Warcraft feeling the pressure?

[Hauntdshadow]

Just an observation not calling out Blizz or hating the manufact. of the game I have played for almost 4 years now. But with what seems to be verbally lashing out by blizz lately Im starting to think that maybe they are getting their feet to the fire by Rift..I mean any large cash rich company can be toppled by an upstart...JC Penny to Walmart...what i mean is you have a game coming out that has been secretly taking notes and listening to the cries about what ppl are getting sick of in WOW..Whats Blizz's take on it..IMO heres what we have come up with play and like it or else dont play.. IMO I think Blizz is relying on no else being as developed or as large as they are however if Rift turns out to be as good as it looks on youtube I think this maybe the beginign of the end..my two cents ...what do you guys think?

[Saviourself]

New, exciting, etc...

[Deleted]

Age of Conan and Warhammer Online were going to be WOW Killers and it didn't really happen either.
I'm not saying Rift is a bad game, but the past shows that they won't loose that much players to it probably.

[Vargur]

New, exciting, etc...

Have you actually played it?
Because I have (in the starter levels), and relative to the expansions/content WoW already has, I have to say, I was impressed.

[Mokok]

Oh look, it's this thread again.

[Maggoo]

"No king rules forever" Although I honestly doubt Rift will overtake WoW.

[Horrify]

Rift won't kill WoW. It's a fine game, and they will probably lose a small fraction of players to it, but it's not going to kill it.

The only thing that will ever kill WoW is WoW itself.

[Deleted]

Not really relevant, but if you think they reacted to RIft, just wait and see how they react to SW:TOR.

Standard responce to competition is to up the ante, and they are.

[WeaponXAnimosity]

Every new game that comes out or is in beta testing like Rift is always shone with a spotlight and as a result, everyone naturally says "OMG THIS IS AWESOME" because they've been introduced to simply a new color of paint on the same car. Give it a month or 2 and people will suddenly say the same about Rift as they did about WoW being boring and all that stuff. Such is how MMO's are.

[Hakto]

I am absolutely 100% certain blizzard is concerned that Rift's 1 million registered accounts is a real threat to their 12 million active subscriptions.

/endsarcasm.

[Zaydin]

I doubt any new MMO will topple WoW; WoW is simply too dominant in the market and too firmly entrenched for another MMO to do so. No, what will kill WoW is Blizzard pulling the plug, or if they release a newer, better MMO that takes the best parts of WoW and makes them even better. The former certainly isn't happening any time soon. That said, some competition would be good; it would get Blizzard to take a look at what they could improve that would make the community happy, if only briefly.

[Deleted]

I played a few of the Betas got one of each class to level 10 with varied specs ect and i really enjoyed it but i am going to wait until it is 3 months live before i decide on playing it to see if player numbers actually increase or decline as i dont want thrown from server to server while they are shutting them down because the playerbase is all away back to WoW and the likes.

[Hauntdshadow]

I havent played it no...only seen it..and as far as "that thread again" Im not only saying Rift but its all its going to take is a small group of ppl to listen to the complaining which seems more than ever with Cata and make a game that is similar so ppl will be quick to join it so its not to difficult to learn and adapt what is lacking...which from what I have read lately is the absolute abortion of a job WOW trying to "balance" classes which seems impossible honestly with PVE and PVP combonation..from what I can see from youtube altho they have the ability to let you make a combo of classes which allows them to say "if its not balanced you didnt build YOUR spec correctly" sort of a failsafe for them..Lets be honest WOWs new talent tree and need to fill one first was a huge mistake IMO

[Nectroyn84]

This is how I see rift.

You tell someone a joke, they laugh. (WoW)

Then you tell the joke again (Rift)

The Joke the 2nd time will never be as funny as it was the first time. Simple as that.

[Deleted]

People must think WoW got 12m subs on it opening day.....j/k They all gotta start somewhere and WoW was no different it takes time to build the player base up. It has every chance wow did and although it wont replace it there is hope it can reach good numbers 2 million plus would be awesome.

[Upptagen]

If all those people that played WoW played Rift instead, I would move over aswell. But now I don't, simply because it's not as big as WoW. People wants to play with friends.

[Kitchlol]

Rift is nowhere near as hyped as Warhammer was, and that had arguably more potential... The only thing i see shadowing WoW atm is Star Wars: TOR, but that is a different game style, so probably won't be an issue.
Regardless, new MMOs get loads of people to start yelling "WOW IS DEAD, QUICK, JUMP ON THIS BANDWAGON!" and they come back eventually(When they find out everything else is pretty lame).

[Charge me Doctor]

Rift will die soon, there is much better games to play, like EQ2, warhammer online. Rift is much easer than wow, and when rerollers will realise this, they will leave. Or they realy like concept of free epics and easy bosses

[Fraza]

Warcraft has grown too big. It takes them weeks, sometimes months to fix a bug, whereas in Rift beta bugs were fixed and pushed to live literally within hours of reporting them. Any major changes to a class require an expansion and some fundamental mistakes in class design (see hunters in arenas) never get fixed. This lack of ability to progress and evolve is not exclusive to WoW, it's a characteristic many industry behemoths have. And it will be the downfall of WoW, even though a slow one. Rift will not kill WoW, but it will show WoW's age.

[Steampunk]

Rift announced 1 million registered accounts on their site the day of head start.

One of their PvP servers currently has a 12 hour wait, earlier it was 25 (And a slough of QQ posts on the forums, instead of going to a newly released server).

I won't say that RIFT is going to make WoW feel any pressure at all. It's a fun game, but it doesn't have name recognition behind it. And honestly... neither will SW:TOR, because it's a very different game than WoW. I will say that Cataclysm disappointed me greatly as a releaser and I'm going to try both Rift and SW:TOR, instead of keep paying to keep my WoW sub active.

No matter how many times Blizzard writes in a blog how they're not out of ideas.... Ragnaros with funny anime-midget legs says otherwise.