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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."
DOOM and WoW craft together?!?!? I won't leave my house for a month!
Basically the guy is saying MMORPGs peak and then go down. He also says Diablo II (a completely different game) is similar to WoW in what's going to happen to players. He's probably right about the peaking, but that certainly doesn't mean WoW will die. And Diablo II has no bearing on what happens to WoW, although D2 is still going pretty strong for a game as ancient as it is.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
I bought WoW a few weeks ago and loved it, at first. But a few days ago, after reaching level 21, I realized that there really wasn't all that much content in the game. It's just a constant cycle of killing monsters, waiting for your health/mana to recharge, killing some more, and then running for fifteen minutes back to whoever gave you the quest.
It was fun while it lasted, but eventually you realize there isn't much variety in the gameplay. The scenery changes, and you get to use different spells/weapons, and if you really stick with it you get a horse to ride around, but other than that, nothing ever changes.
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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.
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
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.
One of the things a lot of players who left EQ for WoW complain about is the fact that the end game appears to them to be a carbon copy of the EQ-style raid system, only now it's instanced. This very complaint, however, is what sets WoW apart from Planetside and City of Heroes. Neither of those two games has this EQ-like raid endgame, which forces the type of social interaction that EQ did. Just looking at my own server, Shattered Hand, I can see this reflected. The Alliance guilds are all large EQ-style guilds, while the Horde guilds tend to be smaller, loosely bound "FPS-clan-like" guilds. They have enough people to do everything up until the raid content, and there they fall apart.
Basically, the opportunity is there for the EQ-like guilds and systems, but WoW has managed to draw both types of gamers, the FPS-type, "flavor of the month" gamer, and the MMORPG-type "hardcore", "play the same game for 10 years" gamer.
There is room for conversion though, and while there will obviously be a dip as the "flavor of the month" gamers leave, it has yet to be seen what the conversion rate will be. A friend of mine was a FPS-type gamer, playing whatever was new for a few month or two and moving on, and when he said he was going to play WoW I didn't expect him to stay longer than a month or two. But he's still around and still interesting in new things to do in WoW. As long as there is something new for him to do, or some item he would like to aquire that is nearly in his grasp, he will probably keep playing it seems.
I believe Battle Grounds is tailor made for these types of players. The type of player who just hops on a Counter-strike public server for a few hours and shoots some people up. Once WoW is "finished", it will have something to do for both the EQ-style and FPS-style player.
I forecast 10 million+ subscribers once MMOGS become truly fun. Blizzard is notorious for storylines and wanting to make comic and culture for their Warcraft series. No doubt with the extra cash they'll be able to guide their MMOG to be more in depth.
The day they bring an action orient game like Zelda or Tekken into a massive world filled with a good progression, that will be the day all the other MMOGs fail. People like to meet and adventure with friends in fantasy worlds, they're not going to drop that.
Its like the atari 2600 debacle. People thought atari was the end of a fad. Its the SAME EXACT THING. MMORPGS imho suck. I wanted to write one in the early 90s, for a lot of reasons. Most of the cool things I envision in MMORPGS haven't been done yet. Try forcing yourself to play the atari 2600 when you know nintendo is coming over the horizon. Its friggin tough man, makes you almost want to program games yourself, and thats a whole lot of work.
God spoke to me.
Article sounds like the author is trying to convince himself that he picked the right horse.
Nothing to see here.
It all comes down to change. MMORPGs lack change. Even in the newer generation games, there's nothing going on that begs for players to get involved. Pen and paper RPGs still reign supreme in the area of an evolving storyline.
In WoW, the same thing that happened yesterday is going to happen today. There no mission you are going to do that someone hasn't already done twice.
Games like Asheron's Call were so huge that, at least for a while, the idea that you were the first person to travel to a new area was still there. You could approach some remote location and find a tower, mountain, or valley that no one had ever been to.
The devs would add new monsters and npcs every month or two. It revolutionized the way players actually played the game. Reports would come in, via the game, about a new mob attacking one of the towns, and then you could go there and actually find/see it.
MxO looks to be the only game that might have a player-driven storyline. Unfortunately, the game is buggy as hell, and won't be going anywhere for a while till they get those issues resolved.
I've Beta'ed Guild Wars, and currently play WoW. Both are great games in completely different ways.
WoW is stronger in the traditional MMO/PvE content. Especially once they flesh out the end-game a bit more. Hardcore dungeon crawls, raids, etc. Guild Wars has none of this. (PvE is on a much smaller scale in GW)
Guild Wars really shines on the PvP front. The entire purpose of the PvE segment is simply to get you up to speed to PvP. Most of a characters development isn't vertical, it's horizontal. (Quick run to 20, then spend time fleshing out your arsenal of abilities) And the skill system leads to plenty of variety and strategy in combat.
Honestly, comparing the two doesn't make sense. They're different types of games, with different goals.
I agree with the main thrust of this article. I've been playing MMORPGs for a while now (mainly FFXI, but also a couple of the older titles) and after a couple of month's play (one solid month when it came out, a bit here and there since then) I see no way that WoW can sustain its player numbers.
Don't get me wrong, it's a game that does a lot right. I've never before seen a MMORPG that made it so easy for new players to get started and get caught up in the game from day 1. Well... assuming they didn't spend day 1 trying to get into either the registration or game servers. There are dozens, maybe even of hundreds, of quests that you can get done at a very low level. They're not all Fed-Ex quests either; quite a few of them involve fighting "unique" monsters or exploring regions. MMORPGs have traditionally been rubbish at inducting new players. FFXI is, I must admit, one of the worst offenders, as unless you have some higher-level friends already in the game, getting started in it is basically an utter nightmare (I started out alone myself and took months to find my feet, but have since inducted three of my real life friends). WoW hammers the competition into the ground at this point. I was able to start exploring, fighting, questing, crafting and doing everything else I can do in other MMORPGs within a few hours of starting.
However, the problem is that I've not found much else to do since then. By the time you hit level 30, it's pretty clear that the game shows you all its significant content up-front and doesn't keep much in reserve for later. Exploring new zones is fine for a while, but they all start to blur eventually and exploration is made unnecessarily tedious by an utterly brain-dead aggro system, which means that even mobs many, many levels below your own will attack you if they see you. While the quests seem varied at first, a few basic templates become apparent fairly quickly. The quests aren't even particularly long or challenging. There are no real equivalents of FFXI's Artifact or Level-Cap quests. While this could be seen as a good thing (let's face it, those quests can be annoying as hell), it does mean you have relatively few chances to spend significant amounts of time grouping with people.
Indeed, the social aspects of WoW are among the weakest. I don't mind playing a MMORPG where you can level-grind solo, but I'll always prefer a situation where grouping brings advantages. Except at the very top levels of WoW (where there's not much left to do anyway), this just doesn't happen. Even as a Mage, the fastest way for me to level up was to run around on my own killing things. Of course, I'd need to find groups for a few of the quests, but this just exposed more weaknesses in WoW. Simply put, the actual infrastructure in place to support the game's social aspects SUCK beyond belief. After being used to FFXI's search and trading functions, WoW was like going back to the dark ages. The upshot of this is that much of your time playing WoW is spent running around solo. To be honest, I could get this from Neverwinter Nights with no monthly fee.
I'll admit that I effectively gave up on the game before reaching 60. However, a large factor in this was that I'd reached a point where I had some degree of sight into the end-game content and I realised how little there was. Simply put, when you hit 60, it's more or less time to start a new character. I'll admit that FFXI perhaps goes too far the other way here; the length of time required to hunt Higher-Notorious-Monsters, complete the Zilart missions and, most of all, get a fully upgraded relic weapon is obscene. However, this does provide something to do once you reach the end of the level-grind and it's a good incentive to keep playing. Moreover, the rate of content addition to WoW has been pitiful. I know there's a big content patch planned for later this year, but to be frank, with a MMORPG, these patches need to be every couple of months; not every year or so.
I'd predict that in the long term, WoW will level out at about
The article only has it half right. The real reason why MMORPGs will have subscription issues is because of http://guildwars.com/.
The "casual friendly slayers" mentioned in the article are going to love Guild Wars (GW) and since there is no subscription fee the company (ArenaNet) doesn't lose out when they stop playing after a few months.
GW also has incredible and accessible PvP which is the only content that doesn't turn into grind (given a large enough community).
Personally, I'm sick of MMORPG companies monthly milking of their customers. Stretching out 60-80 hours of content into 400 hours is akin to watching a movie that repeats each scene five times... and you have to pay to keep watching.
GW is out on April 28th, once the word spreads about the true casual friendly play, lack of griefing, combined with the best fantasy PvP available... all using a pay for new content (expansions) model instead of a monthly subscription I hope it forces it's competitors to start treating their customers less like cash cows.
Complexity Happens
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.
I'm a level 148 Berserk Troll Snotgurgle, and let me tell you, the game doesn't even get started until you get past level 120! Not until you've lost your job, your car, and your family does it really get interesting! Now that, my comrades, is some heavy ass epic shite!
At about level 120 (or perhaps much, much sooner for some of you), you'll find that your life in Warcraft has snowballed far beyond that of your own. Just make sure you are able to steal enough from your roommates to make the light bill, and pray that your next door neighbor doesn't secure her wireless connection anytime soon!
You will also notice that other quests emerge in the comfort of your own home... seeing your own penis will become difficult due to your runaway girth... finding a clean dish or garment will be next to impossible... others come to mind, but the experience gained by battling these epic quests will only serve to enhance your WoW skillz.
In Soviet WoW, trolls own you~!
Talk about grinding? HA. We had to grind random jobs AND PAY people to be allowed to teach them. Then as soon as you became a master and actually could do anything usefull you had to unlearn everything you worked so hard on learning to make room for the next profession.
Content you say? Tired of running? Why I can still remember having to do the exact same run 6 times through the most hostile planets in the universe JUST to be allowed to open up the option to make a lethal run dozens of times to turn hard earned combat experience into force experience at a conversion rate that would shock banks at airports.
Pfff, you guys don't know how good you have it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Every time something comes along that's hugely successful, someone invariably comes along to try and drag it through the mud.
I played D2 for exactly 4 months before it got old..
WoW is heading strong into month 5 with a lot of added content on the horizon...
Blizzard was very smart in not only making tiered level of things to do, but also variable branches of things to do...
The harder levels of PvE are there for the hardcore PvE'ers and are by design only accessible to those who actually ARE serious about PvE raiding. PvP will soon have battlegrounds which will most like be for more hard core PvP'ers.
D2 just had harder levels of the same material, and Blizzard has shown very well that they actually learn from their past mistakes. Which is why whenever I discuss things like theoretical loopholes in the WoW system, the topic usually ends with "but I'm sure Blizzard has probably thought of that already"..or in other words they have gained TRUST from the community.
Blizzard is a shining example of what a game company should be like and I have no trouble whatsoever in handing over $15/mo for a game that I enjoy 99.99% of the time.
I look forward to their added content and inevitable expansions...