Have we been conditioned by wow?

[Trassk]

Although this kind of question would have to extend to a large field of social studies, and maybe it has been already if someone cared to do so, but I began to wonder about wows extent of how far reaching it was to our own look at gaming in general.

Now of course the whole subject on if a game like wow has been addictive and still is to many, frankly the answer is to either or both a resounding yes, many studies have been made about the addictive quality of a game like world of warcraft in the grand field of it.

What more over, even now, when the game itself has begun to lose its sub base and people have moved onto other games or committed to other forms of gaming, does something like world of warcraft leave a lasting impression on how we view other games, or even other activities overall?

Of late, I've been bored with wow itself, the same stale graphics and same repeating of quests and grinds, atm wow with mists of pandaria has reached its limit for me and I don't have much else to log back in for, save running an old raid dungeon for a piece of transmog gear. So until warlords comes out, I've been playing other games, and downloading or buying a couple of new ones.

I recently brought kingdom of amalur, since i enjoyed skyrim so much, and this game seemed pretty good in the witcher style of games. However, just like with every other rpg based game, or even none rpg based games over the past 7 years, I keep bringing myself to comparing every game of this type to how it holds up to the gameplay of Wow. As a standard, wow always becomes that which I have been basing other mmos upon, and even RPG games that are not even in the mmo format.

Skyrim was the best example I think. When I first played that a year and a half ago, I was blown away at how amazing the game was, and cut off playing wow for a few weeks to get into playing skyrim, even as the bereft for my friends and boyfriends. And i got pretty far into skyrim, but never completed it, in general i found it more fun to download mods and play around as I pleased instead of following the lineal story.
And then, over several weeks to a month, I was back in wow again, and ending up comparing aspects of skyrim to how wow was, the gameplay style, the customization, the combat system, it all just repeated, like every other game I've played O.o

Its so strange, its like having the image if mickey mouse in your subconscious all the time, and even if you try to watch other animated movies like pixar ones, old disney always calls to back.

Have we all been conditioned by wow that no other mmo can compared to it, even if its a really good one?

[Ghostile]

Comparing other MMOs to WoW is normal.
Anything else, nope, not healthy.

[Tylaeus]

Comparing other things to something you really like is probably normal.

[Mirishka]

I hated Skyrim personally. The PC version screamed 'console port lololol' on every level, from its terrible textures to awful UI, and was only redeemed by - surprise - the modding community. Go into any 10 conversations about how amazing Skyrim is and I'd bet that at least 8-9 of them are talking about its mods.

As for WoW, I don't hold the game itself over the heads of other games (I have played and beaten many games since starting WOW in 12/04) but I do find myself unwilling to try other MMOs because I doubt that I'd find the same quality of friends or guild in them.

There are times though where I found myself wishing a singleplayer game had more WoW-like gameplay. Especially when it comes to magic users.

[HLKazzak]

Good stuff to think about. Consulting with my inner demons I realize that I am influenced heavily by the first games I play in every genre and base my ratings of modern games on those.

My first RTS was Serf City(Settlers I) and I to this day go back to spend hours upon hours playing it. I have played many RTS games since and the only ones I go back for are Serf City and Starcraft 1(I only go into SC2 for custom game/friends purposes)

My first FPS was Quake. Well, being honest here, I have despised nearly every single FPS released since. COD, the newer Quakes, BF, and so on. I did like the Doom games but Quake is the only one that I repeatedly go back to(still play frag fridays with my bro and friends).

WoW was my first MMO, and as such I feel that it is causing me to generate the same feelings. I have played Ultima Online, Runescape, Everquest, I currently have Landmark installed, and a couple other MMOs but they just dont get me to come back like WoW does.

Do I feel this way because these are the best games in their genres? They probably arent. As I stated you gave me a bit to think about.

TL;DR the first games of a genre I play leave the lasting impression akin to "ZOMG this is the best! f*** everything else in its genre" ....... something along those lines. im weird

[Evil Inside]

I hated Skyrim personally. The PC version screamed 'console port lololol' on every level, from its terrible textures to awful UI, and was only redeemed by - surprise - the modding community. Go into any 10 conversations about how amazing Skyrim is and I'd bet that at least 8-9 of them are talking about its mods.

As for WoW, I don't hold the game itself over the heads of other games (I have played and beaten many games since starting WOW in 12/04) but I do find myself unwilling to try other MMOs because I doubt that I'd find the same quality of friends or guild in them.

There are times though where I found myself wishing a singleplayer game had more WoW-like gameplay. Especially when it comes to magic users.

I think that's kind of an archetype of the Elder Scrolls series, every game comes out buggy and looking alright but then the modding community sorts it out and pretty much rehauls it from making it look amazing with new/HD graphics to new storylines and everything inbetween. It happened with Morrowind, it happened with Oblivion and also with Skyrim.. And I have no doubt that it'll happen with any future ES single-player releases.

OT: Comparing other mmo's to wow is fine, it happens and all of us do it. But IMO you can't really compare the likes of skyrim and wow. I've also experienced the same thing, I keep going back to wow even though I have at this time about 80 games on my steam account that I havent even installed, nevermind played and about 20-30 console games, half of which I havent finished. I think it's mostly the memories and the time investment we put into the game that keeps us coming back.

[serravenger]

I think it is only normal to compare games to something you have played before in the same genre, and if you played WoW a lot then it is going to be the standard by which you will judge similar games by.
I for example have just recently got into the FPS game play with BF4 and thought to start in a few other and am now judging other FPS's based Off my opinions formed in BF4, the same with car games that i play on the PS4 i judge them all based on my first experiences with Gran Turismo series.

I don't see this as conditioning in anyway, just basing an opinion from something i already know and understand.

[Facerockker]

Personally, no. I've played both Rift and Guild Wars 2 and enjoyed them immensely. I'd like SWTOR, too, if it wasn't the mess that it is today. But at the same time, I understand the point you're trying to make. WoW is just so polished, so clean, so well thought out. It's hard to not go back to it.

[wariofan1]

It's not out of the ordinary to use a certain game as the standard of its genre. With a game which fulfills a lot of the criterias for being a good game within its genre, it's impossible not to draw comparisons to it if another game is lacking those qualities. This doesn't only go for WoW or even video games, I'm sure many of us have certain standards for many things that fits under entertainment, and those standards are often born from something that we feel fulfill the requirements of entertaining us, whether it be movies, music, books or video games.

If I play a 2D platforming game, I'll often draw comparisons to Super Mario World. If I play a overhead dungeon crawler, I'll often draw comparisons to LoZ: A Link to the Past. If I play a new MMO, well whoopidoo, I'll often draw comparisons to WoW. It's entirely natural.

[Granyala]

I hated Skyrim personally. The PC version screamed 'console port lololol' on every level, from its terrible textures to awful UI, and was only redeemed by - surprise - the modding community. Go into any 10 conversations about how amazing Skyrim is and I'd bet that at least 8-9 of them are talking about its mods.

I actually aborted playing vanilla Skyrim after rushing the main story, because the above completely killed my fun.
Now with ENB & UI mods on the other hand...

@OP: EVERYTHING you experience, changes your view a little. It's perfectly normal. And yes: I do expect WoWs convenience in modern MMOs. Free time is too precious to be wasted on mundane timesinks.

[Aitch]

What you are describing is not conditioning at all, just heightened expectations. Conditioning is when a stimulus signals the occurrence of a second stimulus. I don't really see how it applies.

[Farseer]

In my mind it's just the fact that World of Warcraft was,for me, the first high quality mmorpg of its kind. It already had an epic storyline with characters and geography from the Warcraft game, and they created a huge game world out of this storyline that also had good gameplay, combat system, nice controls, and a lot of interesting features that make the game really immersive.

Runescape was the first time I really got into a game of this genre, and although I got bored of Runescape long before I discovered WoW, it did sort of feel like WoW picked up where RS left off for me, in terms of it being a similar type of game (fantasy mmorpg). Only WoW is huge production with a bigger and better concept than Runescape did.

One thing that WoW does well is changing game mechanics and adding content regularly (people give them a lot of shit for bringing out expansion late, still WoW does this really well), and it keeps things interesting. I have been playing WoW close to 8 years I believe, and even though I have quit out of boredom for several periods of up to 6 months, I always come back and I haven't missed a single expansion. Also, this might just be me, but I feel like over the last few expansions they have significantly improved in terms of how many bugs there are. I feel that things like bugged quest objectives, mobs stuck on evasive, or character being stuck were things that happened fairly commonly pre-TBC but hardly ever does now.

At the moment, I don't feel like there is any company that can enter the scene and create a similar, high quality game to compete. Blizzard had a good starting position when they created WoW with already a large fanbase of Warcraft I, II and III players, and being one of the first big budget mmorpg productions, and now people are hooked they have a relatively safe position to improve on their game. I like the fact that WoW is never a finished products and they add, tweak and remove stuff every now and then to keep things interesting.

So yeah, it's not strange to feel that way about WoW, because it is a unique game and if fantasy mmorpg is your thing, and you like the non-realistic art style, there is basically no game that comes close to being as well-executed as WoW.

[melodramocracy]

In the MMO world, players certainly have been conditioned by it. WoW's only actual alteration of the genre was creating the risk-free gaming experience. Nearly everything else was a conglomeration of borrowed ideas from predecessors.

It's rather unfortunate, the effect this game has had on the genre. You seem to wind up with this odd duality where players will quickly dismiss a clone of the game (or simply blindly label it as one without actually assessing it themselves), but also shy away from anything that feels 'too' different from it.

[heartless8604]

Yes, you've been conditioned to a rat maze for cheese. Raid to get gear, to raid to get gear, to raid to get gear, to raid to get gear. Thats been the cycle since the beginning of the game. The allure of nicer and nicer items and sets and gear is the cheese to get you to do the same menial tasks. Think about it, literally everything in the game is an unnecessary grind that is passed off as RNG. Getting warforged, or every faction in mists, or the legendary cloak, or pvp gear all of it is a meaningless grind. None of it is really fun anymore, face it it's not, you do it for the reward. Thats conditioning. They've slowly been lowering the quality as to save production costs while finding the sweet spot of lowest costs for highest gain. It's pure business.

[Jester Joe]

Yes, you've been conditioned to a rat maze for cheese. Raid to get gear, to raid to get gear, to raid to get gear, to raid to get gear. Thats been the cycle since the beginning of the game. The allure of nicer and nicer items and sets and gear is the cheese to get you to do the same menial tasks. Think about it, literally everything in the game is an unnecessary grind that is passed off as RNG. Getting warforged, or every faction in mists, or the legendary cloak, or pvp gear all of it is a meaningless grind. None of it is really fun anymore, face it it's not, you do it for the reward. Thats conditioning. They've slowly been lowering the quality as to save production costs while finding the sweet spot of lowest costs for highest gain. It's pure business.

I would disagree that any condition was needed for that, since real life is based around going from salary to salary to make more money to get better things to enjoy life and what not, Blizzard might of just taken advantage of that, but it's also not Trassk's question(I think), he means in "No other game is as good" point I think, which I would say no, because I don't play Mario and think "This ain't no WoW".

[Kraineth]

Yes, you've been conditioned to a rat maze for cheese. Raid to get gear, to raid to get gear, to raid to get gear, to raid to get gear. Thats been the cycle since the beginning of the game. The allure of nicer and nicer items and sets and gear is the cheese to get you to do the same menial tasks. Think about it, literally everything in the game is an unnecessary grind that is passed off as RNG. Getting warforged, or every faction in mists, or the legendary cloak, or pvp gear all of it is a meaningless grind. None of it is really fun anymore, face it it's not, you do it for the reward. Thats conditioning. They've slowly been lowering the quality as to save production costs while finding the sweet spot of lowest costs for highest gain. It's pure business.

Why does anyone go to school? To be educated. Why do people want to be educated? To get a good job. Why do people want a good job? To make enough money for wherever they want to be in life.

Your whole argument can be applied to anything that anyone does for any reason, seems kind of silly now don't you think?

If it isn't fun to you anymore, be smart and bow out. No need to come up with these theories that less and less effort goes into each patch/expansion, because that is ludicrous. not to mention impossible to prove. Unless of course you are one of those people who thinks that throwing tons of money and people at something actually results in a good product, which is sort of laughable.

OT: I generally find myself not liking games which have no persistence, or no character progression. Whether that is due to me playing wow over the years or not is unknowable, but as the years have passed I find games like Call of Duty or League of Legends less appealing, because my efforts in one match overall mean nothing in the next match.