Are no realistic alternative MMO's to blame?

[Logwyn]

No, it is still an MMORPG.

Maybe if you go to GoldShrine in Moonguard..... Standard WOW lost its RPG element. Its a story on rails now...

[arr0gance]

WoW has never had any competition and it's unlikely it ever will. Until there's a viable alternative, Blizzard will continue developing the way it does.

[Eleccybubb]

Yeah, that really killed FF for me as well. New expansion comes out (I am like hey that looks cool) but I haven't played since the initial release and then I find out I have to spend like 40+ hours doing fetch quests just riding around the world to even get to the expansion BEFORE the one I just bought... oh yeah or I can pay some bucks to be able to skip all the story shit that doesn't matter anymore.

Add to the fact I am not going to full time FF just something to mess with here and there so there is no way I am ever going to get through all that content, specially with no on else to play with.

I don't get all the love for FF really, there is some super tedious ass shit they have left lingering around.

Because a good chunk of people who go to FF or fans of the series know what they are getting themselves into. The story is a core aspect of the game.

Saying you don't get the love is exactly like some random person saying they don't get the love for WoW. Different people enjoy different things. Just the way it is.

[Lochton]

Maybe if you go to GoldShrine in Moonguard..... Standard WOW lost its RPG element. Its a story on rails now...

Nope, it hasn't. Still counts as an RPG, still classifies as an RPG. It might be your opinion and views but doesn't change its type.

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Yeah, that really killed FF for me as well. New expansion comes out (I am like hey that looks cool) but I haven't played since the initial release and then I find out I have to spend like 40+ hours doing fetch quests just riding around the world to even get to the expansion BEFORE the one I just bought... oh yeah or I can pay some bucks to be able to skip all the story shit that doesn't matter anymore.

Add to the fact I am not going to full time FF just something to mess with here and there so there is no way I am ever going to get through all that content, specially with no on else to play with.

I don't get all the love for FF really, there is some super tedious ass shit they have left lingering around.

FF killed it for me.

I played the game before it went RR.

I regret it all.

When it was shut down before remaking it, I demanded the money back and said I wouldn't be back for RR.

[Notshauna]

There are realistic alternatives to WoW, the issue is that WoW is synonymous with MMOs. If someone wants to try a MMO chances are they'll go with WoW. Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Final Fantasy XIV, Archeage, Blade and Soul, Maplestory 2 and Runescape are all MMOs off the top of my head with frequent patches and healthy communities. Beyond that I'm sure there are many, many more MMOs that I can't think of at this moment that meets that criteria. WoW's success is pretty much self perpetuating at this point.

[mvaliz]

My main reason for posting is do others think that the lack of competition in the mmo market allowed blizzard to become somewhat lazy and arrogant with WoW?

No, it's because the team that did legion moved on to other things and left Ion Hazapastafusksta in charge, and he's a fukwith EQ flunky who's trying to bring back old-school gameplay that nobody wants anymore.

[Alopex Major]

No, I would say every game I've tried is better than WoW in at least one important aspect. The difficulty is getting your social group to swap. People have so much time invested in WoW that it's difficult to switch, which is understandable. WoW is only successful because people aren't willing to leave it in large numbers.

[mvaliz]

On a more serious note - the only thing that will compete with WoW is a TRUE MMORPG, one that embraces multiple styles of gameplay that doesn't focus on raiding mechanics or gear progression - but rather rewards individual gameplay style choices. In short, not this candy-ass themepark nonsense WoW has become. But, sadly, no true MMORPG will come out as long as people still try making Warcraft Clones.

[shaunika123]

yes they are.

when you have a monopoly you're not motivated to be better, just good enough.

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On a more serious note - the only thing that will compete with WoW is a TRUE MMORPG, one that embraces multiple styles of gameplay that doesn't focus on raiding mechanics or gear progression - but rather rewards individual gameplay style choices. In short, not this candy-ass themepark nonsense WoW has become. But, sadly, no true MMORPG will come out as long as people still try making Warcraft Clones.

every single MMO that has come out in the last 10 years have been either too much like wow, or not enough like it. i think above all the most important thing is a smooth and polished combat system, and fun classes. the rest dont matter really.

the only MMO I genuinely enjoyed was wildstar, but 40 man raids made it basically impossible to play.

[Regalosh]

yes they are.

when you have a monopoly you're not motivated to be better, just good enough.

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every single MMO that has come out in the last 10 years have been either too much like wow, or not enough like it. i think above all the most important thing is a smooth and polished combat system, and fun classes. the rest dont matter really.

the only MMO I genuinely enjoyed was wildstar, but 40 man raids made it basically impossible to play.

Oh than you should check out Black Deset Online. The game is the living example why the two alone is not enough. since that game right now has only two major selling points: beautiful graphics, and very fluid, combo-based action combat due to unique classes that are reallly fun to play. Literally the best you can find in any mmo's today and I really mean it.

However, than there are the rest of those things like:

- Non-existent lore: there is story, but it's so badly written, that nobody cares about it.

- Since it's a sandbox mmorpg, there isn't any instanced content.

- Extremely grindy and time-consuming. You pretty much have to no-life the game, and the game itself provides the means for that through afk lifeskilling to generate whealth all day, while you can't grind.

- Even more extreme rng factor, titanforging in WoW is nothing compared to the progression system of BDO, where you can literally loose months of hard work in a couple of minutes due to some failed enhancement attempts.

- Classes are gender and race locked.

- Lack of the "Holy trinity" - basically no tank or support role, but everyone is a dps class, with very-very different abilities and sets of cc's and survivability.

- No PVE content aside of lifeskilling, which should be done afk mostly, and grinding, which is the best mean of generating wealth while playing the game actively.

- The endgame is heavily focused on PVP and the sieges, but the constant lagg and performance issues make the sieges a joke (rubberbanding lol)

- Terrible class balance, when it comes to endgame and pvp.

- Huge amount of bugs, unchecked hackers.

- As of late, it has slowly turned into full p2w, despite the fact that the developers and the publisher promised, when the game was released back in 2016, that they wouldn't follow the Korean model (where it was p2w from the beginning).


But yes, at least you can play the game basically for free, since there is no subscription and you only have to buy the game once for something like 10 euros. Also you can opt not p2w, but only if you never ever wish to catch up to the majority of the players at all.

[Deleted]

SWTOR was the only one I played that actually hooked me at first. I played it for a couple months and then ran out of stuff to do. Had they supported it as well as Blizzard does with WoW I think it honestly could have done really well.

The problem with WoW it needs to stop "starting over" every expansion and make things more meaningful. The expansions should be a continuation, not a redo every 2 years that makes everything prior basically pointless.

A lot of people don't care about acquiring gear because it just resets every 2-3 months anyway so why waste time on it? I can spend weeks getting 380 now or wait 3 months and get it in full probably a day after hitting 120 with the catch up mechanics. Or wait 9 months and get 420 or whatever. Why even waste time on it? The gameplay really isn't that fun.

The options of things to do are just different ways of ultimately doing the same thing and the adventure doing it (what really matters) is really not that fun.

How would you solve that problem though? Cause it's either that or the GW2 model.

Like, it's nice to say you don't like it, but there's realisticly no solution to that problem.

[Tharkkun]

I do think that the rise (and subsequent fall) of many, many MMOs while WoW continued strong has sort of given the WoW devs a big head.

I remember Everquest 2 came out right at the same time as WoW. It catered more to the hardcore players coming from EQ than the casuals like WoW did, with more "realistic" graphics and not as cartoony as WoW. It's still around, but the last time I logged in it was F2P with P2P option and there had been so many expansions and systems piled on top of one another that I didn't even know where to start with that game (last time I played seriously was 2006/2007 in that game). I logged back out after like 5 minutes and uninstalled the game. So in that sense I think WoW is just familiar and people are comfortable with that familiarity.

I've played other MMOs over the years. Lineage 2, Lord of the Rings Online, SWTOR, Neverwinter Nights are the main ones that come to mind. All kept my interest for a time but became too grindy - way more than WoW and, as I posted in another thread, the sunk cost fallacy kicked in and I went back to WoW, where I had spent years of my life.

Anyway, the point is I do think that no big "challenger" to WoW that's sweeping the market with 10 million+ subs is why BfA feels so lackluster.

EQ2's biggest problem was the system requirements to run it even decently were very over the top at the time. People that switched from EQ to EQ2 couldn't even run the game. Then they added exp penalty systems and other just weird stuff I can't even recall anymore.

I loved EQ2. I still loathe that universe and the lore but SOE blew it. Then when most of my friends abandoned it for WoW I switched as well.

The problem with making a new MMO is WoW has almost a 19 year head start. Most companies will not drop 100 million over 5 years to create a game that could fail. They won't take the risk on it now. So they half-ass a game in 2 years and try to make money off it in order to continue development. But this results in having very little content available and/or broken non-polished systems into place.

As soon as customers start finding bugs or run out of things to do the game fails.

[WintersLegion]

A great example of that would be Lord of the Rings Online
It had so many great ideas,and did a lot of things much better than WoW,but the devs and the publishers just threw it all away.It's to the point where playing it,especially if you remember how some systems worked before they got removed/change is a really sad feeling as you can't help to think about what could have been

Another one would be Star Wars Galaxies I never played it myself but from all I heard it was really good and then WoW came out and the devs basically tried to make SWG more like WoW alienating their fanbase and even removing the majority of the professions from the game. It went from 34 to 9 professions.

[ONCHEhap]

Another one would be Star Wars Galaxies I never played it myself but from all I heard it was really good and then WoW came out and the devs basically tried to make SWG more like WoW alienating their fanbase and even removing the majority of the professions from the game. It went from 34 to 9 professions.

oh yeah,they butchered the game to make a WoW-like,like so many MMO devs tried to do and failed at

[Khallid]

Personally and I stress personally, I do not agree with your second paragraph. Its not "too bad" that I don't like the azurite system (just one example I gave) as you can see from blizzards own responses and the many QA's and the band aid fixes that they have implemented what could have been a really interesting system has been implemented awfully - these are their words not mine.

Of course it takes time but we are not talking about a small indie company we are talking about an absolute monster that is Blizzard entertainment.

I agree there is a variety of people who cry and moan over the simplest things I agree with you and my answer is let them unsub and go if they cry over a store mount.

Blizzard said they want gear to be rewarding , but when you get a 385 mythic shoulder that is a dps loss because of awful traits over a 340 then for me its not acceptable.

Neither is it really acceptable to hammer OP traits and practically force you to keep all your azerite gear in case they nerf your bis perfoming ones and buff the hell out of others.

I mean I have like 4-6 azerite of every slot in bank - its kind of madness the disparity of some traits over others - how they ever though they could balance this on top of every mathematical combination of gear and traits is beyond me !

Bit off topic but anyway

Heh, well I don't like several things about azerite, and I can think of a few easy ways to make it better for my taste, which I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with. My point was just that the system won't be completely scrapped, and modifications to improve it will be fairly minor because that's how their workflow is set up. They won't spend the time and effort required into remaking the whole progression system for BfA, because it's not worthwhile to do so from their perspective.

The size of a company is not all that relevant. All employees have work to do all the time, no matter the size of the company. So any amount of additional work into fixing something they already released has to cut time into whatever they had planned to work. The devs will not spend any time on reworking released content unless their bosses decide that it is urgent to do so, pushing down the line the work they planned to do. Which is why the devs are not lazy, they are working their full shifts on what they are being told to work on. Treat them like people, not like machines.

If anything, what I find troublesome is whenever Ion explains the "intention" of the changes, like azerite gear, GCD on cooldowns and personal loot. They don't seem to be creating these ideas with fun in mind, or player agency, or roleplay value. You know, the things that make a game feel like a game. Their explanations are very weak, claiming that they are good for the game without actually showing supporting evidence to back their claims, which is why they fall flat and don't convince anyone. Currently they just seem to worship RNG. But I still argue that's not laziness.

[Tuhokoura]

Well lets look...is WoW...

Massive: Yes
Multiplayer: Yes
Online: Yes
Role Playing: Yes
Game: Yes

So still is a MMORPG.

Just a wild guess. Fat free is healthy in your world, regardless it is saturated in sugar?

What I mean is, even if the box says its MMO, it currently does not feel like one.

[Loveliest]

Well, I've tried quite a few MMOs with my boyfriend and I liked all of them but he quit on all of them so I stopped playing as well.

TESO - tried it at the start and it was ok, even if full of frustrating bugs; both him and I played templars and he had issue solo-ing stuff with his build (a sort of healer / caster combo); we did them ok in a group, but he saw others running by themselves (dragonknight and the more magey one I can't recall) with no issues; the difference between the classes was too big and he became bitter so we quit.

FF - he doesn't like asian aesthetic; couldn't make him play for more than a few hours.

Secret World - it was performin poorly on his sytem, he couldn't play it.

Wildstar - he picked the worst class once again (Esper) and he couldn't get past one of the attunement steps as easily as I did (rogue tank) so he got angry and quit.

Rift - he got bored leveling, didn't even reach max level because absolutely all quests are only 'kill' and 'collect' (not even wrapped up under some story).

LOTRO - to be fair, I'm the one who quit on this one; my arm hurt every time after playing it for an hour or two, don't recall why.

Neverwinter Online - the grind there was insane; we quit when they introduced some dragon things you'd have to kill and it turned into a waiting game.

STWOR - too many buttons, had to pay to unlock bars to put buttons on; I payed for mine, he didn't.

GW2 - leveling is quite fun and the game looks very nice, but it's daunting trying to do more than that; in GW2, best gear is crafted and you don't get gear resets like you do in WoW; this means the more experienced players don't want to waste time with undergeared newbies and only care for 'meta' (to an extreme).

There's many many others, but I'd say WoW is the most popular for several reasons: can be played solo by any class, it's not boring (leveling is arguably the most fun out there), it's got good aesthetics that appeal to everyone (or at least don't detract from the experience) and it's accessible, not focused on hardcore playing or insane grinding.

[Shakou]

Tons of people still pay it lol

Ya but way more people play WOW so...

[Loveliest]

Doing mythic raiding without addons?

Some people do that. It sometimes allows you to understand mechanics better than 'do it when DBM says so'. For example, what was it, on Mythic Argus, my guy (lock dps, who doesn't use addons) whispered me during their tries: "Can you believe we've gone into Mythic, had several wipes on Argus and people only just now realize that he does his slash when he's at full energy?"
Some people just have great awareness. Others do things when somebody calls it out.
I myself really don't see why NOT to use addons, because they couldn't hurt, but it's not impossible to down full Mythic without them.

[Malikath]

"it's old" chess is old too, and people still play it.
this is the flimsiest excuse out there, made by the only the dumbest of arguers.

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Ya but way more people play WOW so...

[citation needed]