WoW, what a game.

[Dzonna]

For anyone who has played this game I speak to you.

** If you don't feel like reading all of it, answer this - Is wow the best game of all time and will they ever make the game on consoles or another game like ** they - blizzard or another developer

World of warcraft used to be so sticky. Stickiness is, in my opinion, the most important measure of “greatness.” In a nutshell, if the offer of more excitement, combined with the invested time and cost, make it hard to impossible to leave, then a game is sticky. If lack of innovation and future excitement is overwritten by communal and investment stickiness, it’s hard to keep it going.

I feel like Wow perfected this element. There was enough to do when you didn't know anyone online. However, when you played with friends time literally flew by. Video games sure, they take up our time, we schedule our lives around them sometimes whether we admit it or not, lose sleep, are late for dinner cuz were finishing up something etc... But with wow I feel like the game had the ability to take over peoples lives (which wasn't the case for me or anyone I knew, but I heard sad stories online)

Anyways, im wondering... has anyone played a game that kept you coming back for more like wow did? I feel like it had the pick up and play element like cod does, the adventure like skyrim and the music of a zelda game. This game was my favourite game about a decade ago and it still puts a smile on my face now.

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[MayDay]

Is wow the best game of all time.

It wasn’t even the best game released in 2004, according to the poll results in the thread here.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/threads/hf-retro-game-of-the-year-2004-vote-in-the-poll.2467829/

Got beat out by GTA: San Andreas and about even with Halo 2.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

It wasn’t even the best game released in 2004, according to the poll results in the thread here.

http://hfboards.mandatory.com/threads/hf-retro-game-of-the-year-2004-vote-in-the-poll.2467829/

Got beat out by GTA: San Andreas and about even with Halo 2.

But we all know it was the best game of that year, and most of the years after. People are just bitter.

 

[Knave]

I never really got into it. Guild Wars was way better for the pvp experience it offered and it didn't have a subscription.

 

[RandV]

Anyways, im wondering... has anyone played a game that kept you coming back for more like wow did? I feel like it had the pick up and play element like cod does, the adventure like skyrim and the music of a zelda game. This game was my favourite game about a decade ago and it still puts a smile on my face now.

An MMO by design, in large part thanks to WoW's influence, is never going to match up to a good single player game in this regard. With so many players playing at the same time you need to chop up area's into zones that continuously spawn the same leveled mobs to fuel the grind. There can be more creativity available in dungeons and raids, but since these must be tackled in groups with other players (which from a different angle can be a huge plus) means you have to run at the pace of the group which is almost universally a straight b-line to the objective.

That last part was always a personal gripe of mine when I played Guild Wars. I'm the type of player who likes to stop and smell the roses, and in the instanced game world between hubs I could go out solo with CPU party members and take my time exploring every little nook and cranny. But the story missions mostly required other human players to beat, so even if you'd never done a mission before it seemed at least a few group members had already done it so it was always just a mad sprint to the finish line.

 

[McRpro]

Well, no other kind of videogame can match the soul crushing addiction that MMO's could provide. I'm living proof lol.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I don't consider WoW the best or my favourite game of all time, perhaps in part because I tend to put single player experiences above multiplayer ones in general.

That said, WoW is the game that I've easily spent the most time in and the game that had the biggest impact on my life, both positively and negatively. I absolutely loved the game, and it is one of my favourites for sure. It dominated my life for years. Fourteen years later, I still maintain friendships with people I met on WoW.

IMO, there won't be another game like it....at least not for me. This is in part due to the overwhelming nostalgia that can likely never be recreated, and in part due to where I am in my life now. I no longer have the patience to sink into a game like that, unfortunately.

 

[sa cyred]

As someone who put SO many hours into the original GW, & Lineage II, for some reason WoW never grabbed me. I used to play with family and friends on it too but it NEVER caught on for me.

 

[WarriorOfGandhi]

It'll be awhile before we see a game that drew in more people than WoW. It succeeded because it wasn't complex and appealed to a much broader demographic than traditional gamers. I only played on the tail end of Vanilla and through BC but I was constantly surprised at how few gamers were like me (at the time a dude in his early 20s). I met people on WoW who were businesspeople squeezing in a quest during lunch, grandparents playing with grandkids, single moms who had a weekend off, kids in junior high school...damn near everyone under the sun. The only game that I think compares to it in terms of appeal and success is Mariokart, which also is pretty easy to pick up and has over-the-top cartoonishness.

 

[Shareefruck]

I mean.... good for them for being wildly successful at what they set out to do, but I've always really hated that endlessly soul-deadening, compulsively addictive side of video games, personally. I mean, I understand the impulse, and it's not nothing to be able to pull it off, but I tend to react to that stuff the way I react to reality television, which is.... not too fondly.

When games started to move in that direction is about when I started to check out and stop paying attention to the medium altogether for a while.

 

[Osprey]

I mean.... good for them for being wildly successful at what they set out to do, but I've always really hated that endlessly soul-deadening, compulsively addictive side of video games, personally. I mean, I understand the impulse, and it's not nothing to be able to pull it off, but I tend to react to that stuff the way I react to reality television, which is.... not too fondly.

What you appear to hate is how some people let it consume them. It's not the game's fault that some people abuse it to the point of it hurting their mental and social health. Being "soul-deadening" and "addictive" aren't features of the game that its players become victims of, after all. Those are unhealthy reactions that are purely the fault of the consumers. Anything that's enjoyable can be abused, even to point of personal self destruction. That's just human nature. Instead of holding something against games or reality television because many people get too wrapped up in them, I'd hold it against the behavior of getting too wrapped up in them. To use a simplistic analogy, it's not the pie's fault that it's so tasty that you ate the whole thing and gained weight; it's yours.

 

[KingBran]

I respect WoW for what it did for video games. Just like I respect the Beatles for what they did for music.

Neither of which am I particularly fond of.

 

[Shareefruck]

What you appear to hate is how some people let it consume them. It's not the game's fault that some people abuse it to the point of it hurting their mental and social health. Being "soul-deadening" and "addictive" aren't features of the game that its players become victims of, after all. Those are unhealthy reactions that are purely the fault of the consumers. Anything that's enjoyable can be abused, even to point of personal self destruction. That's just human nature. Instead of holding something against games or reality television because many people get too wrapped up in them, I'd hold it against the behavior of getting too wrapped up in them. To use a simplistic analogy, it's not the pie's fault that it's so tasty that you ate the whole thing and gained weight; it's yours.

I don't think that's the case. What I dislike/care about isn't the outcome or what other people choose to spend their time on, it's the feeling that I myself get that certain games seem to be deliberately designed to be consumed that way and with that focus in mind. MMORPGs are often crafted like immersive never-ending staircases that always dangle a carrot in front of you and have no concrete and unified goal/experience/end in sight.... and from what I can tell, that aspect seems to be the primary appeal of it for most people.

Personally, I think I'm primarily interested in games that have more of a tight, pointed, and cohesive structure and experience, and have a general distaste for games that are more of an ultra-customizable interactive playground to live, socialize, and get lost in.

 

[aleshemsky83]

I never really got into it. Guild Wars was way better for the pvp experience it offered and it didn't have a subscription.

I mentioned this in the other thread too. Guild Wars had a PvP mode where you could make as many max level characters as you wanted (only to be used in PvP of course). I loved that mode, not sure if WoW had something similar.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

What I dislike/care about isn't the outcome or what other people choose to spend their time on, it's the feeling that I myself get that certain games seem to be deliberately designed to be consumed that way and with that focus in mind. MMORPGs are often crafted like immersive never-ending staircases that always dangle a carrot in front of you and have no concrete and unified goal/experience/end in sight

This is more descriptive of the current iteration of WoW than the original game.

 

[RandV]

This is more descriptive of the current iteration of WoW than the original game.

It's the nature of the monthly subscription MMO. They want you to keep playing month after month, so they have to figure out the best way to stretch out the gameplay. Single player RPG's have always had the same sort of grind/loot/progression, but the pace tends to remain relatively steady and eventually the game ends. In an MMO it starts out pretty smooth, but as you progress it gets stretched out to ridiculous proportions by the end. By that point the time already invested plus attachment to the community will keep people hooked to keep grinding it out.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

It's the nature of the monthly subscription MMO.

I agree MMO's are built to continue providing content forever. But in original/"Vanilla" WoW, the main repeatable mechanic was leveling: this took an extremely long time, it was basically a game in and of itself, and the world accommodated 2-3 different leveling paths that a person could do without running into rote repetition. Beyond leveling, the main mechanic to keep people engaged was the sheer amount of crap people could do...Vanilla WoW was close to 3-4 different games rolled into one.

Current WoW, Legion, is built on getting people to log on to 3-4 alts a day, do their Emissary questline, do the weekly Mythic dungeon...it's much more obvious in the "do X, get commensurate reward, limit 1 per day/week so you'll keep coming back". Maybe they're both Skinner Boxes, but one is nicer than the other.

If you want to say they're the same, that's fine, I'd argue it's akin to saying a 2$ a pound chicken-and-rib-meat breast is similar to a 50$ chicken breast dinner from a New York restaurant. It's a difference of scale.

 

[McRpro]

I agree MMO's are built to continue providing content forever. But in original/"Vanilla" WoW, the main repeatable mechanic was leveling: this took an extremely long time, it was basically a game in and of itself, and the world accommodated 2-3 different leveling paths that a person could do without running into rote repetition. Beyond leveling, the main mechanic to keep people engaged was the sheer amount of crap people could do...Vanilla WoW was close to 3-4 different games rolled into one.

Current WoW, Legion, is built on getting people to log on to 3-4 alts a day, do their Emissary questline, do the weekly Mythic dungeon...it's much more obvious in the "do X, get commensurate reward, limit 1 per day/week so you'll keep coming back". Maybe they're both Skinner Boxes, but one is nicer than the other.

If you want to say they're the same, that's fine, I'd argue it's akin to saying a 2$ a pound chicken-and-rib-meat breast is similar to a 50$ chicken breast dinner from a New York restaurant. It's a difference of scale.

Vanilla WoW and basically all MMO's back then had so much more depth than they do now. Now they cater to all kind of audiences including casuals that want that instant gratification. Still the same basic priciple though: keep the players hooked.

 

[Shareefruck]

This is more descriptive of the current iteration of WoW than the original game.

The fact that it can and has gotten much MUCH worse (I wouldn't know) doesn't really remove any validity from that, though, does it? It may not have been as egregious as it could have been, but that element of it was still central to the game, and was what put me off from the idea of it.

 

[Suxnet]

Never played WoW but another game in its prime during that time was the original CS, which I play to this day. It's the greatest multiplayer fps of all time.

 

[RandV]

I agree MMO's are built to continue providing content forever. But in original/"Vanilla" WoW, the main repeatable mechanic was leveling: this took an extremely long time, it was basically a game in and of itself, and the world accommodated 2-3 different leveling paths that a person could do without running into rote repetition. Beyond leveling, the main mechanic to keep people engaged was the sheer amount of crap people could do...Vanilla WoW was close to 3-4 different games rolled into one.

Current WoW, Legion, is built on getting people to log on to 3-4 alts a day, do their Emissary questline, do the weekly Mythic dungeon...it's much more obvious in the "do X, get commensurate reward, limit 1 per day/week so you'll keep coming back". Maybe they're both Skinner Boxes, but one is nicer than the other.

If you want to say they're the same, that's fine, I'd argue it's akin to saying a 2$ a pound chicken-and-rib-meat breast is similar to a 50$ chicken breast dinner from a New York restaurant. It's a difference of scale.

I was kind of speaking about MMO's in general, and this being the direction WoW took things. I recall that it took a long time to hit level cap in the original, but I only played it a little bit when they had that 'play up to level 30 free' promo, not sure what version. I'd have to ask though I'd have to ask though with the Vanilla game ho much longer could it keep the subscriptions up as is? The Burning Crusades came out a little over two years later, and part of the business model here to keep those subscriptions coming is to release expansions that increases the level cap and adds a bunch of new content.

This is all reminding me while I find the whole genre distasteful, given enough time the transition from WoW to what it is now is what the bulk of the players eventually want - distil things down to the most basic components and streamline that. Given enough time the player base will figure out the most effective way to play the game, document it with guides and such, and eventually a specific sub culture springs up around the game. That seems to work for most but personally not something I've ever been much a fan of.

 

[The Head Crusher]

I never really got into it. Guild Wars was way better for the pvp experience it offered and it didn't have a subscription.

This is why I never gave it a try. I just could not justify constantly paying for the right to play a game month after month after month.

 

[Mrb1p]

Diablo II is the best game ever.

 

[karnige]

warcraft is pushing 14 years old. thats f***ing incredible. its still rakes in tens of millions a month

 

[The Crypto Guy]

warcraft is pushing 14 years old. thats ****ing incredible. its still rakes in tens of millions a month

But yet it wasn't the top game of the year in 2004 according to HF