"WoW Killer"

[Pike]

This was brought up in the Elder Scrolls MMO thread and I thought it might be interesting to discuss on its own.

A lot of new MMOs have claimed to be "WoW killers" and none have succeeded. What would an MMO need to actually dethrone World of Warcraft?

Personally I don't think anything will until Blizzard's new MMO. WoW has just got such a huge community built up by this point that it isn't going to be put down unless Blizz is the one who does the job.

What do you guys think?

[escobert]

Guild Wars 2! :D

They're trying to push what people think of in a MMO and make a dynamic world that actually feels alive. Guild Wars has a strong following so it is very possible to gain even more once the game gets going. With a side kick system it will make veteran players helping newer players even more fun. and you can run swim jump and climb finally unlike the original Guild Wars.

[Skyblade]

Personally, I don't think even Blizz's new MMO will dethrone WoW. One of the major reasons why a lot of people play MMOs is the persistent world. Switching to a new one would mean giving up everything that you have already done. Getting rid of legendaries, questlines, characters, mounts, pets, etcetera. People don't do that casually.

That's why none of the other games have dethroned WoW thus far. There are superior MMOs out there. But once you start playing one, you don't really want to switch. WoW will have a large community until it is shut down or its main playerbase dies of old age. Even if they stop pushing content for it, there will be plenty of players who won't want to leave just to go start over. And since they are still pushing content for it, I don't think that it is going to go to sleep any time soon.

[Freya]

WoW has the content right now. There are great MMOs that have come out but once you hit that level cap, that's it. There isn't much for people to do when they get to the top just because the games are so new. WoW has had years to build up its content now that it'll take you a while to experience it all. People end up leaving the newer ones because they've ran out of things to do. Where then they go to wow and they are jumping into a pile of content.

Bert has had such a hardon for Guild Wars for years now xD I haven't heard much of anything that exciting coming from the guild wars 2 camp so I doubt it'll take the crown.

God damn Tera is all i'm hearing about lately. I think that one has a little bit better of a chance because it's taking a bit of a different aspect on the community aspect. They basically have it so the zones can be ruled by one guild. NPCs and all. That creates a great dynamic for the players. You're not just playing the game for the quests and monsters but you have to get involved in the world politics. If you want to attack the zone over so your guild can hold two? Go for it but you're going to have to fight a whole gaggle of actual players to try to take and hold that control. With that whole player vs player vs world mechanic makes me giddy.

People do get bored of quests and monsters and if you don't have content you have nothing to do. Well now you have something to do, to get involved in. I doubt it'll stay to the game too. I'm betting it'll leak over to social media sites advocating for whatever player-made factions.

WoW will hold the title for a good long while but it's interesting to see some of the games that are trying to challenge that role. WoW is dropping, that's why they let go about 1000 employees not too long ago. That's why they wont have a blizzcon this year. Right now people are bored of WoW but it's their only option if they want anything with content and few bugs.

[Bunny]

Each and every time a new MMO comes out that the public and media claims will be the next "WoW Killer" I have the same response: The only thing that will kill WoW will be WoW. It is too large, too established, too good (a subjective point), and has so much content available that it would be hard for any new MMO to match it.

The charm of WoW, currently, is that there is little distinction between "hardcore" and new players. A hardcore player can quit for months and come back without a problem. New players can start a character, level to the cap, and fit right in with little to no problem aside from community issues (arguably the worst portion of WoW though it isn't singular to it). As long as Blizzard keeps developing in the direction that it has been, WoW will remain on top and will never be dethroned until they decide otherwise.

[Rostum]

I usually hate this subject. People get so hung up about an MMO having to "kill" WoW in subscription numbers, when they should just focus on finding a game they enjoy - whether it's WoW or the plethora of other MMO's that have large dedicated communities and just as high quality content.


God damn Tera is all i'm hearing about lately.

I mainly replied because of this.

I did not expect it, but I have absolutely fallen in love with this game for the time being. Not only are the visuals stunning and the combat extremely fun, but it's overall just extremely polished and has a lot of promise in the near future content updates. En Masse are also doing one of the best jobs of commercialising the game in North America, with excellent customer service and content / fix patches that coinside with the Korean counter-part.

Honestly, one needs to experience a few of the low-level (20-40) dungeons in the game. They are incredible. The boss fights are extremely epic and very involving, I've played many MMO's over the last decade and a bit and I've never experienced anything like it. Also the BAM's (community's donned name for non-instanced world elite mobs) are incredibly fun; you really need to think and react quickly. It's really hard to explain it though, but it's just... fun.

Also here's my bunny of doom! (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13837193/bunnyofdoom.png)

That's just my two cents on a recent MMO, sorry for the ramble. :)


Each and every time a new MMO comes out that the public and media claims will be the next "WoW Killer" I have the same response: The only thing that will kill WoW will be WoW. It is too large, too established, too good (a subjective point), and has so much content available that it would be hard for any new MMO to match it.

The charm of WoW, currently, is that there is little distinction between "hardcore" and new players. A hardcore player can quit for months and come back without a problem. New players can start a character, level to the cap, and fit right in with little to no problem aside from community issues (arguably the worst portion of WoW though it isn't singular to it). As long as Blizzard keeps developing in the direction that it has been, WoW will remain on top and will never be dethroned until they decide otherwise.

Absolutely agree with this 100%, by the way. The game is just far too established, and has managed to evolve itself in the ever-changing MMO market (which a lot of older-generation MMO's still running today fail to do - e.g. FFXI).

[Pike]

Speaking of WoW, last night I had this great dream that I was a druid in flight form and I flew to Karazhan, but it was all happening in "real life" and it was great.

Anyways, I agree that WoW is sort of on a decline; they've lost a million or so subscribers in the past couple of years; despite that they're still leagues ahead of anyone else in terms of subscriber numbers. I still think that all they have to do is release a couple of Vanilla/BC servers to shoot those subs right back up, but of course they won't do that and they'll just keep making DLC mounts and stuff :roll2

[Yeargdribble]

No other MMO is going to kill WoW. WoW will last for a good long time to come. Even Blizzard's new MMO won't kill WoW. It will remain to be one of the most subscribed MMOs of all time and even in the wake of it predecessor, it still outpace most other MMOs.

WoW already has the install base, a huge amount of content, and people familiar with how it works. There's also the aspect of MMOs that's most enticing to the largest amount of players... playing with your friends. If you were just to pick randomly an MMO that your friends would be most likely to be playing, it's WoW.


This is also why no other MMO using WoW as a template is going to succeed long term. They can't compete in any of those areas. The only one they have might be familiarity, but all other things equal, why would you choose the inferior knock off when the real think is available with more friends and content for the same price? You do it for a few months until the new content is devoured and you've scratched that novelty itch. Afterward, if you still want MMO, you'll probably just go back to WoW.

The only thing that can kill WoW now is time. And think about the kinds of numbers it takes to keep an MMO afloat. Most of the smaller MMOs that are at least making a showing and are profitable enough to keep going have well under 500k subs. WoW probably won't even dip under 1 mil for another 5 years and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that many are around in another decade. Look at the longevity of games like Everquest and UO that never even got near a decent fraction of WoW's install base, yet still could turn a profit for a ridiculous amount of time.


People who talk about WoW killers are, frankly, idiots. They are pitifully myopic and, despite all the evidence to the contrary, seem to think the world is black and white and there must be one winner and all else are losers. In reality, there is one clear winner, a lot of people who are keeping pace (about a lap behind) and then dozens who have died on the track and had their corpses carted off. There's no reason a new contender can't co-exist and do so with some success.

People are too quick to personalize things and extrapolate it onto the rest of the world. They find Tera exciting, or they think GW2 is the hottest thing ever, doesn't have a fee, and they can't imagine ever wanting to pay to play an MMO. Well, that's them. The rest of the world is what matters. GW1 didn't topple WoW (or any of the other relatively thriving MMOs) and neither will GW2 even if you find it personally satisfying.

[Freya]

Your posts are always so pretentious. :/

You're right that WoW wont die anytime soon but the fact is, it is dying. A slow painful death, but it's happening. There will be something to take over as the hot thing. It's just a matter of time. WoW has content but it also is boring now. It's lost it's luster. There wont be anything definitive that will kill it but I wouldn't just write it off that nothing will take over.

[Bunny]

You're right that WoW wont die anytime soon but the fact is, it is dying. A slow painful death, but it's happening. There will be something to take over as the hot thing. It's just a matter of time. WoW has content but it also is boring now. It's lost it's luster. There wont be anything definitive that will kill it but I wouldn't just write it off that nothing will take over.

I don't think this opinion accurate represents the statistics and the way MMOs typically function. The current number of subscriptions, as of December 2011, is 10.2 million, which is a pretty significant amount that topples any of the other current top MMOs (and rivals a combined number). Yes, the numbers have gone down steadily over time but this is to be expected seeing as it is the end of an expansion and a certain number of players always quit around this time. However, every single expansion that Blizzard has released has outsold the previous expansion but a fairly significant margin and this can be an expected trend for the next expansion. Saying that WoW is slowly dying is an inaccurate way to frame the argument though and ignores some of the facts and statistics.

As far as WoW being boring, that's a personal opinion and does not reflect the majority of players, as can be noted from the dominate subscription statistics. I know people who still play, I know people who just got into it and love it, and I know people who have played it for a long time and are bored with it. It's a matter of personal opinion and doesn't really matter in the long run. The fact of the matter is that no single game will be the end of WoW's dominance.

[Shoden]

This is a subject that bothers me a lot actually, I hear friends use the term "WoW killer" constantly every time a new MMO is announced or comes out. The fact an MMO pretty much HAS to live up to this hype, is pretty silly, most of the time all we get is a half arsed, rushed game or something that has potential but just, doesn't hold up to its "WoW killer" label, it kills the game itself in a way. People said this about Age of Conan, Rift, Final Fantasy XIV and The Old Republic, especially that last one which is a terrible, terrible game IMO...

I'm an avid WoW player, have been since just before TBC came out, seen interests of my friends and even myself wane constantly, to times even when I think "WoW sucks, never playing it again" then I'm back on in days or weeks. WoW has something in it that just, cannot be reproduced for some reason. Yeah the whole 1-85 one class one faction character system is a bugger, the pretentious arseholes in PuGs and battlegrounds that absolutely demand people must be of a certain standard of skill to play is a putoff. The whole "need gear to get gear, grind grind grind" thing is a pain too after so long but damn that game just, keeps getting me back in. Its a drug...

[Roto13]

"Game X Killer" has been an annoying phrase for as long as there've been high profile games.

[escobert]

Do I really honestly think that GW2 is going to get like 15 million players and topple WoW? No, I know it wont. I just think that it's a lot different from the general MMO build and people might want to check it out.

[Araciel]

More like WoW petty-annoyances.

[Yeargdribble]

Your posts are always so pretentious. :/
.

What part is pretentious? I'm just citing my opinion based mostly on evidence, history, and an understanding of how the MMO (and gaming) market has evolved in it's short life.

Bunny pretty much said all of the rebuttal I need, but hey, I love being long-winded.



You're right that WoW wont die anytime soon but the fact is, it is dying. A slow painful death, but it's happening.

Sure, but very very slowly. It's still going to be on top for likely years to come simply because no projects are doing anything that could up end it because of two major factors I've already mentioned. One is innovation, which is something new MMO makers can do something about. The other is a combination of content, brand recognition, experience, and familiarity that WoW has working for it, which new MMO makers can't do anything about.

And like Bunny said, while what you're saying may be technically true, I think you expect it to happen faster than it will actually happen because you're not looking at the math of it. WoW is a behemoth, and while there may be a collective distaste for in now among a large portion of gamers who feel it is played out, numerically it's still a juggernaut. If you look at how MMOs have worked out (which I've already mentioned) WoW is going to live for a long, long time to come.



There will be something to take over as the hot thing.

No. Not really. Once again, you're seeing it in black and white. No single game will over take it. By the time there is a game that actually starts beating WoW statistically it will have very little to do with that new game being the WoW killer. In almost no other place do we look at one game as the killer of another game. Was Uncharted 3 the GTA4 killer? The concept is ludicrous and one has little to do with the other. You may say that's a specious argument because they aren't even the same genre, but the point is that at some point more people were playing U3 than GTA4 but you don't think of one as killing the other, and in fact, many people still play GTA4.


The only area where a new hotness might be a factor is in games like AAA FPSs. These are games where the number of players has a very large impact on the game. If a new game steals all of the playerbase then you have nobody to play against. In MMOs you have a persistent world an as players start leaving, devs keep the game somewhat adjusted to the number of players and even then, most content can be done without them. Someone could play and enjoy the crap out of WoW solo... increasingly so. Most MMOs that do finally go offline still have people wanting to play them. The really popular ones continue on private servers.

That's all beside the point I suppose. You think one new game will eclipse one old game, and that's an over-simplification. If one does, it will be through attrition rather than actually winning millions from the WoW userbase and toppling it.



WoW has content but it also is boring now. It's lost it's luster.

For you, yes. For me, yes. For about 10 million people, my wife included, apparently not. That's why my opinion doesn't matter. The hard numbers are what matter and when you look at those, WoW is extremely healthy and will perform extremely well for a very long time.



There wont be anything definitive that will kill it but I wouldn't just write it off that nothing will take over

At some point something will get the numerical advantage, but WoW will still be a very healthy MMO for years after another MMO has surpassed it in numbers. It's also unlikely that any MMO will match WoWs record number until we see a huge change in technology that tempts more people in. WoW was a lightning in a bottle situation at just the right time with the right devs and with the right franchise. That's just not going to happen again. The MMO bubble has burst.

[Shoden]

Right, I cannot compete here with all these great points and long posts (actually I'm just lazy :p) so I'll lay this down. WoW, has pandas coming. Kung fu pandas. Those things cannot be killed so easily. Hell I'm having a fun time on MOP beta on my Pandaren!

[Shlup]

For me, nothing will ever beat Ultima Online. You could place a house in the game world and furnish it and hold guild meetings there and stuff! People loved that.

[Bolivar]

I think it's just the way markets usually work -consumers coalesce around one market leader and in networked products like MMOs, that just compounds on itself. And WoW just has that magic accessibility ingredient that makes it the game people want to play. It also has the advantage of being a several year old game. People exaggerate how expensive it is to keep up with PC gaming, but if you ant that super multi-million user market penetration, modest specs certainly helps.

[Renmiri]

I think even Blizzard knows WoW has it's days of being king of all mmos numbered. Problem is there is nothing like it out there. Like it or not WoW has almost a decade of development and additions to it's universe. How can you compete with that. FF11 could have but Square botched it and instead of leveraging all those years of development and community building it started from scratch with ff14. we all know how THAT turned out.

I am on Mists of Pandaria Beta and we got to test pet battles for one day. Is just a turn based combat so far, not nearly polished enough but added one thing i think blizzard had been missing for years: giving non-raiders a fun to do thing on endgame. Before that, if you didn't want to, or couldn't raid (due to job, gf, bf) there was little to do on WoW end game. Achievements were nnot enough and many of them required you to be on a raiding group.

Now people can "tame" rare pets, train them, sell them on AH, battle them. If blizzard does a good job implementing it, they have a vast world to be hunted for battle pets, and i think they might have created a new reason to stay on wow. Pokewow or Pandamon FTW!

[Pike]

Leveling alts is the best thing to do in WoW. If there was a Burning Crusade server I would resub to WoW and just level alts forever.

At this point I'd even take a WotLK server mostly because I actually like Dungeon Finder

[Raistlin]

For me, nothing will ever beat Ultima Online. You could place a house in the game world and furnish it and hold guild meetings there and stuff! People loved that.

There was also no better game to just mess around and fuck with people. UO for life!

[Bunny]

I think even Blizzard knows WoW has it's days of being king of all mmos numbered.

What exactly is the indication for this?

[Loony BoB]

The only thing that could compete as far as I am concerned would be a Pokémon MMO. But even that may not work now as Pokémon doesn't have the same appeal it did five years ago. But Nintendo would never go ahead with a Pokémon MMO because of their utter refusal to put anything on any platform that isn't made by Nintendo (that I know of). They could have made so much money off that potential game that the mind boggles at the idea that they never went ahead with it.

I'm not sure if any other MMO would have really worked out too well. I'm sure eventually some company will come up with a master plan and overtake WoW, but I think this will happen at a point when people are simply fed up with the old MMO systems. The new game will need to be groundbreaking to say the least. Imagine the craziest ideas you can think of for an MMO, like artificial intelligence to such levels that the game evolves itself rather than relying on devs. It would need gamechangers on this level. And to be fair, the industry needs this kind of unheard of stuff rather than the many clones out there.

[Old Manus]

It'll go the way of Counter Strike eventually. Lots of people will still play it, but only out of habit.

[Peegee]

what new MMO? Diablo 3? That's not going to de throne WoW

If you like Moorpgs, you play WoW. I have friends tell me they hate WoW, but they don't last more than a few months playing some other moo rpg. I suspect it's not WoW they dislike, but moo rpgs.

[Freya]

The only thing that could compete as far as I am concerned would be a Pokémon MMO. But even that may not work now as Pokémon doesn't have the same appeal it did five years ago. But Nintendo would never go ahead with a Pokémon MMO because of their utter refusal to put anything on any platform that isn't made by Nintendo (that I know of). They could have made so much money off that potential game that the mind boggles at the idea that they never went ahead with it..

There is a Digimon MMO in the works? :D Which, was the better show anyway.

[Bunny]

You shut your whore mouth!

[Pike]

what new MMO? Diablo 3?

No, Diablo 3 isn't an MMO.

They're working on a top-secret new MMO. Leaks have said it's codenamed "Titan" but no one knows much more about it.

[Peegee]

what new MMO? Diablo 3?

No, Diablo 3 isn't an MMO.

They're working on a top-secret new MMO. Leaks have said it's codenamed "Titan" but no one knows much more about it.

not based on a franchise? the only way they will lose WoW subscribers is if WoW content freezes.

[Pike]

Nope, they said it's a new franchise.

[Loony BoB]

WoW2? :p

[NorthernChaosGod]

The only thing that could compete as far as I am concerned would be a Pokémon MMO. But even that may not work now as Pokémon doesn't have the same appeal it did five years ago. But Nintendo would never go ahead with a Pokémon MMO because of their utter refusal to put anything on any platform that isn't made by Nintendo (that I know of). They could have made so much money off that potential game that the mind boggles at the idea that they never went ahead with it..

There is a Digimon MMO in the works? :D Which, was the better show anyway.

Why are we even friends? :colbert:

[Peegee]

WoW2? :p

In all seriousness if they upgraded the Warcraft MMO engine I might consider playing it again.

But only if I joined a decent raiding guild.

[Renmiri]

I think even Blizzard knows WoW has it's days of being king of all mmos numbered.

What exactly is the indication for this?
The half ass way they are conducting this beta, frozen content for almost a year (read below)


what new MMO? Diablo 3? That's not going to de throne WoW

If you like Moorpgs, you play WoW. I have friends tell me they hate WoW, but they don't last more than a few months playing some other moo rpg. I suspect it's not WoW they dislike, but moo rpgs.
Diablo3 is not an mmo



what new MMO? Diablo 3?

No, Diablo 3 isn't an MMO.

They're working on a top-secret new MMO. Leaks have said it's codenamed "Titan" but no one knows much more about it.

not based on a franchise? the only way they will lose WoW subscribers is if WoW content freezes.
It has frozen.. no new content until pandas.. on wrath we had ruby sanctum while cataclysm beta was going on. Now people will be waiting 8 months for new content. And it isn't that much new content, i'm on the panda beta, there is not that much content coming.


WoW2? :p

In all seriousness if they upgraded the Warcraft MMO engine I might consider playing it again.

But only if I joined a decent raiding guild.
Aye, another thing wow broke. Decent raiding guilds are harder to keep. Everyone wants to go to the 500+ member guilds at level 25 with all the perks. Those guilds have one or two raiding teams tops. If you are on a smaller guild all you doing is training people who will join a larger guild once they have some boss kills in their achievements.

[Pike]

I don't think Cataclysm is bad; in fact they did a lot of neat things with it. It is different, however, and it may not be your cup of tea, especially for people who have been playing for a while.

Obviously that doesn't cover everyone. I know a lot of people who have been playing since Vanilla/BC who still love WoW just as much.

[DMKA]

Wait...people still play WoW?

[Roto13]

Wait...people still play WoW?

WoW has about ten million active subscriptions. So yes.