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Role Playing (Games)

Academics Speak On 'Life After World Of Warcraft' 171

Posted by Zonk from the it'll-come-eventually dept.
simoniker writes "Are MMO populations 'tribal', and if so, what's the next tribal shift after World of Warcraft? At Gamasutra, academics including MIT's Henry Jenkins and Ludium's Edward Castronova discuss what's next for the MMO market, based on their research and play patterns. Jenkins states that WoW is getting _too_ much analysis from researchers right now: 'WoW deserves attention because it has so captured the imagination of gamers over the past few years. That said, I don't think it is healthy for the field of games studies, which is still emerging, to be so fixated on a single game franchise — no matter what the franchise. A few years ago, it might have been The Sims or GTA, now it's WoW.'" For more on this topic MMOG industry veteran Gordon Walton spoke on this topic last week at GDC Austin, and notes from that event are also available at Gamasutra.
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Academics Speak On 'Life After World Of Warcraft' More

Academics Speak On 'Life After World Of Warcraft'

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  • World of WarCraft 2: The Attack of the RPG Clones (Score:3, Insightful)

    by paladinwannabe2 ( 889776 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @01:26PM (#20575619)
    Maybe I'm just being cynical, but at this point I suspect WoW will continue to dominate until Blizzard creates WoW2. It's so far ahead of all the other MMORPGs on the market that I don't see anyone being able to displace it.

    • I wouldn't be that sure (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @01:59PM (#20576247) Journal
      Well, I certainly see your point, but the cynic in me says that we've thought this before... and we were wrong.

      When Origin invented the genre, they were literally the only player in town. They were so far ahead the other MMOs, that the others were just getting started trying to copy it. Even if you consider MUDs to be essentially the same genre, the difference between UO and your average text-based MUD, if nothing else in terms of number of players, was larger than between WoW and Anarchy Online nowadays.

      Other people who arguably invented a genre, or made it mainstream, are still the Gods of Gaming in that genre. E.g., Id and FPS. You'd expect Origin to share that fate, wouldn't you?

      You'd think nothing could possibly dethrone UO at that point, until Origin creates UO2, right? Well, we already know how that went.

      Then came Everquest, and it was so popular it became synonim with MMOs. You didn't talk, say, about people losing their job and wife to MMOs, you instinctively spoke of them losing that to Everquest. It's also the game which caused the deluge of me-too MMOs. It was such a money-printing license, everyone wanted a piece of that market.

      Worse yet, along came a long period of stagnation, and most new MMOs just managed to steal some of someone else's players, only to have them stolen by someone else in 6 months. It looked like there were a total of about 1 million MMO players total... and EQ owned slightly more than half of them.

      Once you factored in their other games too, Sony _owned_ the MMO market.

      Surely one would have thought nothing will challenge that until their own EQ2 came out, right? Well, wrong, actually. EQ2 peaked a lot lower than what EQ still had, never mind its former peak. It _still_ has less players than the old Everquest. (Not saying it's necessarily a bad game, as that's something highly subjective, just that subscription-wise it failed to be the block-buster everyone expected.)

      Instead there came this WoW noone really expected that much of. What people wanted from Blizzard was Starcraft 2 or maybe Diablo 3, not a MMO. They hadn't proved that they know their elbow from their arse in the MMO arena yet. They had the Warcraft franchise and name recognition, but an unrelated franchise name only carries you so far: see TSO which flopped in spite of the The Sims franchise which had outsold all 3 Warcraft games _combined_.

      Not only it handed Sony its arse at its own game, it managed something that noone else had managed in years: it actually enlarged the western MMO market. About 10 times.

      So now we think the same all over again. "Man, nothing's going to displace WoW until they launch WoW2." I dunno, we've been wrong about that at least twice before. (Or more than twice if we're talking about sequel surpassing their original. AC2 bombed so badly that it was shut down, for example. Essentially that sequel moved the AC franchise from being the second most successful MMO to being nobody.)

      Before anyone accuses me of wishing that WoW fails or anything, note that I'm not against any of the games I've mentioned here. I actually liked WoW, though nowadays I'm playing COH yet again. I can see why WoW was successful. In this highly subjective taste matter, they sure managed to give the larger market segment, the casual gamers and off-line Oblivion-type gamers, more of what they wanted in a game. They "deserve" their current position. I'm just saying that noone, Blizzard included, has a certificate of ownership of the market. They all "rent" the #1 spot for a while. They can fall like everyone else, eventually.

      In fact, I'm sorta surprised that WoW hasn't fallen back yet. Again, I don't wish it or anything, but it's not like they have a patent on what made WoW successful. Everyone else is free to copy the elements that made it sell well. It's just that everyone else seems to be surprisingly slow to understand it. Oh, they've tried to copy bits and pieces of WoW, but they just can't seem to understand _what_ they copy. It's... a bit like watching a clock maker try to copy random individual cogs from a competitor's clock, without understanding what they copy or the larger scheme of the mechanism in which it must fit in.

      But eventually it's bound to happen.

      • Re:I wouldn't be that sure (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Evangelion ( 2145 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @02:37PM (#20576875) Homepage

        In fact, I'm sorta surprised that WoW hasn't fallen back yet. Again, I don't wish it or anything, but it's not like they have a patent on what made WoW successful. Everyone else is free to copy the elements that made it sell well. It's just that everyone else seems to be surprisingly slow to understand it. Oh, they've tried to copy bits and pieces of WoW, but they just can't seem to understand _what_ they copy. It's... a bit like watching a clock maker try to copy random individual cogs from a competitor's clock, without understanding what they copy or the larger scheme of the mechanism in which it must fit in.

        But eventually it's bound to happen.


        The problem is that it's not just one thing that makes WoW successful. It's alot of things that Blizzard is doing right all at once. The key though, is that Blizzard, despite what you read on forums, does listen to it's players. The game as it stands now is vastly, vastly different from when even I signed up in 2005 -- and they're laregly positive changes.
        • World PvP sucks? They added instanced PvP.
        • You miss World PvP? They created world PvP "minigames".
        • Honour system is a joke? Scrapped, in exchange for a token system.
        • Unorganized instanced PvP too much of a hassle? Have short (on the order of minutes, seconds if you're up against a 'lock) 1v1 - 5v5 arena matches.
        • Farming for the 1% elemental drops sucks? We'll split them up into more common drops (motes), so your farming doesn't suck as much.
        • Crafting seems useless as a moneymaker? Epic crafted items now require a BoP drop, so you can now actually make money from your profession.
        • Hybrid classes and off-specs getting the shaft? There are different versions of the new class armor sets for different specs.
        • Instance runs taking too long? All the new 5-mans are split up into wings a'la SM, so that you can run one in less than an hour.
        • Want epics in 5-mans? Okay, we'll add a heroic mode, but it'll be harder, and you can't expect to go in green quest rewards.
        • Having trouble getting a group? We'll tie entry into heroics to specific reputation grinds which can only be done in instances, so people have incentives to run them.
        • Still having trouble? We'll create an actually useful LFG system, and tie entry into the LFG channel to registering with it (to avoid it looking like Trade - City)
        • Don't have a warlock in your group, or he's out of shards? The summoning stones can summon raid members with only 2 people present.
        • Reputation grinds suck ass? Okay, instead of having one or two factions with everything, and a miserable rep grind (I'm looking at you TB), we'll create lots more factions and make each grind easier.
        • Need an easy source of money? We'll make daily quests you can repeat each day, which give cash (and rep) rewards.
        • You want to fly? Sure.

        Ontop off all of that listening, the technical quality of the software from Blizzard is continually top notch. They've folded in popular mods (Scrolling Combat Text, etc), and there were mentions about built-in VOIP, so voice chat won't be limited to guild runs.

        Really, it's Blizzard as an organization that someone would have to copy to unseat WoW from the fantasy MMO genre, not any specific attribute of the game.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Creedo ( 548980 )
          Unorganized instanced PvP too much of a hassle? Have short (on the order of minutes, seconds if you're up against a 'lock) 1v1 - 5v5 arena matches

          Sorry, but this struck me as funny. I'm a level 64 pally, and in the last two days, I've pwned 2 70 'locks. The moment they start to fear, you bubble, Holy Shock, whack 'em a few times, do a Hammer of Justice and a judgement, and watch them cry all the way to the grave.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Creedo ( 548980 )
            Now why was this moderated as a troll? Did I insult someone's favorite class or something? Sheesh.
            • A pally insulting a lock... I think that's considered heresy in the game and is actually in violation of your terms of agreement to play the game. I'm sure there's a line in the Blizzard agreement that states that "All classes must agree to be wtfpwned at any time if requested by a player character who is playing a warlock".

              Guild members of mine of mine went to Blizzcon and learned that pretty much the entire development team at Blizz plays horde locks and shammies.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by AuMatar ( 183847 )
            Then they're absolute morons. 8 seconds of dps from a pally barely dents a good lock's health- your dps is just too low, and no self respecting warlock with moderate gear has under 10K health. Once that bubble is off, you're toast.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Creedo ( 548980 )
              They may well have been morons. I don't make any claims as to being a great PVP fighter. Just relating what I've found. Note: I was taken down once by one of the 'locks. He caught me by surprise, and low on mana. I was toast. So, while I respect 'locks(one of my alts is a lock), they are not invincible.

          • I'm a level 64 pally, and in the last two days, I've pwned 2 70 'locks.
            You must be an Orc pally, the racial stun resist just rapes warlocks. Try it without your cookie cutter spec and see how you go.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by The Living Fractal ( 162153 )
          World PvP sucks? They added instanced PvP.
          Yes, and Alterac Valley for example is so lopsided that most Horde players simply sit in the cave because the Alliance has the advantage.
          Furthermore, where is the WAR in Warcraft? Hi, remember the games of Warcraft? Remember the epic battles with various seige weapons and vehicles and the like? In WoW? Three years after release almost? Nope, sorry. AV is the closest we get and like I said, it's horrible.

          You miss World PvP? They created world PvP "minigames".
          Ref
          • Oh and btw, new players, you're screwed because everyone is already in heroics and they don't want to run non-heroics anymore!

            Sounds quite familiar. Any DAoC player can tell you a few things about that.

            DAoC squeezed out an expansion called "Trials of Atlantis". There, you'd have to go into some area, kill some incredibly powerful guy for his possession, then farm scrolls (from other mobs, partly in very different areas), complete quests (which required a group, and for sure it was a group comprised of class
        • Funny enough, what you listed was what drove me away from WoW. Whenever there was a pebble in your road to "success", Blizzard took it onto themselves to solve that problem for you. You're not finding a group? How about trying to TALK? Or maybe make yourself interesting? Advertise yourself? Find groups at low levels and get known so you have one when you're 60 (or 70)? I never had a problem finding a group. I had a problem finishing my solo quests, lacking time (granted, as a holy priest you were kinda one-
          • Well, I play a level 70 (now beastmaster) hunter. I'm in a guild that got to Nefarian at 60, but no further... No AQ40, Naxx. Once the Tier 1 gear started flowing in, I discovered soloing was not really fun anymore because I could kill just about anything with ease... then came the T2 gear and the problem just got worse. So what did my friends and I do? We started playing the game wrong to introduce new challenges. For example, we'd run Dire Maul with my hunter tanking... all the while I had Aspect of the P
            • It's kinda sad when you have to install arbitrary self-imposed hardships to make a game interesting, but actually... the idea appeals to me. Like, mandatory corpse runs (not only to the instance, but into the instance, then as a living person again). Or trying to see if we can take on a dungeon designed for higher level gear than we have (let's see if we can take a "current" dungeon with our "4 months after release" gear).

              Interesting concept. Let's see if I can convince my ex-guildies. I mean, we've been to
              • Well, it was actually more a response to "how you need to play in a raid" than it was the difficulty level of anything. If we wanted to keep things interesting on the raid level, we'd take 12 or so people to ZG or AQ20, or do a 10 man Onyxia to really test ourselves.

                You know how it is in a raid... be good. Don't steal aggro. If you're a hunter... stand here, shoot, feign. The interesting result of our loony runs was that we all became much better at playing our characters and adapting to new situations. Whe
                • All true. But, well, our group's been together since EQ. We've been playing for ... 8 years? I honestly don't know. We know by the way someone casts (or doesn't) if something's wrong. Everyone knows his role, he's been playing it for years. I'm the healer. I know by default who has how much aggro and when. I can start a heal for the mage before he even draws aggro, because I know he will have aggro and will have gotten a hit in 5 seconds (you get that way in EQ). You can see people start to run and move whe
      • Well, wrong, actually. EQ2 peaked a lot lower than what EQ still had, never mind its former peak. It _still_ has less players than the old Everquest. (Not saying it's necessarily a bad game, as that's something highly subjective, just that subscription-wise it failed to be the block-buster everyone expected.)

        This, I think, is key. Why do people play MMO's? To quote Sony, 'Live in your world, play in ours.' People are looking for an online world they can enjoy in their free time. So my thought is, why sho
    • Maybe I'm just being cynical, but at this point I suspect WoW will continue to dominate until Blizzard creates WoW2. It's so far ahead of all the other MMORPGs on the market that I don't see anyone being able to displace it.

      I remember them saying the same thing about Ever Quest, that the only thing that could displace it was Ever Quest 2. That didn't turn out to be too accurate. I think WOW will run it's course and then most people will move on.

  • Henry Jenkins? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @01:30PM (#20575695)
    "At Gamasutra, academics including MIT's Henry Jenkins and Ludium's Edward Castronova"
    Hennnnry JEEEEENKINS!

  • Games with Endings (Score:4, Informative)

    by SonicTheDeadFrog ( 1155815 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @01:38PM (#20575835)
    If I see one more franchise going "MMO" to try to get a bite of the WoW pie, I think I'm going to puke. After playing WoW for five months, grinding to 60 and grinding on "end game" content, I've come to the conclusion that offline games (i.e. games with ENDINGS) are actually a much more rewarding expenditure of time.

    Practically every MMO out there is either a glorified chat room, or a grindfest-turned-second-career because it want's to be WoW without being WoW and all it succeeds in doing is becoming one more WoW or EQ clone and even the most ardent fanboys would have a hard time saying otherwise. The guys doing Warhammer Online claim that even WoW was largely a ripoff of DAoC, and popular though it was, DAoC was not a super smash hit like WoW.

    There's nothing earth shattering about WoW except being in the right place at the right time. It's moronic to speculate on what the next big thing is because it's as likely to be random dumb luck as anything else.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Knara ( 9377 )
      Well, there *are* a lot of similarities between WoW and DAoC. Sadly, the one thing that made DAoC rock (the realm vs realm pvp content) isn't really done well in WoW. Sad, because the RvR stuff in DAoC was by far the most fun.
    • WoW isn't about endings - the end game is supposed to be about having fun with friends. Frankly if my friends quit playing I'd quit playing too.
    • Sounds to me like you might like Guild wars. Every campaign so far has a clear defined ending and there is no grinding to do anything but get a special style of axe/sword/bow/armour whatever which is no more powerful than drops have been since mid game (even early game if you play factions). Plus it really breaks the mold in that your build is switchable on the fly (just visit town), so if you're bored of playing your Ranger relying heavily on his bow you can switch to a trapping ranger where you lay down a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Manchot ( 847225 )
      Personally, I stick to games with endings because I have a tendency to obsess over things, especially video games. Once a game takes hold of me, nothing can tear me away from it (to my detriment). If I played a MMORPG, there's no doubt in my mind that it would eventually ruin my life.

      Incidentally, this is also why I don't drink, and why I can only buy enough food to last for three days at a time. Alcoholism runs in my family, and frankly, I don't have the self-control to prevent myself from becoming an alco

  • There Is A Reason.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Atomm ( 945911 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @01:42PM (#20575887) Homepage
    No other MMORPG has captured the audience that WoW has. This alone is a reason to study this MMORPG over all others.

    As for upcoming MMORPG's, none of them will command the attention that WoW has. If Lord of the Rings Online couldn't make a dent in WoW, especially given the long, great history of the Tolkien Universe, what chance does any other MMORPG have?

    Warhammer might have a chance to top some of the other MMORPG's like EQ, Eve, AO, etc... But that is only because they copied a lot of the aspects of WoW and present a very similar style of game and universe. Don't believe me, look at the goblins in both games. It's like looking at cousins.....

    So yes, WoW deserves to be studied to understand how they could capture and maintain an audience many times over any of the previous MMORPG's.

     

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Psmylie ( 169236 ) *
      "Warhammer might have a chance to top some of the other MMORPG's like EQ, Eve, AO, etc... But that is only because they copied a lot of the aspects of WoW and present a very similar style of game and universe. Don't believe me, look at the goblins in both games. It's like looking at cousins....."

      I'm not disagreeing about Warhammer's chances against WoW, but that statement made me think of this Penny Arcade:

      http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by T.E.D. ( 34228 )

      As for upcoming MMORPG's, none of them will command the attention that WoW has. If Lord of the Rings Online couldn't make a dent in WoW, especially given the long, great history of the Tolkien Universe, what chance does any other MMORPG have?

      I don't think it will take a lot of "study" to see that game success has nothing to do with weight of established lore behind it. Just look at the history of Star Trek games. If anything, having a license to an existing "Universe" is a millstone around a game's neck.

      Lot

    • No other MMORPG has captured the audience that WoW has. This alone is a reason to study this MMORPG over all others. . . . So yes, WoW deserves to be studied to understand how they could capture and maintain an audience many times over any of the previous MMORPG's.

      Although the focus of whoever wrote the article is on the Next Big Thing, this isn't necessarily the top priority for scholars. The study of games is more about people than it is about games themselves. Here's Florence Chee from the article:

  • Florence Chee had the best viewpoint (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @01:58PM (#20576227) Homepage Journal
    The introduction of the Wii morphs the gamespace possibilities, as do all platform consoles.

    I foresee a day when WoW is replaced by games where you yourself perform the actions of your character, using Wii-mote and nunchuck, to hack slash and parry your way through the world, or use the Wii-mote as a wand.

    When? Probably next gen. So, I would say look for 2009, when the successor to the Wii comes out.

    [caveat - I went to SFU at one point so I'm biased ...]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Knara ( 9377 )
      Yeah well, let's wait for the Wii to have any more than a pittance of online features in their games and then we can talk about how they're gonna make the Mario-Zelda-Smash-Bros MMORPG (what, you think Nintendo is gonna make original content?).
    • I think you're highly underestimating the number of us lazy fscks who would avoid hours of physical activity at any cost. But seriously, I play games to relax and unwind, not as exercise, and there's no way I would play that sort of game. Hacking and slashing? Waving your arms to cast a spell? Count me out.
    • While I'd love to see this (if only to see some clerics casting on YouTube, or maybe a raid party standing next to each other, each and every one waving and flailing), it's highly unlikely to happen.

      1. Latency. MMORPGs have to deal with ping times that would make a FPS (and, essentially, if you plan to do this, you need the ping times of FPS games) unplayable. MMORPGs rely heavily on the fact that most of the combat is automatized and your success in blocking, striking, parrying and casting doesn't depend o
      • Fairly simple, you just have client and host gaming modules, where the client keeps a buffer of moves. Similar to old-style turn-based games, these kinds of systems have been in existence since I did the first worldwide play-by-mail RPG.

        Reaction times would mean that you'd want to play on local servers however, as latency could cause negative reactions. But since most of the world has Net speeds 10-100 times faster than is commonly in use in the USA, this is not a problem, except perhaps in rural or under
        • Action prediction is already implemented in pretty much all online games, especially in MMORPGs. You can see it every time when your latency rises to insane levels or when you lose connection. People still moving after they stopped (and suddenly "jumping" to their actual location when the information is transmitted by the server) or people dying "suddenly" out of combat (because they already died a few seconds ago, in combat, you just didn't get the information from the server).

          This is much more complicated
          • Not really.

            Think of the arc swing of a sword, or the block move of a shield.

            As we translate the literal inputs from computing devices (the Wii-mote into the console), we only plot some of the translated arc points.

            As my sword hits your shield, the game enhances it by your attributes (strength, agility (how much fine motor control do you really have), etc), your "level" (my level 22 paladin with 44 strength and 50 agility is going to hit really really hard from the viewpoint of your 21 strength 24 agility ma
            • One thing is a given: When a game implements that, people will preorder it at announcement. Hell, I will. :)
              • Exactly.

                It's not that difficult to do.

                But first you have to get the polygon vector jockeys to stop trying to drive game design with realistic rain splatter effects while the game POV camera sucks wind.

                Half of true game design is understanding what works and how good it has to be.

                Think of Lego Star Wars or other games with much lower res. People love them.
                • My guess is that we'll first of all have to change the way FOV is implemented. People don't see just a 120 arc, we're more able to see up to and beyond 180 degrees. You can try that. Put a colorful patch to a wall (provided you're not color blind), then turn around looking straight ahead until you don't notice it anymore. You'll see that you're facing about 90 degree off.

                  Now, you don't see well in that area anymore, so maybe a blurring effect would have to be taken into account, too. And we need widescreen.

  • Kind of seems like a stupid statement (Score:4, Interesting)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @02:05PM (#20576391) Journal
    I dunno, it seems like a rather circular statement about the "emerging" field of games studies: "I don't think it is healthy for the field of games studies, which is still emerging, to be so fixated on a single game franchise -- no matter what the franchise. A few years ago, it might have been The Sims or GTA, now it's WoW"

    Doesn't 'emerging' seem to suggest that there is going to be a rather narrow sample size, to begin with? And I don't really fault researchers focusing on WoW; I mean yes, they could grab whatever game is on the shelf, but you have no idea if it's going to be another WoW or if it's going to be Vangers (look it up). I would imagine that anyone in this 'emerging' field would want their results to be reasonably relevant, interesting, and applicable to as broad a field as possible.
    Right now, there's really only one game that hits that mark, and that's WoW.

    For those researchers who are looking for other interesting fields of study in this area, I would make some other suggestions.
    Look at http://www.mmogchart.com/ [mmogchart.com]:
      - The Matrix Online, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online all have very interesting player number curves. Why?
      - WW2OL has fewer subscribers than most of the 'big name' games and quite a few of the middling ones, yet it seems to be surviving where others are shutting down. Why?
      - Runescape - real MMOG or webgame? Is the distinction important?
      - These various games have a host of pay/play models, what's working, what isn't?
      - MMOGs are in a way the descendants of online mass flight sims - Warbirds, etc. How do flight sim pay/play models compare? User numbers and retention?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fallen1 ( 230220 )
      I have another question to add to your list above:

      How fucking dumb can Sony and LucasArts be to completely ignore their existing fanbase and go ahead with not ONE but TWO game "redesigns" on Star Wars: Galaxies such that the end product was a completely new game? And thus, Star Wars: Galaxies - with a rabid fanbase* and new incoming fans - went from being in the top 3 MMORPGS to virtually non-existent. Which, I guess, actually answers the question I posed :-p

      *I mean, come the frack on... I knew a LOT of peo
    • That is true only if we study MMOs which isn't necessarily the case. I study players of FPS games for example. There are also millions of casual gamers too as well as Madden fans and Japanese RPG fans and lots of other segments.

      Even if we stick with MMOs I think a study of the people who have stuck with Star Wars Galaxies or Dark Age of Camelot would be interesting if only to find out why they still play those games (which I admit I have never played myself. I just know that they aren't all that popular i
    • WWIIOL has a 'grognard' community associated with it -- people who began playing SVGA Air Warrior on the GEnie online service, then the various subsequent incarnations of Air Warrior and its 'replacements' (Confirmed Kill, Aces High, etc.); the replacements were created by people who were unhappy with the slow improvement of Air Warrior and went off to make their own WWII online simulation (there were several iterations of "If you're not happy with how things are progressing, why don't you make your own sim
  • WoW: Afterlife

  • for just the briefest second... (Score:4, Funny)

    by UID30 ( 176734 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @02:35PM (#20576845)
    ...my eyes saw "MIT's Henry Jenkins", but my mind read "MIT's Leroy Jenkins".

  • I quit WoW after getting all the gladiator gear and being ranked in the top 10% of the first arena season. Basically, once you get to a certain point there is nothing left to accomplish. The only gear upgrades you can get after a certain point are marginal at best, and require a totally disproportionate amount of time to achieve.

    The next big game will come up with a way to reduce the effect of gradual leveling, then very difficult end-game, then nothing left to accomplish. WoW will be easy to dethrone be

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by smaddox ( 928261 )

      WoW will be easy to dethrone because the game itself isn't any fun. All the enjoyment comes from the sense of accomplishment.


      My exacts thoughts on every MMORPG I have ever played.

      Thats why the only games I play now are DOD:S (haven't for a couple months now), and Guitar Hero.

      I will probably have to get the Orange box though... Portal looks amazing.
    • As I posted earlier... some people find fun in the game acquiring gear via arenas and battlegrounds. Once they've hit the ceiling for that gear, the game loses it's appeal. A lot of people, myself included, play it primarily for the social aspect. Love my guild! We're never going to be a Black Temple Guild, but we throughly enjoy tackling the challenges that are Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep. It's going to take us a while to clear those places, but that's what keeps us going... getting this group to certai
  • What do you mean by chunky change?

    EC: Rapid chaotic change, it'll be going smooth for awhile, with periods of stability, and then suddenly you'll see periods of bulky but large changes.

    You mean: punctuated equilibria [cotch.net]? Why invent a clunky neonym when you can just use a scientific term that already exists?

  • The reason WOW succeeded where DAoC failed is because WoW has cartoon like graphics that make it widely accessible. You don't have to take -anything- seriously in WoW unless you want to. It has a good story, with good characters, and it's a cartoon.

    WoW wins for the same reason that the Wii wins, it has mass appeal (ie, it's not for Ren Faire tards.)

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