Lasereth

Lots to talk about here. Great topic!

First is why WoW became so popular. I think it had a lot to do with multiplayer online gaming getting pretty big right in the early 2000s when WoW was announced. WoW is developed by Blizzard who is undoubtedly the biggest and most popular PC developer in the world. The game already had an incredible amount of hype before it was released because it was a Blizzard game. Combine Blizzard quality with the fact that the world was "ready" for a huge MMO and there you go. It sounds weird but in the late 90s and early 2000s, not everyone had PCs, and not everyone spent a lot of time on the PC. In the early to mid 2000s, this began to change. E-commerce started booming, MySpace and social networking sites started to flourish, and all of a sudden every kid was on the PC all the time, and this is only around 2002-2004. In 2004-2006, people old, young, of every country started using computers every day. Look at Facebook. Everybody is on it. Everybody. Everybody has a reason to be on the PC a lot now, which makes them more susceptible to activities such as MMORPGs.

Blizzard either knowingly or unknowingly launched a perfectly polished, cartoony, run on any piece of shit PC developed by the most popular PC developer ever, right at the time when it became socially acceptable to spend hours upon hours on the PC without being looked at funny.

This is why WoW succeeded. WoW launched at the right place at the right time with the perfect combination of quality, polish, low system specs, and casual content.

So, if you think about it that way, WoW can't be beaten because the world will never be in a place like that again. It IS normal for people to spend hours on a PC everyday now and Blizzard got first dibs on reeling people in.

Now, my complaints about WoW, even though I haven't played since BC came out. I played the game religiously for years. I was a hardcore raider for over half of my time spent playing it, and a hardcore PVPer the other half. I loved the game, I loved playing it and spending time with it, it was my life. I don't regret it, but I do have insight into what could have kept me playing it even today.

1. Character customization. WoW has none. Grats I can change my hair and face. What? We should be able to change height, girth, weight, faces, hair, everything. Every night elf looks the same and that takes away from the experience.

2. Armor and weapons. Sure they look cool, but everyone has the same shit. There is no reason for tiered armor sets in WoW. Why can't there be multiple viable armor sets for a level 60 warrior? Why is it only 1 set that should be used? If you mix in match then you look like a circus freak. Players should be able to wear unique armor that not every night elf warrior in Stormwind is wearing. I played Everquest for a year straight when it came out and from level 1-50 I never saw a single wood elf ranger that looked like me.

3. Classes and races. Here is the big one for me. Why are we limited to so few class and race choices? Everquest excelled here. In WoW you could pick from 5 or 6 races and 7 or 8 classes when it came out. In Everquest there was twenty different races and twenty different classes to choose from. You wouldn't believe the pride of being a wood elf ranger when you saw another like yourself maybe once every few days. In WoW you're a carbon copy clone, swimming in a sea of night elf warriors everywhere you turn. This takes away from the game and needs to be addressed. I know it's very hard to balance 20 classes and races, but man does it add value to the game. This could be fixed by having master classes. At level 40, a warrior turns into a Knight, Berserker, or Fighter. Then a Berserker at level 60 can turn into a Myrmidon or Axemaster. Being a night elf warrior from 1-80 is boring, especially when every other warrior on the server has the same body as you, and on top of that they're wearing the same armor. Blah.

4. The world needs to be bigger. Yes, bigger. WoW seems huge, but when compared to Everquest, it's an absolute joke. The world of EQ was so huge that it felt like a real world. WoW feels like a console videogame with different levels. In EQ, sailing across a vast ocean to a different continent took 30 minutes at the least. This sounds tiresome and boring but it gave a sense of awe when playing. What if something happened out here? I can't see land in any direction. We're actually in dangerous territory! Danger doesn't exist in WoW. That's another problem. I didn't really like EQ taking away 50% of your EXP for that level upon a single death, but it did add a sense of realism and stakes for the world. You cared more for your character because you had something to lose.

Exploration is absent in WoW. You can run across a zone in 5 minutes or less. Zones need to be big enough that they take much longer to traverse. Can you imagine walking across a giant jungle that took 20 or 30 minutes to get through and eventually stumbling upon a city that you had never been to before? Exploration doesn't exist in WoW and there is no reward for it. When a new zone comes open you just run through on your mount, get the flight paths and continue on your way. This detracts from the game. The environment needs to be awe-inspiring and simply breathtakingly huge. Playing WoW doesn't feel like being in a world, it feels like being in Mario with flight paths taking you from level to level. Travelling from Stormwind to Ironforge doesn't feel like an epic journey, and it should. Traveling period should feel epic in a fantasy game. I understand Blizzard's decision to shorten travel time in the game so people can get stuff done faster but in my opinion it really does take away from the grandiose feeling of exploration and trekking.

5. Crafting is pathetic in WoW. The only way to obtain really cool items in WoW is to get them from raiding or other dungeons. Why can't I craft my own awesome items? What if I don't want to raid to get a cool item? Why can't I started up my own business selling useful items to players? This is partially included in WoW, but it's nothing compared to how it could be. I also hate the bind on equip system and soulbound on pickup system. Loot is too easy to come by so it's basically trash once you've outleveled it. Items on your character should be magnificent and extremely rare and mean something once you obtain them. They are assets. You can trade them and sell them and buy them. It creates a player-driven item economy which is how it should be, not an economy built on low level greens and gathering professions.



WoW did a lot right but I think a lot of it was simply when the game released. It does have the best control scheme in the history of RPGs IMO. The camera is beyond perfect and the fluid animations are still above average (gasp). When you fight in WoW, you're actually fighting, shooting spells, swinging swords, etc. Other games are still struggling to make this work.

I'm sure I'll add more to this later.

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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert