Originally Posted by MMO-Champion
What makes wow the best? What is it about wow that no other MMORPG got right?
The biggest challenge in my mind for MMO design is being able to create stuff for players to do faster than they can consume it.
Even WoW can’t solve that problem completely, but it was the closest I have ever seen. WoW always gave players a ton of things to do. Not only were there dozens of quest zones, but you could actually go do them all without having to find a group first. In previous MMOs, you’d hit the point where you’re intended to just go slaughter frogs or whatever to gain the next level. WoW never hit those dry points.
On the other hand, if you did find a group, there were dungeons to run or BGs to jump into. At launch, just looking behind waterfalls or trying to get up cliffs where we weren’t supposed to go was fairly entertaining.
A lot of people, including me, like to point out the ridiculous level of polish that Blizzard puts into games, and I definitely think that is part of WoW’s secret sauce. But for me, the reason I kept playing, is that after Redridge, there was Stranglethorn to explore, and after I got tired of my hunter, there as a priest to try, and after I was sick of UBRS, I could try my hand at LBRS. And then I discovered raiding, and whole new ways to play were on the table. And when I wasn’t raiding, I needed to farm flasks and Whipper Root Tubers or see if I could get the shield to drop in UBRS. Or I could work on my engineering or I could consider grinding factions. Or I could see if there was any PvP happening around Tyr’s Hand. Or try Dire Maul. And just when I was sick of wiping to Naxxramas, an expansion was announced.
Like a lot of players, my WoW-playing started to shift from just logging on to see what was happening to logging on only for raid nights or the like. But I don’t think I would have developed those friendships if I hadn’t already been spending so much time in the game before that point.
I played a lot of games like Civilization, XCOM and Diablo before I discovered WoW, but I felt like I had seen everything there was to see in those games pretty quickly, even though I stuck with them. With WoW, there was always the sense that I was going to discover a new troll ruin or a new rare drop or see some rare spawn for the first time. I also didn’t want to miss out if I heard about my friends seeing all of that stuff the one night I chose not to log in. (
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