Has WoW met its potential match?

[Xiorell]

I think there's to many people like me for any game to come along and "kill" WoW.
I don't mean I'm a fanboy, no no no.
I picked up WoW a few day or so, no more than 2weeks, after it first hit shelfs in UK. I didn't know what it was, I'd read nothing of it, I just saw it, thought "that looks cool", asked the dude in the shop about it, brought it.
Before that the closest I'd gotten to MMORPGs was "What's this... oh you gotta pay for it monthly, fuck that"
So I ran off with WoW fired it up, had no idea what I was doing, got a mate or two playing who had no idea what they was doing either, eventually becoming well versed in the game.

Now I have since tried several other MMORPGs and while I've enjoyed a few, Aion being the most recent of such, They all serve to do one thing... which is make me think "I'm gonna get WoW going again".
Not due to social aspects, not because it's "better" that the MMO I am trying at the time... just coz it's like your favourite pair of jeans... you always end up throwing them on.

 

[Mr Pantomime]

I personally don't care about The Old Republic, or WOW for that matter. I just want FFXIV

 

[Clarste]

Most players of WoW don't go shopping for other games. That's not even on their radar. Lots of people quit WoW but I have never seen someone give "there was a better game" as a reason. People who quit WoW do so because they're completely burnt out on MMOs or need to get their life back in order or they ran out of disposable income to pay for the subscription. These are not the kinds of people who are looking for another MMO to jump into.

Put simply, the vast majority of WoW players are not MMO players. They're WoW players. They may not even play computer games, they just play WoW. These are the "causals" who everyone seems to look down on, but they're Blizzard's bread and butter and they're the reason WoW won't be killed. It'll probably die eventually, but that won't leave a power vacuum that another game could fill up, it'll just be replaced by facebook or Farmville or something. This isn't a competition that Bioware can win, because the target audiences are completely different.

 

[Vaer]

\

If GW wasn't successful how come it had a couple of expansions and generated enough funds to make an ambitious sequel that plans to kill many boring MMORPGS cliches that infest WoW and all the other MMORPGs cloning it ... GW was very successful and popular as far as i know .. not "WoW successful/popular" but compared to all other MMORPGs it was one of the best and most successful.

That's because it was the most successful mmorpg made by NCSoft, which isn't saying much since the make a lot and most are crap, GW had about 2 milion people overall as oposed to WoW's 11, so yeah .. that is a huge difference, I don't care if it was popular it wasn't that good it didn't have a subscription fee and that is why it was so popular, because there were other mmorpgs apart from wow that were better but maybe not enough to warrant the subscription.

Also I call bullshit on all their plans to kill the boring stuff, even if they do I bet that they will add new boring stuff, and as an ending .. you do realize that it's the boring grindfest that keeps people playing even though they hate it.

 

[Vaer]

Ye.. sorry for double post, for some reason I just couldn't see my post ..

 

[Audio]

Starwars has the potential to expand further then Warcraft; such as adding new galaxies. However what people sometimes overlook is Warcrafts lure. It has an evolving story which people care about and Blizzard adds twists here and there. Starwars has a some-what static story which has to keep refering back to the movie in some way. I guess the fans like that but it cant last.

Starwars will be big, but Warcraft will out last it.

 

[Lerxst]

Are people talking about killing WoW overnight? Fat chance that would happen; that's Hollywood drama talk. In reality, it will slowly leech players away from WoW, but the biggest problem it will offer to WoW is that other smaller MMO's may end up suffering and/or folding if enough of their player base moves.

I know a lot of those 3rd party MMO's have sapped players from WoW for years now. Never enough to destroy WoW, but still enough. If a couple of them actually closed their doors due to TOR release drawing too many people away, that leaves a large amount of "been there, done that" ex-WoW subscribers looking for an MMO and TOR will be the freshest one on the market.

TOR builds its player base, WoW stagnates and then Bioware has lots of money in their pockets to start upgrading and adding content to their already advanced game engine. Whereas WoW will essentially be trying to add a spoiler and oversize tail pipe to a Yugo in an MMO Nascar race.

Also...

Look at the games Bioware has done outside of Star Wars in the past - Baldurs Gate series, Mass Effect and Dragon Age. They are all RPG's, mostly 1st and 3rd person.

Look at Blizzard's development history prior to WoW - Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft. All RTS games. Bioware already has a leg-up on them from the start.

 

[Aux]

I don't think Old Republic will take WoW down. In my opinion it has the best chance but I doubt it will still.

 

[skywalkerlion]

...


NO. Warhammer Online looked amazing, and guess what? It sucked because of gimpy balance and poor stability. WoW won't die from anything less than a new game from Blizzard, and we haven't even seen enough of Old Republic to say it's gonna be better then any other MMO on the planet, let alone WoW.

 

[angelous_lecter]

Wished wow would die with the recession... I mean every time I here of a game that lives and breathes on the internet being WOW or even like WOW... I feel contraction pain just above my anus... Honestly... I dont get the point of it at all... other than work... why does this game exist... WOW = IRC with GFX... or even better... overtime at the crab shack...

 

[Recused]

I have to say, WoW is one of the only games to increase in popularity and player base over a some-what steady rate over the course of 5 years. Most games start to decline after 1 year, if that.

SW:KOT will be good, don't get me wrong. Good graphics and full voice over for the entire game, thats huge and something that will bring people. I find it hard to believe that the game will pull off 5 years of continuous increase though.

 

[Doctor Glocktor]

The only thing that will kill WOW is WOW2. 11 million is a larger number than most people think.

 

[HolyMoogle]

Final Fantasy XI's fanbase was almost completely separate from anything WoW-related, so I think XIV can rely on at least most of them returning. I can't believe I'm saying this of an SE title, however, but I really think they need to show MORE of the game pre-release. Limsa Lominsa is getting extremely old.

SWTOR... won't take WoW down, I agree. But it will probably be really critically successful, and might even bring in a lot of people who like Bioware games but haven't played MMOs.

 

[Korten12]

\

If GW wasn't successful how come it had a couple of expansions and generated enough funds to make an ambitious sequel that plans to kill many boring MMORPGS cliches that infest WoW and all the other MMORPGs cloning it ... GW was very successful and popular as far as i know .. not "WoW successful/popular" but compared to all other MMORPGs it was one of the best and most successful.

That's because it was the most successful mmorpg made by NCSoft, which isn't saying much since the make a lot and most are crap, GW had about 2 milion people overall as oposed to WoW's 11, so yeah .. that is a huge difference, I don't care if it was popular it wasn't that good it didn't have a subscription fee and that is why it was so popular, because there were other mmorpgs apart from wow that were better but maybe not enough to warrant the subscription.

Also I call bullshit on all their plans to kill the boring stuff, even if they do I bet that they will add new boring stuff, and as an ending .. you do realize that it's the boring grindfest that keeps people playing even though they hate it.

read these....

with an ever changing world (literaly) http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dynamic-events/ your characters backstroy which isnt based on classes, http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/personal-stories/ your character personality changes http://www.arena.net/blog/personality-in-guild-wars-2 and effects how people look at you. No holy trinity, read more up at http://www.arena.net/blog/category/guild-wars-2

and http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto (this one blew my mind...)

if you think these are boring then you must think WoW is not a cliche mmorpg.

 

[cerebus23]

i think we totally overblowing the quality of wow period, not like it had any real sense of class balance. it was so fail at it that it gave horde and alliance the same classes after insisting forever that hode would never have paladins and alliance would never have shamans and that you could forget it.

then we got that horribly broken op classes that have plagued the game since launch, pallys, rogues, locks, shamans, pallys, dks etc.

then we got the fact that yahtzee nailed himself warcraft had a deep and rich story and lore until blizzard made the mmo"rpg" world of warcraft. there is little about wow that has any amount of lore or story to it.

i mean there is some real rose colored goggles about the quality of wow period. its launch was a bug ridden mess, that every other mmo ripped off wow then wow ripped off all the mmos that came before it. pre bc the pvp and rep grinds are mind numbingly boring. the latest expansions have made the game even more causal than it was to begin with.

i mean wth great and wonderful miracle has wow pulled off other than appealing to the mind numbed masses that like gear grinds?

and people claiming that people cannot start over? i mean how many have jumped ship before and just came back? just because wh and aoc were rushed out the door and unfinished at launch they were bound to be fail, the bioware devs have been very smart is not coming out with a mile long list of features and do not talk about things until they are at a reasonable stage of development, unlike mmos that wrote long lists of things that never happened because they ran out of time, money, or engine limitations.

i played a game 5 years i was level 150 or so had godly gear had a great house with all kind of rare items, could solo much of the content with my skills and build and i left that to play other games, and that game was a damn site better than wow. but after so many years it is just time to move on. i do not care how great a game is eventually it will run out of appeal for the player. because no matter how you dress things up or change mechanics it just all remains the same. and this game added new content every month for FREE. we did not pay for any but the occasional rare mega expansion, think there was 2 in the 5 years i played, but each month we got new events, new lore, new storylines, new dungeons, new monsters, new islands, new mechanics like crafting, housing etc.

 

[Hunter.Wolf]

read these....

with an ever changing world (literaly) http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/dynamic-events/ your characters backstroy which isnt based on classes, http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/personal-stories/ your character personality changes http://www.arena.net/blog/personality-in-guild-wars-2 and effects how people look at you. No holy trinity, read more up at http://www.arena.net/blog/category/guild-wars-2

and http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto (this one blew my mind...)

If you think these are boring then you must think WoW is not a cliche mmorpg.

Nice finds ... i'm glad more Guildwar fans are having high expectations for it, this will probably be the first MMORPG that i'm willing to invest time/money into.

Actually being a big Blizzard fan i tried WoW .. but found it very boring (maybe the early parts are but later on it get interesting), i enjoyed Ragnarok Online way more (even though it shares a lot of stuff with WoW and other MMORPGs).

So yeah WoW is a very cliched MMORPG, maybe it does the cliches very well, but it is still very cliched.

That's because it was the most successful mmorpg made by NCSoft, which isn't saying much since the make a lot and most are crap, GW had about 2 milion people overall as oposed to WoW's 11, so yeah .. that is a huge difference, I don't care if it was popular it wasn't that good it didn't have a subscription fee and that is why it was so popular, because there were other mmorpgs apart from wow that were better but maybe not enough to warrant the subscription.

Also I call bullshit on all their plans to kill the boring stuff, even if they do I bet that they will add new boring stuff, and as an ending .. you do realize that it's the boring grindfest that keeps people playing even though they hate it.

2 Million is a huge number in MMORPG market (and again WoW is an exception until now), there aren't many MMORPGs that has millions of players, so i think without WoW in competition GW was indeed a very good and successful game (and saying that it was popular because it is free is 300% not true, there are tons of free MMORPGs out there and non of them is this successful or even has that many players).

Oh, and GW/GW2 are made by ArenaNet not NCsoft, NCsoft are only the publisher.

Also, i don't find a single thing boring about all the new things they are presenting in GW2 (which are detailed in the links above), it is everything i ever wanted in an MMORPG since i read about Ultima in my youth .. finally an MMORPG that has dynamic events and dynamic combat (which reminds me that besides GW2 there are many other new MMORPGs are starting to adapt active visceral combat like Soul & Blade, T.E.R.A and Mabinogi Heroes), i personally would never play for the grind and appreciate someone is trying to remove it, it was just one of the aspects of MMORPGs that coupled with boring combat that made me hate them and get bored very quickly from most MMORPGs i played.

Fact is WoW is becoming more and more outdated with everyday, and that's something you can't fix with expansion packs or updates, and that's also why Blizzard is making a brand new MMORPG, that's enough proof that WoW is getting too old.

 

[a Soviet Pie]

Just for all of those who said no because of the fact that it won't "kill" WoW, thats not what I asked really. I meant to ask if it would be a major competitor, but I still appreciate the input.

 

[Baneat]

Star Wars certainly does have the fanbase to potentially beat out WoW, but I'd say Guild Wars 2 is the bigger contender.

I agree GW was at least for some time The RPG after WOW and they seem to be developing interesting new settings for the genre.

GW2 is vapourware. It has been delayed countless times and as a result its fanbase is pretty much dead. Have you played GW recently? it's completely fucking empty!

 

[KaiRai]

No, tbh. I don't think WoW will topple. It's got too much rep etc, with too much in-game to do. It's basically your ultimate-MMORPG, no matter what it's missing.