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[joshwebb84]

Personally for me, wow is hands down the greatest MMO to ship, and I've worked on many and played most. Best world, best story, best look and feel, best gameplay, best raiding, best time versus reward balance, best class balance.

I point that out, not because I would ever wish to have a subjective discussion of value at this high a level, but only to provide balance to your thought process when you think about who and what type of player you are targetting. Inability to parse out why wow works for so many on so many levels, regardless of what you personally look for in a game, is a handicap that I don't want any of our developers to have.

Yea even though i have not played wow that much myself i know that now days its the staple in which most mmos are compared to now days and I wasn't praising wow nor  trolling it because I have not played it enough to make any kind of comment other than what you hear in the market and from the gamers themselves as like I said if your Making a MMORPG most people are these days gona compare your game to wow and expect the things that they love about wow to be  recreated in your game so they get that same feeling the first time they played wow but the flip side is they don't want what they don't like about wow (its faults) in a new game because then they will feel like your game is just another wow clone with just a new gui over it lol and if they feel that way they will just put your game down and go back to wow... and thats where alot of MMORPG's fail is they just can't inovate anything new that wow hasn't lol

so thats just what i get from the MMORPGs communities i am in so I think the masses speak louder than the few

[adrix89]

Personally for me, wow is hands down the greatest MMO to ship, and I've worked on many and played most. Best world, best story, best look and feel, best gameplay, best raiding, best time versus reward balance, best class balance.

I point that out, not because I would ever wish to have a subjective discussion of value at this high a level, but only to provide balance to your thought process when you think about who and what type of player you are targetting. Inability to parse out why wow works for so many on so many levels, regardless of what you personally look for in a game, is a handicap that I don't want any of our developers to have.

It certainly is the best success, it pushed all the right buttons of addiction way before Zynga found the trick, and had the right hype from warcraft 3 and carved all of its own market.
The fact that f2p had had some MMOs left standing in its wake is just because they leveraged there accessibility.
But the fact is that all theme MMOs are destined for failure, even SWTOR looks like a bust in line with LOTR.
The next WoW killer will not be a clone.
The great joke is that MMORPG genre itself is still in the infantile stage, WoW literately doomed half a decade of progress.
I always wondered what would happened if WoW hadn't existed and Ultima Online was the inspiration of the next generation of MMOs.
There are some seeds like Darkfall, Mortal Online but there design is not there yet,Guild Wars 2 has some steps in the right direction but still not enough.
But the next WoW killer will come,and it will be its absolute opposite.

[shadowfire]

Personally for me, wow is hands down the greatest MMO to ship, and I've worked on many and played most. Best world, best story, best look and feel, best gameplay, best raiding, best time versus reward balance, best class balance.

I point that out, not because I would ever wish to have a subjective discussion of value at this high a level, but only to provide balance to your thought process when you think about who and what type of player you are targetting. Inability to parse out why wow works for so many on so many levels, regardless of what you personally look for in a game, is a handicap that I don't want any of our developers to have.

It certainly is the best success, it pushed all the right buttons of addiction way before Zynga found the trick, and had the right hype from warcraft 3 and carved all of its own market.
The fact that f2p had had some MMOs left standing in its wake is just because they levered there accessibility.
But the fact is that all theme MMOs are destined for failure, even SWTOR looks like a bust in line with LOTR.
The next WoW killer will not be a clone.
The great joke is that MMORPG genre itself is still in the infantile stage, WoW literately doomed half a decade of progress.
I always wondered what would happened if WoW hadn't existed and Ultima Online was the inspiration of the next generation of MMOs.
There are some seeds like Darkfall, Mortal Online but there design is not there yet,Guild Wars 2 has some steps in the right direction but still not enough.
But the next WoW killer will come,and it will be its absolute opposite.

finally someone with some sanity who hasnt been brainwashed by WoW... i wont condemn them 100% i mean they did accomplish stuff and thier success is undeniable but it's simple logic... If someone wants to playt WoW they will play WoW, if someone wants to play Eve Online they will play Eve Online, If someone wants to play a flying combat game they will play ace combat...  Sure you might get some customers by imitating thier success but that is like the eifel tower... they built it in france years before modern tools and cranes and everything else and it is a marvel of the world... then they build one in japan that is much smaller using modern tools... still cool but nobody says "Lets goto japan and see the eifel tower!"  no they say lets goto france...you cant be better than an original by copying the original... you will never succeed this way. Especially when the original is still around and going strong.  Sure pirates of the carribean did great as a movie remake... but it was remade atleast 20 years later after most people stopped remembering or never knew what the movie was and with all new tech and directing for the modern era... same story but everything else completely different.

[HE-Cooper]

Actually, the most interesting counterpoint to that, is it's exactly the opposite of Blizzard's common methodology, which is to step forward in very little steps for innovation, and much larger steps in polish and fun. Wow at launch was a simple combination of Everquest and DAoC, with the "not fun parts removed". Something to think about.

[shadowfire]

did you just insult two of my favorite games?  Though I have many times over said that WoW stole a ton of ideas from DAoC and EQ and is thus not responsible for creating any of it.

However I am all for online games being released with minimal content and growing from there as resources and player base grows.  This is the best approach rather than a fully polished and shiny 100% game at release.

[joshwebb84]

However I am all for online games being released with minimal content and growing from there as resources and player base grows.  This is the best approach rather than a fully polished and shiny 100% game at release.

Yea that does tend to improve the longevity of the game as you keep adding new content over the life time of the game

[adrix89]

Actually, the most interesting counterpoint to that, is it's exactly the opposite of Blizzard's common methodology, which is to step forward in very little steps for innovation, and much larger steps in polish and fun. Wow at launch was a simple combination of Everquest and DAoC, with the "not fun parts removed". Something to think about.

That was Blizzards opportunity which is gone now.
It is time to be rough and dirty and teach those mega-corps they know shit about design and let them stand back and polish our ideas afterwards.
They haven't even discover the big secret of MMO design when it is so obvious.
A themepark MMO is a heresy in the fullest sense of the word.

[Stadi_Thompson]

Skyrim is great!

[HE-Cooper]

I put skyrim on hold for Dark Souls. Good lord the punishment, more forgiving than demons souls, but just as much controller flinging fun.

[JoshHalls]

Demon Souls reminded me if playing Mega Man 1 and cursing at the screen way more than you should ever playing a video game.  Controls seemed to be just about as responsive as well.

[mproducer]

I spent some time recently in Star Wars TOR Beta and I have mixed feelings about it.
We are allowed to talk about it now legally.
Loved some aspects, and disliked others. Loved the big environments, but in order to handle the massive numbers of characters, they slowly turned down the LOD over time. For example, early in the beta I could see details in the other characters close to mine.
By the last day they had reduced the quality of characters (LOD) to reduce the lag (I am guessing this is the reason) so characters standing next to you were devoid of many features, and smooth with low quality textures.
I really liked the cut scenes when you entered a conversation area, or communicated with a story character.
The environments were very nice, and I could stand on a cliff overlooking an entire city area.
My big issue was that most of the time it looked like my male Jedi was not wearing pants.
So that seemed awkward, like my character was a pervert showing himself.
This did not occur for the male Sith, Republic Trooper, or the Bounty Hunter.
Overall it was quite interesting experience, but I will have to now have my artist change the color of the planned game GUI. SWTOR used the light blue color, so I will have to use another color.
 

[HE-Cooper]

Mproducer, they slowly ramped up the number of players allowed in a server as the tests went on to stress test. There more people near you caused the more models to LOD as your video card ran out of memory.

I was actually the most disappointed that the starting experience consisted of nothing but fighting for spawns. Otherwise, man was I pumped to see how well outlet server tech handles the massive numbers being thrown at it.

[RandyE]

Mproducer, they slowly ramped up the number of players allowed in a server as the tests went on to stress test. There more people near you caused the more models to LOD as your video card ran out of memory.

I was actually the most disappointed that the starting experience consisted of nothing but fighting for spawns. Otherwise, man was I pumped to see how well outlet server tech handles the massive numbers being thrown at it.

RIFT was like that for a solid 2-3 weeks

I like to refer to Skyrim as research...yes, that's it. That's what I tell my wife when she gets on me about playing it. I'm like "you want me to make a profitable MMO? I must research Skyrim." Little does she realize, Skyrim is Single Player. Just don't tell her that. Although, I'm planning on implementing a few things from Skyrim into my game, I'm trying to decide if FFA-PVP is a good idea with a Crime System in place. I'm also thinking of using the skill system as opposed to using a class system I like how the skill progression progresses you in levels, I think combining that with an old fashioned tried and true XP system for leveling is the way to go...