Let me start by sayin I played WoW for five years, with an embarrassing amout of time  /played on just my main not to mention my 8 alts. I stopped playing about a year and a half ago, and have no plans to go back. WoW is dated, and was taken in a direction that I could not agree with. Which brought a level of distrust for Blizzard that hasn't eased yet. 

With that said, how is it possible that Blizzard can take this old game with an older engine and probably sell more copies of it's 4th expansion than GW2, SwTOR, TSW and RIFT combined?! What does this say about the rest of the developers out there? How is it that Blizzard can make a game where millions of people play for years and these other developers can't make a game where most people want to play 6 months?  To be far I did play RIFT for ten months. I tip my hat to the TRION team, but that's a far cry from years. 

So which one is it? Blizzard is that good, or does the rest of the industry suck that bad? It's either more of one or the other.

edit - and an "e" to the "on" in the pole....

Is that a rhetorical question?

/edit haha: a rhetorical poll

Originally posted by Thanes

Is that a rhetorical question?

 

/edit haha: a rhetorical poll

Nah man lol. I looking for an answer lol.

It's sorta a little of everything. Blizzard managed to do better than other MMO developers at the time of WoW's release (or maybe they just had better marketing, I dunno for sure), Old and New MMO developers after WoW released started doing worse due to trying to compete with WoW via cloning it, and the only reason why the developers of relatively good MMOs like GW2 and maybe RIFT aren't getting that much is because WoW's fanbase is so heavily invested into their characters on WoW, that trying to convert a lot of them is nigh impossible.

Sorry if this seems like a text wall.

Wow was the first competently coded MMO that apealed to the masses. It surely is or was good, but being the first mainstream MMO meant a lot more for the game.

LOTRO was also a fine game, but it was too close to Wow to do well. Any game trying to outdo Wow must be different enough, and most MMO devs (including Blizzard so far) have been to lazy to really create a totally new game mechanics. Blizzard didnt create it either, but they were the ones who made it famous.

Elvis didnt invent rock'n roll either, yet many people think so.

I dont think either statement are true, just that Wow was the first well made MMO with a large budget (Wow had $60M budget, EQ2 $8,5M). Blizzards great programmers did help a lot as well.

Blizzard is by far the most talented. That doesn't mean they have ALL the talent tho. But they are #1 for a reason, and it isn't because of something stupid like advertising. Advertising may help sell boxes, but it doesn't help retain subs, which Blizzard has done very well over the life of WoW.

Originally posted by Psychow

Blizzard is by far the most talented. That doesn't mean they have ALL the talent tho. But they are #1 for a reason, and it isn't because of something stupid like advertising. Advertising may help sell boxes, but it doesn't help retain subs, which Blizzard has done very well over the life of WoW.

You know, to this day I am still wondering how the hell did they retain that many people for so long when they update their game at the pace of a glacier.

Originally posted by Eir_S
Also, you could have added a "View Results" option.  You're just forcing people who want to see the results to kiss Blizzard's ass.

No, forcing you to pick a side. It's either more of one or the other.  This is serious Eir_S. This is not the time to be on the fense. We need to talk about this lol.

Blizzard is good, but there's always room for improvemetnt

They really did well by me when my account got hacked.

• Blizzard developers are fat and lazy

Originally posted by Psychow

Blizzard is by far the most talented. That doesn't mean they have ALL the talent tho. But they are #1 for a reason, and it isn't because of something stupid like advertising. Advertising may help sell boxes, but it doesn't help retain subs, which Blizzard has done very well over the life of WoW.

 

 

As an ealier poster said, the programmers are very talented. The developers say hey we want this and they do exactly that.

It was a lot of "right time right place". They just happened to hit the nail on the haid for some people and then it spread. They introduced a new form of marketing and wanted nothing more than to expand and it worked out extremely well for them. So I wouldn't say that all the other devs are bad or that Blizzard are inherent geniouses. I will say that they did it right and those that have followed have tried to recreate what has been done but lack the "time and place" element. On another not most games aren't that bad or are better than WoW in a lot of ways, but WoW will always live. There are those who became gamers because of WoW and playing anything else is either too complicated, too stressful, too time consuming, or too hard. They're use to WoW and trying to get them to do anything else is a waste of effort. A good example are some women who weren't gamers until their spouses got them WoW for christmas or just convinced them to play during some sensual pillow talk. "Baby that was great...so this new game came out...."

It did more than just bring a new game to the market it brought new gamers, created new relationships, happy couples (yeah...), brought couples closer together, and vastly expanded the genre. If the landscape of the genre were the same as it were 10-12 years ago today most people would see games like Rift, GW2, and possibly even TOR as godsends to the genre. Now there will be those "Veteran Gamers" who will chime in and disagree, but you cannot deny this...Over the past 10 YEARS your perception has changed. You've become more comfortable with certain things and become against others. Things you use to enjoy no longer satisfy you. You got older...getting older happens to all of us, except me. I'll be young FOREVER!!

Neither.

Blizzard are like Apple they have built up a loyal fanbase who will evangilize the products the ship irrespective of how good they are.

Apple makes ok products but have a massive fanbase who will buy anything Apple shoves down their throat.  You only have to look at the latest Iphone to see that,   a phone that is worse than 3 others already on the market and by the turn of the year will be worse than 8 on the market yet still breaks pre-order sales again.   Apple could put crap in a box put the logo on it and still sell it to blind fanbois at a premium.  Oh wait they already do it's called a macbook.

Blizzard are the same,  I personally haven't liked a single Blizzard product,  I'm not an RTS fan,  I didn't think Diablo was anything special and the less I say about WOW the better.

Diablo 3 was a catastrophe of a game yet very little was printed in respect of it because the fans keep it between fans,   If EA had shipped Diablo 3 then I guarantee you the internet would have broke :)  Just take a look at Blizzard and metacritic for what I mean whilst theres the obvious troll reviews I have never seen a set of fans write so many glowing reviews of an inherintly flawed game(s)

For some odd reason Blizzard gets treat with much more patience than most developers,  I have only seen 2 other developers be treat in the same manner and that was Bioware pre EA sale and Bethesda.    Whilst I'm a fan of Bioware's games I can't understand the Bethesda passion either I've only ever seen them release buggy messes that again if it was an EA or such like title would be absolutely chastised but because it's Bethesda it's perfectly fine for the to ship a half assed game.

Gamers are very double standarded when it comes to development houses with some under the kosh before they even release a title whilst others could ship the biggest pile of ass ever but not receive any criticism for it.

Originally posted by Ujirik
Mists of Pandaria won't outsell Guild Wars 2.  It outsold the other games mentioned because they were poor excuses of games; created only to ride the bullet fired by World of Warcraft.  The answer is as simple as that.

I expect it will outsell.  But I'm interested to see what actually happens.  I won't be buying in this time.

Blizzard's knack for polishing games and making them appeal to the masses combined with superb marketing prowess is what makes them such a potent force to be reckoned with.... EA's marketing capability behind a veteran developer like bioware was probably the last chance to really put a dent into WOW... and we all know how that ended...poor swtor, didn't stand a chance, t'was a fine lad really... we just expected too much out of him...we just...expected too much...

That beast it just...wouldn't stop...ravishing him...the poor boy, oh god... OH GOD!