I looked it up, here’s the timeline:
X-Box - Nov 2002
Steam - Sept 2003
KoL - Aug 2004
LotRO - Apr 2007
WoW - Oct 2008
(Sorry about the double post but I couldn’t find the edit button to add it on to my first post)
At any rate, consider the fact that multiple generations of families are playing right now. It appeals to such a wide range of people. I have friends who play with their parents, with their kids. One of the best players I knew in a former guild was a 60 year old grandmother.
As long as they keep coming up with innovative ways to keep us interested (or even stealing other games’ cool ideas), people will keep playing.
I’ve played WoW about three years now, and I give it another 5 years max.
I think the balancing act of keeping WoW fresh and interesting and balanced and accessible will be its undoing. To keep the game fresh, they’re going to have to keep implementing changes, and I think sooner or later they will make a change that will cause players to leave. My feeling is that in the name of opening it up to more players, Blizzard will make some aspect of the game too easy or unbalanced, causing all but the most casual of players to play less and eventually quit. The game will become viewed as too easy, full of some small fun things here and there, but ultimately lacking adequate substance. A For-Dummies MMO, if you will. People will then move on to the next new and promising game.
For me, it’s already starting to feel a little pointless. Now we’re all level 80, with skills capped at 425. My 71 healadin crits cures of 4k HP and I’m sure it’ll be at 6-7k by level 80. Bosses hit for 5k a swing. If WoW continues on another 5 years, with an expansion roughly every 2 years, we’ll all be level 100 with skills at 575. If it keeps going, it’ll be level 130 with skills at 800 and I’ll be able to cure for 15k HP and some boss will hit for 20k per. At some point, though, you’re not really adding anything new, you’re just making numbers bigger, with no end in sight.
Right now, I’m still having fun, but I really can’t speak for how much longer that will last. I’m sort of hoping Diablo 3 comes out and sucks away a noticeable portionof WoW players and breaks me of my MMO habit, even if it’s only temporarily.
LOTRO sure does. The title/deed system has been a part of LOTRO at least from open beta, which took place at the beginning of last year. There are several LOTRO food titles that have been around a very long time, including Vegetarian, Breakfast Conoisseur, Carnivore, and my favorite, The Unwise. To get the Unwise title, you need to eat a piece of sickly cheese called “Barrow Brie” that drops in a barrows dungeon near, you guessed it, Bree. If you don’t die after eating the cheese, you get the title. The cheese tooltip says quite explicitly that eating the cheese would be a really bad idea.
People have been saying this about the latest update to City of Heroes. Why? Because they’re introducing rested XP, exactly the same as WoW’s. Personally I think WoW’s already as accessible as you can make an MMO, which contributes to its popularity; it’s not hard for true newbies to pick it up and learn. You’re probably right, though, that the bubble’s eventually going to pop and Blizzard’s going to lose a huge chunk of its base. The question, though, is whether they’ll lose enough that they have to shut it down.
Personally I think we’ll see WoW2 before that happens, or World of Starcraft. If the playerbase is going to leave for a new game, they’ll want it to be one of theirs.
Sounds like the Ghuol Ghuolash trophy you can win in KoL by eating I forget how many pieces of Ghuolash, each piece of which you eat gives you a (small) permanent penalty.
Yes. I play Ancient Anguish which is in the top 15 or so MUDs remaining (we’ve always had a decent population compared to average). While we can’t compare to the 150+ characters logged in of our glory days, it’s still quite active. We’re still adding new content, too, and have a substantial base of active coding wizards.
However, unlike WoW, most MUDs are not a commercial enterprise. We’ll keep going as long as there is an interested base, as we’re player-owned. WoW will keep going as long as it’s commercially feasible, which will mostly likely be at least 5 or 10 years after Blizzard releases a new MMORPG.
I believe Blizzard has said or suggested that they’ll be taking WoW to level 100, so it’s got about four to six years left at current expansion pack release rates. Who knows how long people will play it once its content becomes static. By then Blizzard will surely have constructed WoW’s successor, probably World of Starcraft, which will assuredly be absolutely amazing. They have the money, infrastructure, and creative and technical knowledge base to pull it off. I can’t wait.
Gemstone went live in 1988 and has been running since then. Unlike many MUD’s it is a paid subscription game. At it’s height it regularly ran 2500 or so online at a time but more recently it’s dropped to more like 200-500. Not bad though for a game that’s been around for 20 years.
Or possibly World of Diablo, which would actually fit better in the “lots of heroes running about” background themes. I mean, according to the storyline, there were supposed to be many warriors and so forth going down into the dungeons and killing monsters, but we never see any. Might be too close to Warcraft, though.
The thing is, however, that the way Blizzard operates, I don’t expect content to stop coming just because they hit level 100.
The next MMO they release is not going to be WoW II. I get the impression they want it to appeal to a different fanbase (i.e., not another fantasy MMO).
From an interview with Blizzard’s CEO:
I’ve also heard rumors of some kindof mobile-WoW application in the works.
I agree. I’m a former WoW player – quit earlier this year, after having raided at top level – and frankly, from what I hear now, there are many complaints about class balance, re-structuring, etc…all it will take is a few blunders and I think they’ll lose a large chunk of their player base.
It’s lost a lot of its luster. I play Xbox now – where I can pause a game to go to the bathroom, or if I don’t feel like getting online, I don’t have to – and quite a few people I know feel the same way.
I’m also hearing complaints from the few raiders I still keep up with (the majority having quit) that they’ve already cleared ALL of the xpac content and nothing new is scheduled until the next patch…so more may bail if that isn’t coming soon, or if it is easily cleared.
When haven’t people been bitching about class balance? Since the game started people have been screaming ‘nerf paladin’s’, ‘rogues are overpowered’, ‘warriors suck’ etc etc. It’s funny to me how I’ve been hearing the same complaints since '04 yet many of the same people still renew their accounts every month. Any change is met with howls of outrage. Keeping things the same is met with howls of outrage. Everyone says they’re taking their ball and going home. Yet it seems Blizzard keeps opening more servers to meet the demand.
Of course it’s easily cleared by people that have long since mastered their class with top gear. Blizzard would have to make them just shy of impossible to give many of these guys a pause. Not to worry though after they clear it they’ll go back in and grind for the best gear. Then they’ll go back to see if they can do it with a smaller party. Then they’ll try nude runs or something else wacky. People have been going and re-playing the same end game content for years now. It’s weird to me about how these people were happy to grind Molten Core for hours over and over yet when they get more content suddenly they’re unhappy because there’s nothing to do.
For me it’s a recurring addition. I play it obsessively for weeks get bored/frustrated with grinding stop playing. Let my subscription lapse then one day I think what the hell and renew and the cycle begins again. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the people who know people who ‘quit’ are the same way. Heck I remember last time I was playing a bunch of people quit just before Burning Crusade hit. Sure enough less then a month later (less then a day later with one guy) they were back grinding the same mobs.
I think it’ll last until Blizzard comes out with the next big MMO or if there’s a radical shift in how the industry works.
Someone has been talking about a Fallout MMORPG. If that comes out and isn’t Teh Suck, I may very well abandon my refusal to get involved in MMORPGs, which is mostly based on A) A problem continually paying for a game I’ve already had to spend a fair chunk of change on to acquire in the first place, and B) A dislike of the “Fantasy” setting in general.
I RP with a bunch of WoW and EQ players (don’t play them, myself), and really get the impression that MMO players spend more time bitching about class balance than playing the game (from their own complaints about their own classes getting shafted, and complaining about other classes complaining about getting shafted).
ya know, World of Starcraft just isn’t very jazzy… no alliteration, no rhyme… what would be a good jazzy name?
Starcraft Galaxies? nah, too close too SWG…
Sphere of Starcraft? nah, no alliteration or rhyme… not jazzy at all…
Starcraft Universe? SU wouldn’t be terrible, but it’s a bit over-reaching maybe…
Noobs In Space? too muppet-y…
Spacenoobs? too Mel Brooks…
Pretty much. MMO communities are perhaps the whiniest collective fandom in existence, primarily because the companies tend to have official forums for the games, so it’s very easy for discontented malcontents to make themselves heard. It’s the same way in City of Heroes, and it was even the same way in Planetside, where there was a perpetual argument over which side (there were three) was overpowered, and no amount of reason or hard numbers could sway any side.
Personally I think WoW’s already as accessible as you can make an MMO, which contributes to its popularity; it’s not hard for true newbies to pick it up and learn. You’re probably right, though, that the bubble’s eventually going to pop and Blizzard’s going to lose a huge chunk of its base. The question, though, is whether they’ll lose enough that they have to shut it down.