I have also played wow for years as well as many other MMO's (A lot of NC soft games.)

I think Blizzard is that good.

How they handle tickets is a good example, when putting in a help ticket a GM will generaly contact you before you LOG OUT, compared to other games this is amazing.

People want to "Live" in a fantasy world were they know the stewards of said world care and are responsive.

Also WOW isnt going to close its doors anytime soon.

Originally posted by bcbully

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?!

I'm going to hold on to this, bcbully. ;)

Apparently you just couldn't wait for the actual numbers, since.. you know.. GW2 is doing quite well with the sales and vomited this troll topic out before the relese of Pandaland.

Come on.. you can do better. =)

Originally posted by prpshrt
No they just have several million mules following them who are just too damn stubborn to see what's happened to the once very fun and challenging games. Open your eyes and just look at what's happened to WoW. I'll admit the mists of pandaria trailer was awesome but it's a trailer. They'd be better off making CGI movies like square enix. Diablo III did start out badly but now its alright. I'll give em that one. Still not the greatest game on Earth.

Many will leave when the right game comes along, this i truly believe, but the problem is as of now, there's no where they can go...

Originally posted by arctarus

Originally posted by Xzen

Originally posted by arctarus

Originally posted by Xzen
My answer is none of the above. WoW is an aberration. There is no explination for why it has done as well as it has. Is Blizzard just that good? No. WoW is good but there have been other themepark mmorpgs that were just as good if not better than WoW like Rift and SWTOR.

Subs speaks for itself.

For me Rift is good but not better than WoW in terms of combat animations, the graphic style they choose, yes Trion is a hard working company, and i wish them well.

Swtor????? guess you are those few that like the 4th pillar and satisfied by it alone...

 

I don't play SWTOR. I didn't buy it. I played enough of it in beta to know that it was not for me but it is exactly what they said it would be. It's polished and has a lot of content. I don't play Rift either but it is also polished and has a lot of content. Both are almost just like WoW in a lot of ways.

For rift i wouldnt argue with you. just different preference.

 

But swtor, man you really need to play it to know the amount of contents available even right now to compare to WoW.

Leave alone the path of how one level in swtor, it is no way same as WoW....

 

Alot of devs and gamers fail to understand this, swtor, gw2 , tera etc... when they release, is not going up against WoW of 7 years ago, but now! So when you release a game, you must be at least on par, if not better than WoW in terms of contents. This is 1 of a major reason why post-wow mmo fail.

 

You can cry all you want about how much " potential" a mmo have, but if it dosent release contents fast enough, or didnt have the standard themepark mmo features now , like random dungeon finder, queueing for warzone etc,  than players will start to complain, and leave.

Expectations of players have risen in mmo, much like in a real world when we upgrade from 1 product to another.

 

 

 

 

 

My guild is a multigame guild and we have a lot of people playing SWTOR. They are doing everything I used to do in WoW. They raid a few times a week. They get together and do some PvP. Really not seeing how it's any different.

Originally posted by Xzen

 

My guild is a multigame guild and we have a lot of people playing SWTOR. They are doing everything I used to do in WoW. They raid a few times a week. They get together and do some PvP. Really not seeing how it's any different.

Ok i give an example, i can level halfway in kalimdor and go over to eastern kingdom and carry on my leveling.... can swtor do that?

Originally posted by arctarus

Originally posted by Xzen

 

My guild is a multigame guild and we have a lot of people playing SWTOR. They are doing everything I used to do in WoW. They raid a few times a week. They get together and do some PvP. Really not seeing how it's any different.

 

Ok i give an example, i can level halfway in kalimdor and go over to eastern kingdom and carry on my leveling.... can swtor do that?

 

 

So are you complaining that you can not level in the oposite faction's area?

Most games would sell vastly more if they had WoW's marketing budget.  Most wouldn't sell as well as WoW, and many wouldn't sell enough to cover the costs of the marketing budget, let alone developing the game, which is why they don't spend so many millions on marketing.  But they would sell a lot better than they do.

If one game is run by a company that thinks an each additional dollar spent on marketing will bring $1.20 in added revenue, while another is run by a company that believes each additional dollar on marketing will bring $0.90 in added revenue, then the former will run a huge marketing campaign and the latter won't.  The first game might get 10 times as many players as the second, and might even be a better game on the merits (as both companies could be correct about the effects of marketing on their game), but is it really 10 times as good of a game?

I would say that Blizzard produced a very high quality product that hit the market at a particulary fortuitus time (explosion in online gaming and internet access in genenal) and they were able to leverage a previously well established brand name and fan base (thier Warcraft RTS games) to help them gain market share.

I'm NOT convinced that Blizzard is all that great of a Developer today. However once you've established a significant level of market dominance and brand recognition it's actualy pretty hard to be unseated from that position. Human beings are creatures of habit and it actualy takes a fair amount to get them to break those patterns of behavior. So the Blizzard of today doesn't actualy need to be particularly brilliant, it just needs to not be spectaculary bad.

In general, I think Blizzards competition has made a pretty critical mistake. They treated MMO's like other transient entertainment products ....for example movies...where the person goes out to the Theatre spends thier 2 hours watching the movie and then they are done with it.....and if they enjoyed it, next month they'll be out looking for a new movie with similar qualities to the one they saw the previous month, but they really don't have any interest in seeing the previous months movie again. So the conventional wisdom in that industry is to formulaicaly reproduce a movie with similar qualities as a successfull previous movie but with minor deviations and you get a money-maker. So that's what alot of Developers did...and failed. Because it turns out that MMO's are NOT like transient entertainment products they are alot more like durable goods or long term services (i.e. the guy that does your taxe's, the place that cuts your hair, etc). If you are relatively satisfied with them, you keep going back to the same place year after year unless someone gives you a REALLY compelling reason to switch.

Thus when Blizzards competitors formulaicly reproduced products that were essentialy new versions of WoW with a few minor deviations. Even if those products were as good as WoW (and most really weren't)....they found much to thier surprise that very few people were interested in them.... because they really didn't offer any reason that was compelling enough to make people want to switch from what they were used to. To be successfull, a company that wants to get part of WoW's audience has to offer them a reason that is REALLY COMPELLING enough to switch away (a pretty high bar)....or they have to identify and go after a completely different market segment, one that isn't actualy interested in or currently playing WoW. YMMV.

Originally posted by Xzen

Originally posted by arctarus

Originally posted by Xzen

 

My guild is a multigame guild and we have a lot of people playing SWTOR. They are doing everything I used to do in WoW. They raid a few times a week. They get together and do some PvP. Really not seeing how it's any different.

 

Ok i give an example, i can level halfway in kalimdor and go over to eastern kingdom and carry on my leveling.... can swtor do that?

 

 

So are you complaining that you can not level in the oposite faction's area?

Erm... eastern kingdom is not opposite faction.......

Usher had 20 000 000 sales on his album in 2004. Does that mean his music rocks? No. It says 2004 people are clueless when it comes to what music is.

And I'm not calling WoW fans clueless, I'm just saying numbers don't tell the quality these days... To me Blizzard is long gone from being a quality developer...

Yeah .. Blizz is good.

So far ...

1) i like and play ALL its games (from Warcraft to D3). I have also spent more time on Blizz games than any other company. That means, TO ME, Blizz games are more fun than most others.

2) All its games are highly rated (by critics, you can check gamerankings or metacritics).

Originally posted by arctarus

...or didnt have the standard themepark mmo features now , like random dungeon finder, queueing for warzone etc,  than players will start to complain, and leave.

What if the game in question was designed with a philosophy that would be rendered obsolete or pointless by the addition of these so called "standard features"? What should be done then?

How can you expect any other MMO to do as well as WoW if all they do is offer the same basic gameplay as WoW does.  Who cares if combat is slightly different when, in the end, you're doing exactly what you spent the last few years doing in WoW.

Every single person I've convinced to try any one of the other MMO's that has released after WoW have all said the exacts same things.

I don't feel like doing it all over again. 

I can do the same thing in WoW.

Can't really expect people to abandon what they've done over the course of a few years in one game, to go do it again in another game that's pretty much the same thing. 

Blizzard is neither that good, and other devs aren't that bad. 

You don't convince someone to stop eating steak by offering them another steak, and that is exactly what most MMO developers have been doing sinse 2004. 

Originally posted by arctarus

Originally posted by Xzen

Originally posted by arctarus

Originally posted by Xzen

 

My guild is a multigame guild and we have a lot of people playing SWTOR. They are doing everything I used to do in WoW. They raid a few times a week. They get together and do some PvP. Really not seeing how it's any different.

 

Ok i give an example, i can level halfway in kalimdor and go over to eastern kingdom and carry on my leveling.... can swtor do that?

 

 

So are you complaining that you can not level in the oposite faction's area?

 

Erm... eastern kingdom is not opposite faction.......

 

 

I know that. I'm just trying to figure out what your point was supposed to be. Kalimdor and The Eastern Kingdoms are not in SWTOR so I guess you can't level in either place in SWTOR.