WoW is successful because:

1) Combat system is solid

2) When you log on, you can progress solo if your the lonely type, or immediately hook up with friends/guildmates and go into a dungeon/PvP frenzy

3) Leveling is seemless and grindless thanks to the quest system

4) Blizzard is constantly releasing content, so players rarely encounter a "nothing to do" state

The only thing that can make a longtime wow player quit is having leveled too many characters and/or finding a new hobby irl.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

@Trower.

About the 20+ RL WOW friends I have,...  I guess only 2 or 3 even played other Blizzard games...

So better find another "theory" for the multi millions playing it - even after 5 year.

Perhaps it's a good game to pay 15 dollars a month for and the other games are not as attractive for all those million of players.

It surely has to do something with this .... :)))).

 

Your friends are not millions no matter how popular you are. =p

An example, asian players makes up more than half  of the WoW base.

Asians are a strange people that like to play games that have little or no success in the west, to say that their taste is different is an understatement. And in a way they are kinda patriotic, Xbox has a hard time to compete in asia despite all Microsofts billions.

So what advantage did Blizzard have when they decided to launch a mmorpg in NCsofts own backyard?

What was most played online game in South Korea 2004?

*drumroll*

STARCRAFT

And as I said, if you played Starcraft back then it would have been impossible to not hear about this coming mmorpg called WoW.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

@ Trowar.

I didn't know the free internet Chinese  and Korean cafés pay ... 15 dollars a month just to play MMO's.

Of course they don't. So I can only speak for the western 5 to 6 million paying players that DO pay 15 dollars a month.

90% of Blizzard's income comes from those hard cash monthly western fees. (not the cheap internet café play).

Well a census done 2009 can´t explain why WoW did get big in the first place. Simply because those there are not that many players in the game left and that goes for both raiders and people that one happily put on the ignore list.

WoW is much more well known these days even among people that hasn´t played mmorpg or Blizzards other games. Blizzard advertise much more than they did back then, you see copies of WoW in every store that sells PC games. You still see it on various top lists. By all logic Blizzard should open new realms monthly but that doesn´t happend because about as many are quitting the game as the ones are joining.

The first two years (2005-2006) both my friend lists and ignore lists where pretty much intact and you got to know the people not just in your guild but in the other guilds as well. People joined the game and the few that quitted did it for real life reasons. It wasn´t until AQ 40 that I started to notice that some players began to leave the game because they got bored of it.

The turnover rate (players joining + players quitting) became much greater in TBC, Blizzard released a bunch of new realms after a long break, and the realms did filled up, but very slow and as far as I know no one of them ever got the point that there were queues.

Look at http://www.warcraftrealms.com/temp/activity.html and you see pretty much a nonstop growth to februar 2007, and since then the amount of player activity has fluctuated in Europe and USA, and that is why Asia is so important for Blizzard. And they never fail to mention the amount of players in total, I haven´t seen Blizzard mention how many that is playing in the West.

If they want to get more money it is either to expand in Asia, heavily use Ozzy Osbourne or getting more money from the players in the West *cough* faction transfers,  *cough*.

So why did WoW get big in the first place? Simply because Blizzard itself was and is big. Sony as company is even bigger but its reputation is marred by the worst mistake in mmorpg history, the  NGE and back then their games was known for their grinding. So far Blizzard has avoided any NGE-magnitude mistakes.

Now WoW is so big and well known that the size gives it a momentum in itself, very much like Microsoft and Windows, MS can release a crappy expensive version of Windows and it will still sell, same thing with Blizzard and WoW expansions.

Women should be more attracted to mmorpg than to another game genre, except obviously the SIMS games, given that mmorpgs are social games, and WoW is the most well known mmorpg. But with huge turnover rate, character transfers, minority factions dying, faction transfer, cross realms bgs and soon cross realms lfg; it isn´t strange  that despite more women finding their way to mmorpgs than ever before, ( just look at EvE online! ) WoW isn´t expanding, and hardly any new realms are opened in the West because they quit just as much as the boys even if they are a greater part of the buyers now than a few years back.

wow does offer a good entry level mmo experiance and for many its thier first mmo . it does nt take itself too seriously so the lore is pretty accessable to younger players . which is what makes up most of its player base and unfortunatly is what makes it  a virtual schoolyeard at times . Blizzard also have made it easier to appeal to the more casual player . for instance you can now choose to do battlegrounds for xp and almost totally ignore the pve experiance if you wish . its quite easy to level up 2-3  levels in a day now between 20-60 going down this route . it can be fun but the game does nt offer enough challenge for me to play it regulary anymore . its also certainly not as popular now as it once was with a rumoured drop of 2 -3 million in the west . this is born out by the increase in low - mid servers now and the fact that blizzard hav nt released any subscriber numbers in nearly  a year .

Originally posted by Mithios

Originally posted by wowfan1996

Originally posted by Securion

kids

 

It's funny how almost every WoW "kid" I know is 20 or older...

Kids, yeah.

 

In an RPG aspect, yes they are kids to us veterans who grew up playing pen and parer RPGs where everything wasn't handed to us, and if we cried about it, the GM would just kill your character.

In those olden days, we also where younger and time was not as sparse as now in adulthood. I've noticed that I have less and less time to spend on playing games. Therefor I can't bother doing things that aren't rewarding or plain boring. I'm not talking about just replacing gear and leveling up. Doing a dungeon and barely making it through is rewarding too. Difficulty is a balance many games struggle with, especially MMORPGs that don't have an end (unless the devs stop releasing content). The best way to discourage a player from playing is making the game too hard or easy from the get go.

Good or bad, I don't think i'm the only one that feels this way.

1. Blizzard had a solid fan base with Warcraft before wow came out. A LOT of people forget this. Their fan base waited on pins and needles to see this game come out and helped encourage other players to get into the game. Early on, WoW didn't have a lot of marketing at all, it was word of mouth and the free trial offer that you could pass to a friend that built the fame of wow. When they started to gain more members and expendable money, they just kept refuling the hype with marketing.

2. WoW was one of the first mmos to come out on this scale. At the time, Guild Wars was the only other mmo that came out making a name for itself. Before WoW, we had EQ and Ultima. WoW and Guild Wars were fresh and new. Because WoW was one of the first, it gave so much of an opportunity to build a name. It was because of wow many companies decided to try and cash in on the mmo money train. WoW didn't have many competitors.

3. WoW happens to be a great game. This fact is last. WoW had money and time to make many improvements to their world. Many mmos today aren't given the chance to evolve, the just become "epic fails" in the eyes of consumers when the game doesn't live up to wow's colossal success or expectations.
 

Blizzard has a large fanbase as others have said, people love to play blizzard games and they loved Warcraft, isn't to hard to see many would jump aboard their MMO when it came out.

For example i have some friends that didn't even know about a Warcraft MMO but they loved Warcraft, as soon as i told them what i was playing they not only bought themselves new computers lol, they signed up for the game pretty quick.

This is because Blizzard is a great company and people trust them.  Also contrary to what most around here would say, i would argue a majority of the gaming public doesn't want to play a harder to learn type of game, i mean why do people think the Wii blew up so huge, because it made games more accessible to everyone, Warcraft went this route and i think this is where most of the hate comes from.

Gaming isn't some exclusive club, i'm tired of this elitist attitude, "OMG they brought non-gamers into my world!!!", grow up, gaming is for everyone, developers want everyone to try their games, so why not make it easier for people to pick up a game and play it? it's just good business.

I'm glad companies are building games that don't require you to sacrifice your life just to play it, there will always be games for you hardcore types, every game made doesn't need to be tailored to your "i want to play 18 hours a day and gain one level" lifestyle.

I think Blizz does it pretty well, you can enjoy WoW without all the raiding and not spend so much time on the game and still get some pretty decent stuff, or you can hardcore it out and raid or die and spend a lot of time with the game.

Why? Because people like being rewarded for everything they do and thats WoWs focus.

Let a guy/gal log in for 30 minutes and feel rewarded.

Originally posted by metalhead980

Why? Because people like being rewarded for everything they do and thats WoWs focus.

Let a guy/gal log in for 30 minutes and feel rewarded.

 

I agree.

WoW is popular because it is geared to make the instant gratification crowd happy.

I never much cared for WoW myself. Rewards that are given to freefly hold no meaning for me.

World of Warcraft pulled a Walmart. What Wally world did to the store business, WoW did to the MMO business.

Offer fun, immersive graphics that can run on any system created in the past 10 years. Offer simple playstyle with an slightly inflated reward:risk ratio. Slowly begin to give everyone everything so that anything less than being handed a fish (versus requiring people to learn to fish) is unacceptable. You now have developped not a challenging game, not an immersive game, but nothing other than a drug.

In order to beat WoW's market success you need to out-do what Blizzard has done. You need to run better graphics, you need to offer more immersive gameplay (and thus, bigger challenges) etc. But by doing so, you limit your market base. And if you don't offer a sustaining reward scheme, the market will continue to drift back to the game that is the financial lifeline of the genre.

WoW was a good thing in terms of its attracting gamers to the genre. It did a terrible thing for the manner in which it was done, and especially so for the devouts of both Blizzard as well as the genre.

WoW hasn't been a Blizzard product for many years now. It's currently and until its demise, will always be, a product of its own success.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by pojung

World of Warcraft pulled a Walmart. What Wally world did to the store business, WoW did to the MMO business.

Offer fun, immersive graphics that can run on any system created in the past 10 years. Offer simple playstyle with an slightly inflated reward:risk ratio. Slowly begin to give everyone everything so that anything less than being handed a fish (versus requiring people to learn to fish) is unacceptable. You now have developped not a challenging game, not an immersive game, but nothing other than a drug.

In order to beat WoW's market success you need to out-do what Blizzard has done. You need to run better graphics, you need to offer more immersive gameplay (and thus, bigger challenges) etc. But by doing so, you limit your market base. And if you don't offer a sustaining reward scheme, the market will continue to drift back to the game that is the financial lifeline of the genre.

WoW was a good thing in terms of its attracting gamers to the genre. It did a terrible thing for the manner in which it was done, and especially so for the devouts of both Blizzard as well as the genre.

WoW hasn't been a Blizzard product for many years now. It's currently and until its demise, will always be, a product of its own success.

Well,
 

society is NOT run by people living in mummy's basement either.

Neither should good MMORPG's be.

That's WOW with scaled challenges for the same people we find on the street and ... behind our computers.

You are taking about the basement boys.

I am talking about people on the internet, the society as we know it.

WOW is designed for the hardcore basement dweller and has TONS of appeal for the man/wife we meet every day in RL.

Welcome to reality son ...

 

 

For once I thought you guys were going to have a civilized conversation. I see I was wrong. Laterz.

Originally posted by metalhead980

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by pojung

World of Warcraft pulled a Walmart. What Wally world did to the store business, WoW did to the MMO business.

Offer fun, immersive graphics that can run on any system created in the past 10 years. Offer simple playstyle with an slightly inflated reward:risk ratio. Slowly begin to give everyone everything so that anything less than being handed a fish (versus requiring people to learn to fish) is unacceptable. You now have developped not a challenging game, not an immersive game, but nothing other than a drug.

In order to beat WoW's market success you need to out-do what Blizzard has done. You need to run better graphics, you need to offer more immersive gameplay (and thus, bigger challenges) etc. But by doing so, you limit your market base. And if you don't offer a sustaining reward scheme, the market will continue to drift back to the game that is the financial lifeline of the genre.

WoW was a good thing in terms of its attracting gamers to the genre. It did a terrible thing for the manner in which it was done, and especially so for the devouts of both Blizzard as well as the genre.

WoW hasn't been a Blizzard product for many years now. It's currently and until its demise, will always be, a product of its own success.

Well,
 

society is NOT run by people living in mummy's basement either.

Neither should good MMORPG's be.

That's WOW with scaled challenges for the same people we find on the street and ... behind our computers.

You are taking about the basement boys.

I am talking about people on the internet, the society as we know it.

WOW is designed for the hardcore basement dweller and has TONS of appeal for the man/wife we meet every day in RL.

Welcome to reality son ...

 

 

For once I thought you guys were going to have a civilized conversation. I see I was wrong. Laterz.

This is the mmorpg.com community :P nothing such as a Civilized conversation :D

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by pojung

...

Well,
 

society is NOT run by people living in mummy's basement either.

Neither should good MMORPG's be.

That's WOW with scaled challenges for the same people we find on the street and ... behind our computers.

You are taking about the basement boys.

I am talking about people on the internet, the society as we know it.

WOW is designed for the hardcore basement dweller and has TONS of appeal for the man/wife we meet every day in RL.

Welcome to reality son ...

 

 

It is not my goal to digress into a flame war.

The point I made appears to have been missed. I argued how the mass appeal was achieved. I likened this to how a titan in another industry made their mark. My bias was revealed with my choice of metaphor, but the arguments and similarities between the two would be tough to counter-argue.

WoW used to be something that offered a little of everything for everyone. In its current state, and extrapolating from its patterned behavior, it's a far cry from being designed for both a 'basement dweller' and 'husband/wife' duos. The design of the current version of the game is one that gives 'casuals' everything, 1 step later than 'hardcores'.

Why do HardMode_23 when I can extract slightly less epic farming results when I could just go normal mode? Why even bother with 25man content when I can do 10man and visit the exact same encounter but with far less headache? Hell, why even do 10man when I can farm badges completely at my own pace and cash them in 1 patch later?

WoW originally was designed for the basement dweller when you revisit the concept of Naxxramas 1.0 and the r14 system. These were objectives that required 12+ hours of preperation per day in order to offer just an *opportunity* of success. In WoW's history, Vivendi-owned Blizzard has repeatedly hacked all hardcore elements in favor of caterring to a crowd who wanted reward without investing time nor frustration to achieve the reward. WoW, in its current state, is a far cry from balanced, nor a winner of the reward:challenge:frustration triangle.

WoW is the MMO community's WallyWorld. The same concepts made both successful- none of which is quality of product.

Edit: grammer.

Originally posted by SgtFrog

Originally posted by metalhead980

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by pojung

World of Warcraft pulled a Walmart. What Wally world did to the store business, WoW did to the MMO business.

Offer fun, immersive graphics that can run on any system created in the past 10 years. Offer simple playstyle with an slightly inflated reward:risk ratio. Slowly begin to give everyone everything so that anything less than being handed a fish (versus requiring people to learn to fish) is unacceptable. You now have developped not a challenging game, not an immersive game, but nothing other than a drug.

In order to beat WoW's market success you need to out-do what Blizzard has done. You need to run better graphics, you need to offer more immersive gameplay (and thus, bigger challenges) etc. But by doing so, you limit your market base. And if you don't offer a sustaining reward scheme, the market will continue to drift back to the game that is the financial lifeline of the genre.

WoW was a good thing in terms of its attracting gamers to the genre. It did a terrible thing for the manner in which it was done, and especially so for the devouts of both Blizzard as well as the genre.

WoW hasn't been a Blizzard product for many years now. It's currently and until its demise, will always be, a product of its own success.

Well,
 

society is NOT run by people living in mummy's basement either.

Neither should good MMORPG's be.

That's WOW with scaled challenges for the same people we find on the street and ... behind our computers.

You are taking about the basement boys.

I am talking about people on the internet, the society as we know it.

WOW is designed for the hardcore basement dweller and has TONS of appeal for the man/wife we meet every day in RL.

Welcome to reality son ...

 

 

For once I thought you guys were going to have a civilized conversation. I see I was wrong. Laterz.

This is the mmorpg.com community :P nothing such as a Civilized conversation :D

civil discussion?  i don't think i have seen many people post anything nice about Warcraft, they'll even try to mask it and claim they are being civil lol.  But yes i agree with what the frog said.

Originally posted by Mithios

yes they are kids to us veterans

You seem to miss the point completely. :-) The thread isn't about how hardcore WoW is (because, quite obviously, it's not hardcore at all). It's about success, and 'success' in this context is a synonym of popularity. A  hardcore MMO can be successful too (which means it can have a nice and stable community for many years) but it can't be as popular as WoW.

Worse still, it's not enough to make a casual MMO in order to compete with WoW. You need high quality standards for content and some very good understanding of what people actually need (hint: what they say they need and what they need may be different things).

WoW is successfull because it has something for everyone. PVE,PVP,casual,hardcore and so forth. If the community wasn't so bad WoW would be worth resubscribe.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by wowfan1996

You seem to miss the point completely. :-) The thread isn't about how hardcore WoW is (because, quite obviously, it's not hardcore at all). It's about success, and 'success' in this context is a synonym of popularity. A  hardcore MMO can be successful too (which means it can have a nice and stable community for many years) but it can't be as popular as WoW.

Worse still, it's not enough to make a casual MMO in order to compete with WoW. You need high quality standards for content and some very good understanding of what people actually need (hint: what they say they need and what they need may be different things).

 

Wow is hardcore or as softcore as the player wants it.

 WOW has the hardest hardcore in PvP and PVE in any mmorpg (be it through ladder based pvp competitions or through the toughest PVE raid boss achievements).

ANY game where there is only ONE deadlly gladiator title given to 200.000 people (tx clustered servers) and ANY game where only a handful guilds can down the final achievements (out of millions of players) is certainly hardcore.

It is like poker: that game can be played casual or hardcore (meaning go for the ultimate rewards in a human competition).

So this nonsense of hardcore/softcore has to STOP.

Wow is both. it's the choice of  the player HOW he wants his meal.

And through this mechanism it is succesful: meaning millions play it ... the hardcore way or the softcore way.

Most paid game means it's a very good game. That's succes.

to a certain extent I have to agree with this. I do think that the softer death penalty takes a bit away from the hardcore aspect of the game but I think yo are right on in that in order to get the higher or even highest rewards, one must put in quite a bit of effort.

Yet I played WoW off and on since launch and only have a lvl 38 character and one or two lower lvl characters as possible mains. But I enjoyed my time and never once felt like I had to rush to do anything or to get a certain piece of gear or have to play according to someone else's dictates.

I just enjoyed myself for the small amounts of time I logged into the game. So that is pretty softcore.

---

Originally posted by Zorndorf (numbers added)
1. WOW has the hardest hardcore in PvP
2. through the toughest PVE raid boss achievements
3. deadlly gladiator title ... is certainly hardcore
4. It is like poker
5. this nonsense of hardcore/softcore has to STOP

---

1. WoW PvP has always been very casual. I'm a fan of this game but I'm reasonable. WoW is a PvE game. PvP is a nice addition, yes. It keeps boredom away, but that's all. Hardcore PvP must be complex, strategic, large-scale, guild-based, and it must influence the game world (e.g. long-term zone control). Doesn't sound like WoW, eh?
2. Achievements are casual by definition. They are artificial, they don't change the content and they are easy to obtain anyway.
3. Arena is just an optional minigame. :-) It's based upon a very limited number of viable tactics. Furthermore, all these tactics fall under three categories: resil vs. crit (2v2) or CC vs. anti-CC (3v3) or healing output vs. dmg output (5v5). You can't improvise, you can only have a right setup and excel in repeating the same sequences time and again. It's too artificial and too much like an 'arms race' to be hardcore.
4. WoW isn't poker. Case closed.
5. I totally agree. This nonsense has to STOP. With you accepting that WoW isn't hardcore.

Originally posted by wowfan1996

 

---

Originally posted by Zorndorf (numbers added)
1. WOW has the hardest hardcore in PvP
2. through the toughest PVE raid boss achievements
3. deadlly gladiator title ... is certainly hardcore
4. It is like poker
5. this nonsense of hardcore/softcore has to STOP

---

 

1. WoW PvP has always been very casual. I'm a fan of this game but I'm reasonable. WoW is a PvE game. PvP is a nice addition, yes. It keeps boredom away, but that's all. Hardcore PvP must be complex, strategic, large-scale, guild-based, and it must influence the game world (e.g. long-term zone control). Doesn't sound like WoW, eh?
2. Achievements are casual by definition. They are artificial, they don't change the content and they are easy to obtain anyway.
3. Arena is just an optional minigame. :-) It's based upon a very limited number of viable tactics. Furthermore, all these tactics fall under three categories: resil vs. crit (2v2) or CC vs. anti-CC (3v3) or healing output vs. dmg output (5v5). You can't improvise, you can only have a right setup and excel in repeating the same sequences time and again. It's too artificial and too much like an 'arms race' to be hardcore.
4. WoW isn't poker. Case closed.
5. I totally agree. This nonsense has to STOP. With you accepting that WoW isn't hardcore.

No, it's not an optional minigame, the game classes' themselves are balanced around arena more than they are around boss encounters. It's as optional as raiding and if it wasn't that important, they wouldn't bother to make RL tourneys.
WoW PvP is complex, you need both twitch and "brains" to be able to get Gladiator and if you go for seasonal gladiator, then be prepared to spend hours of arena-only farming each day.
Oh and who says that PvP MUST be large-scale, guild based and bla bla bla as long as you do need to press the right stuff at the right time, sometimes even harder than playing competitively a FPS.

---

Originally posted by Thenarius

 
the game classes' themselves are balanced around arena

It's as optional as raiding

if it wasn't that important, they wouldn't bother to make RL tourneys

sometimes even harder than playing competitively a FPS

---

Excuse me, have you ever played WoW since TBC release? Then maybe you'd be so kind as to enlighten me: in which particular season classes were balanced in Arena. Because "are balanced around" is another wishful thinking that no-one is going to buy.

Raiding brings you new endgame PvE content with every major patch. Arena brings you nothing new, ever. So, "as optional as raiding" is a poor example, sorry. Try again.

Blizzard tourneys prove nothing either. They're just a part of overall advertisement. (When WoW Arena will be recognized by WCG, I'll take my words back.)

Some FPS are casual too. Nothing new here.

---

Bottomline: WoW arena isn't a recognized e-sport. Ergo it isn't hardcore. And WoW has no large scale PvP worth speaking of. Ergo WoW world PvP isn't hardcore.

It's still a great game. Best MMO ever in my opinion. But it's a highly PvE-focused game and it's casual. Face it and live with it.