why wow has been successful.........until recent

[silverzrishi]

just tried a few other mmorpg over the weekend and realized why wow has been a huge success for such a long time.

IMHO wow's keys to success are not beause of the graphic, music, story, quests, game mechanics, but because of fluidity of gameplay and intuitiveness/customizability of the interface.

no other MMORPGs ive tried over this weekend that are as smooth as wow, and wow's interface is just so easy to understand and customizable. they all have beautiful graphics and catchy music or sound effects, but their gameplays are just not as fluid as wow. fluidity = easy to pick up = fun

i also think being able to customize your own interface is a really big thing. like FF14 ARR, it is somewhat customizable, but not closer to how much freedom wow give you to change ur own interface around. i hope someday FF14 ARR will allow us to to use addons to change our own interface.

being able to highly customize interface and other stuff give players a sense of control, and sense of control = fun.

it amazes me to think that the reason why wow has been so successful is because the foundation they laid back in 2004, so far i have not come across a MMORPG engine that is as smooth as wow. that engine they develop was the most important element to that game's success, but it saddens me to see they didnt take care to build the good building nowadays.

hopefully there will be an MMORPG that is as smooth and easy to pick up as wow in the near future; maybe in 3 or 4 months...........

[flan1337]

I also believe Open world is a big key. So far I haven't seen another open world popular MMO. By open world I mean no loading screens between zones.

[Chain Chungus]

I also believe Open world is a big key. So far I haven't seen another open world popular MMO. By open world I mean no loading screens between zones.

I think this is much of the game's appeal, really.

[silverzrishi]

By open world I mean no loading screens between zones.

yeah i feel like that is a huge one, loading screen in between zones is a big no-no cuz it disrupts the fluidity of the game

[Ald]

I also believe Open world is a big key. So far I haven't seen another open world popular MMO. By open world I mean no loading screens between zones.

There's a lot of irony in this aspect though. A true open world has nothing to do with loading screens and everything to do with the lack of instances and instanced content. EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, and Vanguard were true open world MMO's. Every aspect of those games took place in the game world and not in instances or phases. Don't get me wrong, the best aspect of WoW is the seamless world, which i absolutely adore, but it's not an open world MMO.

[Arenis]

I certainly believe the responsiveness/fluidity of WoW's gameplay plays an important role. But just as well the general atmosphere when playing. Back then, most mmorpgs had this sober camelot-like look and weren't very friendly. WoW managed to make a really easy to understand game, with very nice stories, class concepts, animations, zones and a general art-style that is very catchy.

[silverzrishi]

WoW managed to make a really easy to understand game, with very nice stories, class concepts, animations, zones and a general art-style that is very catchy.

yeah they used to be able to do that, but theyve been lazy so even they had an extremely good foundation, they dont care to build much upon it recently.

[Speedblast]

interesting races, decent UI, addons, good writing/lore, good gameplay. The only mmo is close to wow is ffxiv.

[silverzrishi]

The only mmo is close to wow is ffxiv.

imo, ff14 is at least 1 tier behind wow in the interface and fluidity areas.
wow just feels soooooooooooo smooth

[Arewn]

WoW's UI is nothing special. It's entirely saved by addons.

As for this "smoothness" argument, I can only wonder what games you've tried, because "smooth" isn't exactly the word I'd chose to describe WoW when comparing it to the modern MMORPGs I'm familiar with.

[Deleted]

good writing/lore

wat?
Blizzard has always emphasized the importance of gameplay over lore.
It's even part of their corporate values. They are very strong in that field.
Writing however.. WoW has always had really shitty writing and lore.


Garrisons are the first time they add major feature that deviates from this - garrisons have very little active gameplay involved.

[Super Kami Dende]

wat?
Blizzard has always emphasized the importance of gameplay over lore.
It's even part of their corporate values. They are very strong in that field.
Writing however.. WoW has always had really shitty writing and lore.

I've always thoroughly enjoyed WoW's writing and lore. I loved MoP mainly because of its lore and writing. Lorewalker Cho was amazing.

[Vulgrym]

The only game engine I've tried in the past few years that matched WoW's fluidity and responsiveness was Wildstar, which did just about everything else wrong.

As crappy as WoD's non-raid content has been, the gameplay remains a huge strength.

Biggest disappointment - SWTOR. The animation locking and lack of precision was awful. FFXIV feels sluggish as hell too.

[Deleted]

For me, WoW remains No1 because of the atmosphere. Because of the storytelling, not only in the form of quest texts.
The whole game is pictured to stenghten the feeling that you are inside of a story. An old cartoon style engine that has been perfected to serve the storytelling like no other game could ever do.

I currently play GW2, already lvl 38 but it still feels disconnected. You do random stuff in the zones without general direction, it lacks zone main story to drive you to push forward. And it soon becomes boring. You are tasked to kill stuff because they are bad and attacking the good ones, but why, what drives them to? Is there anything interesting you find when you complete the quest? No, you get reward and a "thank yo good sir, now go over there to kill some more bad guys".

I rarely play for more than 30-40min in a row simply because there is nothing to compell me to keep playing. The only thing that catches my interest is the Personal Story episodes, but they are so few and far between.
It has much better graphics, but it feels somewhat souless. There are a lot of really beautiful places, but they fail to touch you since they are not backed with a good story or anything to make them feel important to you.

I am still inspired by stories in Darkshire, the Barov family, the eery feeling of Wailing Caverns with the scenery and music, the Dire Maul, and more and more. Even MoP had given me this feeling of connection to the story being told. And all the music, texture details, even NPCs served to amplify this feeling of immersion.

[Arewn]

FFXIV feels sluggish as hell too.

It doesn't just feel sluggish. It IS sluggish.
Intentionally designed to be a slower paced combat system, once you have a good set of abilities to work with it's fairly challenging and interesting. Nothing inherently wrong with it beyond preference of pace.

[silverzrishi]

WoW's UI is nothing special. It's entirely saved by addons.

You know what, that's exactly why wows interface wins over other mmorpgs' interfaces. Yes it is mundane and nothing special, yet it is HIGHLY customizable which give players a sense of control, and the rule is that - sense of control = fun.

Imo any mmorpg should give player as much sense of control of thier character/interface as possible ason as it doesn't cause bug or mess with the reward system.

[hollafame]

wow was successful because it required heavy time investment to see the end game content. a bunch of window-lickers that spent hours/days/months/years trying to see what other people have seen. it's probably the same reason no one really jumps ship off of WoW -- because they know how much time they've invested in their toons that they don't want to have to go through the process of doing it all over again.

[Littleraven]

I would argue that WildStar is about as smooth as WoW. Not quite the same as it but close in terms of movement. But yeah. WoW really is special as a whole package. It is FAR from perfect (especially in recent years) but it just has a way of welcoming in new people by being easy to play.

I have played just about every other MMO that has come out in the past decade and WoW still feels the best to play to me. That may just be bias though.

[Arewn]

You know what, that's exactly why wows interface wins over other mmorpgs' interfaces. Yes it is mundane and nothing special, yet it is HIGHLY customizable which give players a sense of control, and the rule is that - sense of control = fun.

Imo any mmorpg should give player as much sense of control of thier character/interface as possible ason as it doesn't cause bug or mess with the reward system.

This is like arguing that a particular game's campaign is good because somebody's mod for it was good.
WoW's UI, the UI and in-game UI customization World of Warcraft offers, is nothing special.
It's saved by other people making it good for it.
It's great the EULA allows it, but don't pretend that's WoW's UI being good. You're essentially saying "the good thing about it is that we don't have to use it".

[Deleted]

You know what, that's exactly why wows interface wins over other mmorpgs' interfaces. Yes it is mundane and nothing special, yet it is HIGHLY customizable which give players a sense of control, and the rule is that - sense of control = fun.

Imo any mmorpg should give player as much sense of control of thier character/interface as possible ason as it doesn't cause bug or mess with the reward system.

This is not the true for me. I find it a bad design when you are forced to install computer automated programs to tell you what to do or even to play the game for you (mouseover macros and shit like that).
Actually i find the gameplay of WoW less and less intuitive as time goes on. More and more abilities are added, more and more mechanics on top of existing ones. It feels like a pile of trash. In this pile, you are doomed to not be able to pull the right strings unless you use third party softwares to help you.

And again, it is actually not that cusotmizable. There are cookie-cutter sets of add-ons for each class that pretty much everyone are using. Heck, you are not invited in raids nowadays if you don't have the necessary software.

How shitty is that?