WoW is just made perfect?

[Endrance]

Originally Posted by Hellrose

I think the OP asked a fair question Kaldur
It's the WoW-haters that took it the wrong way.

OP's Question:
Do people really want innovation in MMOs?
Answer:
No not really.

NCsoft found that out the hard way by wasting money on AutoAssault, Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners etc etc.

Those games just proved that innovation isn't necessarily a good thing. People do want innovation, but MMORPGs = fantasy (that's where they came from in the first place). Elves, wizards, big mushrooms, huge tree's, flashy magic, a fascinating atmosphere and ambiente etc. pp. - that stuff is essential (that's why Warcraftis a MMORPG and Starcraft isn't). Dragging most of them away is like a pizza with peanut butter instead of tomato sauce. It may be innovative, but it still tastes like ****.
Although there were and are some games that do leave those out, but are still attractive to a certain group of people just means that they did alot of stuff right when it comes to a different taste (other than the fantasy thing where MMORPGs originally came from). Even though I wouldn't call a game like Eve Online a MMORPG. That's much rather a strategy based space MMO (EnB then again is yet another story). I guess it just means that some people do like peanut butter on their pizza.

[Kaldur]

Originally Posted by Hellrose

I think the OP asked a fair question Kaldur
It's the WoW-haters that took it the wrong way.

OP's Question:
Do people really want innovation in MMOs?
Answer:
No not really.

NCsoft found that out the hard way by wasting money on AutoAssault, Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners etc etc.

Heh, I think you took my comment out of context, and pretty much every other WoW fanboy here. I'm not a hater (even though I dislike WoW for many other reasons than just being WoW), there's just way too much Fanboism around here.

I pointed out at the OP because, really, there was no need to use WoW uniquely as part of "MMO innovation".
As Endrance pointed out, WoW is a by-product of something already in existence.

[Makman]

WoW is a terrible game, its only popular because of the carebear-questing-easy mode gameplay. Some people arent looking for a challenge and reaching top level in a week makes them feel superior in life. Another reason its so popular is cuz of the simple psychological anonomly called "monkey see, monkey do".

[Tareith]

I woulda just left it at appealing to the lowest common denominator and wanting to play with friends. Really, collecting items is a really simple yet effective treadmill.

[Becto]

Take with a dose of sugar, cause its pretty blunt what I'm gunna say.. and people will probably flame me.. and if I do somehow offend you it wasn't intentional and I'm sorry that I offended you.

I LOVED WoW's system of gameplay, it was fun and always active with allot of events and guilds and people to meet and friends to make; hell I regret quitting it a year ago (studies took over.) and have been thinking of buying it again and starting over every once in a while. Overall WoW was just perfect, it included allot of quests, raids, pvp, events, guilds, factions, races, classes, skills. WoW was overall and remains to this day the most played and in most players opinion, most enjoyed game. Though I'm not saying WoW was without faults.. the graphics in my opinion reminded me of a toilet in Wal-Mart, and soon became flooded with posessed little minions of... *ahem* anyhow It eventually became in MY opinion, way to kiddish; especially when you compare their almost ancient technology of graphics to FREE TO PLAY mmo's like perfect world and rf online.


Basically what I'm trying to say is WoW basically held all of the right aspects that you want to see and play in any mmorpg. WoW wasn't the inventors of these key elements but simply was a framework that implemented multiple MMO's and Video Game's elements into it's own to produce a mmo of outstanding quality.

However I must say with such a tone that this will induce sparks to fly... WHAT F'n MMO ISN'T LIKE WOW? Seriously I hate to break it to people but the ideologies produced by the different mmo's are the basic elements of any mmo. Mages usualy can teleport, blast fire, summon things. Warriors go smash with big swords and wear massive suits of armour (Now now.. WOW COPIED THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE MAH GAWD?). And Archers go "Pew Pew" from a far distance.

Basically my question for everyone; and lets face it this is the question all developers are asking themselves; how CAN YOU POSSIBLY make a differentiation that would be of positive nature? In all of our opinion MMO's "set standards and what should be there" are pretty clear and set in stone.

[Endrance]

Originally Posted by Becto

However I must say with such a tone that this will induce sparks to fly... WHAT F'n MMO ISN'T LIKE WOW? Seriously I hate to break it to people but the ideologies produced by the different mmo's are the basic elements of any mmo. Mages usualy can teleport, blast fire, summon things. Warriors go smash with big swords and wear massive suits of armour (Now now.. WOW COPIED THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE MAH GAWD?). And Archers go "Pew Pew" from a far distance.

Point is that they could already do that in DnD.

WoW Haters: SO THEY ALL ****ING COPIED DnD (got himself another reason to start bashing something)! BLIZZARD YOU DAMNED COPYCAT ASSHOLES! HOW COULD YOU!? AND THE GAME IS EZ MODE ANYWAY! Capslock /off
WoW Lovers: Well, Blizzard took alot of stuff from other games, too. Probably. I don't really know as I haven't played anything else than WoW. But please just stop destroying my illusions. Just stop it... I beg you. All I want is to spend alot, if not all of my time on my favorite game... and you wouldn't want anyone to spit on your family and house also, would you?

Me: Why care about the details? WoW failed at the most important part about a RPG: The storyline. Damned MMO freaks... why can't you see that making your own story isn't part of the system anymore once UO got old? There was only one real Christian and that guy died a long time ago. What people are doing now is nothing else but making their own religions, while the platform isn't suited for it anymore.


Ahem.

[Lifaen]

Originally Posted by c4tastroph3

When I think of WoW I get bored and take a nap. Happens all the time at work.

wtf is in your sig then?

[Omegaforce]

Just read through everyone's posts about this subject and decided to add my 2 cents. This is coming from someone who played WoW from launch all the way till January 2008.

1. This is in regards to the community - When WoW first came out the community was a lot of fun. Everyone was helping everyone with quests, teaming up, forming parties just to chat, etc. etc. But like in any MMO over time the majority of people will move on and less people will be willing to help with quests. What gets replaced are the rude comments and the "STFU"'s when people ask for help. It has been in every MMO I've played (4 total). So if history repeats itself Aion will follow suit in terms of community.

2. Lore/Storyline - Pre BC WoW (IMO) had wonderful lore for the most part. Though I do wish it had some type of story to follow like FFXI, the lore was neat because everything that was mentioned in WoW you could look back at any of the Warcraft games and say "Ahhh, that's right I remember that place,person,event". With monsters like Nefarien and Onyxia, at least they made them the kin of Deathwing so you knew somewhere along the line (not yet at least) that Deathwing himself would pop up. Then BC came....well I don't have anything to say other then there are TWO Kael'thalas Sunstriders!!!??? Way to go on that one Blizz....
Here's to hoping Aion has a gripping storyline that makes me wanna find out more between the Elyos and Asmos.

3. Gameplay/Loot System - Wow was never hard to play (which is why it does so good I assume), but with every patch that came out it seems to me they made things easier and less rewarding. When I got keyed for Ony,MC, and BWL I actually felt a sense of accomplishment and was stoked to do some real raiding with 39 other people (which to this day I wish they would bring back). Now other then Naxx you can just have someone summon you from inside. I know, not many people run those anymore but it's the point. Same with SCC, TK, Kara, etc. etc. As far as the loot system goes, to me it will never compare to FFXI. When you claimed a NM in FFXI and got those boots, hairpin, club, you wanted..wow you were on top of the world. Nothing could take you off that high and you wanted more. In WoW it felt great getting my Arcanist Mantle in MC the first time but after about 5 runs of that place if I didn't get my drop I knew I would get it sooner or later because of the now dead DKP system. I would like to see Aion's loot system around FFXI's but maybe not as hard because lets face it camping a NM for 12 hours straight was very boring and if I didn't have people to talk to and whatnot I would of only played that for a week MAX.

Sorry for teh wall-o-text but I felt like I had to add something to all this comparing between the two.

[Daith]

I've never thought about posting in this site as I only visit to find information about Aion but I felt I gotta say a little something.

The phrase WoW-clone doesn't really exist , the thing is this genre of gaming can't be treated like other genres it's always picking up from the previous games that have been released before , WoW took alot of stuff from DAoC and EQ1 and yet it has never been called a clone of neither.

Blizzard is very smart , it has always been said that creativity is a double-edged sword and the same goes for over-innovation , what blizzard did back when they're developing WoW was the exact perfect definition of Evulotionary , they never really did anything new to the game expect the amazing art and other stuff.

WoW fanbase has existed even before the game been released for years with the original RTS games so technically it's not something raw that suddenly dropped over our heads.

WoW is most definitely easy when you quest , PvP and run 5man instances but it gets a bit harder when it comes to raiding and in fact it has been one big marketing strategy , I've always seen WoW adds on the net saying stuff like its the only game where you can get to the top without spending huge of amounts of time playing and it really took the genre to another level with millions of players , I haven't really played the old school MMO's but I can say that the fans of this genre back then wasn't expecting 10.9 players playing one MMO.

Not to mention the class balance , you'll always feel that it's done right , I gotta say they've worked hard on that.

But WoW is far from perfect , you can say to a certain point that it has the best playability and huge bug-free PvE content but still even after three years of playing it was too boring for me I had to quit.

For a pure PvE player like me there's the lack of things to do , the only thing to do is to raid which is normally 4 hours per day four days a week in the evening so if you log on in the afternoon you'll find nothing to do after of course farming all the 5man instances and having a decent amount of gold , I really hope Aion would not turn like this and keep me occupied.

Another bad factor about WoW that it's more a business than a game , The folks at blizzard will do almost anything to keep their players subscribed , since the game is mainly PvE (that's why I chose it of course) they always try to compensate the people who couldn't get to the upper raid dungeons with gears which are equivalent if not better than the drops in upper raids i.e the the badges system and taking off the attunements for some raid dungeons.

The community is another issue but yet again the game attracts little kids with the cartoonish art and other stuff but I always find a way to stay away , I usually turn off almost all chat filters except guild chat and my ignore list is nearly full , when you millions of players playing there has to be about a huge percentage of players with bad attitude like any other game but in WoW we're talking millions.

Overall I don't mind that Aion adapts the nice features of WoW but not the bad ones that made quit and play nothing .....

Still waiting for Aion and hoping it will be a nice solid PvE experience. but one of my fears is for this game to get de-hyped lets hope that doesn't happen.

P.S I played FX11 and it was one hell of a game back then I just hated the grind but most definitely loved the Epic end-game PvE.

[Livvy]

My main concern is Aion is going to be paper-rock-scissor PVP point grind for gear which is what WoW has turned into.

The main problem with WoW is that - seemingly- the developers didn't think things through when they designed PvP . It's :
- entirely gear based ( that isn't even true PvP, PvP should be about the most skilled player winning )
- limited to the extent it has arenas and bg's ( another issue is the horde vs. alliance thing , it just doesn't cut it to have a mere two factions , you have to incorporate some kind of clan/guild PvP )
- most importantly : they destroyed the game-design as a whole by making the rewards /titles etc. waaay too good and easily obtainable . You now see heaps of folks walking around in their PvP-epics - in all major cities - doing nothing but act important and boast . They don't actually play the game anymore but are instead just standing around . The introduction of these epics also severely undercut the incentive to participate in endgame raiding or even just raiding . Why bother with a very long raid with a minute droprate when you are assured the epic reward for far less effort ? It's also very clear some of those players are actually very bad ones .I have had couple of those epic-geared folks join in heroic instances and was noticing just how bad they were .

In my opinion WoW doesn't even have a PvP component because the travesty they call that isn't the true stuff. If Aion makes drops/rewards for PvP too good I'll be dropping it extremely fast because it will end up being like WoW then . PvP-point grinding is not my idea of fun and I simply refuse to PvP in WoW for that reason and because I think someone earning their epic gear by raiding is he better player and is showing dedication to getting the best stuff in game ( and let's not forget ; the obtaining of the gear is more important then the gear itself ,it's a game and doing those raids should be fun and not some kind of obsession ) .

I was just wondering you know - people persist for Aion not to have anything in common with WoW and at the same time they search for similarities. The idea for mixing the game with different elements from other mmorpgs sounds good but maybe in a certain level. If they do that and of course add new features I think it will become epic game.

You can't "copy" WoW and think that's a guarantee to have a success on your hands . In fact : even Blizzard can't copy WoW or repeat its success . What you need to do is take elements from WoW which are good and implement those .You do the same for other MMO's ( PvP -designs of guild wars for example , making it skill based ) and throw in original stuff - aerial combat is that . When you do that right you have a very good game . But you must never start out with the idea of making a WoW-killer . Every game which has attempted that is either marginal now or has dissapeared.


WoW is in essence a well-designed game .Easy for new players - very important - and loads of content .It has also established a firm name for itself .I'm still wondering what's going to happen when Blizzard makes a new MMO ( there is one in development ) . How will that fare in terms of subscribers and general success ? In effect they have to start from scratch - even if that new MMO would happen to be a sequel to WoW - and hope for the best , just like every other company out there . Difference is they have all the resources they could possibly want and heaps of cash due to WoW-revenue .

[Riku]

very interesting read here about WOW and WAR. MTV Multiplayer Allegedly Blocked From Beta, ‘World Of Warcraft’ Designer Plays ‘Warhammer Online’ Anyway [UPDATE]

[Xanoth]

Looks like topic is going to change to ''WoW - awesome or shitty game"... or I'm just too tired already (reading forums at 1:00 AM may be dangerous)

I was just wondering you know - people persist for Aion not to have anything in common with WoW and at the same time they search for similarities. The idea for mixing the game with different elements from other mmorpgs sounds good but maybe in a certain level. If they do that and of course add new features I think it will become epic game.

Well you can look for as many similarities Aion - WoW, as for Aion - *Any Succesful MMORPG*. All the way since creating this kind of game there were good and bad features, that sooner or later was implemented in next games. Saying that Aion is a copy of WoW it's like saying that WoW is a copy of Tibia - after all it's all about same thing - good gear, high level (well... capped in WoW) etcetera, etcetera.

As was posted many times before - creating a succesful MMORPG is an art of adding good features while avioding bad ones.
As for WoW - imo it's a nice game (I've played for few months on a priv serv, so there were no trobules about the community...), but the only real revolution was a dynamic combat - instead of click-to-move, spam-1-2-3-4-1-2-5-to-fight system, which is common for the most of Korean MMO's. Wrong step was making it a Diablo-2-like. Diablo was almost 100% PvE game, where main reason to play on CBN (Closed Battle.Net) was creating more pwning and better equipped chars. However, finding a few container of nice items in D2 was a 2-3 hours for good MF Sorc. In WoW... everyone know, how it is.

Another matter is storyline - there is (maybe not best, but after all) a storyline in Diablo 2. WoW (and like 95% or more Korean MMO's) lack it. It has great potential - a great storyline of Warcraft RTS (I'm still enjoying Frozen Throne), but all that has beed added is a few references and characters from Warcraft 3.

There's also PvP - orginal, but non-realistic - I don't believe that arena fights or capturing one mill/stables/whatever could decide which side will win the war.

I hope Aion will take (well, since there are only few months left, there's no big choice now) patch of storytelling instead of simply grind-for-power mode. Most of us is already full of it and need something new - a character living in changing world, becoming a part of its history

Bah... I guess I'm starting to rave, time to hit the bed.
Goodnight Everyone.

[shawn]

Originally Posted by Makman

WoW is a terrible game, its only popular because of the carebear-questing-easy mode gameplay. Some people arent looking for a challenge and reaching top level in a week makes them feel superior in life.

Then there's people who would rather not grind for a month just to get to the good stuff in the game. The more I read about Aion the more similarities I'm seeing to a typical MMO such as WoW rather than something innovative with minimal grind and balanced gameplay. You can make new chars at max level for pvp in Guild Wars, ffs. You don't need grind to have fun, and for most people it's a detriment to gameplay.
Take Diablo 2. What was fun, making new characters and playing from level 1-20? Hell no, the real fun was in nightmare mode, from levels 30-80. Before that it was too boring, after that it was too grindy. More games need to cut out the grind filler, it's a poor excuse for content.