Originally posted by dreamer05

I just wanted to toss something out there.   Why does it seem like nobody likes to group that much?  Any game I've played recently has grouping of course, but it seems very nominal to what it should for something called a massive multiplayer game.  Sure people group at certain levels, or certain parts of the game, but isn't the point of playing that you are playing with other people anyway?

 

I know I'm one of the very few people who wishes that the entire game was group dependent, but even the harshest grouping critic has to point out that it has steadily declined in game after game.  I remember in EQ we used to group everything and everywhere.  People would just make up spots to camp out and group, and that was the fun of it.

 

I just played Aion as my recent attraction, I've since canceled.  Although I did enjoy it as a game and this isn't the reason I canceled, I grouped with someone maybe once the entire time I played to level 18.  That seems a little off to me.  Sure you can chose to group or try to find someone to group with but it seems like nobody really cared too much to be active about it.

 

Mainly I'm just wondering what people have against games being group dependent? I know pick up groups can be scary but come on, don't take the game so seriously and just have fun is what I say.

   I'm tired of playing these Massive Mutliplayer Onine games that are solo fest.   I like to play MMO's to see and group with a wide variety of different people, and lately it seems that every MMO I have played after WOW have been single player games.  I have singled it down to one thing, since each of the last 4 MMO's that I have played lacked this feature and that is Group Instances.  If a MMO does not have a Group Instance or two for ever level bracket I WILL not be playing it, period!  
 

I know it will probably be like the old days where people grouped just to group, but alteast I can support games that have lots of group content unlike alot of these newer Solo fest *cough* (Champion Online)  MMO's that are out nowadays.

Originally posted by Aganazer

If Cryptic does it then it must mean something is wrong. If Turbine did it or Blizzard then it would be seen as a great move for all.

Point is Blizzard woudn't need to have a trial so early after release because they made a solid game and  their population would be going strong 2 months after launch.  This game however, well just look at any review on almost any site (this one included) to see all the flaws that this one has.

But as a official hater of this game (since I cannot get a refund) Im glad they have a trial.  The more people that play this the more people that will be dissapointed.   Word of mouth is the best way to kill a MMO, so please Cryptic have more free trials!

A free trial so early after realese, wonder what that means....

Originally posted by MysticCabbag

-Aggro generated by healing has been reduced drastically.

-Timed Missions can now be shared. If you share a Timed Mission, the value of the timer will be inherited by your teammates.

-Crossover Missions: When a teammate shares a mission that you are not eligible for or have already completed, you will now be offered a "Crossover Mission" so that you can continue to play with your team. Crossover Missions give you special experience and resource rewards, but will not give you item rewards or allow you to progress in story arcs. Crossover Missions are not currently available for Nemesis Missions or Patrol Missions.

-Defense and Power boosts now significantly repair Personal Force Field (and many other “force field” like powers)

There are lots more but these are the ones that jumped out at me. See the rest here.

 

   All of these are things that should have been in the game at launch.  Their beta testers and the people that played the first Month all told them about it but they refused to put them in.   The first three fixes will have a very positive effect on grouping, something this game lacks severly.

   In this day in age of MMO's you have a very small window (exp AFTER LAUNCH) to get it right.  So you better fix you major problems in beta or quickly after launch.  Expecially when you have another major MMO luanching soon after yours.

  These are nice fixes but IMO they are to little to late, the game poplulation is already dropping at a dramatic rate.  Most likely because people don't want to pay 15 bucks a month for a single player game...

Originally posted by Luneth7

It's a total snoozefest. I've had more fun watching paint dry.

Sure, It's nice to have some alone time to yourself every now and then and be able to solo when grouping just isn't viable but when the majority of the core game is composed of everyone soloing, It's just soo dull to me.

You can argue that most games end-game isn't very solo friendly but who wants to put up with the entire journey to there If It's all a solo fest?

Snoozers, I think I'd rather play with a wooden toy car and take naps than spend more than half of my time soloing in MMORPG's.

I guess you must have tried Champions Online recently.  And btw I totaly agree soloing is absolutly boring as hell, why even play a MMORPG if you want to solo?  Isn't the point of playing a MMO so that you can group and join others?

People want to bash games like WOW but one thing they did right was have the right mix of grouping and soling content.  Something alot if not most MMO's totally FAIL at.

Originally posted by Stellus

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My feelings exactly.

Some of you people in this thread are comical, if SOE and SMED does nothing you bash.  When they try to do something you bash.  Can't win with you worthless piles of crap.

Most of you people make me happy that things like diseases exist.

Wish I could sell you mine for a fraction of the price but alas that is not allowed here.

Man if I was you I would look up alot more reviews.  If you like to group like I do then this game is diffently not for you.

The way the game is set up is just anti grp friendly, I used to think I would love a game where I could pretty much make a do it all character.... Boy was I wrong.   It makes it so there is hardly no reason to group.  This  is proably the only MMO that I have ever played that felt more like a Single Player RPG.

Save yourself some cash and get this in a month when its like 15 bucks.. Trust me, and others.

Originally posted by stormseekaz

My point though is, the quest grinding got boring, I've had almost no social interaction in the game so far because of instancing and because I've been able to solo everything if u just buy the right powers and know how to use block. The PVP was so boring that I could barely do the quests requiring u to complete some arena matches.  

 

 

This was the deal breaker for me, I have never in my life played a MMO where noone ever freaking Grouped or needed to group.  I cannot believe the same people that made COH/COV a very group friendly MMO made this....

I used to think that I was ready to be done with the old ball and chain of the 'class system'  that is standard is so many MMO's but I now see the light.  I see now that that same 'class system' encouranged you to group with others since you could not do EVERYTHING yourself, you needed others to help fill in the areas that you were weak.  Be it CC/Healing/Damage or whatever some area you NEEDED others to fill a role that you could not, but in this game you don't need ANYONE since you can just make a character that can do all of those things themself.  I think this might be why PVP in this game is so horrible as well, everyone can be a tank/healer/CC/Damage dealer which makes them incredibly hard to kill.  Tatics don't don't matter in the PVP in this game, zerging one player does since that is the only way to kill most of these guys that pick the FOTM powers.  And then if they have half a brain they will just Teleport away (and please don't talk to me about the skills that take away travel powers for 3 seconds...lol).

Anyways you add all of that to the fact that the UI interface is laggy as hell (not as bad as Warhammer was in the beggining but bad enough) and you just have a totally bad playing expierience for most people.  I mean when I press a key I expect that power to work I should not have to keep pressing it 4 or 5 times or wait 3 seconds for the UI to recongized that I pressed it...

This game could have been so great but they failed in alot of fundlemental areas, and I do not see anyway they can recover.  This MMO is flawed to its core people, its not like a AOC or Warhammer that can be fixed with a few patches.  If they want to fix this MMO they will have to change the complete dynamics of this game, and thats not going to happen.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Odela

Is there a reason?

Is it because we haven't seen anything massive yet?  Or because people think doing the main story is all there is to the game?


They've announced that there will be massive PvP fights and raids, as well as endgame when you complete the story.  Why are people still calling it a single player oriented MMO?

 

Usually "single player oriented" is used to described the pre-end game portion of an MMORPG.

It's not really relevant that the game has raids in the end.

WoW for example is considered a single player oriented game, or solo friendly, NOT because it doesn't have raids at the end which are of course forced grouping, but because the pre-end game portion of the game can easily be solo'ed all the way through.

It's solo friendly or single player oriented if you can solo easily all the way through the levels or skills. I believe rough estimates are that only less than 20% of a player base for any particular MMORPG actually plays the "end game" for any significant amount of time. So the pre-end game portion of the game is much more important than the "end game".

I think this game will look a lot like a solo friendly game, since you get NPC party members, and quests will probably scale so you can do them solo. The majority of the player base will probably be off in instances doing their quests solo, and group once in a while, till they get to the end game, then quit or roll an alt.

Even so, might still be fun, because KOTOR was a lot of fun even if it was a single player game.

 

 

What WOW did you play World at War? Becaues the WOW that I played (World of Warcraft) was full of group content way before you got close to the end game.  I mean hell before I hit  level freaking 30 their were already 5 or 6 grp instances that I could run with others.  If you want to sit here and say  how those could be soled at a low level go for it, but you would be dead wrong.

I think you would have been better off using a game like Champions Online as an example of a grp oriented MMO.

Originally posted by Kexo

Originally posted by ghost047

Originally posted by Kexo

They forgot to include a reason TO team in this patch. There is no reason to do anything group related, at all. With the right build you can solo 99% of the content. There are group dungeons but those are all quest based. After you complete the quest there's no reason to do them again. The drops are crap and the xp is terrible.

You see, your problem is like you said, you NEED a reason to team. Why don't you just team for the fun of it, don't wait for the dev to tell you when you have to team (what are you, 6 years old? No) so you can make your own choice.

Me and my friends always play together, we do and redo missions over and over again, just for the fun of playing together. Get to an area and kill everything, so player who needs missions item can click on them without any problem, in between we clear public mission, we explore the world looking for perks and hidden missions, you wouldn't believe how they are..

The problem with people in today's MMO, is they need a reason to do something, loot, XP.........

Because I am not easily amused. I can't just do something boring and passive like exploring the same desert that I've been playing in for the entire week just to uncover some completely useless perk. If you want to team with your friends and just hang out, thats all well and good. But not everyone play with a friend, some, if not most peeps like myself play in PUGs for group quests. When you're playing with random people it's important to have a common goal and interest, which doesn't work when one person can melt faces just fine by their lonesome.

Its basic human nature. Unless there's a reward there's no reason to put in the effort and unless there's a common interest there's no reason to cooperate. So please spare me the completely moronic 6 years old comment while you're pondering absurd crap like why must there be a XP and loot as a reason to do something in a freaking MMO.

Exactly! 

Man I love the people that will come in and say "But I team with my friends to just fly around and look at the environment" and other useless crap like that.   NORMAL people need some type of reason to go group together and in this game you are not given that.

I used to think that being able to create the jack of all trades character would be great for a MMO, now I see that all it does is force everyone to play by themselfs since there is really no reason to group.  This game is just not Pug friendly, and for a MMO to me thats the kiss of death.

Originally posted by banthis

Originally posted by Kexo

 

This.

 

CO is so solo friendly that you can't even call it a MMO. If you replace everyone in this game with bots most players wouldn't even notice the difference. The community aspect of this game is virtualy zero.

 

You've obviously not played anything other than the basic quest lines because yaea they are solo but try going to Dr. destroyer's lab at even leven with the mobs there...have fun good luck and expect to die alot :)

So because you have to team up to run a few (probably what 4 at the most) of the games Liars its suddenly not a solo only MMO?  Thats comical and you have the nerve to call somoene 'uneducated'?....

{mod edit} This is basicly a solo game when once in a blue moon your going to have to team up to get a extremly hard boss mission done.  But those are few and far in between,

And yes as others have said the recent nerfs to alot of powers and the fact that alot of powers are just not that good will make it so that you cannot solo a fly.  So if I was you I would just pick the powers that everyone else uses to solo and hope that Cryptic wakes the hell up and see's that something is broken here, or just play something else because grouping in this Game is pretty much noexistent.  Its like the a poster above me said, people join your grp to run one mission they cannot solo,  don't say a thing and then leave as soon as that mission is done.

Sucks really this game has so much potential, but I be dammed if im going to sit around and pay a montly fee and wait untill the Developers realized where they screwed up at to reach that potential.

Thanks guys or the responses im offically pushed over the fence lol.

Sounds like this game is just what I was looking for. 

Right now im just standing here reading ever review I possibly can on this game but im still undecided.  Several weeks ago I decided that I would play CO instead of Aion, that is looking like more and more of a mistake.  And I really do not want to make that same mistake agian expecially when its going to cost another 50 bucks.

So if anyone has that time maybe you could answer these few questions that I have.

1.  Are there any group instances in this game.  By that I mean like instances of WOW (Deadmines, SFK, MC, Gnomeregan, etc).  And if so at what level do they begin to have them.

2.  How balanced are they classes atm.  Are there classes that are clearly overpowerd and if so does NCsoft make a point to try to balance these classes?

3.  To people group up alot in this game or does everyone seem to be a lone wolf? 

4.  How would you rate this games longevity?  Does it seem like something that will be viable in 6 or so months or is it more like a 2 month wonder that will crash and burn.

Thats all that I can think of atm, so if anyone would please take the time to answer that I would really appreciate it.

Originally posted by zspawn

Bought it today, runs great  and plays fast - I even play it with my XBOX360 controller and it's even more fun :D

Combat is crazy fast and has no downtime so far which I like in a game

However,

I see A LOT of people playing the game (saw 12 full instances today for the Canada and mine was almost full) but no one talking / grouping.

I run into them but they won't talk or group so I was wondering when does grouping become a necessity for some missions / content ? I understand people are still learning the ropes at level 8 but I'm curious ! :) 

Don't think you have been reading a few of the thread on this site and the Main site complaining about Grouping.. To put it short and to the point grouping in this game is pretty non existent.

Maybe its the fact that you can make characters that don't really need help (IE that can heal/tank/CC/Damage effectively)

Maybe its the fact that alot of the missions cannot be shared therefor no xp bonus for people grouping with you, which is needed after the MOB xp nerf that Cryptic hit us with.

Maybe its the fact that the search for people that actually are lFG is flawed to hell and back, and/or is usually only filled with people that are not looking for what your looking for.

Maybe its the lack of any type of group instances (aka as Lairs) untill around level 30.  Which is silly considering that the game has a level cap of 40...

Maybe its the fact that most people can solo everthing anyways, so why would they need to grp?...

Or maybe its all of those things and more.  Bottom line is that you just like me probably bought the wrong game, because when its all said and done people hardly if ever group in this MMO....

Your turn fanboys by all means let the bashing begin.

Originally posted by rummblebelly

This is a solo game period. There is very little reason to group up, and when there does happen to be a reason grouping is very difficult. There is normally around 40 to 50 per server(shard) so getting a team of 5 is next to immpossible, I mean thats almost 10 percent of the entire shard that you hope are near your level and have same quest or in same zone, its a joke. .. there is no que..You can instance from shard to shard..yelling it out in every zone.. "I mean really" there is a search box but its so slow most the people it shows are not even online anymore

Grouping feels like an afterthought from the developers. When you do group there is one piece of loot and as of right now there is no need and greed that works. Also if  you play a surpport role such as heal..you dont get credit or xp for kill..lol. '

Sharing quest never works..there is always some stupid reason quest cant be shared..developers say there working on this.

Also teamates have to ask if quest has ben completed because when quest is done it dosent let rest of team know

And basically character creation supports this as well as there is no classes so characters are made completley self sufficient with dps..heals and tank ability all in one toon..

  OP is absoluty correct, for those of you that are still sitting on the fence wondering if you should or should not shell out the 50+ to get this game roll this over.   Also look up my thread on the subject, I sure in hell wish I would have waited could have saved some Mula. 

If I wanted to play a single player game with others around me I could have just stuck to Call of Duty: Word at War or waited for the new Halo.

I play MMO's to grp with others, run group instances in between my pvp fetish.   Grouping not only is counterproductive, its pretty much usless since there are no grp instances (called Lairs) in this game untill your about 10 levels away from the freaking level cap.  Freaking WOW had 5 0r 6 before level 30....Add that with the fact that you can make a character just by totally closing your eyes that can pretty much solo anything and there you have it, a MMO that is a single player game... How is that suppose to work?....

The only thing my charcter has not been able to solo so far is the freaking Public Quest Bosses and that might have something to do with the fact that they hit for 5k and have about 100k life...Wait hold up scratch that, the Jail Break PUBLIC QUEST I did solo, when I finially found a zone in which all the mobs that you need spawns (its a bug they STILL havent fixed since beta).. Some might say "well why don't you look for people to quest with" to which I reply I do DAILY but most of them are just like me I guess and really don't need any help to run missions.   Add that to the fact that you usual have to find people doing the exact same thing as you, and when you do if you do, chances are they already did it its just the search function didnt update.   Or then are no Online anymore.  

Cryptic went out and made missions that call for 2 or more people but then guess what, they wont allow you to share the quest.... So what are you going to do beg someone to help you when they don't even get a xp bonus, and due to the recent XP nerf hardly any xp from the mobs?  Or just solo the freaking thing yourself and sayve yourself 40 mins looking for a sucker to give you help you don't even need anyways.

Im telling you people don't listen to the fanboys if your sitting on the fence, I like the game alot and it has alot of POTENTIAL.  But Ryan Leaf had POTENTIAL... And we see where he ended up....

Reasons why this game failed or fails whatever your in the mood for thinking.

1. Its pretty much a single player MMO (um what?) by that I mean that most if not everyone solos in this game rather then group.

2. It did not include the holy trinity of MMO's Healer/Tank/Damage. I know I know I too thought that that was tired and played out, but this game changed my mind sadly. There is a reason why Developers make games with this setup, or should I say reasons. The main one being is that it makes you want to grp up to do stuff together. Which IMO is needed in a MMO!!!

3. No group instances(lairs in this game) untill you get to level 30, for a game that has a level cap of 40 thats pretty darn SILLY!... To put that in prespective WOW (which had a level Cap of 60 when it first came out) first group instance was at lvl 12ish and off the top of my head I can think 6 alone before level 30...Group instances are needed in a MMO PERIOD. Not everyone wants to run missions/quest/grind all day long they need something to fill that XP void and group instances do that nicely.

4. UI lag as others have said on the official forums there will be several times where you try to charge up a abliity and sometimes it will be as if you never pressed a button, or sometimes it will just fire off instead of charging...

5. Developer overreaction, when people started to hit the level cap in the first 3 or 4 days the Devs overreacted. They decided to make the Mobs more difficult (which was a good thing) but then they decided to nerf XP. Yeah that was a brilliant idea as well, NOT!

6. Lack of a good grouping system, just try to run a PUG in this game. Spam in the LFG channel and watch the tells flood in, oh wait they don't have a LFG channel. Add that to the fact that most people want even get a bonus XP for completing your mission and some missions that say you should get 2 or more to help you cant be freaking shared and you have a giant WHOOPS aigan made by the Development team.

7. PVP rewards, ROFL so let me get this straight I can get a Purple level 40 ish PVP item that will add +1 Con +2 Intell and +3 EGO and all its going to cost me is 140,000 Acclaim (PVP) points.... To put that in perspective when I was level 1 about to turn level 2 I got a +4 end +3 rec +2 Con item in the freaking Tutorial....This is a true story folks for those of you that have the game go look up the PVP rewards and your nearest arena vendor....

8. Do it all characters, Lets jump back to that Teaming thing which is why I and many others play MMO's verus playing single player games. Why would I run with a PUG that already has a hard triying to find missions that we can do so that everyone will get the bonus xp for completing the missions. When I can just freaking SOLO EVERYTHING MYSELF. Do I need a healer, Naw I can heal, Do I need a tank, naw my character is built to keep them close so that I can AOE the hell out of them anyways. What about some CC, blah I have that on lock plus I can just go dig into another powerset to grab another AOE hold or something, or I could just burn themdown anyways with my Uber damage. What about a striaght Damage class, did you need hear that I solo everything. Well except the Public quest Supervillians that hit for 5k and have 300k life. Cant solo them.....yet....

I wanted this game to work, really really wanted it to work. Hence why I choose it over that Crappy Anime game of AIon. But to tell you the truth I screwed up, Champions online should have been released on the XBOX, and they should rename it Champion Online, since the majority of the team it will be YOU and YOU alone.
 

Originally posted by dougmysticey

 It would be nice if teaming with someone would allow you to share the mission you may have already completed but it is not the end of the world.

And thats another point, teaming usually does not allow you to share with the other people you might team with.  If you do not find a person that is on the exact quest as you more then likely they will not get the XP bonus that you get for completing the quest.  So bottom line they will just be tagging along getting minimum  and helping you compete quest, im sure you know what will come so after a complete stranger finds that he is just helping and recieving pretty much nothing for it.   
 

Also their are several quest that say they recommend that you take 2 or more people with you, but for some SILLY crazy reason they are not sharable...Thats comical.

Now lets talk about grp instances those of you who ever played other big name MMO's will know what im talking about.  Lets take WOW for example...(yeah I know WOW sucks, but whatever).   In WOW the first grp instance was at level 12ish, and that is for a game that had a level cap of 60 at the time.   Now lets take this game, they don't have any grp instances(dungeons or Lairs in this game) untill around level 30, and the level cap is 40.   Agian this just seems to be kinda stupid on their part to do something like that.  But who knows obviosly that was intended.

Anyways im not going to bash this game to much, its a really decent game.   But boy oh boy do I think they missed the boat on making it grp friendly.  But when you have a game that you can pretty much make a character that has no weaknesses thats what ends up happening.  Why run missions with people that its going to take time to get together and then time to figure out which quest everyone could do together, and then wait for each other to get to the right place.  When I can save those 15 minutes and go do it with my character who is like one in a million others in this game  that can CC/Damage/Heal/Tank any mission +4 levels above me...

And for those that might say well don't make a character that can do all I say to you, first that is not a easy task unless your intentionally trying to gimp yourself and what idiot in their right mind would do that.  And then second I say why don't you and then have fun trying to find people to group with when you need them but they sure as hell don't need you.

Champions Online makes me miss the old tired and true set up of Healer/Tank/DPS/CC.   Reason being?  Because in this so called MMO you can be all of those roles in one character, so what is the need to group?...  

And that my friends is where Cryptic screwed up here, sure being able to truely custumize your Character to be exaclty what you want sounds fun, but  all it does is gives people reason not to team up.   And isnt that what MMO's are all about, do we not play MMO's to go on Epic adventures (corny I know but you get the point) and take down baddies?  Well in Champions Online I don't need to group up (even for the quest that tell you to take more people because it will be tough) because I can make a character that can do everything by himself, and no im not talking about some overpowerd powers that I took, pretty much ever single guy I made so far of the 8 I made can solo ALL...

If that wasn't bad enough they went out and made a game that pretty much has no group content, sure there are things scattered here and there but its few and far between.   I just don't understand it, for a Development company that made a very group friendly game like City of Heros/City of Villians why would they go seemingly the complete opposite and make a game like this?

Anyways im rambling all I can say is that if your a fan of grouping up in MMO's then I do not believe this is the right game for you at this time.  Maybe they well add more group content later on but you would have figured that would have been one of the first things they added so maybe they don't see a problem there...  Sure while Champions Online is well made and pretty fun at times, it still has way to much of a single Player feel to it.  I think the Devs shold have named it Champion Online instead.

Originally posted by Die_Scream

Once you get up to the mid 20's and upward, you'll find a serious content gap, running out of missions. Wouldn't be so bad, except mob xp is negligible, so grinding open quests is the only thing to do, over and over until you open another contact.

Also with the content, there are only enough missions in game so that you have to do all of them to level, so every character will do all the same missions in roughly the same order. Since all the power combinations play pretty similar, rolling alts also gets old fast.

The sounds, as you said are mostly recycled from CoX, some are even the exact same sounds.

Currently, the biggest flaw of the game is a severe lack of content. Given that even casual players have been hitting 30 (out of 40) before the headstart was over, they better get some content patched ASAP.

Another problem I personally have is that there are next to no instanced "dungeons" in the game, with the first Lairs coming around level 28-32, and only a few of them, very short. Most missions are the standard go to circle indicated on the map and kill X of Y, click on X of Y, or kill X. You can literally be doing the same mission with different mobs over and over and over. Occasionally, you get an instanced mission, but these are easily completed solo, in under five minutes.

Bringing me to my last point. The game is really solo oriented. You can team, but it's not necessary, and even counter productive to do so. With all the open world spawn camping you have to do (EQ anyone?) to complete missions, and everyoine doing the same missions, and everyone running solo since it's faster, you find kill/clicky stealers always swooping in to take it while you fight surrounding mobs, etc. It leads to much bad feelings among players.

The travel powers can also make teaming a hassle, since if you are on a team of fliers for example, and you have Acrobatics, the mission will be completed by the time you reach the team, or you'll get killed on the way, since you can't avoid them. Tunnelers with missions on top of a building..etc. Lots of disparity there.

It's an MMO-lite, probably a 100,000 base after things settle, but it introduces nothing new to CoX players except less content and updated graphics.

That said, it's worth a month's play.

 

 

if anyone wants to know about this game, read the post very carefully.

He pretty much sums what Champions Online is all about.

Originally posted by tokenizer

Yup, I tried all releases/betas, all sux.

I am not an WoW funboy, but I start to think that nothing can beat WoW that year...

There is NO MMORPG at the moment to give me same feeling what WoW have given me 5 years ago, NO ONE. I am still waiting... or maybe, I will come back to WoW.

Blah screw what the haters say, I do not play WOW anymore but I must say no game out there comes close to giving me the feeling that WOW did back when it first came out.  And there is a reason for that, simple put WOW with all its cartoony characters and what not was and is the most complete MMO to date.

Its popularity stims directly from that fact.  People hate the fact that WOW dominates, but who cares you cannot deny that its populatrity is a direct result of the fact that the game is just good.