While I agree that the first 5 to 10 minutes of a game should grab you, Nightbringe1 made a valid point.

MMOs should be about a community experience. I prefer to group with people to do quests/kill that monster for the loot that I will use for a long time. I hate fast forwarding to the end game.  I think people should explore every part of an area, do all the quests before they should go on to the next area. You don't want players to go past areas that the developers spent a lot of time on. The world can get empty fast, with people congregating one high end area.

I think this article is spot on.

Let's be real, most of the people that even log onto forums or websites like this are not the majority of the players.

I play WoW on a PC I bought in 2001, and it was pretty low end then. My son played WoW on a PC only slightly better until I bought him a newer PC for Christmas. Most of the people I've played WoW with from teenagers to grandparents have old PCs. Sure I've ran into a few people in my guild that have decent PCs, but most of the people in the world have old clunkers.

If you want to be a success, it can't just be in Europe or the States. It should be global and accessible to the average person. I think the average age in my guild is about 35, with the youngest being 17 and the oldest being in his early 60s.

When I played DDO or LOTRO, the average age was much younger. Whether thats due to requirements or not, I am not sure.

Blizzard has joked that WoW can be played on a toaster.

Thanks for the article.  I wished more people would read it and follow the tips listed.

I just transferred over to a friend's server and ran a heroic with his guild. After a horrible time in Heroic UK, I asked him what was wrong with the tank. The tank couldn't hold aggro. He told me that that was the guild's main tank. I was healing and spent most of my time healing the casters and not the tank.

I later heard him talk about the dps always competing for the highest dps, and they even do that in raids. They have no concept of aggro.

I know I'm an outdated old school player, but any dps that went all out every fight and didn't watch their threat meters, should be kicked.

There will be another expansion. I wished I had a link to a story where they talk about their future plans for WoW.

They will keep pumping out expansions every 18 months - 2 years until their subscriber base is below a million.

WoW won't really decline until after they've released their new MMO, but that won't be for many years.

We don't even have a release date on SC2 or D3.

I do think if they raise the level cap again with the expansion after WOTLK, they will have to do something to help new players catch up to speed. The new buddy system seems to be a step in the right direction.

1) DDO - How can you scew up the grand father of all RPGs? Somehow Turbine did.

2) LOTRO - While it has it's advantages, how can you screw up the grand father of Fantasy? Turbine did.

3) Hellgate London- High Hype from the "Developers of Diablo", but empty promises.

If you grew tired of WoW before WOTLK, you will stay tired after WOTLK.

While Death Knights are a very great addition, I find myself wondering if I am playing LOTRO in some of the new areas based on the scenery.

I feel that WoW seems to be trying to continue to borrow from other MMOs and I don't think they fit any more.

WOTLK will break more records, and the number of subscribers will continue to grow. Until Blizzard releases their unnamed MMO years from now, don't expect WoW's numbers to decrease.

While this is slightly off topic, I'll post my question.

I got a beta key, signed up on the warhammer site, downloaded the client, installed it and now I can't log in.

I can't seem to find the beta help website.

I am wondering if my beta isn't active until the 7th.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks.

I only played AD&D 2nd edition. I couldn't get into the newer versions.

I agree that the newness has worn off of WoW. Although they will add more flavor with the DK's quests, I just get bored faster with the new content.  Most people I know are ready to leave WoW, but they are just waiting for a decent MMO. I hope WAR lives up to what I think it will be.

Great post Juvante.

I have gone from a "Will play" to a "Might buy if most of the Open Beta posts are positive"

Honestly, they should have just pushed it back to May 2009, instead of releasing it in this state.

However, I think the jury is still out. I need more proof on how the game really is before I even buy the preorder.

Blizzard already knows how many Russians currently play WoW, and they must have estimated how many more subscribers they will get with a Russian language version.

They must have thought that it would be worth the cost of translation.

I want the Klingons and Federation to be at war!

If you are limited to just Klingons and Federation, the other points in time, don't make much sense.

At least they will let us play Klingons. I don't want to be forced to live by the Prime Directive.

My server is starting to be a ghost town. Sure there are a few Raiding guilds running Sunwell, and  a few random Kara Badge PUGS, but I rarely see many people running around anywhere but Capital cities.

If I bump into someone doing a Daily, I'm in shock.

I know that when WOTLK comes out, my server will be alive again. The same thing happened before TBC.

WoW's two reasons why it is so successful are low required system specs and it's easy to start playing out of the box.

Grandpa Joe and Little Johnny can play with their 8 year old PC. Both will be equally good at level 1. You don't even have talents until level 10.

You can't expect to sell 8 million units if it can't be ran on old computers.

I don't think WoW's PVP zone will be as big a hit on all the servers like everyone is saying.

On PvE servers where one side outnumbers the other by a huge margin, it will be pretty useless for the minority faction. Considering how important contol of the zone will be, it will turn off a lot of players.

It's a huge risk.

Will WAR fail? It is too early for me to have an opinion, but I don't think PvP WOTLK will be the next big thing. I'm sure that wOTLK will sell over 10 million copies and WoW's subriber numbers ill continue to climb. I just don't think the PVP zone will be a huge success.

If you don't admit that you've been burned by the promise of Darkfall, you are fooling yourself.

I want Darkfall to be released and for it to live up to it's promises, but until I see it on the shelf at the store, I'll just ignore the hype. I'm just too numb to do otherwise.

Death, taxes and WoW being the number 1 MMO are all givens.

I expect whenever Diablo 3 is released, that we'll see Blizzard have three titles in the top 5 PC sales charts (SC2,D3, WOTLK battlechest).

However, I think that WOTLK will be the start of the slow down of WoW's ever increasing playerbase. I am not saying it will be the end of WoW, just a slow down.

It isn't too bad right now for someone new to buy WoW and hit the end game in a month or so. You can go from level 1 to raiding Kara rather fast. Unless they increase the leveling speed, going from 1-80 and doing the entry level raid instances will be too much for people.

Today people have to level alts from 1, but when people can start a DeathKnight at level 55, you won't see much demand for low level instances or help in group quests. I have 70s on 3 different servers, and I don't think I'd ever level a character from level 1 again. I'd create DKs and level my 70s. I am sure that is what most people will do.

This is a long time coming.

I can't wait. Diablo is my favorite of Blizzard's games. I had hoped they would have announced it last year and I was disappointed when they announced SC2 instead.