World of Warcraft Turns 20 64
An anonymous reader shares a report: Blizzard Entertainment first released World of Warcraft in November 2004, so The New York Times celebrated the anniversary by outlining the many ways we can still see the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game's influence's 20 years later.
For one thing, while multiplayer games and early social networks such as MySpace already existed, WoW provided a real preview of a future where everyone would connect to friends and strangers online. For another, the game made billions of dollars with a business model combining monthly subscriptions with in-game purchases (including for pets and animals that players could ride), becoming a massive cash cow for Blizzard and pointing the way to future internet business models.
For one thing, while multiplayer games and early social networks such as MySpace already existed, WoW provided a real preview of a future where everyone would connect to friends and strangers online. For another, the game made billions of dollars with a business model combining monthly subscriptions with in-game purchases (including for pets and animals that players could ride), becoming a massive cash cow for Blizzard and pointing the way to future internet business models.
Back in my day (Score:2)
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Yeah and the best part was you got to stay up drinking soda and eating pizza with your actual friends, rather than alone even if you were still in your mother's basement.
Re:Back in my day [we didn't have OCD] (Score:2)
Not a bad FP, but not funny enough.
On the serious side, I think we have gotten too good at manipulating the compulsions of most people. It's just that some people are early adopters? WoW is sufficiently addictive to saturate the available time. An even more addictive game still can't capture more than 100% of the available time.
Or a bigger problem that some people are more easily programmed to act on their compulsions? My current theory is that I'm lucky to be able to mostly direct my compulsive behaviors i
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Yeah and the best part was you got to stay up drinking soda and eating pizza with your actual friends, rather than alone even if you were still in your mother's basement.
Basement dwelling along was still an option. There were options to play over the internet even before Battle.net support was added to the game.
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Prior to this, I played Warcraft II. I donâ(TM)t recall the specifics but you lugged two computers next to each other and connected them via a serial cable. It was amazing and free as long as you had the game. The only limitation was your parents yelling at you to go to bed. Ahh, the old good days!
WC2 is a real time strategy game. It supported peer-to-peer networking over serial, IPX, and modem. After Diablo was released and Battle.net introduced, WC2 was update to work with battle.net as well. Regardless of the networking the game was peer-to-peer. It ran on everyone's computer and there were occasional sync checks to make sure everyone's computer agreed. The number of players was somewhat limited, 4, 8, players? A 2D tiles game with a relatively small map which you may see in its entirety during pl
Baffled (Score:2)
A bit baffled in regards to how a 20 year old game still dominates the MMO market. Seems pretty bad as far as innovation goes.
Of course it doesn't help that I tried the game and didn't enjoy it at all. To each their own though, I just wish we'd get something innovative in this genre.
Re:Baffled (Score:5, Insightful)
There just hasn't been a WoW killer, yet.
WoW was my first MMO, all the way back in 2004. I've played on and off, (mostly on,) for the past 20 years. I've tried others, (most notably STO and SWTOR,) but they never stuck.
Why?
Because unlike most MMOs I've encountered, WoW's never been pay-to-win. You pay your monthly sub or not and you play or you don't. No free tier, no special advantages for being a monthly sub. Once SWTOR went that direction, I left. STO has similar problems. Most other MMOs I've seen are like that too.
Blizz has also struck a very good balance in making sure that every player, regardless of skill level or ability to commit has access to some form of endgame. Able to play every night at a high level? Mythic raiding and Mythic+ dungeons for you. Weekend warrior? Hit up some LFR and heroic dungeons. Prefer PVP? Arenas and battlegrounds. No other game I've seen can claim to have something for everyone in their player base.
Finally, unlike the other MMOs I've played, for whatever reason, I've always been able to find people I enjoy playing with in WoW. This could just be a me thing, but I think it's interesting that basically every other MMO I've played has been with a small friends group, or solo. Once that friends group lost interest, (usually to return to WoW,) so did I.
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GDKP, if I know what you're talking about, was always more of a guild or raiding group problem than a problem with the game, although I'm sure you're right; those who were willing to buy gold for real money would be most likely to get the loot. That's a really stupid way to divide up dungeon loot though, especially in a guild.
I play retail now, and it's nothing like back in the vanilla/BC/WOTLK days; no whisper spam, and I can't remember the last time I saw something that I was sure was a bot, although I'm
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I had no idea tokens were a thing in Classic, and I can 100% see how they'd break the game in that context.
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WoW to me has too much FOMO; stuff got removed before I was done with it, or was locked behind a skill level I simply don't possess only to then be removed forever when that expansion was over. I did not like that.
My poison of choice now is FF14. Nothing gets removed, nothing is pay-to-win, and the game just feels ... relaxing, where WoW often felt like a chore to get everything done every single week or be forever left in the dust.
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First, I've heard extremely good things about FFXIV; the people I know who love it, love it. I gave it a try, but sometimes I think not enough of a try.
As for FOMO in WoW, I guess I'm just weird. I've never been a collector, so if something had time limited availability and I didn't have the time for it, oh well. I don't have a problem with certain items being locked behind a certain skill level, because I'm not aware of any item that's actually permanently locked like that. Example; in Shadowlands, I farm
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What was locked that way and then removed in WoW? There are some rewards, like Ahead Of The Curve mounts, is that what you refer to? Those are like six mounts per expansion or something. Otherwise, things remain for, like, forever. You can still farm all mounts from TBC on, for example, except the ones mentioned.
WoW is full of catch-up methods, especially in the latest expansion. What there isn't though, and never has been, is any pay to win.
Re:Baffled (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I think games kinda hit a wall sometime around the mid 2000s.
There are are few genres (large scale simulation, ie Victoria III (CPU), racing/flight that really do improve with faster frames and richer textrures and higher res ) that burn up a modern CPU, and everything can crack the texture/resolution/fps up until the lasted GPU hits its thermal envelope but for a lot of games like shooters and RPGs I am not sure they are a whole lot more 'fun'.
If you get the concept and game play right it holds up at this point. If the human interface is going to be keyboad, mouse, and ~25" display, I am not convinced there is a whole lot of experience you can deliver today you could not do with a PS3. Can you jump for 1080p to 4k yes, but with some noted exceptions does that matter for most games? Again I am not say you can't pause it and go 'oh my gosh look the detail in that dudes facial hair' you can but I guess I don't see the 'fun' there. I don't think a lot of folks do either.
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A bit baffled in regards to how a 20 year old game still dominates the MMO market.
Sunk cost fallacy.
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A bit baffled in regards to how a 20 year old game still dominates the MMO market.
Sunk cost fallacy.
Not really. There is nothing preventing one from finding a game they like even more and spending their time there. One can have more than one game. If a person is still playing its because its still one of their more fun options.
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Not really. There is nothing preventing one from finding a game they like even more and spending their time there.
That is exactly what sunk cost fallacy does. It raises the importance of something you keep doing.
Now, I am not saying the game is not fun or not desirable, I'm saying that it's one of the important factors that make switching to another similar game more difficult.
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Not really. There is nothing preventing one from finding a game they like even more and spending their time there.
That is exactly what sunk cost fallacy does. It raises the importance of something you keep doing.
What they are doing is having fun, and if something more fun shows up there is near zero switching cost. Your WoW account is still there if you occasionally want to check it out. You lost nothing, you can have two games. Its not zero sum.
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The term is generally severely underestimated.
I know a few people who still play WoW, and they explain the reason as "I played it for so long, and have invested so much, that it's a pity to stop playing it".
Shit, I played it when it was released, and for a couple years afterwards, then I lost interest. At some point, I realized I was paying the subscription, while playing it hardly at all, so I stopped.
Note, I'm not saying it's a bad game, but past investment is a major part of why people, in general, keep
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Yup. For me, I was only there 11 months, and quit when I hit max level (just after first expansion was out). Mostly because the more levels I got the worse the player base became. Trolls, elitists, griefers, gear checks, exclusivity, etc. And it cost money, so I quit. Later on I found one that I liked and they offered a lifetime sub, which was a great decision. Still a sunk cost though, even though I only pay cash for the expansions and not to log in; and the lifetime sub along with an optional F2P ke
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With WoW, I play with people who had left for up to 15 years and now have been back for a few months. They are not behind, they do not have to buy all expansions (the latest catches you up completely), and they join the best instances because it's easy to pick the game back up.
I have quit playing for a few years at the time several times. Getting back each time was really easy. This is part of why I like WoW. I know I can easily step away for a short or long while, and all I really risk missing is a few tim
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I used to leave for 6 months or so in mine, then get focused on single player games. But I was mostly solo with sporadic pick-up-groups (which were rare in WoW, especially as I got higher level and everyone got more overtly critical). Then I got into a regular session mostly as a main tank, and it felt more important to stay up to date, especially if a new expansion came out that I shouldn't dawdle with getting new gear up to date, etc. Anyway, I haven't really gotten the more extensive time off... Expec
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Do you want to be a high level mage with top tier gear and a regular exclusive group (WoW instances tend to be guild run, not PUGs), or do you want to become a noob in a different game that you don't understand very well? The longer you're in your favorite daily/weekly game, the harder it is to migrate. Sunk cost. Even if that cost is just time.
There's no "end" to MMOs, there's no "win" to it despite the visceral whining about pay-to-win. So there is no ending to the game which becomes the natural point
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No, not at all. I quit WoW several times when a new, shiny MMO showed up, but they always ended up doing a lot of things badly which WoW do well. And then WoW has excellent catch-up mechanics, meaning it's possible to go away for a decade, and then start again, and be back in endgame within a couple of weeks.
WoW dominates simply because it's a helluva lot better executed than any other MMO. There is room for lots of levels of involvement, from truly casual "now and then" play to bleeding edge competitive pv
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There have been several attempts, but it seems they all were too worried about making the launch date, and not worried enough about delivering a complete product.
Meanwhile, Blizzard has continued to crank out content (whether you thought it was compelling content or not is a different question). And they've even refreshed the old content in order to keep it somewhat relevant. And they've embraced the nostalgia crowd with their "classic" servers that aren't interested in the 10+ expansions, some of which r
Bartle (Score:2)
Richard Bartle was the author of MUD and MUD2, the first of their kind. WoW is basically a graphical MUD, only differentiated by scale (and graphics) from its textual predecessors. Those who have designed MMOs in the last 20 years have hired Bartle to consult on the topic.
In his writings, he points out a few things, but two things stand out:
1) All multiplayer games are essentially the same, as user action results in the rules of the game changing to converge on a single workable paradigm.
2) Every player b
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When WoW came out I was already burned out on MMO's, having played MUD's, Air Warrior, Meridian 59, The Realm, and finding Ultima Online just too much.
I did get into it a year or so later because so many of my friends were on WoW. And a couple of expansions later I left again. I ended up playong LOTR, Rift, Tera and others, but they all have a lot of shortcomings.
The reason I'm back now is because it's simply better than any other MMO I have ever tried. It's a lot better than the first ones I played serious
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I have a local copy of WoW 3.35 or so and I fire it up every once in a while to cast some spells as a lock or a wizard. It's fun. Scratches the itch.
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If WOW was the first MMO to be big you'd have a point. The huge numbers of Ultima Online and EverQuest players that existed at both game's peaks kind of poke a great big hole in this theory though
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I still think Ultima Underworld is the best game I have ever played. I still miss the Two Towers MUD of the mid-1990s.
I think there is some merit to what Bartle is saying, even if we don't _play_ that game forever, we always wish what we were using was like that.
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A few major reasons:
First, there is the micro-quest, which really seems to have taken the MMO and RPG world by storm. Simple, almost trivial, quests with instant feedback, which creates dopamine in the brain which gets the player hooked (if not addicted). I would say that this is WoW's breakthrough technology. Since WoW so many other games do the same thing, handholding the player every step of the way. It was even mocked in the Simpson's. Literally the first quest I had when I played it was "deliver thes
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A bit baffled in regards to how a 20 year old game still dominates the MMO market.
It's a 20 year old game, but they keep updating it. The experience you get now is much different than the experience you got 20 years ago.
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I've never understood from anyone I know who plays the game that core gameplay has changed much. Nothing here https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/c... [reddit.com] seems very dramatic.
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1) The game has expanded dramatically. So you can experience Pandaria, Daenor, the Broken Isles, etc. New storylines, adventures, items. In the original game it was just Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.
2) Gameplay has been tuned to reduce grind, like the level squish. Modern WoW is less grindy.
So yeah, I think a lot of the reason people keep playing is just "Oh, there's a new continent, I want to go explore it now!"
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Sounds like what I understood the updates did then. Great for people who enjoy WOWs model but nothing terribly new in terms of innovation.
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Why would that be?
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For me, I fully oppose grinding games, I don't like games without an ending, and for RPG style fighting games there are many, many options that don't involve a subscription.
That said, I appreciate the multiplayer aspect of it, but "getting and coordinating a team to go fight a monster" is a skill I admittedly do not possess.
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You opposed grinding games but you play WOW? Everyone I know who plays WOW says that "the real game" doesn't even start until max level. There's zero wrong with enjoying the game but that's like the definition of grind even if it currently takes less effort to reach that mark then it used to.
Don't get me wrong, I've played and enjoyed games with heavy grind elements before and probably will again but to say you opposed grinding in games but play WOW seems pretty preposterous to me based off both my own expe
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You opposed grinding games but you play WOW?
That's why I don't like WoW. You might have your own reasons.
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So as I said from the very beginning then, WOW does not represent any form of modern innovation in MMO game play. Despite you initially refuting this claim and claiming things like "less grindy" was meaningful innovation you seem to be on board with the fact that the game is still a grind.
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World of Warcraft Turns 20 (Score:2)
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Maybe all of the older folks were still playing ret
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It had a surprising number of players that are much younger.
General industry stats show two massive age spikes when player age is graphed. One around 15 and one around 35. At lease for PC based games.
There where precedent MMO (Score:2)
I enjoyed Everquest I and a good chunk of Everquest II befor I even went to WoW. Then it got boring when they introduced PVP Arenas. This gave a direction to the game that I didi not like and I quit.
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The drums of war thunder once again (Score:1)
Despite the ancient graphics and 20 year old mechanics, the game still resonates with people. I've been talking with friends since the announcement and we're all excited to start again Thursday for the new classi
Transgender Dragons in, Spitting Out (Score:2, Insightful)
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BTW, there transgendered person on the original WOW team, anyway.
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" Dear Slashdot. The above post is hatespeak, if should have been moderated out. "
Thicker skin might be required to visit many parts of the internet which may or may not agree with your ideology.
People give words power over themselves.
You can either be part of the club that demands everyone else cater to your every whim and idea or you can choose
to simply ignore such things and live a much happer life.
The choice is up to you.
Re: Transgender Dragons in, Spitting Out (Score:2)
Were there transvestites on the original wow team, or did someone who worked on the original wow team later become a transvestite once it became trendy in advertising?
No One Crossed the first Contenent Before Me : ) (Score:2)
The level treadmill (Score:2)
Games like World of Warcraft no longer interest me as many of them all have the same underlying structure.
Give players never-ending collection quests to earn mundane gear or reputation which allows to purchase
slightly better gear. The best gear in the game requires you to raid with a guild which effectively equates to
a second job.
At some point, once folks have the best gear, you drop out an expansion and start all over again with the gear,
reputation and level grind.
Wash, rinse and repeat for twenty years a
Freecraft (Score:2)
Still awaiting for the last trademark of Warcraft to expire so Freecraft can be resurrected.
Re: Freecraft (Score:2)
Trademarks don't expire.
Trademark do expire. (Score:2)
Ummm, trademark do expire.
Renewal interval is 10 years. True expiration is six years.
Just requires continual usage plus refiling (just to show that you and your legal entity are alive).
https://gearhartlaw.com/how-lo... [gearhartlaw.com]