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Why BioWare's Star Wars MMO May Already Be Too Late
Since the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, many gamers have been hopeful that its high budget, respected development team and rich universe will be enough to provide a real challenge to the WoW juggernaut. An opinion piece at 1Up makes the case that BioWare's opportunity to do so may have already passed. Quoting:
"While EA and BioWare Austin have the horsepower needed to at least draw even with World of Warcraft though, what we've seen so far has been worryingly conventional — even generic — given the millions being poured into development. Take the opening areas around Tython, which Mike Nelson describes in his most recent preview as being 'rudimentary,' owing to their somewhat generic, grind-driven quest design. Running around killing a set number of 'Flesh Raiders' in a relatively quiet village doesn't seem particularly epic, but that's the route BioWare Austin seems to be taking with the opening areas for the Jedi — what will surely be the most popular classes when The Old Republic is released. ... the real concern, though, is not so much in the quest design as in BioWare Austin's apparent willingness to play follow the leader. Whenever something becomes a big hit — be it a movie, game or book — there's always a mad scramble to replicate the formula; in World of Warcraft's case, that mad scramble has been going for six years now. "
This is why Tabula Rasa was so amazing when it came out, but suffered from poor advertisement and development direction. Even the team for it didn't know where they were going to go with it and openly admitted it.
Everyone wants to be the next big hit to take down WoW so if they go that path they're going to be compared and scrutinized against something that is entrenched and has an army of people backing it. It's quite sad that one of the best games as far as MMOs go was killed off early and left for dead (by politics between NCsoft and Richard Gariott no less). Whoever thinks sending themselves into space is a good advertisement for a game should at the very least have their motives questioned.
CEOs point at a metric and say 'make it earn money like that game', developers just 'baaah' and follow suit because they just want their paycheck and their name on a product no matter what it is. Unfortunately the gaming industry is a chicken and the egg. You can't get money without a name, you can't get a name without a good title, and you can't make really hit titles without money. Either the old generation needs to die off and the internet savy need to take over or someone with really good business sense needs to step into the video game industry or things will die more so then they already are (I wonder if Google wants to start a gaming business...).
Could you imagine a universe, where successive Pacman clones are more expensive, so the last one will cost 150 million dollars?
Thats the MMORPG business for you. Cloning a formula that seems to work, in a very expensive way, for a public that is progressively more bored of the formula.
What make that hurt here even more, is that we don't want BioWare to die. Did a lot of great games, and we are really pleased of his work. These people really got talent and the exact formula of RPG fun.
To be honest, we don't know at this point if the game will be a success or not.
-Woof woof woof!
I think after six years it's safe to say that trying to beat WoW at its own game is futile. If you want to surpass WoW as the world's leading MMO, you can't just copy their model.
The approach that ArenaNet appears to be taking with Guild Wars 2 is more sensible. They've thrown out many things which could be considered as fundamental in an MMO, but are actually limiting or frustrating. This includes things like grinding, quests that have no impact, text based plot and more subtle concepts such as the DPS/tank/heal arrangement.
If any game is capable of surpassing WoW, my money would be on GW2.
no surprise, a megacorp doesnt want to risk even a dime in new concepts or originality. rehash, serve. make how much you can make. this is what happens when big companies with stockholders get innovative small outfits like bioware in their grip.
Read radical news here
The article basically says that despite all the advancements for the genre, the starting area quests feel like more of the same from previous MMOs. That's not a minus so much as a "not so big of a plus".
Personally I'm waiting to see what they do with the endgame, Bioware promised something secret and revolutionary years before it was revealed to be a Star Wars MMO. WoW's endgame (raiding) was designed by the leader of the lead hardcore raiding guild from Everquest, so MMO endgames have failed to evolve for the past 10 years.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Isn't it true that the WoW hype was at it's pinnacle back in 2006 - 2007 or so? Sure, an expansion pack has been released recently, but it appears to be lacking the whole hype. In fact, where I live, Blizzard seems to be promoting the expansion pack pretty aggressively, something I have never seen them do before. Is this necessary because WoW's days are counted? Blizzard themselves are shifting focus to Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, WoW is losing it's momentum, hype is fading away. I'm sure that still a lot of people play it, but from here on out, I think the only way for WoW is down. Maybe in due time, some other game will step up and be the next WoW, simply because WoW is too old and too 'been there-done that' so there's no competition from WoW anymore.
It was just as grindy as all other games.
What the real problem in these games trying to follow World of Warcraft is that they usually take aim at the previous generation of WOW. As in, Blizzard keeps moving WOW forward. The change the mechanics, the reinvent classes at times, they even change their world completely. They haven't stood still. Yet each time I see a new WOW killer come along it is aimed at WOW from three to four years ago claiming great new features which just btw, happen to be in the current WOW or are very similar.
Throw in the one thing they all miss, WOW has two major focus points. It has the leveling system which interests many people with thousands of quests and a lot of lore and it has the end game. The prior does not inhibit you from getting to the later by any appreciable degree. You can blow right through the quest systems, even ignore the majority, and strictly hit top level and do the end game content. Which is where WOW shines. Their end game content is always good. Far too many up and comers have NPC BOSS mechanics that feel nothing more than just that Rat I killed twenty of but with ten times the health. It might have one new effect but for the most part its as dumb as the rats outside.
What is happening at BIOWARE/EA is that I see "we have this great IP, hence any expense is justified" mentality which usually goes hand in hand with feature creep and never finishing a system to completely but having far too many incomplete ones.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why do so many people think that every new entrant into the market has to take down the top dog?
The SWTOR MMO only needs to make money. It doesn't need to beat anyone. This obsession with beating the 'best' is unhealthy and does not drive development well.
I seriously doubt that WoW devs had the thought 'We need to beat Everquest' running through their heads. Instead, they were thinking 'We need to make a great game'. Beating Everquest came as a by-product of the real goal.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I really don't understand why these sorts of mistakes keep getting made.
From the perspective of game designers, Blizzard clearly has several advantages that will be difficult to overcome: 1. Already having had years to iterate and refine their game and engine. 2. A large paying audience, which means that the costs of implementing content X or upgrade Y are, per subscriber, tiny. Any game designer who thinks that those can be overcome by any means except doing something quite different(EVE: online, which went for a totally different player base, or any of the random browser-based grind games which go for being radically less expensive to produce and to play) is suffering from some serious hubris.
From the perspective of the management types, Blizzard clearly has several advantages that will be difficult to overcome: 1. Network effects: because so many people play WoW, if your friends play any MMORPG, that is probably the one. Barring specific hatred of some aspect of WoW, you will default to playing the one that your friends are playing. 2. Substantial costs already amortized: They have a (more or less) fully functional engine, stuffed full of art assets and flavortext and whatnot, all paid off. Any new player that they can attract is, other than some slight server and bandwidth load, basically free until they have ground through a fairly large chunk of gameworld. Any competitor is starting from a far weaker position, attempting to get their engine and flavor to playable levels on borrowed or advanced money. 3. Large player base over which to divide fixed costs: Games, like movies, are heavy on fixed costs. The engine costs the same even if noone ever uses it. That dialog tree costs the same even if noone ever reads it. The more subscribers you have, the lower your fixed costs per subscriber(or, alternately, the higher your quality for the same fixed cost per subscriber as your inferior competitors).
That's what I don't understand: All but the most delusionally hubristic game-design guys should easily realize that any 'me-too' attempt is going to go badly. They are probably inclined to be a bit optimistic about how original their work really is; but they should know that 'me-too' is suicide. At the same time, even the management types who know absolutely nothing about games should, purely with basic EC101 type considerations, be able to see that this is not a market where there is much room for imitative product. Blizzard hardly has a monopoly on "games"; but the idea that the market will support multiple "clearly WoW-like games" is hard to support.
Given that even outrageously hubristic game designers tend to depend on suits for money(at least until the game is ready to sell) and that even the dullest suits need a bunch of game designers willing to take the risk of having a real fuckup on their CV, I don't understand how these projects get off the ground. In almost any case, I would expect one party or the other to (sensibly) get cold feet quite early, if they even get the idea at all.
Why is WoW still succesful? That is something worth pondering for the other MMO producers who want to be the next Blizzard. They do not have to beat WoW on the level of graphics or gameplay: WoW is already beaten there, by several other games. And they're still nr. 1. Because of one word: momentum.
Everybody plays WoW because everybody else plays WoW. They got to where they are by being the best but they no longer have to be, social momentum has taken over. All WoW players I know got bored with the game, they took a break, tried one or several other MMO's, got bored with those too, and gravitated back to WoW because at least that had plenty of players and most of their friends in it. The way to beat WoW is to create an MMO that does way better at the social aspect of MMOs, and provides enough staying power for the first two years to retain players and help those players to convince their friends to hop over too. At this time, I don't think this is possible. Don't try to beat WoW, for the same reasons it is foolish to try and beat Facebook at this time.
If I had to guess how WoW was going to be beaten, my money would be on slow attrition caused by light, browser based MMO's on a popular social network like Facebook. And guessing at which MMO producer is going to survive, my money is on a company that figures out how to produce, operate, support and expand an MMO on the cheap, so it can serve a niche market of 100k-500k players and still be profitable. This you can do by figuring out your niche, rather than trying to clone WoW. Two examples of good, viable games are Star Wars Galaxies and Age of Conan. They did a lot of things right in terms of gameplay, lots of things other companies can learn from. There's mistakes to be learned from as well: SWG lost most of their players after a big and hugely impopular change in game mechanics. AoC lost a lot of players following a buggy launch and a subsequent patch that made matters far worse. A shame, because both games have a lot of potential as profitable niche players.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I'm not sure how it was grindy at all. People complained about it not having enough grind and that they got to max level right away. They got rid of the grind by making it more like a FPS then a MMO, but they marketed towards the MMO crowd who wants a grind.
It was anything, but a grind. You could've seen that by reaching the first control point. The style of gameplay and the rewards for participating in the world took a back seat to the actual gameplay, which it is as it should be.
The ideology that the end has to be where all the content is was something that Blizzard fostered and something TR didn't have.
Play a few different MMOs besides WoW (WAR, EQ2, TR (was), CoH, and Aion are good places to start) then you'll have a different look on things. Each one of those titles has very unique things WoW doesn't have and it is extremely apparent after playing with them for a bit.
Stop thinking that WoW is the ultimate game that will ever be produced and look at things outside of their formula, which is coincidentally as addicting as heroine and makes you very subjective. Things can be fun without being really grindy. WoW keeps you addicted with stuff, good games keep you addicted with fun.
What's baffling to me is that they've chosen to use one of the most tedious aspects of WoW. People enjoy WoW *in spite of* the grinding, not because of it. What's next, the Karate Kid "Wax on... wax off" emulator?
Sure it was a grind, but for the first time in MMO history, the grind was FUN! Grinding was like playing a round of base attack / base defend shooter. Against NPCs, ok, but still, it was a lot of fun to mow down rows after rows of enemies, trying to hold the base for as long as you possibly can. And all the while you earned XP, got "marks", got credits, found loot... not only compared to the grind of other MMOs this was heaps of fun!
Grab a few friends, choose a base in your level, take it over and defend it!
Hell, I miss that game.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I had fun grinding Shattered Galaxy but not enough fun to pay
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Whether it's too late for the game to be successful depends on how you are defining "being successful". If you are defining it as staking out a sizeable, but still sub-WoW-sized share of the MMO market, perhaps even becoming the second-place runner, while bringing a number of players new to the genre, then Old Republic still has every chance to succeed; the key factors in whether it does so will be whether it is a good game and whether they have the infrastructure in place to manage it properly.
If, however you define success as "beating World of Warcraft, taking away a large portion of its players and leaving it languishing in the dust" then the timing is indeed wrong. Or at least, the window of opportunity is closing fast and, once closed in a month or so, will not open again for another 18 months to 2 years.
WoW's great strength is also its great weakness - and is the only plausible route to defeating it before Blizzard retire it in favour of a successor. The strength is WoW's cyclical nature. Expansions come out roughly every 2 years and completely reset the game more the vast majority of players. Gear becomes obsolete, old dungeons are retired, some aspects of the game change on a fundamental level. This keeps things fresh for players and, combined with the periodic roll-out of further content via free patches, provides an incentive to continue playing. And if everybody you know is continuing to play, then you yourself feel compelled to continue (even if you aren't enjoying the game much any more). This was WoW's great strength; it achieved a certain kind of watercooler-momentum, that saw people draw into the game by their real life friends and family. You're not going to break that easily.
But every two years or so, there is a window where, I think, WoW's aura of invincibility is briefly dispelled. The final month of one expansion and the first month of a new one is, in many ways, a fairly grim time to play WoW. Before the new expansion hits, you will be bored to death of all of the current content, and many in-game activities will feel pointless because all of the rewards will be obsolete soon anyway. For the first month or two of the new expansion, there isn't all that much content to be working on and a lot of the hardcore players are cheesed off at having to start over from scratch again.
So if another developer, with a relatively polished release product, a rudimentary end-game already present, an interface as good as or better than WoW's and, preferably, a decent existing IP to base the game world on could launch in that window, then the might - just might - have a shot at derrailing the WoW juggernaut and triggering the kind of mass-defection that would cut WoW's player-base by a half or more. However, the window that the launch of Cataclysm created is rapidly closing, and it looks like Old Republic has missed it. So if you are defining success as "WoW beater", then yes, I suspect it is already too late for Old Republic to succeed.
It's the story, stupid. When WoW came out, the majority of MMOs were horrible at telling stories. For example:
Star Wars: Galaxies - there were what, 2, 3 possible "raids"? There were theme parks where you ran a bunch of random quests that kind of told a story, but at the end of it, nothing changed, nothing was unlocked, nothing was different for your character to do, and your rewards were pitiful for doing it. The "missions" in the game were literally, run up to a machine, it says "Hey, (some random SW type person) wants you to go and kill a bunch of animals! Do that!" and you ran out to kill a bunch of animals. The only interesting thing about that game was the rather amazing player based economy, but SOE completely wrecked that when they changed the underlying mechanics of the game.
City of Heroes - this game actually had some really interesting things going on, in that you had storylines to do (though they were grindy as hell and *incredibly* repetitive through *incredibly* repetitive environments, and were *incredibly* stupid for superheroes to be doing). But the whole "repetitive" thing and the whole "dumb for superheroes" thing made it wretched - why, for example, would Spider-Man be asked by (some random person) to deliver something halfway across town? The game mechanics were fun (and the base game still can be from time to time) but it can't really draw the crowds in because once you've run 4-5 missions, you really have done most of what that game has to offer, from a "seeing new and interesting things" standpoint.
And then there is WoW. When it launched, the normal quests you were given lots of were the equivalent of most other MMOs *major* storylines as far as complexity. It was rough around the edges as far as player friendliness went (I remember running around for a couple of hours trying to find someone to turn a quest into - the text said "north of here" but it really meant "way on the whole other side of the world and all the way north as far as you can go") but there was a story, and you were a part of it. There were dungeons to go to - and some of them were jaw-dropping ("Holy shit, a PIRATE SHIP, in a MINE?!") even if they were annoying at times. For every little mechanical nit or bugged event or other complaint, there was stuff to do. And, even with all of the flaws at the time, it was *still* the most polished game around.
In the meantime it's only gotten more polished, and the already way more intricate quests and storyline has been added to massively. There are dozens of dungeons to go to at various points in your playing life and quite a few raids (though some of the older stuff is ignored). They've added tons of features to improve gameplay. And, with the latest expansion, even at very low levels, your character feels, despite being one of millions, *important*. And you can change the world through your actions - as you complete quests, the world around you changes to reflect that in many ways. On top of that, they've really done a good job of making the player feel like their character is important, but at the same time that they are part of something larger.
WoW doesn't have the shiniest engine - it's actually really dated, and I'm often surprised when I play newer games at just how dated it is - but that's not really important. The biggest asset WoW has (aside from a huge playerbase drawing people in) is that there's TONS of stuff to do, tons of stories to follow.
And now we have Bioware's new game and... Oh, look, quests that would have been amazing 6 years ago but WoW's from 4 years ago were better. A shiny new engine but not, seemingly, a lot to do with it. So kind of like a lot of the other games out there. I played Champions Online - and it actually had some interesting stuff going on (and seems like it's gotten more to do so I might try it again). I got Star Trek - which really was pretty interesting to play, but I quickly got bored of repeating pretty much the same 5 missions over and over when I ran out of story arcs to do.
If people want t
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
It was just as grindy as all other games.
You have some interesting points about how WOW has some flexibility and good end game content. But I think the above quote hits the mark. Boring grind is what IMHO kills the fun in most MMORPGs. A game that wants to be successful needs to get around that. Some possible ways to do that:
-Lots and lots of developer-generated, original quests. Problem: That approach is EXPENSIVE
-Make PVP a way of leveling, as it tends to be less boring. Problem: Will probably be exploited by all kinds of leveling services, commercial and private. Think "victim for hire".
-Make PVE more interesting. There has been some progress with giving players skill combos or allowing them to take cover, which gives more tactical options. But ultimately this approach needs better NPC AI, which is a difficult field.
Here I'd like to mention EVE Online in particular. That game already has a great variety of different weapons, ammo types and support mechanics that make for great tactical options in PVP.
But unfortunately, poor NPC AI and mission ("quest") design make these options useless for PvE. Usually the mobs come at you in a big bunch, so hampering some of them with jamming equipment does not make much of a difference. On top of that, the NPCs always use the same tactics in the same mission, so once you know the mission you just follow the script.
With smarter NPC opponents, EVE PVE could be a lot more entertaining...
-Go for MMOFPS mechanics to get rid of the old "click on enemy, lauch attack, wait what happens". Problem: Twitch combat needs a high update frequency, which increases the neccessary bandwidth (and likely server CPU power). Fortunately, both of these get cheaper year by year, and there is a slow but noticeable trend to more FPS mechanics in MMOs :-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Exactly. How hard can it be to evolve past "kill 10 rats"? Text based games 20 years ago had more variety in quests and adventuring.
As one perceptive WoW player said, logging on for the first time after watching the South Park 'Sword of Truth' episode: "They're all boars. Some are bigger, or look different, or have different abilities, but they're all boars."
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Welcome to Star Wars - Inner Force!
The entity that you permeate is:
[ ] - Inanimate
[x] - Animate
The living entity you inhabit is: ...
[ ] - Vertebrate
[X] - Invertebrate
You are drifting in the blood stream of a Death-Star Trash Compactor Monster.
[ ] Begin Mitosis.
[ ] Generate Force.
[x] Draw nutrients from your host.
[ ] Die
----
Every player is a Midi-chlorian. The goal of the game is to remain undetected throughout the original trilogy followed by the prequel trilogy in order to avoid becoming a ridiculous explanation.
This is why I'm pretty much done with MMOs. I played MUDs back in the day, and have played "modern" MMOs ranging from Meridian 59 and Ultima Online all the way through WoW. The last time I logged in to an MMO was back in 2006. I'm completely, totally done with the idea of it. Yes, the sense of community is awesome, but I'd much rather just take part in multiple weekly tabletop/pen and paper games for that kind of team work. Not even The Old Republic can reignite my interest in MMOs...and I play in a Star Wars pen and paper RPG game every Saturday night :p
Living With a Nerd
I'm an EA employee. I used to work at BioWare. There's my disclosure.
I'm not allowed to talk very much about the game, for obvious reasons. I AM allowed to disclose that I was part of an internal beta late last year. (At least, at the time I was in it, I was allowed to disclose that. Hopefully that hasn't changed.)
Everyone that I know that was playing it was playing it addictively. We all loved it. The storyline that WE got to play was impressively well put together; I felt more at the center of that universe than I ever have in WoW (and I'm playing Cataclysm again, just so you know. I also think it's great).
This 'review' is pretty vague, and betas are betas. I can't promise the game will be great, and there's obviously a massive bias for me to say that it will be, but I was really sad when the beta completed. The first 6 hours of WoW are just you running around killing small, nearly defenceless animals; the first 6 hours of MY ToR experience was so much more. I really wish I could reveal everything that went on; it was really rich, engaging storytelling, with interesting conversations and dialogue. I don't remember skipping over any of the dialogue – spoken dialogue, of course –even once. Most of the time in WoW, I just click through as quickly as possible and read the quest text only if I really obviously become stuck. (Cataclysm's introduction of forced cutscenes in the beginner areas actually makes things a lot better.)
Seriously, give the game a chance. Beating up on it before you play it and based entirely off of the experiences of one person that played a few levels is hardly the way to judge an entire MMO.
I still remember how much fun SWG was, but when they implemented the "combat upgrade" they completely ruined the game. I loved the SWG economy and player cities. No other game I ever tried came close to replicating what SWG did (never tried Eve Online). Almost all the best gear is player created, and the best gear requires very rare material spawns that even the newest newbie can aquire if they know which planet the material is on. If you wanted nothing to do with combat, you could still have a very important role in the community. There was something for everyone. A friend of mine had fun being the town mayor and architect.
Before they ruined combat, the only downside to SWG was the lack of end game. Base raids were fun when both sides were somewhat even (almost never happened) and there were just a couple instances to run.
A group has been working on re creating the orignal SWG (haven't check on the project since last spring), but I would play it again in a heartbeat.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Except that wouldn't be an MMO.
Now you're getting somewhere. All these comments and not a single one actually says the truth - they failed as soon as they decided to make an MMO. They have said there is enough story for KOTOR 3-12. You know what would have made more money than this MMO? KOTOR 3-12. If Bioware wasn't releasing other cool stuff I'd be even more pissed that they trashed the best Star Wars-licensed games ever.
I've been seeing previews of your new "World of Warcraft" game, and I think you're wasting the rumored 50 million dollars you've put into it. It's nothing but a clone of the market leader, Everquest, and there's really no way you can overcome the huge advantage EQ has on you in terms of subscriber base and development time. They've had over five years to constantly refine and improve the game experience; you'll be starting out where they were five years ago, and doing nothing but playing catch-up. You've got the same "Go kill 10 rats" gameplay and the same endgame, except you have almost no raid content ready and I hear that your "innovative" PVP system, using the same "instancing" technology that Everquest implemented years ago in their Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion, will not be ready at launch. Only something totally new and radical will work -- have you considered making it over into a twitch-based FPS game? Just doing what's already proven to be popular and genre defining, but doing it better, cleaner, sharper, and faster, is no recipe for success. Originality is far more important than competence, and building on your competitors work and taking advatnage of all they've learned the hard way, and then bettering it, is no recipe for success. Only the totally new and totally unproven, especially if it's not what customers have previously demonstrated they're willing to pay for, will win the game. You may want to look at Tabula Rasa, which has been in development since 2001 and will probably release soon. It's so original and groundbreaking even the developers aren't entirely sure what kind of game they're making -- that kind of shattering of genre boundaries is the best way to have a mega-hit. I feel sorry for the developers, artists, and so on who will be laid off when World of Warcraft bombs, dismissed as just another Everquest clone in a field already crowded with them (Asheron's Call, Dark Age Of Camelot, Horizons, etc).
you must have missed the later added content. new breed of AI uses quite advanced tactics, and even tho they are so far focused on taking you down, not keeping themselves alive (that's what PVP is about) they pack quite a punch. and in 10 days these new breed AI npcs come in a form of incursion, that should fuel both pve and pvp content fuse .... im not sure this will end well, but there's only one way to see.
No, they failed when they bought up Mythic to get some MMO-experienced developers for SWTOR. Mythic, for chrissakes! The ones that made the oh so popular Warhammer Online, which has lost 90% of their release subscribers in the two years it's been out.
WAR is a lingering niche game in addition to being a bug-ridden, unbalanced, gear-dependent PvP mess with some of the worst developer/player communications I've ever witnessed.
It's not boding well for SWTOR...
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
WoW just had a massive retooling to make the first 60 levels feel less grindy. For instance, a lot of zones now tell a story.
I can think of two really good examples here. However, the one that was more memorable to me is Stonetalon Mountains (as Horde).
Did I mention that you get promoted through the ranks of Krom'gar's army, until you're made General just before he drops the bomb?
Sure there were some quests that were done just to kill time, but WoW in general has a much more cohesive (and epic) storyline and structure than it used to. Silverpine Forest / Ruins of Gil'naes is likely an even better of an epic storyline where (SPOILER) Sylvanus, leader of the Forsaken (Undead) is actually killed off before being resurrected, but I couldn't remember the entire storyline of that one.
Note: The old version of Stonetalon Mountains was just a random collection of quests to fight the rogue Tauren, stop the Venture Company from pillaging the land, kill some random monsters to perform crazy voodoo rituals, plant some plants, fight some harpies and wyverns because... well... they were there.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I had fun grinding Shattered Galaxy but not enough fun to pay
SG was amazingly fun. I was in one of the big regiments (guilds) back then. I had almost quit when I got into EHJ, but it was a blast with a community. It isn't a "solo" MMO.
Interesting note about SG in the context of the thread: there was no "max level" in the truest sense. There was a level limit, yes, but you could choose to refresh your character to level 1 periodically. Every time you did, you had additional stat points when you reach the level limit again. And there were, what, 3 layers of leveling, too. SG had no endgame, it was a pvp strategic squad MMO, and it was very different from WoW (no quests, player-driven politics and events, changing ownership of provinces).
Of course, it was not massively successful, but it's an excellent example of how a game can be radically different from the WoW model.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
Isn't it, though? Games are made to entertain their customers and sustain their backers. WoW has done both to a degree that no other MMO ever has before - for years and years running. If your image of the 'ultimate game' doesn't include success then I humbly submit that your game wouldn't live very long.
By this reasoning, McDonalds must make the best hamburgers in the world, based on their corporate success.
"The "best" anything is always subjective.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.