WoW Relevancy Question

[Khatovar]

Technology changes, consumer attitudes change, etc. I mean, 10 years ago, the "profile" of the typical MMO player was 15-25 year old males that fell into the "geek, dweeb, nerd or loser" category. "Cool" people didn't play them, they played console or FPS games.

WoW really did change that dynamic, making MMOs much more socially acceptable in the American market. And with that came a whole new set of expectations from the consumer base. People expect a game to be something they can invest more than a few months in. They expect it to evolve. And they also expect it to be something they can go back to later. As long as WoW can maintain that, it will keep a good population.

I don't imagine that it will remain the reigning champ of MMOs forever, but it's still got some steady lifespan ahead of it. The number of MMOs out there just keep growing, so there's some inevitable splintering of the playerbase, but people are also hard pressed to let go of something they've invested a good amount of time in. Sure, a good chunk of people left after Cata launched, but I'm sure a fair number of them came back with 4.1 or will come back with 4.2.

I'm not really seeing a single game just coming in and decimating WoW. It'll take a combination of things to knock WoW off its throne, not the least of which is time, IMO.

[Drizhal]

Left shortly after gearing in heroics after release.

Came back for 4.1/4.2 been having a blast.


Until something offers the flexibility with a polished (...laughable at times) finish that WoW has more often then most games, it will be a contender.
Rift was fun for about 3 months but it's just that, how do you make a fun game that is similar in characteristics to WoW but not WoW? After 3 months I felt, "Well I have 5 years invested in the other game, I should just play that..." Even with all the little perks and extra's (Loved the ability to just run up and rift...)

The MMO style game may die, but how do you describe a persistent world that constantly evolves and never ends? In my opinion the next "ground breaking" game will be a polished, story driven, hunting style flexible game similar to WoW but without a holy trinity. Because inevitably no matter what you do with the current system it is just "Genre Style DPS/Tank/Heal Type"

With what they just released about talent trees, I see changes yet again in WoW to get more people back and interested for a couple months again. We'll see though, give it 15 years and we may just interface with our brains...

[thebucket]

WoW toppled the other MMORPG's when it came because they offered a much different style of online roleplaying. When WoW was new Blizz was pushing the fact that you could actually play solo and do quests without a group which was a lot different than the other games at the time and has now become standard. That one change made the whole game more accessible and allowed people to play on a much more flexible basis. Also Blizz had the highly successful Warcraft world to draw people into. I also think that creating two player factions was a brilliant move. Think about how it unites people in PvP; you know who your friends are and who the enemy is. PvP in games like Conan are just a free for all, everybody is out to get you gank fest.

Any new game that wants to topple WoW now has to contend with WoW's 6 1/2 years of polish and find some way to attract people with either an already popular universe (Star Wars) and/or fix something that WoW doesn't do well that almost everyone who plays WoW wants fixed or offer something even more mainstream oriented to bring in completely new MMORPG players.

In my opinion the next "ground breaking" game will be a polished, story driven, hunting style flexible game similar to WoW but without a holy trinity. Because inevitably no matter what you do with the current system it is just "Genre Style DPS/Tank/Heal Type"

I don't think mechanics really matter though. WoW basically copied the classic fantasy RPG cliches, some that go as far back as Dungeons and Dragons 1st ed and Tolkien and made it work really well. Polish and flexibility are essential but what does WoW lack there? What does WoW do badly? Graphics? I don't think WoW's graphics have hurt it at all. I can still run Cataclysm on my Thinkpad with 16 megs of VRAM. I'm not kidding. It won't do any fancy DX9 stuff but it runs at 30+ fps. That allows a much larger number of people to play who may not want to spend a lot on or know how to buy/build a gaming computer. It brings WoW more into the mainstream. (Gaming computers are cheap to build now with awesome low-mid range cards out but few people seem to know what to get. I know a lot of people who buy a laptop to watch movies and then end up trying WoW).

So what is WoW doing badly that another company could capitalize on and is a franchise like Star Wars popular enough to pull people away from WoW?

[zenga]

So what is WoW doing badly that another company could capitalize on and is a franchise like Star Wars popular enough to pull people away from WoW?

I agree. Don't see myself playing any star war kind of game.

And then again I see possibilities for wow to evolve when the next generation of mmo's show up (whatever next gen might be). With new technologies they could merge certain realms into 1 big with 100k players per faction, which would add a whole new dimension to the game, definitely when they create a new world like outland/northrend.

Frankly I don't care if wow has 1m or 12m subscribers, as long as my realm/battlegroup remains populated enough. It will however affect development budget and information available on the web.

[Apps]

WoW is the rubber stamp for "how to make it work for everyone", kind of MMO.

Any other sucessful MMO is going to either be compaired as "a copycat" or "strayed too far from what works".

The only way WoW will be toppled, is going to be the chip away strategy. Once enough of the smaller client based MMO games have each pulled a little bit of the client base from WoW, only then will WoW be in a position where there isnt such a large gap between its own subscribers, and the rest of them in aggregate.

Games like LotRo, Aion, Warhammer, AoC, and yes, KotOR will have a bigger dent than the rest... but individually I dont see any of them taking the mass lead role anytime in the near future. Big dents, yes. Take overs... nah.

[Tonuss]

re: Graphics, a few years ago someone had posted a Youtube video showing the WOW models with high-res textures and lighting, and they looked amazing. I don't think it was a Blizzard rep doing it, but it did imply that there is room to improve the game's graphics as video technology improves. I think they do a good enough job with graphics that it would not hurt them going forward. And if they really CAN do what that video showed, they'll be just fine when we're using quad-SLI GeForce 9001 cards.