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Doom Forecasted for World of Warcraft
The ever interesting Grimwell.com has commentary available forecasting doom in the near future for World of Warcraft. Commentator Geldonyetich argues that, by the very nature of the Warcraft game design, the impressive subscription numbers they currently boast are fleeting. From the article: "World of Warcraft is a tremendously successful game. Its subscriber numbers are reaching peaks that threaten even the lofty Korean Internet Café centered Lineage series. Those of you who are stuck behind overloaded servers, don't despair: I can see WoW's success as being a very temporary thing."
Yes, poor, poor Blizzard. They have a "failure" on their hands just like Diablo II.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Total waste of time...
He classifies WoW as a "slasher" (one of his designations) along with EQ and some others. He then goes on to say that slasher games don't last long in the market place, ergo WoW will fail soon. He ignores the fact that EQ is still running and relatively viable even 8-9 years after it's release.
His worst error, though, is in picking two games, seemingly at random (CoH and Planetside), saying that WoW is just like both of them and that since their historical subscriber #s showed an inital peak and then a drop-off WoW's #s would behave in the same manner.
That hypothesis is so wrong for so many reasons: * Planetside isn't an RPG, it's an FPS. * CoH is lacking in a # of important areas for player rentention. The most glaring one is the lack of loot acquisition, something WoW has in spades * Just like in the stock market past performance of #s is not indication whatsoever of future performance.
In other words, he believes that due to the fact that WoW is simple and easy to pick up, and doesn't have tedious things like trade skills of old EQ
- That couldn't be farther from the truth.
IMO, WoW designers made a game that isolates the "hardcore" from the "casual".
On the surface, casual Joe doesn't see the insane grinds that are in the game. And the same time hardcore John can grind away to get extra items. Since WoW is a very item centric game, hardcore John is perfectly at home, gaining more power for his avatar as he grinds away. Same time, casual Joe also gains power while doing many non grind quests and dungeons, hell even small raids.
I challenge anyone to come post with a straight face that there are no grinds in WoW. There is plenty:
- Argent Dawn, Thorium Brotherhood, Timbermaw, Cenarion, and other race faction grinds.
- High end tradeskill recipe grind: Arcane Crystals, Azerothian Diamonds, Dark Iron ore, Frayed Abomination Stiching and other rare gems/items.
- Grinds to get elusive world drops: Brainhacker, Destiny, Hurricane, and others.
- Grinds to get very rare dungeon drops: Runeblade of Baron Rivendare, patterns to epic caster robes, plans for epic craftskill recipes, plans for very rare but powerful craftskill items (Arcanite Reaper), epic quest items (Chromatic Carapace) and so on.
- Grind to be able to afford epic mount.
WoW has a lot grinding in it. Everyone who says the opposite hasn't played much high end.
Blizzard efficiently threw a smoke screen infront of casual Joe, casual Joe goes and clears a dungeon once a week, gets a few nice items, his character progresses and he is happy. Same time, hardcore John has myriads of grinds to keep him occupied. And if that isn't enough, he has still PvP, Upper Blackrock Spire, Molten Core and Onyxia.
Even Blizzard said it, the game starts at level 60. Plenty of things to do for everyone. And with content being added (hopefuly a more frequent basis), there will be many more things to do. So this modern Nostradamus fellow from Grimwell will be proven dead wrong because he obviously has no clue about WoW, or he wouldn't have spewed garbage like WoW is only for casual gamers.