Some other MMO company better hurry up and come out with something new so that blizzard can dumb it down so a monkey can do it.  They all ready have it where anyone can play, but when a monkey can play, thats revolutonary!!

Originally posted by toddze

Some other MMO company better hurry up and come out with something new so that blizzard can dumb it down so a monkey can do it.  They all ready have it where anyone can play, but when a monkey can play, thats revolutonary!!

I just had a good laugh because it is so true. Why take the iniative and be innovative when you can have the industry do it for you and just dumb it down. Awesome concept don't you think ?

sorry but I'll believe blizzard can do something new and innovative when it bites me square on my big white #@$.

Originally posted by riceae02

WoW will one day be F2P ... you heard it here first.

This is even a better way to make more money, this would be a smart move for them when the game gets older, which is not to far from the distant future.

I really do not understand why people keep complaining about Blizzard. They owe you nothing, if you don't like what they do don't play there games... don't give them your money. If you're angry that other companies copy Blizzard, blame those companies for not having the balls to be innovative and again, don't give them your money either. If you want to play a specific type of game that nobody offers, learn how to develop games, go get an investor and design your own game... then you can listen to everybody how your game is "epic fail!!".

Originally posted by mbd1968

I really do not understand why people keep complaining about Blizzard. They owe you nothing, if you don't like what they do don't play there games... don't give them your money. If you're angry that other companies copy Blizzard, blame those companies for not having the balls to be innovative and again, don't give them your money either. If you want to play a specific type of game that nobody offers, learn how to develop games, go get an investor and design your own game... then you can listen to everybody how your game is "epic fail!!".

You don't understand. You see, it's Blizzard's fault. All of it.

The decline of the sandbox MMO? .. Blizzard caused it by making a themepark.
The death of SWG? .. SOE wielded the blunt instrument but Blizzard tempted them with sub numbers.
The decline of the forced-group mechanic .. Blizzard caused it with solo questing in WoW.
The devolution of the community "feel" .. Blizzard caused it by turning the industry mainstream.

It's a sad but understandable thing; the genre has changed and the people to whom the changes are abhorrent make themselves feel better by having something or someone to blame. WoW (and by association, Blizzard) is just the most visible target for obvious reasons; WoW is just everywhere.

As a Blizzard/WoW fan, I don't take it personally. It's important not to bottle up negativity, so it's healthy for them to vent their spleens from time to time. If they didn't, their heads would explode and a slew of mothers/wives across the globe would get stuck with the job of scraping chunks of squishy nerd brain off'f the walls. You wouldn't want that, would you?

 I think the Xbox 360 micro-transactions are doing pretty well for Microsoft.  I'm also thinking that the iPhone is doing alright.  There's more than a couple micro-transactions on that thing.  

MT is the way of the future.  UO is still running if you want to hang with the MMO dinosaurs.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

The decline of the sandbox MMO? .. Blizzard caused it by making a themepark.

You are making a very powerful assumption here. Why or how did WOW cause the decline of sandbox MMOs? WOW is a themepark MMO and has nothing to do with sandbox MMOs.

Are you assuming that if we wouldn't have WOW that we would have a sandbox MMO with 12 millions subscribers. I don't think so. I think that most people that like WOW would not like a sandbox MMO and that most people that like sandbox MMOs are not playing WOW.

Sure, UO did loose players because of WOW. But that were players that didn't like the sandbox concept in UO and they were playing UO simply because there was no other MMO to play. Even if we wouldn't have WOW these players would sooner or later leave UO.

I think on the contrary that WOW is helping making sandbox MMOs more popular. Because of WOW a lot of people found out that there is such a thing as MMO. And afterwards they also found out that there are sandbox MMOs. If there wasn't such a popular game as WOW most of these people would never know that there are sandbox MMOs. Because of WOW we have a much larger base of potential sandbox MMOs players and because of that sandbox MMOs are becoming more and more interesting for developers.

If WoW weren't so successful, do you think we'd have as many new MMOs coming out or companies interested in making MMOs?  Hell no.  The MMO community would still be in the shadows, and the selection of games would still be crap.  WoW has been a great thing for MMO players and has shown investors that MMOs can be profitable if they're managed correctly.

Whatever Blizzard comes up with, I have no doubt it'll be successful. 

Originally posted by mbd1968

I really do not understand why people keep complaining about Blizzard. They owe you nothing, if you don't like what they do don't play there games... don't give them your money. If you're angry that other companies copy Blizzard, blame those companies for not having the balls to be innovative and again, don't give them your money either. If you want to play a specific type of game that nobody offers, learn how to develop games, go get an investor and design your own game... then you can listen to everybody how your game is "epic fail!!".

When you have people kissing Blizzard's ass over a marketing phrase thrown out during an interview, as we have in this thread, the complainers help remind people that Blizzard is not the Second Coming of Christ, Blizzard does not cure cancer, and Blizzard is certainly not the last word in MMORPGs.  Leave the complainers alone. They're performing a valuable service - they're here to negate the mindless praise of the fanboys and bring balance to the forums.

EA is already experimenting with Item Mall crap with their Battlefield: Heroes, even though it's still in "open beta"... people are buying tons of stuff... in a beta game...

The market is there. The morons are there. If they don't get that playerbase, then some other company will.

Originally posted by bonobotheory

 

Blizzard does not cure cancer, and Blizzard is certainly not the last word in MMORPGs.  Leave the complainers alone. They're performing a valuable service - they're here to negate the mindless praise of the fanboys and bring balance to the forums.

When a game company has around 80 to 90% marketshare in the western based PAID subscription market. (it even has 60% with the freebies included), you are talking about Microsoft  kind of performance. Read 1.2 billion dollars yearly coming from just one game.

The guy saying that Blizzard is NOT the last word in MMORPG's these days is living in another reality or hiding in some odd tree and refusing to come down.

And no ... this situation is not going to change in the future years either.

Read money and resources (manpower) devoted.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by bonobotheory

 

Blizzard does not cure cancer, and Blizzard is certainly not the last word in MMORPGs.  Leave the complainers alone. They're performing a valuable service - they're here to negate the mindless praise of the fanboys and bring balance to the forums.

 

When a game company has around 80 to 90% marketshare in the western based PAID subscription market. (it even has 60% with the freebies included), you are talking about Microsoft  kind of performance. Read 1.2 billion dollars yearly coming from just one game.

The guy saying that Blizzard is NOT the last word in MMORPG's these days is living in another reality or hiding in some odd tree and refusing to come down.

And no ... this situation is not going to change in the future years either.

Read money and resources (manpower) devoted.

Thanks for making my point.

Originally posted by bonobotheory

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by bonobotheory

 

Blizzard does not cure cancer, and Blizzard is certainly not the last word in MMORPGs.  Leave the complainers alone. They're performing a valuable service - they're here to negate the mindless praise of the fanboys and bring balance to the forums.

 

When a game company has around 80 to 90% marketshare in the western based PAID subscription market. (it even has 60% with the freebies included), you are talking about Microsoft  kind of performance. Read 1.2 billion dollars yearly coming from just one game.

The guy saying that Blizzard is NOT the last word in MMORPG's these days is living in another reality or hiding in some odd tree and refusing to come down.

And no ... this situation is not going to change in the future years either.

Read money and resources (manpower) devoted.

Thanks for making my point.

Np. Just to remind you MMO's are no longer being made in a basement..

Read the following: http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php The man quit the MMO industry after this speech.

Blizzard already does MicroTransactions. Faction change, server change, gender change, name change, trading card game with ingame items, ingame items for paying to see a blizzcon feed, heck even ingame items for checking out the mountain dew game fuel site when it was up.  An exapansion is just a lump sum of microtransactions.

People need to get over microtransactions. They've been around about as long as MMOs have, and they're clearly not gonna disappear.

Also if you think Blizzard is the be-all-end-all of MMOs, you may be delusional. They're on top right now, but so was EQ in it's hayday. BioWare's SWOTOR has many people excited and they are easily a company who can rival Blizzard for the title of "best rpg makers". Not only that but many feel that Blizzard is simply watering down and taking all the flavour out of WoW with all the current and planned "features" that are changing the game from what it once was. It's only a matter of time. Heck there's already many people excited about Aion.

They're only the "best" until they're not.

 " unlike anything that has ever been done before".

I dont think Blizzard has 1 single developer able to come up with an original idea...if they have, for some reason they always forget to add that code to their games LMAO

and I wonder what IP they will 99,9999% plagiarize this time :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by mbd1968

I really do not understand why people keep complaining about Blizzard. They owe you nothing, if you don't like what they do don't play there games... don't give them your money. If you're angry that other companies copy Blizzard, blame those companies for not having the balls to be innovative and again, don't give them your money either. If you want to play a specific type of game that nobody offers, learn how to develop games, go get an investor and design your own game... then you can listen to everybody how your game is "epic fail!!".

You don't understand. You see, it's Blizzard's fault. All of it.

The decline of the sandbox MMO? .. Blizzard caused it by making a themepark.
The death of SWG? .. SOE wielded the blunt instrument but Blizzard tempted them with sub numbers.
The decline of the forced-group mechanic .. Blizzard caused it with solo questing in WoW.
The devolution of the community "feel" .. Blizzard caused it by turning the industry mainstream.

It's a sad but understandable thing; the genre has changed and the people to whom the changes are abhorrent make themselves feel better by having something or someone to blame. WoW (and by association, Blizzard) is just the most visible target for obvious reasons; WoW is just everywhere.

As a Blizzard/WoW fan, I don't take it personally. It's important not to bottle up negativity, so it's healthy for them to vent their spleens from time to time. If they didn't, their heads would explode and a slew of mothers/wives across the globe would get stuck with the job of scraping chunks of squishy nerd brain off'f the walls. You wouldn't want that, would you?

Almost all of those are good things.

1) Directed content is more entertaining than an empty world.

2) Well, i don't play SWG anyway so i dont care.

3) Solo content -> great .. offer choice to players. I applaud the death of forced-grouping

4) What are you talking about? I have plenty of friendly guildies. I like this current guild a lot more than back in the EQ days. The good news is that the community is much BIGGER so you can pick & choose your guild.

I am not sad at all. I am happy with all the changes. Bioware is going to take the genre to another level. If you don't like it, too bad.

Originally posted by alecbr

Last time I have read an article about the history of Blizzard. They did twice something completely new and both times they did it the same way.

 

 

1st time - beginning of the 90s

 

They took a very small niche of the game market - RTS. For most game companies RTS was not interesting. Only a small specific group of players played RTS and the potential revenue was very low.

 

Blizzard made two very successful RTS games: Warcraft and Starcraft. In the next 10 years they made RTS the dominating segment of the game market and they dominated it.

 

2nd time - 2004

 

They took a very small niche of the game market - MMO. For most game companies MMO was not interesting. Only a small specific group of players played MMO and the potential revenue was very low.

 

Blizzard made a very successful MMO game: World of Warcraft. In the next 5 years they made MMO the dominating segment of the game market and they are dominating it.

 

3rd time - ????

 

They are taking a very small niche of the game market - ???. For most game companies ??? is not interesting. Only a small specific group of players are playing ??? and the potential revenue is very low.

 

What is this niche? One possibility is a 100% sandbox MMO. I think that at the moment only EVE comes close as being a sandbox MMO (my opinion is that it is still not a true sandbox MMO). 

You mention at the start of your post that Blizzard twice did something new, but don't actually post what.  The RTS thing and MMO was simply taking existing established ideas and spending development time balancing and marketing rather than innovating so they are obviously not the ones, I would be interested in what you think Blizzard has done "new" as it is simply not their business model.

This thread is full of people that have it all figured out.  I mean it's like watching a bunch of professionals debate the ins and outs of business and creativity. 

Originally posted by dstar.

This thread is full of people that have it all figured out.  I mean it's like watching a bunch of professionals debate the ins and outs of business and creativity. 

Your world must be very boring if you insist that everyone you know is not allowed to express opinions or conjecture.

Unlike anything that has ever been done before eh?

I'll believe that when I see it.  Smells like pure marketing b.s. at this point.

On the plus side, at least they're not answering 'story,' 'the fourth pillar,' and 'story' to every question.

Originally posted by FunkyLasagne

Originally posted by alecbr

Last time I have read an article about the history of Blizzard. They did twice something completely new and both times they did it the same way.

 

 

1st time - beginning of the 90s

 

They took a very small niche of the game market - RTS. For most game companies RTS was not interesting. Only a small specific group of players played RTS and the potential revenue was very low.

 

Blizzard made two very successful RTS games: Warcraft and Starcraft. In the next 10 years they made RTS the dominating segment of the game market and they dominated it.

 

2nd time - 2004

 

They took a very small niche of the game market - MMO. For most game companies MMO was not interesting. Only a small specific group of players played MMO and the potential revenue was very low.

 

Blizzard made a very successful MMO game: World of Warcraft. In the next 5 years they made MMO the dominating segment of the game market and they are dominating it.

 

3rd time - ????

 

They are taking a very small niche of the game market - ???. For most game companies ??? is not interesting. Only a small specific group of players are playing ??? and the potential revenue is very low.

 

What is this niche? One possibility is a 100% sandbox MMO. I think that at the moment only EVE comes close as being a sandbox MMO (my opinion is that it is still not a true sandbox MMO). 

 

You mention at the start of your post that Blizzard twice did something new, but don't actually post what.  The RTS thing and MMO was simply taking existing established ideas and spending development time balancing and marketing rather than innovating so they are obviously not the ones, I would be interested in what you think Blizzard has done "new" as it is simply not their business model.

Blizzard didn't invent RTS or MMO. I hope that's clear to everybody.

What I wanted to say is that they didn't try to compete in the main segment of the game market. That would be the safest thing to do and almost all the other companies did that. But they tried something new. They didn't invent RTS or MMO but they tried to made big money out of it. That was a new and original approach to the game market. It was very risky but the profits could be very high. And they were very high.

So when I'm saying that they did something new I'm saying that from a business model view not from a developer view.

And we should not underestimate what they did. Let's try imagine that at the beginning of the 90s somebody would go to the big companies that were dominating the game market and suggest to them that they should invest money in a RTS game. I'm quite sure that they would laugh at him and tell him that he has no understanding of the game market and that his idea is simply stupid. The same would happen with MMOs some 8 years back.

The same would happen today. Why are the big game companies today competing with WOW instead of trying to make something totally new? Because it's less risky. WOW showed that you can earn big money with MMO. So if you are making a MMO you will get at least some money back. Try to persuade the investors that they should put a lot of money into several years of development risking that nobody would want to play the new game. You need guts to do that. And Blizzard had twice the guts to do it.

I dunno why everyone is so surprised, its not like the gonna make something for the exact same niche again, when its perfectly filled from their POV already.

 All you n00bs are whining over what it'll be, well I already know. Saw it in an ATHF episode... it's called "Clam Digger."

Meatwad says, "Oh you gonna love this, boy. Tyrone calls you up, you know, in the game, and he says, "I can dig more clams than you, stupid!" And you've got to say, "Nuh-uh, boy!" And then y'all gotta race down to the beach with your buckets and your shovels. And the object of the game... is to find parking."

That's your next-gen game from Blizzard. The same WoW stuff, just better, and from the sounds of how Meatwad put it a massive upgrade with an interactive quest system.

Originally posted by Lansid

 All you n00bs are whining over what it'll be, well I already know. Saw it in an ATHF episode... it's called "Clam Digger."

Meatwad says, "Oh you gonna love this, boy. Tyrone calls you up, you know, in the game, and he says, "I can dig more clams than you, stupid!" And you've got to say, "Nuh-uh, boy!" And then y'all gotta race down to the beach with your buckets and your shovels. And the object of the game... is to find parking."

That's your next-gen game from Blizzard. The same WoW stuff, just better, and from the sounds of how Meatwad put it a massive upgrade with an interactive quest system.

you win, epic post! +99

edit

ps: thanks for the laughs