Originally posted by Va-le

 

Originally posted by Josher

 

Originally posted by Zindaihas

Who says its good?  Certainly not me.  I think a more appropriate question is - what makes it so popular?  That's the big question.  Actually, I think I already know why.

 

10 Million people and every professional critic.  Actually they describe it as excellent or outstanding=)  Its popular because its better than good.  Quite simple actually.

 

 

Are we going to get in to a debate about what popularity represents? Nazism was popular, drug addiction is popular, the spice girls are popular, teenage pregnancy is popular.... WoW was and is a game aimed at the masses, it's that simple. It is aimed at your average teenager, it's not complex, it's not challenging and it's easy to get in to. Tick, tick, tick.

I think you are responding to one of the masses so you will never be able to convince him otherwise.  Leveling in no time, soloing all the way to the top, cartoonish graphics.  These are not characteristics I would describe as being a great MMORPG.  But hey, if it works for you, I'm happy for you.

Personally, I think it's because WoW is the most solo friendly game on the market.  Compared to any other MMO out there, WoW has more solo content, better quality solo content, better rewards for soloing and the best xp curve for soloers hands down.  While soloing is still second class to other play styles within WoW, such as groupers / raiders, it's still much more preferable to the hellish grinds, crappy rewards and low quality solo content and the outright hatred players and developers show towards soloers that is found in every other MMO out there currently.

World of Warcraft is similar to the Wii.  The Wii brought gaming to the typical non-gamers: children, parents, and the elderly.  World of Warcraft brought subscription based MMOs to non-MMORPG players.  The game is Extremely easy to get into, however, it is hard to master.  The end-game content requires time, coordination,skill, and gear.   Only around 2% of it's population actually clears all the end-game raiding content before new content is released (this number may have risen or fallen a few points in the last couple of months.)  The game was originally pve centered and its patches in many ways still put an emphasis on pve, but its pvp is also very complex to master.  Not everything is decided by gear and for those people that think that it is, they are just speculating blindly.  Some of the best pvpers in the game came from other mmorpgs such as DAOC and lineage 2. 

World of Warcraft is a very good game and has been keeping veterans of MMOs occupied for years.  Of course it is a grind, but what mmorpg is not a grind?  People want to see results for their time spent playing and world of warcraft has many.  It defintely is not a sand-box which turns away many people but it is extremely polished and is run by a great company.

Some of the drawbacks to the game are the community which has reached a point where so many people know so much, they need an ego check.  Also, the pvp, while constantly being tweaked, focuses only being balanced at level 70 (max level) and is a rock/paper/scissor format.  The game also focuses on being balanced in terms of arena pvp (2v2,3v3,5v5).  This can have negative effects on world pvp and people not yet level 70.  Another drawback is the content of the game.  Blizzard releases content in the game which simple replaces old content.  So when the expansion came out, many people stopped going to certain areas and raids.  This leaves new players a plethora of unseen content that will never be seen because people do not want to raid a level 60 endgame instance when they can be raiding a level 70 instance for better gear. 

I know ive missed many points about it being good and bad but i hope i gave you some insight.

All and all, i found the game enjoyable and i had many good moments.  I can also understand why people would not like the game.  Do what I do and give all mmorpgs you find interesting a shot.  Eventually you will find the one that you want to waste your money on :P

Nothing, it is absolutely average. People relate to average and like average. Strive for the best bah, we got mediocre. That is WoW for ya.

WoW is so good because it changed just enough about MMOs to make them... FUN.

It is so large because it is one of the first MMOs where long time MMO players could invite their non-mmo friends to try it and they actually could play it and have... fun.

It didn't use the design method of punish players with long boring grinds as a way of prolonging subscription time.  Instead they designed the game from the ground up to be entertaining, something people often confuse with being "easy". 

The game was just made right for lack of a better term.  WoW had its growing pains, but everything the devs do is about making fun first. 

It wasn't about some mythical 50 million dollars in advertising.  The game came out when there was a deep desire for something new (which there usually is every few years) and it was good enough that it finally attracted those people who resisted getting into MMOs, because they didn't think sitting in one spot of a dungeon for 8 hours hoping a named mob would spawn was fun. 

From the little bits of humor, to the well crafted story lines, to the ease of understanding the game mechanics everything seems designed to make playing enjoyable.  It caters to just about every type of player with a large degree of success.

 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'm a newbie and if I want to have fun ONLINE with more people then I'd best go with the one with the most subscriptions.

I know I was not the only one and there will be more who will choose their game IN STORE based on that,  with no prior knowledge of what is out there.

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Originally posted by TeflonEddie
4. Timing. It was released at a point in time where there really wasn't much competition for a fantasy-based game of the type; which drew it a lot of subscriptions.

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Flood of games, too few players cause change in online realm (Feb 2004)
wowmb.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-220.html

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other companies are finding it surprisingly hard to duplicate Sony's success.

Microsoft abandoned Mythica last week, even before the game was officially launched. "We were looking at the . . . market and really determined that we couldn't be competitive," said Microsoft spokeswoman Genevieve Waldman.

Spurred by the success of EverQuest, lots of companies began launching persistent online role-playing games, without thinking through the demands of the market.

"Too many products got created, to be used by too few customers," said Jeffrey Anderson, CEO of Westwood-based Turbine Entertainment Software, developer of another successful online game, Asheron's Call. "It's like we all decided we all wanted to create our own version of MTV."

Actually, it's worse. Nearly anybody who likes pop music might check out the various MTV imitators for a minute or two. But there are millions of gamers who'll never try an online role-playing game.

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Originally posted by Nadia

Microsoft cancelled Mythica 10 months before WOW launched
citing that they couldnt compete in the mmo market
You gotta love MicroSoft. When they get it wrong, they get it really wrong.

WOW appealed to mmo subscribers that were not thought to exist
Very true, they also appealed the EQ'ers who, after 4 years and ~7 different paid expansions were looking for a next-generation alternative and had the choice of either EQ2 or WoW, as they were released at about the same time. WoW was the more polished and innovative game, and had the extra boost from the influx of people who'd never done the MMO thing before but loved the Warcraft IP.

 

Originally posted by Bronks

 

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...

 

There's absolutely nothing single player about WoW.  Very solo friendly yes, but even then you are never alone.  There are people playing around you, talking to you, talking in general chat, competing with you for spawns or even helping with the occassional heal if you get into trouble.  You couldn't be more wrong about WoW or other MMO's that offer a lot of solo content, such as EQ2, City of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies.  Their problem is that they do a crappy job of it.  Their idea of solo content is to make it boring, grindy and unrewarding, particularly in comparison to WoW's system, all in the hopes to force people to group and to placate groupers who can't seem to get past the idea that soloers deserve good content and rewards and that it won't ruin the game for groupers by doing so.

I played WoW for six months, explored every zone and group instance, got my main to level 60 (max at the time) and felt I had seen it all and done it all, since I'm not really into raiding, so moved on. Even though I do not play it anymore, I still recommend WoW to everyone as their first MMOG. Why? For all the reasons stated above, easy to play, low hardware requirements, polished content, etc.

Bottom Line: I feel that WoW is the best introduction to MMOG's out there today so, if you're interested in MMOG's, you should start with WoW.

It's 100 times better than any other mmorpg on the market, simple as that really, I mean the polish of WOW can't be matched by anyother game and the artwork of the game is just sooo much better than anything else out there. 

I myself am bored of WOW and it doesn't appeal to me anymore but the game is such high quality it's the only blockbuster game in the genre and tbh the genre wouldn't miss anyother game but WOW.... so basically you can take all the rest away and noone would really care apart from a minority of fanbois who like crap games like Vanguard who think it makes them elite that they are th eonly ones playing it.