Current MMOs and why WoW stays on top?

[Dorkins]

Because other MMO's are boring and have bad gameplay? Yes I have tried others.

[vizzle]

It'll be different in a year though after SW:ToR and GW2 have both been released.

[mordale]

in short its because many of the AAA MMORPGs don't take notes and don't go beyond.
rift is a perfect case of this other then the class system(which both DA:O and DA2 did better) and the dynamic content of rifts they did next to nothing that was innovative, and what they did do was poor and generic..
and worse they fell into the exact same potholes that blizzard did with WoW.
at this point the only 2 MMORPGs im looking to are KoA and planetside 2, Guild wars never was an MMO(in the standard sense) to begin with.

[caapi]

Guild wars never was an MMO(in the standard sense) to begin with.

you know gw2 isn't guild wars right? they are making a persistent world, move lvling, more pve, ect. So it'll be more of an mmo than the first one. I don't think it'll ever be a pve type mmo like wow raiding though.

I think so many games fail now because they jsut try to copy wows model. I really think the majority of people looking for a new game do so because they are tired of end game raiding, massive gear grind, carrot on a stick type crap that is every single mmo to date. No one does anything innovative. It's all the same crap. Lvl up, grind dungeons for gear so you can grind raids for gear so you can wait for the next dungeons and raids to come out so you can grind them for gear so that you can grind the next dungeons and raids for gear... people seem to be sick of that desgin and I think any game that continues this will fail (SW:TOR) just like rift is.

Here's a really good read called "How to make a successful MMO" by Jeff Strain, if you don't know who he is here's copy/paste from wiki-

"Jeff Strain is a game programmer and one of the three founders of ArenaNet. He served ArenaNet and NCsoft as the leader of the Art and Production teams and President of Product Development respectively. He was previously the lead programmer of Blizzard's MMORPG World of Warcraft; he also created the StarCraft campaign editor and worked on Diablo and Warcraft III. He is credited as a programmer and executive producer for Guild Wars.

He left NCsoft in August 2009 under amicable terms with the company.[1] On November 23, 2009, it was announced that Jeff had founded Undead Labs, to create a zombie MMO game for the major consoles.[2]"

and here's the article, it's not guildwars related, just hosted on their site

http://www.guildwars.com/events/trad...7/gcspeech.php

[Flanteus]

options, polish and accessibility...

Although, many of the game aspects are streamlined(correct word?) like crafting or gathering..etc, they aren't as deep and complicated like other MMOs/games out there (that doesn't mean it's bad) I just wish sometime there was some kind of depth to them or more options, a little bit of sandbox touch (e.g. the more Iron deposits you mine the better you get at mining Iron ores? more specialized gear, epic pickaxe?) , Also, there are many brilliant features that WoW don't have that IMO MMOs should not be without!

[Deleted]

Among other reasons, another important one would be that people don't want to start from scratch again in a game that's 100% the same as WoW but with a different name. Until someone comes with an original idea and revolutionize the entire MMORPG market the majority will still play WoW. Blizzard knows this will happen eventually otherwise they wouldn't work on the new MMO.

[Worgoblin]

It'll be different in a year though after SW:ToR and GW2 have both been released.

I've heard this so many times before. Aion, Rift, Warhammer, blah blah blah. SW:TOR and GW2 will take some players from WOW. And then the newness of those games wears off just as Mists of Pandaria launches, and they come crawling back to WOW. Hell, I've done it... tried getting into other games. But then WOW comes out with a new patch and I come back.

[Deleted]

I've heard this so many times before. Aion, Rift, Warhammer, blah blah blah. SW:TOR and GW2 will take some players from WOW. And then the newness of those games wears off just as Mists of Pandaria launches, and they come crawling back to WOW. Hell, I've done it... tried getting into other games. But then WOW comes out with a new patch and I come back.

Not everyone will have your level of addiction. People who left wow for new shiny will more often than not just move onto the next mmo out rather than go back to Wow. Blizzard have the same astounding arrogance to think that 'Everyone comes crawling back to wow'. They dont as the last year has shown. They have done nothing to try and win back subs or even change and that is why they are leaving in the hundreds of thousands.

They lost people to Rift. They will lose more to Sw:Tor, GW2 , Tera , Secret World , ArcheAge ect ect. The time when there was one AAA mmo out every year or so are over. Wow is going to be bombarded over the next year with quality mmos. If they dont change pretty soon the decline may increase at an alarming rate. Blizz better Hail a cab and head for Real Street.

[Edge-]

It's losing more subscribers (another 300k as per the last call) and with a number of big title MMO's coming out and very little from blizz other than "huge content patch in 4.3" they don't seem to be working too hard to counteract it.

Honestly *dons tinfoil hat* at this point I don't think they're actively trying to keep all their players. Instead, they are diverting effort/funds to finishing D3 and working on Titan. I think they've realized that in order to keep the subscribers and keep WoW "fresh" for some people (specifically, the ones leaving), they would have to invest a significant amount of time and money, but they also realize that the game is aging and that with Titan in the works, now is a pretty decent time to let development peter off a bit and just try and maintain as much of their userbase as possible. That being said, it's still overwhelmingly popular with 11 million subscribers.