Top 10 Subscription MMO in 2013 (WOW NO.1)

[BenBos]

Can i ask how many other mmos you have actually played?

Too many to list. And frankly none touched WOW by a mile. I even played EQ1 a few years before WOW back in 2003. Since then practically all in beta form or pre publication as you can play the things before launch mostly and still going a few days after launch even.

You name it and I probably dabbed a little in it. I must say tough that since WAR I never played them as a player, but only to view them from a technical point of view and see the HUGE technology gap with Blizzard.

How is the (mostly terrible) control and responsiveness, how is the server structure, what kind of world is it, how did they do questing. What PvP did they offer. Etc...

Every time I really had to laugh about how silly some corners were cut vs WOW.

From seeing games where the music was apparently made by a Casio CZ100 to falling through the ground in so called sandboxes to terribly animated NPC bosses, extreme bland worlds etc , incredible hampered animation and simply unplayable content.

I could cite an incredible number of pages where you would say::: Oh God what were they even thinking in asking subscription money for this ...

From LOTRO to Vanguard, to Pirates, to Aion, to WAR, to AoC, to LOTS of free ones I can't even remember the names. FF14 was a joke, you coldln't even jump and had to follow roads everywhere. GW1 was not even an MMO and GW2 is a smart camouflaged upgrade but with the same limits: loading screens instead of open worlds.

Calling their PvP open world PvP is a huge flat lie because it simply is instanced, you don't even meet the enemy in the same open world.

I think the "better" ones were SOOOO WOW much copycat (like Rift) it was not even funny anymore.

But mostly even the world design was awkward at best. Like running into a 2D painted forest in Tabula Rasa, you had to see it to believe it.

Actually there was hardly ANY living world in those other MMo's: badly animated, stand still NPC's, if you looked around you look at static puppets and the adventure ALWAYS began with some heavy fighting in a rather lifeless Lore.

I thought LOTRO was terrible when I played it, perhaps afterwards it was the most enjoyable after seeing all the others that came later.

So nope, I think all these experiences were the worst time of my life as a game player.

I would rather play board wargames with 10.000 pieces on a 5 meter square map ... than still wanting to play in the majority of these things for a few weeks. I went into Star Trek with a VERY open mind as an old Trekkie, but nothing can describe the feeling I had when doing missions in that trash.


It beats me why these guys thought they could set up subscriptions for such duds. Of course, it is no surprise they all went free to play really.

So yep, that's personal opinion, but apparently LOTS of players thought like I did.

If you liked some of the above, no problem, but be honest: it was because you probably loved them for the Lore or a specific setting or mechanic.

Like Pirates of the Burning Sea. I liked to play it very much, but frankly its "polish" was laughable at best. You then thought,... wel damned if Blizzard could do this, it would be awesome ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Burning_Sea

I think most of us were simply spoiled by Blizzard in overall polish, world design and technical advancements (read cross server play that evolved from simple CS BG's in August 2006 to open world play in 2012).

Does Blizzard make mistakes ? of course Lots of things they could do better, but frankly it is the best in the Land of the Blind and Crippled.

[LilSaihah]

Too many to list. And frankly none touched WOW by a mile. I even played EQ1 a few years before WOW back in 2003. Since then practically all in beta form or pre publication as you can play the things before launch mostly and still going a few days after launch even.

You name it and I probably dabbed a little in it. I must say tough that since WAR I never played them as a player, but only to view them from a technical point of view and see the HUGE technology gap with Blizzard.

Hold up

You've played "too many to list" but the most recent one you've played was released in 2008? What does "never played as a player" mean?

[ravenmoon]

Wrong on so many accounts.

1. Beside the end game swtor had issues with button bloat in addition to not having macros and it still has these issues. The start was nice and immersive but by the time you got to level 40-ish, it became very repetitive and boring (still better than Wildstar where the feelings of boredom and repetitiveness start at level 20). Plenty of people I know gave up on the game without even hitting 50. The pvp balance was and still is a sham where anything with a lighstaber can only be defeated by another thing with a lightsaber, and game has no arenas and ladders (which are very important for pvp-ers).

i take it you haven't played SwTOR online for a long time. They have no macros, but they don't suffer from button bloat at all, having far less abilities on the cards than wow, and they had an ability prune over a year ago. The game is less repetitive than wow, and does have an engaging story line, which is the core of making adventuring interesting. WoW suffers a lot from poor storyline integration, so your adventure engagement has to come purelly from a gameplay perspective because the sotry is so un-interesting and poorly presented .. compare a wall of text in a window to full conversation close ups and secenes.

the game end cap has long since passed 50, it's been 55 for over a year and a half. so it is quite clear i'm sorry that you're in the camp that played it a lot when it first came out and dumped it. There are arenas, and ladders in the game too, and right now they have something like 8 active raids you can play a part off and over 15 dungeons you can play a part off at max level, they've done a lot of work, it's a thoroughly engaging game, and whiles they still don't have certain feautres, all the reasons the hardcore players left have been addressed, you guys just weren't patient enough.

3. Nah, Aion sucked ass.

4. Funny. I played Rift for 6 months and I only played swtor for 2 months. I definitely liked Rift more than swtor as it had that...thing that gets you to keep playing, a thing which was kinda lacking in swtor after a certain level.

Not sure where you got the idea that a game having a low playerbase because it's bad, is not the developers' fault but somehow it's the forums' fault. Though such a statement is not surprising in the least, in my country big names under criminal investigations blame the media not themselves for getting caught.

never played Aion, and whiles you may feel it sucked ass, it's up there at number 7, so a lot of peeps do not agree. and i played RIFT and SWTOR and SWTOR is a much better game at their start. Are you sure you're not overly biased against SWTOR because of the disappointment of rushing to 50 at game launch then finding yourself not able to super gear becasue there were no ladders or raid tiers at the time? Are you sure your opinion has been unfarily influenced by peer pressure, beause everyone at the time just strted dissing a game they had been hooked too like crack for nearly 2 months, yes, it takes seriousl dedication to have levelled to 50 in SWTOR in that time, you couldn't play both wow and TOR seriously, if you had 2 accounts like I did, one took a back seat (WOW) only logging for the weekly raid, and the other was where the main time was spent.

no people found SWTOR throgoughly engaging or they won't have stuck to it so much or raved about it as much as they did in beta, the mood only changed at end game, so it tells me it was end game that really disappointed them, and i think the reaction was more frustration and hate for havin g hopes dashed by poor end content at the time rather than the game actually being bad.

and the stigma still goes on because you talk of SwTOR as still been rubbish throwing reasons or features in the game that have for nearly 2 years been addressed now. it's thoroughly engaging now at end game even more so than at levelling.

they even have 3-d fighter jet shooter

[BenBos]

Hold up

You've played "too many to list" but the most recent one you've played was released in 2008? What does "never played as a player" mean?

No no, I mean an engaged player for several weeks/months. If you play an MMORPG you would normally play it for several months. But I couldn't stand that mostly, so I "played" just enough to get the hang of them and see if they had anything interesting.

Mostly it was over after a few days as the frustration compared to what I have in WOW was building up. Money as such is never a problem for me, but very often you can play them in pre launch for free or 5 euro for a couple of days. Pre order lets you play pre launch.

That's what I meant.

[Krommm]

Surprised Lineage is even a thing, even if that is last year earnings. I would of thought RIFT would of been higher, but otherwise about what I would expect.

[LilSaihah]

No no, I mean an engaged player for several weeks/months. If you play an MMORPG you would normally play it for several months. But I couldn't stand that mostly, so I "played" just enough to get the hang of them and see if they had anything interesting.

Mostly it was over after a few days as the frustration compared to what I have in WOW was building up. Money as such is never a problem for me, but very often you can play them in pre launch for free or 5 euro for a couple of days. Pre order lets you play pre launch.

That's what I meant.

What is "what I have in WOW"?

[Huehuecoyotl]

I think, I see and I observe that there Is NOTHING like real time phasing in a seamless open world across realms.

Ah, BenBos, once again living up to your philosophy; WoW is the best MMO. Any feature that is in WoW must be a good feature. WoW is the best MMO because it has all the good features. The virtuous cycle of Blizzard worship.

And you don't even blink when you adjust your beliefs so they stay perfectly in line with Blizzard. Of course loading screens are terrible, you say. They are in GW2 and they are terrible. Then, when people point out that there are loading screens in WoW, you either ignore them, or make it clear that WoW has just the PERFECT amount of loading screens. That it hits the exact sweet spot for the number of loading screens an MMO needs to be perfect.

Keep it up, this forum would be considerably less funny without your posts.

[Deleted]

Keep it up, this forum would be considerably less funny without your posts.

Here here!

[BenBos]

Ah, BenBos, once again living up to your philosophy; WoW is the best MMO. Any feature that is in WoW must be a good feature. WoW is the best MMO because it has all the good features. The virtuous cycle of Blizzard worship.

And you don't even blink when you adjust your beliefs so they stay perfectly in line with Blizzard. Of course loading screens are terrible, you say. They are in GW2 and they are terrible. Then, when people point out that there are loading screens in WoW, you either ignore them, or make it clear that WoW has just the PERFECT amount of loading screens. That it hits the exact sweet spot for the number of loading screens an MMO needs to be perfect.

Keep it up, this forum would be considerably less funny without your posts.

Keep it up. I'll go in detail, just to show the difference in this specific point .......

Guild Wars2 - like GW1 - has a loading screen for ANYTHING.

Go from one zone to another: loading screen.
Go within a zone to another point: loading screen.
Absence of ANY sort of fast transport: loading screen.
Going into a City: loading screen
Every zone has a fixed wall, you can't cross : loading screen
There is no open world to travel in across small zones: loading screens
You want to have a "world pvp" : loading screen, you can't even see the enemy in the same open world.

----

In WoW you can fly/travel/mount over a continent crossing a dozen of zones or more without a loading screen in sight.

in WoW you play seamlessly with other players from other servers across zones without loading screens

In WoW you can play in world zones that use instances without loading screens. Players are not even aware while doing farms or pet battles.

----

Next in WoD the announced NEW feature: open world PvP with seamless loaded instances across different servers from players coming in without any loading screens.

-------> Like WoW insider reported: players will not even know the difference anymore of what is open world or the integrated part of an instance: this technique is baffling: it opens up instance play fully integrated within the open world - without the players even realising it - AND protecting the players inside from abroad. All cross server too seamlessly.

Go on and continue to put in the usual silly remarks of yours.

I know which company has the superior technology and which cut corners, such as even the most basic forms of transportation.

GW2 is a joke as an open world MMORPG. More like maps of CoD glued together with ... loading screens.

WoW in this respect is pretty much the Rolls Royce of MMO's in WoD.

----

Of course the above Blizzard technology is superior. The only thing these other duds are capable of is cutting corners on technology to save development costs and ... development time.

Anyone with half a brain could notice the HUGE difference this technology makes, only the usual and well known WoW haters could come up with disregarding it.

It is so simple to notice the differences but hey: you ARE blinded by hate any way so just play the content argument. That's about the only thing that counts: cheaply made content in games that cut everything in costs.

You understand very well this superiority in design and development by Blizzard, but actually your hobby is pissing on it on forums. Grtz to you for being intectually dishonest just to provoke.

--------

And then people wonder why WoW is still the most successful ? In the end the superior know how will always come on top. A full decade already.

And I haven't even talked about the superior design of dungeons and raids or animated worlds.

Yep all the above costs time and resources. Many times more than the cheap copy/paste things around. Luckily we have WoW as a reference or we would all be playing life less single map MMO's.

Sorry if that superiority in Blizzard's overall design hurts ... but frankly you can always play the inferior technology for free. In fact that was about the ONLY way out for these "MMO products" to even stand a chance.

I think most people after 8 years have come to realise this gap is huge. As such the MMO's of a few years back launched with 1 M players, these days it is far less and the hype even dies sooner than 4 months.

[Deleted]

Keep it up. I'll go in detail, just to show the difference in this specific point .......

Guild Wars2 - like GW1 - has a loading screen for ANYTHING.

Go from one zone to another: loading screen.
Go within a zone to another point: loading screen.
Absence of ANY sort of fast transport: loading screen.
Going into a City: loading screen
Every zone has a fixed wall, you can't cross : loading screen
There is no open world to travel in across small zones: loading screens
You want to have a "world pvp" : loading screen, you can't even see the enemy in the same open world.

LMAO!!!!

And this is why ur hilarious

Nobody else on the internet gives a shit about loading screens on GW2 except u Benbos... google it, i can assure u that u will not find a single other person discussing this comparison. No game reviewers, no bloggers, no forum discussion except for u.

There are loading screens on every MMO, its normal. There are loading screens in pretty much every online game, its normal. Sure, GW2 open world is built different to Wow but i can assure u as a regular GW2 player it has no effect on your game experience at all.

It is only your personal opinion that its a problem, nothing more nothing less.

I play GW2 and im happy to list my opinion of what apsects of the game are better than Wow.

1. The community is much friendler than Wow.
2. The world PvP is easily the best of all MMOs, its no surprise that TESO have copied it pretty much exactly.
3. The questing and levelling is more fun and not as linear as Wow.
4. The rule for no mods makes the game much more about player skill because u know every player is using exactly the same UI.
5. Character builds r more interesting. There are very few cookie-cutter builds and build experimentation is awesome fun and an ongoing interesting part of GW2.
6. Content updates are more regular and more often, so there is always something new to play with.
7. Realm/faction pride is paramount and fun. The World v World awesomeness keeps realms competing against each other and everyone has lots of lols with the constant competition for bragging rights.
8. The world is much more relevant in GW2 than Wow. World bosses, events and new content ensure the world is always in use.
9. Crafting is miles ahead in GW2. Its a constantly relevant part of the game.
10. No monthly subscription.

Ur welcome to have an opinion on each point but im very sure that these 10 points far outweigh your bullshit about loading screens.

[BenBos]

LMAO!!!!

And this is why ur hilarious

Nobody else on the internet gives a shit about loading screens on GW2 except u Benbos... google it, i can assure u that u will not find a single other person discussing this comparison. No game reviewers, no bloggers, no forum discussion except for u.

There are loading screens on every MMO, its normal. There are loading screens in pretty much every online game, its normal. Sure, GW2 open world is built different to Wow but i can assure u as a regular GW2 player it has no effect on your game experience at all.

It is only your personal opinion that its a problem, nothing more nothing less.

I play GW2 and im happy to list my opinion of what apsects of the game are better than Wow.

1. The community is much friendler than Wow.
2. The world PvP is easily the best of all MMOs, its no surprise that TESO have copied it pretty much exactly.
3. The questing and levelling is more fun and not as linear as Wow.
4. The rule for no mods makes the game much more about player skill because u know every player is using exactly the same UI.
5. Character builds r more interesting. There are very few cookie-cutter builds and build experimentation is awesome fun and an ongoing interesting part of GW2.
6. Content updates are more regular and more often, so there is always something new to play with.
7. Realm/faction pride is paramount and fun. The World v World awesomeness keeps realms competing against each other and everyone has lots of lols with the constant competition for bragging rights.
8. The world is much more relevant in GW2 than Wow. World bosses, events and new content ensure the world is always in use.
9. Crafting is miles ahead in GW2. Its a constantly relevant part of the game.
10. No monthly subscription.

Ur welcome to have an opinion on each point but im very sure that these 10 points far outweigh your bullshit about loading screens.

Again you are talking personal opinion. Friendlier community is bla bla. The rest is PURE personal.

I was talking about technologic superiority and overall technical design.

I like Pirates of the Burning Sea very much too. That's why I thought most of the time ...: if BLIZZARD. would have made this game with their superior resources and build up knowledge, how much better could it have been.

But PotBs was frankly subpar in technology.

Hence Blizzard has - of course - all the tech keys in hand. The rest struggles far behind.

Reason is 10 years of having the superior RESOURCES. And the difference atm is staggering.

Which is a huge promise for future projects.

btw: the purpose of my post above was NOT talking about loading screens, it was just used as an example of the technology used by Blizzard and the superior technology behind it.

I reckon you like GW2. Good. No reason to not look through the surface and question the limited resources used. Ever wondered why GW2 doesn't have ANY normal form of transportation and why ALL zones are closed?

To speed up play ? Nope to cut costs and I have seen this on ANY MMO competitor of WoW and of course I was spoiled.... Instead of talking cheap loading screens I could have started with dead animated worlds or Raid design etc ...

I simply took the latest technology introduced in WoD to explain the technical gap and how Blizzard even integrated it in a 10 year old Legacy system. Just technical descriptions.

Awesome.

[Deleted]

Again you are talking personal opinion. Friendlier community is bla bla..

I told u it was personal opinion.

Your bullshit about loading screens is also PERSONAL OPINION.

Nobody else cares about loading screens, its a worthless point of discussion. We are all cool that u dont like GW2 due to the loading screens, ur welcome to your opinion.

[La]

You have to realize than an MMO is a genre that you can't really add a whole lot more innovation to. It's like FPS games, there's only so many ways that you can change it, and when you do change one thing, all the rest will have that one thing as well. "Playing x MMO was just like playing WoW" no shit, I've said the same thing about countless games I've played across the board, it doesn't mean they were bad games, maybe they were better, it's just the mindset of why play that when I can just play WoW? It's a consistent game to say the least.

[BenBos]

You have to realize than an MMO is a genre that you can't really add a whole lot more innovation to. It's like FPS games, there's only so many ways that you can change it, and when you do change one thing, all the rest will have that one thing as well. "Playing x MMO was just like playing WoW" no shit, I've said the same thing about countless games I've played across the board, it doesn't mean they were bad games, maybe they were better, it's just the mindset of why play that when I can just play WoW? It's a consistent game to say the least.

I do agree and certainly Blizzard can do things much better.

But to arrive at those extra things, you first need the "know how" and "resources" and only now people start to realise that to do BETTER than WOW you need these things. The MMO's that were launched during the past 8 years did NOT have an equal number of technical tools or resources.

This is all about RESOURCES and if you don't have them in the same order as Blizzard has build up things over all these years, you SIMPLY fall short.

That's the main reason over all these years. And with the philosophy of Blizzard - polishing and evolving it to the sky - this simply added up to the wall getting higher and higher for trying to do better.

We will see how Destiny will do it. The worst thing that could happen to the competition is a WOW2 from scratch as a free to play MMO from Blizzard. They can all fold by then is my guess, with the know how of the past 10 years.

I was too spoiled to play in things without mounts, open landscapes, suppreme polished Raids, e-sports, and a zillion other things polished up to the sky with an extreme technical superior support.

If you played an MMORPG over these past years, it was best to play the reference game.

[Deleted]

You want to have a "world pvp" : loading screen, you can't even see the enemy in the same open world.

Oh i almost forgot to address this....

Please explain exactly what loading screens r in "world pvp" in GW2?

And what ru talking about "cant see the enemy"?

[BenBos]

Oh i almost forgot to address this....

Please explain exactly what loading screens r in "world pvp" in GW2?

And what ru talking about "cant see the enemy"?

oh trivial: you are not even living in the SAME open world as you enemies in GW2. The joke is really quite good PR: you have to jump into a 4 cornered instance to have some "world vs world pvp".

Go figure.

BTW: re read what I stated above: the technical constraints are SOOOO huge in GW2, I certainly would NOT call it an open world MMO. More a stitched map collection with loading screens through jumping holes to play in each closed zone seperately.

GW2 = GW1 with bigger closed zones and a few things added that hardly resemble decent PVE content.

Mind you by loading each zone seperately, you can up the graphics somewhat as opposed to a "real" open world MMO, but again I suppose we talk too technical here for a yougster bewildered by GW2.

Have fun kid, but don't kid yourself: GW2 is not the evolution of MMO's. Far too limited technically to even play a decent role in the history of MMO's.

If Blizzard would launch such a thing with the exact same features and sold it as an MMO, their HQ would be assaulted and burned down.

But NCSoft published it as if it was the next coming of the Messiah. We know it already. As it now stands no one is follwing it on tracking tools. Even D3 gets a zillion more attention, which is not even supposed to be long term played like an MMORPG.

And nope I find D3 RoS not a good game anyway. It shows the bad things too at Irvine.

But WOW ... is a milestone on the contrary. It put the height of the high jump at 2m50 and the competition went right under it, without even touching the bar. Certainly from a technical point of view during the last 10 years.

Functionality is a different matter. That's pure personal opinion.

[Deleted]

oh trivial: you are not even living in the SAME open world as you enemies in GW2. The joke is really quite good PR: you have to jump into a 4 cornered instance to have some "world vs world pvp".

So u have avoided answering the question.

I can tell u why u have avoided it... and thats because ur completely wrong.

There are NO loading screens in GW2 world v world and there isnt any pvp out in playing area world. Thats because the game is divided into realms and not factions like in Wow. Each realm everyone is on the same team.

So we have proven that your bullshit about loading screens is based on u not understanding GW2 gameplay or game design whatsoever.

NOTE: i didnt even read the rest of your post cos its irrelevant bullshit to my question.

[Txiv]

I told u it was personal opinion.

Your bullshit about loading screens is also PERSONAL OPINION.

Nobody else cares about loading screens, its a worthless point of discussion. We are all cool that u dont like GW2 due to the loading screens, ur welcome to your opinion.

Actually that would probably put me off if I played gw2. There is a certain standard wow has set and to not reach something as simple as this seems sloppy.

[Deadite]

Actually that would probably put me off if I played gw2. There is a certain standard wow has set and to not reach something as simple as this seems sloppy.

The only way wow is different for GW2 is a bigger instance. In wow each continent is just a big instance. WoW is rife with loading screens just like every mmo. I don't mind a 2 second loading screen to jump between zones in GW2 any more than i mind a loading screen every time i teleport,portal,jump on a boat,hearth or move from Belf/Space Goat lands to some place else. Each to their own i guess.

[BenBos]

The only way wow is different for GW2 is a bigger instance. In wow each continent is just a big instance. WoW is rife with loading screens just like every mmo. I don't mind a 2 second loading screen to jump between zones in GW2 any more than i mind a loading screen every time i teleport,portal,jump on a boat,hearth or move from Belf/Space Goat lands to some place else. Each to their own i guess.

Actually this post proves you didn't even read my previous post on the HUGE difference of supporting technology that Blizzard uses.

It is NOT a problem of loading screens. It is the problem of cutting corners everywhere in technology to arrive at some poor man's MMO that GW2 and most other MMO's show.

The loading screens, complete lack of ANY fast transportation and the CLOSED 4 cornered zones are simply consequences of cutting costs.

I could equally start of the poor man's animated worlds, the appalling Raids and dungeons vs WOW as a reference. But I explained all above already.

Wake me up when the others catch up on all of this, because they didn't in 10 years time.

--------

Indeed, my PET peeve is the NEW WOD technology introduced in the open world play. That's simply awesome. That's something that is tearing up the complete MMO kind of play of the last 15 years even: imagine not even feeling the difference anymore between an instanced dungeon, warzone or the open world ---- ACROSS servers even in real time.

WOW. First seen in WOW - as usual. That's the end result of 10 years MMO know how and dominance. You can't reproduce that without resources.