What's the next biggest MMO and how close is it really to WOW?

[Deleted]

Tom Clancy's The Division seems cool so far, but all we have is a few minutes of gameplay (correct me if I am wrong, I havent done a lot of research on the game in ages). I like the idea of the game and it looks cool, but lets see if it turns out to be yet another of the clancy milking games!

[Deleted]

I wouldn't even bother with a F2P game. Why? Because there's most likely going to be a cash shop to give players an advantage. I want to play a game where everyone's on the same level and has the same chance to be successful through legal means. (IE Bots, Gold buying being the exception).

Currently, only WoW that HAS the big player base and fair pricing provides that.

F2P games also deteur people from playing them because they don't think the developer has the sense of maintaining hotfixes and fixing problems as soon as they arise. Also a sense of security of a long lasting game.

On a semi-related note, Maplestory is F2P and was the shit back in the dizzle.
That's gone now though, sadly.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, too much unnecessary new crap spoils the Maplestory.

[MoanaLisa]

Rift is good and has the best F2P model of anyone I think. There's something missing with it though in the story. I enjoy it as an occasional thing but haven't been able to invest in either the story or my character on an emotional level. That's all very personal though. I think it's a really decent game.

Keeping an eye on Wildstar and EQ Next.

[KungFuFanta]

GW2 or Runescape are probably second biggest, probably because they're either Buy2Play or free to play, Runescape to an extent, except it's been around forever, and even released its 3rd version this summer.

I'd say TOR is pretty close, it's a great game and much better than WoW, both in PVP, questing and dungeons and graphics and gameplay. It could be a lot more, but as it is it's a major improvement while maintaining traditional MMO values. If TOR had come out before WoW, TOR would probably now be the one with millions of players but slowly declining.

As for the future, Firefall is getting better and better, and I have high hopes for EQ Next as well. Tried Wildstar beta, it sucked, and ES Online seems cool from a lore perspective, but the gameplay leaves to be desired, the movement is still that floaty crap they've had since Oblivion.

P.S: for people complaining about F2P games, you only have to spend the price of about 1 WoW expansion to unlock everything you need, or pay a monthly fee to access all the content which comes down to a small fraction of WoW's monthly fee to stand around major cities waiting for queues. For example TOR, you pay a few bucks a month to have access to unlimited PVP. On top of that you pay the price of a WoW expansion once to have access to all the cosmetic and quality of life features. It's a win however you way you want to spin it.
15$/month + expansion costs just for new artwork every expansion and new bosses and crap like battle pets just isn't justifiable anymore.

[Deleted]

Still waiting for some to make proper full fledged forgotten realms mmo game with a huge world . No clue why no one has done it, or perhaps it's the who ever holds the rights to it being not so co-operative. Getting slowly tired of these jam packed mmo's in these tiny worlds.

[Deleted]

Elder scrolls will probably be a huge hit, since it has what WoW had- a large fanbase and sucesseful game series behind it.
Gw2, rift, aeon and such were a nice try but nothing close to reach a huge portion of the market.

[Vankrys]

one advantage WoW, it is available in china, not a lot of western MMO are available on this market. Thry are legal restriction, i believe blizzard has to go through a proxy (the9) to make it available there and can't directly sell subs there, only game time.

That alone double wow subs. But wow is not the biggest MMO in china, recent studies show that in 2011, there is 100 millions MMO player in china, wow only manage to get a few millions of those. This is a huge pie a lot of MMO company want a slice of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_gaming_in_China

[Immitis]

crap like battle pets

ironic considering pet battles are one of the most popular features in the game.

[Dilbon]

Next big one is the MMO that solves the hardcore vs. casual issue.

[enchanted]

To be honest only the old everquest is close to WoW since WoW actually took alot from EQ back during 2004. Keeping that timeframe aside, I think for the current gen. mmo's I'd say it definitely is rift although idk why when I first played warhammer (RIP) reminded me alot of WoW back then. I could say elder scrolls online but it depends if you like the elder scrolls genre or not. But seriously nothing will come close to wow for destroying it as it will destroy itself.

[Yunru]

Well mmo when it comes to fantasy wins usualy by a race choice.... no i dont want to play a f**** human.

MY vote goes for Aurin (a mix of gnomes and night elfs)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zUqz4K87I3...artaurin01.jpg

[Nobleshield]

Rift is good and has the best F2P model of anyone I think. There's something missing with it though in the story. I enjoy it as an occasional thing but haven't been able to invest in either the story or my character on an emotional level. That's all very personal though. I think it's a really decent game.

Keeping an eye on Wildstar and EQ Next.

That's because there's very little of the story fleshed out. Other than the general lore for the factions, there isn't anything really to bring it "alive", its like a D&D campaign with only enough fleshed out to tell the story in the campaign, without going into detail. For instance, the Guardian mount, the Valmera (two-tailed lion type thing) has absolutely zero story or anything even indicating what it is, where it came from, or why it's domesticated (and the ONLY ones in game are the mounts, they aren't even mobs). It's just there because they wanted a mount and someone must have wanted a cool cat mount like Night Elves have the Nightsaber in WoW, so let's have a lion instead of a panther and let's give it two tails.

As much as I love(d) the game, the Rift story is extremely bland and boils down to "A gang of evil gods who look suspiciously like dragons want to destroy the world and can open up portals to their elemental planes to bring their minions over. The religious faction is at war with the steampunk faction because the religious faction thinks the steampunk faction are godless heretics and the steampunk faction thinks the religious faction will doom the world with their ignorance. Religious faction players are basically angels brought back to life by valkyries, steampunk faction players are essentially androids from a doomed future sent back in time. Oh and there's another civilization of technologically advanced humans across the sea that were all but destroyed a thousand years ago when the evil dragon gods first showed up. And there's also timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly stuff where you can go to another timeline where the world is destroyed and beat up some evil dragon minions out of revenge."

[eschatological]

RIFT is good, I love the depth of their "talent" system (the souls), but I agree, the world doesn't feel that alive to me.

GW2 is a great leveling experience...once. Because the push for legendaries includes 100% map completion, even leveling alts in different zones is still something you've seen before. Endgame it is super grindy and nothing mechanically spectacular. Certainly the casual MMO of choice when I just want to play solo in a rich, inviting, alive world.

I'm looking forward to Wildstar for its endgame, which is going back to hardcore roots, but I'm a bit wary that people have the nostalgia goggles on. I don't think a 40 man raid can be both 1) 40 people, and 2) require hardcore coordination/attitude. WoW's 40 man raids were succesful because more than half the raid could be bad and you could still win as long as they showed up.

I'm also looking forward to EQ2 for the fact that their servers will have permanent, altering events, and could effectively be different worlds from each other, in addition to their player-driven content system. Plus it looks really good. We'll see how these two games turn out.

Everything else doesn't even come close to me.

[Orby]

The only MMO I would buy is if they ever made one based on the Fighting Fantasy universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy
http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wik...ki_-_Titannica

that would be like my childhood come to life. I have nearly all of the books. #

And its not like they haven't made games based on that universe already. They made Deathtrap Dungeon for the PC and Playstation back in 1998. Not sure if its still true but Ian Livingstone one of the guys behind the books who also founded the Games Workshop used to work with Eidos. Get him back on board for it and I'll be happy

[cmennare]

Farmville and farmville2? maybe, I don't play them but I have heard good things.

[RoninaThorstone]

There will be no "giant MMOs" anymore. WoW will slowly lose players as competition in the market increases and we will end up with lots of quality MMOs (we already do).

Welcome to the new normal. 250k players on 1-2 servers per MMO.

[Deleted]

Eternal Crusade, one year and closing.

[Mister K]

There will be no "giant MMOs" anymore. WoW will slowly lose players as competition in the market increases and we will end up with lots of quality MMOs (we already do).

Welcome to the new normal. 250k players on 1-2 servers per MMO.

Yeah there will, it's matter of time. You really believe that within next 10 to 15 years there will not be one MMO to have over 10 million "subscribers"?

... and I personally doubt it will be Blizzard that will strike gold again. They got the timing right back in 05'.

[Deleted]

Elder Scrolls Online looks amazing, can't say how it works exactly but it'll come out this spring. Looking forward.
PS: it has a different style from wow, it's fantasy is pretty gothic style and I love that kind of old ambient.

Oh, you mean Transcription Error: The Game?

[RoninaThorstone]

Yeah there will, it's matter of time. You really believe that within next 10 to 15 years there will not be one MMO to have over 10 million "subscribers"?

... and I personally doubt it will be Blizzard that will strike gold again. They got the timing right back in 05'.

No, it won't.

Fragmentation of the market share between mmos will prevent it.

*Unless the total amount of "mmo players" increases at a much more dramatic rate than it has, there just isn't enough MMO players to go around.