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."

Comments

Doomed because it's not "epic"

[Drakino]

This guy seems to think WoW is doomed because it is not "epic" enough.

A MMORPG cannot just be a game: When you start charging a subscription, you're promising it to be more than that. It has to genuinely interest players in investing time in it for meaningfully compelling reasons. World of Warcraft is far too trivialized, it's evident in the quick grind, the artificial world, and the punch-out trade skill system. World of Warcraft, in matching casual friendly (even console-game like) design expectations, is simply not built to last as a top 5 MMORPG.

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, this will somehow drive people away. How someone can think a grind in a game is a good thing is beyond me. EQ1 subscription numbers are now dropping quickly, even with a new "epic" expansion filled with yet more content accessable to uber guilds only. I would dare say the players in EQ1 in the last year were simply their due to the social experience with their uber guilds, as much better games have since come out.

I see WoWs success in another way. The game is simple, easy to learn and thus people are enjoying themselves. Friends are having a much easier time convincing someone to play WoW over other games. There isn't any talk about the problems of old EQ1 when WoW comes up, like the 15-30 minutes of downtime EQ1 used to have to regenerate health. Since WoW is so easy to get into, people are more tempted to run a character to 60, then try a completly different race. The diversity in the game is quite nice.

Only time will tell though. So far, it seems the server issues haven't scared off a noticible amount of people. And for many, the server issues are their only complaint with the game.

My summary...

[QuantumG]

People play WoW because it has unique and novel gameplay. When the gameplay is no longer novel people will get bored and leave (instead of hanging around and socialising, as they do in other MMORPGs, because the game isn't accomidating to that). When other games come along which have similar gameplay people will leave to play them instead.

Of course, all this assumes that the current state of WoW is the final state of it. Surely once WoW's numbers start going down they'll modify the game to make it more accomidating to socialisers (it's not hard). As for people leaving for greener pastures, can anything stop that?

It's interesting to think of other MMOGs and Geldonyetich's three categories. Think about The Matrix Online (TMO). It's definitely in category three, so what's going to keep people around when the novelty of the gameplay wears off? I think the answer is story.. TMO is one of the few games where paid actors actually direct the gameplay.

Of course, I generally stop playing MMOGs in category three for a completely different reason: they get too hard. I find this especially annoying in single player games which have good story (like Simpsons: Hit & Run). Why do they have to keep making it harder? I don't want a "challenge" I want to have *fun*. I guess this is also the reason behind the popularity of cheat codes. With that in mind, I think the worst thing you can do in a MMOG is force people to take harder mission/quests. Just give me the option of Easy/Intermediate/Hard missions and I'll pick the level of challenge I feel up to today.

I have to totally disagree with this article.

[Sandman1971]

Yes, I've RTFA, and I am a WoW player, and I totally disagree with this article.

World of Warcraft has quite a few things going for it. It has a rich history of 3 amazing games, and its this history that has introduced the MMORPG genre to gamers who would have previously not given it a second glance. Most of the people I've spoken with that fall in this category are not planning on leaving WoW any time soon. From this type of gamer's prospective, it allows a micro view of the previous games; building your character instead of building towns and armies, but without losing too much of the original games.

From an MMORPG player prospective, this game offers what many other MMORPGs have strived to do; have a great and interesting quest system that's not too repetitive. I played CoH and quit after a couple of months because as interesting as the concept of that game weas, the quest system was purely repetitive; something I have yet to experience in the 5 months I've been playing WoW.

Another great aspect of WoW is that if you prefer playing alone, you can. If you prefer playing in groups you can. You can hunt and level by your lonesome, even attempt dungeon quests by yourself. Something that lacked in AO. If you prefer playing in a group, WoW has one of the best and fairest party systems that I've seen (and I've played about 7 MMORPGs dating back to the launch of Asheron's Call).

Will Wow's numbers go down? Most probably. All North American/European MMORPGs suffer from this. But it's my personal opnion that it will be on top of the MMORPG list for quite a while.

Re:I have to totally disagree with this article.

[meta-monkey]

I'm a lvl 60 hunter with my full class set and pretty much everything you can possibly get in the game outside of Molten Core and Onyxia. I've done MC and Onyxia, I just don't have all my loot from there yet...and I don't think it's even really possible to ever get it all until they get rid of the raid timers, but that's another post...

I still find the game fun. levels 1-60 were okay. It was interesting discovering new lands, seeing new monsters and doing new quests. Many of the later quests, especially those that revolve around instances, do have a much greater emphasis on story.

However, what you'll discover is that the game doesn't really start until level 60. That's when you start PvPing like crazy...well, only really if you're on a PvP server. Absolutely DO NOT roll on a PvE server. If you're on one now with your level 20s, delete them and roll PvP (come to Laughing Skull! It's glorious!). Here's where you get all the drama. Join a good guild, make some friends, and grief the hell out of other players, both on the other faction and your own. Get the uber loot.

I don't think Blizzard is dumb. They realized how easy it was to get to level 60. They understand that people need things to keep them constantly entertained...and that thing is PvP. Once they roll out the honor system and battlegrounds, I think WoW is going to take off forever. That's how people will make their own content...horde vs alliance, guild vs. guild, with all the drama and board smack talk you can imagine...that's where it's at.

Anyway, point is, roll PvP and stick it out. WoW is awesome.

Re:I have to totally disagree with this article.

[elrond1999]

Look, if you find the quests boring, cant stand to Party with anyone else and dont engage in Guild / Raid, then yes I can you get bored rather quick. Wow shouldn't be about racing to lvl 60 in a long solo grind. If you don't enjoy the journey to the higher levels then you won't stay very long.

About the Qs being repetitive, yes on the surface they are. However if you actually bother to read them and not just skim to the objectives/rewards, you will get some entertaining stories. I think Blizzard made the Qs like this so that they are easy to understand, if they were more diverse the chat channels would flood with questions and thottbot would crash..

Re:I stopped playing

[Forager]

For what it's worth, depending on what class you played, the game doesn't really "start" until a bit later.

I have a hunter, a rogue, and a priest that I play regularly - for my hunter, 30 was where it got really interesting; for my rogue it was 20; for my priest ... well, i'm still waiting on that one, and she's 21 right now.

My roomates and I were discussing it the other night, and basically came up with this:

Levels 1-10 are training. They're the turorial levels, where you learn how MMOs work, the basic mechanics and all.

Levels 11-20 are advanced training. Class-specific stuff starts popping up, basic grouping and instances, that sort of thing.

Levels 21-30 are when the training wheels come off. Around 25ish, depending on class, tons of zones open up for you, and you get a much better feel for the world. If 11-20 is High School, this is the college phase of the game.

31-40 are the first red meat you get. Lots of quests, lots of instances, lots of stuff to do and see. Most of the world is open to you now. This is when you should be joining a guild, learning to PVP, etc.

41-50 is endurance. Sadly, this is the most painful part. I almost quit, myself, around level 47 or so. At 40-41, you just got your mount, and by god you'll need it. Be ready to spend lots of time traveling - FedEx quests, lots of grinding, etc are the norm here.

51-56 is where you learn that you are pretty weak on your own. Sure, you can grind out those levels, if you want to, but soloing is much tougher, and the options for where to go are pretty limited.

57-60 are the final meat of the game. Scholomance, Stratholme, BRD, LBRS, UBRS, etc. Sadly, this is also where the fun starts to taper off. After a few days you realize this is all you've got left, except maybe runs against Onyxia, MC, Azuregos, and Kazzak. And, of course, farming set gear and epics =\

If your account is still active, you might want to try making it to 30 or so. You might find that the interest level picks up quite a bit from there.

Cheers to ya,

-A.