Angelblaze said:
There's no real magic formula to what WoW has done for MMOs and it's players.
Before WoW came out, MMOs used to be for those who could sink hour upon hour into the game, grind for the best gear and status in game.
Ultimately, MMOs were for the "hardcore" and for a while they stuck to that.
This is pretty much why WoW toppled alot of the competition, it's not a complex game that you have to sink every waking hour into to get ahead.
You can have your own choice of playing environment (PvE,PvP,RPvP) so that whatever you're into, you're bound to find like minded individuals.
Lots of explorable and engaging content, it's very,
very hard to get bored in wow whilst you level up (Barrens excluded).
Even once you hit 80, alot more content is suddenly unlocked and that's been expanding with every expansion that has been released.
WoW, simply put keeps giving you more to do, which alot of MMOs don't.
I remember Aion, that was pretty boring content wise considering how hyped it was with the whole PvPvE.
Lots of MMOs promise beautiful mechanics that could make or break their game, but most turn up to be completely broken or not quite what everyone was expecting.
Looking back at Aion, the portals were supposed to be randomly generated and took you to another point on the other factions map at random likewise.
Didn't work like that, people ended up camping portal points waiting for pvp and ultimately the mechanic was rarely used.
Level 50s would roll on through, murder the lowbies and be on their way and with totally segmented maps you had no way of getting protection against it.
You couldn't not have this happen either.
Which things like this, whilst some don't mind just don't happen in WoW if you picked a PvE server.
Small and meaningful changes helped create the giant that is wow.
It's a great game worthy of it's praise and status it's received across the years. It's successor would be something spectacular indeed.