WOW gets some competition, or dose it?

[Disinvolto]

i guess we'll see Dezrow

personally i think you'll be surprised at what happens when a 30 year old cultural phenomena enters the marketplace with a good well made product against what is only, in comparison, a video game frachise.

healthy markets are not monopolies. competition is a good thing even if you like WoW. it places preasure on your chosen "brand" to refine, innovate, invest and offer more to the customer for less.

Blizzard themselves in the last year have stated most of the people who try wow quit by level 10 (70%) and more that twice the number of people who currently play have bought the game and quit (meaning there are at least 20 million potential MMO players out there who don't play WoW by choice). Cata itself is a very obvious bussiness attempt to address those issues in the face of serious up and coming competition.

its pretty obvious you are a "Blizzard fan" Dezrow. personally i like only Warcraft. i haven't bought SC (an rts) and i have no intention of buying Diablo (a dungeon crawler). why would i ? they are completely different game types and do not interest me. i know what most of my game purchases are going to be over the next year (all of them RPGs except Portal 2 which i suppose is a puzzle game) and none of them are Blizzard games. i find your game market interpretation lacking and tbh somewhat strangely focused on a single companys output (no insult intended). 2011 is looking like a great year for game releases in general.

i think and hope things are gonna change for the better for all of us.
those that, after 5 years, are pretty much done with WoW.
and those who are not.

a decent competitor can bring that.

i'm pretty sure if SW:TOR hits 2 mil subs in both the US and EU after say a year you'll finally get all the old player models updated and more character slots. who knows . . . maybe even a dance studio ;P

I agree with this statement. I think SW:ToR will be a success. They've invested tons of time and money and taken what works and doesn't work from all the MMO's out there. They also have taken the old text based questing system and changed it to fully interactive acting and choice-based system. I think it will be awesome, but only time will tell. I hate when they push back the release date because I cannot WAIT to play this game, but I completely understand and think that pushing it back can be a good thing when it's ensuring its success.

[sleekit]

Disinvolto, i'd appreciate it if you see this and have a second you requote that as a made a couple edits

[Kazlehoff]

Guild wars 2.
please don't kill me.

[sleekit]

Guild wars 2.
please don't kill me.

lol

is looking like possibly a great game.

you can argue that its not a business competitor to wow tho because it doesn't require subs.
i will probably buy it.

[Holywraths]

What about TERA? (Then again from what I've seen, the system requirements might be quite hard)

Seem to me to be a Aion wannabe Wich im my oppinion Failed real bad

---------- Post added 2011-01-03 at 07:11 PM ----------

Guild wars 2.
please don't kill me.

Who would kill you... The game actually have some great potentail Like the First Series But the only thing that actually killed it a bit was the point it was not An MMO Fully Going out a zone just with your party not encountering anyone on the way is the big part that made me sad But overall Its gonna be a huge hit when it come out.

[Deleted]

Im not too sure about that. As far as games in general goes there is not a single company with a loyal following as Blizzard. Not a single game they have released have been less than the next big thing in the gaming industry. On top of that you have the fact that Blizzard is incredibly smart and has means to pretty much crush any game that comes out.

I am not saying that There isnt going to be another MMO that has a better idea than Blizzards but what i am saying is that the last 4 years worth of mmo's that have come out have not been bad at all, but they have had their noses rubbed into the ground due to the fact that Blizz strategically releases new games, new large content patches as well as expansions surrounding releases of other MMO's and even releases of other big games that are unrelated.

The only thing that will ever keep a Blizz title from being on top at this point would be an extended period of time between games. If Titan takes too long(or is canceled due to not being perfect, like the other handful of announced titles Blizz had canceled) and Diablo, Starcraft, and WoW arent getting expansions and new content due to development of it or another game, then you will see the crown fall to another game until the new Blizz title comes out. Like i said only Blizz is capable of causing their own fall.

I was about to reply you, but then i saw that sleekit replied to you what i wanted to say.

But i just had this up, stop seeing this things as a Blizz fan, they will not be at the top forever, think WoW "DeThroned" the MMO's that existed before and it will happen again, Titan is a FPS MMO and for that keep this in mind, not every one that plays mmo's like FPS.

[Dezrow]

i guess we'll see Dezrow

personally i think you'll be surprised at what happens when a 30 year old cultural phenomena enters the marketplace with a good well made product against what is only, in comparison, a video game frachise.

healthy markets are not monopolies. competition is a good thing even if you like WoW. it places preasure on your chosen "brand" to refine, innovate, invest and offer more to the customer for less.

Blizzard themselves in the last year have stated most of the people who try wow quit by level 10 (70%) and more that twice the number of people who currently play have bought the game and quit (meaning there are at least 20 million potential MMO players out there who don't play WoW by choice). Cata itself is a very obvious bussiness attempt to address those issues in the face of serious up and coming competition.

its pretty obvious you are a "Blizzard fan" Dezrow. personally i like only Warcraft. i haven't bought SC (an rts) and i have no intention of buying Diablo (a dungeon crawler). why would i ? they are completely different game types and do not interest me. i know what most of my game purchases are going to be over the next year (all of them RPGs except Portal 2 which i suppose is a puzzle game) and none of them are Blizzard games. i find your game market interpretation lacking and tbh somewhat strangely focused on a single companys output (no insult intended). 2011 is looking like a great year for game releases in general.

i think and hope things are gonna change for the better for all of us.
those that, after 5 years, are pretty much done with WoW.
and those who are not.

a decent competitor can bring that.

i'm pretty sure if SW:TOR hits 2 mil subs in both the US and EU after say a year you'll finally get all the old player models updated and more character slots. who knows . . . maybe even a dance studio ;P

I am a Blizzard fan and no offense taken by anything you said and i see your point, but ill tell you where my point of view of the market is coming from, and i apologize if i am all over the place with my ideas but im at work so im just typing things as i think of them.

I worked for Gamestop for 6 years and was a manager at a store for 2 of those years. I have seen a lot of games come and go and a lot of buying habits by a lot of people. My store was also located within walking distance of a college campus, so i had a lot of people to sample from. I stopped working for the company early 2010 so things havent really changed that much since i was there. I assume that you refer to SWTOR when you talk about 30 year old cultural phenomena, and i know it is going to have its own great following, but the issue with that is it has a cultural following, and that is going to be its bottleneck. People who do not like Star Wars will not play this game.

Here is a LARGE chunk of people I talked to about the game; People who after playing WoW for so many years are dont with MMO's as a whole are not going to play it. Being a new game it also has to compete with every other new game comming out at the time, and since this is going to be a great year for games you are going to see some odd results.

Also my focus on Blizzard when it comes to the gaming marketplace is not strange at all. Because of Halo, and Call of Duty do people not base how good a new shooter does by whether or not a new Halo, or CoD game is right around the corner? When i was at gamestop there were tons of great shooters on the market but when i would pitch one to a customer they would respond "eh i already have Modern Warfare 2 so i dont really need another shooter." Also when it comes to developers, you have the same kind of things. In the sports world you have several companies who are in the market. When i would get a customer in my store at the beginning of the fall i would get a lot of people who only played the EA Basketball games, or the 2K baseball games, and would not even try the other games because they stick with what they know.

I am going to revisit one thing, and its going to be the whole SWTOR thing. I said earlier that what will be the biggest thing for Bioware to overcome when it comes to dealing with WoW is the fact that they, unlike WoW, have to deal with they have a very focused group of fans. You will have Bioware fans, and Star Wars fans and that is all, except for the people out there that try every new mmo on the market for some reason. The Star Wars fan base is something that can be very strange because it is so diverse. They consist of every kind of person imaginable, and the Star Wars name is pasted at least somewhere in ever game genre imaginable.

So fan base for Star Wars is going to have to be slimmed down a bit. Take the Star Wars fanbase as a whole, and subtract everyone in that category who doesnt play video games. Then subtract everyone who likes video games but arent into MMO's. This is going to be the core group this game is going to be marketed to. There are lots of other variables but in a nutshell thats is the largest sample of people this game has to sell to. People who dont like Star Wars are not going to play it. People who dont like Bioware(yes there are people who dont like Bioware) arent going to play it. People who are Blizzard fans are going to be busy with Diablo III and still be playing WoW or something most likely so wont be playing it.

As for a cultural phenomena with a well made product going against a video game franchise, i say this and its going to be somewhat of a repeat. Not everyone who likes Star Wars is going to play this game where as pretty much everyone who is a Blizzard fan will play EVERY Blizzard game , because Blizz has NEVER made a bad game. If SWTOR is to be successful they will not put focus on the Star Wars fanbase but instead put focus on the fanbase of the market they are going into and then add something for star wars fans can latch onto. That is exactly what Blizz did with WoW. If you ask a lot of the people who play World of Warcraft you are going to get a fair amount of people who could give a damn about Warcraft Lore and story, they like it because its a good game. Star Wars is sooo lore heavy they have to be careful not to alienate the people who could give a crap about who Boss A is and why they are destroying crap.

That is all i have for now.

---------- Post added 2011-01-03 at 08:32 PM ----------

I was about to reply you, but then i saw that sleekit replied to you what i wanted to say.

But i just had this up, stop seeing this things as a Blizz fan, they will not be at the top forever, think WoW "DeThroned" the MMO's that existed before and it will happen again, Titan is a FPS MMO and for that keep this in mind, not every one that plays mmo's like FPS.

Just because I recognize Blizz as a behemoth in the video game industry does not mean i am using my liking them a lot influence what i think. I'm not by any means saying "omg blizz is king of everything and anyone who thinks that wow is going to be dethroned is wrong because no other good games will ever exist". If a truly better game came out then i would defend it the same way. i have no reason to keep myself from playing a good game just because it's not the brand i like.

[Deleted]

I am a Blizzard fan and no offense taken by anything you said and i see your point, but ill tell you where my point of view of the market is coming from, and i apologize if i am all over the place with my ideas but im at work so im just typing things as i think of them.

I worked for Gamestop for 6 years and was a manager at a store for 2 of those years. I have seen a lot of games come and go and a lot of buying habits by a lot of people. My store was also located within walking distance of a college campus, so i had a lot of people to sample from. I stopped working for the company early 2010 so things havent really changed that much since i was there. I assume that you refer to SWTOR when you talk about 30 year old cultural phenomena, and i know it is going to have its own great following, but the issue with that is it has a cultural following, and that is going to be its bottleneck. People who do not like Star Wars will not play this game.

Here is a LARGE chunk of people I talked to about the game; People who after playing WoW for so many years are dont with MMO's as a whole are not going to play it. Being a new game it also has to compete with every other new game comming out at the time, and since this is going to be a great year for games you are going to see some odd results.

Also my focus on Blizzard when it comes to the gaming marketplace is not strange at all. Because of Halo, and Call of Duty do people not base how good a new shooter does by whether or not a new Halo, or CoD game is right around the corner? When i was at gamestop there were tons of great shooters on the market but when i would pitch one to a customer they would respond "eh i already have Modern Warfare 2 so i dont really need another shooter." Also when it comes to developers, you have the same kind of things. In the sports world you have several companies who are in the market. When i would get a customer in my store at the beginning of the fall i would get a lot of people who only played the EA Basketball games, or the 2K baseball games, and would not even try the other games because they stick with what they know.

I am going to revisit one thing, and its going to be the whole SWTOR thing. I said earlier that what will be the biggest thing for Bioware to overcome when it comes to dealing with WoW is the fact that they, unlike WoW, have to deal with they have a very focused group of fans. You will have Bioware fans, and Star Wars fans and that is all, except for the people out there that try every new mmo on the market for some reason. The Star Wars fan base is something that can be very strange because it is so diverse. They consist of every kind of person imaginable, and the Star Wars name is pasted at least somewhere in ever game genre imaginable.

So fan base for Star Wars is going to have to be slimmed down a bit. Take the Star Wars fanbase as a whole, and subtract everyone in that category who doesnt play video games. Then subtract everyone who likes video games but arent into MMO's. This is going to be the core group this game is going to be marketed to. There are lots of other variables but in a nutshell thats is the largest sample of people this game has to sell to. People who dont like Star Wars are not going to play it. People who dont like Bioware(yes there are people who dont like Bioware) arent going to play it. People who are Blizzard fans are going to be busy with Diablo III and still be playing WoW or something most likely so wont be playing it.

As for a cultural phenomena with a well made product going against a video game franchise, i say this and its going to be somewhat of a repeat. Not everyone who likes Star Wars is going to play this game where as pretty much everyone who is a Blizzard fan will play EVERY Blizzard game , because Blizz has NEVER made a bad game. If SWTOR is to be successful they will not put focus on the Star Wars fanbase but instead put focus on the fanbase of the market they are going into and then add something for star wars fans can latch onto. That is exactly what Blizz did with WoW. If you ask a lot of the people who play World of Warcraft you are going to get a fair amount of people who could give a damn about Warcraft Lore and story, they like it because its a good game. Star Wars is sooo lore heavy they have to be careful not to alienate the people who could give a crap about who Boss A is and why they are destroying crap.

That is all i have for now.

---------- Post added 2011-01-03 at 08:32 PM ----------



Just because I recognize Blizz as a behemoth in the video game industry does not mean i am using my liking them a lot influence what i think. I'm not by any means saying "omg blizz is king of everything and anyone who thinks that wow is going to be dethroned is wrong because no other good games will ever exist". If a truly better game came out then i would defend it the same way. i have no reason to keep myself from playing a good game just because it's not the brand i like.

This reply of yours only makes me say one thing. If u can defend your point of view in such constructive way i can only respect that and follow my merry little way.

About SWTOR, i have been hearing and reading so many mixed opinions about the game that it have become for me one of those cases of "Wait and see", but in my honest opinion it will not be the one that will end WoW, but giving WoW a strong competition will be only good for us, the costumers.

[moaradin]

SWTOR can burn in hell for replacing Kotor series!

It's not "replacing" it, its the true successor.

And DC universe is a totally different game. It will definitely do good, but not for the same reasons. DC universe is a very fun Open world beat em up style game. It's very similar to single player games like infamous.

---------- Post added 2011-01-03 at 09:03 PM ----------

About SWTOR, i have been hearing and reading so many mixed opinions about the game that it have become for me one of those cases of "Wait and see", but in my honest opinion it will not be the one that will end WoW, but giving WoW a strong competition will be only good for us, the costumers.

Mixed opinions? The game has gotten nothing but rave reviews for the people who got to play it lol.

[Dezrow]

This reply of yours only makes me say one thing. If u can defend your point of view in such constructive way i can only respect that and follow my merry little way.

About SWTOR, i have been hearing and reading so many mixed opinions about the game that it have become for me one of those cases of "Wait and see", but in my honest opinion it will not be the one that will end WoW, but giving WoW a strong competition will be only good for us, the costumers.

Thanks and i respect the fact that both you and sleekit looked at what i had to say and didnt take the "your stupid" route. I've enjoyed this thread a lot because of you two giving smart and well thought out replies to what i had to say.

Also i agree. this will be a wait and see thing, with how good it will actually be, and i think this will be VERY good for WoW players.

I see you are a Half Life fan. That also adds merit to your arguments.

[Deleted]

It's not "replacing" it, its the true successor.

And DC universe is a totally different game. It will definitely do good, but not for the same reasons. DC universe is a very fun Open world beat em up style game. It's very similar to single player games like infamous.

---------- Post added 2011-01-03 at 09:03 PM ----------




Mixed opinions? The game has gotten nothing but rave reviews for the people who got to play it lol.

Then you only heard part of it. I had heard people saying pretty bad things about the game. I'm not one of them because i really don't care about SWTOR so i don't have a opinion about it.

[skrump]

I watched some Video's of Tera and Rift Online

They both look like very promising games.
They both have a cartoony look but it is much more Vibrant and refined than wow.

To be honest Tera online looks like an absolutely amazing game.

[Deleted]

Seem to me to be a Aion wannabe Wich im my oppinion Failed real bad

Then again, didn't Aion require some insane amounts of grinding at the later levels? Not that I know much of TERA at this moment but the game looks fantastic. Also, the fighting system should be rather refreshing since it actually requires you to aim for your target instead of stacking hit rating =)

[Mitsumoto]

I don't have time for another MMO so i don't think i'll ever try it.

[Deleted]

Guild wars 2.
please don't kill me.

I wont, /hug.

Guild Wars 2 really does have potential,
and I hope they start beta testing sooner or later during this year.

[pateuvasiliu]

You are quite right. There are very high expectations of games, however - it was the same when World of Warcraft came out. It was buggy and not more playable than any other new MMO release, however, Blizzard Entertainment buckled up & corrected their errors and got through the hard times and are currently sitting with 12 million subscribers monthly.

No matter what, AoC, Warhammer or Aion was never, EVER good games to begin with. They were failures right from the start and would never have competed with World of Warcraft even if they were to be played smoothly.

EVE Online has also succeeded quite well, as they appeal to a different targetgroup, mature players. What other game companies fail to realize is, that World of Warcraft is capable to do whatever they do, better. They have more talented people, they have more money, they have a much longer and more respected background, giving the world the two most played Real Time Strategy games ever played, StarCraft & WarCraft. They have the biggest name in the industry and you can see on the expectations for Diablo III how gigantic the company is.

I hope that SW:TOR will be "POLISHED" when it launches, because that is where every other MMO has failed in the past except for WoW & EVE. If SW:TOR is a finished polished upon retail, you will not have die hard fans of other MMO's instantly turning it down. World of Warcraft wasn't polished, but it was ahead of it's time and Blizzard had it's reputation to go with.

this,pretty much

When i say gaming i think immediately of Blizzard.

I put on Starcraft when i was like 6-7 and it was like a dream.

I even recall imitating the sounds the units made ''En'taro adun'' btw.

They just have great games(gameplay-wise) and great lore.

IMO blizzard will never be out of the picture,only if they want too.

[Dezrow]

You know ive posted in this thread a couple of times now and just realized that the title of the thread is misspelled.

[moaradin]

Then you only heard part of it. I had heard people saying pretty bad things about the game. I'm not one of them because i really don't care about SWTOR so i don't have a opinion about it.

From where? Certainly not any Beta testers because its under the NDA. The only people that got to release a review of the starting zones were some people from the media, and like 8/10 of the sites that got to play it, including someone from curse.com, say its great. The negative reviews were so damn minimal and didn't mean anything either.

And I have not just seen some of them. I've been following the game since 2008, and I've seen every review that was released legitimately.

[Amaranth]

ToR will be interesting in that there's a LOT of solo content. Think of it like you would every other BioWare game (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, KoToR, etc) but with an online multiplayer aspect.

[BallsofThunder]

For what i've seen from Totalbiscuit's vids about DC online the game has big potential. I just hope they don't screw up like Funcom in AoC where u only had fun in the first 20 levels then you had a true bore fest.

This, I intend on DC Universe buying on release, from what I've seen it has great potential.

In all honesty I'd rather kick the hell out of things as a Super Villain, then as an Orc Hunter.