I don’t play it over other games. I play it because my friends play it the most. But we’re starting to veer away and play FFXIV and Phantasy Star Online 2 more. Both are better games IMO. but WoW is still fun, so I continue to play. It’s really just spinning my wheels until Shadowlands at this point.
Gameplay is smooth and feels good. Personally, I like the world-building of FFXIV better but the PvP gameplay does not come close to WoW.
GTFO looks really good. Only thing holding me back from jumping in is how people tend to say you really want a core group to progress regularly through it.
for me it’s mainly for 3 reasons.
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easier to get into ( given how long i’ve been playing WoW )
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cheap ( $15 a month with lots to do or added free option for buying token with gold; compare that to say a triple A game $60 for maybe 10 hours of story and some… online gameplay give or take )
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Nostalgia - been playing WoW for so long grew on me. ive only played another mmorpg for just as long as WoW but that mmo has a lot of cash shop items you need just to play and is more solo based compared to WoW. given a lot of the players solo everything and the rest of the time they are just sitting in the city talking in “trade chat” very boring. there are guilds and constant updates but the NA community in that game is fairly dead when it comes to doing content together.
WoW isn’t a whole lot better but it’s not like we can solo current raids where as in that game you can. the mechanics are still hard but gear is what makes it or breaks it in that game which is very time consuming to get.
To be perfectly honest I wish there was something else to draw me away. I’m increasingly not happy with the direction WoW has gone the past few years, but nothing else has caught my eye. FFXIV is interesting but I’m not sure it will suffice. ESO I don’t like the gameplay and only log in to RP. SWTOR I couldn’t get into. RIFT I played years ago but has fallen from grace. Wildstar is dead and buried. What else is there? Hell I’ve even tried Everquest but it’s so primitive that’s an immediate turnoff before anything else. And Classic WoW just shows me why a lot of changes done to WoW were actually good.
It doesn’t feel like anything will tear me away since games are either too much like WoW or wanting to do completely the opposite. I was very hopeful for Pantheon if it ever comes out but the idea of ignoring everything WoW has done out of some misguided idea the MMORPG genre was better without things like being able to level solo or having maps or having instances is just too ridiculous for me to fathom and I’m pretty sure that game is going to be DOA (if it ever comes out) because only a niche of a niche of a niche is going to want to go back to 1999-era gameplay.
I don’t feel like I want to invest my time into any other MMO at this point, and I like the setting and the art style.
i have friends that play different games. i played many different games until last year when i jumped onto 8.2. dota 2 and pubg mainly. firstly, i do not play single player games anymore. i like playing with people. WOW ticks off that box. my friends still play dota 2. they would like me to play with them, but its too frustrating for me. the reason I like dota is the competitiveness of the game. I grew up playing sports so it gives me that same type of satisfaction. WOW has competitive aspects to it, but its mainly internal competitiveness. When I raid, I’m pushing myself to beat my dps for last week. When I run mythic, I’m pushing myself to beat my last runs dps. I’m not competing against people in the sense of trying to crush them to win. I’m just trying to crush the mobs and bosses the best I can. sure, I’m competing to be top dps against my guild mates or group mates, but its different. We’re all on the same team. It’s not as frustrating as doing player vs player. Of course, I will do pvp and its irritating at times, but its not the only thing in this game. I can also go mount hunting, or transmog hunting, or legion artifacts, etc. Theres just so much this game offers. Other games, such as dota, has one aspect - pvp.
In a nutshell, this game gives me what i like from my games and so much more.
Now, other mmo’s just dont sit well with me. FFXIV’s gameplay is slow and frustrating for me. the pvp is lacking i hear so i havent even tried it. I dabbled in ESO, and i couldnt get into it. i cant remember what issues i had with that game. same for SWTOR. I could put a list of things i like in those games over what WOW has to offer, but im not going to do that. i choose WOW over all these other games because it checks alot of boxes for me. the things WOW does better than other mmos are more important to me than what the other games do better than WOW.
I’m going to wait till all the episodes are out before I begin to dabble in that. Been playing the 97 version lately and I’m very curious to see what they cut out & added. I read about how much you see Sephiroth and just rolled my eyes at it(Kefka is the best FF villain plus not really a fan of Sephiroth).
The same answer i would give if you ask me “Why you play other games over WoW”. A variety or multitude of reasons, that being i play the said game cause i find it very enjoyable, i like the story, i like how the gameplay works, the content inside is enjoyable, i like certain aspect of the game or this gerne interests me, the graphics look nice, the characters are relatable, or that’s what my friends are playing.
But to answer this question in particular and keep this straightforward; it’s just because i like it. I enjoy the genre and it’s trappings enough to look past some of it’s genre’s oddness for the most part, the world of Azeroth is pretty huge and i can explore for years and still only scratched the surface, some of the classes feel pretty great to play (sans the GCD nerf), i like it also gives choices on how to progress yourself up but with a few caveats if your playing solo, as it should, and i like collecting things like tmogs and mounts and being rewarded for having that on other toons to use and enjoy. 
Dearly reminds me of Spyro 2’s Perma Fireball powerup across saves, but with Cosmetics. Actually, it’s more akin to unlockable costumes that games used to have as a norm, but account bound. (Or unlocked across saves for another run)
I’m gonna have to say the gameplay style and the elements it all combined it has. There really hasn’t been an offline* single-player variant of WoW.
Sure, There’s Dragonage Orgins and other Bioware games that has that similar gameplay style, and there’s Skyrim with it’s free open world. And sure, there has been single-player Warcraft games… that are top down… but i like world of warcraft in that regard cause it’s more easy for me to immerse myself into the world and story that way. And i yet to see Warcraft uses all the elements that WoW has, put into in a standalone offline* single-player RPG, if that makes sense. 
* = I had to make an important distinction there, cause while i do know somebody will joke about that, somebody would actually confuse it with "playing solo in a multiplayer". Playing solo in a multiplayer isn't the same exact thing as playing it single-player, cause you still have other people in the game, playing in the same space as you. And this is why i say "offline single-player".
Alright then, time to respond a bit more.
Indeed, they do. This thread has only reinforced that point, though it often feels like WoW is trying to monopolize your free time… at least up to the point you’re down to doing only what you need for the weekly reward schedule, where it may feel less constrained.
Definitely the case, many of us just can’t help ourselves when it comes to this.
To be frank, BfA’s plot almost makes me miss the worst parts of the ARR MSQ.
… come to think of it, I actually did end up creating an alt in FFXIV (though not because of BfA, I was starting to get a bit bored of same routine of FFXIV’s endgame) and running through the ARR MSQ again. It certainly was more interesting that my intermittent forays back into WoW over the past several months.
If that’s the case, you’ll be waiting quite a while. I haven’t kept the closest track of the development, but I’m guessing that there could be multiple years between releases of each episode.
I’m only about a third or so through the remake… it hasn’t been too bad so far. It’s just been brief moments and they come off as hallucinations (or some form of PTSD?) that Cloud is having. It actually seems to fit the narrative rather well.
That being said, I am somewhat rationalizing the addition – the Midgar arc in the original game had no appearance of Sephiroth (technically his sword, but he didn’t appear himself), despite him being the “poster boy villain” of the game. Essentially, I was expecting him to be added because of his notoriety.
Probably the strangest addition would be “The Arbiters of Fate”, which look like a whole swarm of flying cowls or ghosts. With a name like that and their actions that I’ve seen so far being described as “keeping the original FF7 plot on course”… well, it looks like they’re leaving the door open to changing the plot significantly in a “defy fate” sort of way.
… it’s not hard to guess where that may be headed, but we’ll just have to see if it will actually play out and how it could be changed.
Kefka is definitely better than Seph, no doubt about that.
… though I have to say, Emet-Selch gives Kefka a run for his money.
Actually, that game may exist. Not quite pinning it down perfectly (and certainly not as replayable as the other examples), but a damn good parallel in a single-player RPG.
Looks at Xenoblade Chronicles
I have to agree, that’s a very important distinction.
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i dont know if we will ever see a new mmorpg get big again. the market isnt really asking for it now
i think if a better mmo came out today most wow players would not switch and it would be tough to get new players too
Because wow is the only pc game i play. id LOVE to play more games on my xbox oneX in 4k but if i sit on the couch playing console games then my gf wants to join which meand im stuck playing the same old multiplayer games. Where as playing wow lets me get on my pc, listen to music and actually have some time to myself
wow has never been worse about that than it is right now
i said f that and play other games anyway and im behind in wow. some people only seem to play mmos though so they just stick with wow
Couple reasons, #1: Sunk Cost fallacy: Individuals commit the sunk cost fallacy when they continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money or effort).
I’ve always played wow, so I’ll always play wow since I’ve played it for so long.
I suppose my second reason can answer this one. Wow has an insanely large amount of stuff to collect, which is my primary function. I’ve never looked into other mmo’s so I don’t know what they have. Let’s list my goals.
-Collect all xmog available for every class/armor
-Do every quest in game
-Collect every toy, mount, pet
-Collect all the recipes
-Complete all the achievements
Are there other mmos with more? Do they have a way for players to track it?
This last bit isn’t a reason why I play wow, but because I’ve spent so much time playing wow I would never invest that amount of time into another mmo.
Originally because I’d just Switched to Mac, around LK and it was one of the few good games you could get on Mac. Now I have an MSI gaming Laptop, as well as a MBP, and it screams WOW But in the end. Simply momentum. After 11 years, WOW is just old comfortable shoes.