The massive MMORPG collapse - MMORPG Center.com

[Wolfie]

I don't believe for a moment that WOW ruined the MMO market in the way you guys think it did. What WOW did to "ruin" the MMO market is to launch as an extremely polished game, and to rapidly expand and improve with top of the line quality. WOW's developers, designers and QA* were top of the industry people, and it was reflected in their work.

Every big budget MMO that came after WOW tried to appeal to a more hardcore audience, and an audience that sought a change from WOW. Every single one had massive hype built up around it and had hundreds of thousands of pre-orders or followers. And then the games released in an almost unplayable state with game-breaking bugs or lack of content, and the game fizzled. It had absolutely nothing to do with the game not being a clone of WOW or it being an easy mode game, and everything to do with the actual (low) quality of the goods that were promised.

You take a look at how WOW operated for the first few years of its life, and you see that they didn't try to hype anything. They never released features that had major bugs in them; they instead opted to delay some features until they were actually ready and usable (tip: Yoshi is doing the same thing). They placed a massive focus both on story telling and gameplay (and yes, WOW DID have game play), instead of focusing on just gameplay (Aion, RIFT, EVE) or just story (WH, AoC).

You can't blame WOW for "ruining" the MMO industry by being an extremely polished game.

(* The older WOW dev, designer and QA teams. The newer teams that are working on WOW are pretty awful, and it's reflected by the fact that WOW lost approx. 20% of their user base in the last year)

[Mishakai]

Ah I see, so when worthless entitled mouth-breathing scrubs can't get the attention they are looking for on a games official forums, they post their worthless drivel on their own website.

Well, at least those are much more easily avoided.

[Wolfie]

And by the way, FFXI had a steady population post WOW's launch for YEARS. Its population only dropped when the quality of its content also dropped (post level cap increase).

[Roaran]

I think the problem with modern producers and would-be publishers of MMOs, is that they don't see world of warcraft for what it really is. They see something that they could replicate, but WoW is fundamentally just a fad; and, we will likely never see the remergence of another like it.

Unless producers realize this and start catering to their future and current audience, they'll likely never be successful.

I personally play MMORPGS in order to experience all the great things I loved about RPGS, story, strategy, and character development with friends.

[Defmetal]

I think he just nailed it.

It's not that WoW was a kiddy game designed for 9 year olds and up.

It's that WoW launched with an incredible budget, extreme polish, and rapidly updated and released content. And not just minor content, MASSIVE content. The size of their expansions is not matched by any other game. Their .1 updates bring as much content as some MMOs entire expansions. Hey look how little content FFXI has with each expansion (at launch day of the expansion, not end-life of the expansion). I mean CoP only released with a few chapters, a few new zones, no new jobs and virtually no new items. Think about that. (Not where it ended up 2 years after the expansion came out).


WoW didn't create the newbie problem. It responded to it. WoW, like most blizzard games, had so many players it didn't know what to do it. They outdid themselves, they had to rapidly create more servers to handle the unexpected influx of players.


As a result, they had 5m players of all different backgrounds. So, they tried to make the game open and enjoyable to everyone who wanted to play the game. Just like your First Person Shooters, WoW has difficulty settings. You've got your Normal Dungeons for everyone where even morons can complete them. You've got your Hard Mode dungeons for players who want basic strategies. You've got Normal Raids for people who want strategy and a bit more difficulty and risk/reward. Then you've got your Hard Mode raids, for people who want an extreme challenge - and most of them are very difficult.

It's not that WoW was easy, it's that WoW had a difficulty slider and made all difficulties produce acceptable reward tiers.

FFXI never did that. FFXI was an extreme basic set of gear at 75, and a hardcore badass set of gear for raiders. No middle ground. That's also how most MMOs were.

Look at Everquest I, virtually no casual gear for level 60 players, but plenty of incredible raid gear. WoW broke the curve by creating casual gear, roughly 20% weaker than raid gear, but allowing them to have fun.


WoW isn't easy, you're just playing on the wrong difficulty. Guild Wars lets you hit max level in 1 day and doesn't even have raids ..... Have you guys tried raiding in WoW on 24 person heroic difficulties? Some of those fights require a lot of attention and reaction. Just because casual players have content doesn't mean the overall game is easy.

Most of the "hard" mmos are considered hard just because they have no casual content - They have virtually nothing to do for casual players besides level up or some basic gameplay functions. Look at FFXI in TOAU. Assaults were an incredible grind. You'd spend an immense amount of time over many days to get one piece of gear. Nyzul Isle you'd spend weeks getting to floor 100, then you could farm gear. Gear was pretty rare, and there wasn't REALLY casual gear for max level players. All gear was designed for people with lots of play time, lots of hours, and no real life.

Look at Xatsh. He's spent many years of his life playing a video game. He may have gotten a relic in FFXI, and led a guild, but he spends more time in a fake world than the real world.

[Jaide]

I miss the days when MMOs used to be sandbox games that focused on adventure and immersion, the journey to endgame. Then WoW came out and shifted the genre to focus on players with short attention spans that preferred twitch based gaming. Players that couldn't be bothered with adventuring in a game if it took any time away from their race to max level and needed a linear monotonous line of quests to get them there. Now there's nothing left for fans of the genre in its original form because most games are poorly developed or failed attempts to copy WoW's success.

Yeah that article was a rant, but those who dislike WoW have a reason to complain. There's nothing left for them to play and probably no hope of anything coming out in the future that isn't just another poor attempt at mimicking WoW's formula. You could dumb down any genre to appeal to people who originally had no interest in it and you'll see its fans get upset.

[Nanamix]

To be honest, MMORPG nowadays are all about profit. Rather than a so called "Deep Experience" like many developers claimed. Many MMORPG out there have their own potentials, that including create mission and quests and modes that are relevant to their Lore. But instead, they made it casual like "Go kill x amount of monsters." - "Search for this." - "Talk to this guy" and then turn in for a twat load amount of rewards for doing the same thing over and over again. To be honest, MMORPG Developers should stick with their own idea, rather than replicate of the same infamous game, and add something a little different to make it seems different, and then claim it's a "WoW Killer". To be honest, as soon they claimed it's a WoW Killer, we all know that the game content are based from WoW. It's like playing the same damn game over again.

[Jinko]

Agree with everything Defmetal says, of course its falling on Defears in here.

[Delsus]

I don't believe for a moment that WOW ruined the MMO market in the way you guys think it did. What WOW did to "ruin" the MMO market is to launch as an extremely polished game, and to rapidly expand and improve with top of the line quality. WOW's developers, designers and QA* were top of the industry people, and it was reflected in their work.

Every big budget MMO that came after WOW tried to appeal to a more hardcore audience, and an audience that sought a change from WOW. Every single one had massive hype built up around it and had hundreds of thousands of pre-orders or followers. And then the games released in an almost unplayable state with game-breaking bugs or lack of content, and the game fizzled. It had absolutely nothing to do with the game not being a clone of WOW or it being an easy mode game, and everything to do with the actual (low) quality of the goods that were promised.

You take a look at how WOW operated for the first few years of its life, and you see that they didn't try to hype anything. They never released features that had major bugs in them; they instead opted to delay some features until they were actually ready and usable (tip: Yoshi is doing the same thing). They placed a massive focus both on story telling and gameplay (and yes, WOW DID have game play), instead of focusing on just gameplay (Aion, RIFT, EVE) or just story (WH, AoC).

You can't blame WOW for "ruining" the MMO industry by being an extremely polished game.

(* The older WOW dev, designer and QA teams. The newer teams that are working on WOW are pretty awful, and it's reflected by the fact that WOW lost approx. 20% of their user base in the last year)

Who are you and what is your job at Blizzard?

While the article does reak of troll and generally bashing WoW I would have to say that it had atleast damaged the MMO industry, before WoW we got a few good MMOs, now we get sub par MMOs coming out left right and centre from everyone trying to "become the next WoW" because if they do that it will make money.

WoW is like marmite, you either love it and nothing else will do, or you hate it and wouldnt touch it with a 50ft barge pole, there is no inbetween.

[Elexia]

He has valid point, but the article is really poorly written.

WoW seriously destroyed the MMO market as we knew a few years ago, this is a fact.

Yep, it truly did. People who never played MUDs or MMOs prior to WoW wouldn't feel this way, they'd feel "it made MMOs better."