General Discussion

Originally posted by Thunderous

 

Originally posted by CharSol

 

Originally posted by Thunderous

You can say whatever you want to defend WoW, here is why it is successful...

1.)  Kids can compete with adults.  WOW REQUIRES ZERO SKILL OR THINKING.

2.)  CPU specs are low.

That's why.  The game is built for a child to navigate, women can get into it as well.  It's like the Super Mario Brothers of the MMO world.  It reaches ALL genre of people.  it just has an enormous customerbase to pull from.  My friends 10 year old was getting addicted to it so he grounded him from it.  The 10 year old had several toons with elite levels...

Personally, I want to play a game with adults, not kids.  WoW isn't for me.  However, WoW clearly is for 10 million other people.

Children, women, Asian subscribers, and first time MMO players can easily get into this game.  That is why it is so successful.  Plus, Blizzard provides quality content and a very dumbed-down level.

I find the comment about women amazingly offensive, I'm not a raging feminist or anything but women -can- play a game that is not horrendously dumbed down too.  It is more accurate to say first time gamers regardless of age, race or sex will have an easy time in WoW.  A large number of children and women play plenty enough games to know what they are doing in something a litle more complicated. 

 

For the record also I did try the WoW trial along with LoTR and EQ2 and of the three I put my money on EQ2 although even that did not keep my interest very long.  Despite the fact they are not strictly massively multiplayer, I found guildwars and DDO to be the most enjoyable of more recent games, I think DDO could have beat it all for me if it was not so damn repetative, adopting instead a more Diablo 2 way of completing the quests.  It was the endless repeating of the same quest in order to be high enough level to continue, that's what killed it for me.

I'll be hoping the best of AoC too but if not I'll just be keeping an eye on the beta for Stargate Worlds.

 

I think you misunderstood what I was saying...

Of course women can play games that require thinking, probably more-so than men.  I knew many female players in Pre-CU SWG who were powerful crafters and high level entertainers and tailors.  Pre-CU SWG had a lot of female players actually.

However, they were mostly Star Wars fans.  Women, typically, don't play hardcore video games.  They just didn't grow up (for the most part) playing computer games...  So Blizzard was VERY smart when they made their game equally attractive for women, who traditionally wouldn't play Blizzard's games. 

There are a some very cool women out there who play video games like a lot of us guys do, but for the most part (like my wife) they don't seem to be interested in games.  Now, if someone were to market to them that would mean a potentially massive customerbase.  Blizzard seems to have had some success doing just that. 

That was my point.

Just move off of the woman subject before someone like shae gets a hold of you....

As far as your pretty strong dislike for WoW, well each to his own. It has the misfortune of being overly successful, thats about all its guilty of.

Yes, its base and not very challenging but thats all old ground. It keeps many more people interested in MMOs then any other game ever did. Thats what counts. Given the endless parade of trash MMOs released over the last 4 years its a wonder anyone even invest in these games anymore.

The core of much of the WoW dislike from MMO players I suspect is that WoW changed how devs make their games. So much that many of them even altered existing games like SWG and that caused a lot of resentment. Either way, like it or not WoW changed the course of the genre for better or worse.

IMHO, GW had an equal if not more influential impact on MMO design, devs discovered that players will tolerate massive instanced, linear, restricted, compartmentalized, lobby based games instead of virtual worlds....GW gets a lot less attention then WoW but had just a strong impact if not more so.

Originally posted by Thunderous

You can say whatever you want to defend WoW, here is why it is successful...

1.)  Kids can compete with adults.  WOW REQUIRES ZERO SKILL OR THINKING.

2.)  CPU specs are low.

That's why.  The game is built for a child to navigate, women can get into it as well.

was interested in what this thread had to say, and then i hit this statement..... agist, is one thing, but then someone threw out the sexism card too... wow. the last guild i was in half dozen of the most competenet raiders 'which wasn't more than a dozen people' were guys spouses' including mine. There is no correlation between zero skill and women can get into it too... sorry to disappoint.

Geez some people fail to grasp things...

WOMEN CAN BE JUST AS GOOD AT VIDEO GAMES AS MEN! 

My point was that ON AVERAGE MORE MEN/BOYS PLAY VIDEO GAMES THAN WOMEN/GIRLS.

Do I need to use crayons and draw stick figures to illustrate this point?  I know WoW requires no reading, but come on...

So if MORE men play video games than women, it stands to reason that a company who advertisess and develops a game that has EASY ENTRY CURVES for women, that is, doesn't intimidate those who really haven't gamed much before, like WoW has, that a nice market of untapped subscribers awaits.

That is not sexist, that is marketing strategy. 

If for every 10 males say there is 1 female MMO player, just think of how well a game could do if they tapped the subscriber base to a 10/3 or 10/4 ratio.

There for 1 million male subscribers you could have 300,000 female subscribers, instead of say 100,000 female subscribers.

Originally posted by Torak

 

Originally posted by Thunderous

 

Originally posted by CharSol

 

Originally posted by Thunderous

You can say whatever you want to defend WoW, here is why it is successful...

1.)  Kids can compete with adults.  WOW REQUIRES ZERO SKILL OR THINKING.

2.)  CPU specs are low.

That's why.  The game is built for a child to navigate, women can get into it as well.  It's like the Super Mario Brothers of the MMO world.  It reaches ALL genre of people.  it just has an enormous customerbase to pull from.  My friends 10 year old was getting addicted to it so he grounded him from it.  The 10 year old had several toons with elite levels...

Personally, I want to play a game with adults, not kids.  WoW isn't for me.  However, WoW clearly is for 10 million other people.

Children, women, Asian subscribers, and first time MMO players can easily get into this game.  That is why it is so successful.  Plus, Blizzard provides quality content and a very dumbed-down level.

I find the comment about women amazingly offensive, I'm not a raging feminist or anything but women -can- play a game that is not horrendously dumbed down too.  It is more accurate to say first time gamers regardless of age, race or sex will have an easy time in WoW.  A large number of children and women play plenty enough games to know what they are doing in something a litle more complicated. 

 

For the record also I did try the WoW trial along with LoTR and EQ2 and of the three I put my money on EQ2 although even that did not keep my interest very long.  Despite the fact they are not strictly massively multiplayer, I found guildwars and DDO to be the most enjoyable of more recent games, I think DDO could have beat it all for me if it was not so damn repetative, adopting instead a more Diablo 2 way of completing the quests.  It was the endless repeating of the same quest in order to be high enough level to continue, that's what killed it for me.

I'll be hoping the best of AoC too but if not I'll just be keeping an eye on the beta for Stargate Worlds.

 

I think you misunderstood what I was saying...

Of course women can play games that require thinking, probably more-so than men.  I knew many female players in Pre-CU SWG who were powerful crafters and high level entertainers and tailors.  Pre-CU SWG had a lot of female players actually.

However, they were mostly Star Wars fans.  Women, typically, don't play hardcore video games.  They just didn't grow up (for the most part) playing computer games...  So Blizzard was VERY smart when they made their game equally attractive for women, who traditionally wouldn't play Blizzard's games. 

There are a some very cool women out there who play video games like a lot of us guys do, but for the most part (like my wife) they don't seem to be interested in games.  Now, if someone were to market to them that would mean a potentially massive customerbase.  Blizzard seems to have had some success doing just that. 

That was my point.

Just move off of the woman subject before someone like shae gets a hold of you....

 

 

As far as your pretty strong dislike for WoW, well each to his own. It has the misfortune of being overly successful, thats about all its guilty of.

Yes, its base and not very challenging but thats all old ground. It keeps many more people interested in MMOs then any other game ever did. Thats what counts. Given the endless parade of trash MMOs released over the last 4 years its a wonder anyone even invest in these games anymore.

The core of much of the WoW dislike from MMO players I suspect is that WoW changed how devs make their games. So much that many of them even altered existing games like SWG and that caused a lot of resentment. Either way, like it or not WoW changed the course of the genre for better or worse.

IMHO, GW had an equal if not more influential impact on MMO design, devs discovered that players will tolerate massive instanced, linear, restricted, compartmentalized, lobby based games instead of virtual worlds....GW gets a lot less attention then WoW but had just a strong impact if not more so.

 

Torak,

I don't dislike WoW, in fact, I give Blizzard props every time this topic comes up.  They have done a great job of making a lot of money on a game that is no better than most on the market.  Developers have been trying to steal that secret recipe now for years...  What is that recipe for Blizzard's success?

1.)  They used their OWN IP.  I've been playing Warcraft since the 1990's as an RTS, as have millions of other people.  They can write their own stories, add their own content, and only Blizzard has a say in what happens to their game.

2.)  They made the system requirements minimal to run the game, therefore allowing more people easy access to their game.

3.)  They provide a quality product.  I don't like levels/classes, but I did play WoW for 3 months or so and actually enjoyed a lot of the time I spent there.  It wore out qickly for me but the game has minimal bugs, has enough quests content to keep players busy, and offers a quality experience for the customers.

4.)  The game is easy.  It's simple.  You put in your disc, you log on, and you play.  It requires no skill, no deep thought, no wasted time analyzing.  The game provides a path for you to follow.  This allows casual gamers and children to equally participate in the online world. 

5.)  Blizzard keeps coming out with expansions.  They keep updating their content.

Compaines like SOE who offer poor quality in their games will never achieve WoW status because of how they operate.

Originally posted by Elikal

1.) WOW is playable by EVERY computer.

You might say you dont like the comic style, it isnt my thing either. But currently LOTRO has proven that even with low polygon counts you can create VERY beautiful game worlds due to todays standarts and STILL make a MMO relatively broad accessible. Its just very difficult when a game like once EQ2 or later Vanguard only runs *somewhat* on high end machines at launch. And as I said, you CAN make beautiful landscapes with less demand, see LOTRO landscapes.

QFT.

This is why consoles have a bigger market, average customer doesn't want to upgrade for financial reasons.  Vanguard, EQ2, TR, and now AoC all suffer the same fate.

Turbine and Blizzard did an excellent job with LotRO and system performance, now only if others could do the same.

Originally posted by Adamantine

 

 I'm not in position to have it experienced myself, but I heard it

Why the hell do people that haven't even played a game feel qualified to comment on it????

Originally posted by Elikal

Lets start to take down some myths about WOW.

- WOW was so bug-free and complete

We hear that myth often. Sure, it wasnt bug ridden like Vanguard, but the truth is, it was FAR from bug free. When I spoke to friends who were in since the first days, and compared it to the first days of EQ2 we didnt find such a big difference. Sure, WOW caught up with most bug soon enough, but other MMOs did that as well. Like all MMOs, many features, especially central one like the skill tree came MUCH later and were NOT in the game at launch! Other features they spoke about, like housing, never ever entered the game.

Much as I hate to pick one small thing from your otherwise very good post, I just can't let it go.  Who in the world told you that the Skill Tree was NOT in at launch?  That's complete lunacy as it was actually in the beta that I played and in the copy I bought from the stores on day 1.  And housing is not in because the developers don't think that housing is a big deal in an MMO.  I know, heresy you say, well personally I think you have to cut Blizzard a little slack on this one.  It's not possible that maybe, just maybe they're right?  So what  features were actually missing at release that you're talking about? 

The PvP aspects of the game were clearly not well defined from the beginning, but they've been constantly adding features to it since the beginning and many feel that the open world PvP encountered in WoW from the beginning was actually the best.  Much as people like to bash it for it's PvP, WoW has a loyal following of PvP'ers.  When it goes head to head with Warhammer later this year or perhaps next year, we'll see where the chips fall on that one.

Some others have complained about the end-game content or lack thereof in the beginning, but there were 2 large raid encounters (Molten Core, Onyxia's Lair) and another 3 smaller raid encounters (Blackrock Spire, Scholomance and Stratholme) at release.  Another small raid encounter (Dire Maul) was added a few months later along with a couple of World raid encounters(Azuregos, Lord Kazzak).  That's a pretty fair amount of end-game content if you ask me.  Not all of it was there at release, but it was there by the time most people actually made it to max level, so there's not really much difference.

Sorry, but I can't agree with your premise WoW was missing a lot of key features at release.  It was very polished and I can't remember a single review that mentioned missing key elements of gameplay.  I think the people you are in beta with have a little revisionist history of WoW.  I'll cut you a little slack since you only played for 2 months, but some of us who have been playing since beta know better.

As far as bugs go, well everyone has their opinion.  Certainly there were some bugs.  How many relative to other games at release is something that is extremely difficult to quantify.  I think the big thing is looking at not just how many bugs there were or weren't, but how many things worked correctly as opposed to things that didn't.  I think if you look at in that context, then WoW has a step up on just about all the competition.  Blizzard got the vast majority of things right at release.