why can't someone who's played UO for only 3 days critique reviews of mmo's or mmo's themselves? you make it sound like UO is THE standard. Does EQ not count? what about paper and dice rpg's? what about the FF series (though I'd even rip you for that), or any other console rpg? This site has how many games listed? 50? If i've played even 10 of those (excluding UO), compared to someone who's played only UO surely the prior is more knowledgable of MMORPGs than the latter. What about those that failed? Above and Beyond or whatever it was, AC2, SWG, etc...

I'll tell you what, I was playing RPG's on my puter before there was internet. That's right, BEFORE internet. I was flying around my ANSI text of a space ship in Galactic Empires when you nay-sayers were likely being weened off yer mother's milk. I can't even remember the names of the games it's been so long.

This is by far my most aggressive post, but nothing drives me crazier than some nub telling ANYONE whether they have the experience, knowledge, or whatever background necessary to critique another game. Just argue your point well, be articulate, site your sources or what you are comparing to. But don't put someone down cuz they haven't played your UO for 4 years.

One could argue it's how different WoW is from these classics that makes it such a success. Oh wait, that's what he did... guess the 5mill subscribers and one decent editorial showed you.

I'm not singling anyone out (notice I mentioned no names), but you know who you are.

As far as I'm concerned, you don't have to have a history with any MMO to give a review.  If you have at least played the current game sufficiently to have a point of view, then that is all that is required.  A game should be judged based on its own merits.  Critiquing a game is completely different than making a comparison between one MMO and another.

 

 eruvin posted;

          Now on a lighter side, I figured I would post this link about a raid leader in WoW I find quite funny. I never raided with this person, but I have raided with similar in both EQ1, EQ2 and WoW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU0AB6xAtMg

Thanks eruvin, made me laugh was very much like my first MC raid, scared me away for weeks

Nice article, I feel you speak for many of us. MMORPGs have advanced so much in the past few years, and for all the enjoyment we've derived from these games we have those hard working, creative devs to thank.                              

I do appreciate not everything is perfect which is why we need to give good feedback and even with devs trying there best to please, it must be an impossible task given our varied styles of game play.

" It is much easier to be critical than to be correct"                                                                                    Benjamin Disraeli

 

 

 

Well, I'd say it was more lack of competition - there really hasn't been any major MMO releases to offer people something a bit more challenging, the only people I know still playing WoW either have about 5-10hours a week to spend online (and even alot of those folks got bored long long ago) or are the people simply still playing because they don't want to go back to games they've already done, so are killing time till next year when some new stuff will be arriving.

I also find WoW's content release schedule frankly insulting, when they are making 10-100's of millions of dollars a month, what are they doing running the building boilers on 1000 dollar bills? Where's it all going? It certainly isn't into live or expansion developement, nor CSR's or bug fixing. TBC - no new classes just recycling the shaman and paladin? My reaction is how much of a lazy con can you get.

I have to agree with you.  Blizzard makes money hand over fist, but they are almost belligerent about hiring more programmers, customer service reps and even class reps.  They are not producing content at even a fraction of the rate that smaller companies like Mythic put out, let alone goliaths like SOE who don't even make as much money off their MMO's combined in comparison to WoW.  There is absolutely no excuse and it truly is a rip off.  All I can say is that Blizzard makes greedy people look like saints.  I used to have a lot of respect for this company, not any more.  They're a bunch of money grubbing lazy assed developers.

 

 parmenion posted;

I also find WoW's content release schedule frankly insulting, when they are making 10-100's of millions of dollars a month, what are they doing running the building boilers on 1000 dollar bills? Where's it all going? It certainly isn't into live or expansion developement, nor CSR's or bug fixing. TBC - no new classes just recycling the shaman and paladin? My reaction is how much of a lazy con can you get.

Blizzard is part of the Vivendi games group of Vivendi.

Quoted on Wikipedia;

Vivendi SA (formerly known as Vivendi Universal) is a French media conglomerate with activities in music, television and film, publishing, telecommunications, the Internet as well as video games.

The company disclosed a corporate loss of €23.3 billion in its 2002 annual report, the worst loss to date for a French company.  

Wonder how they managed to sort that lot out, maybe a little help from World of Warcraft!

 

 

$75,000,000. That's how much revenue Blizzard is making (very roughly, 5mill*$15), a month. Add to that game sales, and also soon all the sales from their expansion. Obviously they have expenses too, but with a revenue off of a single product of this size, 23mill euro loss isn't much. On top of that, if European business practices are in any way similar to U.S. business practices, investments and research is often used to conceal actual monetary growth of a company, since these expenditures reduce profit, and thus reduces their taxes. With the anticipation of their expansion, such a loss is probably negligible as well as expected. They'll make it all back overnight come the expansion.  Easy math to prove that, the expansion costs $40? I really don't know to be honest, but lets go with that, and say 10% of their subscribers buy it (500k people), that's $20,000,000. There you go, there's their loss, regained, all overnight.

oops, you said billion. lol! still, add to this some 5 year projections and all the other aspects of their conglomeration and the value of all assets i'm sure it's not as bad as it sounds.

First and foremost, I will say WoW was a great game in the start. It still has it's interesting aspects and the game design is great. Actually the player mobility and game play mechanics is probably one of the best I have played. These are the pluses for this game.

For the casual player...it's hard really to comment on this. The author of the article obviously is concerned with solo play, so in that it's ok if you are a casual player while all your friends zoom past you and you can't party with them anymore (but that is a problem with all MMO that involve levels), so that aspect doesn't seem to be a factor to the author.

I have played WoW since Feb of 2005, and after playing on and off, I have officially shut it down yesterday. I was bored with the game for months, but just had my account to play with friends I had. The problem with warcraft is that it is really farmcraft. Farm for items, farm for honor, farm for mats...there isn't any real point to the game except to get better gear. Sure, it's fun to explore a new zone when it comes out, but after it's done...it goes on "farm mode" as big guilds call it, to get honor in that faction or for items.

This comment on BG for pvp is a joke, I BGed tons, and it is a real poor excuse for pvp, but the only outlet there is. World PvP died when cross server BG started, because instead of waiting for 30 mins->1h+ to BG you have instant pvp access...though in a controlled and set rule world. Thus, world pvp died because the only ones out in the world are on their way to instances or farming for honor (talking about 60 here). Sure a few skirmishes arise, but these far and inbetween fights doesn't count as a PvP oriented server (thus PvP server is almost moot).

I find it odd that you claim to have played UO for 3 days...why bother even mentioning that, since it shows you really didn't play it. UO is everything WoW isn't, and I and many like me are waiting for a game to come that will be like it again (DF don't let me down!!).

In Wow sure there are raids, so you take over an ally/horde town...hold it for a while, then so what? The npcs spawn, after a while people leave and nothing has changed.

The expansion will just bring more of the same. It will be interesting to see how it will hold up with other new games coming out that actually give purpose to being top level. Taking over towns (and owning them), etc...

Not knocking the people that still play WoW, just saying there is a cap on the playability on the game, one which I and many others have had enough of.

As a casual player, not sure what you can do at 60 besides BG, and perhaps get invited to some PUG instances where you probably wont have an equal chance to roll on items...oh well. In the mean time I am waiting for other games to come...and hope they are what they claim to be.

 

very true. HOwever, there is the fact that despite being ultimately owned by a single corporation, BLizzard is an individual entity, as are the other companies. Therefore, it is not as if Vivendi can just skim off all the profit from WoW to distribute elsewhere. That is possible only to a certain and minor extent, due to tax/legal issues. Neither Vivendi nor Blizzard are privately owned companies I believe, which further makes this difficult.

Think about it this way. Vivendi is a European company with divisions all over the world. WoW has subscriptions from all over the world. Blizzard is taxed on profit in the US, and if Blizzard tried to claim no profit because it was sending it all back to Europe, I think the IRS would have a problem with that. This is certainly done to a certain extent by many many companies in an effort to avoid paying taxes. This does not mean that it is entirely legal in every form either, and we see companies in legal difficulties with the IRS and other national government tax departments every year. (Yes I know that the US federal tax code needs a lot of work) There is a huge grey area when it comes to taxes, and companies pay millions every year to lawyers whose sole job is to help those companies avoid paying billions in taxes.

Popularity does not equal great for all people. In fact if you just consider popularity, WOW is not even in the top 3 unless Lineage etc have lost a lot of players.

But my main objection to WOW has been stated by others - far too much emphasis placed on solo, nobody at 60 has any raiding skills. And to be honest, who cares - after the 20th raid on the same zone for the same old stuff, it would get old.

To some extent that was also EQ2's failing - tons of content up to 70, but after that it turns into a "why bother" game.

EQ1 avoided a lot of that with the AA system, and Asheron's Call 1 with the "endless" levels. The problem with both of those games is that the basic game core is somewhat flawed. In EQ class is far too important & game limiting, in AC1 it is far too trivial.

While WOW has a lot going for it - especially for "casual" players - it also has a lot of things that harder core players don't like. WOW has a huge player base, but a very small (comparitively) veteran base. Very few WOW players that I ever saw have played for more than a year - yet it is very easy to find EQ1 players that have been playing at least off and on for 8 years.

Great game to solo to 60. Then u get owned by people geared to the teeth because your soloing habit cant get you gear to compete.  0 world pvp because no point to it grind Bgs for sub par pvp gear That in tbc will still be sub par. O wait arenan teams then u cant solo ohh noes no gear for the solo player. Please save me Warhammer....