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BrookM wrote:Somehow I doubt that WAR will topple WOW from the throne of best MMO ever. I agree that WAR is superior but about 99% of the people who play MMO's will stick to the real thing and don't bother with the "knock offs".

If that was true no one would be playing WoW.

And you forget that WAR is starting with two massive fan bases, first from WarHammer and then from DAoC (Also created by Mythic)

BrookM wrote:Somehow I doubt that WAR will topple WOW from the throne of best MMO ever. I agree that WAR is superior but about 99% of the people who play MMO's will stick to the real thing and don't bother with the "knock offs".

Knock off?



http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10/

Look, I am not calling it a knock off myself, I know that WOW is the far-off rip off from WAR, just try telling that to the legions of idiots and Koreans who are on their knees for Blizzard most of their spare time.

BrookM wrote:Look, I am not calling it a knock off myself, I know that WOW is the far-off rip off from WAR, just try telling that to the legions of idiots and Koreans who are on their knees for Blizzard most of their spare time.

I'm not even refering to the rip off Blizzard did to come up with Warcraft and StarCraft. WoW did nothing but take ideas from Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot and make everything look like a cheap cartoon, then spend 5 million dollars shoving it down our throats for 6 months before it went gold. WoW brought nothing to the MMO world other then removing all the slow 9 year olds from the good games.

Please tell us more about your hatred of popular franchises.

WoW is the real deal. If the other games that came before it were the real things, why did they die off and become forgotten? WoW is THE MMO game. Listen to any of the recovering WoW addicts and you'll realize that WoW's carrot-baiting recipe was the perfect one for MMOs. Addictive enough that even though everyone talks about how unoriginal and boring it is, they'll still play it for hours on end for no reason. That's what an MMO should be - like a drug.

I've tried WAR. It doesn't have that feel. It's like TF2. You hop on and get off an hour later. It's not the ideal MMO.

stonefox wrote:Please tell us more about your hatred of popular franchises.

WoW is the real deal. If the other games that came before it were the real things, why did they die off and become forgotten? WoW is THE MMO game. Listen to any of the recovering WoW addicts and you'll realize that WoW's carrot-baiting recipe was the perfect one for MMOs. Addictive enough that even though everyone talks about how unoriginal and boring it is, they'll still play it for hours on end for no reason. That's what an MMO should be - like a drug.

I've tried WAR. It doesn't have that feel. It's like TF2. You hop on and get off an hour later. It's not the ideal MMO.

Yes, because I am a real gamer and know my history I hate WoW just because it is popular with 40 year old house wives and little kids.

You don't hear about DAoC because it has everything WoW has AND MORE 10+ years ago. The game is a decade old with a crap load of expansions and still holds a few hundred thousand subscriptions

MMOs are not supposed to be like a drug, there supposed to be fun and let you emirs your self in a fantasy world for a few hours every now and then, not keep you playing for 40+ hours a week and do nothing els. WoW is a complete disgrace to the gaming world.

Yes, let's blame Korea. Blizzard made a lot of great games. I'm a huge RPG lover.

But WoW was always such an obvious way for the company to amass gold, that I simply had to turn away. WAR is no different for me - I WILL NOT SUBSCRIBE TO A COMPUTER GAME. I also play a hacked version of HL2, because Steam can blow me. I was on dial-up when HL2 first came out; it was another day before I could play it thanks to Steams's all-star dumbness. Playing games online is one thing.
I love it and I've done it for years. I pay for my internet connection and my downloads. In fact I fork out a premium, mostly so I can get less than 60 pings on UT04.

If you buy a game, you shouldn't have to download anything else to make it run, except for patches, which aren't generally needed - there is some choice in the matter.

If you buy a game like WAR at full price, and are paying for your internet connection AND subscriptions to god knows how many other fanboi games... Geez, thanks losers. THAT's were the powerful economy our parents built for us went.

Blizzard did their homework, their studies and weren't pushed out the door by a money grubbing producer like EA. Enough said.

Hrm, calling MMO players losers because they pay for server upkeep and further development?

Arctik_Firangi wrote:Yes, let's blame Korea. Blizzard made a lot of great games. I'm a huge RPG lover.

But WoW was always such an obvious way for the company to amass gold, that I simply had to turn away. WAR is no different for me - I WILL NOT SUBSCRIBE TO A COMPUTER GAME. I also play a hacked version of HL2, because Steam can blow me. I was on dial-up when HL2 first came out; it was another day before I could play it thanks to Steams's all-star dumbness. Playing games online is one thing.
I love it and I've done it for years. I pay for my internet connection and my downloads. In fact I fork out a premium, mostly so I can get less than 60 pings on UT04.

If you buy a game, you shouldn't have to download anything else to make it run, except for patches, which aren't generally needed - there is some choice in the matter.

If you buy a game like WAR at full price, and are paying for your internet connection AND subscriptions to god knows how many other fanboi games... Geez, thanks losers. THAT's were the powerful economy our parents built for us went.

Wow, way to make your self look stupid. People pay monthly for large content patches and server maintenance so they can keep playing the game they enjoy. Sounds to me that your just pissy because your stuck on Dial-up.

And I hate to brake it to you but by paying the monthly you are helping people keep there job so they can keep the rotation of wealth going. People paying monthly fees for entertainment is not "ruining the economy" its the same as you paying to go see a movie on the weekend.

JokerGod wrote:
Yes, because I am a real gamer and know my history I hate WoW just because it is popular with 40 year old house wives and little kids.

You don't hear about DAoC because it has everything WoW has AND MORE 10+ years ago. The game is a decade old with a crap load of expansions and still holds a few hundred thousand subscriptions

MMOs are not supposed to be like a drug, there supposed to be fun and let you emirs your self in a fantasy world for a few hours every now and then, not keep you playing for 40+ hours a week and do nothing els. WoW is a complete disgrace to the gaming world.

Yeah, too bad that really popular game is successful with everyone and not just the "gaming elite". DAoC and other MMOs were never popular. They never caught the attention of the news and you'd be hard pressed to find a random person who knew about it.

MMOs are role playing games. Ideally, they'd be so good that you'd want to actually believe that your character and his makebelieve life was real. They should get you wrapped up in the fantasy world and assert the image of the basement junkie who gets laughed at. Last, they should make you feel utterly vulnerable so much that you can feel better about your pathetic waste of a life by being this grand hero who's strong, smart, and popular - qualities you don't possess IRL. This provides endless entertainment for you and for those who view you - everyone wins!

This is what the ideal MMO should do:

Yes because a games popularity is only based on how many lives it destroys. :S

The only reason games like DAoC and EQ2 are not "Popular" as you put it is because the companys behind them put there money in to the GAME and not advertising the crap out of it to the point where the advertisements where great but the game was generic crap.

Most of the people that play WoW have never played any other MMO so they don't know what a real MMO is like and end up basing every other game they play off of WoW, its destroying the MMO genera

So, yeah, I think WAR eventually has the capability of turning WoW into what EQ is today. A game that'll still exist

A ludicrous statement. Eventually WoW will become what you described, but where the players are going isn't into WAR, but into the new MMO Blizzard is set to release in about (?) five years. Untill then WoW will reign supreme by an absolutely massive margin. The share Blizzard has in the MMO market is over 50%, with the other half split between dozens of games. The same was essentially proven true of Starcraft, as the only proper worldwide competitor in the same genre is Starcraft 2. I've now played WAR for what, three or four weeks, and it's been nothing short of a big disappointment for me, and I've already gone back to WoW now that 3.0.2 was released on live and the expansion CD is only three weeks away. To me it seems the hype of WAR has already ended before it ever truly began, and popular gaming blog sites like Gameriot aren't writing anything much about it anymore. The only people I know still talking about WAR are desperate WAR players trying to round up WoW players from WoW forums into their game to fill the empty servers.

Double post.

Therion wrote:

So, yeah, I think WAR eventually has the capability of turning WoW into what EQ is today. A game that'll still exist

A ludicrous statement. Eventually WoW will become what you described, but where the players are going isn't into WAR, but into the new MMO Blizzard is set to release in about (?) five years. Untill then WoW will reign supreme by an absolutely massive margin. The share Blizzard has in the MMO market is over 50%, with the other half split between dozens of games. The same was essentially proven true of Starcraft, as the only proper worldwide competitor in the same genre is Starcraft 2. I've now played WAR for what, three or four weeks, and it's been nothing short of a big disappointment for me, and I've already gone back to WoW now that 3.0.2 was released on live and the expansion CD is only three weeks away. To me it seems the hype of WAR has already ended before it ever truly began, and popular gaming blog sites like Gameriot aren't writing anything much about it anymore. The only people I know still talking about WAR are desperate WAR players trying to round up WoW players from WoW forums into their game to fill the empty servers.

The only people left playing WoW we don't want on WAR. you can feel free to keep all the stupid kids and 40 year old house wives. We don't want them ruining out game.

And I Hate to brake it to you but WAR has slaughtered WoWs starting month, they where twice WoWs beta and close to twice WoWs first month.

The only reason WoW is still bigger is because it is years older and has spent over a billion dollars advertising it, WAR hasen't even spent 100,000 on advertisements and it is growing faster then WoW ever did.

WoW could have 900,000,000 players and I wouldn't care. This isn't how I choose to play my games. WAR is fun in a way I find engaging. thus I play it. WoW is fun, but it doesn't really engage me, so I don't play it.

Not that it matters as this thread was derailed awhile ago and now we are someplace unfortunate.

The only people left playing WoW we don't want on WAR

So aggressive. The only people? Oh yes, the 10.9 million monthly subscribers. I don't know any serious gamers at all who have left WoW for WAR. Actually, the only people I know at all who've made a serious switch to that game, were two unbelievable casuals who got tired of WoW Arena PvP demanding much more individual skill than they had to offer. Thus, they're now 'capturing castles' in a 'superior' game.

And I Hate to brake it to you but WAR has slaughtered WoWs starting month

A lot of WoW players were curious if the game was any good. I'm one of those 700K so called 'WAR players' who bought the box, and by the way, won't subscribe.

The WAR case hasn't been in any real way different to AoC so far a little previously, and it will suffer the same fate. The noise quiets down everywhere else than on Warhammer 40K/Fantasy Battle fansites, and then the game dies a slow death.

EDIT: The WoW market share is actually 62%, not 50% as I previously stated.

I'd play MMOs if it wasn't for all the other people. Several of them look interesting and cool, but I just don't want to have to deal with the average online gamer. Not my type of crowd.

And I Hate to brake it to you but WAR has slaughtered WoWs starting month, they where twice WoWs beta and close to twice WoWs first month.

The only reason WoW is still bigger is because it is years older and has spent over a billion dollars advertising it, WAR hasen't even spent 100,000 on advertisements and it is growing faster then WoW ever did.

The reason WAR has broken records is because WoW paved the way by introducing the MMO genre to players who normally had no interest in it or in PC gaming at all. Due to WoW, the MMO scene has changed dramatically between the time that WoW was released and now, so comparing subscription numbers between WAR and WoW at release is meaningless.

That's not to knock WAR because it's obviously having a more successful release than LotR online, Vanguard, DDO, AoC, etc. One further caveat to add, though, is that one should be cautious about using subsciption numbers to determine the quality of a game. Good games tend to be successful, certainly, but just because one game has more players than the other doesn't necessarily mean it is a better game. McDonald's sells the most hamburgers in the world, but that doesn't mean they're the best hamburgers in the world.

Saying WoW is the only reason WAR has its numbers is like saying Apple only sells computers because Microsoft invented it first :S

WoW came out as the internet was growing and more and more people where getting computers for more then E-mail and surfing, Dial-Up was going out the window and things like Online banking, Flash Games and Easy to use E-mail where coming in to play. Blizzard was smart and relised the game when people where starting to explore the options of the online world, they got lucky and all the little kids loved the cartoon images and so easy a slow can do it game play.

The people still playing WoW can stay there, thos of us playing WAR don't want your care bear crying in our game, have fun doing the same thing 600 times to get your "epic loot" We will be playing a revolutionary game that doesn't require us to play for 10+ hours a day.

And WoW has 10.9Million ACCOUNTS, not subscriptions. Blizzard has out out false reports since WC2, there press reports can not be trusted.

Yes because a games popularity is only based on how many lives it destroys.

The only reason games like DAoC and EQ2 are not "Popular" as you put it is because the companys behind them put there money in to the GAME and not advertising the crap out of it to the point where the advertisements where great but the game was generic crap.

The cost of WoWs development cycle was well over both of those games. It cost more to make, it costs far more to upkeep, and it is BETTER. Thats why it has 11 million subscriptions. Not because of advertising (that began occurring well after the games release). I like WAR, i play WAR, I think it's better than WoW. I also think DAOC is overhyped garbage and EQ2 was about as revolutionary as a madden sequel.

The same was essentially proven true of Starcraft, as the only proper worldwide competitor in the same genre is Starcraft 2.

Actually, outside of korea C&C 3 and Dawn of War both saw superior numbers in the tournament sector. They just don't have the longevity of starcraft because the companies that produce them don't wait a decade to release a sequel.

To me it seems the hype of WAR has already ended before it ever truly began, and popular gaming blog sites like Gameriot aren't writing anything much about it anymore.

There is no such thing as a "popular gaming blog". There are blogs about gaming that attract diehards but to be popular you have to have some pretension of being mainstream. Penny arcade is a popular gaming blog attached to a mainstream comic and they talk about WAR all the time. The initial release hype is dying down because the release has HAPPENED not because the game sucks.

The only people I know still talking about WAR are desperate WAR players trying to round up WoW players from WoW forums into their game to fill the empty servers.

The fact that you actively surf the sesspit that is the WoW forums means your not the kind of player Mythic is likely to win over. You have too much invested to switch, as will anyone that is able to USE WoTLK. MMOs gain and lose memberships in the longterm if they are successful, the first months entry and exit numbers are rarely indicative of more than the health of the industry.

The only people left playing WoW we don't want on WAR. you can feel free to keep all the stupid kids and 40 year old house wives. We don't want them ruining out game.

Facepalm.jpeg

I don't know any serious gamers at all who have left WoW for WAR.

"serious WoW gamers" won't leave WoW for WAR. They are "serious WoW gamers". Thats like saying a "Serious Reuben Fan" will drop it because there is a new sandwich on the menu. If he did he wasn't too serious.

WoW Arena PvP demanding much more individual skill than they had to offer.

If by individual skill you mean rock paper scissors metagame.

I'm one of those 700K so called 'WAR players' who bought the box, and by the way, won't subscribe.

And you have made it painfully obvious that you were just using it as a stopgap measure before WoTLK so you could grind more lootz in NEW neon caverns with giant monsters in them.

The WAR case hasn't been in any real way different to AoC so far a little previously, and it will suffer the same fate.

Actually AoC is dying because of a horrifying amount of launch bugs, a total lack of upper level content, and soul crushing system requirements. All of which are admitted by the development team.

None of which WAR has. Most of your posts are rabid fanboism, but really, do some research.

Saying WoW is the only reason WAR has its numbers is like saying Apple only sells computers because Microsoft invented it first

No, its akin to saying that apple sells computers because the computing industry exists and is large enough to support their products. Which happened in no small part thanks to the lowest bidder system that Microsoft put forth. If there wasn't a massive computing industry apple wouldn't sell as much. If WoW hadn't grown MMO genre five times over, WAR wouldn't sell as much.

nd WoW has 10.9Million ACCOUNTS, not subscriptions. Blizzard has out out false reports since WC2, there press reports can not be trusted.

Saying WoW is the only reason WAR has its numbers is like saying Apple only sells computers because Microsoft invented it first

Taken from the WIKI article. Maybe its lower maybe its higher, but its probably damn close, since its illegal to lie to shareholders in that way.

JokerGod, your argument seems to suggest that prior to the time WoW was released, the internet wasn't growing and computers were only used for e-mail and web surfing and everyone was still using dial-up, none of which is true. Those changes pre-date WoW by several years at least (and, in fact, PC gaming is on the decline, not the rise).

The truth of the matter is that Blizzard put out the most polished, user-friendly, and generally appealing MMO ever made. EQ 2 came out at almost EXACTLY the same time and never reached anywhere even close to the same number of subscriptions--and that's with the advantage of being the sequel to the definitive MMO (at the time) and a large fan base to boot. WoW was better able to widen the MMO-playing demographic. It's not luck, as you suggest, that is responsible for the most successful MMO in history (by a huge margin).

And this is coming from someone who has grown to hate Blizzard as a company. But I still give credit where credit is due.

And WoW has 10.9Million ACCOUNTS, not subscriptions. Blizzard has out out false reports since WC2, there press reports can not be trusted.

Actually, any press reports coming from Blizzard can be trusted because they are now part of a publicly traded company (Activision). Providing false reports would leave them liable.

I play WoW and I picked up War and am slowly leveling up an Archmage and just started a Zealot. I enjoy it and the pvp is fun.

I still play both games when I can find the time. I think the big test will be what will War's subscription number look like after WOTLK comes out. If they can keep players or do people flock back to WoW.

Kirika wrote:I play WoW and I picked up War and am slowly leveling up an Archmage and just started a Zealot. I enjoy it and the pvp is fun.

I still play both games when I can find the time. I think the big test will be what will War's subscription number look like after WOTLK comes out. If they can keep players or do people flock back to WoW.

It's be nice if WAR can hang around. Competition spurs innovation. The most recent gaming example is Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero - look what Harmonix' success has forced/encourage Activision to do there!

Oh right you are there. But stick to Rock Band or wait for Rock Band 2, my girl had to play the drums and guitar of Guitar Hero World Tour for a promo thing and it just didn't feel as great as the RB instruments. Not to mention the musical tracks! /off topic

WAR wont die that easily when the new expansion is cranked out. Worst case scenario servers will be merged and new content will move in a little slower. The game is still young though, a lot of people wait out for a year or so before diving in, waiting until most bugs and whatnots have been hammered out. We've got good stuff ahead of us yet with two new classes coming this December and a lot of other features that they had to cut will be put in as well. Mounted combat sounds like good fun.

I've got both RB & RB2; I'm mostly curious about the drums for GH:WT, as I don't especially care for the RB drum kit - it's the four drum distribution. I guess I need to visit with the Best Buy demo (before it gets destroyed by visitors).

OT but you can always pick up that new kit for the RB drums:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001E2UGVQ/ref=s9sdps_c6_63_at1-rfc_g1-frt_g1-3215_g1-3102_p?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1W3TZS0JDQNEH3AAMNXE&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=436516001&pf_rd_i=507846

Ozymandias, King of Kings

stonefox wrote:

Yeah, too bad that really popular game is successful with everyone and not just the "gaming elite". DAoC and other MMOs were never popular. They never caught the attention of the news and you'd be hard pressed to find a random person who knew about it.

Lets be fair, World of Warcraft would never have had the success it has if it didn't have the Blizzard name attached. If you took WoW back in 2004, called it "Quest World" (or whatever) and took the Blizzard name away, it would just be another obscure MMO. What made WoW was the Blizzard tag and Blizzards ability to market it, it was all about name recognition. The *vast* majority of WoW players have never even played another MMO, and probably never would have in the first place, and most never will. If you look at other MMO's, the vast majority of the player base in such games typically have played other MMO's, WAR, EQ, EQ2, Planetside, Lineage, Guild Wars, etc...

Other games have done the MMO thing much better, lets be honest about that. Even when I played WoW (and I played it just as hardcore as many other people for 2 years) I knew there were better MMO's out there, and its part of the reason I quite (in addition to it just being a boring grindfest)




And no, an MMO needn't be like cocaine to be great, in fact I much prefer MMO's that I can walk away from when I want to. I'd never buy another MMO that required the time investment of WoW.

Also WoW's "addictiveness" doesn't come from immersing yourself in the world, it comes from everything taking forever and always having a carrot (just do two more quest lines to get a new sword!) to keep going. Immersion isn't the factor there.

Lets be fair, World of Warcraft would never have had the success it has if it didn't have the Blizzard name attached. If you took WoW back in 2004, called it "Quest World" (or whatever) and took the Blizzard name away, it would just be another obscure MMO.

Thats pretty baseless. Bungie was an unknown and HALO is now a household name. Developer name recognition doesn't take a game very far, hype and quality are vastly more important. I would attribute its success more to the reletively well known warcraft brand then to blizzard.

Other games have done the MMO thing much better, lets be honest about that.

Oddly enough then, WAR is the only MMO to have gained close to the same agregate rating (88 to WoWs 93) via metacritic. So if other games have done the MMO thing much better they managed to suck enough to not warrant good reviews while doing it.

Also WoW's "addictiveness" doesn't come from immersing yourself in the world, it comes from everything taking forever and always having a carrot (just do two more quest lines to get a new sword!) to keep going. Immersion isn't the factor there.

Immersion has never been a factor with MMO's. Of any game genre they are the least immersive, with long boring quests, comparitively dated graphics, and layers and layers of math on top of a story that really only exists to justify the scenery. MMO's excell at the social aspect of the game, creating a sizeable game world and then tossing thousands of players in there to interact with EACHOTHER as well as that world.

Want to know where the rest of othe MMO Markety is? Off playing guild wars for free every month. My brother who plays more than most WoW players I know tells me it has just under 5 million accounts. Compared to 10.9 thats not too bad for a game that you never hear hype about and is rarely discussed. Overall though it is a decent game. And it does actually have most of the things that WAR has. The only significant difference is the MMO part consists of towns and outposts. More of a mix of KOTOR and WOW than a true MMO, but one of the best nonetheless.

The *vast* majority of WoW players have never even played another MMO

What the heck is this based on? Most of the officers in my previous guild ran guilds in Everquest, and three of my real life friends who play WoW in addition to me even have a history in MUDs and later other nolife games like Planetarion. I know a ton of WoW players like this.

MMO's excell at the social aspect of the game

This is spot on. Some people generally don't care what happens in the game as long as there are new challenges to overcome as often as possible for themselves and their online friends and guildmates. MMO's are rather boring places in the long run if you're going at it alone (essentially refusing to make any friends and contacts while playing).

As far as E-sports are concerned, WoW arena is very entertaining and competitive (which is why it's one of the few traditional computer games that you can win serious money from [Quake 3, CS 1.6, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft]) , and although flavour of the month comps exist the arena seasons are very exciting especially in the early and late stages. Things will get even more interesting now when a new class is introduced and now that the hybrid classes were completely revamped. WoW players were handed more prize money this year than any other cyber athletes outside Korea (Starcraft is still the national sport over there), and next year both the prize money and the monthly subscriber pool of 11 million are only going to get bigger. Even though casual guys don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever seeing any of that money, I know quite a lot of them who still enjoy playing games in which they could 'potentially' progress to sky high limits. As a side note, the same phenomenon applies to online poker players, and a lot of other sports. Star players are 'idols' of sorts and give the elite of the game an actual face and the new kids on the block some dreams to strive for.

The future of WoW PvP is quite bright as the game has been developed with mostly PvP in mind for well over a year. In a recent interview of Kalgan & Tigole, they said that in Wrath of the Lich King they also want to shift the focus slightly towards competitive large scale siege battles and battlegrounds in the form of 10 and 15-man team ratings. Like they explained, the problem in the past has been how to reward players. Will you reward them for having played more than the other guy, or having played better? If everyone agree we want to reward the best players, how will we figure out who played the best in a 40 vs 40 public battleground? Capping flags or objectives and maxing out your DPS or HPS doesn't really tell anything about your team or your opponents and whether they were clueless AFKers or not. That's why the only real solution is an arena type ladder system for the larger battlegrounds as well. Arena became the automatic focus of WoW PvP because it was easy to track the up and down progress in the ladders and the higher you got the tougher teams you faced and the better rewards you received. When the casuals noticed that the arena potentially gave out the best items nearly everyone started playing it. The endgame is what everyone are interested in afterall. The two designers did say they are adding the feature to queue from everywhere in the WoW world and that they are exploring the possibility of EXP and other rewards from playing battlegrounds, although in my opinion the EXP aspect isn't needed at all as 99% of an MMO player's online time is spent at maximum level. Anyway, good times.