Beating WoW At Its Own Game

The BBC has up a short piece on the hopes of game developers and investors to 'beat World of Warcraft'. Representatives for the upcoming Age of Conan, recently-released Lord of the Rings Online, and Star Wars Galaxies all discuss what it's like competing in a post-WoW world. Funcom game director Gaute Godoger has a point when he says, "The industry so needs competition to World of Warcraft ... We need other strong games that can make people understand that there's more to it than WoW." The article discusses some of the features each of these games offer that differ from WoW, and theorizes a bit on where the MMOG genre will go next.

No first post

Due to everyone playing WoW, there will be no first post for this article.

Re:No first post

Fuck no! We do NOT need games more addicting than Warcrack.

Links about WoW addiction:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/WOW_widow [yahoo.com]
http://soulkerfuffle.blogspot.com/2006/10/view-fro m-top.html [blogspot.com]
http://wowdetox.com/ [wowdetox.com]
http://wowrecovery.com/ [wowrecovery.com]
http://deletewow.com/ [deletewow.com]
One out of many particularly sad stories: http://www.wowdetox.com/view.php?number=13640 [wowdetox.com]

Re:No first post

Perhaps the real point here is, "people who have problems with addiction shouldn't engage in behaviors that can, *for some people*, be addicting"?

I mean, comeon, I like a self-reinforcing, carrot-stick game well enough, but lately I can't get around to playing it. The game (or any game) on its own isn't nefarious. But, I suppose we have to villianize it *somehow*, right?

Re:No first post

WoW's effect on people is similar to some drugs but to a much lesser degree and without a chemical component. Perhaps there is a genetic predisposition to the addiction like alcoholism, perhaps gambling?

But in the end it still came down to a decision, and as much as we would like it to be otherwise, we are faced with the reality that we are responsible for our actions regardless of the factors that influenced the decision. You can be predisposed to being fat, but it does not excuse you in the eyes of society. When it really comes down to it, gun to the head, people will see bodyfat as a reflection on that person's character. Whether or not the circumstances are "fair" doesn't make much of a difference.

An alcoholic can blame alcohol all he or she wants, but the responsibility will sit with the alcoholic for their actions. And it's their prerogative to make the right decisions and accept the consequences. It may seem harsh, but I do prefer it over the alternative, where decisions are made for me by someone else.

Re:No first post

I read an article a year or two ago about a study a group did regarding shopping. Turns out, getting "stuff", even though we're buying it ourselves, gives us an empirically observable "high". I would imagine that getting virtual "stuff" likely results in the same sort of chemical reaction.

Re:No first post

No, WoW did not destroy your marriage. It didn't show up and sleep with your wife. You and your wife's inability to deal with problems in your marriage destroyed it. It's not nefarious, it's a game that millions (literally) play without it messing up their lives.

In short, "save it for Livejournal".

Re:No first post

You and your wife's inability to deal with problems in your marriage destroyed it.

i don't like that logic, it makes it sound like it's my fault... i much prefer arguments that leave me blameless and say that there is nothing wrong with me.

Re:No first post

"WoW did not destroy your marriage. It didn't show up and sleep with your wife."

You might want to cancel the 3.4.10 patch. That's all I'm going to say.

Do some research

The article refers to the Star Wars Galaxies updates as minor fixes and modifications that made players happier and expanded the player base. A simple check would have shown that after every major overhaul, experienced players left in droves and were replaced by noobs. Then to top it off it touts adding creature handling as a new feature (neglecting to add that it had existed long before, but they removed it). Surprising that SOE finally admitted maybe people liked raising animals, and put a feature people wanted in a game.
 
Yes, I rant, but being an avid fan of SWG before the Combat Upgrade, I can tell you that SWG is no longer the game it was. And then it was beaten while it was down with the New Game Experience which turned it into an action game instead of an RPG. Poor SOE, if you want to release a new RPG, do it. Don't replace what people were playing with something else, ESPECIALLY if they are paying a subscription.

SWG one of the first MMOs?

I love how the Star Wars Galaxies guy tries to excuse their massive screwups by saying SWG was one of the first MMOs and that "their wasn't a manual then for how to do them"

Hmmm... didn't SW:G come out after Dark Age of Camelot which was a nice MMO that was based around the concept of "Do Everquest but make it fun"?

Maybe the SW:G team could have spent some time with the Everquest team to help them avoid making the exact same missteps?

Reps for Star wars galaxies ? WHAT are they just

discussing there ? a NON game they screwed up SO bad to the extent that they even alienated the staunchest star wars fan ?

go fuck yourselves off in some remote location please. If you have "reps" from swg "discussing" shit, and if these are sony people, not only your article, but its writers, you, deserve it.

Some suggestions

In case any MMORPG developers are reading this, some suggestions:

1. Either make me pay a monthly fee, or make me pay for the client, not both. Charging for both makes it seem like you're not convinced I'll want to keep playing. By all means have a CD distributed in stores at a price that covers costs; it's just the phenomenon of paying $50 for the chance to pay another $10 that doesn't make sense.

2. If you can't make the client free, make it transferable, so I can sell it if I decide I don't want to keep playing. There's no way I'm going to spend $50 on a game I may not even like, if I can't resell it to get back some of the cash.

3. Include Mac and Linux. I don't run Windows and won't run Windows. There are millions of us, and we have very few MMORPG choices right now, so it's an easier niche for you to get into than the more saturated Windows market.

4. Make it possible to play the entire game in cooperative mode. I have zero interest in deathmatches.

5. I prefer SF to fantasy, yet most RPGs are fantasy. I guess it's easier to artificially limit the players and work around plot issues when you have magic around and a lack of fast long distance transport and communication technologies.

6. Don't riddle the game with spyware and have an abusive EULA. Yeah, WoW got away with it, but that's no excuse.

7. Don't require bleeding-edge hardware. My next machine is probably going to be a laptop with Intel graphics.

Generally, the idea I'm presenting is to try and go for the potential players who are not being served at all by the current online gaming market, rather than to compete to steal customers who already have a choice of a half dozen games they could be playing. You know, try to be the Wii rather than the PS3.

Re:Some suggestions

Sounds to me like you are suggesting they cater to the market of one - you. Maybe you did not mean it that way, but have you read what you wrote? It is all "me me me."

Re:Some suggestions

1 & 2 - Several MMOs have trials that you can play. Just off the top of my head I know that EQ1 and WoW have free trials, I'm sure there are others. I think I played EVE for some period for free as well.

3 - If there actually were millions of Linux using MMOGers out there, they'd make a client. But there aren't (not trying to troll, just being realistic). Cedega/Wine has several MMOs running as a secondary option.

4 - I don't remember ever playing any form of deathmatch(pvp?) in any MMOG. PvE is the focus of most MMOGs. PvP is usually a side game you can participate in if you choose.

5 - Are you saying that warp drives and ansibles are somehow more realistic than a teleportation spell? There are plenty of Sci-Fi based MMOGs...SWG, AO, EVE, TMO, etc.

6 - I think WoW is the only one to ever actually do it. Are there MMOs with tons of spyware all over?

7 - I've played several MMOs on my crappy laptop with Intel Graphics, including WoW and EQ, among others.

The Linux gaming market

If there actually were millions of Linux using MMOGers out there, they'd make a client. But there aren't (not trying to troll, just being realistic). Cedega/Wine has several MMOs running as a secondary option.

I won't lie, the Linux and Mac gaming market just isn't there in force yet. However, I don't look at this as a hindrance to entering the market; I look at it as an opportunity.

Linux and MacOS is growing. Especially with Microsoft's feeble latest attempt at an operating system, I think that more and more people will be looking at it as a viable home computing platform. Those people are going to want games. There just aren't that many available yet, especially in the MMORPG market.

If I were an MMORPG developer, I'd be jumping on this chance. I'd use as many cross-platform libraries as I could, and that would be one of my major selling points: Whether you're using Windows, MacOS, or Linux, you can play our game. You might make a mediocre dent in the Windows market, probably trailing behind the 800 pound gorilla of WoW. But you would virtually own the MacOS and Linux market for these types of games.

As those markets continue to grow, so does your game, and the market for Windows-only games shrinks. Even Windows users may start preferring it because they can play with their friends who are using Macs and Linux boxes, not just the ones who are beholden to Uncle Bill. Also, as a development company, you gain experience at developing cross-platform games, so the games you come out with in the future will likely be better than other's who are playing catch-up to the new world of multiple OS's out there.

Personally, I think developing games only for Windows is a really bad business gamble. You're basically betting your financial future on Macs and Linux not gaining any market share in the future. I think that's extremely short-sighted.

Oh, and just as an added note, don't forget that in the case of an MMORPG, we're not talking about developing the whole game for multiple platforms, only the client. The primary function of these clients is simply to display graphical representations of network data efficiently and prettily to the user. A very powerful and popular cross-platform graphics library already exists (OpenGL) that will handle the lion's share of this work. In my opinion, if you're a graphics application developer and you're not using it, you're being pretty stupid. As for the back-end server software, unless you plan on selling it or otherwise distributing it, you're free to lock yourself into whatever platform strikes your fancy.

Re:Some suggestions

Wow ... you sound exactly like I did 2 years ago before playing WoW :) ...
1. I think it's fairly obvious now that the retail box is to pay for the time and effort of developing the client and the monthly fees are to cover bandwith and server maintenance.
2. Allowing you to sell your account leads to the sale of high level accounts which denies them money for having that same player buy the box new and level on his own.
3. More than a few MMOs these days do have a Mac client. Plus if you're die-hard against Windows Cedega supports quite a number of MMOs as well.
4. I've played a few MMOs and with the exception of Guild Wars none of them focused on PvP ... it was always an option.
5. Yeah there's really not a whole lot they can do about that. Most RPGs in the non-computerized world are fantasy as well. Just the nature of the beast. That said look into Hellgate:London coming soon. :)
6. Spyware? I assume you're referring to the WoW check for hacks? I wouldn't go so far as to call it spyware. Especially when it doesn't talk to Blizzard unless it finds something worth reporting. As for EULA's ... come on man ... what software doesn't have an EULA? Freakin' Linux has an EULA ... less restrictive yes ... but it's there.
7. I played City of Heroes on my notebook with Intel video. WoW is currently playing on a 3-year-old machine. You can't crank the graphical settings but these games don't require "bleeding-edge" hardware.

Hope this helps :)
Kleedrac

No Grinding in LOTR Online?

From the article:

For instance, LOTRO rewards the repetitive actions often required in online games. In return for slaughtering large numbers of one type of creature players will become more powerful or gain a fancy title to demonstrates their prowess.

In this way, he said, LOTRO hopes to avoid the "grind" that afflicts the middle ranks of those adventuring in WoW.

How does this system eliminate grinding? It seems to me that it would exacerbate the grinding problems as players would grind even more in order to get the additional power and titles conferred by grinding mid-level mobs.

Re:No Grinding in LOTR Online?

It all depends upon your definition of "grinding."

IMO grinding means killing monsters for no reason except experience and money.

"Farming" is killing monsters repeatedly until the item you want drops.

"Kill counts" are the number of monsters you must kill in order to complete a quest. Some consider this grinding, but I do not since it has an end and a purpose.

From what I heard (never played it) EQ required grinding just to reach the next level.

I feel that WoW successfully did away with the senseless grinding. There is absolutely no reason for any character to ever have to grind by my definition. There are always more quests to do at your level; they may not be in your race's zones if you think that linearly, but they do exist. If you're trying to get a certain piece of gear (or getting gear to sell) then you'll be out killing specific mobs for quite some time and gaining money and XP to boot until you get that gear. Still, you have a purpose and there is an end point.

I beta tested and bought LotRO (even though I posted here and elsewhere that I wouldn't: the idea of a pay once and never again fall back game for when I [rarely] don't feel like playing WoW was just too tempting). LotRO reminds me of Ultima IX: Ascension. It's a very linear story with lots of little branches. You are free to go and do whatever you wish, but the main story will not progress until you complete the chapter you're in. I have experienced only one instant where I felt grinding was necessary. I was about to complete a quest that would take me out of the current zone. I knew I hadn't defeated a certain boss, but I could not do it by myself or at my current level. I went and killed a few more monsters to get the last 15% of my level, went and killed that boss and then went to complete the zone quest. (I was rewarded as well since two excellent items dropped off that boss.)

Still if I had looked for a fellowship or just accepted that I didn't finish a quest in that zone, I could have continued on my way without grinding. I have a few RL friends that simply weren't on at that time, so I doubt I'll ever have to grind like that again.

So, the same as WoW, then?

So basically you're saying that LOTRO's lack of grind is... well, the same as WoW before it.

Well, I'm not arguing with your assessment of either. It's just silly nevertheless to hear the LOTRO creators make such claims as that they're beating WoW by eliminating grinding (when WoW didn't require any either) or that titles for the number of creatures killed are what turns grind into non-grind.

It's blatantly silly. If anyone despised WoW's "collect 25 murloc heads... and only 1 murloc out of 20 has a head" quests and considers those "grind", then adding a title for number of murloc kills doesn't turn it into non-grind. If anything, it just adds insult to injury. The _last_ thing I'd want, when I'm bored out of my skull killing those murlocs... and yet another one was headless, is a message to pop up telling me that I got some title for a million murlocs killed. Not only it wouldn't make it magically "non-grind", it would be a reminder of all the points before when I grinded murlocs for some dumb quest.

Basically I'm used to hearing silly boasts from people making yet another "X killer" (where X can be WoW, iPod, etc) or "beating X at its own game", but this kind ranks not only as silly, but as... clueless. If the best they can come up with is "I know, let's add some titles", then they're truly and completely clueless. They didn't actually look hard at what they're copying, what works, what doesn't, what's not what the players want, and what they could design otherwise. They're taking wild guesses at something they don't even freaking understand, and hoping WoW would just have a heart attack so they can claim the kill.

Talk is cheap.

Instead of complaining about the lack of a strong competitor to WoW, how about making one?

Because they can't?

Well, let's see who they mention there:

- Funcom: makers of Anarchy Online, launched as the buggiest pile of shit in recorded history. Read the reviews on Something Awful, and know that they're actually going soft on it. The game was actually buggier than that. Also bear in mind that that's not at launch, that's after Funcom had been given more time to fix it, and had proclaimed it 110% fixed and working as intended. Yet people fell through the ground and/or started swimming in the ground, enemies attacked through walls, enemy melee attacks had longer range than a sniper rifle, doors were a swirling graphics error, balance in _all_ aspects was a sick joke, crashes and disconnects were common, getting trapped in scenery was also common, missions were randomly generated crap from the same template (e.g., you actually had to kill everyone in a "stealth" or "infiltration" mission to get the token), etc, etc, etc. It says something about the kind of people who'd proclaim that to be working as intended.

Heck, even the whole freaking factions were so messed up that faction 1 got more money and better equipment, faction 2 just got shafted, and faction 3 didn't even have a shop above newbie level. How's that for balance? Imagine joining, say, the Horde in WoW and discovering that your side doesn't even have more than the newbie areas in the game.

So basically forget these guys, they just _can't_ design a competitor to WoW. All they can do is hope that someone else comes along and kills it.

- SWG: it stayed afloat at all because of being a merchandising exercise (you know, like putting Darth Vader's head on a t-shirt: you hope people will buy it just because it's official merchandise), _not_ because of having good design. It was the game that was awaited by _millions_ of SW nerds like it's the second coming of Obi Wan, and it just managed to disappoint almost all of them. Either right away, or in the many changes, culminating with the NGE that turned the whole game into a whole other _genre_. Among many other sins.

And reading TFA just reminds me of another thing: the team also always had a thorough contempt for the players, and had no qualms with making excuses or telling outright lies. And I see it continues to this day. E.g., now they're introducing pets as some exciting brand-new feature... never mind that it was there before they removed it in the NGE, pissing off everyone whose class had been eliminated. E.g., claiming that reducing the classes was because of noticing what players do and want is... rich. It's like claiming that you kicked someone in the balls because he obviously wanted that. E.g., the excuse that they were the first and that excuses their mistakes... no it doesn't. There were things known not to work long before, some since the time of MUDs, the SWG team just chose to ignore everything. And at any rate, by the time they did some of their biggest blunders, such as the NGE, that was already after a decade of MMOs. They simply didn't have that excuse any more. Etc.

At any rate, to return to the main idea: everyone who is still there, is there because it's SW. _Not_ because the SWG team can design a good game.

- Turbine: Well, these guys did make Asheron's Call, which was rather popular at one point. (Even if mainly due to being the place where you won't get ganked instantly like on UO.) So at least at one point they did have the mojo to challenge the kings of the hill.

Then they seem to have forgotten how.

AC2 was a flop, and its long list of mistakes could make a case study in how _not_ to go about designing a MMO. It seemed to actually go out of the way to be the opposite of what the players wanted in at least two dozen aspects, or at least miss the mark by a mile. Thoroughly clueless game design.

D&D Online was a thoroughly mediocre and uninspired game, which again managed to miss the mark of everything that most players want in a game. Not even a case of trying to innovate and happening to get it wrong, but just getting it wrong with

Try better competitors, to start.

Seriously. Turbine has had one real success-- Asheron's Call. Its sequel bombed spectacularly, D&D Online is basically a Guild Wars with a monthly fee, and while LOTRO is barely out of the gate, its questing and lore structures are as turgid as its source material (which is great if you're a Tolkien fan, granted).

Star Wars Galaxies has gone from 'flawed, but promising' to 'what has science wrought?!' over the course of its existence, a stunning reversal of the usual trend to launch with missing content and patch in later, to launching with missing content and tearing most of what's left out later. Servers are ghost towns, good going there, guys.

Anarchy Online has had more ups and downs than a roller coaster (abysmal beta, spectacularly awful launch, promised lore/television/multimedia tie-ins that failed to materialize... and a free year of basic play offer to bolster subscription numbers), but at least Age of Conan has some interesting gimmicks planned for it.

WoW may be simplistic compared to its predecessors and competitors, but it's been as well-produced as any other Blizzard product-- that is to say, polished to an eye-searing shine. In order to pull the same thing off, their competitors will need to get out of the 'launch first, patch later' mindset, which will absolutely require the trust of the people that fund the projects. Without that element of risk-taking on their part, there's no way that any development team will be able to pull the same thing off. All of that development and polish takes time and effort, which are fueled by money... and the precedent of shipping something that runs, rather than something that shines is still much stronger than WoW's literally phenomenal success.

Polish is the Defining Characteristic for Blizzard

WoW may be simplistic compared to its predecessors and competitors, but it's been as well-produced as any other Blizzard product-- that is to say, polished to an eye-searing shine.

I've found that to be the case with most Blizzard games. They don't do anything particularly innovative (Real Time Strategy existed before Warcraft, MMORPGs existed before WoW), but the level of polish on a Blizzard game is far above and beyond any other game in the same genre.

Heck, look at Starcraft. That game is still being sold and played, despite approaching 10 years of age. Reason: the game was simple to understand and play, and the races were far more balanced than in any other game of that time. Nothing really new or innovative, but the overall execution was of high quality, ensuring continued success.

No Mention of EVE Online?

EVE Online is one of the largest MMORPGs out there. Its also possibly the only successful science fiction based MMO game. Given these two characteristics, combined with the fact that EVE's developer team is much more hands-off with regard to player-to-player interaction, I'm surprised that EVE was nowhere to be found the article.

Massive players compared to readership?

A massively multiplayer game needs to have numbers of players that are... massive. So dislodging WoW from the lead spot takes a lot more than just a great game, you have to reach those players. If there are 8 million subscribers on WoW then how many more are out there to be reached? The $15 or so per month doesn't sound like a lot to most of us, but that's on top of having broadband available, having a decent computer an having the leisure time to spend on a game. The claim that they're making Conan "for adults" sounds fine on paper but other adults think it's odd that I have the time to commit to World of Warcraft. Finding the millions of adults interested in spending the time and money on an immersive game is a huge challenge. It's a lot harder to do than getting people to read the original stories.

I wonder how the numbers of players they need compares to the readership for the works they're based on.

LOTRO avoides the grind?

From the article:

LOTRO has also learned from the bad experiences seen in other games, he said.

For instance, LOTRO rewards the repetitive actions often required in online games. In return for slaughtering large numbers of one type of creature players will become more powerful or gain a fancy title to demonstrates their prowess.

In this way, he said, LOTRO hopes to avoid the "grind" that afflicts the middle ranks of those adventuring in WoW.

How is that avoiding the grind? I may be mistaken, but repetitively killing the same things over and over again to advance sounds suspiciously like grinding to me. If they had an entertaining system that avoided grinding to advance, then the article might have been worth reading.

These companies are not doing their best...

...if they are attempting to steal customers from Blizzard. If your game is worth playing over WoW, you will be able to attract a wider audience if there is a free trial period or weekend. Personally, I played the WoW 'beta weekend' before the launch and only bought the game (read: sold my soul) this past January when I finally decided it might be worth it to spend some cash every month to play a game. I play slowly and at my leisure (I am only level 45) but am already looking at LoTRO. Only one problem -> I am not going to spend $50 just to try it out. And I'm not even a hardcore WoW fan. If they can't win me without a free trial/weekend, how do they expect to snag the level 70s that have been playing for much longer? Most of all I am looking forward to Age of Conan. The gameplay videos and general concept look promising even if I do prefer fantasy races to built men.

The success of WoW

It's quite easy to explain why WoW succeeded where others have failed.

First and foremost, they had an already existing background world. That started it off well. Warcraft has a LONG and quite well known world. Not with movie goers, not with bookworms, but with computer players. That sets it apart from SWG and LOTR. Yes, both have a large fanbase, but those aren't necessarily gamers. WoW had a gamer fanbase from the start.

Second, it's easy. Sorry, dear WoW players, but that game is easy. Easy. Easy. I know a five year old who's leveled to 60 without any real difficulty. But that actually meant that it was one of the first MMORPGs that drew the attention of people who're not hardcore number crunchers and grinders, who don't first of all consult a billion pages about the game to find out whether spell X or spell Y is in situation Z more appropriate.

It was basically the mix of having a good player base at its start and being easy enough that people who got invited by those who knew its name (i.e. the "old" Warcraft players) didn't get bored with the detail work.

"[...] there's more to it than WoW."

Like other MMOs! Seriously, I'm really starting to think that Warcraft's popularity was the final nail in PC gaming's coffin. It was already becoming rare to see anything truly great released, and now even more-so that MMOs are at the top of everyone's list of "regurgitated crap to release". At least Age of Conan sounds to add some *cough* new *cough* features and will be set in a universe one could care about. But even at that, I have a hard time seeing how people can justify regularly PAYING to play a game unless they are indeed playing it near non-stop. A habit I have unfortunately witnessed up close and found to be quite annoying. I'm just glad that Quake II actually took some skill, otherwise I might feel as if I had been wasting my time on constant deathmatch back in the day...

What is SWG doing there?

Some marketing drone must have earned his money, to make someone believe that SWG is significant, growing, or a "future competitor". The only game SWG is trying to defeat is SWG itself. I don't really believe there's currently any game (announced or released) that has a remote chance to dethrone WoW, but to say that SWG is a contender is ludicrous.

End of this year

We have plenty of potential "WoW killers" due for release at the end of this year: Team Fortress 2, Crysis, Warhammer Online, Unreal Tournament 2007. They may not steal all of the player base (the hardcore people who play relentlessly for minor equipment upgrades), but I would bet a few dollars to say these games will make a serious dent on the population of WoW. That is unless Blizzard are crafty and manage to get another expansion out by then, which is doubtful.

Although the upcoming patch for World of Warcraft is pretty much offering more of the same and has been 5 months in the making, and WoW players seem to be particularly apathetic about what Blizzard provide them with in the way of content - Blizzard say they prefer fixing bugs rather than producing more content - seems to keep the majority of the wow addicts happy.

http://www.eurogamer.net/releases.php?platform=pc [eurogamer.net]

Shows all the PC games

How to Beat WoW at its own game...

...don't.

You need only look so far as Diablo and Diablo 2 to realize that when it comes to addicting grindfests, Blizzard is king. Attempting to take Blizzard down on their home turf is a ridiculous goal, and one that should be abandoned by any MMORPG hopeful.

I can't say I pay attention to subscription numbers, but to my knowledge the most successful MMORPG outside of WoW is EVE. EVE also happens to be fundamentally different from WoW.

The problem with these companies is that they're trying to make "WoWLotR" or "WoWConan". They see WoW as a formula they can copy and make money from. What they fail to realize is that the "GTA Clone" strategy doesn't work with MMORPGS. Even if you were able to make a game as good as WoW was when it launched you're still 2 and a half years behind on new content updates, balance tweaks and cosmetic upgrades. Even if you can make the game as good as WoW is now, you still don't have the 8 million strong playerbase. Your game literally needs to be significantly better than WoW straight out of launch.

No, you can't beat WoW at its own game. You can wait for it to eventually fade and then stab it when its weak, but that's a long ways off yet. If you want a successful MMORPG, it needs to be different from WoW. It needs to do the things people wanted from WoW but didn't get. I doesn't even have to be in a fantasy setting. I know I'd enjoy a Dynasty Warriors MMORPG, were it done right (we probably don't have the technology to make that as awesome as it could be, sadly).

In summary, trying to beat WoW at what WoW does best (it's own game) right now is like trying to beat an olympic athlete in a marathon when they have an 8 mile head start.

Step 1: better artwork, not better graphics

I see these games, with their bump-mapping, realistic shadows and high-poly models. One or two screenshots is all I need to know that I don't want to play them. Game designers need to realize that graphics are more about art than technology. I don't care how realistic the shadows are, if I'm forced to walk around in some drab, grey world, carrying generic swords taken out of some cheap Maya Model Pack.

The quality and imagination of the artwork in World of Warcraft is one of the main, and often-overlooked, reasons for its success.

MMORPGs aren't just games...

WoW, aside from being a well polished, easily accessible game has more going for it than fun gameplay. WoW has become a social community, many of whom spend time talking on Vent, many of whom are college roommates or friends who all play together and actually keep in touch, not only through facebook or myspace, but through WoW. WoW is a social game and to say that other games are going to pull away users...well I just don't see it happening.

Nuke the grind

The grind is the worst part of the MMORPG experience. The existence of the grind is understandable: there's only so much material that the designers can create so the grind is a way to extending gameplay. But it's just not fun.

The only game I can speak of from experience is EVE Online. They solved one half of the grind problem by using training rather than leveling. You train skills in realtime. Even if you don't have time to play the game for a week, the skills are still training in the background. So someone with a job and a college student who have been playing for three months will both have comprable skill levels but the college student will have more cash.

The second half of the problem is cash. In EVE, losses hurt. Lower level ships may only cost a few million but better ships can easily cost hundreds of millions, plus all of the equipment you put on it. This can represent the profit of weeks of playtime going up in smoke when a battle goes poorly. You don't respawn, you don't pay a nominal fee to "repair" the ship, it's gone. What makes this so irksome is that profesions in EVE boil down to grinding. You can mine roids, you can hunt NPC pirates in asteroid belts, you can run missions, but it all becomes a tedious chore after a while. For most veterans, the fun stuff is pvp. The downside is that you have to grind to make good those losses. Proponents of the "serious loss" style in EVE say it helps deter immature gamers from ever joining up but that claim has been disproven many times. The other bonus is the adrenaline rush you get when you're putting it on the line with an expensive ship. The pulse-racing experience cannot be replicated in a traditional game where you can just reload when something goes wrong.

It's tough to strike the balance with these sorts of games. You can spent 10 minutes or 10 hours playing Counterstrike and it's non-stop run and gun but you aren't building towards anything bigger. The RPG's require a lot more time with the idea that you're building towards something but you end up suffering from play mechanics that have ceased to be fun, thus a grind. What's more, games seem to go through severe creative lurches. You see a flurry of development before launch and then the effort tapers off, new features coming along once in a blue moon. Players can't really debate the decisions made before a game goes public but everyone has an opinion once they're in the game; fixing one problem gores somebody else's ox.

The best idea I can come up with for a game that makes death count but doesn't add grind would be one that gives a player a certain number of respawns per day. You can earn cash by playing. You die, you lose a respawn. You can buy spare spawns with your cash but it's expensive. For the casual player, they'll be using the free respawns. The more hardcore player will be earning the cash to pay for spare spawns. This can give provide the adrenaline jolt "serious loss" gamers are looking for without necessitating a huge grind for casual players.

Well ask someone who played them all

The oldest first, Star Wars Galaxies. Yes its launch was bugged, yes bugs took for ever to fix and yes SOE changed the nature of the game, in my opinion ruining it, with the CU and the NGE. Yet it remains one of the most ambitious titles. Player controlled economy with all equipment obtained through crafting NOT looting, yes this could mean that a new player who wasn't socially capable enough to find existing players, had a hard time getting the money to buy the equipment. I personally have helped plenty of newbies to get their decent starter kit. SWG had a nice community. It also remains alone in allowing you to combine classes as you saw fit. Sure, this did lead to some people trying to spec out uber combat classes and to wich SOE made the fatal mistake of them upping the high level content to those specced out players. Yes the doc-buff was the death of grouping BUT it tried.

A typical SWG quest, oh wait, nobody bothered with them because although some had nice writing the XP and loot sucked and so why bother, RPG for the story? Not in MMO land mate.

Everquest 2 too tried. FULL SPEECH! Read that again and realize that in 2007 NOT ONE SINGLE MMORPG EXCEPT EVERQUEST 2 HAS SPOKEN TEXT FOR ITS QUEST GIVERS. 2000 called, they want their text bubbles back. It also tried a new crafting system and upped the stakes in the graphics department. It didn't work. EQ2 is a nice enough game but it is also evercamp squared. A typical EQ2 quest goes like this. Kill 20 X, turn in, Kill 20 X, turn in, Kill 20 X, turn in, Kill 20 X, turn in, Kill rare spawn that only spawn on days with no y.

And then SOE changed the game again, the running animation now looks like an old fashioned slapstick and the death penalty was made so light it barely matters.

Next, there is WoW. A little known MMORPG that is managing to hang on somehow. Blizzard is to MMORPG's what Microsoft is to desktops. It does nothing new, it copied everything it does from everyone else and still it absolutly dominates. Does it have less bugs? No, read the forums, did it have an untroubled launch? Like hell, does it have excellent customer service? Still read the forums.

Its gameplay is a throwback to the orignal everquest with absolutly nothing new added. And yet. Something is right. (something is also wrong, but I am coming to that).

EVERY single SOE game has an engine that is claimed to be future-proof wich is why your computer right now will choke on it. Apparently nobody at SOE realized that a future proof engine is of no use unless the game itself has a future.

The WoW engine is NOT futureproof. Blizzard used an engine that computers of that day could run. Its relativly low power is hidden masterfully by their choice of art direction (hint to SOE, you need some) and it works. To a point. I am not alone in simply NOT like the graphics after prolonged exposure. It is worthy to note that of all the major MMORPG's in the west WoW is closest to the korean ones in the lack of being able to customize your avatars basic looks. Well I say avatar, WoW players tend to think of it as toons.

WoW is Everquest Lite done decently. It says a lot about the MMORPG market that this is high praise indeed. What turns people off sooner or later is that WoW copied everything from everquest including evergrind and evercamp. These things I could have done without.

A typical WoW quest goes like this. Loot item from X by killing it. Oops that one didn't have it, kill another, and another and another and another (repeat for several hours).

Next, another SOE title. Ambitous, certainly, trying new things, absolutly. Bugged, oh hell yes. I am talking offcourse about no other game then Vanguard.

More races then any other game and although a cynic might claim most are just color variations, they do have different starting areas/stories. More classes as well. An extra gameplay option in the form of diplomacy. A future proof engine (hint looks great, won't run) and lots of potential. And bugs. Lots of bugs. Basic stupid bugs that

Re:Well ask someone who played them all

Oh and another sad comment on MMO's, this is the one and only MMO to have women who run using their hips. If nothing else, Vanguard will go down in history as the first MMO ever to have a good walking animation for the females.

Haven't seen Vanguard, but have you seen Guild Wars? The females in GW are very well-proportioned and well-animated. GW may have the highest 'pixellated boobie rating' of any MMOG out there, with excellent and attractive character designs.

This is important if, like me, you choose your character build based on what kind of backside you want to watch running across the landscape for hours on end.

FunCom doesn't have the formula

FunCom and Blizzard come from different planets as far as culture and ethos, and IMHO its why FunCom will always be a second rate game company. (The industry will probably never forget the absolute disaster that was the AO rollout. I was personally one of the thousands in line waiting for a full refund for that atrocity). Unlike Blizzard, FunCom sticks to release schedules and predefined featuresets (among many other problems) which will always result in buggy gameplay and cut corners.

What we have now in the industry is a few players who were successful *primarily because they were early to the scene* (FunCom being one. I personally hope Mythic isn't another, but they may be). These players really don't necessarily have the caliber to maintain their position and IMHO will vanish over time.

So when FunCom says "The industry so needs competition to WoW" its very true. Except that FunCom isn't really in the running. The bar of quality and depth has been raised significantly by WoW, and the result is a black-hole which sucks players away from the competition. ArenaNet is still looking strong, and other contenders like LOTRO and DDO are looking good, but FunCom? No.

SWG let itself be beat...

It wasn't LucasArts, well, not directly by changing game elements. Their mistake was picking SOE to develop and maintain the game. SOE did NOT listen to the user community. I played SWG from its inception until WoW came out. I buried myself in SWG, at one point paying for 6 accounts by myself. I absolutely loved it, even with all of its bugs. But with every bug that surfaced, the mentality SOE employed was not a bugfix but a complete re-write of the system. The community did not want the NGE, the community wanted long-standing bugs fixed. Instead, SOE decided to completely change the premise of the game. Why was it so hard for them to realize that, through this change, they were going to lose (and alienate) a vast majority of their playerbase?

Blizzard's success hinges upon one fact that many people debate but is essentially true. The developers DO listen to the community. A good chunk of the changes made to the game, or at least proposed and then refined, were driven by the player community. Since the player has a direct impact on the direction the game takes, the loyal playerbase stays with the game. Indeed, for the first year and a half to two years of WoW, I played almost non-stop, every day, all day. I have since made an entrance into the "real world" where there big yellow LED light source we call the sun exists, and have cut back on my WoWcrack addiction by quite a bit.

Perhaps the most laughable piece of the entire article is the claim that SWG was "one of the first" MMOs. It was, by no means, one of the first. It was, however, one of the first MMOs that managed to gain the biggest following, and subsequently lose it because of inept management.

You Want A Winner?

The largest problem in MOST MMORPG's is that they dwell on singular components and fundamental modules too much.
What I mean is that the most successful are those that can create inter-cultural settings that make groups of people follow an pathways that are completely outside others. The excitement of the entire secular experience is when those paths cross and it's almost like discovering a new race and culture that was always there but you never knew existed.

The same goes for skills, weapon choice, and etc.

Most MMORPG's do this so poorly that you find yourself in a hamsterwheel spinning as fast as you can to level up to get to the top so that you can finally start to enjoy the game.

The entire point to the MMORPG is not the skill levels, but the social interactions that take place inside the game, and the introduction of those unique experiences in the correct amount of time- no matter how you play the game.

Beating WoW is not the objective, but a by-product of successful construction of a MMORPG.
Take one look at the cookie-cutter and break that into several pieces. Then start from there by taking with you what pieces you like. THAT is how you win.

I miss the late 90's where there were some really original ideas out there in the hands of innovative minds.
Where did all those crazy people go? They really had some moxie!

Wow is ready to fall. Just do it.

Wow is very weak at the moment. Expansion was a major failure. Any real competition would be very successful. So... don't write, don't hope. Go make it, chop-chop =)

It's easy, it's simple...

Blizzard wins right now because they've found the secret. KISS, it's not difficult or hard or painful. If a person wants to pop for an hour grind some rep, or something else they can. That's the key and that's why Blizzard currently dominates. You can take anyone of any age or even a trained monkey and drop them in the starter area and away they go, they can get to the top level on their own, if they decide they want to go further they can raid after they get finished grinding out the 5-man instances. They don't need two other people or four others to go questing with every night.

They have 5-man instances galore, 10-man raids, 3-25's, and another two coming out in the next month. While it's not as easy in the old world for people to play(read: trained monkey's have to be able to play their class now and can't hide their screw-ups), it's still doable.

Casual's have their niche, raiders have theirs, PVPers whine because PVE mechanic's don't mesh well with PVP.

Yes, there *is* more to it than WoW...

...but not in terms of what the industry is actually willing to do.

WoW goes about as far as it's possible to go while still having what is very largely a static environment. Blizz are in the process of phasing in what essentially amounts to zone-wide games of domination, (if your faction holds all 3 or 4 castles in the zone at once, all players in your faction get a 5% damage bonus) but that still isn't what a vocal minority of players have expressed that they want.

What I've heard said minority in the playerbase saying it wants in terms of world pvp is a scenario where regions can literally be taken by one side or the other. In other words, although Hillsbrad for example might start out neutral/contested, there could be a scenario where Alliance players could invade it and it could literally become an Alliance zone. At the moment, zone allegiance is static; it never changes.

The problem with this sort of thing however is that there are technical issues with regards to implementing it, and that said technical issues are mostly above the industry's preferred pain threshold; especially considering that they involve introducing things that are radically outside the current paradigm. (At least from what I've seen) The other incentive for Blizzard NOT to introduce such things is that even though some players generally do want them, such players are a tiny minority. Most players are firmly addicted to ovine repetition such that if Blizzard *were* to start introducing genuinely innovative/novel aspects into the game, it'd probably scare the sheep away. That's something Blizz really don't want to do, because given that the sheep are the overwhelming majority, they're also where Blizz consistently will make most of their money.

If you look at the differences between WoW and UO in particular, what sets WoW apart isn't what Blizzard added to the model anywhere near as much as what they took away. UO was a lot more open-ended; yes there were dungeon crawls, but there was also a much more thorough economy, a somewhat more diverse reportoire of trade skills, and there were player created and run towns in some places due to the player real estate. In other words, the game wasn't only about "Go to X location and kill some monsters, or X dungeon and kill some more monsters there, or X set part of the map and kill other players there."

The real problem though, now that I look at it, isn't with the development industry. It's with the players themselves. If WoW has proven anything, it's overwhelmingly that players want an extremely narrow, object-oriented game environment for the most part. They need objectives spelled out for them extremely precisely. Maxis actually found out the same thing with The Sims; most human beings simply don't have the initiative or the intelligence required to set their own objectives within the game environment, but instead require the game designers to do it for them.

So yes...UO in particular and other games as well have showed us that there's a lot more to it than WoW, but what WoW itself and players' response to it has overwhelmingly shown is that neither the design industry nor the playerbase itself for the most part *wants* more. If Blizzard have any overwhelming talent, it is a talent for identifying and isolating those elements of fantasy which the gaming public want, and then regurgitating said elements back to the gaming public in an utterly McDonaldised way. They did this with both D2 and Starcraft as well as WoW. The end result is a game which is massively horizontal, rather than vertical. There's no depth whatsoever; it's based around literally mind-numbing repetition, but even though nearly the only two activities include killing monsters and finding gear with which to kill yet more monsters, the sheer number of different monsters and loot in themselves make the game sufficiently superficiallly interesting that you're able to at least temporarily (depending on your degree of intelligence, which thankfully for Blizzard, is minimal in the ca

What the hell...my two cents

I could make a zillion points...but I'll only make one:

What I'd really like to see is two MMORPG companies get together, preferably from different genres (think SWG and WoW) and create a cross-game PvE and/or PvP zone.

How totally sweet would it be to force choke an elf mage or stab an Orc with a light saber?! WICKED SWEET, THAT'S HOW! Or what about putting together a war party of whatever characters WoW offers and having an onslaught against a clone army?!

Now, MAKE IT SO!

Arnold Factor

Seriously, if the Conan game actually reaches a final/shelved state, I'd buy it and enjoy it for the Arnold factor alone. Be it a revolutionary MMORPG or a complete flop, I'd get at least $50 worth of laughs out of it, shouting Arnoldisms at the screen with my friends.

I can already imagine epic PVP taunts: (Schwarzenegger accent) "I AZK YOU, FATHA KRAAHM, GRAHNT ME VIHKTORY, GRAHNT ME REVENGE!!!"

Actually create a decent MMO and I'll play it

The problem isn't WoW. It's that all the other MMOs out there suck about as hard as a black hole. Make a decent MMO and people might actually play it. SWG dug it's own hole, they can blame no one else. As for other MMOs, how about creating something that we can enjoy after we stop wearing diapers.

SWG had serious potential

I really think that in overall concept, SWG was the most promising MMORPG released to date. I loved the large variety of professions and the fact that you didn't even have to do anything combat oriented if you didn't want to. I also liked the fact that it was accurate to the story line (being between episodes 4 and 5) with very few jedi being in existance (and those that were had to mainly remain hidden or face perma-death if found and killed). It put the focus back on everyone else (non-jedi) who make up 99.999 percent of the Star Wars universe of the time. I had a weaponsmith/armorsmith who made a killing farming nuclear power with our guild's power company. We'd find the top quality patches of radioactive and drop a billion harvesters across the patch to farm it and make a killing. I'd use the money to buy other top materials to make the best possible weapons and armor. It was fun doing it and building a very good reputation on the server for top quality gear. Where I believe they made mistakes (or at least where they started in a long series of mistakes) were having characters unlock Jedi slots by grinding and mastering different professions over and over. This is speculation, but I believe that they had originally set the profession masteries to a very low level (possibly 5-6) to unlock. They underestimated players "hamster like" qualities of running in the wheel all day (grinding professions) to unlock their slots and therefore had to adjust the limits closer to 20 to unlock their jedi slots. The game went down hill when players all caught on to this and began the non-stop profession mastery grind to unlock. They then made it more direct (and grind-like) by adding the whole Force Sensitive grind/profession tree to allow everyone and their mothers the chance of being Jedi. Of course, PVP was useless at this point if you weren't a Jedi. Jedi were everywhere and became very powerful being that they didn't have to hide as much any more. Bounty Hunters had to team up in large groups to take them down and with Perma-Death removal, it didn't matter if they did, really. They basically tossed the story line to the side in efforts of allowing everyone to be the big winner by giving Jedi to anyone who'd grind enough. If they'd just stuck with the original concept, kept Jedi extremely rare and hardly ever seen, and improved the process of being a Jedi, the game would likely remain a huge contender. What I think would've worked best for choosing who was Jedi and not would be to have random CD-Key's chosen as Force Sensitive. That way, regardless of grind, you're a Jedi based on luck. Either you are, at birth (purchase) or not. Also, you'd have to grind a character up a significant way before finding out if you're force sensitive or not to prevent little rich kids from buying 50 copies of the game to try it and toss if it wasn't force sensitive. Also different keys could have different levels of force sensitivity (the force being stronger with some than others). But before I get flamed for the suggestion, keep in mind that I'd prefer living Jedi to be a truly rare thing. If anyone happened to be Jedi, they'd find it extremely difficult to see just how strong the force was with them. And with perma-death in place, they'd have to start over from scratch if they got too obvious about it. So destroying the story by flooding the game with Jedi, weak/klunky expansions, rediculous updates that dumbed the game down significantly and refusing to listen to the player base. Not to mention taking months/years to fix launch bugs. GG SOE. Thanks for ruining what could've been the best MMORPG.

Here's one of the big secrets:

Mac versions. And not bad ports, not Wine hackery, not months- or years-delayed half-efforts. Blizzard has always mantained mac versions as first-class citizens among all their products: full feature and performance parity, full interoperability, and synchronized releases. And this has served them incredibly well.

There are somewhere between fifteen and twenty million macs in use right now that are recent enough to run WoW. Even though these are people who have not chosen their platform to maximize the number of games available to them, let's say that one in ten has at least some interest in gaming occasionally.

That's about two million potential customers for whom there is very little product competition. A market that size is about a quarter of WoW's total playerbase, and far larger than most games ever see.

Blizzard is one of the few companies that has been bright enough to catch on to the value of making big-scale games for this incredibly ripe market, and I suspect that it has been a big contributor to their success. With luck, a few other big game authoring companies will figure out this trick as well.

Stickiness tough to overcome

Beating WoW won't take just a great game; if WoW itself had launched in the face of another game that had the same success WoW enjoys now, it would not have had the success it has had. The reason is that many people like to play with friends, either RL ones or people they've met in-game.

So even if these games are great, polished, and addicting, if their friends won't leave WoW with them, people will go back to WoW to be with their friends. It's going to be a very tough market for the next 4+ years.

Hopefully at around that point, enough people will be tired of WoW that entire guilds will be looking for a new game to play, and new games will have a much better chance of getting a solid foothold.

I'm still stuck on the pricing issues

I really enjoy MMORPGs, but pricing is a big issue to me. Paying $15/mo when I barely have time to log 5 hours a month feels like I'm being taken for a ride. For someone who's dropping 10 hours or more a week, $15/mo is a steal in terms of cost per hour. For someone like me, however, it makes more sense to buy a block of hours (like a calling card of sorts) or pay a lower monthly cost for a restricted-use account. This is one of the main reasons I quit WoW. Contrary to what more than a few other posters have said, there are plenty of missions that are either difficult or impossible to complete by yourself AND require an investment of 2 or more hours at a time. Sure, you can make it to level 60 without doing them, but you're missing out on a lot of the content. When I figure that I can't play a large chunk of the game without spending at least 10-20 hours a month on it, I feel like I'm being ripped off. EVE gets some of it right by letting you train skills while logged out. Even if I'm not playing all of the time, I still feel like I'm getting some benefit from the game without giving up my Saturdays. Of all of the MMORPGs I'm aware of, this is the one I'd be most likely to start playing just for that reason. (I still wouldn't mind a drop in cost, however.) Where an MMORPG can succeed is by capturing players like me. Make a game that can be played for 30-60 minutes at a time at a lower cost without sacrificing or foregoing content because of time constraints and you'll grab a significant number of price- and time-sensitive clients.

time-suck

'We need other strong games that can make people understand that there's more to it than WoW'

I quit WoW 3 times (although haven't cancelled my account), the 3rd time after raiding for around 6 months. 3 weeks ago I bought BurningCrusade & played it for about 1 week before I realised why I stopped playing. It's a repetitive time-suck device. I love playing my undead priest I greatly enjoyed instances & raiding, which I'd love to be able to logon & do a couple of times a week for an hour or so. But there is no progression at that rate & it is unsatisfying.

The very idea that MMORPG's can be casual player friendly is a lie when 'casual' means only an hour a day.

Sometimes I think people have forgotten that there are games other than MMORPGs. Or perhaps the game industry has forgotten that they are 'games'. Remember, something you do for fun & entertainment as a break from your real life.

And I'm still bitter about Starcraft:Ghost.

Disingenuous Article

While I can't comment on the Age of Conan portion of that article, the section discussing Star Wars Galaxies is completely misleading. It suggests that Lucas Arts has "tweaked" the game on a few occasions. What they have actually done is effectively redesigned the entire core mechanics, not once, but twice, and each instance made the game simpler, less challenging, less innovative, and less engaging. The playerbase has responded with its feet and left the game en masse.

SWG is *THE* textbook example of how not to make changes to a game, and the perfect example to show exactly how badly a company can mismanage one of the largest provenances in a game. There is no reason - other than lack of design skill - that World of Warcraft should be more successful than a game based on Star Wars, probably the best recognized storyline in the history of Cinema.

The original design was ambitious and as it says in the article there was no manual on design, WOW has the advantage of having been built after all the first generation MMOs and thus can incorporate all of the essential features found in those games. It does so very well IMHO, even if I think its a mostly derivative and unchallenging game overall. What WOW does though, is do all the essential things very well, even if it introduces very little in the way of new elements overall. SWG at the moment, does NOTHING well at all in any area of the game, and has lost all of the new and innovative features that once made it a great, if flawed, game. With SWG its like they identified all of the great and interesting points in the game then cut them out of the game one by one until the only thing left was a pathetic FPS/MMO hybrid that has nothing worthwhile left.

The bit about adding the Beastmaster skills completely ignores the fact that up until the last massive rewrite of the game (so for the first few years) there was a highly popular profession called Creature Handler. When they came out with the New Game Enhancement (NGE in SWG parlance), they removed that profession. Now, a year later or so they are reintroducing it as a shell of its former presence like its something new and innovative. In fact just about every new feature added to the NGE has turned out to be something that used to be in game and has only now been revived.

The notorious quote by some Lucas Arts Executive, named Nancy McIntyre I believe is "Players just want to kill, loot, repeat". Thats the basis of the NGE, which has replaced a combat system that forced players to pick the appropriate options from their abilities during a fight, to a system where you point your weapon with your mouse, then hold down the left mouse button until the target is dead (no exaggeration, thats the sum of weapon combat). Previously we had special shots, special effects, etc that were all conditional during combat, now its point and hold. Oh, sure there are some specials you can fire off by clicking the right mouse button as well, but there are only a few of them, and you more or less click them when they come up.

No, SWG is a completely gutted game, and honestly not worth considering. Lucas Arts has taken the most promising provenance available in gaming and produced a complete laughing stock of a game. They couldn't have made a single worse decision than they have throughout its history. What was once, innovative and cutting edge, is now bland, unchallenging and suited for an audience of 6-8 year olds.

Done

I beat WoW ages ago.

<spoiler> Press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start during the end credits to enable "ghost mode" and try to beat your best time! </spoiler>

The World of Darkness

I am looking forward to the "World of Darkness" game being produced by CCP and White Wolf. If they do this one right it will be the best MMO ever made. I cannot wait to see how it turns out.

I won't change til I feel the need to move.

I played Dark Age of Camelot for a couple of years. I got to the top levels with lots of money, items, etc. The most annoying thing for me was the lag. So what do they do every patch but add graphics and create situations where large numbers of people would be in one place which generates....lag. Eventually, I gave up and went to WoW.

I won't wait so long next time. When I get bored or annoyed by the patches, I'll move again. The next game won't be WoW so the game makers shouldn't try to hard to copy Blizzard.

I hope all the WoW wanna-be's make great games so that there will be more choice for consumers. Unfortunately, I expect most of them to suck for the same reason so much sci-fi and fantasy sucks. Gene Roddenberry was passionate about Star Trek and so it was good. Those who followed were passionate about money and so it sucked.

I know what will beat WOW

There is this game company who is going to announce a new game soon. They're called Blizzard. If that game is an MMO it might beat WOW.

Re:All of these games

I hear it is vaporware. What do you know? Any launch dates?

Re:How do you beat WoW at it's own game?

Quoth the Tao of Programming:

A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. ``Excuse me,'' he said, ``may I examine it?''

The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. ``I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, and Hard,'' said the master. ``Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the human.''

``Pray, great master,'' implored the novice, ``how does one find this mysterious setting?''

The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it underfoot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened.

Re:How do you beat WoW at it's own game?

Novice's "enlightenment" in this case included the realization that Master was a total dick.

Re:All of these games

Stop posting Slashvertisments and get back to work. There are already rumblings that your game is vapor.

Re:All of these games

People hated Ultima Online. That's why they all picked up and went to EQ.
You want to go back to it?

Re:All of these games

WoW is horribly dumbed down. Almost no penalty for dieing,

Yes there is a penalty for dieing. I have to run back to my body, which in some places is a long fscking way away. If I die before a mob dies, I don't get XP for it. In a fare number of quests if I die, the area respawns before I can get back to my body. If I kill the mob I was after, but get killed by adds, sometimes the mob I want despawns before I can get back (meaning I have to wait around and do it all over again.) If I resurrect at the graveyard I have 10 minutes of being an utter weakling. Maybe it's not harsh enough for you. That's fine, the game isn't for you. Go play DDO, I hear the penalty for dieing there is quite a bit harsher.

There shouldn't be a need to grind,

Every RPG ever has grind. You go on quests, typically to kill things/get things to get experience to gain levels to improve your skills to go on more quests.

you should be able to raise your skills by simply using them

Which is, in itself, another form of grind.

Wow is designed to appeal to a broad base of people. The game is well polished, and fun to play. Like almost all Blizzard games. I still play Starcraft from time to time, because it's still fun. And that's why WoW wins. At the end of the day, it's the game that the most people find the most fun.

As a side note I had to laugh when on of my friends berated me for not joining LOTR (despite the fact there is no Mac client, and I'm not running Windows on my home box) and he told me it was completely different. Um, no. You still go on quests to kill stuff, to get stuff, to get better skills, to go on quests, to kill stuff....etc.

And besides, Tauren just look so cute and happy when they're jumping up and down!

You mean UO?

All there, old man... Origin had that long before Blizzard even started to read documentation for networking.

Re:An interesting thing to note about WoW's succes

I think that reason would rank VERY low on the list. Not many people game with a mac and the customer base they are largely gaining (college students that think macs are special/unique/fashion statement) are usually too busy screaming about how great their macs are and would rather be dead then appear as a nerdy MMORPGer. However they still feel fine playing NES and ranting about how every game since has sucked, and that the Beatles were the best bang every and how all music since has sucked. Or maybe that was just my personal experience for the last 4 years... Reasons I feel WoW has succeeded: -older MMORPGer players were getting bored with the generic grind style game that had little content. -simple game play on the surface for younger players -complex setups when fully leveled determining what skills/gear to have for nit-pickers (the ones who "NEED" an extra .25%) -plethora of quests that weren't just: go here, kill 10 things, come back (sure it had many, but it also had others) -two well defined sides with well defined classes (not too few, not too many) -attractive graphic/art design -Simple PvP design -large and hard instances (although it originally didn't come with these) -warcraft legacy (although I don't think that is the main reason for success, if it was SWG would be the biggest) -it is the biggest and the most well known, it became like a snowball rolling down a hill, just kept growing bigger and at a faster rate The next successful MMORPG will occur when players have gotten udderly bored with WoW and another game comes out that bring out something that seems new or genuinely is new.

Re:All of these games

WoW is horribly dumbed down.

I think you mean "simplified interface" so that anyone and everyone who even attempts the game discovers how easy it is to get started and gets hooked within minutes. I've met some handicapped players including one guy who was completely immobilized except for his head. Seeing his joy at playing UO was heart-wrenching. I'm quite certain he is playing WoW and enjoying it even more because it's so much simpler than UO. Whenever someone complains about a game being "dumbed down," I think of him.

Obviously, WoW is so dumb it attracted over 8 million people because it IS easy to play. The most amazing part of WoW, though, is even though it's easy to get started and continue to play in a casual manner, it can get as complicated as you wish and require a great deal of research, modification and time in order to complete the more challenging quests and instances.

Almost no penalty for dieing, especially in PVP?

If there were more penalties, you'd have more people getting frustrated, giving up, logging off and canceling subscriptions. You wouldn't have nearly as large, varied or active the PvP community that does exist. I tried getting my wife involved in UO (pre-pvp consent) twice. Both times PKs ruined her experience and drove her away. I introduced her to WoW while I beta tested it and she's played constantly ever since. One more experience we get to share together.

There are enough penalties for death. You have to pay to repair your equipment, or if you cannot get back to your body (long distance, over active spawn, etc.) then you REALLY pay by rezzing at the graveyard and taking extra damage. Plus it's a penalty of time lost when you should be enjoying yourself instead of running back to your corpse.

Grinding the same dungeons and over to get the best items?

That is the players' choice and the reason Blizzard introduced better items for casual players in Burning Crusade. (Plus that death penalty gets steeper.) Not everyone can commit the time or has the resources to run a raid, but I bet they would if they could.

There shouldn't be a need to grind, you should be able to raise your skills by simply using them, not grinding xp to go up a level.

There is absolutely no need to EVER grind in WoW. (**By "grind" I mean kill a monster for the sole purpose of experience gain.)

At launch there were 2500 quests per faction (Alliance, Horde); with BC I'd suspect it is now more like 5-6,000 per faction. My first character hit 60 within a few months (I'm a casual player who plays multiple characters at once) by only doing quests and running the instances associated with quests. There was never a point where I said "I'll go kill these wolves to gain my next level," it was always "Oh, look, I'll get my next level at my next quest turn in or while killing for that next quest."

Anyone who is "grinding" is ignorant of the available quests and simply doesn't understand how WoW is different from all those MMO's that came before it. For those that are ignorant, all it takes is a tell in the public channels asking "Where should a lvl xx go for quests?" I can reference the Prima strategy guide, wowwiki.com or any number of other resources if I cannot draw upon my own experience. There are so many quests, Blizzard had to up the quest log from 20 to 25 so people wouldn't have to do so much extra running back and forth. There is never any reason for a person's quest log to drop below 5 quests much less be empty.

By your definition of "truly great game," you just described Ultima Online as it existed in 1997-1999, and how the Felucca side of each shard still exists. I think most of us have grown beyond that.

By your complaints and suggestions I gather that you are an experienced gamer and one who participates in PvP. I've heard these same complaints from players over my 10 years of playing MMO's. Trust me, you are in the minority

Eve Online

There is a real penalty for dying in Eve, and good teamwork can trump even the most expensive faction setup.

PvP is the point, and flying together with pilots you respect and can count on is the real heart of this game.

Re:All of these games

Are grindfests, and nothing more. WoW is horribly dumbed down. Almost no penalty for dieing, especially in PVP

I really hate it when they don't penalize me for making casts and molds.

Re:Conference vs Listening..the great debate

Don't do projects on a bloated market. Give us a true reason to try something new...make it new. Hack and slash has been done to death, give us sci-fi, horror, historical, etc. Work to push new ideas. Where is the great 'zombie' MMO? The alternate history MMO? Research and don't be afraid to try something new

Where is Gamma World/Fallout? Starcraft? Paranoia? Shadowrun?

BTW, World of the Dead would be completely tits.

And Mac OS X support please, Blizzard is ++ for that very reason..

Re:Death penalties are stupid

That's why there shouldn't be uber weapons that will make or break a player. The best items should be PLAYER CRAFTED, and not require a tremendous amount of work to get so that only a set of hardcore players can control it, everyone should be able to get it.

Re:Death penalties are stupid

I don't really get people who want death penalties. Most of the time want something like an XP loss, which really just requires grinding to get back. Hooray for pointless timesinks?

He hints at it in his post. Death "penalties" (I hesitate to even call it "penalties" because there's certain things that should just naturally result from dieing...) matter a lot in PvP. If you have some consequences for dieing (instead of just a 5-minute corpse run) people are a lot more careful about being a griefing jackass. And a big battle where everyone can just res and come back for more in a matter of minutes really has no end; it just drags on until everyone's bored with it. There's a lot more to it than that, but that covers a few of the basics.

You're different. Item loss, eh? So what happens the first time I lose an uber +20 hammer of smiting because of a server lagspike? The only people who will tolerate that sort of nonsense are in the smallest niche of players.

He did say something about player-created items. And if you'd go to the URL he posted, you'd soon see that Darkfall is going to be mostly about PvP with a full-loot system, so if you lose something... well, you can just go kill the guy who took it and get it back. If you're good enough. Also, all items (in this game) will eventually wear out and break beyond repair, so no one's going to get too attached to their gear. Think of it like an FPS on an MMO scale, not like "a game similar to WoW". In fact, according to the developers this game will be designed in such a way that a veteran player with good gear and all his in-game skills maxed could lose to 3 or 4 players fresh from character creation - if they're good enough. So while there will certainly be some gear better than other, their won't be "an uber +20 hammer of smiting".