General Discussion

 First off, you can't deny WoW is a great game. It has amazing design, art, few bugs, stable servers(right now anyway) and its beautifully crafted.

 The reason its so successfull? Take the idea of a massive world. Now take that idea and polish it. Add to it the above statements. What happens from then is that vets will tell their buddies 'hey you should join me in this game, its fun." and then those buddies, will tell their buddies.

 I got into WoW on word of mouth from a friend of mine, even went to the same server as he did. Around that time you have to understand I never got my chance to play Everquest and I had always heard about it. I viewed WoW as my first 'serious' mmo. Anyway though, the best way to understand is to play it.

WoW's two biggest reasons why it's the king is simply polish and population. The game keeps you entertained, especially at first. And it's easy. And getting easier. Blizz is bowing to the casual players, since that's what most WoW players are. Biggest turnoff for me was the PvP.

Personally....

What makes WoW good compared to other games:

1. It works. Little to no bugs, servers up, no worries bout anything..Unlike 99% of other games who launches incomplete and dies incomplete and horribly bugged.
2. Marketing. WoW spent more $'s on marketing than other MMO's spent on creation. It put WoW on everyones lips, kinda like Coke or Levis or back in the days "Benneton"..Never knew what they made, but everyone knew Benneton...

It's silly really. WoW isn't a great game. But because of the massive marketing and that it works, Blizzard can now afford to keep making the game work and keep up the massive marketing.

Ofcourse, it also helps WoW that there's only Koreangrinders and woW clones available now... There are no games that stand out and can even reach WoW to the knees. (Thanks to deves and publishers and investors that couldnt see further than their own nose, and just HAD to try  make a WoW clone). In a world of Diablo..err WoW clones, you pick the original.

In case it hasn't been said in this thread (I can't read all the WoW fanboi comments) I will tell you what Blizzard did thus explaining the greatest mystery, apparently.

Blizzard took the concept of Massively Multiplayer Online and turned it into Massively Single Player Online. Before WoW, most MMOs required at least some portion of your game time spent in a group. The grouping is what drew me to MMOs in the first place. Blizzard was one of the first well-marketed games that anyone could play, regardless of skill. From 5-year old kids to 70-year old Mahjong-playing grannies, WoW is simple enough for anyone to play.

Forget graphics and low system requirements... it's turning MMO into MSPO that made this game successful. Imagine what sales and subscriptions would have been like if something like, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion had been created as an MMO. That game was a successful Single Player game. Take the millions of sales Oblivion experienced and multiply it by 2 and you could get an idea of how it may have fared.

So to sum up, if you're experienced with MMOs and you like a little challenge in your game I would recommend avoiding WoW... not because I hate the game - not because my mom plays - not because I'm a recovering addict.... avoid WoW because it is simple.

Blizzard increased the experience rate that a character gains from levels from 1-60. Why do this? To speed up the Mahjong players so they will be even MORE unexperienced lvl 70 characters that much quicker? I don't understand...

Originally posted by Bronks

Blizzard increased the experience rate that a character gains from levels from 1-60. Why do this? To speed up the Mahjong players so they will be even MORE unexperienced lvl 70 characters that much quicker? I don't understand...

 

 Easy answer: IF you can have as many people hit 70 as soon as possible and before the expansion arrives, then they'll be able to experience the expansion, thus flooding blizzard with more money.

Originally posted by Bronks

 Blizzard took the concept of Massively Multiplayer Online and turned it into Massively Single Player Online. Before WoW, most MMOs required at least some portion of your game time spent in a group. The grouping is what drew me to MMOs in the first place.

I disagree with this statement. My MMO's prior to WoW were UO and SWG, neither of which were particularly group oriented compared to WoW, whose end-game is currently very group-oriented.

One other thing that I forgot to mention about WoW; people play it because of the size of it's subscription base. People assume that because it has 10 million subscribers that means that they will always have way more people to play with than other MMO's, but this is of course not the case.

If we take WoW's EU subscriptions for example, they currently stand on around 2 million over around 240 servers. That's a (rough) average of about 8.3k subscriptions per server, though of course some are more populated than others.

Compare that with EVE, which is considered a "niche" game with far less players than WoW. Currently (at 9am on a Sunday morning) there are 22.4k players on the Tranquility server.

well wow is good if your a child i guess but it made me fall asleep,now give me face of man kind and i will play for hours.

Originally posted by TeflonEddie

One other thing that I forgot to mention about WoW; people play it because of the size of it's subscription base. People assume that because it has 10 million subscribers that means that they will always have way more people to play with than other MMO's, but this is of course not the case.

If we take WoW's EU subscriptions for example, they currently stand on around 2 million over around 240 servers. That's a (rough) average of about 8.3k subscriptions per server, though of course some are more populated than others.

Compare that with EVE, which is considered a "niche" game with far less players than WoW. Currently (at 9am on a Sunday morning) there are 22.4k players on the Tranquility server.

As someone who played only consoles in the past I can't stress enough how...out of this world Blizzard's marketing is.

I stood there in the shop deciding which MMO to buy. The first one to basically assault my eyes was WoW. If you've been to a gaming/electronics store and seen the WoW display you'll know what I mean.

BUT! I was not to be persuaded so easily, no sir. So I checked out the different boxes and their list of features.

The deciding factor for me was: I'