The Secret to the popularity of WoW no one talks about....

[Geognosis]

Hello Humans, Night Elfs, Orcs, Trolls and all the rest. This post is agree/disagree or your valued thought out opinion. I feel that what makes WoW so popular is the complete and udder (Moo) customization of the game. ADD-ONS!!! No other game I am aware of has it to the degree that Wow does.....its awesome!! No two UI's look the same (unless you use the completely boring stock one). No need to go into which ones i use, i am an add-on crack-whore (is crack-whore allowed to be said??) Please post what your thoughts are. Thanks and happy grinding.

[Finear]

world of tanks/warships also allows a pretty heavy UI customization via addons (mods)

[Usernameforforums]

Eh, it’s a stretch. It’s more about the social interactions, gameplay, and timeless graphics/art style. Addons are no doubt part of it but I don’t think it’s “the” reason why people play WoW.

[lokithor]

Pretty sure Rift had addons, SWtoR has UI customization, and ESO has addons.

[Heathy]

yeah the ui customisation is one of the reasons ppl likely stick with wow over other mmos, but I think the real popularity simply came from accessibility, honesty go and try to play everquest and tell me how far you get, at one point the choice was everquest or wow. lots of ppl thought wow was better than eq on a massive number of things, better game world, better quest design. instanced dungeons, meaning that you aren't fighting over mobs with everyone else because there aren't any instances.

i played eq years after i played wow, going back and seeing what wow was trying to be better than, you really do get a sense of how everything just feels way more clunky in eq. most other mmos have tried to be like wow, which is probably why they failed, rift tried to be like wow, too much and wow was ultimately just better. hell it could just be that there are a finite amount of ppl willing to play mmos and there are only a few really good mmos worth actually playing. that either have very good pve, or very good pvp. I honestly think wows pvp is nothing to write home about, but, I don't think anyone has managed to top blizzard on the pve front, there is a certain level of charm in wows pve encounters that no one has managed to reproduce. no one has made 5 man or raid content as good as or better than blizz, rift had good difficult pve, but the game ran like shit for me which prevented me from actually enjoying most of it.

[Will]

I think it's a bit of a long shot to attribute add-ons to the immense popularity of the game, considering many other games go a step further and allow actual full modding. Tweaking the UI really doesn't come close to sandbox modability.

[horbindr]

it's hard to say. you can easily argue that addons have harmed the game too by being too powerful/useful. the fact that addons are de facto mandatory is probably not a super good thing.

but i do really appreciate any game that lets you change the font it uses.

[arkanon]

Everyone's reason for staying will be different. Most people's reason for starting would be similar - accessable, large profile, and most likely to have friends already in game.

Some stay for the arenas, some the raids, some m+, some comfort zone, some like customization, some like simplicity. Some like to community, some like banking.

I completely reject the idea that wows extremely limited customization is the main reason for anyone sticking with the game.

[hulkgor]

Yea, no.

Most other MMOs had as much 'power' of addons as WoW. SWTOR was the only one with no addons, whilst Wildstar was the most addon friendly (the whole UI were addon modules from scratch).

It's a good feature, sure, but far from the 'secret to the popularity'.

[arkanon]

Well first of all despite what a lot of people think, WoW has cutting edge performance and graphics, making it playable and beautiful to a lot of people regardless of their hardware, it also has a really basic clean UI that makes it pleasant to use first time, its highly refined as an MMO and the classes progress fairly well. Theres also a large player base to hook in the player shortly after starting.

Many other MMO's have struggled by overcomplicating these systems in efforts to one up MMO's like WoW. Muddly UI's, A weaker artistic theme/less consistency in the game visuals art wise, or performance to be desired. Another thing they often do is try to make the combat 'next gen' and it ends up just not being very fun/fluid/balanced, or equally, they try to make combat very similar to WoW, and honestly, just do it worse. Over a decade of experience in cleaning up gameplay to be as smooth as it is overall for most specs and classes counts for something!

WoW is an incredible MMO. Its just suffering big time right now because of ridiculous end game mechanics causing mass exodus's of players at max level. I think if they removed all these terrible systems, and almost just went back to Cata or something (SYSTEM WISE PEOPLE) then it would be one hell of a product.

Class design / fluidity / enjoyment is my biggest concern with bfa, and to a lesser extent, legion. Wrath /cata / mop were when my altaholic nature got out of control as I LOVED at least one spec per class. Currently, there is only a couple of specs I enjoy, and have everything at max level.

The second major flaw for me is the gearing systems, too many difficulties, and too much gear form basdically anything. For me, it has devalued pretty much all content, and we are currently farming old raid achieves and enjoying that MORE than current raid (which we have cleared, just to be clear, and we did enjoy it).

The third biggest complaint is the laziest, uninspired, clearly outsourced weapon and gear designs. There have been some standout pieces which I'm sure blizzard designed, buy I am absolutely confident the rest has been outsourced.

[InTheEnd]

Can a game that once boasted ~12 million subscribers but now has about 500,000 still be considered popular?

[kail]

Hmmm, the addon support is surely a plus for me. I've spent hours doing some tweaks and pixel level adjustments for my "perfect" and neat looking UI. What's great about the addon support with WoW is the vast diversity that one can have with their UI looks. It is incredible.

Having said that, I attribute the support to the fact that WoW was already growing in popularity before addon support reached the levels we have today or even some years ago. In the arguement of which came first, chicken or egg, WoW started off as a solid playing MMO. It's growing popularity fueled addon devs and designers into what we have available today.

[Shelly]

I've always thought it far more the responsiveness of the game. Click a thing, you do a thing. Most other games take forever to get to the point.

[Mormolyce]

I think it's just that the Warcraft brand allowed it to defeat Everquest, and at that point they became the premiere MMO. That was the early days of MMOs over and since they kept coming out with big expansions until the MMO market started to decline, they were always ahead of the curve.

Kind of like how Facebook slew Myspace early on, and after that they were pretty much locked in as the market leader until that kind of traditional social network started to decline in favour of Twitter etc.

[Geognosis]

Can a game that once boasted ~12 million subscribers but now has about 500,000 still be considered popular?

Could you please post a viable source where this "500,00" player base came from?

[Varitok]

Wow is the best feeling and most responsive games i've played. The addons are a huge plus too.

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I've always thought it far more the responsiveness of the game. Click a thing, you do a thing. Most other games take forever to get to the point.

I didn't even see your post before I posted. Couldn't agree more.

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I think it's just that the Warcraft brand allowed it to defeat Everquest, and at that point they became the premiere MMO. That was the early days of MMOs over and since they kept coming out with big expansions until the MMO market started to decline, they were always ahead of the curve.

Kind of like how Facebook slew Myspace early on, and after that they were pretty much locked in as the market leader until that kind of traditional social network started to decline in favour of Twitter etc.

I disagree, Warcraft was a popular name but not that popular to stomp out competing MMO's. It was the fact that WoW was extremely accessible compared to other MMO's at the time like EQ, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online.

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Yea, no.

Most other MMOs had as much 'power' of addons as WoW. SWTOR was the only one with no addons, whilst Wildstar was the most addon friendly (the whole UI were addon modules from scratch).

It's a good feature, sure, but far from the 'secret to the popularity'.

Maybe not a Secret to popularity but you are just uninformed if you think other games have the level of customization that WoW does.

[Polygons]

I've thought this for a long time now, but there's no one secret to WoW's popularity or classic's success, instead it's a lot of little things.

[Mormolyce]

I disagree, Warcraft was a popular name but not that popular to stomp out competing MMO's. It was the fact that WoW was extremely accessible compared to other MMO's at the time like EQ, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online.

Yeah that was certainly another thing it had over Everquest. Did DAoC ever really take off? I remember there was buzz about it for a very short span of time.

[Daedius]

Wished FF14 did Add-ons...

[Super Kami Dende]

I think it is a reasonable part of why it works. I find myself playing other MMO's and wishing for certain Add-ons I have in WoW.

It's never a deal-breaker. But Addons do sweeten the deal.