Do I Want WoW To Stay On Top?
Interesting question I seen on MMO-Champion. Do I want WoW to stay on top?
World of Warcraft is a game I've sunk years into and spent a lot of money on, in subscriptions and expansions. I've made some very good friends there, friends I've carried out of the game and into the real world. I've written articles about the game, reviews about it. I've written a comic about it and various game design articles about various features of WoW.
I have invested a lot into this game. But do I want it to stay on top?
The answer is No.
The power of WoW
Let's face it. WoW has such a powerful presence that no other MMO has come close.
Tabula Rasa tried to kill the Warcraft
They failed, as their servers were smite to the ground.
Warhammer tried to kill the Warcraft
They failed, as they were stricken down to the ground
Age of Conan tried to kill the Warcraft, Hahahaha
They failed! As they were thrown down to the ground
With WoW on top every other game tries to be WoW. They've all failed. Some of those games don't even exist any more. With WoW having such a huge market share, and so many expansions their game is relatively perfect. Many new MMO's suffer from intense lag, major graphical flaws and heavily unbalanced PVP. Warcraft being on its 3rd expansion has fixed those flaws. Yet any game that comes out gets compared to WoW as it is now, not how it once was.
As long as WoW is this powerful and dominant nobody will try anything else. By dethroning WoW, I hope, it would open up new possibilities as publishers and developers alike will go "Warcraft got dethroned by a total unique MMO. Let us try new ideas and broaden the horizons of MMO's also!" which in the end works out better for all of us.
...realistically we'll probably just get more copies of this new MMO, but I can hope.
Stories
There are so many stories in games. So many yet to be birthed, yet to be experienced. Warcraft has some awesome stories and an awesome world. But eventually they're going to run out of main lore. We've had Illidan, Arthas and now Deathwing. Those are some of the biggest names in Warcraft history. Eventually they're going to run out of bad guys and have to create more. But I don't think you could capture the same feeling in facing them... unless of course they release Warcraft 4 with a whole slew of new characters that will be the basis of an expansion or two after Cataclysm.
I remember reading that Bioware may consider turning Dragon Age into an MMO. That I would like to see. Dragon Age has a very dark fantasy story with many continents spoken of, but unexplored. An MMO of it would be amazing.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is supposed to have a unique story for each class. That also will be interesting to see.
Mechanics
I don't know where the basis for World of Warcrafts mechanics came from. You know the whole action bar at the bottom, talent trees, health, mana, energy for rogues sorta thing? I haven't played Ultima or Everquest so I'm not sure if they started it first. Still that's pretty much the foundation for every MMO I've played and I've played a lot of MMO's.
The most original mechanic I've seen so far is in Star Trek Online. In it your ship has shields. Forward, Rear and Side-facing. You can click buttons to redistribute shield energy to whichever side needs it most. You can also change how your power is distributed.
"All power to shields"
"All power to engines"
Heard these phrases? If you put more power into the engines, you move faster. Put more in weapons your phasers hit harder. It's an interesting mechanic and makes space combat more interesting than just getting in range and spamming phasers for all you're worth.
Warhammer Online was a Warcraft clone with Warhammer races. They had a few original ideas here and there, but for the most part if you knew WoW, you know WAR.
This is disappointing. I want to see more interesting mechanics. Nobody will be able to dethrone WoW while they continue to copy WoW. It is only by stepping into uncharted territory and doing something totally different that WoW will be defeated. If WoW is not on top I don't think that pressure will be as intense to make something just like WoW to take the WoW players away.
Yeah I know in reality we'll just get games copying the WoW-killer. But like I said, I can hope for growth in the games industry. I can hope for change.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
You've bound to have seen some user created WoW films. Leeroy Jenkins? Onyxia Wipe video? Blind? Nyhm? What would happen if the creative geniuses in the community got together and created their own quests and raids using existing models and zones as a template?
A whole lot of crappily done instances with poor balance. But among them will be the shining gold that even the MMO's designers will go "WOAH" to.
Many of the designers and writers that I respect believe the WoW-killer will be an MMO that implements UGC and pulls it off. City of Heroes have it, but due to misuse anyone who makes or plays user quests that are unbalanced in the favour of the player, get banned or reotroactively lose everything they've gained.
This sounds fair enough, but they don't give any examples or guidelines as to what is and is not exploitative. So the players don't use the system and stick to Developer made quests. This is a shame as there's so much potential here.
This is what I'd love to see. World of Warcraft has Community Managers. These are the awesome guys in a thankless job who dig through the forums all day, locking the crap threads, blue-tagging the awesome ones and stickying the really helpful ones.
What I envision is an MMO that allows User Generated Quests and Raids. The developers provide the textures and models, the dragons and skeletons etc. They also provide you a choice of 'difficulty' e.g. Tier-10. If I choose T10 I then am restricted into giving out items that are of appropriate power for that difficulty and bosses must have fixed Health, also appropriate to that difficulty.
The players then piece that together into a dungeon or raid. The 'Community Managers' or 'UG Managers' will have the job of looking through all that was created, finding the truly awesome ones and marking them as "Full of Win". A User-Generated Dungeon of the Month. The 'Editors pick' of raids. Amongst all the tripe (and there'll be a lot of it) there'll be gold which will be plucked out and put on a stand for all to see and enjoy.
When I consider this, I see what my designer/writer friends are saying that the MMO which masters User-Generated Content is the MMO that kills WoW. How many people are still playing Warcraft 3, years after it's release, not for the base game but for the custom maps? DoTA is one of the most played maps in Warcraft 3 and it's still going, changing and getting releases. An MMO that pulls that kind of effect will be the dominant one for years to come. "Not enough content" is a problem when it's only developers making it, but let the community make some too and woweee, what a game that could be.
Conclusion
Do I want WoW to stay on top of all MMO's? No I don't. There is just too much untapped talent, too many awesome mechanics and too many epic tales to tell that are outside the Warcraft Universe.
I want to play an MMO that'll let me make my own content for the game. An MMO that'll let me enjoy the aweome content other players make.
Don't get me wrong, I love World of Warcraft, I'm glad it's going strong after 5 years, but eventually I'm going to want to experience more than it can provide.
World of Warcraft is a game I've sunk years into and spent a lot of money on, in subscriptions and expansions. I've made some very good friends there, friends I've carried out of the game and into the real world. I've written articles about the game, reviews about it. I've written a comic about it and various game design articles about various features of WoW.
I have invested a lot into this game. But do I want it to stay on top?
The answer is No.
The power of WoW
Let's face it. WoW has such a powerful presence that no other MMO has come close.
Tabula Rasa tried to kill the Warcraft
They failed, as their servers were smite to the ground.
Warhammer tried to kill the Warcraft
They failed, as they were stricken down to the ground
Age of Conan tried to kill the Warcraft, Hahahaha
They failed! As they were thrown down to the ground
With WoW on top every other game tries to be WoW. They've all failed. Some of those games don't even exist any more. With WoW having such a huge market share, and so many expansions their game is relatively perfect. Many new MMO's suffer from intense lag, major graphical flaws and heavily unbalanced PVP. Warcraft being on its 3rd expansion has fixed those flaws. Yet any game that comes out gets compared to WoW as it is now, not how it once was.
As long as WoW is this powerful and dominant nobody will try anything else. By dethroning WoW, I hope, it would open up new possibilities as publishers and developers alike will go "Warcraft got dethroned by a total unique MMO. Let us try new ideas and broaden the horizons of MMO's also!" which in the end works out better for all of us.
...realistically we'll probably just get more copies of this new MMO, but I can hope.
Stories
There are so many stories in games. So many yet to be birthed, yet to be experienced. Warcraft has some awesome stories and an awesome world. But eventually they're going to run out of main lore. We've had Illidan, Arthas and now Deathwing. Those are some of the biggest names in Warcraft history. Eventually they're going to run out of bad guys and have to create more. But I don't think you could capture the same feeling in facing them... unless of course they release Warcraft 4 with a whole slew of new characters that will be the basis of an expansion or two after Cataclysm.
I remember reading that Bioware may consider turning Dragon Age into an MMO. That I would like to see. Dragon Age has a very dark fantasy story with many continents spoken of, but unexplored. An MMO of it would be amazing.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is supposed to have a unique story for each class. That also will be interesting to see.
Mechanics
I don't know where the basis for World of Warcrafts mechanics came from. You know the whole action bar at the bottom, talent trees, health, mana, energy for rogues sorta thing? I haven't played Ultima or Everquest so I'm not sure if they started it first. Still that's pretty much the foundation for every MMO I've played and I've played a lot of MMO's.
The most original mechanic I've seen so far is in Star Trek Online. In it your ship has shields. Forward, Rear and Side-facing. You can click buttons to redistribute shield energy to whichever side needs it most. You can also change how your power is distributed.
"All power to shields"
"All power to engines"
Heard these phrases? If you put more power into the engines, you move faster. Put more in weapons your phasers hit harder. It's an interesting mechanic and makes space combat more interesting than just getting in range and spamming phasers for all you're worth.
Warhammer Online was a Warcraft clone with Warhammer races. They had a few original ideas here and there, but for the most part if you knew WoW, you know WAR.
This is disappointing. I want to see more interesting mechanics. Nobody will be able to dethrone WoW while they continue to copy WoW. It is only by stepping into uncharted territory and doing something totally different that WoW will be defeated. If WoW is not on top I don't think that pressure will be as intense to make something just like WoW to take the WoW players away.
Yeah I know in reality we'll just get games copying the WoW-killer. But like I said, I can hope for growth in the games industry. I can hope for change.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
You've bound to have seen some user created WoW films. Leeroy Jenkins? Onyxia Wipe video? Blind? Nyhm? What would happen if the creative geniuses in the community got together and created their own quests and raids using existing models and zones as a template?
A whole lot of crappily done instances with poor balance. But among them will be the shining gold that even the MMO's designers will go "WOAH" to.
Many of the designers and writers that I respect believe the WoW-killer will be an MMO that implements UGC and pulls it off. City of Heroes have it, but due to misuse anyone who makes or plays user quests that are unbalanced in the favour of the player, get banned or reotroactively lose everything they've gained.
This sounds fair enough, but they don't give any examples or guidelines as to what is and is not exploitative. So the players don't use the system and stick to Developer made quests. This is a shame as there's so much potential here.
This is what I'd love to see. World of Warcraft has Community Managers. These are the awesome guys in a thankless job who dig through the forums all day, locking the crap threads, blue-tagging the awesome ones and stickying the really helpful ones.
What I envision is an MMO that allows User Generated Quests and Raids. The developers provide the textures and models, the dragons and skeletons etc. They also provide you a choice of 'difficulty' e.g. Tier-10. If I choose T10 I then am restricted into giving out items that are of appropriate power for that difficulty and bosses must have fixed Health, also appropriate to that difficulty.
The players then piece that together into a dungeon or raid. The 'Community Managers' or 'UG Managers' will have the job of looking through all that was created, finding the truly awesome ones and marking them as "Full of Win". A User-Generated Dungeon of the Month. The 'Editors pick' of raids. Amongst all the tripe (and there'll be a lot of it) there'll be gold which will be plucked out and put on a stand for all to see and enjoy.
When I consider this, I see what my designer/writer friends are saying that the MMO which masters User-Generated Content is the MMO that kills WoW. How many people are still playing Warcraft 3, years after it's release, not for the base game but for the custom maps? DoTA is one of the most played maps in Warcraft 3 and it's still going, changing and getting releases. An MMO that pulls that kind of effect will be the dominant one for years to come. "Not enough content" is a problem when it's only developers making it, but let the community make some too and woweee, what a game that could be.
Conclusion
Do I want WoW to stay on top of all MMO's? No I don't. There is just too much untapped talent, too many awesome mechanics and too many epic tales to tell that are outside the Warcraft Universe.
I want to play an MMO that'll let me make my own content for the game. An MMO that'll let me enjoy the aweome content other players make.
Don't get me wrong, I love World of Warcraft, I'm glad it's going strong after 5 years, but eventually I'm going to want to experience more than it can provide.