What Made WoW Successful?

[Confidence-heartseeker]

@Zaalg-ashkandi

Another thread made by someone who didn’t play the game when it was released, and definitely no mmos before that.

I actually played during Vanilla. I was very young, but I played. And TBC. Get out of here you delusional cynic.

[Axxo-skyfury]

It sure was, and was also before peak population… quite possibly helpful for reaching peak. Advertising/marketing is often quite helpful for sales.

[Juicebolt-sulfuras]

Being able to play with my friends. Let us be able to pay for a transfer to Sulfuras!!!

[Zaalg-ashkandi]

And the point is people like the OP have absolutely no idea what they’re taking about. They have no clue about the mmo genre before WoW. From day 1 WoW was about accessibility and convenience. Nothing changed when RDF was added. In fact they wanted it in when Vanilla launched. It doesn’t abandon any design principles.

[Negald-aggramar]

@Kleist-westfall

Ideally for these megaservers the population should be distributed and the servers should’ve been locked at a certain threshold. Just as they’ve done for Grob you’re not allowed to make a new character unless you’ve already had a character on that server. This a Blizzard failure and altering the game because of their failure shouldn’t be the solution.

A lot of people paid their money to be on those mega servers. You can’t just invalidate their purchase. Or I guess you could, but that would be the worst idea I could imagine.

[Axxo-skyfury]

@Zaalg-ashkandi

Nothing changed when RDF was added.

By the very definition of adding something, something obviously changed. I mean, I get what you’re saying, but I also don’t find any reason to agree with that stance.

To note, this isn’t an anti Dungeon Finder (or pro Dungeon Finder) statement, but there are definitely differences to how we socialize and interact with others in our communities.

@Axxo-skyfury

While leveling over hours, days, and weeks, it’s not uncommon to run into the same person or people from time to time, be it for group quests or instances. This shared experience over time can lead to a form of social bonding. Heck, I still remember during the original TBC leveling a Priest with a friend of mine on a Warrior. We would often run into this shaman while questing in the open world or in instances, so much that it felt as though we were leveling together, and we became friends (Hey Zarth! Wherever you are now).

With Dungeon Finder, while it’s possible that you’ll run into the same person or people in instance groups, you won’t run into people who aren’t on your server outside of those instance groups, and even if you can befriend them, you cannot cross-realm party or queue, so this is somewhat impactful for some people’s social experience in the game.

[Kleist-westfall]

@Negald-aggramar

A lot of people paid their money to be on those mega servers. You can’t just invalidate their purchase. Or I guess you could, but that would be the worst idea I could imagine.

Seems to me that every idea is the worst one imaginable if you don’t get what you want exactly.

[Zaalg-ashkandi]

People are claiming that suddenly the entire philosophy of the game was abandoned and everything changed because of RDF. It’s utter nonsense. It let people skip pointless wastes of time.

Did the game fall apart in 1.6 when players no longer had to travel to a bg entrance to queue? Did the game fall apart in 1.12 when bgs were made cross-realm?

Of course not. RDF is no different.

[Axxo-skyfury]

I’m curious how anything in your post is a reply to my comment.

[Kleist-westfall]

@Zaalg-ashkandi

People are claiming that suddenly the entire philosophy of the game was abandoned and everything changed because of RDF. It’s utter nonsense. It let people skip pointless wastes of time.

That’s the problem. You take entire pieces of content and journey itself as “pointless wastes of time”. That’s a retail mindset.

@Zaalg-ashkandi

Did the game fall apart in 1.6 when players no longer had to travel to a bg entrance to queue? Did the game fall apart in 1.12 when bgs were made cross-realm?

Taking one bad take from Blizzard and justifying another isn’t a good example.

[Zaalg-ashkandi]

Nothing changed. You said something changed. No, the design philosophy did not change. The values of Vanilla weren’t abandoned. The social fabric didn’t degrade.

From the day this game was launched Blizz set it apart from every other mmo due to its convenience and accessibility. RDF is completely in-line with that.

[Negald-aggramar]

@Axxo-skyfury

I mean… advertising no doubt played a part! They had some pretty big advertisements with well known people, like Mr. T, Will Shatner, and a few others.

But this was after it was already the biggest MMO in the world by a wide margin even before those ads.

IMO, what made WoW successful is being in the right place at the right time. WoW is basically EverQuest with most of the tedium stripped out and the Warcraft IP. Plus, you could play with, and talk to people from all over the country at a time before social media really took off. Those two things made WoW the game changer that it was.

[Negald-aggramar]

It doesn’t make good business sense to take someone’s money for a transfer, then remove them from the server they paid to transfer to.

[Flashyou-mankrik]

Back then WoW had literally 0 competition, and they actually had GM’s moderating the game.

[Axxo-skyfury]

@Zaalg-ashkandi

Nothing changed.

Fair enough. We simply don’t have the same understanding of the meaning of words, so we don’t have a basis of communication through which we can have a conversation.

[Härland-grobbulus]

@Confidence-heartseeker

What made WoW so successful?

the quality of the game (of its type)

At that time other RPG’s had horrid game play and worse graphics…

WoW brought RPG game types up to around the 60% quality level of the Era’s FPS games that were all on better, higher quality engines and hardware.

WoW did also something else that other RPG’s were not doing… Had actual questing.

[Bigblam-sulfuras]

You seriously nailed it with this comment. The community use to thrive and now people don’t even speak to each other unless they are trolling or insulting someone. It has turned into a “everyone for themselves” community

[Negald-aggramar]

FF11 was competition. So was City of Heroes.

@Zaalg-ashkandi

Nothing changed. You said something changed. No, the design philosophy did not change. The values of Vanilla weren’t abandoned. The social fabric didn’t degrade.

From the day this game was launched Blizz set it apart from every other mmo due to its convenience and accessibility. RDF is completely in-line with that.

In all fairness, I don’t think anybody is disputing this. However, there’s a line somewhere between enough and too much. The debate is simply where that line is.

[Zaalg-ashkandi]

@Axxo-skyfury

@Zaalg-ashkandi

Nothing changed.

Fair enough. We simply don’t have the same understanding of the meaning of words, so we don’t have a basis of communication through which we can have a conversation.

It’s quite simple. People are claiming RDF abandoned the original design philosophy of the game. Those people are wrong.

And this thread annoys me because the exact same design philosophy that led to RDF is precisely why WoW was so successful.

[Flashyou-mankrik]

@Negald-aggramar

FF11 was competition. So was City of Heroes.

Were they though? I have never met a person that played city of heroes, is that even a AAA MMO?

Edit - Google says city of heroes peak was in 2019 with 9,998 concurrent users…