100% true. Your average so called MMO player is nothing more than a whinny little ADD brat on the sugar crazies. I'd say about 50-70% of pc gamers didnt even know what a mmo was till WoW came out. Blizzard put the genre on the map and more importantly kept it there. It wasnt just a flash in the pan.

I've always thought it was funny that people keep on trolling Blizzard instead of the countless devs out there that just keep spamming out crappy games trying to make a fast buck.

Troll all you want and pretend it isnt true, without WoW theres no way we'd see the amount of mmos out that we have over the years. You people really think that companies like Bioware would even be looking at the mmo genre without WoW leading the way? Doubt it. And you could kiss GW2 byebye as well cause without Blizzard/WoW getting everyone and their dog playing mmos you can forget your mass PvP fest.

Anyways, have fun trolling away. Thats what the mmorpg.com forums are all about right? ;P

wow didnt ruin mmo's...yust the fun ex wow players had while playing other and even better mmo's

they didnt ruin the fun u had playing other mmos either. wow is a good game. its not to blame despite all u whiney little people on here who blame blizzard for everything from communism to the fact warhammer came out an incomplete mess of a game and failed

instead of blaming devs who make the games that fail and dont give u what u want u blame blizzard and thats just stupid. 

is that an insult maybe will i get warned who cares im tired of the whiney intitled mmo players who think there the only ones whos likes and dislikes matter and everyone elses opinion is stupid

im tired of the so called veterens who whine about how great uo and everquest were and how much better older mmos where. 

im tired of that because they dont even play those games themselves anymore. so if u arent playing it why should anyone else. 

sandbox games dont get the same kinda population themepark games do but if people who wanted a sandbox actually supported them and gave them time to grow they might succeed and not be a niche market.

want people to make the game u want heres an idea play them when they come out dont test it out quit and whine theres no good mmos to play when there are a ew very good ones from eve to darkfall to wow to god knows how many free 2 play titles that are actualy fun.

Originally posted by bobfish

Number 1 isn't entirely true.

 

WoW made MMOs mainstream in the west, but South Korea had million+ subscribing MMOs long before WoW came along. China's MMO market was also much bigger than the west's by the time WoW launched there and is now far bigger than both EU & NA markets combined.

 

So, please amend your article with the correct facts for that one, WoW did not make MMOs mainstream globally, just in the west.

Yep, the author doesn't seem to be aware that games like Lineage and Lineage II had multi-million subscribers long before WoW.

Originally posted by bobfish

Number 1 isn't entirely true.

WoW made MMOs mainstream in the west, but South Korea had million+ subscribing MMOs long before WoW came along. China's MMO market was also much bigger than the west's by the time WoW launched there and is now far bigger than both EU & NA markets combined.

So, please amend your article with the correct facts for that one, WoW did not make MMOs mainstream globally, just in the west.

 

In support of this: In China, Fantasy Westward Journey had over 20 million registered users when WoW launched.

There is no doubt WoW is one of the top mmo today, but in Asia it has not been influential.

Ugh, just reading through this comment section is giving me a headache.

Isn't the hatewagon crowded enough as is?

+1 Good article

Originally posted by ammonite

Originally posted by bobfish

Number 1 isn't entirely true.

WoW made MMOs mainstream in the west, but South Korea had million+ subscribing MMOs long before WoW came along. China's MMO market was also much bigger than the west's by the time WoW launched there and is now far bigger than both EU & NA markets combined.

So, please amend your article with the correct facts for that one, WoW did not make MMOs mainstream globally, just in the west.

 

In support of this: In China, Fantasy Westward Journey had over 20 million registered users when WoW launched.

There is no doubt WoW is one of the top mmo today, but in Asia it has not been influential.

 

 

 

 

You invalidated your entire point when you attempted to use the registered user argument, when anyone who plays these games knows is a meaningless number.  Also trying to imply Wow did not greatly impact MMO play in Asia is absurd, a good portion of Wow's numbers were from there.

I don't agree Wow actually destroyed mmorpg genre... I think it's same as everything. You got mainstream stuff that is largely succesful (and have many failed copycats) and you've got smaller stuff, that does things differently, their own way.

There are many servers and games that do it differently, sandboxes, games with completely different battle systems (turn based, RTS). I know even a few original MUDs that are still alive and kicking... They are out there, they are not so massively played, but then, do you want them to turn into second wow?

Just because your game where your favourite hero/environment is, is broken doesn't mean whole mmorpg genre is broken. It kind of reminds me music bussiness.

I was expecting some more solidified facts in this article to support the writer's argument, but this seems like nothing more than the gushing of a die-hard fan.  Not even worth writing an argument over the points made in the article.

I would think that a staff writer that's part of a website dedicated to supporting and reporting to the MMO community at large could do better than this.

There's only 1 reason I see you can claim about WOW: the first one. Seriously, the 2nd reason there were other games that had the same things before WOW. The 3rd reason is not even that great, considering the quantity of expansions other games made with the same or better quality. Just search for Guild Wars that launched some months before WOW, and it wasn't even an MMORPG but a Co-opRPG.

But I have to admit, WOW was the one that brought a large quantity of players to the genre. It was the marketing plan of Blizzard that made that possible. It wasn't polished nor had new features in the genre, but they made it work really well. There's no arguing here. But this is the sole reason why there's people that call "WOW-clone" to a lot of other games, that's the bad side of this. 

WOW is still first, ut not for much time. As almost all things and people known to be the best in any area of knowledge for a certain time, this will follow the same path and end up beeing hated and criticised by everyone in a near future.

Originally posted by Praetalus

Wow, I must say that MMO players are the hardest buunch of people to make/keep happy. All I see on this site is negativity of the highest degree - Why a game sucks or will fail, most post are before the games even come out. It's sad. 

 THIS

Three ways in which wow ruined mmos.

1) Opened the doors to the lowest common denominator which has in turn fractured and hurt far more communities than it has helped.

2) Brought about the sense of entitlement bs into our games, thanks to number 1.  The one place where you actually had to earn your way these mouth breathers turned into a welfare state where you are given crap just because you log in.

3) Because of the huge population, again thanks to number 1, in World of Warcrap it forced other developers to throw away ideas that would have actually progressed the genre in favor of churning subpar clone after clone. 

Making MMORPGs mainstream is probably the biggest reason disgruntled vets have for believing that WoW helped ruin the genre, in my opinion. It seems that the games are more like console action games than role-playing games these days. Even the old games have adopted these features. When the games were niche, most players had something in common which lead to healthier and more friendly communities. With millions of people from all walks of life playing them, there is conflict everywhere. People were safe and comfortable in the niche. Now they have to deal with everybody else, just like in real life.

Originally posted by severius

Three ways in which wow ruined mmos.

1) Opened the doors to the lowest common denominator which has in turn fractured and hurt far more communities than it has helped.

2) Brought about the sense of entitlement bs into our games, thanks to number 1.  The one place where you actually had to earn your way these mouth breathers turned into a welfare state where you are given crap just because you log in.

3) Because of the huge population, again thanks to number 1, in World of Warcrap it forced other developers to throw away ideas that would have actually progressed the genre in favor of churning subpar clone after clone. 

#1 was occuring before WOW came along. WOW was just the first game to capitalize on it. Most people think other games changed to be like WOW. I think they changed because they realized the profile of the average gamer was changing and they needed to do so to be viable in today's market.

WOW is a symptom of the problem, not the problem.

And no 90% of us on this forum are not today's average gamer.

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Originally posted by Palebane
Making MMORPGs mainstream is probably the biggest reason disgruntled vets have for believing that WoW helped ruin the genre, in my opinion. It seems that the games are more like console action games than role-playing games these days. Even the old games have adopted these features. When the games were niche, most players had something in common which lead to healthier and more friendly communities. With millions of people from all walks of life playing them, there is conflict everywhere. People were safe and comfortable in the niche. Now they have to deal with everybody else, just like in real life.

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Originally posted by Dhraal

Originally posted by Squiggie

Actually, WoW was not even close to "polished" at launch.  I can't believe how many people forget how messed up it was.  Blizzard saved themselves by relatively quickly fixing what was wrong, though.

I played 2 years SWG before I started with WoW. And WoW was bugfree and polished compared to SWG, there was not even 1 server rollback where you lost a few hours of gameplay ;)  

 Just because SWG was more broke at launch doesn't mean WoW wasn't broke...  :D

And for the record, I don't think WoW ruined MMORPG's...it's the 11 million subscribers that accept WoW as the "norm" that are ruining MMORPG's!

I agree, WoW didn't ruin MMO's. It's also unreasonable to say the people who like WoW ruined them. All of the teams who use WoW as their inspiration and try to follow in its footsteps, even though most of WoW's large subscription base isn't really interested in another lamer, worse version of WoW; those people are to blame. Blame the people making crappy games, not Blizzard who made a decent one that was quite forward thinking for its time.

This article is pretty terrible though. WoW has nothing to do with mmo success in the east, it wasn't even released there until fairly recently. I think ragnarok or lineage etc are the ones responsible for the expansion there. And I really don't see how the 3 reasons mentioned are even remotely related to the premise. To analyze whether WoW ruined mmos or not, you might think about actually looking at OTHER GAMES THAN WOW. Otherwise you are just listing things about WoW that you like.

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Originally posted by Elidien
And no 90% of us on this forum are not today's average gamer.

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Haha, you got that right. Today's average gamer spends what little free time they have playing games, rather than lurking for hours on end in a discussion area talking about how wonderful games used to be :) I think most of us here spend actually more time discussing than we do playing. I know I do.