World of warcraft is dying and how to save it.

That's a major advantage of instances, I guess.

Also, is there an MMO out there that uses Fighting a Shadow as their excuse for why you need 40 people to kill Grobnog the Destroyer over and over again?

^^Closest you might get there is Minecraft's Adventure Mode on a Multiplayer server.

^I guess the closest excuse to having repeated quests and big events is that the bosses never really die but just simply flee to another plane of existence and manifest again.

Again, kinda like Team Fortress 2 and the whole stuff with the Headless Horseless Horsemann and MONOCULUS.

edited 2nd Nov '11 10:04:21 PM by RocketDude

World Of Warcraft has Holiday events, which usually get changed up every year or two, and pre-expansion build-up events. World Of Warcraft was doing it before TF 2.

edited 2nd Nov '11 10:10:05 PM by Neo_Crimson

Not every MMORPG out there is inspired by World Of Warcraft.

Take... Wakfu. Or Runescape. Both differ a lot from World Of Warcraft's formula.

Or Spiral Knights, which is also very different.

Yeah, that one too.

Korean grind is also different from World Of Warcraft in a number of ways.

Well, Ragnarok Online is still healthy enough to get expansions and remain subscription based despite being one of the clunkiest and grindiest of all traditional MM Os.

Ultimately, to quote Grand Moff Tarkin, this bickering is pointless. World Of Warcraft is popular because it's a wacky grindfest that is temporary crack for achievement-hounds. People like me who want story will get it other ways, and hopefully soon in other MM Os, but trying to change World Of Warcraft too much to fit our expectations of what an MMO should be would lose Blizzard their core fanbase.

Still, I can hope.

This, exactly, and its another reason I say MMORP Gs are a series of catch-22s.

I mean, if I'm not getting a sense that my actions are affecting the world outside myself... if nobody is gonna run up to me and say "Wow, are you that legendary soldier who slayed the Blood Ogre and saved Victimville from annihilation? Freakin' awesome!" then what's the point? I might as well be playing Secret of Mana again.

So, basically, some people want ''WorldOfWarcraft'', while others want Spiral Knights or stuff like that.

I like drawing parallels.

^^I actually like what Guild Wars 2 seems like it's going to do in that regard.

There will be events where, say, a small army suddenly attacks a village on one server. If the players who are there don't stop it, that village is occupied on that server until some people get together and kill/drive off the occupying force. It seems like it'll build a sense of agency and community.

"You the rag who whupped Baron Stormlash at 11:30 last night? Know how many hours of my prep you wasted? PVP Flag up, chum, so I can say thanks."

thefran, did you mean me or Recon? I don't hate World Of Warcraft, I just think it's a specific type of gameplay that I don't like as much as story-driven RP Gs, and I think it'd get more people if it had more plot. But it sure works as it is for some twelve million-odd people, anyway.

Why save this MMO? It doesn't have to be THE BIG THING for the rest of its life. Its been king for long enough, bring us another game.

'coz it's a good game many people like?

And because there's nothing saying that everything must be new. Something that is still good or something that could still be good doesn't need to be phased out because it's old.

It's not like there's anything stopping people from creating other games anyway. People have still made games that don't follow World Of Warcraft's footsteps.

What did thefran say that got thumped?

"bloody".

edited 3rd Nov '11 12:08:03 AM by thefran

^^^Sure, there are games that it hasn't interfered with, but its dominance over the MMO market has been the number one obstacle to making an MMO for years.

I feel like its collapse really wouldn't be a big deal, as there are plenty of other MMOs its fans could migrate to.

^^I don't think the point of a thump is so that someone can then immediately repost the thumped post :P

edited 3rd Nov '11 12:35:22 AM by INUH

There are plenty of others, but none of them are usually quite the same. They lack the weird humour, or the content, or the same type of playerbase, or the endgame content. Despite the derogatory term World Of Warcraft clone, I've yet to actually find a game I could classify as being similar enough to it to be cloned.

edited 3rd Nov '11 12:41:28 AM by CyganAngel

Fair enough. Probably the more clone-y videogame market right now is the FPS one. Hell, I don't even know what's copying what half the time in that genre.

Perhaps no MMO would attract the sum total of WoW's playerbase. In fact, I'd consider that a good thing, as I prefer the innovation afforded by market diversification where possible. But I feel like any given WoW player could, in the event that WoW collapsed, find an MMO that he or she would be satisfied with.

I don't think the game needs to be torn down urgently or anything, but nor do I think its loss would be as bad as might be expected.

I don't think the loss would be OMG WORST THING EVAR, but it would annoy a lot of players. Especially considering how long some people have been playing the game now- for many players, they've literally sunk hundreds to thousands of hours into it over the course of years.

Fair point.

And I don't think it's coming soon. It might take a bit of a hit from TOR and GW 2, but if any MMO can stand a bit of a hit, it's WOW.