World of Warcraft Turns 20 28
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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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 i
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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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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
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:3)
As I got older I just couldn't justify spending cycles on the loot treadmill, arbitrary gates that force you to come back week after week, all with a sub par story and Blizzard, after 20 years, still being unable to properly tune classes in between patches and expansions leaving me to often believe I once again picked the wrong class this time around.
I think Blizzard as a company lost its way as game developers . They used to put out great games that I would wait up until launch to play -- but since Diablo 3 and WOTLK, they just don't hit like they used to.