Would MMOs have been better off if WoW was never made?

[Lagwin]

I doubt it, there is nothing wrong with WoW other that it is old and stale now...even most of the new features are copied form some other game and are getting old by the time WoW gets round to them.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the game,for those new to the genre it will be the definition of what an mmo should be...for those that have been with it for a while it might start loosing it's appeal to the point of quitting.
If it wasn't for WoW there wouldn't have been the market there is now for many mediocre mmo's or the development of some of the better ones...and to a degree there would be no f2p model (good or bad)

[Dabrix32]

The problem is every single new game that is released is immediately compared to WoW and then labeled FAIL if it isnt as good. When did every company in the gaming industry sit down and agree that WoW was going to be the measuring stick for every new MMO that is released?

[Faroth]

MMOs have greatly improved because of WoW.

MMORPGs have been delivered a critical, perhaps fatal, blow because of WoW.

I'm actually keeping my fingers cross, but not holding my breath, that Sony actually manages to strike the right balance of EQ1 and WoW style gameplay with EQNext (whatever the title winds up being).

I love WoW, but a lot of things Blizzard has done has pretty much turned the MMO market into MMOArcades rather than MMORPG

[Edge-]

I'm actually keeping my fingers cross, but not holding my breath, that Sony actually manages to strike the right balance of EQ1 and WoW style gameplay with EQNext (whatever the title winds up being).

Bad news. They're going for a more open world sandbox feel that focuses on emergent gameplay. So it's going to be a pretty big departure from what EQ1 was/is, and what WoW is.

[Dabrix32]

Bad news. They're going for a more open world sandbox feel that focuses on emergent gameplay. So it's going to be a pretty big departure from what EQ1 was/is, and what WoW is.

Isnt that what everyone has been wanting ever since Ultima Online? A true sandbox MMO where you can mold your character into what you want and do what you want to do rather than what the game forces you to do.

[Deleted]

MMO would not be better without WoW. The problem is wow popularity bring alot of player who should not be playing mmo, aka the casual. MMORPG isn't made for people who only wanna play an hour a day and still enjoy everything the game has to offer within a month.

Who are you to say who should and shouldn't be playing mmorpg's? There are plenty of excellent hardcore mmo's out there if that is what you want to play, but none of them has ever come close to having the commercial success of wow because they are niche products. Wow was never meant to be a hardcore only game, the vast majority of its content is perfectly suited for casual players. Compared to the other mmo's that came before wow, vanilla wow was decidedly easier to get into, required much less playtime to progress, was far less punishing to failure and had a much bigger tolerance of player skill levels required to complete dungeons and raids.

Wow was designed and marketed from the very start as an mmo for the casual masses, it was specifically made so you didn't need to be a hardcore player to progress. Just read this interview quote from Shane Dabiri, wows original producer:

GameSpy: What are the major mistakes made by other MMOs that you feel you've addressed in WoW and how do you feel you've advanced the genre? What sets this game apart?
Shane Dabiri: We've always been big fans of MMOs, and everyone at Blizzard has been playing them for years. So, when we finally decided to make World of Warcraft, we ended up making a game that we would all want to play together.

The things we've really focused on during development have been: making a game that's easy to get into and yet challenging to master, keeping the action moving, and making a game that doesn't require investing 40 hours a week to have a good experience.

With World of Warcraft, whether you play for one hour during lunch, or for five hours on a weekend, you can make progress and feel like you're really a part of the world. By doing this, we've opened the game up to a whole new market of people who have always normally shied away from this type of game. I think that this fact alone will set us apart.

Source: http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/world-of.../568500p4.html

Don't get me wrong, there is obviously still a market for hardcore, time consuming games, that is why titles such as Everquest are still around, but there is a much bigger market for casual games like wow.

[Azrile]

I was around back then playing some Ultima Online and Asherons Call and yes, people DID say "omfg XX is gonna be a YY-Killer!"

Remember when Anarchy Online first came out? That game was suppose to shut shit down lol.

I agree with this. I played UO from the beginning, and we had online fights regarding it and EQ. I remember vividly someone posting a picture of like 100 players killing a boss the size of a house in EQ side by side with a picture of a player banksitting in UO with a pet dragon.

I think the big thing WOW changed, maybe for the worse, is the idea of playtime. Even at it´s worst in Vanilla, you could log into WOW for 30 mins and get a lot done. The game was efficient, and for the most part got you ´fighting´quickly.

I completely disagree with the person that said WOW got lucky and had good timing. Remember, EQ2 launched at nearly the exact same time and there never was even a competition, WOW crushed it right away. There are a ton of things that went into WOW being WOW.. timing was a small part of it, but I believe it also had as much to do with graphics and computer specs. There are a ton of people, myself included, who thought it was absurd to buy a computer (or graphics card) to play a game. Almost every game since WOW has had that philosphy.. they need crazy realistic screenshots.. and then are mired their first 3 months with tons of tech issues related to it ( AOC, EQ2 etc). WOW had some server issues at launch from too many players, but it´s client was tight.

[Edge-]

Isnt that what everyone has been wanting ever since Ultima Online? A true sandbox MMO where you can mold your character into what you want and do what you want to do rather than what the game forces you to do.

That's what everyone says they want, but most of the time when you give it to them they get bored/confused/overwhelmed and don't stick around.

Admittedly, most of the offerings have been from smaller studios with lower quality than your average AAA game, but they've still been pretty decent games.

[Azrile]

The problem is every single new game that is released is immediately compared to WoW and then labeled FAIL if it isnt as good. When did every company in the gaming industry sit down and agree that WoW was going to be the measuring stick for every new MMO that is released?

The problem is pricing. If a new game is going to charge $50 for a box and $15 per month, it better stand up to similar products charging the same amount. It is one of the reasons Warhammer, AOC and SWTOR were more directly compared to WOW than GW2. You better be able to earn that $15 per month... and as we´ve seen, most can´t anymore.

---------- Post added 2012-12-24 at 06:27 PM ----------

Isnt that what everyone has been wanting ever since Ultima Online? A true sandbox MMO where you can mold your character into what you want and do what you want to do rather than what the game forces you to do.

I am not sure that will ever work again.. I played UO from the beginning and loved it.. but I really don´t think you will find a substantial amount of players who want to log in and not have directions on what to do next. In UO, you would log in, gather up some friends and then decide what dungeon to go camp in. Someone would have an idea, and others would say ýeah, good idea, we haven´t been there in awhile´.. You could do it in WOW.. you could grab a couple friends and just go camp some area in Dread Wastes. Why not grab 10 people and try to clean up the wall in Valley of the 4 Winds where all the mantid are. That is basically what we did in UO. In UO, you knew where the harder monsters spawned ( Destard for dragons, Hyolith for demons) or you could go to a plae with middle-type mobs (Orphid temple) or to a low level dungeon like Despise ( lizard men) or Shame (elementals).. which basically would be like a lvl 90 camping a spawn area in Jade Forest. Yeah, the dungeons were public, and some had like 8 levels.. but almost everyone had runebooks and teleported directly to the mobs they wanted to camp. In fact, I used to have a runebook (16 spots) for each dungeon.

I loved UO, but most of what people talk about as being ´open world´.. is Nostalgia.. you could do the exact same thing in WOW, but everyone would say ´that is stupid´.. Seriously, go to Dread Wastes and spend 2 hours camping an area for blue drops...

[Dabrix32]

I am not sure that will ever work again.. I played UO from the beginning and loved it.. but I really don´t think you will find a substantial amount of players who want to log in and not have directions on what to do next.

Have players really become that retarded and lazy that they cant decide what to do without the game saying "Go kill X monsters over there" and then highlight the map area where they are? If thats true its pretty sad.

[kangamooster]

Have players really become that retarded and lazy that they cant decide what to do without the game saying "Go kill X monsters over there" and then highlight the map area where they are? If thats true its pretty sad.

The simple fact is that most of these "open world sandbox games" don't have enough content to make it worthwhile.

And, yeah, casual players (which is, like previous posters pointed out, the reason why WoW does well) do want directions. They probably don't NEED them, but it absolutely helps with player retention.

[poser765]

Isnt that what everyone has been wanting ever since Ultima Online? A true sandbox MMO where you can mold your character into what you want and do what you want to do rather than what the game forces you to do.

And that's Star Wars Galaxies. I know...I'm going to be that guy that brings up SWG in ANY nostalgic old video game conversation.

[schippie]

I honestly have to say.. that without wow the mmo market would have never become as big as it is now. So .. it would have been worse off without it. Even though that i am 100% sure that when wow ends it takes 50% of its player base with it. Players who will never touch other MMOs.

For innovation sake it was a great step forwards to. The only negative effect it had was because of its success people were to lazy to innovate. Meaning companies didn't try new things. Which has hurt the MMO market for quite a while.

[lordjust]

Before WoW came along everyone was happy. We were all playing Ultima Online, DAoC, Everquest, FF XI, and possibly a few other games Im forgetting that I didnt try. We didnt compare games to each other and we were happy playing what we were playing. Then in 2004 WoW is released. Fast Forward to 2012. A game cant be released without it either being called a "WoW-killer" or "just another WoW clone" People want to compare new games that havent been out for even a month to a polished game thats been out for 8 years. No new game stands a chance when it comes out because all these idiots expect it to be just as refined and bug free as WoW is. Also you cant say a new game is better and more fun than WoW without some idiot fanboy going "If it was so much better why doesnt it have 10 million players?". Would the MMO genre have been better off if WoW never existed?

People compare new games with what is available at the same time. If a new MMO comes out it has to be as good as WoW or it will die (see SWToR) because people will always ask themselves which game is better and if a 8 year old game is better than the newest one there's something wrong with the new one. Look at it like buying anything else like a smartphone. When a new one is released you'll compare it to the iPhone, Galaxy S3 and so on.

Also to the question if it would be better if WoW was never made. How was the situation before WoW? There weren't happy times where everybody was happy. People played Ultima and every new game was compared to it, after that people played DAoC and every game was compared to it and after that Everquest and since then all MMORPGs are compared to WoW just because there is no new MMORPG that can entertain the most people.

In fact developers already given up to make a better game than WoW and all MMOs that came after WoW like Warhammer Online, GW2, Rift, Tera and so on are specialized towards one type of players. The only MMO that tried to do the same as WoW was SWToR but it lacked so many features (not necessarily content) that it wasn't even better than classic WoW.

So would it be better if WoW was never made? No. Other would have come to take its place and sooner or later we would have the same situation as today.

[Itisamuh]

No. However, I think the mentality of WoW and MMO players kind of ruins it for other games coming out. When people have invested so much time and money into a game like WoW, it makes them extremely unwilling to simply give it all up and move on to another game, unless that game is far better. This makes them far too biased and critical of competition. Personally I think WoW is inferior to at least one MMO in every single respect, not at all the best at anything, but it is already established and people are too unwilling to move on. I feel bad for developers trying to compete. Even if the product is superior, the stubborn WoW playerbase will never move on. But as someone else said, if it was not WoW, it would be some other game. Whatever the first major established game is would be in the same success boat as WoW is now.

[poser765]

I honestly have to say.. that without wow the mmo market would have never become as big as it is now. So .. it would have been worse off without it. Even though that i am 100% sure that when wow ends it takes 50% of its player base with it. Players who will never touch other MMOs.

For innovation sake it was a great step forwards to. The only negative effect it had was because of its success people were to lazy to innovate. Meaning companies didn't try new things. Which has hurt the MMO market for quite a while.

This sums it up pretty well. Before WoW MMOs were a more niche (nerdy) market. MMOs certainly weren't underground but they were far from mainstream. Wow changed that. Hell, the first commercial for an mmo I ever saw was one for wow. It blew my mind at the time.

however, without wow, I have to wonder if something else would have popped up that had the same effect.

[Remilia]

Possibly and possibly not.
In order to cater to the vast market. You become the jack of all and the master of none, which really is my opinion of World of Warcraft.

You can't specialize without compromising the other.
You want a PvP game, and to have PvE balance? Well, have fun with the balance without a complete different system, which Blizzard isn't doing.
You want to have hard raids without time investment? Well the raids are not going to be hard.

I never have once looked at Elitist Jerk or any other site that 'tells you what to do'. You don't need to. Just look at the most logical methods of DPS, tanking or healing. Get recount if you have to and test it out. It's how I've done it, and it works and makes yourself a hell of a lot more flexible when the time calls instead of being told how to do something. It truly is not a hard game.
And don't mention enrage (soft or hard) mechanics. Those are artificially inflated difficulty part related to gear.

I remember someone wrote. "Why put all your effort when you can just put half of it and get the same results". Think it was Eternal on this forum, not sure.

That being said. WoW did make the MMO market more public. In return it lend itself gained more customers.
Issue is that with the new things that were introduced. Community is at a dead zone. It's not like how it was in EQ1. It's just a seething brood of hate and just 'want it now' expectations, expecting to have achievements of a boss in order to do it and such.

It did make other MMOs into light, and those MMOs may be really different. It's just how people perceive the game in itself that makes it annoying as hell to have people running around going "WOW CLONE WOW CLONE" when it isn't anything remotely like it. (TERA release was freaking awkward as hell with people running around saying that).

[Lilly32]

Before there was WoW I was having fun and there were enough games to keep me from getting burnout as I switched between EQ for the raiding and DAoC for the PvP. So I was happy. I honestly dont really care how many people play an MMO because more subs =/= good. Im enjoying SWToR again and also playing Rift neither have near the numbers of WoW. People say WoW is getting better yet I think its regressing and getting worse. If there never was a WoW Id still be playing the same games I enjoyed 12 years ago. WoW just made everyone have unrealistic expectations every time a new MMO is released.

[TJ]

Doubt it, WoW is the best game ever made (OBVIOUSLY THIS IS MY OPINION) and it made a relatively small marked into a big one by being so successful.

[Mezzolith]

WoW was my first MMO and it's what drew me into playing MMOs. I imagine it's like that for a number of people, and I think it's pretty obvious that WoW's responsible for drawing MMOs into the mainstream.