All I needed to know there really.
Though I should note, WoW wasn't the first game to have it's style of concept, infact WoW is a huge rip off from Everquest, it just does it better and has evolved. The UI is easily the best UI in any MMO game, EVE's has improved vastly in the last 6 months but it's still way behind.
The formula was already there to be copied, WoW is technically itself a "WoW-type" clone.
I've played it on and off for years - since release - and I don't entirely disagree with him (maybe not the extent of the vitriol
) It wasn't an awful game - it was a very addictive and enjoyable game. But it probably has killed MMOs in a creative sense by virtue of its success. And yes, the two first major MMOGs that I know of were Everquest and Ultima Online. WoW went the Everquest route and very few subsequent MMOs went the Ultima Online route (EVE was one. Not saying EVE is a 'UO clone' obviously, but very similar outlook. IIRC TomB cited it as an inspiration/influence in a devblog).
So since almost the dawn of time (1997!) we've had the concept of a sandbox MMO in Ultima Online. We've had player killing, player thievery, and home (and boat!) ownership. We've had no levels, but a set of chosen skills to increase. We've had death that equates with loss.
So it does boggles me slightly that similar ideas are apparently too groundbreaking, controversal or difficult for game developers to manage in 2012. It's not like there wasn't precedent. Many of the things people are disappointed won't make it into the elder scrolls MMO or that 'don't translate into MMOs' were already done in
one of the first MMOs. Seems a tad ironic. (
Like raaiiiin)
WoW's staggering mainstream success was a game changer. Most MMOs seem to go the 'WoW-clone' route (some really do justify the term 'WoW-clone' rather than simply the same ethos, as it just seems like a changed skin - all the WoW elements are there, to the point that nowadays they are not associated with World of Warcraft, but simply MMOs. Particularly when the next (current?) generation of MMOG players has never encountered another way of doing things...)
I don't hate WoW. It's very on and off for me, and I'll burn out on what ultimately feels like a shallow experience. It is very very good at what it does and yes, it's extraordinarily polished. What I do hate, is that game developers are now simply repeating the formula ad naseum; at times an unabashed copy and paste. It's perfectly understandable from a financial perspective: WoW was successful, try and replicate that success. It's inexcusable from a creative standpoint. We already have WoW; you're probably not going to improve on it in any meaningful way. Be brave and do something
else.---
(as an aside that has very little to do with the conversation, but just occured to me...the lexicon tends to be absorbed into the ether. f.ex 'raids' and 'end-game content' and 'level-cap' are all familiar MMO lexicon now, not just WoW terms. They are things expected and assumed to be in MMOs - I have seen people be absolutely flummoxed in the eve-o forums after inquiring about the game using these terms. Then the thought occured about how EVE is on one server rather than 'sharding' and how the term 'sharding' for splitting the game into servers/worlds is so commonplace now and remembered that the term originated in UO...The world was a crystal or somesuch, which was broken into 'shards'. Hence servers ^^...oh...but there's also 'database sharding'...anyone know if that term predates UO?
http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/08/database-sharding-came-from-uo/interesting!! um. to me.)
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(as a further aside: I wonder what A World Without WoW would've been like. I wonder if I am genuinely overstating its influence on the MMO market. Without the WoW model saturating MMOdom, would games have been more experimental and varied - but perhaps more underground or niche? Or would something similar to WoW have simply filled the vaccuum and become hugely popular? Has WoW created a culture or did the culture create WoW? IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME. @_@ Eh. Probably a bit of chicken and a bit of egg.)
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(er. further aside. WoW is SO simple, basic and easy to grasp that I set my parents up on PCs to play it and see what happened. Disaster. They couldn't grasp how the game worked at all. Things like moving the mouse for the camera and the keyboard for movement AT THE SAME TIME confounded them. They kept running into (literal) walls or staring up at the sky
my mother became very stressed out with having to perform simultaneous tasks and said "you do this to relax???" In retrospect, unlike most of the population, they may have actually found EVE easier
Though I also agree that the chat system in WoW is poor - especially after EVE, which spoilt meh)
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Topic: Welp, there goes all the Elder Scrolls players from the EVE community... (Read 34534 times)