This is something i’ve considered for awhile and decided to post it….cuz i can…..yeah…
TAKE THIS SOCIETY!
…..enjoy
How WOW has ruined the MMO market.
Strange title considering it’s about a game with over 10 million subscribers. Most wouldn’t call that failure. However, when put into perspective it soon becomes a highly arguable point.
You have to start in the days before the game was concieved. Then MMO’s were a small market, as most of us know MMO means Massively Multiplayer Online. This seems like a contradictory point since now the market is open to millions upon millions of people. In its basic form an MMO is designed to bring players together and have them either cooperate on quests or virtually tear each apart for bragging rights. So why would a larger audience hurt an MMO? One word…douchebags.
When the overall community was smaller people were able to get more personal, in essence become close friends, while this does happen in the current market it tends to stay within a certain sphere, in a smaller community (like the ones found in some of todays less popular MMO’s) the community can become closer as a whole and sportsmanship becomes the name of the game, victorys and losses are both accepted with humility for the most part. While there are never perfect examples of this it is known.
Now lets fast-forward to the release of WoW, a game that started out as the most popular MMO of its time and has managed to retain that title. With that game came popularity, and the evolution of the market. WoW made breakthroughs in its gameplay, accessability (take note of WoW’s ability to operate on the computer equivelent of an abacus), and customer service. Friends of subscribers soon got into the action, soon the game was plunged into popularity, now you can find many people only play the game because their friends’ do. They don’t play it because they enjoy RPG’s they play for friends.
This is where the games popularity became a double-edged sword. People began to complain, and complain, and complain some more, people are good at that. Wether about a specific class or the game as a whole. Blizzards natural reaction was to change
according to what had become the popular demand. Unfortunately for those loyal to the true MMORPG market, that meant that WoW would soon no longer function as a true RPG. These masses of non-RPG fans flocked to a game they didn’t understand, and refused any attempt to do so. As is known RPGs are games of mathematics, scales, and rock-paper-scissors.
Players who didn’t understand their classes role in the groups fight then argued to have that role changed, a mage complained about their inability to win fights against a class like a rogue, one which is specifically designed to be able to win a fight against nearly any casting class. The system of balance in an MMO works in a circle, casters take out the heavily armored type (tank), who takes out the melee fighters, who takes out the casters and healers.
This is a simple and effective system, and it works. However WoW was soon populated by a large audience that didn’t understand this truth, soon caster were given the ability to neutralize the melee fighters, the melee fighters were given ways to win against the tanks, and circle fell apart. Classes lost their point, and now as time has gone on, you look at the game now and can see that only about half the classes available in WoW are actually considered useful by the players (for example, druids have taken the role of primary healer in every circumstance with very few exceptions).How does this effect other MMO’s you ask? Why is elementary my dear Watson. When WoW has fallen into the depths of virtual oblivion those players still addicted to what it gave them will seek a familiar outlet, and in all realistic view will find none.
Many players flocked to Warhammer online, expecting it to single-handedly destroy WoW. This didn’t happen, what they found was a game that smelled reminiscent of WoW, but it didn’t FEEL like WoW, they became frustrated. The PvP combat they so craved and flocked to was not what they had hoped, what they were used to was a game full of invdividuals fighting 1v1 fights with other players nearby, what they got was a game that required teamwork to succeed. They ranted, raved, and flocked back to their hovels.
We now focus on Warhammer, which is made by Mythic studios. Mythic’s current state to those new to the MMO market is dwindling, but for the veterans its only a noteable downfall. Mythic’s previous entries into the MMO market, Ultima online and Dark Age of Camelot, were the most popular games of their day, but now those titled are only fondly remembered by those old enough to do so. Seeing as I myself thoroughly enjoy Warhammer Online, I stay hopeful for their subscription numbers.
However the market has changed, the big name companies now measure a MMO’s success on the numbers seen in WoW’s subscribers. Look at SOE (Sony Online Entertainments) library of MMO’s. It saw their potential success, bought them, and soon after release didn’t see the numbers they desired. When this happened those projects were all abandoned, only leaving enough people to keep the game on life support while the other staff were redirected.
Vanguard online is currently the best example of a developer and publisher’s “DO NOT DO” list. Vanguard in concept could’ve been the most successful MMO the world had seen, however, as the small company struggled to keep its budget alive they made shortcuts and the quality of their game dwindled, soon the game was released in hopes that it would generate the revenue necessary to fix the problems with development. It didn’t. Players abandoned the game in droves, soon they had no other option but to sell. Once bought by Sony, the game was shelved like so many of its predecessors. Due to the failure of the game, its concepts and mechanics have never been looked at
since.
This is only a small piece of the pie, equally long posts could be made about its impact on what we could call the views of a “True RPG” and how the community has erroded into a bunch of children insulting each other over a simple game. These things cannot be confined to WoW, its subscribers will seek a new “host” when the game dies, and the infection will spread like a disease unless the communities fight to purge it from the system and show those who aren’t fans of RPGs that they should leave our games alone and stop ruining them for the true fans.
. Its a 2002 Triumph America, it was used but it already had saddle bags, a sissybar and pad for the passenger and a small luggage rack on the back. So here’s a pick for your viewing pleasure 
