The massive MMORPG collapse - MMORPG Center.com

[Wolfie]

You have zero reading comprehension.

And shame on me for replying to you.

[Sidious]

Look simply put, WoW is successful because it has content for all players, of all backgrounds, and each group is treated equally to new content.

All casual players get the same amount of new things to do as raiders.

That's a detriment to the game, not a benefit. People might not want to admit it, but they want a world where there are winners and losers. Kids hang up sports posters and participate in athletics to be like their pro idols. Ash Ketchum wants to enslave an entire kingdom of sentient beings to be the best there ever was. This mentality that everyone needs to be on equal footing goes against the nature of humanity, and indeed nature itself.

If you look at the numbers, it's very easy to see how successful the design philosophy for each stage of WoW has been. Vanilla was a more refined Everquest, with characters and lore from the Warcraft franchise. It was wildly popular, and by the time it was over it had gained about 5 million subscribers. Mind you, this was in an era where MMO's were still not considered to be hip or mainstream. Vanilla WoW forged a market for itself, and paved the way for its successors.

Next, Burning Crusade. TBC is where a good deal of the remaining player base started out, and it was destined to be successful because of what vanilla had done before it. It gained 6 million people by the time it was over (for a total retained subscriber base of 11 million), and is held to be one of the better periods of WoW to date.

Then something happened. In "Wrath of the Lich King", Blizzard wanted to change the game so casual players could experience all of the endgame content that the hardcore raiders do. They removed or simplified many of the game mechanics, made "heroic" dungeons very very easy, and eventually created four different types of raids: Normal 10, Heroic 10, Normal 25, and Heroic 25. Also, the progression model was abolished-- you no longer needed to do the prior raid to "gear up" for the latest content. Because activities were so simple and so easy to accomplish in the game, and with the prior raids being inviable, people began to run out of things to do. As such, WotLK stagnated and gained only 1 million players by the time the epic conclusion of Arthas' storyline had completed (12 million retained).

The most unsuccessful period of WoW has been Cataclysm; the current era of WoW. In this era, the developers tried there hardest to "please everyone". Heroics were made to require the use of your crowd control skills again, and you could no longer bulldoze through them in your average gear. Raids were similarly more difficult, although this is more likely due to the changed Blizzard made to healing-- a story for another time. Aside from these two things, however, nothing had changed from WotLK. In fact, Blizzard made it worse by essentially putting a hard cap on how much you could accomplish per day/week. Blizzard still wanted casuals to be on a level playing field. As such, a hardcore raider could get, at max, xxx out of xxx valor points per week. Valor points came from raid bosses and heroic dungeons. This was the first time that, aside from weapons and some tokens, a hardcore raider was physically unable to achieve more than a casual. The "only the current tier matters" mentality continued, and people had even less content to do than in WotLK. Heroics were nerfed because people thought it was the difficultly of Cata that was causing it to be so unpopular, but they were incorrect. They soon realized that it wasn't the difficulty of Cata that was killing it; it was because there was nothing to do. Every single facet of the game had been simplified, restricted, or otherwise dumbed down to make the game more accessible to casual MMO players. The result? A staggering loss of over 2 million players and counting.

That keeps every group of the population happy.

As someone who still plays WoW, and has played since open beta, I can assure you. Discontent with the direction of the game is at an all time high. This isn't an assertion or conjecture; WoW's current losses are unprecedented. Even after offering Diablo 3 for free in exchange for an annual WoW contract, they still lost a record amount of subscribers. Even though they introduced "easy mode" raids that you need only queue for from the UI, they still lost a record amount of subscribers. In WoW, you sit in town-- no need to gather or craft because neither one provides any real use anymore-- and queue for dungeons. You do not interact with your server, and there is no interserver competition anymore. There's no point in the older content except transmogrification items, and there's only a vague point in the current content.

In the end, people don't want an easy game; they want a game where there's something to aspire to. Even if they know it's beyond their reach.

[Blarp]

"In the end, people don't want an easy game; they want a game where there's something to aspire to. Even if they know it's beyond their reach."

That's an odd thing to say since there's millions of people that apparently do. WoW still offers something to strive for; not every player is going to be able to do heroic raiding or high level PVP. People cheer and boo for different guilds going for world first kills. There's a mad dash every time there's a content patch -- guilds on the same server are always competing to finish first. A lot of people would love to be a part of something like that, and work towards it.

People are so discontented with WoW because they've been playing it for over seven years. The majority of people still love the game. It's just like any other MMO; the malcontents are the loudest, but it's never representative of the larger population. WoW lost ~2 million subscribers. They still have ~8 million players who still enjoy the game. I'd say they're doing something right.

[Onji_T]

The blatant WoW bashing article is indeed poorly written. There wasn't a single constructive thing said in it. The people that ok articles like that should really take the time to read them first.

WoW is a successful mmo and there is no denying that. While I think it lacks innovation and challenge it offers a lot to casual players. The problem with the mmo market today really isn't that WoW was successful, it's that other companies are trying to copy that success rather than move forward and be innovative. I think the genre will be fine when companies figure out that they can't copy WoW they need to move on and do something a little more original.

[SniperRifle]

Playing 4 hours a night 5 days a week, someone was able to beat Sunwell Plateau during The Burning Crusade with the other <2% of WoW's population.

The possibility to maintain a life outside of computers/school/work, and still perform a once in a life time feat. For someones 75 days playlog, WoW surely delivered.

[Firon]

Hmm, but Street Fighter most didn't ever play and found pretty bad. Street Fighter II maybe, but what really set fighting games into motion was Mortal Kombat, Tekken and Marvel vs Capcom. Street Fighter reached a broader audience by being ported to consoles.

Dead or Alive and Soul Calibur were great fighting games too which you could easily say pushed it even further in terms of custimization (since prior to that, it was merely costume/color scheme swaps), but the thing with WoW is, WoW got popular but it's design pretty much ruined everything that made MMOs fun or great, then every other new developer directly copied that design, so yeah unlike blaming street fighter, you literally can blame WoW for what happened to the MMO market.

Wow i almost coughed up blood when you said mortal kombat pushed the genre forward lol... FG are nothing about customizing or anything like that lol..

[zergasaur]

I do agree with the article in some limited way though. Games have become easy and boring as of late. And game companies have lost their way. Its all about $$ instead of releasing a quality product. A clear example of this:

Dragon Age

Do you guys remember how fantastic that game was? How long did it take you to beat it? Most would say over a week. Every minute was glorious. Then the expansion came out. How long did that take you to beat? 5 hours for me. ( Really? Well okay, its an expansion. ) Lastly, how long did it take you to beat Dragon Age 2. 1 day ( WTF! Every dungeon uses the same map! ).

Command & Conquer 6??? I forget...and don't care anymore

Beat the single player on highest difficulty in 6 hours. On all previous versions, I would spend 6 hours on 1 level alone...
What Happened?!

[Cichy]

oh god I woke up to a world where Bioware = quality /facepalm

[Elexia]

Wow i almost coughed up blood when you said mortal kombat pushed the genre forward lol... FG are nothing about customizing or anything like that lol..

Is that why fighting games have been adding customization or in the case of SC, let you change your style/weapon choice? Guess I've been playing the wrong fighting games then, but then again, I don't play a lot of games that get localized to the west so maybe that's why I actually have different insight on them.

oh god I woke up to a world where Bioware = quality /facepalm

If we're not allowed to hate WoW because of success you're not allowed to hate on Bioware because of success either.

[Firon]

Is that why fighting games have been adding customization or in the case of SC, let you change your style/weapon choice? Guess I've been playing the wrong fighting games then, but then again, I don't play a lot of games that get localized to the west so maybe that's why I actually have different insight on them.

FG are not about customizing chars at all that stuff is put it for a few casuals who buy those games. FG are all about game mechanics and among other things. It's a reason SF4 is the most popular fighting game atm cause it has very deep mechanics etc. Its like saying SC(star craft) enhanced the genre due to more colors and stuff -.-