I spent a few minutes looking but I couldn't find any statistics about it, but I remember reading it somewhere.

WoW is not growing, it has been dwindeling for some time now. If you read the advertisements WoW gives, 11 Million "Have tried the game". It's actual current subscription base is lower than it was a year ago. It's a "dieing" game. Dieing meaning the total actual subscribers are getting lower and lower. Heck, because of Aion, they lost something close to 500k subscribers from the Asian market alone. Granted WoW is still the most populated P2P game on the market, but let's be honest, there are so many F2P games out there, is there really a need to pay anymore? I jump between several F2P games right now as it is and am enjoying myself. If you want to talk about "Tried the game", there are F2P games out there in the 200 million "Have tried the game" areas. WoW is not the mega giant you believe it is. It's has "crafty" advertisment. WoW is for tourists, not purists. Forgive my english, it's not my primary language.

-Karnage

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by tro44_1

Originally posted by rashhero

WarCraft and Blizzard as a whole already had a fan base of millions before WoW came into being. There is your reason for the sub numbers. Nuff said. It's not the polish, it's not the content. It's the pre-existing IP.

 

You mean just like Warhammer has a Fanbase from TT and RTS? Ooh wait, I remember how that went

Difference is, Blizzard had a great deal MORE fans that were playing actual computer games, and Blizzard created the ultimate shallow casual experience to ease these fans into the game. WAR was fairly different in terms of MMO designs, and those that may have been pulled into it already were already playing WoW.
 

That still doesnt excuse the fact that Warhamer was developed by the DAoC team.
 

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by tro44_1

Originally posted by rashhero

WarCraft and Blizzard as a whole already had a fan base of millions before WoW came into being. There is your reason for the sub numbers. Nuff said. It's not the polish, it's not the content. It's the pre-existing IP.

 

You mean just like Warhammer has a Fanbase from TT and RTS? Ooh wait, I remember how that went

Difference is, Blizzard had a great deal MORE fans that were playing actual computer games, and Blizzard created the ultimate shallow casual experience to ease these fans into the game. WAR was fairly different in terms of MMO designs, and those that may have been pulled into it already were already playing WoW.
 

You can also add to the fact that if GW let Blizzard make the WH RTS series, there'd be no such thing as WarCraft or WoW and where you have WoW, you'd have WAR. But GW botched that, told Blizzard no and so Bliz just made their own WH.

Originally posted by tro44_1

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by tro44_1

Originally posted by rashhero

WarCraft and Blizzard as a whole already had a fan base of millions before WoW came into being. There is your reason for the sub numbers. Nuff said. It's not the polish, it's not the content. It's the pre-existing IP.

 

You mean just like Warhammer has a Fanbase from TT and RTS? Ooh wait, I remember how that went

Difference is, Blizzard had a great deal MORE fans that were playing actual computer games, and Blizzard created the ultimate shallow casual experience to ease these fans into the game. WAR was fairly different in terms of MMO designs, and those that may have been pulled into it already were already playing WoW.
 

That still doesnt excuse the fact that Warhamer was developed by the DAoC team.
 

Which is not even the point of this thread. You're just trolling.

Originally posted by metalhead980

Originally posted by Varny

 EQ has crap combat and WoW has the best.

 

WoW combat is EQ combat turned up to 300% speed.

Seriously I could run into BG's with my warrior and slide my face across the keyboard and completely own people because I could spin around them faster.

I wish I could record the sound of my brother pvping in WoW it sounds like hes having hardcore sex with his keyboard.

There is no skill or tactics involved in combat like that just strafing around a players spamming a few keys faster than the other guy.

My kids play a game with just as much skill its called Hungry, hungry hippos.

Sex, Hungry Hungry Hippos, and WOW PVP all sound an awful lot more fun than 1/3rd speed WOW combat.   So I guess we've hit on at least one of the reasons EQ failed to deliver.
 

Faster isn't always better, but if you feel you can still faceroll your way to victory in WOW, then quite obviously it would've been that much more boring at 1/3rd speed.
 

Simple explanation:

Blizzard is the only MMORPG maker that also published succesful other games in other genres.

They let gameplay prime and that starts with:

1. Fluid movement and extreme polish and control of the avatars.

2. A huge open world design without useless loading screens and channeling. You only port to instances for gaming purposes.

3. Eliminate all elements that don't add anything to their final goal: gaming pleasure. Like extreme basement situations.

Is Blizzard perfect? Nope. In fact they made several small errors in the past and will continue to do so.

The problem is that by stacking so much know how and money, they always catch up quicker than the competition and apparently have the time to implement the changes faster than the competition (cross server content in combo with realm based worlds is going to be huge).

The question remains how anyone could even compete with their next MMO?

But start with the 3 above and you have a nice answer to your specific question.

Gates of Discord upon it's release was unfinished, broken, bugged to hell, & built for level 70 characters but without an increase to the level cap, in essence players had already left EQ in droves, in whole guilds of leavers before World of Warcraft was released, WoW hurt EQ in far less a disastrous way than SoE's own poorly implimented expansion.

EQ released it's expansions to a 1-yearly or 6-monthly schedule, basically providing a forecastable revenue model, rather than focusing on "getting it right" they focused on delivering it on time, which played the biggest part in the content being delivered unpolished, this is SoE's inherant problem of it's "money-men" having too big an influence over game development.

World of Warcraft, based off the Warcaft universe (itself a emulation of the Warhammer IP, shouldn't of happened as it did, but due to Games Workshop's stubborn attitude towards videogames Blizzard decided to say screw em & emulated their IP anyway) gave them a huge following, which alongside their other successes in Starcraft & Diablo had them as a very sucessful developer with a vastly higher profile than SoE had, they made their MMO & had therefore a double following of Warhammer fans that wanted a computer game variant, Blizzard fans of their other games, and capitalised on all that with a massive Ad-campaign, something longtime EQ players had despaired of because SoE had such a tiny pathetic marketing, most of it;'s playerbase was gained via word-of-mouth.

As far as polish goes, it's down to when the polish gets applied & when the content is available, WoW does the polish now release later method, SoE does the release now, polish later method, both are in fact highly polished games, the merits of the 2 approaches are different.

WoW was built for videogamers, console gamers that moved to the PC and the native PC-game buying masses, EQ & MMO's are still a niche market because despite it's similarities to an MMO WoW is in essence a single - player game that was expanded for online gaming, EQ was built for an online audience from the ground up around the concept of providing online gamers with a sandbox world to play in, they however learned from UO went 3d & added theme-park design elements to offset the parts of UO they thought hadn't worked, indeed UO itself altered radically as a result of what EQ did to their formula.

Emulation, improvement & borrowing of ideas are what all MMO's have done so far, but WoW is still an aberration, no other MMO has come close to it's 5- year reign at the top but the majority of it's early fans were not EQ players but Blizzard players, EQ players that did play WoW were dwarfed in numbers by Blizzard fans from other games, WoW brought Blizzards own audience into the MMO gamespace, generating new players of the genre in the process via it's success, it actually "took away" from other games only marginally, now the other games get "tourists" FROM WoW as they grow bored or disenchanted or simply curious to explore what exists outside of the game that brought them into the genre.

But polish, meh, OP I humbly submit you don't actually know what polish is.

Originally posted by Jimmydean

Originally posted by Wrender

Originally posted by Bathnor

I can see my self doing this many many years from now when i am old and grey, with no teeth and a cane. ...

Why yes Tommy we did have MMOS when I was young....

Why back in my day we had to group to get the good experience!!

We had to make naked corpse runs uphill in the snow!!

Dying could cost you hours worth of experience!!

Wa actually took long boat rides to get around, we lost poor Bob once when he fell off!!

We didn't have these fancy "addons" for our games, if you had an addon back then you were a hacker!!

We didn't have fancy ventrillo, we actually had to type!!

Those were the good old days!

*shakes his cane at you*

Get off my lawn you young whippersnappers!!!

I could not have said that better. Excellent visualization Bathnor. Although coming off humorous, that is exactly how it was ... he is not exagerating. Games back then and before everquest are from a different era completely, computers back then were not on everyones desk. In fact back then the only people to even own a computer was few and far between and of those who did own one most people labeled em geeks, nerds, and thier views on those type of people were dim indeed. When MMO's first appeared they were pretty much looked upon in awe and confusion as they were beyond most peoples comprehension and playing online fantasy games back then was considered akin to devil worshiping by some. The gameplay back then was more mental stimulating than anything we have today. It is kinda hare to grasp if you hadn't been there. I could go on but im cutting this short due to interuptions in household................................
 

 

1999 was not that long ago my friend. Most if not everyone had computers, although not necessarily good ones, but EQ didn't take a gaming PC to run.  You act like EQ released in the 1970s. Don't talk about a time when you weren't even born yet, because you don't know anything about it.

Like I said you have no idea what kind of mindset people had back then unless you were there. My friend I am old enough to be your daddy several times trust me. And if I was your daddy you would not have the shitty attitude you have because your ass would be so sore all you would be able to do is stand there and whine like a little girl cause you damn sure wouldn't be sitting down. And you sure wouldn't smart off to your elders like that no more.

Shit! I was almost 30 in 1999! EQ was among the first mmo's to crawl out of the basement and into the light of day. I played many other games before EQ..early ultima online,wizardry games MUD's internet address games with the freak down the street... now those were the days....Again you have no concept of what that was even remotely like...sigh...

Originally posted by tro44_1

How did WoW manage to take many EQ players?

Didnt EQ come out before WoW? So how come that game didnt out polish Blizzard's WoW mmo?

WoW came out as the new and improved theme-park, cruise-controlled EQ many years ago.  It's not much different in it's game-play purpose, that of shallow appeal of whacking computer generated and tethered pixels, for the most-part.

Originally posted by camp11111

Simple explanation:

Blizzard is the only MMORPG maker that also published succesful other games in other genres.

They let gameplay prime and that starts with:

1. Fluid movement and extreme polish and control of the avatars.

2. A huge open world design without useless loading screens and channeling. You only port to instances for gaming purposes.

3. Eliminate all elements that don't add anything to their final goal: gaming pleasure. Like extreme basement situations.

Is Blizzard perfect? Nope. In fact they made several small errors in the past and will continue to do so.

The problem is that by stacking so much know how and money, they always catch up quicker than the competition and apparently have the time to implement the changes faster than the competition (cross server content in combo with realm based worlds is going to be huge).

The question remains how anyone could even compete with their next MMO?

But start with the 3 above and you have a nice answer to your specific question.

I think it more the fact that Blizzard first put Strain and then Kaplan in charge of Wow. SOE doesn't have anyone of their caliber.
 

Some people are better bosses and programmers than others and you just can't find people like that easy.

But someone can compete with Blizzards next MMO.

Arenanet have still some of the better old Blizzard employees and Strain have made the programming of the engine (like he did for Wow) and a lot of decisions before he jumped off (he is currently working on a zombie MMO). Guildwars 2 will have a full persistant world and no monthly fees, that is hard to compete with.

Bioware is Bioware and are currently working on 2 MMOs, one secret and TOR. They have as much experience as Blizzard and many great devs, don't count them out.

CCPs "World of darkness online" have some of the best pen and paper RPGs devs on it, mix that in with the know how from Eve and things will be interesting.

69 Studio have Salvatore writing the lore (the dude with Drizzt and the darkelfs) and MC Fairlane (Spawn) doing the art for upcoming "Copernicus". Interesting and popular people if they just can get as good programmers things will be interesting. But that is the most insecure card of the games I mentioned.

It is true that it is unlikely that a low budget company like Cryptic, Turbine or Funcom could make the next big game, the lack the resources for that but what really makes a hit is good people. Blizzard might make the next big game also but the company is very different now compared to what it was when the work on Wow started, few people who still works there are from that time. 

I personally don't think there will just be one large game in the future. I think there will be 3-5 larger with 2-3 million subs each instead. But that would be better for us players, competition makes better games.

---

Originally posted by tro44_1
How did WoW manage to take many EQ players?
Didnt EQ come out before WoW? So how come that game didnt out polish Blizzard's WoW mmo?

---

WoW took Everquest and removed all the annoying things basically.

EQ2 sort of had the same idea as WoW, but ultimately failed. Imagine Blizzard releasing a new MMO tomorrow which was WoW with better graphics but ran like crap and had a quarter of the content. That's EQ2 at launch.

Originally posted by Aradria

---

 

WoW took Everquest and removed all the annoying things basically.

EQ2 sort of had the same idea as WoW, but ultimately failed. Imagine Blizzard releasing a new MMO tomorrow which was WoW with better graphics but ran like crap and had a quarter of the content. That's EQ2 at launch.

In late 2004 EQ was suffering from a ton of annoying issues.  Massive timesinks, gameplay itself that forced you to group or to multibox.  Out of combat downtime and regen were punishing to the point that people would kill something, then vacuum the house while medding.

WoW was designed by people that played EQ and played it a lot.  They knew what they wanted to change to take the good things of EQ while stripping out the bad.  By the time WoW was released, lots of old school EQ players were happy for the relief from what had become tedious gameplay.  It took SOE years to realize some things needed to be changed - and to their credit they did change.  EQ plays much more like WoW today - whether you feel that's good or bad. 

EQ still suffers from limitations of their 10 year old game engine and that shows and makes the game look aged.  Looks aren't everything though - many people really dislike the cartoony look of WoW but still log in for a quick 30 min fix of MMO achievement.  EQ has finally mirrored this in that you can log in, take a task, and complete it for a reward in half an hour.  Still, too little too late.  Getting players back to a dated game engine and graphics is an uphill battle and SOE seems to have accepted this.  They don't advertise much.  It's a shame because with all the changes over the years, EQ is now a better game than WoW because the one thing that WoW has always been missing is the inherent challenge of play.  Sure WoW puts that in for the end game, but that just trivializes the rest of the game world in my opinion.

I have this sneaking suspicion.....that the OP was thinking GRAPHICS when he posted. However, I also wonder if he isn't confused and meant EQ2. But I'm addressing it as if he actually meant what he said, and meant EQ. With that logic, however, I wonder why he didn't ask why UO was "unpolished."  lol

EQ isn't "unpolished." Let me use WoW as an example (because...we ALL do). Have you noticed that WoW's graphics haven't changed a WHOLE lot? There are reasons for that. One of which, is to keep from having to require a large part of your player base from having to go buy new hardware. People can get a little pissy about that. lol  The other (and I'm sure there are many reasons I haven't thought of) is because the WoW player base OVER ALL...LIKES the stylized graphics. The exact same things can be said for EQ.

Also...say you're level, I don't know....114 (I don't know what levels are in EQ now)....and you've spent 10 years getting there and accumulating special items in a game. How apt are you going to be to EASILY lay it down...IF....IF those items took a LOT of time to obtain. No I mean REALLY a lot of time.  (If WoW was your first MMO....you can't begin to relate to this "a LOT of time" part, don't even try, because NOTHING in WoW takes a lot of time in comparison to EQ.)

Now when you say polished...if you DON'T mean graphics aren't "up to today's standards," and you're talking about the game mechanics themselves?  HAHAHA....EQ is very polished. It's also very difficult and TIME CONSUMING, compared to WoW.  Myself, I don't look at graphics alone as "polish," but more the gameplay, the combat, the quests, is it buggy?  Stuff like that.

Anyway, I'm rambling. But if the OP meant graphics....I think I covered that.

How dare you even ask this question?   My grandfather is old school and talks about walking 3 miles in the snow to get to school, and killed japs in WWII when he was 20.   He may not be as good looking or as fast as me and other people my age, but he's a seasoned bad ass and one of a kind. 

Originally posted by tro44_1

So how come that game didnt out polish Blizzard's WoW mmo?

EQ is ugly as sin. At least WoW is barely acceptable.

Easy answer: SOE

Said in the most polite terms, they don't have a good track record with MMO fans.

Ken

You can't compare EQ to WoW.   It's apples and oranges.  All WoW did was take ideas from EQ and dumb them way down, so theres your polish.  And graphically its no comparison either if you account the release dates of the game.  WoW looks like a cartoon.  EQ looked amazing when it came out.   Compare Vanguard graphics too WoW graphics, they were released around the same time.

EQ didn't age well. It could have, but sadly it didn't.

 EQ1 'WAS' polished when it came out.

It was one of the first games that required a 3DFX card to play, which some of the Sony team thought would make it fail, but within a year or two it had 500K subscribers, something that was unheard of. They thought it would last a year, two at max, and had already started to plan a sequel, as most games do. They did not expect for one minute it would last 10 years and still be running.

EQ2 was being designed and built in the background within two years of EQ1's launch, with the plan being to transfer players over to it and close down EQ1 (as most PC's games faded out within a year). But as the years rolled on, it became clear that this wasnt going to work, so they started to work on a much more advanced engine, and opted to try running two games at the same time. The advanced engine idea was born out of the 3dFX uptake they had seen at the launch of EQ1, so again, they presumed people would upgrade to play it. But that was not the case, and so the new players thought it looked bad on their PC's and quit in droves. These days (despite what some say) on a decent rig it looks outstanding on max (and with the new shaders coming in next month its set to look even better and play faster than ever).

None of these mistakes can really be blamed on the dev team at the time. They were trying to learn from the first experience, and push the graphic boundaries, but it backfired on them.

As for Warcraft, they took a different choice, and aimed the graphics for a more cartoon style, and an engine that would run on much older machines, meaning anyone could play it without upgrading. This paid off hugely, as their army of existing fans (which numbered in the millions) could jump straight in and play.  And making it funny, simple, and easy to "jump in and play" meant it spread by word of mouth, growing upwards, whilst EQ2 got a reputation for being difficult to get into (losing XP and shards when you died) and hard to run on most PC's. 

EQ2 is still an amazing game to play, both graphically and gameplay-wise, with a mature pleasant community and a very open and contactable development team, which is why its sat in the top 10 games on this site for the last X years. When SOE finally announce EQ3, I'm pretty sure it will have learnt alot of lessons, and be a much more successful game.

EQ was more polished than WOW at the time of WoW's release.

I played WoW not long after release.

The EQ interface was much more polished than the WoW interface.  The WoW interface had limited functionality compared to EQ.  Also, the EQ servers ran more reliably.  EQ graphics looked better.  Did Blizzard ever fix that loot bug where heaps  of people in an area lagged because at times the server took 10 to 30 seconds to loot monsters?

People who left EQ at the time left to try 2 new games:  EQ2 and WoW.

The reason for EQ's decline was not polish.  There were a number of factors including:

• EQ was an old game and people like to try something new
• Blizzard are very good at releasing games with reasonable graphics that run well on older computers
• EQ needed a good computer to run well
• Blizzard combined some of the best features from a number of earlier MMO's into a fun MMO.
• EQ was sensitive to drops in player population.  There was a drop in the number of active players when WOW and EQ2 were released.  EQ's big raids meant that a drop in population made raiding impossible for many guilds as they did not have enough players to raid.  Because raiding became impossible for many players, this led to even more people leaving.
• EQ's endgame was raiding only.  To be fair, WoW's pve endgame when I played was raiding only too.
• WoW was a new and exciting game that was released  when there was a massive increase in the number of people with internet access.