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.Originally Posted by Freya
Bunny pretty much said all of the rebuttal I need, but hey, I love being long-winded.
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.You're right that WoW wont die anytime soon but the fact is, it is dying. A slow painful death, but it's happening.
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.
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.There will be something to take over as the hot thing.
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.
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.WoW has content but it also is boring now. It's lost it's luster.
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.There wont be anything definitive that will kill it but I wouldn't just write it off that nothing will take over
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