retail. I think we've all started to lose perspective when that is considered a retention failure.

There are only 3 things that WoW has done to innovate over Everquest:

1) Quest experience is more important to overall advancement.
2) Every server has PVP (though arguably this is not that innovative since it's almost directly stolen from DAoC)
3) It has instanced the content that is likely to be most hotly contested (also not totally innovative considering EQ's Lost Dungeons of Norrath, and Anarchy Online's use of instanced higher-level dungeons)

In the MMOG industry, STABILITY is a fucking innovation. Not having your game's client and/or server shit itself daily is a fucking innovation. Innovation in MMOG's is a low bridge, and most seem willing to play it like it was a limbo stick. Blizzard aimed low and almost hit the mark. Their continuing technical issues with database, login and stability is somehow not hurting them significantly, which I think proves that these games are truly addictive.

WoW doesn't suck. It is also not a messianaic nirvana machine. It is a fun MMOG, and it is the new reigning king among MMOG's.

What I heard on Elwynn Forest general chat yesterday on my alt:

"This game isn't innovative or dynamic enough."

Add that to the list of WoW discussion pre-empts.

I love you Schild, I really do. But, I don't think anyone is gonna take anything you say about WoW seriously. You've had a serious hate-on for this game for as long as I can remember. At this point you're emotionally invested in being anti-WoW as you've poured so much energy into it.

As for retention, my guild has lost maybe 5 or 6 members, and most of those have moved to other servers and not quit the game in its entirety. The only major complaint anyone has is how slow Blizzard is to update things.

It doesn't take me much energy to hate on shit. Particularly not MMOGs. If it wasn't WoW, it would be whatever the flavor of the month MMOG is, I just don't see MxO being worth hating on. It's going to flop around like a salmon on dry land. WoW is just an easy target since many, MANY of it's fans are turning a blind eye to some of the same shit they've complained about in past games.

Ok, well here's a question then. Why are they turning a blind eye? And let's not use the Blizzard fanboi argument because while it'd work for the MMO newbies, alot of F13 people like it. Take me for example: I own Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 and Starcraft but I haven't played any of them for a large chunk of time. The longest was probably Diablo 2 because I got caught up in the whole acquiring loot online thing.

So why are WoW players ignoring these issues?

I'd like to give you an answer. But it seems that there's no rational explanation. I lasted in SW:G for 8 months from launch day. I lasted in WoW for 3 weeks from launch day precisely because it presented me with nothing new. I'd done it all before in other games. And the graphics weren't a hook for me. I'm very easily willing to overlook disliking graphics though. I really think the game was everything I liked and disliked in MMOGs - again. Yet somehow, many MANY mmog veterans are still putting around Azaroth. This sort of unpredictable behavior can't be charted. And really, I hope it provides some of you with a years worth of content, but at this current patch rate, I just don't see that happening.

My rational explanation is that I'm not a hardcore MORPG player.  The only ones I have played are UO, EQ, and SWG.  WoW is really not more of the same to me, because I haven't played DAOC, SB, etc.

WoW is similar to EQ, but with important differences.  I would have liked EQ a lot if it hadn't been for:

- The amount of time that it wastes making you walk almost everywhere
- The enraging boredom of getting killed and having to spend the next hour recovering shit from your corpse
- Not to mention sometimes losing a whole playing session (or more) worth of xp in the process
- Most mobs of equal or even lower level being able to kick your ass to force grouping
- The hours that it would often take to find a group and get everybody in the same place,
- When key group members die, it can mean sitting on your ass for up to an hour or more waiting for them to get back.
- Spending so much time looking at the fucking spellbook during downtime that I read the LotR trilogy, and several other books, exclusively while medding in EQ.

WoW remedied every one of those problems.



I don't see what's so unpredictable about it.  It's finally a chance to play a MORPG without having to devote blocks of hours of playing-time per session to accomplish anything.

That is exactly why I am still playing. I know that when I get a chance to play for an hour or two, I can actually accomplish something that advances my character in some way.

I think the quests have little perks.

The world seems alive.  Yesterday I stumbled upon a battle with Centaurs raiding an orc outpost.  All NPCs.  But a few us players jumped in there and could heal and buff our side.  A peon even emerged to try and chop wood.  I killed a high level centaur and got exp for it - even though I was very late into the fight.

This made me feel apart of the world.

Today I killed some raptors.  Except to complete the quest I had to place a feather from my kill in each of three nests of the Raptors to ensure they "got the message".  lol.  Nice.

I killed a feared tiger today.  No big deal, except once I got to his lair I had to use this quest given horn to blow on to summon him.  I had no idea what to expect.  Again - the little touches.

Fun + Casual Friendly + Polish= A winner is WoW.

This isn't rocket science.

(1) because it lacks the brutalizing timesinks of EQ, people, even average people, consume content in WoW much more quickly than they did in EQ; (2) Blizzard is slow as fuck at putting out new content; (3) once people are out of content they are more likely to quit, especially because (4) WoW does not force people to develop social bonds like EQ did, and those social bonds can keep people sending in their checks long after the game itself is fun for them.   

Bingo on how I lasted 8 months in SW:G. I still miss the guild I led there.

Do we need to photoshop you up a picture of Calvin peeing on the WoW logo?

I'm simply not that hateful. Once again, but I'll say it slower this time:

WoW is the flavor of choice right now, it is the game that gets talked about. Almost everything I say applies to almost every other MMOG out there. Except for Fairyland. It's my favorite in the whole in entire world.

For some reason, I've actually forged more social bonds in WoW than either EQ or SWG.  I can't put a finger on the reason why, especially since it DOESN'T force grouping.  Then again, the MORPG I forged the most bonds in was UO, which was also very solo-friendly. 

At the top of my head, here are some reasons why this might be the case:
- While soloing, if you reach a quest npc that you're not quite ready to take down by yourself, there is usually at least one other person already there, or will show up within minutes, with the same problem.  Solution: insta-group.

- Something that probably isn't unique to WoW, but it still very useful: the official forums, in which everybody posts as their in-game chars.  This is the first MORPG I've played in which bullshitting on forums at work can facilitate in-game relationships.

- In-game alchohol actually buffs your stats AND provides drunken entertainment.  W00t!  There are always bar/tavern hopping social events on ER, I just wish they would have them on a night that I'm not doing rl bar-hopping.

I think you missed one. The built in scripting language and client side modding heads the meta-gamers off at the pass and turns what otherwise might be destructive into something that is constructive or at least distracts them from being destructive.

I like the fantasy based theme.  I enjoy the atmosphere of the Warcraft art.  Now, one of the first things I noticed about WOW was how fucking slow it is compared to COH.  However, one thing it shined over COH is the amount of content and the huge variety of areas.  Part of why I think I like the game is the structure the world is setup in is very intelligent in design from moving the newbie on up the leveling chart.

What makes it better than EQ and why I can stomac playing this night after night is the fact you have some positive feedback, some progression beyone the minimal xp bar move in much much less time.  The zoning in EQ always turned me off.  The lack of PvP turned me off.  WOW stomped those arguements into the ground.  PVP in WOW is not level dependant, level certainly influences, but in no way does it determine the outcome hands down.

I'm at a loss as to put it into a word.  It's sort of the opposite of steampunk.  Fantasy but with guns, planes, tanks and gadgets.  And a train.

Steamtasy?  That sounds WAY too Harlequin romance.  Fantasteam?  A soft drink.

EQ's XML interface allows some of the same things, so I'd consider that more of an evolution. And just like EQ, WoW manages to break most of those with EVERY PATCH! YAY FOR PROGRES!!

Actually, it was Haemish who trolled first in this thread; I just responded to it.  But please, this thread is supposed to be about WoW and subscription numbers, not me.

Bruce

I personally don't agree with many of schild's observations in this thread, but I think he's right on here. From what I personally can tell, there are two primary "experience levels" for WoW players:

1) Jaded MMOG players from other games that like WoW because it fixes what they most hated about game X. They are settling for what WoW has and doesn't have, because playing it isn't a love-hate relationship, it's a "like" relationship, and that is so new and cool that they settle for the rest without noticing.

2) Brand new MMOG players: who knows how they did it for sure, but sheer numbers management demonstrates that WoW has brought more people to the genre than even the first MMOG's did over their complete lifecycles. These guys don't really know about all the "best of breed" features that existed in either successful MMOG's, or various projects that got zapped along the way, and therefore are happy with what they have (they don't know any better). Again, they are settling without even knowing that they are settling.

(Note: I know this doesn't cover every group/class of WoW player, I'm not trying to say that).

What I think is going to be really interesting is the retention after WoW gets a competitor that meets it's production standards, PLUS brings in the things that most of us want as well. As a (weak) analogy, think about the original automobiles as compared to initial MMOG's (Meridian 59, EQ, DAoC, UO), and think about WoW as the first mass-produced automobiles. Now, think about when the model-T wasn't the only equivalent product--Ford doesn't have the 100% market share that they had when mass-produced automobiles came out, and WoW (I think, anyway) won't be the MMOG people settle for when future MMOGs come out with equivalent production values.

Pics plskthx. I need a new avatar!

Why wait?

(http://www.its2.uidaho.edu/video/images/sbfl.jpg)

Crappy photoshop job, but it *is* Friday afternoon...

Flavor?  What other game was so warmly received?  I like CoH just as much - but not even that game was as warmly received as WoW.