It could. However, realistically the quality of the content isn’t something I think is all that much better than the content in EQ2 which comes out 2-3 times as fast. The quests are similar in many, many ways. There are spanning quest lines. The graphics are different, so perhaps that accounts for it.
EQ2 launched a month before WoW… Echoes of Faydwer, their third major expansion, is slated to come out roughly the same time that TBC does. In the interim they’ve released 2-3 mini expansions as well as free content. Quality is an ephemeral thing, but I’d argue the quality of the content isn’t really why folks prefer WoW, but rather it’s the quality of their game system.
Blizzard is godawful slow. Disproportionate with the differential in quality.
I think part of the slow rollout of material is that they are cautious. Everything they add is going to be played by millions, so every mistake is magnified.
The other thing is that content requires players, and while WoW certainly has enough players, it’s still not always easy to get a group for an instance. Adding more instances and zones might make that task even harder.
Also, EQ2 is playing catch up. They have to try harder. :)
EQ2 may add more content, but it is odd content. I really think the basic game system there is better than WoW, but everytime I try to play it, I get to about level 20 and start wondering what in the hell I am supposed to do.
EQ2 seems to have a ton of content, and the players seem to ignore it and spend their time killing mobs over and over (Thundering Steppes - LFG to grind giants) to gain XP. I’m not really sure why they are looking to gain XP, because I have a level 30 character and there doesn’t seem to be that much more to do at 30 than at 20.
I don’t know about that. Realistically, most of what they’ve rolled out in the last year wasn’t ever going to be played by millions (raids). And if they’d had any sense of caution, the AQ opening event would never have gone in. (They can’t keep their servers stable generally, but they cautiously tested and decided it was okay to have a 10 hour event that would pack a huge fraction of the server population into Silithus at the same time? I don’t think so.)
The other thing is that content requires players, and while WoW certainly has enough players, it’s still not always easy to get a group for an instance. Adding more instances and zones might make that task even harder.
Not adding new content sure doesn’t make it any easier, though. If there’s some underlying reason folks don’t do isntances (there is, because folks can solo and there’s no good way to find folks to do instances with, especially if you’re looking for reliable, competent players), the problem isn’t the amount of content one way or the other, but the systems that underly the content.
Also, EQ2 is playing catch up. They have to try harder. :)
Yep. And one thing that annoys me tons is companies who rest on their laurels putting out half-assed efforts because that’s all they have to do. Like, say, Blizzard ever since WoW launched. :)
(I wish to hell that I could get the 5 people I actually play WoW primarily to interact with to get over their hurt pride at Sony/EQ and try EQ2. I’m pretty sure they’d convert, given the amount of grumbling we all do about WoW on a regular basis. But they’re stubborn and I don’t particularly play any of these games “just to play them” any longer, but rather to keep in contact with long-term friends.)
I’ve thought about trying EQ2, but I just don’t want to invest the time. Besides, I know I want to play Burning Crusades. I have my level-capped characters in WoW and I just don’t feel like starting over at level 0 in a new game. I’ll just play Dominions 3 or Dawn of War or something instead if I get sick of WoW. Then, after a break, if I feel like an MMO, it will probably be WoW again.
It’s really going to be hard for a competing MMO to peel me away from WoW. I just don’t want to invest 300 hours to get a character in another game to where I have my WoW characters now.
I tried playing EQ2 after playing a year of WoW, but it simply really sucks compared to WoW, in almost all departments… I remember the original EQ being more fun. But that’s just one man’s opinion ;)
WoW is the antithesis of EQ2 in almost everything, despite they try to be nearly identic.
EQ2 has structural problems that will take A LOT to discard (and, plain and simple, character artists and world builders that aren’t at the level of WoW’s ones), while WoW is still capitalizing on the base structure it had at release (read as: what the devs did in the last couple of years wasn’t decisive for the success of the game).
Notice:
What WoW’s devs did in the last couple of years wasn’t decisive for the success of the game.
What EQ2’s devs did in the last couple of years was decisive for the survival of the game.
I’m not really sure why they are looking to gain XP, because I have a level 30 character and there doesn’t seem to be that much more to do at 30 than at 20.
Some people just seem to value the “status” of being higher level, even when it confers little to no in game value from a gameplay point of view. WoW caps you pretty tightly into your level regarding what you can do compared to something like Jumpgate so I do feel a lot of pressure atm to grind those levels to keep up with the other guys I play with otherwise I’ll get to a point where I just can’t join them on stuff. Where the level is largely incidental, I’ll pay attention to XP and so forth only for so long as I need to unlock that flooble, then I’ll actually get around to playing the game “properly”.
I see this sort of comment a lot, and I have to say, I find it perplexing. Almost as though the act of, you know, playing the game is a distasteful hurdle that you have to overcome in order to… what? Sit around at level 60 and bitch about the lack of high-level content? Did you not enjoy the time that you spent getting your characters to wherever they are? If you did enjoy it, then why would the prospect of levelling new characters in a different game be so distasteful?
the alts I have on the full server I currently play on are generally a bit of bind to pick up and run with. The alt I rolled last night because our realm was, u as usual, down for maintenance on an empty server was a lot more enjoyable, lots of people in the noobie zones and amusing discrepancies on the AH pricing when there’s only a tiny % of level 60s on the server.
Well, these games are designed to make you feel invested in your characters, else they’d have trouble convincing players to cough up the requisite 15 bucks a month. At the same time though, the expansion is going to eliminate any “investments” players have made thanks to a significant revamp of several underlying game mechanics (stamina in particular.) If I were making an MMO, I’d want to release it right now, when the investment factor for WoW is essentially being reset.
For me, the problem with other MMOs is they lack a good chunk of content, activities, and general ease of use interface options that WoW has. A couple of friends convinced me to try DDO with them, but I find it a painful experience due to the limited number of things to do and the absolutely retarded interface and gameplay.
You want to beat WoW? Make a game exactly like it, but in a different setting.
As important as it may be to you to have WoW’s graphics vs. EQ2’s, I don’t consider those to be structural problems. EQ2 looks plenty fine to me if people do more than judge it from screenshots. It’s got the same fundamental underlying quest driven system that WoW does. It’s got, IMO, a more robust grouping oriented game than WoW does. (EQ seems to have generally done a better job of insuring that any tank class, any healer class, any DPS class can come along and be useful.)
What it doesn’t have, unfortunately, is the people I want to play with. However, that’s not really due to underlying game systems as far as I can tell, but rather to WoW’s ability to have captured folks up front with the whole spit and polish routine.
On a side note, I think it will be interesting to see if there’s any attrition when wow removes the “one key wonder” ability from UI modding. I wonder how much of wow’s appeal is the fact that the UI is so modifiable currently that it can make the game play exactly the same for most anyone regardless of whether or not they’ve actually taken the time to learn to play the game.
It’s more about the realization of the amount of time it will take to hit the cap in a new game. Would you be more or less inclined to play a new single player game if you knew that to complete the game it would take you 300 hours? I realize that we all play and don’t finish many if not most games, but I bet we seldom start a new game with the plan to discard it part of the way through.
When I look at a new MMO I am looking at a gigantic block of time. That is the part that is difficult to swallow. I never play an MMO with the idea that I’ll get to level 15 and quit.
But TBC is supposed to take the same amount of time to get from 60-70 as WoW did from 1-60. Let’s just assume that to max out in EQ is similar time investment as WoW.
I think what Ben is saying (and I know what I’m saying) is why does it matter if you go from 1-60 in a new game vs. 60-70 in an old game? If the purpose of the game is to enjoy the experience, and the experience is newer and more enjoyable from 1-60, why wouldn’t you prefer to spend that amount of time there?
IOW, are you playing to be max level, or are you playing to have fun? It sure sounds like you’re playing to be max level, but if you’re not looking to do the endgame raid crap, why? (Especially when you compare WoW to say, EQ2, where you can start doing raids at level 20 or so if you like that type of stuff.)
If a game is entertaining to play, then I’d say the prospect of getting 300 hours of play time out of it would be a huge plus for me. If I soured on a game before reaching the 300 hour mark… oh well. It happens. But it’s not like I’m going to avoid playing all new games merely on the basis that I may end up not liking them, or even because I may end up not finishing them. And it’s not like shorter play time makes the prospect of playing a bad game any more palatable.
I mean, why did you put 300 hours into WoW? Were you having a good time with it, or did you do it merely because you felt somehow obligated to play until you reach the level cap?
When I look at a new MMO I am looking at a gigantic block of time. That is the part that is difficult to swallow. I never play an MMO with the idea that I’ll get to level 15 and quit.
I guess my point is: so what? If the game is good (e.g. WoW), then the gigantic block of time should be a selling point, not a negative. And if the game is bad, then the amount of time that it would take to “finish” it is irrelevant, because why would you want to?
I’ll echo the sentiment that Gordon did a great job of summarizing the appeal of WoW to the solo, yet gregarious player. I too like to log onto WoW sometimes when I don’t have a lot of time, and mindlessly kill mobs while I’m chatting with my pals.
As far as what will ever replace WOW, I gotta say that I don’t see something coming along that’s “more WOW-like than WOW itself” - that’s the problem with a lot of the MMORPG development. They’re so stuck in the traditional MMORPG mindset that they feel they have to out-WOW WOW. It ain’t gonna work. What happened to EQ? Nothing came along and destroyed it - it got a bit older, a couple of different games came along, people drifted off now and then. Eventually enough people drift off to other games that you’re no longer the blockbuster you once were. I think that someday that’s what will happen to WOW. Nothing is going to come along and out-fantasy them. It’ll be a slow, steady erosion of the user base that people will note but not especially panic over. And then someday we’ll all wake up and some other game will be top dog, and WOW will be played by the long-timers and the people with 15 level 60s.
The graphic isn’t a structural problem, but the client is.
The fact that WoW runs flawlessly on a wide range of hardware configurations and specs while looking great IS a definite advantage that strongly contributed to WoW’s success and popularity.
The itemization (meaning the look of the equipment and variety through the treadmill), scope and variety of the zones, animations, UI and so on. Even from the strict perspective of the client technology WoW has strong advantages. While EQ2 suffers from the bad choices that became structural flaws that are now really hard to dismantle.
There isn’t a single aspect of EQ2 that wouldn’t need work.
In the last two years the team had to put some serious work only to dismantle the game design only to make it “like WoW”. And not because they are trying to imitate it deliberately. But just because WoW got things right at the first try.
They had to redo completely the class system just as an example. They had to backpedal on almost EVERYTHING that set EQ2 apart from WoW simply because it didn’t work. And all the effort was just to recover that huge gap.
It’s not one thing. It’s the ensemble of literally hundreds of little things that WoW’s players don’t even notice because they are used (spoiled) to them.
Recently I was thinking about the tutorial. In EQ2 the NPCs tells you about the interface, buttons and keys to press liberally. WoW is instead designed to slowly introduce elements naturally, in an immersive way. Without requiring tutorials. The tooltips that you see and that explain the UI are “impersonal”. It’s the UI to speak, not a character breaking the immersion. The rule is: what is beyond the “window” must never betray immersion. The UI sits on the window, everything beyond is immersion.
EQ2 breaks that rule. It’s an irrelevant detail, but it’s an example to clarify as everything else behaves.
This is the highlight effect around a button that you see when a spell is queued:
On the left you see the normal icon, on the right the same icon when it is highlighted. The inner border is infinitesimally lighter.
That’s another tiny detail.
Recently they increased the experience you gain from mobs. I ranted against this. Why? Because what WoW did right is that questing is more convenient than grinding mobs without a purpose. Well, in EQ2 the ratio between exp gained from completing a quest, and the monsters you have to kill to complete it is totally unbalanced toward the monsters. You gain 95% of your experience from killing stuff and 5% when you complete the quest. And this was even before the patch that rised the exp you gain from killing mobs.
The crafting system is a mess. They reformed it but missing the fact that it was a mess mostly because of the micromanagment required that could have been easily reduced just by reworking the UI.
In the last weeks I have ranted again because they are removing from the game another aspect unique in the game: spell “fizzles”.
These are examples. I’m pointing them not because of their relevancy, but because it’s stuff that it isn’t usually noticed. EQ2 has problems both on the micro (the hundreds of details of which I brought examples) and the macro (client, UI, progress, pacing, zoning etc…).
Without WoW the game could have found its own respectable space. Because they thought that the mmorpg space was so static that you could live by with little effort. WoW broke the status quo. It delivered a better game from every perspective and it slowly acquired hegemony.
Damion Schubert said that success doesn’t necessary imply virtue. WoW’s success is partly proportional (read as: it is THAT great), partly due to the hegemony, aka the landslide effect that you obtain where you are king of the hill. It autovalidates itself. Other players bring in friends. Influence. Trend setting and all the rest.
