Originally posted by PapaB34R

Originally posted by Josher

 

People playing after the first month is the ONLY issue.  MMOs aren't about boxes sold bud.  Commercials CAN'T sell subscriptions and thats all that matters.  If people don't like the game/service, they quit.  Its not about boxes sold.  Theres little profit in the box sales anyway.  MMOs aren't movies or CDs or soda, but I gather you know that.  I guess I should've been more clear that selling the game means actually playing the game for more than the trial month.   Even then...StarWars, the biggest IP in history can't keep a MMO going strong or even a game.  How's The Force Unleashed doing lately?  people don't play whats popular.  They play whats FUN and FUN games become popular.   Popular games don't become fun.  It doesn't work like that.

So people will buy a box of poop with Blizzard's name on it huh?  Then why did Blizzard cancel Ghost?  It was POOP.  It was behind the times and Blizzard canned it.  WHY?  Because it would've been thrashed buy critics and players.   They knew it wouldn't sell. 

 

but if they didnt manage to sell the game in the first place it would still fail miserbly.. and I somewhat disagree, the more people there is the more things there are to do ingame, more people to play with, trade with etc. So of course it matters how many they sell. Also they get a $40 from a box sell and a $15 for month subrsciption. In the long term they make a lot more money on the subscription sure, but the more money they get from the box the more can be invested into the game

Also ghost wasnt cancelled due to the fact it was bad it was cancelled out of a financial situation, one among others were blizzard draw folks to work on their newest project ala WoW. The whole idea that Blizzard would be geniueses who only make perfect game is just crazy. Sure they have a good track record but cmon theyve only made what, like 6 or so games with expansions, it just wont cut it.

(and guess what commercials work. They dont just make you buy the project but make you drawn to it, of course if its totally crap youl only remembered the bad stuff and wont go back to playing but if you had some fun stuff too then theres a big chance youl wanna start playing again. The same can be said about movies when comparing movie and dvd sales)

What the heck does that mean=)  If it doesn't sell, it would fail?   Duh=)  Marketing of course matters, but WOW already sold millions BEFORE the marketing blitz even started.  1 Million copies BEFORE the commercials hit.  They sold 1 million by sheer word of mouth and great critical reviews.  Marketing helped blow the doors off, but the core game sold itself.  Name didn't sell it.  The GAME did.  People trying it and telling their friends did.  Downloading a trial of  WOW was no harder than trying any MMO out there.  Doing no more than SOE did with SWG or EQ2 at the time, Blizzard sold millions where others sold average.   I'm not saying Blizzard is gods gift to gaming.  I never finished any of the Warcrafts or Starcraft.  I didn't even like Diablo.  WOW hooked me in the beta.  Any reputation Blizzard had didn't mean anything at least to me and most people I knew.  People were trying it BECAUSE it looked great and played great.    Everyone that came from other MMOs was playing WOW in the first month for the most part.  Advertising, commercials, all of it didn't matter at that point. 

I worked in advertising by the way.  I'm quite aware of how it works=)  You have to remember when it all started.  A great review isn't advertising.  Word of mouth isn't advertising.  Forums aren't advertising.  Advertising sells a box, but thats where it stops.  Selling a box doesn't matter is the game is a turd and its a subscription.  You can't FOOL people into paying a subscription, but you can fool them into buying a can of soda;)  Its quite different.  No amount of advertising sells a monthly fee and monthly fees are what its all about with P2P MMOs.  Do you stick with one phone company because they're called AT&T?  Hell no you don't.  You use who offers the best service each month.  WOW offers a better service than others.

By the way, 6 blockbusters is more than most developers could ever dream of.   Basically a perfect record of top selling games and expansions is about as good as you can get.

Originally posted by Josher

Originally posted by PapaB34R

Originally posted by Josher

 

People playing after the first month is the ONLY issue.  MMOs aren't about boxes sold bud.  Commercials CAN'T sell subscriptions and thats all that matters.  If people don't like the game/service, they quit.  Its not about boxes sold.  Theres little profit in the box sales anyway.  MMOs aren't movies or CDs or soda, but I gather you know that.  I guess I should've been more clear that selling the game means actually playing the game for more than the trial month.   Even then...StarWars, the biggest IP in history can't keep a MMO going strong or even a game.  How's The Force Unleashed doing lately?  people don't play whats popular.  They play whats FUN and FUN games become popular.   Popular games don't become fun.  It doesn't work like that.

So people will buy a box of poop with Blizzard's name on it huh?  Then why did Blizzard cancel Ghost?  It was POOP.  It was behind the times and Blizzard canned it.  WHY?  Because it would've been thrashed buy critics and players.   They knew it wouldn't sell. 

 

but if they didnt manage to sell the game in the first place it would still fail miserbly.. and I somewhat disagree, the more people there is the more things there are to do ingame, more people to play with, trade with etc. So of course it matters how many they sell. Also they get a $40 from a box sell and a $15 for month subrsciption. In the long term they make a lot more money on the subscription sure, but the more money they get from the box the more can be invested into the game

Also ghost wasnt cancelled due to the fact it was bad it was cancelled out of a financial situation, one among others were blizzard draw folks to work on their newest project ala WoW. The whole idea that Blizzard would be geniueses who only make perfect game is just crazy. Sure they have a good track record but cmon theyve only made what, like 6 or so games with expansions, it just wont cut it.

(and guess what commercials work. They dont just make you buy the project but make you drawn to it, of course if its totally crap youl only remembered the bad stuff and wont go back to playing but if you had some fun stuff too then theres a big chance youl wanna start playing again. The same can be said about movies when comparing movie and dvd sales)

 

What the heck does that mean=)  If it doesn't sell, it would fail?   Duh=)  Marketing of course matters, but WOW already sold millions BEFORE the marketing blitz even started.  1 Million copies BEFORE the commercials hit.  They sold 1 million by sheer word of mouth and great critical reviews.  Marketing helped blow the doors off, but the core game sold itself.  Name didn't sell it.  The GAME did.  People trying it and telling their friends did.  Downloading a trial of  WOW was no harder than trying any MMO out there.  Doing no more than SOE did with SWG or EQ2 at the time, Blizzard sold millions where others sold average.   I'm not saying Blizzard is gods gift to gaming.  I never finished any of the Warcrafts or Starcraft.  I didn't even like Diablo.  WOW hooked me in the beta.  Any reputation Blizzard had didn't mean anything at least to me and most people I knew.  People were trying it BECAUSE it looked great and played great.    Everyone that came from other MMOs was playing WOW in the first month for the most part.  Advertising, commercials, all of it didn't matter at that point. 

I worked in advertising by the way.  I'm quite aware of how it works=)  You have to remember when it all started.  A great review isn't advertising.  Word of mouth isn't advertising.  Forums aren't advertising.  Advertising sells a box, but thats where it stops.  Selling a box doesn't matter is the game is a turd and its a subscription.  You can't FOOL people into paying a subscription, but you can fool them into buying a can of soda;)  Its quite different.  No amount of advertising sells a monthly fee and monthly fees are what its all about with P2P MMOs.  Do you stick with one phone company because they're called AT&T?  Hell no you don't.  You use who offers the best service each month.  WOW offers a better service than others.

By the way, 6 blockbusters is more than most developers could ever dream of.   Basically a perfect record of top selling games and expansions is about as good as you can get.

makes me wonder if you live in the desert. The marketing they begun weeks before launch, maybe not in TV but magazines, websites, billboards etc.

Also the hype ofc thats forums/rewievs and peaks contributed.. as well as old blizzard fans but Il still have to believe that the marketing campaign they produced (which was a lot bigger then what EQ2 ever did btw) showed early results

Im not saying that the game itself had nothing to do with the success, yes of course it had like any other game.. however had it been released by a small company with not that much money to advertise and be seen WoW wouldve never grown big. It probably wouldnt even exist today, but thats another "what if" story

Also dont be quick to discard the power of commercials, the effect it will have on the potential buyer is huge. I myself have studdied marketing as well as conducting small experiments with folks about this and guess what, most of the commercials strenght doesnt rely in the direct message itself but how you see the things subconsciously. Sure your brain will still stop you from doing utterly foolish stuff, or if your less impulsive youl think before youl make the buy but in either case it will affect you one way or another, so yes you can perfectly fine compare a soda and a mmo subscription. You might keep buying the soda even though youl like another kind better in the same manner you might continue to play because of the comercials and the "everyones playing it right now". If you think Im wrong, go see for yourself as this be the last post I make in this thread.

Originally posted by PapaB34R 

 

makes me wonder if you live in the desert. The marketing they begun weeks before launch, maybe not in TV but magazines, websites, billboards etc.

Also the hype ofc thats forums/rewievs and peaks contributed.. as well as old blizzard fans but Il still have to believe that the marketing campaign they produced (which was a lot bigger then what EQ2 ever did btw) showed early results

Im not saying that the game itself had nothing to do with the success, yes of course it had like any other game.. however had it been released by a small company with not that much money to advertise and be seen WoW wouldve never grown big. It probably wouldnt even exist today, but thats another "what if" story

Also dont be quick to discard the power of commercials, the effect it will have on the potential buyer is huge. I myself have studdied marketing as well as conducting small experiments with folks about this and guess what, most of the commercials strenght doesnt rely in the direct message itself but how you see the things subconsciously. Sure your brain will still stop you from doing utterly foolish stuff, or if your less impulsive youl think before youl make the buy but in either case it will affect you one way or another, so yes you can perfectly fine compare a soda and a mmo subscription. You might keep buying the soda even though youl like another kind better in the same manner you might continue to play because of the comercials and the "everyones playing it right now". If you think Im wrong, go see for yourself as this be the last post I make in this thread.

Even if everything you said was true (which it isn't), some of the population would eventually even out.  People would try new sodas (or mmos) and find out that they do enjoy the other brands more than they do the heavily advertised ones.  The other games would swell just off the subscribers that burn out from wow.

That isn't the case though.  Almost every single other mmo is shrinking and has been since wow released. 

You can't advertise your way to over 11 million people at one time and not have at least a portion of them switch over to other products if they are indeed better as you say. 

Originally posted by PapaB34R

Originally posted by Josher

Originally posted by PapaB34R

Originally posted by Josher

 

People playing after the first month is the ONLY issue.  MMOs aren't about boxes sold bud.  Commercials CAN'T sell subscriptions and thats all that matters.  If people don't like the game/service, they quit.  Its not about boxes sold.  Theres little profit in the box sales anyway.  MMOs aren't movies or CDs or soda, but I gather you know that.  I guess I should've been more clear that selling the game means actually playing the game for more than the trial month.   Even then...StarWars, the biggest IP in history can't keep a MMO going strong or even a game.  How's The Force Unleashed doing lately?  people don't play whats popular.  They play whats FUN and FUN games become popular.   Popular games don't become fun.  It doesn't work like that.

So people will buy a box of poop with Blizzard's name on it huh?  Then why did Blizzard cancel Ghost?  It was POOP.  It was behind the times and Blizzard canned it.  WHY?  Because it would've been thrashed buy critics and players.   They knew it wouldn't sell. 

 

but if they didnt manage to sell the game in the first place it would still fail miserbly.. and I somewhat disagree, the more people there is the more things there are to do ingame, more people to play with, trade with etc. So of course it matters how many they sell. Also they get a $40 from a box sell and a $15 for month subrsciption. In the long term they make a lot more money on the subscription sure, but the more money they get from the box the more can be invested into the game

Also ghost wasnt cancelled due to the fact it was bad it was cancelled out of a financial situation, one among others were blizzard draw folks to work on their newest project ala WoW. The whole idea that Blizzard would be geniueses who only make perfect game is just crazy. Sure they have a good track record but cmon theyve only made what, like 6 or so games with expansions, it just wont cut it.

(and guess what commercials work. They dont just make you buy the project but make you drawn to it, of course if its totally crap youl only remembered the bad stuff and wont go back to playing but if you had some fun stuff too then theres a big chance youl wanna start playing again. The same can be said about movies when comparing movie and dvd sales)

 

What the heck does that mean=)  If it doesn't sell, it would fail?   Duh=)  Marketing of course matters, but WOW already sold millions BEFORE the marketing blitz even started.  1 Million copies BEFORE the commercials hit.  They sold 1 million by sheer word of mouth and great critical reviews.  Marketing helped blow the doors off, but the core game sold itself.  Name didn't sell it.  The GAME did.  People trying it and telling their friends did.  Downloading a trial of  WOW was no harder than trying any MMO out there.  Doing no more than SOE did with SWG or EQ2 at the time, Blizzard sold millions where others sold average.   I'm not saying Blizzard is gods gift to gaming.  I never finished any of the Warcrafts or Starcraft.  I didn't even like Diablo.  WOW hooked me in the beta.  Any reputation Blizzard had didn't mean anything at least to me and most people I knew.  People were trying it BECAUSE it looked great and played great.    Everyone that came from other MMOs was playing WOW in the first month for the most part.  Advertising, commercials, all of it didn't matter at that point. 

I worked in advertising by the way.  I'm quite aware of how it works=)  You have to remember when it all started.  A great review isn't advertising.  Word of mouth isn't advertising.  Forums aren't advertising.  Advertising sells a box, but thats where it stops.  Selling a box doesn't matter is the game is a turd and its a subscription.  You can't FOOL people into paying a subscription, but you can fool them into buying a can of soda;)  Its quite different.  No amount of advertising sells a monthly fee and monthly fees are what its all about with P2P MMOs.  Do you stick with one phone company because they're called AT&T?  Hell no you don't.  You use who offers the best service each month.  WOW offers a better service than others.

By the way, 6 blockbusters is more than most developers could ever dream of.   Basically a perfect record of top selling games and expansions is about as good as you can get.

 

makes me wonder if you live in the desert. The marketing they begun weeks before launch, maybe not in TV but magazines, websites, billboards etc.

Also the hype ofc thats forums/rewievs and peaks contributed.. as well as old blizzard fans but Il still have to believe that the marketing campaign they produced (which was a lot bigger then what EQ2 ever did btw) showed early results

Im not saying that the game itself had nothing to do with the success, yes of course it had like any other game.. however had it been released by a small company with not that much money to advertise and be seen WoW wouldve never grown big. It probably wouldnt even exist today, but thats another "what if" story

Also dont be quick to discard the power of commercials, the effect it will have on the potential buyer is huge. I myself have studdied marketing as well as conducting small experiments with folks about this and guess what, most of the commercials strenght doesnt rely in the direct message itself but how you see the things subconsciously. Sure your brain will still stop you from doing utterly foolish stuff, or if your less impulsive youl think before youl make the buy but in either case it will affect you one way or another, so yes you can perfectly fine compare a soda and a mmo subscription. You might keep buying the soda even though youl like another kind better in the same manner you might continue to play because of the comercials and the "everyones playing it right now". If you think Im wrong, go see for yourself as this be the last post I make in this thread.

EQ2 matched WOW's billboards spot for spot at least for a little while.  Same with magazines.  EQ2 ALSO had a 1 month head start, which is huge if EQ2 was actually a better MMO, which it wasn't.

But you can keep on beleiving people play MMOs just because "everyone" is.  People only play games they enjoy, unless they're demented.  Case closed.

Originally posted by Mopar63

First you have to understand why WoW succeeded, it is designed to play toi the lowest common demoninator. It is a game that is very easy and forgiving on it's players and allows for near instant gratification. In the old days of Pen and Paper we called this a Mony Haul game. Since it would not win players with it's great story and content it wins them by making them the deal of letting them have whatever they want with minimual effort.

Before the flamers start try taking a real look and you will see the above is true. Most other MMOs are more diffuclt at the start, are slower.

Now other games try to steal the thunder and go all Monty Haul, even some games that started harder have dumbed down their design to gain on WoW. However that will nto work, the reaon is that the relationships built in the game are now keeping the players there. The game is really not all that special anymore, nothing new by any stretch of the imagination yet no one is moving. The reason is  the relationships.

 

 

 

 

This is actually exactly backwards.   80% of this post is correct, its merelyu approaching from wrong direction.  It is the attitude and perception of the users themselves that is backwards.  

WoW succeeds where others fail because they did not design the game with this attitude in mind.  Namely that what people want is somehow bad and you should inflict things upon people for their own good.

But they also do not simply give in to every dumbass demand of their player base.    There is nothing special about WoW, they simply actually listened when a lot of people said they did not like certain features.  The design of WoW makes no inferences about whether the users are stupid or smart or lazy or driven.  They merely accumulated a lot of input and actually bleived people when they said some stuff was or was not fun.

That combined with the fact that they minimize all the ridiculous just plain bad stuff that tend to crop in other MMOs and you have a huge difference.  I mean go do some of the Kasshyk quests for the Actis jedi starfighter where things OFTEN spawn in places that make them unkillable and its been that way for years.  Blizzard just doesn't let things like that stand for very long.  Yeah they don't always know what they are doing and they do have bugs.  But there are bugs and then there are completely stupid BS bugs and those will destroy a person's esteem for your product.

It is not necessary to be perfect or even high quality.  But what is absolutely essential is to craft your game so that causes the least amount of anger from as many people as possible.

In general what kills these games (and many computer UIs in general) is that they have a lot little or big things that piss people off to use or play them.  Any little bit of  game that seems retardly stupid or frustratingly implemented will be a black mark in the users esteeem for the game.  And once they feel sufficiently pissed they will never play that game again and will talk about like its a piece of shit to other people, even if its only kind of crappy.

Most dev houses fall down on the minimization of pissing off the user.  But where the current crop of games have failed is that they make the same judgement the quoted post makes.  That WoW is all easy Monty Haul lottery come here and I will give you stuff.  Yeah WoW is a gear grind no doubt and it does have Monty Haul aspects to it.  But all these people assume the masses of WoW players are therefore greedy dumbasses.  No the Developers are the dumbasses because they expect normal people to continue to play their games after they have pissed them off.

This is why there are so many people who would like to leave WoW.  They actually are not all that into the Monty Haul stuff.  It occupies them but they exactly how hollow it can be.  The problem is other games have stupid and frustrating BS in them.  Either just negligently broken quests or an RvR endgames that after a hard look has no meat on it or an annoying interface or whatever.  Then they go back to WoW not because its good but because its not bad and pissing them off.

I think the main reason is this. Game Companies do NOT want to be a "WoW Clone". Why? If they are labeled as that they are set to the standard of WoW and bashed. So companies try TOO HARD to not be WoW and then get too far off the tried and true MMORPG medieval/fantasy 'ruleset'. Then they fail...

It is similar to Diablo Clones. I would totally play a good diablo 2 clone. Hell I would buy 2nd and 3rd expansion for Diablo 2 right now. No one wants to straight up copy it because it will be compared and more than likely fail.

Originally posted by Yegor

Indeed Torath. You are correct in the departments that you have mentioned. Nevertheless, you have failed to see (or at least to state) that all the games that failed spectacularly (very few exceptions) are trying the old formula. Why are all the games going after medieval fantasy setting when Blizzard pretty much perfected it. You will not make a more perfect perfection. Vanguard tried, AoC tried, hell even Darkfall will try. All failures because they are following Blizzard's own formula.

Everquest started the equation. Blizzard took it and made it better if not the best in the setting. Medeval fantasy is theirs.

I agree with this to a certain extent, however there are parts of earlier games, and new games that are better than WoW to many players. For one thing, the LFG system in WoW is really bad compared to Everquest's in my opinion.  WoW's LFG interface is very complex, but severely lacking in many aspects. For example, you can only look for groups of quests that you have, or dungeons that are your level. Everquest's LFG tool was much simpler and merely consisted of having an LFG after your name in chat searches by typing /lfg. One could simply do a /who all LFG Shaman 30-36 or whatever. It was easy to use, more player's used it, and it left alot more options open as to what you were LFG for, or willing ot help with. Most players in WoW use the trade channel to find groups, rather than the sorely lacking LFG tool.

For some players, the quest tracker in WAR and AoC (for example) were much more intuative and easy to follow. Sure, some players like the challenge of finding out quest obectives on their own. They are good at it, and enjoy it. Some people, though do not have such a great sense of direction and become lost and frustrated very easily. It would be a nice option in WoW's interface. There is an addon that lets you plot your own markers on the map, but mods are frustrating in thier own right, and not all modders have the endurance to change the entire code every patch.

Bottom line is, sure WoW has improved some major game elements over it's predecessors, but some still remain behind the times, or simply too complex to be of any real use, so there is room for improvement.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by PapaB34R 

 

makes me wonder if you live in the desert. The marketing they begun weeks before launch, maybe not in TV but magazines, websites, billboards etc.

Also the hype ofc thats forums/rewievs and peaks contributed.. as well as old blizzard fans but Il still have to believe that the marketing campaign they produced (which was a lot bigger then what EQ2 ever did btw) showed early results

Im not saying that the game itself had nothing to do with the success, yes of course it had like any other game.. however had it been released by a small company with not that much money to advertise and be seen WoW wouldve never grown big. It probably wouldnt even exist today, but thats another "what if" story

Also dont be quick to discard the power of commercials, the effect it will have on the potential buyer is huge. I myself have studdied marketing as well as conducting small experiments with folks about this and guess what, most of the commercials strenght doesnt rely in the direct message itself but how you see the things subconsciously. Sure your brain will still stop you from doing utterly foolish stuff, or if your less impulsive youl think before youl make the buy but in either case it will affect you one way or another, so yes you can perfectly fine compare a soda and a mmo subscription. You might keep buying the soda even though youl like another kind better in the same manner you might continue to play because of the comercials and the "everyones playing it right now". If you think Im wrong, go see for yourself as this be the last post I make in this thread.

Even if everything you said was true (which it isn't), some of the population would eventually even out.  People would try new sodas (or mmos) and find out that they do enjoy the other brands more than they do the heavily advertised ones.  The other games would swell just off the subscribers that burn out from wow.

That isn't the case though.  Almost every single other mmo is shrinking and has been since wow released. 

You can't advertise your way to over 11 million people at one time and not have at least a portion of them switch over to other products if they are indeed better as you say. 

 

 

I know I said I wouldnt post again here.. but this be the last, let me ask you something, why do you drink coca cola so often, or why does ppl do it. Why dont they drink other sodas, why do you think. Let me say it like this, its not because of the taste, theres pepsi, its not because of the coffeine, there coffee... well you make your own oppinion

and as a last say about the subject, WoW flooded the mmo market with new people who havent ever played mmo's before, why and how do you think that happened. The success relies much more in the less obvious then what you may think.

Originally posted by PapaB34R

I know I said I wouldnt post again here.. but this be the last, let me ask you something, why do you drink coca cola so often, or why does ppl do it. Why dont they drink other sodas, why do you think. Let me say it like this, its not because of the taste, theres pepsi, its not because of the coffeine, there coffee... well you make your own oppinion

and as a last say about the subject, WoW flooded the mmo market with new people who havent ever played mmo's before, why and how do you think that happened. The success relies much more in the less obvious then what you may think.

People drink Coke because they like the taste of it and you can buy it anywhere.  Plus plenty of people drink Pepsi, Dr. Pepper and an assortment of other sodas.  Also way more coffee is drunk then Coke anyway.  Sodas are so over-advertised that it boils down to personal preference in the end.   No matter how many commercials for Dr. Pepper I see, I will not start liking it all of a sudden when up till now I hated the taste.

Let's not forget the New Coke debacle. 

Our kids wanna play what their friends play, and that is WoW. All three kids like lotro more but still play WoW because thats what all their friends from school are playing.

And thats what game devs go wrong. They try to make a "WoW killer" when in reality they cant kill WoW. WoW is a kids social network as well as, or as much as, a game.

So here we are, a whole world of adult (30+) veteran gamers (C64, Amiga, etc) that have been playing games our whole lives, we have jobs, kids, houses and a shitload of buying power, but no adult MMO to play, because they all try to beat WoW or turn up to be gankfests... Good luck dickheads!

So Torrick, you drink whatever commercials tell you to drink even if you hate the taste?  You eat at restaurants even if you don't like them just because you keep seeing commercials?  Do you buy games that all the websites tell you to buy, even after you play a demo and decided it wasn't for you?  You play MMOs you don't like just because your friends play?  You're that weak minded?

If you do all these things, you're an extremely impressionable individual who can't think for himself or probably still a teenager.  If you don't do these things, you just disproved your own point;)

I don't know a single person who eats at McDonalds every day, but hates it.  I've NEVER met anyone who purposely drinks soda they don't like.  I've never met a person who keeps going to the same movie even though they hate it.  I've never met anyone who eats at a resturant every weekend even though they hate it.  But please enlighten everyone as to where these people exist.

I've never met anyone who plays WOW who actually hates it.  I've read about these people in forums who bitch and moan for years, yet continue to play, but forums aren't REAL people.  Those who complain actually enjoy the game very much.  It doesn't matter what they say.  Many just like attention.  Why else would you play a game for so long?  Their actions speak louder than words.

I don't concern myself with whether there will ever be a game with the same or greater subscription base than World of Warcraft.

I play a game to have fun, not to be able to say that I play a game that has more subscribers than other games. The success of a game is whether I enjoy my time in it, not in how many others play it with me.

Many times it's the friends you make that keep you in a game you'd have otherwise quit long ago.

WoW,  I feel the game was alright.  But i played the game for 2 years because of the friends I made and developed a bond with.

This is what's drawn many into a game like this.   It's a giant,  the timing of release was perfect,  it was well advertised, and the game was pretty good.   Was it an excellent game?  No, to be honest i doesn't even rank close to my top 10 list, but regardless,  i still payed a monthly fee for 2 years.   Some have been going much longer.

Also,  as a whole,  other games being released are just spinoff's on what WoW created.  Why would i bother if i could just play the giant in the industry?    I've played LOTRO, vanguard, etc...   all knockoffs.   Did i enjoy them?  certainly!   but knockoffs nonetheless.

The MMO industry is starting a shift, which is nice to see.   Darkfall for example is going back to UO roots and delivering (or rehashing, depending on your view) something fresh.   Don't get me wrong,  the delivery of the game leaves something to be desired,  but hype and excitment for this game remains regardless.

Other games are being released with some new concepts as well,  yet i think it's a foregone conclusion that WoW will remain the heavy hitter for years to come.

Originally posted by PapaB34R 

I know I said I wouldnt post again here.. but this be the last, let me ask you something, why do you drink coca cola so often, or why does ppl do it. Why dont they drink other sodas, why do you think. Let me say it like this, its not because of the taste, theres pepsi, its not because of the coffeine, there coffee... well you make your own oppinion

and as a last say about the subject, WoW flooded the mmo market with new people who havent ever played mmo's before, why and how do you think that happened. The success relies much more in the less obvious then what you may think.

First off, I don't drink coca cola so you are already off to a poor start with you assumptions and line of logic. 

When I do drink soda it is normally something witout carmel color and caffine.  Preferably without HF corn syrup to boot. 

Let me return a question to you.  When you walk into a store to buy a soda, how many choices are you presented with?  Have you noticed the shift to "sports" drinks, bottled water, juice drinks and tea based beverages? 

All that coca-cola advertising hasn't stopped those beverages from carving out huge chucks of the market as you seem to think happens.  People sure don't seem to have a problem breaking free from the bonds of coca cola advertising that you seem to think keeps people zombified consumers.

Fact is millions of people were playing mmos prior to wows advertising.  Yes millions and they all had no experience with mmos before they started and there was plenty of people moving around games then.   Then blizzard releases wow (at the same time as eq2 which was just as heavily advertised). and they completely blow every single game out of the water.

There is a reason you hear so many stories of people returning to wow for the 3rd, 4th, 5th time after playing other games.  That isn't advertising not matter how hard you want it to be true.

Originally posted by Netspook

Originally posted by schloob

Because every recently failed game (DF, AoC, WAR,etc.) thinks it can change the rules of what makes a sucessful MMORPG.  By looking at the phenomenal successes of EQ and WoW we can establish a few rules:

-Most people like PvE

-The few people that don't like PvE like PvP

-Your game should be about 90% PvE and 20% voluntary PvP

-Full loot fails

-Open PvP fails

-One end game encounter fails

-No progression fails

-Titties >>> gameplay/working game fails

-Scenario PvP doesn't fail but should only be a small part of PvP

I could go on and on.  Hopefully a good company will come along and make a game that I can stand for more than 3 days but seeing that Darkfall and AoC recently tried to set the bar low, wanted to go lower, got a shovel, dug awhile and set the bar, I think the next successful MMORPG will be either Blizzard or SoE old-school crew produced.

 

Wrong on sooo many lvls. If you were correct, PvP servers wouldn't be very popular among WoW players, which is lightyears away from the truth. Check for yourself:

http://www.wow-europe.com/realmstatus/index.html?locale=en_gb

Now, how many PvP server are there, compared to PvE? 'Nuff said.

You do realize that people don't actually roll on those servers to PvP? They roll on these servers because they are more populated and you have a higher chance to actually join some serious guild.
 

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Raekon

EQ2 was there for years and they had not even ONE spot running to tv and barely any were in the magazines to say the least.
 

Additionaly EQ2 was mostly for people that had a clue about the lore AND was partially and it wasn't mindless bring me 100 heads from the same person questing like WoW to say the least.

You seem to under the impression that Blizzard was running television ads for warcraft prior to its release.  Perhaps I missed it, but warcraft television ads started showing in late 2007 with the shatner/troyner spots.  

As for eq2 not advertising much, are you kidding?  You didn't see the full size cutouts in stores of Antonia Bayle of Lucan D'lere?  For petes sakes they hired Heather Graham and Christopher Lee to head up the voice acting in the game.  Soe had an entire division devoted to advertising and marketing mmos, not only for themselves, but other companies that needed a publisher.  There was plenty of EQ2 vs Warcraft advertising going on. 

I also think you are mistaken with your view of what eq2 was supposed to be.  EQ2 was supposed to be the next generation mmo that would dominate the market.  That is why soe worked so hard to compete and rush to beat wow to market.  It wasn't aimed to be some niche game as you are trying to make it out to be.  EQ2 was aimed at capturing a wider and more casual market.  Just because it failed to do that doesn't change what it was intended to be.

 

The question I keep coming back to is, if the key to success of an mmo was simply advertising it, what is holding back so many games from doing just that?  It can't be that big of a secret if the posters on mmorpg.com know about it. 

 

Dear daffid.... you obviously missed that I'm talking about a worldwide scale and not only about your place right?
 

In Germany heck even in Greece when I went there you could see tv spots about wow as the only one mmo.

Advertisement HELPS and that's no lie! Additionaly as others said fans from diablo and warcraft/starcraft were millions already? I'm one of them and I'm not denying that this was one of the main reasons I joined wow and to my dissappointment I saw a screwed up story that had barely to do with the warcraft series (illogical stuff they as I heard partially corrected later) a very simple character editor that make no difference with some mediocre or simple korean mmos and couldn't match editors like the unmatchable one from city of heroes/villains (OK no mmo ever managed to do that yet. :P ), a gameplay that was nothing else than mediocre, a frustrating and boring repeatable quest system (hey! Let's let this guy get into the fight with the mobs so we can steal the quest item so when he comes out after he made the whole effort gets nothing and has to wait for a respawn while he needs to fight again!), a bad distribution (random luck in "epic items" and rare items with dice roll) of items, holes in the generated blending of the BITMAPS of the environment (yes they were bitmaps....), a traveling system that had you to walk 30 minutes to reach the next place so you can open a travel option and travel with a griffin or flying bot, the possibility to fall out of a map and land on the water with the only option to either swim for 30 minutes or longer to reach a place you can come back on a land spot or instantly die and much more that actually any good mmo would had done  and already has done much better!

Don't even start me with the pvp....

So don't start me please with "it's the unmatched gameplay fanboy talk" cause such talks are epic fails in my opinion.

Their whole gameplay are pieces they took out of other mmos, polished a bit and sold as their own system and nothing more.

Nothing new, nothing special. I don't mind that though cause if someone likes it they should play it!

However, the game itself is definately not the reason for the success they had with it cause there are many other mmos that did many of these features much better then they ever did!

Have Fun!

I never liked WoW at all, but Blizzard did everything quite well. Very little was outstanding but almost nothing was bad. They had sound financial backing, a loyal ready-made market from the Warcraft franchise and they didn't scare away people trying their first mmo.

Contrast that with EQ and you can see the differences immediately. I'm English and I was in EQ from the start but not only didn't I know any other English players back then, I didn't even know anyone who'd heard of Everquest. The game just didn't exist over here in 1999 beyond a handful of people like me who stumbled across it by accident. I remember finding out about the /played command when I was level 14 and I had 14 played days.  That's 336 hours of gameplay to get to level 14. People won't tolerate that now.

Not competing with WoW is nowhere near the realms of failure though. WoW is the exception, not the rule. EQ was a massive success with half a million subscribers.

Originally posted by Raekon 

Dear daffid.... you obviously missed that I'm talking about a worldwide scale and not only about your place right?
 

In Germany heck even in Greece when I went there you could see tv spots about wow as the only one mmo.

<<snip>>

However, the game itself is definately not the reason for the success they had with it cause there are many other mmos that did many of these features much better then they ever did!

Have Fun!

You do realize Warcraft was already a success years.. yes years.. before they ran television ads.

For all the ranting you are doing about advertising winning the masses, soe was king of the mmo hill at the time.  They had an entire division devoted to marketing and distribution.  They beat wow to market in north america by a few weeks and europe by months.  By your logic eq2 should be a monster of an mmo, yet it struggles to retain 1/3 of what the original game held population wise.

At the end of the day people were leaving other mmos (which you claim do things so much better) that they could log into and immediately play to join wow, where they had to wait in a login que sometimes for hours just to play. 

I can't think of one single commercial or advertisement that is powerful enough to draw people away from a better product with immediate gameplay to an inferior product (as you put it) only to have to sit and wait at the server select screen waiting and waiting just to play the game.

I never said wow had a flawless release.  The logic that people get sucked into a bad game for years on end as the result of advertising is just plain dumb.  There are a great number of mmos that had significant advertising and well history proves you wrong.

Originally posted by Roin

The idea that advertising was respondible for WoW's success is laughable.  

Really?  I guess that's why any mainstream corporation spends millions upon millions on advertising campaigns, endorsements, prime television spots, billboard placements, marketing freebies, etc.  These corporations will cut expenses killing product quality & hamper their operations before cutting advertising budgets. 

I hate to break it to the WoW fanbois, but the reason Blizzard went so mainstream is because they purposely set it out mainstream with massive advertising.  If you were a MMO player at the time, you definitely took notice.  The reality is most of the WoW players in here are the new batch who were not playing MMOs then and noticed the transition.  The game was significantly easier than other MMOs.

Blizzard took notice of the success and has been progressively dumbing down the game while pumping advertisements.  Contrary to what some fanboys think, WoW has high turnover.   Each new influx of players is dumber than the previous one.  WotLK made the game accessible to retards.  The guilds I was in just a few months ago are pretty much done, most players have quit.  But the number of utter retards went up significantly, while the overall IQ of community has taken a dive.  Lot of new players with bought accounts just to roll Deathtard and be completely clueless.

Blizzard tapped into a demographic that previously unavailable to MMOs.  The "bads", "casuals" & easily amused morons.  Most people, by a wide margin, are stupid.  Hence WoW's position.

Originally posted by Daffid011

 There are a great number of mmos that had significant advertising and well history proves you wrong.

There is not one other MMO that has even comes close to Blizzard's marketing.  There is no comparison, especially back around launch.

Warhammer did some TV spots, but WoW had multiple times more ads.  Warhammer also geared toward cable channels & shows with more serious gamer demographic while WoW was penetrating prime channels.  I barely watch TV and I think I saw two WAR ad spots while over 20 WoW spots.

Just think about how much they had to pay Ozzy & Shatner.  Their current ad budget is probably higher than other games' development budget.