Current MMOs and why WoW stays on top?

[juzalol]

It's because you are a part of some online community.
Group of friends, guild or whatever.

You won't be switching games until the community
switches or the community collapses due to players
quitting WoW.

It's not about WoW being great. It's about WoW
being out so long and people have found players
they enjoy playing with.

At least this is the case for me after 6 years of
playing. I honestly think that it's been downhill since
ToC became a part of WoW, but i started playing
again because of the players i'v known for a while.

[JustintimeSS]

Stopped reading there. Current MMOs just aren't as good as WoW. That's why WoW stays on top.

I haven't played wow in about 4 months. I took a long break from it to try other MMO's (DCUO/Rift) for quite a few months. In the end I went back to wow just for one single month. The end result was that i was still bored of WoW. What i did discover though was that WoW is fucking polished to a high sheen. If they cranked out content like the Rift boys do, WoW would remain unstoppable until a new genre our minds know nothing of comes about.

[hakujinbakasama]

I haven't played wow in about 4 months. I took a long break from it to try other MMO's (DCUO/Rift) for quite a few months. In the end I went back to wow just for one single month. The end result was that i was still bored of WoW. What i did discover though was that WoW is fucking polished to a high sheen. If they cranked out content like the Rift boys do, WoW would remain unstoppable until a new genre our minds know nothing of comes about.

Wow is a great game... sorta. To bad the players suck.

[Valeron]

Someone mentioned social enertia, which is a great point. Also why do people stick with it? For a lot of people it's hard to throw away a lot of the time investment that they have had with the game. I mean some have played it for 6 years (going on 7). That's a lot of time put into a character or game to just stop and play another.

When WoW came out it was a perfect storm situation that will never be repeated. If it came out today like it did in 2004 it wouldn't be near as successful.

It'll eventually diminish. It seems to already be sliding down a bit from it's peak. I know that everyone who I started playing with over the years don't play it anymore and I stopped last December. It'll be a slow fade for it and there won't be another game to take its place. The market will be a lot more spread out with no game that has a dominant market share.

[whatsmyname]

Wow is a great game... sorta. To bad the players suck.

This to be honest, the thing thats really killed wow for me is how shitty the comunity has become. Back in the days of TBC it was much easier to make freinds because you had to find your own groups for dungeons/raids and you became well known on your server after a period of time, players also behaved alot better because if you acted like an arsehole you become known as an arsehole and you wouldnt be invited to groups.

But nowadays you can get away with murder, it doesnt matter if you insult other players because you most likely will
A) never see them again
B) you can just faction/realm change whenever you want

The feeling of a close knit server community is gone.

[Degenerator]

Hailing WoW as the greatest MMORPG is like saying McDonalds has the best hamburgers.

No,......almost. Hailing WoW as the greatest MMORPG is like saying McDonalds is the greatest franchise ever.

[hakujinbakasama]

This to be honest, the thing thats really killed wow for me is how shitty the comunity has become. Back in the days of TBC it was much easier to make freinds because you had to find your own groups for dungeons/raids and you became well known on your server after a period of time, players also behaved alot better because if you acted like an arsehole you become known as an arsehole and you wouldnt be invited to groups.

But nowadays you can get away with murder, it doesnt matter if you insult other players because you most likely will
A) never see them again
B) you can just faction/realm change whenever you want

The feeling of a close knit server community is gone.

I've read or heard people comment this same feeling over the last year or two. Which is why I wonder why in the hell its still on top. The community has completely gone to shit and since games like Rift and Aion can nearly duplicate several concepts, why hasn't a game company done things well enough to really get the ball rolling?

I'm not saying designing a game is easy, but really, WoW sets the bar at this point. You copy everything they've done, make adjustments, and call it your own. This is the video game industry people.... it's on par with Hollywood at this point.

[hyphnos]

WoW is on top because on top because of the size of it's playerbase.

Just like facebook is on top now and will be for a while.

It doesn't mean WoW can't become a niche game like Everquest or facebook can't go the way of friendster or myspace.

[hakujinbakasama]

WoW is on top because on top because of the size of it's playerbase.

Just like facebook is on top now and will be for a while.

It doesn't mean WoW can't become a niche game like Everquest or facebook can't go the way of friendster or myspace.

Wouldn't that mean that Facebook is right there with them thanks to Farmville?

[Deleted]

. You copy everything they've done, make adjustments, and call it your own.

Thats how wow became top dog. At this point it stays top dog due to time people have spent playing it. Its hard for people to walk away from 6 years+ work and the people they have met. It was hard for me but the slow and i mean slowwwwwwwww rate that Blizz gives you new content just ground me down.

Due to them artificially boosting Sub numbers with the 5 or 6 million Asian pay-to-play chaps they will hold the top spot for a while , on paper anyways. I know i know...BOOOO! RIFT SUCKS!!! as a chunk of people seem to think on these forums but its a good game and it took a bite out of Wow. With SW:ToR and GW2 and a few other interesting game on the horizon i really cant see wow being the Champ for much longer. Not the undisputed champion anyways.

As much as folk like to slag Rift off you they have set a new bar on content release. Since they are new they can change and adapt quickly to the player base. In the end i think that will really be the downfall of wow. They have so many people playing game and for so long they cant make the big changes to save the game from the inevitable decline. Hell they cant change the small stuff without pissing of half the player base these days.

[Worgoblin]

They remain on top because to this day, not a single polished MMO has been released that could compete with the level of polish that WoW has.

I think this is the main thing. I feel sorry for other MMO developers. I wouldn't even wanna try taking on WOW. They have such a massive headstart, no game on launch day has a chance of matching WOW's polish and sheer amount of content.

Hell they cant change the small stuff without pissing of half the player base these days.

This can be said of every MMO I've ever played. It's no different in WOW. The only difference is WOW has way more players, so there is of course more whiners.

[jakeic]

In the end i think that will really be the downfall of wow

i think the end of wow is that it is no longer an mmorpg but more like a game lobby where you sign in and wait to find the game you want to play. if you want to pvp, wait in queue. if you want to do some dungeons, you wait in queue. if you want to raid, wait in orgrimmar with no formal queue, but still in line waiting for a group. hell, if you want to level an alt the best way to go about doing that is to wait in dungeons queues since moving from zone to zone very 2 levels sucks.

[Worgoblin]

hell, if you want to level an alt the best way to go about doing that is to wait in dungeons queues since moving from zone to zone very 2 levels sucks.

Really? Then I must be doing something wrong, since I still enjoy moving from zone to zone while I'm leveling.

[Edge-]

Part of it at this point is that it feeds upon itself. Look at other major franchises that really haven't done much in the way of innovation (case in point, Call of Duty), they feed of their own playerbase and the popularity gets more people into it because if it's that big, it must be good.

[Deleted]

Only WOW will kill WOW, i have said that since day one, But i think SWTOR and GW2 will hand it the cyanide pill.

---------- Post added 2011-08-03 at 11:15 PM ----------

Rift would like a word with you, its just simply not built to appeal to the masses like WoW is. The developers never had the intentions to be a "WoW killer", only to secure a number of MMORPG players to populate their servers, which they have successfully done.

It was too much of a WOW clone for me, i cancelled my account after 3 weeks.

[fartman69]

WoW is on top because when it was launched most of the other games sucked so it was able to attract a large player base, and by then the game could evolve and destroy rift Aoc etc.

[Asrialol]

So this isn't really a question of "what will kill wow?" We already know WoW is doing a good enough job of killing WoW. What I'm wondering is why WoW remains on top and why other developers haven't taken notes and gone beyond.

Now, I admit I didn't play too far into Rift. Rift ended for me right after I realized that I was playing a WoW version Rogue for every melee class. FFXIV is just a god awful piece of crap that I'm amazed people not only defend it but that SquarEnix hasn't demanded Seppuku from the entire team. Warhammer didn't look good to me as far as graphics go and I couldn't really care about a system that was primarily based pvp for leveling. Aion looks great but then dies to the 70% - 30% Pvp-Pve end game all while being saturated with a giant grind fest feel to it.

So really? What's the problem.

I explained to a friend recently that WoW easily ranks at an 8 out of 10 as far as games go. The one thing which really hurts it overall is the utter lack of crack down on the community which its needed for 7 years now. I would honestly say the only thing it really hits a 10 on is leveling (not so much questing but just plain leveling.) There will always be a grind with an MMO but WoW at least offers enough diversity as to what you could currently do to gain xp that it isn't so bogged down. And when adding all of the nerfs to the Xp requirement, it's done nothing but get shorter over the lest few years.

All that being said, what is really holding other companies back from really taking good solid ques from these things and expanding on somethings thats basically 8 years old at this point? I'll admit that FF took a step forward by allowing a class system in which you "can level" completely via a profession system, but for the 1 step forward they took they also took 20 million steps back by their actual application for this.

So yeah, anyone got any thoughts as to what's going on?

Who the HELL are you, who think you can speak on my behalf? Huh? Jesus christ the arrogance of some people on these forums.

Also pretty funny, considering the game has more subs now than it did back in Vanilla. If the game was slowly killing itself, it's kinda weird the subs didn't drastically decrease, isn't it?

As you just proved, which has been proven before, it anything is killing the game at all, it's the players - such as yourself.

[Joey Ray III]

MMO-RPG is a temporary genre. it is only fun for the first time ;/ it wont last.

[Borfl]

All they need to do is copy WoW and start cutting the crap The crap that players don't like, it's basically why RIFT is doing so well compared to the others. WoW was able to reach the top because it learned from other MMOs like EQ and Ultima. WoW essentially copied a lot of how the game works from EQ and just made it easier with less bullshit. And each progressing expansion they made the game easier so everyone and anyone could enjoy the game.

But the one thing WoW doesn't have is diverse customization. Funny enough all the MMOs that did fail that had huge customization options weren't that successful(Lol FF14).

Current MMO's I find have such retarded combat that's very clunky and sadly as much as I hate to say this but WoW is probably the most balanced MMO in terms of PvP. WoW has actually done a pretty good job, compared to others, in diversifying PvP and PvE. The problem with current MMO's is they try to emphasize on PvP like AoC, WAR, GW1 did and it just failed, people don't enjoy PvP as much as PvE, that's the simple truth, and it was poorly balanced.

I'd be surprised if WoW still reigns as the undisputed champion when TERA, GW2, and SW:ToR come out.

[Deleted]

i see it as nothing really has challenged it, only DDO has offered anything that is better (better dungeoneering, but no real rpg outside that).

give it 1 year and we will see if star wars or guild wars will make a bigger impact, as these seem like very good games.