Quote Originally Posted by jinkobi View Post
Well... WOW pretty much created the model for the modern day MMORPG. Let's give credit where credit is due. They were groundbreaking.

These days I feel like the game has a huge flaw. This flaw is how WOW expansions work and I have come to realize it isn't fun. I've started from scratch in TBC, WOTLK, and I still haven't bought Cata. The changes while awesome- the starting from scratch once again got to me this time. Still WOW is very hard to walk away from and I keep tabs on the game and still come to Dualboxing because I like you guys. Not in a gay way though

Renewed my main account to just fart around. Still can't seem to get into the game. Kind of sucks, lol. It's weird since I still love WOW at heart- just don't feel like playing. Maybe I'm just burnt on WOW.

Wish WOW's expansions were done differently. For example City of Heroes. They come out with new content constantly without raising the leveling cap. It's a bit complicated to explain in just a few lines but you never feel like you're starting from scratch. Basically they come out with harder taskforces/dungeons and give you the ability to become more powerful to compensate. Also you can adjust taskforce/dungeon difficulty infinitely. Want a more challenging mission just change the difficulty.

What I see is WOW becoming free to play before the next expansion. Then they'll sell expansions and BS making even more money than they are now.

/rant off

What were we talking about again? lol
No, WoW did not. If anything Everquest did. About 95% of the MMO's on the market today can trace their ultimate inspiration in the MMO genre to EQ and the diku mud fundamentals that game was based on. If anyone says "Ultimate Online" I'd have to disagree, while UO was the first real MMO on the market, UO and its sandbox style of game play has been essentially extinct since EQ released. There have been a few attempts into the sandbox market by small budget essentially amateur start up teams and I think that is a large market that is therefore basically untouched. The safe money was to copy EQ, and then to progress to copying WoW. Although, maybe it isn't such a safe bet since almost every MMO that has gone that route with the exception of just a few have failed spectacularly.

The guy who ultimately designed WoW is Jeff Kaplan, he was the guild leader of a guild called Legacy of Steel, along with Fires of Heaven and Afterlife. Those guilds were the big three in EQ. Legacy of Steel happened to have 4 or 5 Blizzard artists/programmers in it, Tigole, or Jeff Kaplan got a position with Blizzard and eventually went on to design WoW.

What he did, was take EQ, and remove all the aspects of the game he hated. Open world raid content, which prevented 99.9% of the player base from ever experiencing it. Gone. Consequences for dying, gone, no more 4 hour corpse runs or 4 hours of grinding gone. Leveling up via grinding, removed, replaced with questing.

What we can credit WoW with, is being far and away the most successful MMO to date, the easiest MMO to play and achieve success in, to date. It took Everquest and refined it and released a game with a high degree of polish. Personally I would argue whether WoW is an actual improvement in the genre over EQ, or DAOC or any of the diku mud derivatives because I don't equate catering to the lowest possible denominator as "improvement" rather I would say it is successful.

The way they run expansions is both brilliant and frustrating. It is brilliant because people who have quit the game can return and be on equal footing with everyone else. It is frustrating for people who have devoted hundreds if not thousands of hours of their lives to be on the cutting edge of the game and content progression for the past 2 years. At the end of the day, Blizzard follows the path of least resistance on all things. There is more money to be had by resetting the game every 2 years than to create an insular environment where a small cadre of players get further and further ahead of the curve with each expansion.

I have a love hate relationship with Blizzard. I generally hate their games because they are neither particularly innovative, or complex. I imagine in 10 years we will be looking at Starcraft 3, Warcraft 5, and Diablo 5, I'd be shocked if they added any more IP to their collection, or rather stole anymore I love them because they always manage to release a quality, highly polished product which aside from Bioware(Pre EA) didn't exist in the market.