WoW Reaches 10...

[Mrbloodworth]

This can go round and round.

It wasn't what i was talking about, and i bet its not what the developer was talking about. While i understand and agree with what boath of you are saying. Its not normality what the term refers to.

Games have many parts, at the top of the heap is the game level, the part that makes it a game, and not just a collection of audio layer, rendering engine,Image libs , and databases (The parts of a game engine).

Any way, continue on.

[Rondaror]

No.

The first 10% is the key part.  You cannot unfuck a bad architecture in the last 6 months.  Execs tend to believe you can, possibly because in other industries it is possible to buy your way out of a bad architecture.  In software this is not the case, and I've personally seen it fail every single time it has been attempted, in multiple disciplines.

One of the reasons I'm bullish on PotBS is -- gameplay issues aside -- I've followed Joe Ludwig's blog, and it's clear that from the outset they knew what they were doing technology-wise, and have the tools and expertise in place to fix it or change it.

I was not arguing about the core mechanics of a game. If the core mechanics suck the game is going to fail anyways. I was talking about the polish of a game, like UI, easy and comprehensive introduction into the game mechanics of combat, chatting etc..
HGL is a perfect example for a failure in the polish. Even with a fun game design (ding-lewt-gratz) the failure was the abundance of polish. Obstacles to group with others, due to stupid grouping bugs, uncomfortable friends list functions, uncomfortable chat functions and small, silly things like going through the long login process again, if you just wanted to switch to another character,  was driving me away from the game, even more then the sucking mem-leak.

[Slyfeind]

Polish starts on day 1. 

That should be stapled to the forehead of every software developer everywhere.

[sidereal]

I think you're mistaking the degree of influence of software on the whole system.  Software isn't just memory leaks.  It's combat mechanics, it's the ability to LOD your 3d objects so they look good, it's managing your color palette, it's logging game data so you can go back over it and find out why combat sucks.  The idea that there is a level of the game above the software is a myth.  It's a fine, and probably even beneficial, myth for players to believe.  Any developer who believes it is doomed.

Here's the quote from Gaute where the world 'polish' came in.

The simplicity of this explanation (bugs) as the reason behind the delay is that you have heard it before by all major players in the industry and by all others making computer software. Bugs are controllable on a statistical level, but I guess sometimes statistics don’t really reflect the experience. Although we have seen bugs go down as predicted by statistics, the increase in polish didn’t really follow suit. This discrepancy can only be explained that the bugs we have fixed aren’t by themselves flawless. Two bugs out of beta and one in. Again a well known phenomena. The added time should now deal with it. We are on the right track.
...
Reading your concerns and replies about the delay on our forums I see, and understand, that many of you are concerned about the status of the game. I also see that many of you support our decision in pushing it back, since you have played enough MMO’s to understand. Like me, you know that the last stretch of polish is what makes or breaks our MMO straight-after-launch-first-impression.

It's clear he's talking about bugs, not how good the music score is.

[eldaec]

2 million subscribers in Europe, more than 2.5 million in North America

I lose track, are these numbers still growing?

Or is this just the expansion bump from China?

[tazelbain]

By the time you get to polish, the game should already be fun, thats what all those ugly, dirty and quick iterations were for. 

It should be fun and you should know why its fun.  The polish should be to make it shine.

[Ratman_tf]

It should be fun and you should know why its fun.  The polish should be to make it shine.

Yep. Not all companies can afford Blizzard's level of polish. Personally, I think your first sentence is far more important than your second. 

[Abelian75]

Totally true that polish starts on day one, which is why I hate the word "polish" itself.  It implies it's something you do after the game is complete, or nearly complete, which is not at all the case.

Regarding the stuff about architecture not counting as polish, that's true in the sense that the end user doesn't care how the servers internals are working, but that's the only sense in which it is true.  Obviously when you call a game "polished" you are talking about the end user experience, but that experience is influenced by how solid the architecture is.

The stuff people are talking about regarding how a company can appear "tolerant" of bugs (like with EQ's boats) is almost certainly due to poor architecture.  There's a difference between bugs that are just due to an oversight by the engineer and bugs that are due to a flaw in the architecture.  The first you can fix, and the second you may never realistically be able to fix, ever.  That's why the final six months aren't really what makes the game "polished," because if you've made too many mistakes before you get to that point, you will never be able to get the game working properly.

This isn't, like, abstract stuff, this is exactly the reason that games, and MMOs in particular (with their more complex architecture) end up being fucked up.  It's not that nobody's aware of the bugs, or that nobody is available to fix them, or that they ran out of time... it's that they fucked up along the way and now they're fucked.

[Venkman]

You don't polish the transmission belt or the power steering fluid container. You design and engineer it well. What you actually polish is the integration of all these individual systems into a cohesive system.

But often, what people refer to as "polish" (beyond being of Poland) is the prettiness of the graphics or the cleanlines of the UI. That, as has been said here already, is just making something prettier. It doesn't solve fundamental architectural issues. Pretty cars fall apart too.

Polish doesn't start on day one. Design and engineering does. Once you've proven they work (as in function and are fun), then you proceed with polishing.

[Simond]

2 million subscribers in Europe, more than 2.5 million in North America

I lose track, are these numbers still growing?

Or is this just the expansion bump from China?

Still growing, I think. IIRC, this is the first time that it's been "over 2 million" and "[/b]over two and a half million" respectively.

[Rondaror]

But often, what people refer to as "polish" (beyond being of Poland) is the prettiness of the graphics or the cleanlines of the UI. That, as has been said here already, is just making something prettier. It doesn't solve fundamental architectural issues. Pretty cars fall apart too.

If I would own a pretty car, that is not just good looking, but really pretty, I would be pissed if I had to read a 300 page manual just to manage to put the drivers seat in the position I wanted it to be.

For games it's just the same.

And that's something Blizzard has done well with WoW.

[Tarami]

I agree with those saying "polish" is really about first impressions/last touches. When discussing games (hell, any software, perhaps any -product-), the last 10% is what makes the consumer go "Oh, how fancy", they don't care shit for the architecture until it's working so badly that their experience is directly impeded by it. Tacky technology can go a long, long way with chewing gum and duct tape. A good system design is easier to polish, but it's the polish that's the hard, boring, ungrateful bit to do. Everyone is familiar with how tedious it is to do those last 20% that only give a 2% increase in quality, while the first prototype that worked to 70% was so fun to build. Prototyping is fun, finishing up is horrid. Game developers are no different. A good system design takes two clever people, a good end polish takes the entire company's combined effort. It's just human nature - if you're going to fuck up, it'll be near the end.

Problem is, on something as content-heavy as a diku, you just have so many systems, bits and ends to polish that it's almost an insurmountable task to handle it all, even if you got enough staff.

When it comes to WoW's polish, I think what credits it most is the even level of polish, rather than the highs. There's no point where you get backstabbed with a shiv of blunt game design as is legion in this genre. But pretty much every game got polish, often more than WoW in some sense. It just does the majority better than the rest. Thus the majority plays it.

Edit; Spelling and clarification.

[mutantmagnet]

I think any one thinking that WAR will put a dent in WoWs numbers is dilusional.

It's not so delusional. I made a response awhile back in another forum that basically answers this question of how WAR vs WoW can play out.

Well you have to consider how important pvp is WoW. In reality these days pvp servers aren't that much different from pve servers because of how the goals defined in WoW deter people from making use of the unique rules in pvp servers. It is this fundamental deterrence that has led to a lot of players complaining about WoW killing off world pvp for a long time and now battlegrounds in the past 8 months.

The assumption I'm using that makes me say WoW will lose 1 million players to WAR in the west is due to my bias on how I view people genreally dividing themselves. In the States about 30% of the people or Republicans or Democrats and the rest don't like to be pidgeonholed. Past experience has led me to believe this division of ideology on strong issues can be applied to many things that are strongly debated and there are few things debated more strongly than pvp vs pve in the MMO scene. So since wow has slightly more than 3 million players [edit] clearly outdated numbers[/edit] in the West that means WAR has 1 million potential customers just from those disatisfied with WoW's direction for pvp by making Arena's the priority. (I must admit 1 million is very generous of an estimate, it's more likely 600k that would leave)

Another factor is that even without the MMO community the warhammer franchise has a sizeable fanbase in North America and especially in Europe. Having the warhammer or W:40k logo stamped on a box doesn't guarantee success but everytime it didn't succeed those games were critically panned. All Mythic has to do is make a game that gets an average score of 8 on gamerankings.com and they'll easily have 500k subscribers just from the warhammer fanbase alone. Since the number of western pvp games are few and Mythic has a strong reputation for making DAOC they are guaranteed to get that 500k from peoplewishing for better pvp in their MMOs that doesn't have a learning curve as steep as Eve Online.


I will end this on a note that Blizzard is interested in fixing world pvp and/or battlegrounds and they will regain player interest when Wrath comes out. In the long run though whatever they would do won't nearly be enough to match WAR if WAR implemented most of the features they said they will have. [edit] and those features increase the fun factor. Lots of features are irrelevant if the quality of these features equates to les fun[/edit]

[edit]
 Beyond WARs niche and the MMOhardcore who knows about it?  Seriously I'm sure you know some people who know jack about MMOs want to bet they've heard of WoW?  Want to bet they have no idea what WAR is and aren't even curious?[/edit]

This point is irrelevent. WoW was in the same boat.

Wow initially succeeded among their target demographics which was their fans and those who knew about MMOs.  As time wore on more people were introduced to WoW by these players and word of mouth spread of a good game to play through everything from college dorms to national news like NPR. Now Blizzard is just doing what any good business does when they have a huge market share. Their size alone attracts people because other people are there. Blizzard also reinvests their profits to launch media campaigns that target people beyond gaming circles. Lastly since WoW is a cultural hub that grows in population it gains more people who advertise for it for free on the cheap by incorparrating it into their own work like South Park or Machina movies.

Warhammer just has to do what any "start up" has to do. Pick a target demographic and do your best to attract them. Because of wow EA Mythic actually has an easier time attracting the attention of people because the MMO audience became alot bigger. The problem EA Mythic has is convincing these people to leave a good game for their own. There a few ways of doing it and Mythic has chosen one of the better methods which is to differentiate itself by focusing more heavily on pvp. I have strong doubts they will meet expectations of pvpers but they should be able to satisfy them well enough.

Just on their marketing campaign alone they've already gained a sizeable following and a portion of that following agressively advertise for them for free on WoW in game and in the forums. Sometimes they're obnoxious about it but they are making people think about WAR.


If WAR is a good game it will continue to grow like Eve and WoW has. If it is a really good game it will be able to reach a million players within a year and the moment it does that it will snowball in a similar manner like WoW. It's up in the air though how large their peak will be though. To even make an educated guess on that inital sales have to be tracked.

[sidereal]

In the States about 30% of the people or Republicans or Democrats and the rest don't like to be pidgeonholed.

?

Party affiliation in the Harris Poll has been 65-80% Dem or GOP since they started taking it.  WAR might overtake WoW, but I don't think it'll have anything to do with a native American resistance to pigeonholing.

[Abelian75]

Polish doesn't start on day one. Design and engineering does. Once you've proven they work (as in function and are fun), then you proceed with polishing.

A lot of this disagreement is boiling down to semantics.  What I (and others, I think) are saying is more that the end result of a polished product is not just due to the product having another six months tacked on at the end, but rather due to more careful design and engineering throughout.  Giving a game "another six months" (or any software product, for that matter) isn't necessarily going to make a difference, or at least not enough of one.  It will still look "unpolished" from the end user's point of view, ultimately because of flawed work done at the start of the project.

A good example is probably (bearing in mind that I have no idea of what WoW's development was like) is how smooth the zone transitions are in WoW vs. the "chunking" in Vanguard.  The slower chunking could be seen as lacking "polish," but it's almost certainly something that was fated back in early development and will never really be fixed.  Yet people would still see that as "unpolished."

Another example might be the slow combat responsiveness of LOTRO (and, well, lots of games that aren't WoW, frankly).  Again, that's going to seem to people like a "polish" issue, but I imagine it's nigh impossible to change at such a late stage of development.

These are only possible examples (particularly the LOTRO one, as it's entirely possible they could make it more responsive and just choose not to, I dunno), but regardless of whether they happen to be accurate in these particular cases, they certainly could be the case, and illustrate the point.

[mutantmagnet]

In the States about 30% of the people or Republicans or Democrats and the rest don't like to be pidgeonholed.

?

Party affiliation in the Harris Poll has been 65-80% Dem or GOP since they started taking it.  WAR might overtake WoW, but I don't think it'll have anything to do with a native American resistance to pigeonholing.

I maybe way off with the percentages but you are way off in focusing on the example in the manner you did. The example was an extrapolation on human behavior, more specifically how we like to or can't help but divide ourselves. Within WoW alone their subcultures within the WoW culture. WAR can grow by convincing sub groups within WoW they do that thing WoW does better.

[Archimedian]

Well you have to consider how important pvp is WoW. In reality these days pvp servers aren't that much different from pve servers because of how the goals defined in WoW deter people from making use of the unique rules in pvp servers. It is this fundamental deterrence that has led to a lot of players complaining about WoW killing off world pvp for a long time and now battlegrounds in the past 8 months.

The assumption I'm using that makes me say WoW will lose 1 million players to WAR in the west is due to my bias on how I view people genreally dividing themselves. In the States about 30% of the people or Republicans or Democrats and the rest don't like to be pidgeonholed. Past experience has led me to believe this division of ideology on strong issues can be applied to many things that are strongly debated and there are few things debated more strongly than pvp vs pve in the MMO scene. So since wow has slightly more than 3 million players [edit] clearly outdated numbers[/edit] in the West that means WAR has 1 million potential customers just from those disatisfied with WoW's direction for pvp by making Arena's the priority. (I must admit 1 million is very generous of an estimate, it's more likely 600k that would leave)

Another factor is that even without the MMO community the warhammer franchise has a sizeable fanbase in North America and especially in Europe. Having the warhammer or W:40k logo stamped on a box doesn't guarantee success but everytime it didn't succeed those games were critically panned. All Mythic has to do is make a game that gets an average score of 8 on gamerankings.com and they'll easily have 500k subscribers just from the warhammer fanbase alone. Since the number of western pvp games are few and Mythic has a strong reputation for making DAOC they are guaranteed to get that 500k from peoplewishing for better pvp in their MMOs that doesn't have a learning curve as steep as Eve Online.


I will end this on a note that Blizzard is interested in fixing world pvp and/or battlegrounds and they will regain player interest when Wrath comes out. In the long run though whatever they would do won't nearly be enough to match WAR if WAR implemented most of the features they said they will have. [edit] and those features increase the fun factor. Lots of features are irrelevant if the quality of these features equates to les fun[/edit]

[edit]
 Beyond WARs niche and the MMOhardcore who knows about it?  Seriously I'm sure you know some people who know jack about MMOs want to bet they've heard of WoW?  Want to bet they have no idea what WAR is and aren't even curious?[/edit]

This point is irrelevent. WoW was in the same boat.

Actually it's completely relevant, how many boxsales do you think the warcraft franchise had prior to WoW launch?  Would you think it's easier to convert table top gamers to MMO gamers, or single player/ co-op gamers into MMO gamers?  I would bet that the initial WoW crowd came directly because they were waiting for the next version of the warcraft series, that it happened to be an MMO was not the deciding factor (beyond converting them from one time to monthly sub status).  Sure the MMO vets from AC, EQ, UO came along but they would have come along any way if the game was any good and prior to WoW no one thought "millions" in the western market was conceivable.

Your points about PvP, I have no idea on.  It assumes that DAoC RvR concept has a bigger market than it does (adjusting for growth) and that people want this (I know you have some forum bitching).  WoW is very good at providing meta-game pvp, we'll just call it loot so it can be put in context.  Most people just want that next shiney so they can show off their armory, bs with friends in game and the process in which they get that shiney is usually the path of least resistance.  Raiding in WoW is time prohibitive for any one who falls into the I play a few hours a week crowd or has time schedules which are flexible.  It's why the WoW battlegrounds work, you basically have a guaranteed outcome based on just being there.  Your team mates can suck, you can lose the short term objective but in 5 minutes you can be back at it again and the long term objective gets moved ever closer.

So given that I think your assesment of how important a "pvp mechanic" which only really takes into account PKing is important to people (mind you this is my opinion here, I have zero data to backup these claims) I would say that WAR wont dent WoWs subs in the least, I'll make a bold statement and say a year from now they'll announce 13 million world wide and WAR will not announce 250k active subs.  My opinion is that MMOs are just not a platform you can truely design PK around, FPS games with less moving parts are much better for this crowd.  That PvP in is abstract form revolves around the small portion of player killing (world pvp, arena pvp, battleground pvp) is what I disagree with.  It's not what is driving those WoW players (you never see any one caring that their arena rating is 2200 because they are awesome they care because they are farming points for the next loots and a small minority care because they know those points are valuable and can earn real cash by selling the teams off.

[Dtrain]

I'm holding out for a Bible MMO - at this point it's the only IP left that is popular enough to compete. Because I judge my self worth on how big my MMO is (just like my penis.) 

[Draegan]

Actually LOTR outsells the Bible.  Or so I read somwhere!

[UnSub]

I think Microsoft could do a MMORPG done right with a 6 year plan.  They have the finances, and are willing to take huge losses upfront to get it done (see the XBox).  They would screw it up by doing things like making it an Xbox exclusive and Vista only.

MS is willing to take a huge upfront loss on their hardware if it helps sell software. I'm not sure they are willing to take a huge loss on their software.

Also, MUO is pretty close to what you're describing - MS publishing, Xbox360 and Vista dedicated, I'd say it probably has a timeline closer to 3 years than 6. 6 years is two hardware cycles, so probably at least one redesign of internal game engine architecture to meet new hardware stardards (Gig Cores and terrabyte video cards, or the Xbox 1080 or whatever).

From my external viewpoint, it's not that designing a MMO for the Xbox 360 is hard so much as the Xbox Live architecture appears to not scale well to massively multiplayer games. I say this based on a lot of assumptions, but the recent problems at Xmas just added to this belief. Fixing the Live architecture is a job for MS and one they probably don't see a lot of value in doing for an unproven game format (i.e. MMOs on consoles).

[UnSub]

I'd be happy if development houses would focus on one simple detail: Is their game fun? 

So simple, yet so few manage to capture the essence.   WoW is, at its core, a fun game.  It's possibly the first MMO to be fun first.  I'd say that is the fundamental reason for its success above all others.  It's not flashy.  It's not revolutionary.  It's just fun. 

Stop worrying about detailed mechanics, spreadsheet development schemes, ultra-rare loot tables.  Just make the game something to look forward to.  Noone needs a second job. 

<fanboi>

CoH came out before WoW and there was a wide consensus is that it was fun out of the box. It also had a great launch. It is also, for its budget and studio, a financial success.

</fanboi>

I don't think you can point to one factor - that WoW was casual friendly with low barriers to entry, that it had the Blizzard name behind it, that it was polished, that it had near simultaneous worldwide release - and say that was the one factor that is the reason for WoW's success. Truth is that it was a whole range of factors and that if they weren't all working, WoW's status might have been very different. If it'd been a highly polished hardcore PvP game then it certainly wouldn't be seeing 10 million players.

While WoW is casual friendly up to the endgame, it also lets players be uber-loot whores and min/max their way through the game if they want. Some people make it their second job / substitute for a social life.  It does a good job of allowing for a wide range of playstyles, which only helps with its success.

However, WoW is what it is and it can't be duplicated. If any of the new games copy WoW and just add a few features, they are always going to be behind WoW. Out of WAR and AoC, I've got a lot more interest in AoC because they seem to be trying a number of new things. AoC's devs have a greater chance of mucking it up, but I also think they've got a greater chance of surpassing expectations (assuming the servers don't meltdown and AoC deletes every third file from your PC). That said, I think WAR's sub numbers will be better at launch than AoC's since WAR will be a 'safer' jump from WoW.

[UnSub]

I'm holding out for a Bible MMO - at this point it's the only IP left that is popular enough to compete. Because I judge my self worth on how big my MMO is (just like my penis.) 

Harry Potter outsells the Bible. Plus a HP MMO would be better because everyone gets to use magic, not just the guy with the beard.

[Dtrain]

I'm holding out for a Bible MMO - at this point it's the only IP left that is popular enough to compete. Because I judge my self worth on how big my MMO is (just like my penis.) 

Harry Potter outsells the Bible. Plus a HP MMO would be better because everyone gets to use magic, not just the guy with the beard.

No wait, here's the part that makes it good - the guy with the beard gets stuck inside Mondain's Gem of Immortality as it gets broken into thousands of shards. Plus it would have fewer  

Edit: O wait, I forgot about the Catholic faction.

[WindupAtheist]

Except established fan bases prolly don't like swallowing shit, as you two previous examples show. Here I'll give a counter example:

Warcraft has a pretty large, and I think under-estimated fan base. WoW has that going for it, if they can lure RTS players into the MMO.

Note Diablo and Action-roleplaying will also be acceptable.

Warcraft was an IP that was strongly relevant to computer gamers, put forth by a company with a reputation so sterling that it alone practically outshone the IP.  Warhammer has none of that going for it.  It's just another case of "Well if some people who like a thing that has nothing to do with computer gaming suddenly decide that this brand will make them play an MMO..."

[Archimedian]

<fanboi>

CoH came out before WoW and there was a wide consensus is that it was fun out of the box. It also had a great launch. It is also, for its budget and studio, a financial success.

</fanboi>

I don't think you can point to one factor - that WoW was casual friendly with low barriers to entry, that it had the Blizzard name behind it, that it was polished, that it had near simultaneous worldwide release - and say that was the one factor that is the reason for WoW's success. Truth is that it was a whole range of factors and that if they weren't all working, WoW's status might have been very different. If it'd been a highly polished hardcore PvP game then it certainly wouldn't be seeing 10 million players.

While WoW is casual friendly up to the endgame, it also lets players be uber-loot whores and min/max their way through the game if they want. Some people make it their second job / substitute for a social life.  It does a good job of allowing for a wide range of playstyles, which only helps with its success.

However, WoW is what it is and it can't be duplicated. If any of the new games copy WoW and just add a few features, they are always going to be behind WoW. Out of WAR and AoC, I've got a lot more interest in AoC because they seem to be trying a number of new things. AoC's devs have a greater chance of mucking it up, but I also think they've got a greater chance of surpassing expectations (assuming the servers don't meltdown and AoC deletes every third file from your PC). That said, I think WAR's sub numbers will be better at launch than AoC's since WAR will be a 'safer' jump from WoW.

I would assume if it turns a tidy profit, returns the VCs their investment and yields say 15% return on investment per anum, any game can be considered a success (mild one at 15% most VCs would probably be looking at closer to 50% 3 years).  Which will be slightly different than what gamers feel a success is, which is so subjective.  I'm sure COH paid off in spades, Blizzard poured a ton of money into their dev cycle (more than any one todate that I can think of).  Does this mean the only MMOs worth making are blockbusters?  No but this thread was specifically about WoW subs with a bit of WAR will make them decline banter thrown in for flavor.

And a harry potter MMO, tell me who's making it and I'll tell you how hard it flops :)

[Ratman_tf]

Warcraft was an IP that was strongly relevant to computer gamers, put forth by a company with a reputation so sterling that it alone practically outshone the IP.  Warhammer has none of that going for it.  It's just another case of "Well if some people who like a thing that has nothing to do with computer gaming suddenly decide that this brand will make them play an MMO..."

 

[Slyfeind]

And a harry potter MMO, tell me who's making it and I'll tell you how hard it flops :)

EA owns all video game rights to Harry Potter.

[squirrel]

Actually LOTR outsells the Bible.  Or so I read somwhere!

Actually Fountainhead outsold them both. Or was it Atlas Shrugged? Dunno. But I read it somewhere!

[Dtrain]

And a harry potter MMO, tell me who's making it and I'll tell you how hard it flops :)

EA owns all video game rights to Harry Potter.

Sims Online +  + +  = Epic Fail

[Slyfeind]

EA owns all video game rights to Harry Potter.

Sims Online +  + +  = Epic Fail

I couldn't think of anything more to add, so yeah, thanks for finishing that thought. ^_^

[tmp]

I'd be happy if development houses would focus on one simple detail: Is their game fun? 

So simple, yet so few manage to capture the essence.   WoW is, at its core, a fun game.  It's possibly the first MMO to be fun first.  I'd say that is the fundamental reason for its success above all others.  It's not flashy.  It's not revolutionary.  It's just fun.

Tbh when i played WoW during the open beta, i didn't find it really any more fun than Anarchy Online or Ragnarok Online that i'd played before. It had exactly the same 'find foozle and whack it and the little numbers on your character get bigger" thing these others did. It wasn't less fun but it wasn't more, either.

It probably just shows the concept of 'capturing essence of fun' is like trying to capture essence of 'sexy'. Everyone knows sexy when they see it but try to ask 10 people what they find sexy and you'll get 10 different answers.

Yeah that's been done to death too. Sorry.

[Venkman]

hehe tmp, this whole thread has been done to death. The factors of WoW. The cries for a game to be fun without definitive metrics. I think even the HP MMO thing. Heck, we're just a post or two away from it being den'd for someone bringing up SWG

[Bungee]

It's amazing to read through all this "No no no, the REAL reason why WoW is so successfull is....." and be able to think to yourself "it sure is a reason" time and time again.

Let's be honest- it's just the same story as it was for Half-Life. How long did it take for other companies to actually get anywhere near the HL sells with their own FPSs?

[UnSub]

Actually LOTR outsells the Bible.  Or so I read somwhere!

Actually Fountainhead outsold them both. Or was it Atlas Shrugged? Dunno. But I read it somewhere!

The Objectivist MMO would have RMT. Fact.

Plus your Objectivist character would be above physically fighting his opponents - you'd only be able to talk condescendingly at them. Burying them under a wall of text defeats them.

[Surlyboi]

hehe tmp, this whole thread has been done to death. The factors of WoW. The cries for a game to be fun without definitive metrics. I think even the HP MMO thing. Heck, we're just a post or two away from it being den'd for someone bringing up SWG

Did someone say, "Twitch"?

That'll get this bitch denned for sure.