We all need to stop about WoW, its a terible game beyond believe.

Now get all your assesesss to Darkfall and breake with easypiesy gameplay plus fuffy toys and childish cartoonee grapix.

Open your mind see the light the future is already here free roaming world with no zones or instance free for all player vs player get free loots build your own raft or ship or your own town get your assessesss ingame.

Be a HERO have the courage to play Darkfall.

Originally posted by insanex

I've just finished perusing the Realtime Worlds news of going into 'administration.' Yet another MMO is at serious risk of bombing completely. I think we can agree that APB is definitely a breaks-the-mold type of MMO. We can also agree that the so-called 'WoW way' of doing things is tied to continued success, even in those emulating Blizzard's titan MMORPG. We also see a large number of users on MMORPG.com speaking out against the 'WoW way' for a variety of reasons. 

Here is my question: If the WoW way is continually showing to bring success and solvency to developers that use it, why not ditch the breaking-the-mold ideology and try to make the WoW way better? 

There are thousands of companies that make a ton of money in all areas of industry by simply making a good idea better. 

What do you all think?

insanex

EDIT: I thought I would mention that I am not a WoW player and due to the addictive nature of it, I will never play it again. Perhaps that lends some sort of credibility to my question above.

Tell that to dying AoC, Aion, LotRO, (insert failing WoW clone here) while games like Darkfall and Eve are steadily growing. 

The only issue with games that break the mold is that they're usually broken by companies with little to no money, so they can't pull off most of what they're trying to do. We just need a big company to do something different for once. 

Haven't read any of this, but judging by the title all I'm going to say is,

"If I wanted to play WoW, I would play WoW. If I want to play something aside from WoW well then why would I want to play something that is 'doing it the WoW way'."

Originally posted by insanex

After reading the replies to my thread, I think I should rephrase my question.

Is the WoW way truly a success? With over 10 million subscribers, I'm thinking that pretty much tells the story. From a couple of the replies here, it seems that some of you feel the WoW way is going out of style and becoming old hat. Should anyone try to emulate WoW's success? If not, why have so many break-the-mold style MMOs tried and failed at maintaining a consistent, thriving user base?

insanex

From a business pov, yes its a huge success, just look at all the 3rd party industry that's sprung up around it.  IMHO, there was no magic bullet, it was a number of factors.  Blizzard's reputation along with the time of the launch went hand in hand to give them a head start on their subs.  Another factor was system requirements for satisfying game play.  EQ2 almost demanded a top end system which fewer gamers could afford, where as WoW required a mid level system, a difference on average (at the time) of $1,500 or so (which at that time, $1,500 was worth more than today, just compare fast food prices of the day to get an idea), as well as timing and less competition.  That timing played hand in hand with system requirements because the standard age demographic of the day could afford a mid ranged system without painful effort, thus people flocked to what they could access with their systems and gain satisfaction from.  And those system specs have become progressively easier for bargain budget PC systems to measure up to, thus lowering the cost of entry into the game.  Then when you factor in the momentum those combined elements generated, its small wonder it became so dominant.

Finally, evolution of game play, Blizzard sifted through feedback, balancing their design philosophy with player wants, unlike their chief competitor SOE, they weren't as arrogantly stubborn about it like SOE was with their various games and their "Vision(tm)" where they totally ignored feedback.  Its a delicate balance to maintain, but Blizzard was significantly better at doing so and as a result, didn't come off nearly as adversarial as SOE.  And because of that arrogance, SOE never recovered their crown.

Is it old hat now?  I can only speak for myself and those whom I've discussed this with, we're completely burnt out on the treadmill theme park and any game that embraces that model will not see our $$s, for now I and others like me are more of a minority, but that feeling will spread because its against human nature to stay in the hamster wheel.

What I find interesting is that while WoW is indeed a success, so is Eve Online, which is a sandbox game.  Why aren't people discussing how successful a sandbox game is vs a theme park game?  SWG was also a sandbox game that thrived up till SOE's "Vision(tm)" humped the poodle into a bloody gooey mess, and their only real claim to fame is how to be a shining example of what NOT to do.  Another was UO, which suffered losses mostly due to the graphics dept, their gameplay however,  was extremely robust and let them hang on for much longer than most would've thought possible.

So while the "WoW way" works for WoW's player base,it has IMO pretty much reached its limit, as the burnt out are returning less and the infusion of new players is likewise slowing as consoles continue to evolve in complexity not only in regards to tech, but content and online access.  Thus doing what WoW does only better is IMHO a dead end, to capture a larger market share you truly have to evolve gameplay and experience beyond the theme park model.

The only way for that to occur is to design a game that is sandbox from the ground up, which takes into account and polices exploitation strategies (I.E. Shadowbane despite its potential failed to address this).  When players are given tools to add/subtract/use the game environment, when there are repercussions to choices made, when they can pursue topics ranging from the child like joy of baking and selling cookies, to starting up a virtual business be it selling swords or assembling a sports team, to the scarred adult vices with its many joys/pitfalls, and when players can pursue justice for crimes committed against them, then you will have a WoW killer.  The thing of it is however, that's exceptionally complicated code and expensive development that simply cannot be rushed, but it will pay dividends far out weighing development and support costs, and anyone who manages to do this will make WoW's success seem like little league softball earnings vs MLB franchises.

If devs could instead of stealing their WoW interest, literally take player's characters from WoW's database and put them on their own "Wow Way" "WoW clone" then I think they might have had some success. But there is probably a law against that or something.

Originally posted by insanex

 

EDIT: I thought I would mention that I am not a WoW player and due to the addictive nature of it, I will never play it again. Perhaps that lends some sort of credibility to my question above.

This is why a lot of players are against WoW.

People like you and me are now jaded and don't wish or can't or will not even try other games because of WoW.

Rather than having decent games blizzard wants to create addictive games.

So in effect these naysayers are saying "just drink something good, don't do heroin".

"why not do heroin?" puts the op/thread in better perspective.

I don't get the OP. There are plenty of MMOs that are almost dead carbon copies of WoW. Why would someone quit WoW to go play another WoW with a different name? It seems the new trend is to actually try and make the game easier than WoW.

Soon we will all be able to log in kill one boring pig, and be level 60. Then we can do an instance once a week to grind for gear. Sounds fun, right?

Originally posted by brostyn

I don't get the OP. There are plenty of MMOs that are almost dead carbon copies of WoW. Why would someone quit WoW to go play another WoW with a different name? It seems the new trend is to actually try and make the game easier than WoW.

Soon we will all be able to log in kill one boring pig, and be level 60. Then we can do an instance once a week to grind for gear. Sounds fun, right?

back when I was playing wow at endgame I was thinking how I wanted to play WoW but with different effects, maps, etc.  I learned everything I wanted to; rolled every class and got familiar with all of them.. I actually wanted WoW to be new (i thought, if only blizzard would make another mmo - that almost 4 years ago) - good thing Age of Conan saved me! (lol!)

So is it safe to say that WoW is not technically a success from a player standpoint? I have read a large number of posts indicating that many players are not happy with the way Blizzard implements changes and gameplay mechanics.

insanex

Originally posted by insanex

So is it safe to say that WoW is not technically a success from a player standpoint? I have read a large number of posts indicating that many players are not happy with the way Blizzard implements changes and gameplay mechanics.

insanex

Don't let the vocal players fool you, usually the only ones who speak out about any changes in a game are the ones who are unhappy with them, and they generally make up a minority.

To answer your question, the reason it should never be done the WoW way is that it makes for a terrible business strategy. It's very hard to make the WoW way "better", because there really are no simple game mechanics you can add that will suddenly make your game leaps better than WoW. The only thing that will happen is you'll be directly competing with a game that is already established, already successful, has more content, has a deep lore, and probably most importantly has a bigger community. The developers will be doing all this, with only a fraction of their budget. It shouldn't happen, but it does. That's why so many games have failed over the last few years.

The issue is that although companies have the "breaking-the-mold ideology", they never actually do. The majority of them all follow the same essential game mechanics. Adding flight or putting yourself in a different setting or whatever won't change a thing. If you can even remotely compare your game to someone else's, it's usually a bad sign. They can advertise breaking the mold all they want, but in reality they aren't breaking any molds at all. And doing so isn't easy, even if a developer does have a vision that differs from other MMO's, making it work is a whole other level of difficulty.

If developers thought that way we'd never have a WOW in the first place, they'd all be trying to do it the EQ way...

Hold that thought.

Originally posted by insanex

I've just finished perusing the Realtime Worlds news of going into 'administration.' Yet another MMO is at serious risk of bombing completely. I think we can agree that APB is definitely a breaks-the-mold type of MMO. We can also agree that the so-called 'WoW way' of doing things is tied to continued success, even in those emulating Blizzard's titan MMORPG. We also see a large number of users on MMORPG.com speaking out against the 'WoW way' for a variety of reasons. 

Here is my question: If the WoW way is continually showing to bring success and solvency to developers that use it, why not ditch the breaking-the-mold ideology and try to make the WoW way better? 

There are thousands of companies that make a ton of money in all areas of industry by simply making a good idea better. 

What do you all think?

insanex

EDIT: I thought I would mention that I am not a WoW player and due to the addictive nature of it, I will never play it again. Perhaps that lends some sort of credibility to my question above.

First off, I haven't seen any other game be as successful with the "WoW way" as WoW has - in fact we've seen a pretty big string of games on life support that tried to mimic the basic model of WoW.

What makes up the "WoW way" is a complex set of ideas.  You can take some elements of it that work, and put them into something totally different.  The WoW model is far from perfect.  Copying something with a fresh coat of paint isn't innovation - taking the parts that work and removing the flaws is innovation.

The things that people find fun about WoW can be experienced in games with completely different models.  Fun isn't something that's concrete and easy to pin down, after all.  If you can think of a better model that would be more fun than WoW to more people, why wouldn't you try to do it?

You can't beat Blizzard/Wow at its own game - they have all of the experience and all of the money spent (hundreds of millions in development/research) and lots of players with significant time/energy investments that aren't willing to start over from scratch at the drop of a hat.  Putting out  a game that is cosmetically different but smaller, buggier, less thought out and very counterintuitive is just going to annoy Wow players.

The market has room for more, but not much room for more of the same.

I honestly can't comment on why APB is doing so poorly.  For whatever reason, it's one of the few mmos I have never bothered to take a look at.

I suppose one could blame their marketing maybe since it's one of the few mmos to come out in some time that hasn't piqued my interest even a little.

As to doing things the WoW way...isn't that one of the main complaints people have these days about games is that they're all WoW clones?

Why would you make a Wow-clone? No one will play it. You know why? Because WoW already does it, and better.

The "WOW Way" works.  I would tweak it somewhat (i.e., step up the death penalty, have "TRAINS" which are mobs that can aggro folks outside the group that pulled them, and some other stuff).  But yes, the WOW-Way works and will continue to work as long as companies do not innovate their way into failure.

Originally posted by insanex

I've just finished perusing the Realtime Worlds news of going into 'administration.' Yet another MMO is at serious risk of bombing completely. I think we can agree that APB is definitely a breaks-the-mold type of MMO. We can also agree that the so-called 'WoW way' of doing things is tied to continued success, even in those emulating Blizzard's titan MMORPG. We also see a large number of users on MMORPG.com speaking out against the 'WoW way' for a variety of reasons. 

Here is my question: If the WoW way is continually showing to bring success and solvency to developers that use it, why not ditch the breaking-the-mold ideology and try to make the WoW way better? 

There are thousands of companies that make a ton of money in all areas of industry by simply making a good idea better. 

What do you all think?

insanex

EDIT: I thought I would mention that I am not a WoW player and due to the addictive nature of it, I will never play it again. Perhaps that lends some sort of credibility to my question above.

I'm not sure you should consider 50k subs a success, which is what most of the games that emulate WoW end up with. AoC is great, it did some things differently, but outside of its combat and dungeons being harder, it's pretty WoW-like. I just canceled my sub from it not because I don't enjoy it, because I do, but because there's literally no one to group with on my server unless I want to raid or pvp, which I am undergeared for.

WAR? Okay outside of public quests and the supposedly trademarked RvR this game was pretty eerily similar to WoW. Even down to some of the graphics similarities. Yeah, I know, Warhammer came out first, but not in the mmo world. This game is hugely popular in the freebie zones, but from what I understand even Mythic becoming managed by BioWare is not saving the game from losing subs. Add in the fiasco a few months back where some people were getting charged $200+ for supposed multiple packaged of 6 month subs. Dealbreaker.

Aion? I honestly can't tell you how popular this game currently is in the west, but it was hemmoraging players when I quit playing. It broke the WoW mold by adding in flying combat and relying almost exclusively on the eastern-popular "grind". It is doing well enough that an expansion is coming, but I would estimate the subs in the west to be no higher than probably 200k, though I can't pretend to have an actual number. Successful? Yes. Compared to WoW? No.

lotro: this is the one case where I agree with you. A game that is extremely similar to WoW with the addition of an epic storyline. This game was chugging along very nicely, however once Turbine saw dollar signs above their projected growth model for DDO, they decided to turn lotro into f2p when it does not need it. This is purely a move to gather more money, make no mistake. There is no possible way to quest to lvl cap without paying money at some point, unless you get a lot of free points from beta participation and veteran rewards from having a sub for the past few years. So in this case, yes the game is successful, however the company wants more monies.

EQ2: A game that is not exactly similar to WoW but has been modified to become closer to it over the past few years. Originally you could solo same con mobs and then they changed it so that you couldn't do that past lvl 20, and within the past year or two they changed it back. This is a case of SOE acting like someone with bi-polar illness, modifying their game every year or so, back and forth.

And there are tons of other games that are WoW clones that fail and fail very hard. WoW is not something to emulate, especially since it emulates the original EQ's strengths and turns EQ's weaknesses into something better.

The point I'm trying to make here is the only thing about WoW that should be emulated is the polish and the desire to take existing parts and refine them to make them better. Most times we just see copy/paste and the game retains maybe 100-200k subs. Those were healthy numbers in the early 2000's, but if these devs and pubs want multi-million sub #'s they need to actually start investing in making mmos better.

As it stands now the investors see WoW's numbers and think that the devs just need to copy it to make it work. This isn't like building a car. Once a long time ago every game that existed for the pc (or virtually every game) was different than each other. The monetization of the games industry is stifling development and progress.

Originally posted by insanex 

Here is my question: If the WoW way is continually showing to bring success and solvency to developers that use it, why not ditch the breaking-the-mold ideology and try to make the WoW way better? 

Well, first of all there was Meridian 59. A game named EQ made Meridian way better. Then came Wow and did the same with EQ.

So basically have we been playing the same game for 15 years now and I am pretty sick of that and it isn't just me.

I got my first computer in '85, a Commodore 64 and games were very different at the time. RPG games either only had text or a small dot you moved in the dungeon. Then things started to change and from there have all the genres today evolved. And they still do, once in a while comes a game than changes the entire genre and often do they become huge.

If everyone thought like you we wouldn't had any MMOs, just Space invaders and Super Mario Bros. MMOs needs to evolve or they will slowly die out like the dinosaurs. APB didn't become a good game but the reason for that wasn't because it wasn't like Wow but because there just wasn't enough of things to do.

CCP already have the second largest P2P MMO right now and they are working on a new game that might change everything. Arenanets Guildwars 2 are changing a lot of the concept too. Tera is trying a new action based combat and there are more.

One of them will be the next one, not another try to rip off Meridian, EQ and Wow. There have been many attempts to do a better Wow but they all failed miserably, and not just because they all sucked even if most of them did but also because people are either tired of the whole regular concept or already playing and loving Wow or one of the very similar games out there.

The genre needs something new to start to growing again, it have more or less had the same number of players the last 2 years after a great growth for 6 years.

Originally posted by Evasia

We all need to stop about WoW, its a terible game beyond believe.

 

Now get all your assesesss to Darkfall and breake with easypiesy gameplay plus fuffy toys and childish cartoonee grapix.

Open your mind see the light the future is already here free roaming world with no zones or instance free for all player vs player get free loots build your own raft or ship or your own town get your assessesss ingame.

Be a HERO have the courage to play Darkfall.

I was playing Darkfall till I moved to the country and can't get a wired broadband line :(