Originally posted by Zorndorf

Jon it is a theory of how we came to this present day situation. and interesting. Although a lot of people who didn't came in with the WC2 or WC3 door. (Myself included).

But you could be right.

However the discussion was now, how to breach the equilibrium.

A simple fantasy Lore change doesn't break it. Together KOTOR will need to change core game mechanics of traditonnal fantasy mmorpg's.

An example? Fleet fights, space combat. conquering planets, assault on Death stars, building up your space ship AND avatar skills. Planets that change overtime. Populations growth. Politics included within each planet.

You could be a hero in one planet system and a newbie "non event" in another planet.

Just breaking out of the "kill 6 pigs with the light sabre" mentality here.

The 5 million (subs) question here: who wants to take the risk ???????

 

Sorry... hehe... that's just a point I've been wanting to bring up, and this thread seemed as good a place as any vis a vis WoW.

Your point about not having come in via the other Warcraft games is valid, but I have a theory about that, too. The game comes out and becomes a blockbuster thanks to the established Warcraft fanbase. Blizzard starts raking in the money, which goes into marketing. Their marketing people, obviously good at what that do as we can see, get the game out everywhere. Product placement, celebrity commercials, billboards--- EVERYwhere. Meanwhile, the "Hey, check out this cool game I'm playing" effect is going on. Back before I became jaded, I loved the game. It was easy to pick up and dive right in. This, coupled with the marketing, coupled again with the friend 2 friend spread and before you know it, 11 million+ subscriptions.

But anyway, that's a topic for another thread. I'm quite enjoying the current direction of this thread. :)

Originally posted by luckypotato

Yes but you can kill counter strike source with combat arms.

Lotro will eventually kill WoW as time passes by.. well.. not kill.. but take a majority of subs

"combat arms" Kill counter strike LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thanks for the laugh

If MMO-market would be a co-operative game, then your game-theoretic approach likely would shed some light to it, but even in that case we could not trust the co-operativeness of others and would still end up with the collectively worse payoff than in ideal situation in order to guarantee an acceptable payoff on a personal level. Therefore many of the equilibriums aren't rational and thus won't be reached. But as the markets aren't co-operative and we are missing information from the moves of others it leads people to fluctuate between different games in search for a higher payoff, which explains why new games have their hype. If the strategy chosen by these players actually is long lasting enough, also other will try to get the same payoff which might change the balance of the game and its winning strategy.

In sum, players don't choose the game that would likely have the highest personal payoff as that would not be found amidst the genre but rather stick to games that offer the highest collective payoff with still acceptable personal payoff. That's why PvP games will not be the big dogs in the park for as long as majority of MMO-players aren't also PvP players. The problem with PvP is that you get a better payoff from FPS games if you are competitive as there the balance is always ideal and only player skill will affect to the outcome. A situation like this is actually the polar opposition of MMORPG because would all character development lead to uniform character there would be no purpose to develop your character. Thus, the PvP power in MMO game is not a function of skill but that of skill and time spent which weights the balance to good old grinding, which then again leads to the source of PvE MMO which then again is what PvP MMO players state they hate. A dilemma of a sort we see. 

Originally posted by Zorndorf 

AoC and War didn't make the cut as Wow killers. The reason was very simple: they played within the same bracket with exactly the same strategies. It is a myth they failed because of lack of polish. They just reinforced the existent equilibrium. They reinforced the position of Wow as the market leader. Lotro was 10 times more polished, it helped to built up the market situation.

And the others you mention will face the same faith IF they play within the same playing field (as were LOTRO, TR, Spellborn, AD&D, etc...).  

And this is where i disagree

First,AoC and WAR were marketed as PvP games,opposed to WoW and its PvE focus

Second, both AoC and WAR quickly sold 1m boxes in west,and we all know quite a few of those were WoW players. That tells us that there is a decent amount of people that are willing to drop WoW

Third and last, AoC and WAR fell flat on their faces because of their own mistakes. Had they presented finished products not filled with bugs,that lived up to expectatives, they would have grown instead of shrink

I dont know why are you outright lying in this point, and I wonder if you played AoC or WAR.

I played both,and i can tell you how it went from experience. You could see daily people complaining about this or that problem/bug/mechanic, well founded problems indeed. They all wanted that games to succeed, they all gave the devs one and even two attempts to turn the situation before eventually losing their faith and dropping the game. And both games failed to deliver at a divine scale.

But any of them all of a sudden missed the good times raiding in WoW, or the arena, and decided that even if the game was performing adecuately (which wasnt) they would still get back to WoW.

They were dissapointed because they felt almost forced to play WoW again

I can agree that at the moment WoW is the best option. It is. But not because of its merits, but because of other's de-merits. Many people already stated with their wallets (see second point) that they are willing to change game if the other game is well worth it. Until now, any game was.

Which if we think about it for a second, its even unfair. People will only drop WoW for a game that is better than WoW. that is,they want at release a game that surpasses anoter game that have had almost 5 years of constant development and polish.

Lets imagine for a second that we lived in a paralel universe where WoW never existed prior to now, instead there was another game called Z that had the exact same progression as WoW

and tomorrow, WoW were released the way it was back in 2004

I bet my life that WoW would fail. fail hard, harder than AoC or WAR. epic fail. It would never be given the time to improve to today's standards.

Until a few months ago i tot that,based on that premises, WoW would never be killed by other game that wasnt Blizzard's second MMO. then i found out Aion, and i think it will kill WoW...kill meaning getting more subs than WoW eventually,and being the main cause of said shrinking in WoW numbers. my reasons:

1) Its a game almost exactly like WoW, but newer, better looking, with an appealing PvP system,and excellent performance in large scale warfare,something that WoW cant handle

Its ambitious because it isnt cattering only to the RvR crowd, its pputting almost as many focus in the PvE content as in the PvP

2) Its an asian game,targetted mainly for asians, and we all know that in MMOs, the asian market is the one that matters

3) Its good enough to not become a dissapointment for the initial playerbase.

4) Following 3), once you have guaranteed retaining your subs,  I think Aion will experience a similar "social phenomenon" like WoW experienced.

Its a good game,it doesnt fail to deliver,its growing in popularity. Thats what made WoW what it is today.

Sooner or later, people that at first were hesitant will give it a try, wondering why others say good things about it. And thats when the game hooks them. And thats when others follow their example

Its a slow but steady process

The title was: you can't kill Wow by cloning it.

I expanded on it to say the present day mmorpg market as we know it in the west is a perfect example of a Nash equilibrium.

Every new mmorpg using the same context and strategy in and out of the game situation is confirming the current dominant position of WoW.

(Xn, ... Sn) = WOW.

The 5 million (subs) question was: how to breach the equilibrium. Meaning how to avoid every new mmorpg being published is free publicity for WOW in the current market.

You could of course simply ban the playing of WOW, like the Chinese dictators do it since the beginning of this year. You could shut down the internet access too like Iran does it.

But the core economic mechanics at he moment prevent other games to change the market situation in mmorpg's as we know it.

You don't have to believe this. Just look at the plain facts of  the last 4 years and theory behind it.

The first one that understands this principle will find the new goldmine in long term gains: play other mechanics in the multi mass online field. Don't play with the big, fat, ugly guy who has already 30 cards of a full 52 card set.

Hoping your favorite new game will be the new leader of the market is nice. But you can't win the card game with 3 cards in hand . That's the problem.

I hope for most mmorpg.com posters Blizzard is not already preparing the next mmo game market. But I am afraid they are already on top of it. 

But your reasoning is against all logic. You seem to imply that people can step into much better products yet ignore them, and that better products only make publicity to the already stablished one.

Reality is far from that. The Consumism is based exactly on the contrary. We are taugh since we are born that we have to consume, that we always have to go after the "next thing"

The TV industry, the film industry, the music industry, all of them follow this premise. If one thing proves to be successful, you have to find another product that oneups the previous. One you get it, the first product will fall into oblivion, the new product will hoard the limelights.

Thats why the term "bandwagon" was coined. Because its in the human nature

WoW has never faced a product that oneup-ed it, thats why it has hold the market with iron fist, not because dozens of better products were released yet WoW was too big of a mammoth to be taken away

Until Aion. Aion oneups WoW.

Originally posted by arcdevil

But your reasoning is against all logic. You seem to imply that people can step into much better products yet ignore them, and that better products only make publicity to the already stablished one.

 

Reality is far from that. The Consumism is based exactly on the contrary. We are taugh since we are born that we have to consume, that we always have to go after the "next thing"

 

The TV industry, the film industry, the music industry, all of them follow this premise. If one thing proves to be successful, you have to find another product that oneups the previous. One you get it, the first product will fall into oblivion, the new product will hoard the limelights.

 

Thats why the term "bandwagon" was coined. Because its in the human nature

 

WoW has never faced a product that oneup-ed it, thats why it has hold the market with iron fist, not because dozens of better products were released yet WoW was too big of a mammoth to be taken away

 

Until Aion. Aion oneups WoW.

Do me a favor and scroll back to hese forums 31 months ago and then 26 months ago and then 13 months ago and then 9 months ago.

My reasoning is proven even mathematically and acccepted as a law within the economic markets. Just reread the theories behind it.

I'll say it one more time in human language: if you copy the market leader and play along the same lines the same game, you actually promote the market leader and fix his position.

Aion is not changing anything. It may even use better mechanics (which I doubt because a lot of now standard mechanics are simply not even present), but it will only confirm the present day market positions.

A few simple examples of the dozens of features Aion lacks? Blizzcon hype and marketing, Lore, Cult. the fact of being the best sold PC game of 2004,2005,2006,2007, 2008. The built up through years of record sales and fan base.

Lotro, Warhammer and AOC sold MORE extra copies of WotLK than Blizzard could promote.

Let's put this falacy to rest right now: WoW's level of success has virtually nothing to do with it's IP. Several MMORPGs with far, far, stronger IPs could never dream of reaching a tenth of WoW's 10 million subs. Conversely, several brand new IPs have had just as much initial success as WoW did, but then failed to grow or rapidly shrank for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with IP.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

My reasoning is proven even mathematically and acccepted as a law within the economic markets. Just reread the theories behind it.

I'll say it one more time in human language: if you copy the market leader and play along the same lines the same game, you actually promote the market leader and fix his position.

Aion is not changing anything. It may even use better mechanics (which I doubt because a lot of now standard mechanics are simply not even present), but it will only confirm the present day market positions.

A few simple examples of the dozens of features Aion lacks? Blizzcon hype and marketing, Lore, Cult. the fact of being the best sold PC game of 2004,2005,2006,2007, 2008. The built up through years of record sales and fan base.

Lotro, Warhammer and AOC sold MORE extra copies of WotLK than Blizzard could promote.

Your mathematical arguments are grounded on baseless assumptions. You are mixing and twisting lots of concepts to fit your theory,while disregading many others events that happened to prove you wrong

the market laws reserve a 95% to the publicity impact. You can ill-copy the market leader and if your campaing is better you will come out on top with a worse product.

Features that Aion lacks?

same or even more can be said about NCSoft products in asia, and even in west by the hand of GW.

Maybe you should take a step backwards and realize we arent talking about Mythic nor Funcom here, we'r talking about NCSoft, a behemoth of Blizzard's size, with as many loyal followers, and as many resources.

Aion is based on a really highly successful asian anime saga, so the marketing and lore part are moot.To put it into perspective,imagine Aion is the "asian SW:ToR"

Remember that Blizzard built up their lore with WoW,while NCSoft dont need to,that process is already done to perfection.

Btw, what standard mechanic isnt present in Aion? honest question, with this one you got me really confused

Lotro, Warhammer and AOC sold MORE extra copies of WotLK than Blizzard could promote.

That is a baseless assumption that is shot down by the reality.

Lotro, Warhammer and AOC are western products. Their lifespawn was primordialy based in west.

WoW is stagnated in west, and has been since January 2008. 2m in EU, 2.5m in NA, take or give a couple 100k  for the standard deviation. All the growth that WoW has experienced lately came solely from asia, plenty of articles support this claim

Warhammer and AOC represented (admited by Blizzard) a small initial impact on WoW sales and subs. WAR even caused WotLK to come out less successfully than expected at first.

When those games failed by their own screwups, WoW raised back to normal ranges again.Had they not...who knows?

I think its unavoidable thinking that they would have represented a small blow to WoW, yet anyway they would stagnate in low numbers, 1-2m at best is my guess, maybe taking 500k subs each to WoW's share of the market.

One thing is true,what those games did for WoW is perpetuating the idea that WoW is the best product and its unkillable.

We should not understimate this,business, like everything in life, are strongly based in customer loyality,and faith in being getting the best for their money.

While that alone is a lot,no, they didnt represent an increase in WoW's sales, because that increase has not happened (in west, remember)

And had not happened that the 2 mainsteam MMOs direct competitors to WoW absolutly sucked, the current situation would be far different.

Its very easy talking about past events as if you predicted them and they fit in your theories,when:

a) you didnt

b) they dont

Blizzard admitted that WAR and AoC represented a small inital damage to WoW. Both games should have stayed in the oven at least 1 more year, in which case its safe to assume their retention rate would have been significantly bigger,and their potential growth respectable. Their producters took the wrong decition, and the sky fell over their heads.

1+1=2, but 1 apple + 1 orange =/= 2 apples. dont mix things that arent related at all, any of those games meant an increase to WoW but a decrease,this is a hard fact, and had they done as expected that decrease would be more significant by now.
 

And last but not least, we are forgetting about what i consider to be the most important factor here.

the spending power

1) Aion and WoW cost exactly the same. Everybody knows that Aion is, if not better,at least equal and more modern than WoW.

do you seriously think that people will pay exactly the same for an old-fashioned product when they all know there is a newer one in the market? really?

2) The most important. Asia

The spending power in asia is significantly lower than in west.The vast majority of players there cant (and wont) pay for several games, cybercafes wont double their pc stock or purchase double of accounts for very similar products.

Sooner or later they will start taking decitions. asia represents well over 60% of WoW's worldwide subscribtions and profits

and in asia....honestly...which one do you think the Audience will favour?

---

Originally posted by Trenchgun
Quake was followed by a string of so-called "quake killers", which were always evolutionary clones trying to duplicate the original's success by duplicating it's foundations.
Quake's success was never duplicated by something that came along which was not simply a better version of quake, but also very new and different compared with what the original offered.

---

So, that is why Unreal & Half-Life cloned Quake and succeeded....

Wrong, Unreal's single player was NOT a "quake killer", and Half-Life WAS the much awaited "quake killer" BECAUSE it did something totally new and different that no other FPS had really done well before - Cinematic real time storytelling, immersion, interactivity, clever game design that moved away from strait shooting towards puzzle elements and varied encounters with smart AI, etc. They took the FPS experience to an entirely new level that nobody else was willing to attempt. Some of the first publishers they shopped the game to actually laughed at their ambitious proposals.

Originally posted by Trenchgun

Quake was followed by a string of so-called "quake killers", which were always evolutionary clones trying to duplicate the original's success by duplicating it's foundations.

Quake's success was never duplicated by something that came along which was not simply a better version of quake, but also very new and different compared with what the original offered. 

WoW will ultimately be killed only when some MMO publishers have the courage to not only push the genre into new territory, but is willing to put enough resources behind it to get it done in a polished way.

No one MMO is going to "kill" wow.  Just like Everquest, it will probably go on for years and years.  However, over the next 2 years I believe it will no longer be the leader, as a large amount of people will spread out over the enormous amount of big name MMOS coming out such as Aion, SWTOR, Final Fantasy XIV, Heroes of Telara, Guild Wars 2, etc.

EQ has been dead for a long time.

Merely existing is not the same as being alive.

Originally posted by luckypotato

Lotro will eventually kill WoW as time passes by.. well.. not kill.. but take a majority of subs

Delusional much? If this will happen in the next three years, send me a PM and I will personally reward you $500.

Originally posted by Margulis

 

No one MMO is going to "kill" wow.  Just like Everquest, it will probably go on for years and years.  However, over the next 2 years I believe it will no longer be the leader, as a large amount of people will spread out over the enormous amount of big name MMOS coming out such as Aion, SWTOR, Final Fantasy XIV, Heroes of Telara, Guild Wars 2, etc.

EQ never had the same grip on the market (mainstream news item on prime time) and wasn't lead by an industry leader of ... PC games.

Like I said scroll back in these same pages 2.5 years ago (Sep 2006 would be a good time) and go on from there.

I would have been very rich in receiving a dollar from every poster that said X will kill Wow and THIS will change the complete industry.

Now you have 2 options: or ALL these new games were >VERY bad (and we are talking here of dozens of games) OR the market is in that famous equilibrium lock where everyone plays his cards within the same game and the same strategy  situation.

The advantage I have is that the second option is a well documented fact in other economic markets. It is even a math model.... OR the fan boys of each new "same"  game simply don't see the obvious.

The fact that MANY people even bought some new games... but simply didn't stay shows the mechanic is working and the industry leaders are starting to realise it. Hence the complete lack of "WOW" talk at the latest E3 stands.

The famous spread out you talk about is already present btw. Each player except one or two has a ... 0.5 to 1% part. The more MMO's the bigger the industry leader. The equilibrium locks the market to the key positions.

You simply have to breach the equilibrium by NOT copying the same game.

You simply have to breach the equilibrium by NOT copying the same game.

 

 

 

And how was WOW new in everything they did?

They copied all the good parts from all mmo's back then, they even copied the whole ip from Workshop and see how that turned out for Blizzard,

Also the true real strenght of WOW is that it runs on every pile of poo with a keyboard stuck in it. Where as AOC and WAR requirements are way to steep to rake in millions and millions of subs

WOTLK made me buy WAR btw so it also works the other way round

WoW killed EQ by cloning it.

Every new game is being called a WoW clone before it's even made. This is getting ridiculous.

A few pre alpha shot of swtor on youtube got digged. And everyone on youtube and digg called swtor a WoW clone. Before we even know anything about the game. You can't blame the developer if something is a WoW clone before its even developed.

Everyone call WAR a WoW clone.  Yet I was able to level in WAR doing nothing but scenarios.  No quests at all.  Sorry - but that's not a WoW clone.  That's nothing like WoW.  You people need to lay off the WoW clone crack. 

Originally posted by GreenChaos

Every new game is being called a WoW clone before it's even made. This is getting ridiculous.

A few pre alpha shot of swtor on youtube got digged. And everyone on youtube and digg called swtor a WoW clone. Before we even know anything about the game. You can't blame the developer if something is a WoW clone before its even developed.

Everyone call WAR a WoW clone.  Yet I was able to level in WAR doing nothing but scenarios.  No quests at all.  Sorry - but that's not a WoW clone.  That's nothing like WoW.  You people need to lay off the WoW clone crack. 

 

 

While I think you are right that to many people are calling to many games a wow clones  It is getting out of hand as you said.  To go one step further many should just be classified as diku based mmos and not wow clones.  Not that there are no wow clones, but not as many as people often make out.

What I do disagree with you about is warhammer not being a wow clone.  So you can gain leveling experience in scenarios, that isn't enough to distinguish the game from wow.  It is strange that you bring up scenarios as a point of how warhammer isn't a clone when it is obvious that they are mutated copies of warcrafts battlegrounds in almost every aspect. 

There are a few innovations and twists on some concepts, but for the most part warhammer tries to play like some angry twin brother of warcraft with keeps slapped on top of it.  That is part of the reason is was received so poorly. 

When will people realize you can't kill games. The only person or entity that ruins a game is the game itself. There is no WoW killer because it just won't happen and can't. WoW is a global game for a reason, its easily accessible. The day you realize this, is the day you may start to enjoy games.

I completly agree that World of Warcraft was not the first MMO ever made by man. It has "perfected" raids and maybe crafting that's about as far as I will go with a game like that. The only reason I'm not going to go all out and make a list of why I don't really like World of Warcraft is because I play only Free MMORPG's...Except Guild Wars (I'm not saying it's a MMO, but that it's not free) I do find it amusing though when every time there is a game out everyone states that it is a "WoW Clone LolerSkates!11!!1!eleven1!!1" because honestly it shows fear that a free to play might have the ability to crush their idea of a perfect MMO in their mind. I will say that most people in fact don't act like that who play WoW (I know some people who are pretty mature about it) but it's just the population of bandwagoners that see's the ads and thinks it's the greatest game "evar" and supposedly has the right to dominate both pay to play and free to play, when in fact it is not. I honestly played it the first few months it was out and thouroughly enjoyed my experience but I will always give MMO's a chance and see that in fact, all MMO's are different in some way shape or form. Though World of Warcraft may have perfected the "raid" system, there will always be flaws in every game...like how WoW kinda dies after you beat the game. I mean unless you want to raid for about two years until the put some famous actor or singer to advertise and open the floodgates for more bandwagoners. Choose a game that fits you best and just play it! I mean the only reason everyone plays a MMO is to connect with other people or do what they love doing...not flame every game that's out and act like "One MMO Reighns And Pwns Joo All". I know me sitting here for five minutes will end up in the long last pages of this article or be food for some troll who thinks the internet is for drama since they had issues in Middle School and never let it go. I just feel relieved that I could post my opinion and someone actually read through this book. I might've left WarCraft, but I'll always be a Tauren on 'teh inside. xD

Tl;Dr : o_O I don't blame you. At all. xD

You say that Quake clones were effectively Quake but a little better.  In reality with the disasterous MMORPG market, companies are making WoW clones that are far worse than WoW.  The industry is devolving and I fear that the next decent MMORPG will be a game made by Blizzard.

Originally posted by Ephimero

WoW killed EQ by cloning it.

WoW was ultimately a completely different game to EQ because it was targeted at the casual gamer; it took everything people liked at the time about MMOs and filtered out anything that wasn't directly considered fun.  That was WoW's lasting contribution and every game since seeks that market with the method WoW pioneered.

I'm thinking WoW will kill the MMO genre actually. Alot of the WoW players are gaming nubs and only play WoW, and they have this stupid attraction to it. So when it finally goes out, they will probably stop gaming.....but thats just my contorted take on it. After all those brats that are all cool and started playing Guitar Hero cause they think its cool don't play anything else, usually. Poor comparison but still, I'm weird.

Originally posted by battleaxe22

Originally posted by luckypotato

Yes but you can kill counter strike source with combat arms.

Lotro will eventually kill WoW as time passes by.. well.. not kill.. but take a majority of subs

 

Lotro taking maj of wow's subs.  I'd like to have what you're smoking. :) 

Seconded. What the hell, Combat Arms is like the Big Rigs of the online shooters.