MMOers should be thankful of Blizzard in two fronts:

• From a bleeding/no future/ consoles will dominate era, we moved to the massive online era. The true potential of the gender was tapped first by Blizzard in the west (east is another story).
• The quality expectations of the gender are finally high. Those who want to make good MMOs will find the resources, however people have very little tolerance for payed betas any more.

WoW heralded the beginning of the MMO era. Even with all the failed attempts and the failed copycats, today we have more MMOs produced than any other time in the history of this gender. Those same investors that you blame that they want to normalise all MMOs, would never have put their money in the gender in the first place if it wasn't for this game.

Let them produce failed games. If from every 10 failed or semi-failed attempt we end up with one decent game, I call it a success. By leagues better than the past, where nostalgia is blurring most people's perception, making them forget the bad and only remember the good.

Originally posted by Xasapis

Let them produce failed games. If from every 10 failed or semi-failed attempt we end up with one decent game, I call it a success. By leagues better than the past, where nostalgia is blurring most people's perception, making them forget the bad and only remember the good.

This is a bit of a dicey area.

Every time an MMO fails, I can imagine that the following happens:

1. Other MMO developers (should) learn from the mistakes of the failed MMO title.
2. MMO investors lose a bit of confidence.

I would hope that when MMO's fail it acts as a wake-up call for the other developers and gives them a very clear warning that the playerbase will not accept a substandard product, so they need to put the extra effort in to ensure that their title is polished, well bug-tested and has enough content to ensure the retention of its playerbase.

Unfortunately, I can also imagine that if the genre sees too many failures between successes, the investors might just decide that MMO development is too risky a prospect and that their money would be better invested elsewhere, leading to less AAA titles in production.

Obviously hoping for the former, but still.. dicey area.

I don't think things are that bad. Some of the players who only pays Wow will surely quit MMOs all together but it won't be the end. In the last few years we seen many devs trying to copy Wow and that never went well, I don't think even Blizzard can make another succesful game if it is too close to Wow (Wow 2 not included if it comes 5 years from now or more).

Look on other succesful games like Half life and Diablo, very few clones of them were succesful too.

It seems however that the companies are doing their own stuff once again, games like Mortal online, World of darkness online, TOR and Guildwars 2 will all differ a lot from Wow and more are coming. I am sure we sooner or later see another really big game or several.

Remember any Diablo clones? Darkstone for one? No, they all failed. When someone make a good game people will try to copy it, however the original usually wins. Also it have been hard to compete with Wow but the game is aging and all the programming would have to be made for scratch if you want much better graphics so I would say that 2009 or 2010 is the perfect time to release the next big game, just like Wow released 5 years after EQ. Timing is important with MMOs, not as important as making a good game of course.

First, I dont see why people have less fun in a MMO with 200k that 11 million people. I had played EQ2 for years and it didnt mean a heck to me that it did have no millions of subs.

Second, as much of an oddity WOW is, even WOW will pass someday and other MMOs will come. Its with all earthly things, teh.

What I DO think however, and what many people here in this forum do not recognize for real is, that WOW has made a lasting change on MMOs in general. Like the invention of cars over time removed horse and carriage, so do some concepts behind WOW change the expectation and perception of a MMO forever. For the vast vast majority of people, at last. The wheel of time does not turn backwards, and besides some 40k niche games, no bigger next MMO can fall behind some standards WOW has set, and thats good. However, new concepts and changes in other parts for better are possible, like SWTORs concept of story.

its amazing what you can do with $6.5 million a day...

anyway post WoW there will either be a WoW 2 (or some other blizzard game) and/or other people will move onto new games.

will it be the end of MMO's?  hell no.  There are wayyyy more players out there playing other games than WoW (how many people play Runescape? Guild wars? Lotro? every other MMO out there? i bet its more than 11 million)

When World of Warcraft was released it had one or several things that made it stand out over all others that had came before it. An auction house and player mounts and an in game mail system. That's it!

Right now it offers nothing better then was currently available 5 years before WOW's release. WOW really has taken the MMO genre in the wrong direction. My first MMO was DAOC well large scaled one that is. The things that made DAOC shine was it offered the best of both worlds be it PVE or PVP.  It was very benificial to socialize and group. In fact there are group XP bonues that you couldn't get while playing solo. I have nothing against solo as i do it alot myself but when the focus was put on solo vs grouped it really hurt the core concept of what an MMO is supposed to be.

DAOC was a grind and i never really minded it. The crafting system up to the point of when TOA was released was important and in very high demand. And well the PVP/RVR to this day has never been outdone by any modern day released MMORPG. DAOC was very social, very group dependent and the PVP/RVR had importance to your realm be it cash, xp bonus or access to restricted area's/dungeons. I would also like to point out that the average age of players seemed to be 25 years old plus. It was a mature gaming experience.

WoW came out and changed the gaming industry by storm and not in a good direction. Two words describe WOW. EASY + MODE. Sure it had some cool features at release. Graphics were fitting yet subpar compared to other modern day released MMO. This is a plus because people will older machines could still play WOW when they couldn't play the newer games. This was a smart move by Blizzard in every aspect. WOW system demands are very low. WoW is a solo players game. You dont need anybody to level and there is no benifit to grouping other then high end raiding. In fact grouping slows down the leveling process overall at any level. If i don't need to group then i don't need to talk to you therfore there is no need for social relationships to develop.

The downside is that game companies like Mythic that tried to attract part of the WOW fan base with WAR really hosed themselves. One of the biggest complaints about Warhammer on day one was that NOBODY was talking to anybody. Why? there was no reason to. I didn't need anybody to level in that game at all be it PVE or PVP. Insta action fights on. No penalty at all for dieing in PVP. Ooops i  died but back in battle in less then a minute as graveyard spawn point is 30 sec away from the fight for both sides. I also want to point out that MMO's used to be games parents played while there kids were playing outside being creative making up there own fun.

Now parents figure its a pretty cheap price to pay for a babysitter where there kids never leave the house are generally obese do to lack of physical activity that we as children got plenty of. Yes WOW can be blamed for alot of the poor health of kids in todays day and age. Kids never leave the house so its alot less stress on parents wondering where there children are. All for 14.99 a month. WTG Blizzard.

You can't blame Blizzard for the desire to be financially successful. We can blame them from taking time proven standards for MMORPS and throwing them down the drain. The next big thing in MMO gaming won't be a clone of WOW . It will be a game more tailored to the mature player base *age 30+* and this game will have a crafting system that is vital to players. A PVP/PVE element that encourages interaction between players as a priority. You know why is it that we all sit here and give developers idea's on what we in general want in a game that they cant deliver us. We've told them we're tired of WOW and want a new experience. Do they not have the capability to be risky, creative and imaginative based off player desires? The reason WAR flopped was that it was more WOW like then DAOC like. I'm still lost at what the heck Mythic was thinking in development. Nothing can compete against WOWs playerbase which is fine. Lets attract a new playerbase to a new game.

I'd be willing to pay double what todays average monthly gaming subscription price is *$14.99* for a game that offered me what i was looking for in an MMO. Now all we can do is look and hope.

The reason is WOW is so popular is rather simple. They never targeted the MMO groups. 

If you think about yourself as a product and you want mass market appeal as well as getting yourself out to many. You blanket market.

1) You want people to know your product is easy to use. Wow has a very easy learning curve.

2) You want something all can partake in from mom and dad to the kids. Wow is rather family orientated in many ways and not M rated.

3) You want to be able to sell your item to as many people as possible. Wow was playable on lower end systems so that you can take advantage of anyone that did not have a high end game rig like many games do.

The problem that most MMO's right now have is that they focus on the gamer group and not the mass market. Just because someone plays WOW does not make them a MMO group person and may not be interested in WAR or LOTR. Some of the games out there now that are based on an existing idea do not work well as they focus on one area and not many.

Take WAR for a moment (No I am not falming WAR at all here but it is used as a comparison) 

If you do not like the table top game or have never heard of it you may not want to get it. The box art reflected the game style , (MY GF plays WOW and thought the box art for WAR was dark) and it needed a better system spec, which kills those who do or have not updated comps.  I am sure you can see where things fall off here.

For any game to ever beat Blizzard in the game market.  They need to look beyond what everyone is doing and find out what they should be doing and do that.

But it is my guess that a whole revolution to the genre of MMO's needs to be looked at and it may be a game that has not been developed that will dethrone the leader.

Till then .. hey it's just a game