How to actually kill WoW

brickbuster · 2012-02-12, 12:49 AM

so obviously we are all looking forward to Planetside 2. But I'm here to talk about mmorpg's and specifically, two games, World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic. For years now, game companies have tried to topple Blizzard's World of Warcraft, because of the amount of money that mmo's make. The most recent attempt was EA-BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. In case you havn't been paying attention lately, SWTOR was a gigantic flop. Linear questlines, nonexistent PvP, mechanincs dumbed down so badly a toddler could play it, and a complete lack of endgame content sent it's subscriber rates through the floor. Now, the game was never exactly meant to succeed (it was made by the exact same people who did Warhammer Online, another WoW clone; they just got shifted to BioWare), but I still think that in evaluating how to kill World of Warcraft, it's essential to look at the industry's most recent, and largest, failure.

SWTOR's selling points include:

Two factions
8 classes to chose from
Linear Questlines
Voice Acting
Warzones(Battlegrounds)
Flashpoints(Dungeons)
Space Combat(Space on Rails)

In case you havn't noticed, 5 of these are extremely similar to WoW, and the other two just suck. The Voice Acting, while new to an mmo, prevents BioWare from coming out with new quests and general content as often as World of Warcraft. Space on Rails is worse than Top Gun for the NES, because at least in that game you could move your plane around a little bit.

Basically, EA fucked up because they were too stupid to see that in order to draw suscribers away from WoW, they had to provide something that felt different from WoW. I don't mean Star Wars instead of Dungeons and Dragons, I mean in actual game mechanics. They don't want World of Warcraft to be ported into a Star Wars game, they wanted stuff like epic space battles between players, light saber battles that weren't just animations controlled by hotkeys (just like WoW), an actual moral system(like if you act like a Sith, you become a Sith, not get Dark Side gear during raids). Troopers are supposed to play like Troopers, not Hunters. Jedi are supposed be Jedi, not Pally/Mage hybrids. And Han Solo does not heal people, damnit!!!

TL;DR: If you're trying to make an mmo to kill WoW, don't make a crappier version of WoW. I'm sick of seeing this kind of boring, repetitive bullshit from the game industry.

Vancha · 2012-02-12, 06:37 AM

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02...ats-financial/

Er? I'd say that's a pretty good showing for a WoW clone.

Fact is, you just can't kill WoW. Too many people have too large a time investment in it for it to do anything but gradually decline. In fact, the biggest blows to WoW's user base will probably come in the form of it's own expansions, but even then, considering EQ's still around, WoW should be around for at least another decade.

brickbuster · 2012-02-12, 12:36 PM

reported sales of more than 2 million units of The Old Republic with about 1.7 million subscribers

The success of an mmo is not determined by it's initial numbers, but by how many people actually continue to play it. BioWare invested most of their time in the leveling experience, which made it fun until you hit the level cap. At the level cap, there are no daily quests, very few dungeons, 3 Warzones that are basically the same as WoW, no Arena system, a dumbed down economy, limited gear, and basically a desire to play the game that has more endgame content. However, there are no numbers for this month, but if you head over to the official forums, you'll see many die-hard SWTOR fanboy admit that the game is boring after they reach the level cap.

Vancha · 2012-02-12, 12:59 PM

That may be, but to say it's subscriber rates have been sent through the floor when it has more subscribers than most MMOs?

Now maybe it will have a bad retention rate due to lack of endgame and hit 200k subscribers within 6 months, in which case it'll be as successful as your run of the mill MMO, but to call it a flop and a failure when it's running 1.7 million subscribers? Nope.

Warborn · 2012-02-12, 02:13 PM

WoW will die under its own weight in time, although it will probably be many years before it is actually shut down. The only way to outdo WoW, I think, is through a total paradigm shift in MMOG design. Nobody should expect to make a game about standing around hitting hotkey buttons and think they'll eclipse WoW in the process.

The problem with MMORPGs is they're actually quite shitty games when you get down to it. I mean, remove the online aspect from WoW and what're you left with? A game which would bore people to play. It is not engaging at all. Compare it to any of the big-selling games these days. How many of the top-selling console games are ones where you hit tab to select a target, and then stand in place while you hit a couple number keys until it dies? None of them. Not one. Final Fantasy games might come close, but from what I understand those games at least attempt to have a very compelling story to tell amidst the pretty boring combat sequences. Certainly people aren't playing them for the combat. I know I didn't play Final Fantasy games on my SNES because telling party members to attack in sequence was amazingly fun.

The "WoW killer" will be the MMO which is designed to bring actually fun, enjoyable gameplay to a MMO scale. That's what the next step in the MMO industry is going to be. Planetside 1 and 2 are going to be the first steps on that road I'd imagine. Hopefully Blizzard's new MMO will go down this route too. Either way, that'll be the kind of game that eclipses WoW.

Graywolves · 2012-02-12, 02:32 PM

I don't understand why companies have this idea of "this is successful so we'll pretty much copy it."

Why would people want to play the same game they've already been playing?

Companies need to stop "thinking safe" and actually make different games.

Warborn · 2012-02-12, 03:03 PM

The want to copy success because it's proven to work and money is the ultimate goal. Trying new things is risky. When you're talking about millions of dollars and years of work, "risky" doesn't sound so good to the investors. But pointing to a product that makes buckets of money and saying "we're going to do what they do", well, that probably sounds pretty good. Fortunately, I think BioWare just fucked it up for everyone. If you can't make a hit title with $200 million and the Star Wars IP, then what can you make a hit with? I think BioWare's turd will be the last of the WoW clones.

SKYeXile · 2012-02-12, 11:37 PM

You talk to most people who play wow, they dont even play or keepup with any other games.

Vash02 · 2012-02-13, 07:20 AM

Hasnt that kung fu panda expansion killed it yet?
I imagined thousands of people cancelling subs in disgust.

Warborn · 2012-02-13, 04:50 PM

Maybe thousands did, but it has millions of subscribers. And I guess maybe the number of Chinese customers attracted to their very Chinese-themed expansion might make up for it.

Adeon Hawkwood · 2012-02-13, 05:43 PM

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

Never understood why they didn't use the playerbase for quests....

Well part of it is Sturgeon Law (90% of user-generated content is awful) but the other side is that in practice the very nature of MMOs works against user generated content being viable. As someone noted above the majority of MMORPGs have pretty poor game play and essentially revolve around giving players rewards for doing something (i.e. go and kill 100 swamp rats and you'll get an item that is 0.01% than what you currently have). What that means is that any player generated content will be used by players to try and decrease the time-to-reward in any way possible. I'll give two examples of MMO's I've played which do have user-generated content: City of Heroes and Star Trek Online.

The Architect Entertainment system in City of Heroes is pretty powerful and can be used to make some interesting stories. However the majority of people using it are basically just farming easy-mode enemies for rewards because doing so offers some of the best rewards per time in the game (even before factoring in actual exploits). The history of AE in the game is basically one long struggle between the developers and the people trying to find the next major exploit.

The Foundry in STO is not as bad but mostly because individual missions don't give rewards. However there is a daily quest to complete foundry missions so needless to say people have created the simplest possible missions (click on a terminal in one of the central social hubs) to allow of maximum reward/time.

Graywolves · 2012-02-13, 08:25 PM

Originally Posted by Vash02

Hasnt that kung fu panda expansion killed it yet?
I imagined thousands of people cancelling subs in disgust.

All I hear is people complaining about something that the majority of the players have wanted since vanilla, Panderans.

WoW's just a really old game. It's not going to go down due to them screwing themselves over. People will just eventually want to do new games.

Vash02 · 2012-02-13, 09:17 PM

Originally Posted by Graywolves

All I hear is people complaining about something that the majority of the ~~players~~ squeeky wheels have wanted since vanilla, Panderans.

WoW's just a really old game. It's not going to go down due to them screwing themselves over. People will just eventually want to do new games.

there you go.

Crator · 2012-02-13, 10:09 PM

Consider this, EverQuest released in 1999 and Dark Age of Camelot in 2001; Both are still going to this day. Games that have pioneered the market run for a long time.

Raymac · 2012-02-13, 11:16 PM

The Simpsons has been on air for over 22 years now. There are so many episodes that there is talk of the show having it's own tv channel. Now it may have lost some of its luster but it is still going strong. It's not at the top of the ratings anymore, but it is still successful enough to get renewed for another couple years at least.

There has been no "Simpson killer" tv show, so there doesn't need to be a "WoW killer" video game. Who knows, we may someday be playing WoW and watching new Simpsons episodes with our grandkids, telling them about the good ol' days.