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  1. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by wynterlyn View Post
    I think that was a fair thing to say considering a lot of the newer games are basically competing against a game that has been out for the better part of 8 years and has a lot of content to provide to any new person willing to join the game. Even though I dislike where WoW is going, I have to give credit where it is due. I mean no other game has has much detail has WoW has which includes in game festivals, the darkmoon fair, etc. There is practically an event/festival every month of the year which usually carry on for a 1 -2 week duration.

    I mean even WoW themselves are having a hard time holding onto their subscribers. The main reason they can hold on to a wast majority of their customers is cause of the emotional attachment each one has to their character. I mean I've literally had numerous chances to play a different MMO after I quit WoW but it was like, "I would rather play WoW than invest myself in another one." Why would I want to start from scartch when I have an entire character built for me to go back to including vast financial resources. People fail to realize the commitment required to play an MMO, especially one as vast as WoW.

    And I will also agree if WoW had launched today in its current state it would hardly be a financial success. I mean every major game developer puts considerable amount of their resources on improving the graphics of the game than they do they game play. And it is a fact, in the current times, graphics are as or even more important that content.

    WoW was launched at a time where people's expectations were so low and technology as a whole had not progressed to where it is today.

    Playing BoP2 recently made me go back to the very first COD in 2003 and the game wasn't as polished as it is today. This goes for a lot of the older games including Morrowind when compared to Skyrim. As much is the game enjoyable and fun to play as each one I have just mentioned, its clearly easy to tell the time when they were released.

    And lets not forget EA and Bioware make no money from Server/Faction transfers. I know or have seen individuals that have spent over a $1000 on faction/race/server transfers during their time in the game. And a huge portion of the player base has invested in one of those services at least once. And its even more when couples are involved and when they plan on transferring their 5+ toons across servers and factions. So Blizzard have a lot of additional revenue coming in from other sources including the pet store and other sales.

    But I will agree, that it is a hard to actually develop an MMO in today's day and age that has content to keep players coming back for more.

    P.S But I have a long standing history when it comes to EA especially. They are known for one thing and one thing only. They provide a very visually impressive game and this is across all their titles. The game content may never be the best or the depth may be lacking when compared to other games but their games are visually impressive. Being an avid sports gamer, the FIFA and the FIFA Management series for example. The games looks visually impressive and are probably the best games out there from a purely graphical point of view but if you want greater depth and a broader sense of the world PES and the Football Manager simulation are better games.

    Well the success behind a MMO is comparable to a "catch 22 situation". Any MMO requires a considerable large player base to continue to grow and remain successful. Otherwise your current players are left with ghost towns and no one to queue or do anything with which results in them leaving as well. I think a MMO is a very unique genre where you need people out in the world to actually feel the true sense of the open world. I mean you can have 100 people playing multiplayer COD and it wouldn't matter a bit. On the other hand game developers can only continue to churn out new content regularly if they have a large player base to support them. I would hardly call Blizzard pioneers in the MMO market.
    About that black text of yours. On one side it is by far the BEST what has been published in these pages, at the other hand you conclude with the wrong statements.

    Which MMO's are (were) successful in the LONG run: those that reunited their player base to avoid "ghost towns" (your own words): WOW and EVE...

    While every newly launched MMO since WOW divided their player base to unseen proportions PER server (WAR: Warhammer: 4 seperate Tiers each with half a dozen seperate RvR zones, each with server only BG's, each with server only dungeons, each with X number of server only Public Quests).

    I mean in games like WAR you actually would jump 2 meters high for meeting someone somewhere.

    The same for all those other duds: SW TOR at launch: players stranded on single server play until everyone left.

    What did Blizard do ?

    2006: cross server BG play; no more waiting times.
    2008: start of phasing
    2009: cross server dungeon play: old leveling dungeons bahm: alive.
    2011: cross server intro to Raiding.
    2012: cross server open world play without loading screens.
    2012: perfected phasing seen in farming (open world farms without phasing would be impossible).

    Each time these Blizzard server tools pioneered the MMO scene , each time the forum trolls yelled , each time these non lifers who so called "know the MMO scene" were wrong...

    Next MMO ?

    Blizzard and you BET it will have cross server open world play without loading screens from the very start...

    Rest is history. All players reunited in seamless open worlds. All 2 million per region.

    CRZ is a very new - just starting - technology and pretty much will seal the faith of single server play faster than you might think. Certainly in Blizzard's next MMORPG. While the rest of the bunch (EA and Bioware included) will wait for their ... loading screens to happen...

    The difference ? : a revenue stream of 1.2 billion dollars per year.
    Last edited by BenBos; 2012-11-20 at 03:20 PM.

  2. #62
    thanks for the great article. cant imagine the work that goes into a 3d game

  3. #63
    This really highlights how bad bioware/EA fudged up. They had a MASSIVE fan base as goddamn EVERYONE loves star wars. A perfect opportunity to make something amazing that could've truly been competeitive with wow...ALL the cards were stacked in their favor and they fudged it up by making a seriously sub par game.

    And now the only part of their game worth experiencing (and only once), the single player leveling experience will be f2p. No reason to sub or spend money on the game after that. Don't know what they're thinking.

    Maybe it's because it was my first experience with such a game in a fantasy setting, but wow really felt like an adventure when it first came out. A journey where you defined your character in a massive free world. I was downright excited when I went to explore kalimdor for the first time, after spending all my time in the human lands.

    No MMO feels like an adventure anymore, just a grind. Things have become so streamlined that there is no sense of fun anymore. In vanilla wow there wasn't a single streamlined set of quests in every zone, built specifically to get you from point to point like a herd of sheep; you could actually go explore and find out of the way quests and have an ADVENTURE. That's all gone.
    Last edited by Wazooty; 2012-11-20 at 03:54 PM.

  4. #64
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    I think that the problem is that everybody compares new MMO's to WoW as it is now. Which just isn't fair on the new MMO's tbh . . .

    I didn't play WoW on launch, but I'm sure its just as buggy as many of the other new MMO's that come out, but because peoples expectations were lower, everyone was fine with it, it survived the teething stage and flourished from there. New MMO's are compared to the very polished complete version of WoW we're now playing. To realistically succeed a new MMO has to:

    - be released with as few bugs as possible (don't rush its release!)
    - must have the graphics at just the right level where they're good, but without restricting who can actually play the game too much
    - must have features that make it different to WoW, I don't think a clone of WoW will ever beat it.
    - compelling story, that makes you WANT to carry on playing
    and possibly:
    - from a a story that players are already familiar with, be it an existing game of another genre, or film/series/book that is popular.

    It will need to steal aspects from WoW and other MMO's - mostly for quality of life things etc, but while making the gameplay refreshingly new...

  5. #65
    If it's too expensive and time consuming to make an MMO with 2012 graphics and lots of content, then go back to using 2004 graphics. I'd rather have a game with 2004 graphics and more content than a game with 2012 graphics and no content.

    Seriously I think the gaming industries too hung up on graphics at the expense of everything else. Look how popular smartphone or DS or wii games were with relatively primitive graphics.

    Stop trying to make "WoW, but with better graphics".

  6. #66
    while i see your point of view and acknowledge it.. i also think that your painting a very one sided picture.
    things your biased about.

    1. Your speed leveling through everything. well yes as an experienced player your hitting your quests by the straightest line possible because you have no inclination to go explore an area you've already seen. that same experience will make you faster at leveling and more than likely more efficient at playing through the game a 2nd or 10th time.
    i recently gifted my brother who never played wow the game just before MOP launched. i helped him occasionally with questions but other than that it took him 2 months to hit 85 because of the shear amount of exploring and trial and error that a new player has to learn. just figuring out what toon you want to play the first time will have you experimenting with the different classes to see if you like em.. (i told him i wouldn't help him power-level because he needed to take his time and learn the game rather than rush to the end and be clueless).

    2. nearly everything about wow's end game is tied into raiding. raiding has gotten to be very unfriendly to new players who havnt raided before. think of a healer who's first raid experience is going to be MSV and try to think of all the damage going out and their confusion on whats going on. try it from their point of view not your experienced or skilled point of view. a new player quite simply is overwhelmed by the amount of stuff being thrown at them in a short period of time (yes their are always exceptions and will always be exceptional players)

    look at whats happening to 25 man raiding. its dying.. a lot of people blame blizzard but the truth is raiding is getting harder (compare today's raid bosses and all their abilities to the zerg fest 1 trick pony's that was early raiding) and the amount of experienced raiding pool is getting smaller as people leave or move on. your long term vanilla bc raider simply isnt interested in carrying 7-12 window lickers in a raid hence you get more and more of the raiding guilds consolidating to 10 mans so they can drop the dead weight.

    in the end blizzard didnt change the raiding habits we did. but we have to reconize that we are a smaller pool of players now hard core raiding is dying sure you got 2-3 guilds per server doing heroic modes.. (more some servers less others) but not alot of people even care to try. thats their choice just like its yours for doing heroics.. where we need answers is blizzard needs content designed for both players (Udluar was a great example of this.. if your good enough.. press that button)

    we need divergent paths to end game gear not it all leads to raids.. want 496 gear? gotta raid. where do the patterns drop .. in a raid.. where do the mats drop... in a raid or disenchanting raid gear. let raiders raid , crafters craft and farmers farm.. give them options not take them away. (aka burying 489 gear behind gated rep grinds)..

    3. i wanted to bring this up cause i see it so much.. flying destroyed wow.. no.. flying didnt.. adding flying then adding no content that utilized it destroyed the feeling of exploration.. this game despite being 8 years old still has many years left in it, but its going to take blizzard getting its head out of its ass and recognizing that the times have changed and we need and want more divergent content that doesn't all lead to the same thing.

  7. #67
    Quote Originally Posted by BenBos View Post
    About that black text of yours. On one side it is by far the BEST what has been published in these pages, at the other hand you conclude with the wrong statements.

    Which MMO's are (were) successful in the LONG run: those that reunited their player base to avoid "ghost towns" (your own words): WOW and EVE...

    While every newly launched MMO since WOW divided their player base to unseen proportions PER server (WAR: Warhammer: 4 seperate Tiers each with half a dozen seperate RvR zones, each with server only BG's, each with server only dungeons, each with X number of server only Public Quests).

    I mean in games like WAR you actually would jump 2 meters high for meeting someone somewhere.

    The same for all those other duds: SW TOR at launch: players stranded on single server play until everyone left.

    What did Blizard do ?

    2006: cross server BG play; no more waiting times.
    2008: start of phasing
    2009: cross server dungeon play: old leveling dungeons bahm: alive.
    2011: cross server intro to Raiding.
    2012: cross server open world play without loading screens.
    2012: perfected phasing seen in farming (open world farms without phasing would be impossible).

    Each time these Blizzard server tools pioneered the MMO scene , each time the forum trolls yelled , each time these non lifers who so called "know the MMO scene" were wrong...

    Next MMO ?

    Blizzard and you BET it will have cross server open world play without loading screens from the very start...

    Rest is history. All players reunited in seamless open worlds. All 2 million per region.

    CRZ is a very new - just starting - technology and pretty much will seal the faith of single server play faster than you might think. Certainly in Blizzard's next MMORPG. While the rest of the bunch (EA and Bioware included) will wait for their ... loading screens to happen...

    The difference ? : a revenue stream of 1.2 billion dollars per year.
    Well before all those changes were made WoW had been out for over 2 years then. So its not like they had all that to do during the early 2 years. But that is what the players are expecting these days from all new MMOs. Rift had to cave in and with in a few moments opened up a LFD Queue system. Only a couple of weeks into SWTOR players were asking for something similar to WoW's LFD System.

    Blizzard have it easy in the sense is that they already have a solid customer base to build on. While new MMOs that are coming out can't really fall back on that.

    And we all know WoW is now Blizzard's test child for their future MMO - Titan. The BMAH being one of them, CRZ being another and so on.

    But I also think Blizzard merging with Activision had a lot to do with that. I mean the change in direction of the entire company from a hardcore focused game to a more casual approach where you can pick it up any time has had a lot to do with it as well.

  8. #68
    Quote Originally Posted by wynterlyn View Post
    But I also think Blizzard merging with Activision had a lot to do with that. I mean the change in direction of the entire company from a hardcore focused game to a more casual approach where you can pick it up any time has had a lot to do with it as well.
    WoW was the MMO that gave us rested exp. It was always designed to be more casual than it's competitors. As other MMOs got more casual, Blizzard followed suit and in turn made WoW more casual friendly.

    There was no change in focus.

    I played CoH before WoW came out. CoH was considered a really casual MMO at the time and on the CoH forums we used to make fun of the kiddie game Blizzard was making. After moving over to WoW, I realized that CoH was a massive grind by comparison.

  9. #69
    This article is ridiculous. Production costs of a AAA MMO could be kept way down by being careful with cinematics and voieceovers and a tight experienced staff. There is really not that much more content in a new MMO than an ES games and they dont cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Very large corporations might spend a lot but that is a comment on the corporate world not what is required to develop and MMO

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