QFT. And particularly worth noting in the case of the SW: Old Republic MMO. The press conference this week had so little information, and so few commitments on anything–from classes to release dates, from starship travel to cameos–that I think it was held so EA can officially put this project, and the accompanying power-blurbs, in the Q4 reports for stockholders. (Although I don’t remember WOW being mentioned at the conference on Monday at all).
Foxstab, I worked for the man who brought WOW to China and he told me the reason for it being so popular was because Warcraft 3 was incredibly popular there in the first place. Warcraft 2 was also quite well known and regarded as one of the ‘classic games’, where PCs are the mainstream and consoles are not.
Warcraft 3 was an incredibly pirated game, but the public knowledge of Warcraft 3 was so prevalent that bringing World of Warcraft in seemed like a surefire thing, despite the perceived ‘risk’ of bringing in a Western MMO into a market already saturated by MMOs, even at that time.
Everyone who played Warcraft 3 knew what they were getting into. They knew the characters, the lore, and the story. The CGI was as breathtaking to them as it is to everyone else.
That guy on the SWToR forums who talked about the knowledge trickling down to the zeitgeist is full of shit.
Actually FFXI is a very good game in many respects. In a few design dimensions, I think it’s actually best in class.
The fact I couldn’t stand to play it past level 30 or so is perhaps a minor point, but let’s just say it has some major design problems as well. I think it still has around 400K players, though, (could be wrong) which is more than say LOTRO.
Um, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is the title of the game. WHO would only make sense if “Warhammer” was two words.
So the OP thinks that MMO developers/publisher should just accept that they will never compete with WoW? Like Blizzard accepted that no one would ever be better than the juggernaut that was EQ1?
Every MMO with a AAA budget should be shooting to knock off WoW.
This isn’t a matter of better, it is a matter of bigger. I think the first 6 or so months of horrible server shortages for WoW suggests that WoW was not expected to be as big as WoW.
Anyways, “We’re gonna be bigger than WoW!” is like the new “We’re bigger than Jesus!”. You’d think EA would have learned a lesson from their vast expanse of half-empty WAR servers, but I guess you have to talk yourself up to investors.
It’s a shame they couldn’t come up with something that abbreviated to WAAGH!