Shadowlands - Eclipse Feedback, Mike Morhaime Interview, Earthfury Layering Disabled

Originally Posted by A Blue Smurf

Under what rock did ghostcrawler live? I'm only 32 now but Id been involved with and met people via online games and communities for years before wow was even announced. It was not new, it was not novel.

His wording is certainly odd, I think if you replaced the word "new" with "mainstream" it'd probably make a bit more sense (still not completely right, but better than saying it was new).

The idea that "instant messaging didn't really exist" is absolutely laughable, and that's being generous. By the time of WoW's release in late 2004, we were well into the early social media era: Myspace, Facebook, and others were already extant. Instant messaging services - ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger and more - were old hat and in widespread usage by then, with those three alone having come about in 1996, 1997, and 1999 respectively.

I remember using ICQ and mIRC with my UO guild in 97, so Ghostcrawler seems to have forgotten a thing or two.

Originally Posted by rlloyd3

The idea that "instant messaging didn't really exist" is absolutely laughable, and that's being generous. By the time of WoW's release in late 2004, we were well into the early social media era: Myspace, Facebook, and others were already extant. Instant messaging services - ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger and more - were old hat and in widespread usage by then, with those three alone having come about in 1996, 1997, and 1999 respectively.

What genuinely confuses me here is that Greg Street is old enough to have experienced the 90s/00s first hand and yet makes statements that give the opposite impression.

Like even if you try to be generous and say "well maybe he meant instant messaging within games only" it's still not accurate. I'd like to just say it's just really poor wording on his part but it does come across as someone that completely forgot what things were like and rather than admit it they just make shit up.

Originally Posted by aeuhe4yxzhds

Early for anyone not interested in video games, maybe. It is around 2009-2010 where majority started using the web thanks to cheap laptops and smartphones.

It's a country by country basis, but majority internet usage in the US was 2002.

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Originally Posted by Great Destiny Man

What genuinely confuses me here is that Greg Street is old enough to have experienced the 90s/00s first hand and yet makes statements that give the opposite impression.

Like even if you try to be generous and say "well maybe he meant instant messaging within games only" it's still not accurate. I'd like to just say it's just really poor wording on his part but it does come across as someone that completely forgot what things were like and rather than admit it they just make shit up.

I think he's speaking more on the broad reaching appeal of WoW at the time and meeting NEW people. IM Programs/Social Networking were great for communicating with people you already new, but I know of very few people who used them to find NEW friends.

First time making friends in a game? Oh, I guess they live in a reality where Everquest, Ultima Online, and countless other games hadn't already existed for years, and not to mention that ICQ was around for at least 5 or 6 years. They certainly like inflating their importance.

Even then there was forums, irc, Roger Wilco!

If my memory serves, the first time I used voice chat was in CS in early/mid 99 and for that group of players it was standard even then.

If his comments reflect his relative experiences, it's little wonder why he oversaw the largest decline of player participation and active subscriptions in wow. Don't take that as a commentary on his competence, it's just a musing.

Originally Posted by Onikaroshi

I think he's speaking more on the broad reaching appeal of WoW at the time and meeting NEW people. IM Programs/Social Networking were great for communicating with people you already new, but I know of very few people who used them to find NEW friends.

It certainly could be, hence why I said it could just be poor wording. I agree in that context it was rare for it to happen but there was the odd situation it did.

Originally Posted by Wyviner

First time making friends in a game? Oh, I guess they live in a reality where Everquest, Ultima Online, and countless other games hadn't already existed for years, and not to mention that ICQ was around for at least 5 or 6 years. They certainly like inflating their importance.

You are forgetting that before WoW online games had players in the tens of thousands to at most hundreds of thousands while WoW had millions. So for millions of people it was their first experience.

I can't even remember my first online chat experience maybe Helbreath or some browser thing like BattleTrolls? Can't even remember when BattleTrolls was released can hardly even find any info on it.

Hahah ok I usually find Ghostcrawler right on the money with his comments but this time he couldn’t be further off.

Instant messaging was actually on its last days when WoW came out. By Nov 2004, MSN Messenger was almost dead and now called Windows Messenger. I hated to see it go but everyone quit using it. Then AIM stuck around in popularity but by TBCs launch it was over too. So I’d say he’s dead wrong about IMs being “new”.

Shit I remember my first instant messenger. It was ICQ (UH OH!) in 1996. Those internet days were so fun.

But yeah long story short obviously they’re right about the social aspect going away as the game got more accessible. It was bound to happen.

Originally Posted by chaud

Now is a great time for indie game studios.

This is a meme, right?

GH’s instant messaging comment was odd to me... AIM and ICQ were huge in the late 90s let alone the mid 2000s... especially for gamers and online people..

Im wondering if he meant texting which got bigger with smartphones

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Originally Posted by rlloyd3

The idea that "instant messaging didn't really exist" is absolutely laughable, and that's being generous. By the time of WoW's release in late 2004, we were well into the early social media era: Myspace, Facebook, and others were already extant. Instant messaging services - ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger and more - were old hat and in widespread usage by then, with those three alone having come about in 1996, 1997, and 1999 respectively.

I just posted the same thing almost... amazingly weird thing to say..

If you were someone who was already well versed in online games and communities before 2004 you definitely weren’t in the majority of the population.

EQs height of popularity was a few hundred thousand subs. WoW came along and brought it in millions, with most of these players having their first MMO or online gaming experience.

I remember MSN and Yahoo chatrooms being so popular in the early 2000's, they were shut down shortly after two young girls in the UK disappeared after meeting someone online.

Disregarding the odd/false comment about IM being unavailable, the rest of his post is pretty much spot on.

WoW in those days was a really good platform to learn new people with similar interests; something that a lot of other games didn't have at the time.
For example in those days (early 2000s) I played a lot of Counter Strike and Jedi Knight 2; but the only sense of community was if you found a dedicated server where people frequented. Or you had to find a Clan/Guild/Community through online forums and such. Most of those were quite a giant leap for people not all too familiar with the internet.

WoW (and similar games like Runescape) at the time really opened up an easy and accessible way to find people and create friendships.
Don't forget that most of the people playing at that time were the first or second generation of online gamers(*); so it was new and exciting at the same time.
This is also that feeling/sentiment that a lot of people miss nowadays.

These days things are different. Finding friends online is much easier through social media and larger hubs. Finding people with similar passions is also a lot easier.
Meeting people who play similar games is also much easier. But in some way it's not the same thing.

(*) Also don't forget that internet before about 1995 was mostly dial in internet which was expensive and had a lot of interruption and lag. Not ideal for online gaming.

Oh look this thing was already available in the 90s, he doesn't know what he's talking about. As someone who lived through the 90s and took a basic computer class that taught how to make a dos tree and what email was, you are greatly overestimating the knowledge and use of any of the programs at the scale of what WoW was in it's hey day or even what it is now. I didn't own a computer until 98 or 99 and hardly anyone I knew at the time did, now people walk around with super computers in their pockets.

People forget sometimes that when WoW became popular, things like instant messaging didn't really exist, let alone having social features in every game....

Even my mom was using IM before WoW came out.

Early WoW players would see another player and be all "Is that another human? That's crazy." ...

And what about EverQuest? That game was not unheard of.

I was also playing a lot of games that were online multiplayer at the time, WoW was an outlier being an MMO but it's not like people hadn't seen other players playing other characters in games before.

I'll also add, people are connecting a lot in classic. I don't really understand why people are talking about it like you can't see what a game like WoW in 2004 would be like today. The social aspect is way more prominent than on retail servers.

What is he talking about? no social messaging?

I was one of the kids he's talking about, I was around 14-15 in 2004 when I started playing. I had email....so why would I use wow "like email", before wow was a thing I had ICQ... and before ICQ was a thing I remember talking to people in the chatroom on Napster. I'm pretty sure MSN messenger started up around 2004 too. So no, stop trying to give all this bonus credit to WoW for doing things to help people that other apps and programs had already been doing.

I won't bring up the fact that WoW wasn't the first MMO that had all those features... COUGH runescape ffxi everquest ultimaonline darkage of camelot

didn't starcraft and or battle.net have chat features? as an older millennial not only was there the IM services mentioned but I remember -albeit vaguely- public chatrooms which I have to imagine were probably yahoo! which helps explain why I still use that garbage site.

Though I think more highly of Ghostcrawler than a lot of others the answer he provided was a defensive deflection at best as he was the guy that was the face of WoW during its transition from a social game juggernaut to a soulless accessibility version of the game.

Morhaime's comment is probably a reflection of the corporate battles that took place inside Blizzard / Activision between the camps that favored the social version of WoW and the Bobby Kotick's and corporate bean counters that favored accessibility models and game design built solely around maximizing MAU stats.

WoW's greatest success, and the success of Classic, were the result of the game's social aspects being the driver of design. To paraphrase Brack "You think you want more accessibility but you don't". The game has never been as popular, or as good in my opinion, as when it was built around a social community rather than accessibility and game metrics.

If Blizzard had managed servers better and introduced some QoL improvements (better flight paths, dual spec, paladins that could tank, heroic dungeons as examples) but stayed away from all the things like CRZ and cross-server realms and the things they supported like LFR that destroyed all sense of community and giving every johnny everything they wanted (welfare loot everywhere, legendaries that weren't etc) WoW would of ended up in a better place in my opinion.

Classic and Retail are based on the same game. The vast majority of the content is very similar (kill 10 boars, dungeons & Raid). But it's the reward structure and differing social elements that turn nearly identical products into completely different experiences. Classic has proven that there is a yearning for the latter type of game design which has been abandoned by most developers in favour of accessibility and/or monetization metrics. But as WoW (Retail) has proven attempting to appeal to everyone, contrary to what many thought or still think, ultimately results in a game that really doesn't appeal to anyone in the same way a "Classically" designed social game with proper reward structures (effort required) does. That's partly why new game content is blown through so fast and often has to be so gated in modern WoW. People log on merely to get their rewards / carrots on a stick and then log off for months at a time until the latest carrots are dropped because they simply aren't as attached and invested in the game as they once were because 90% or more of the content doesn't require ever interacting with anyone else.