MMORPG's After World of Warcraft
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jun 7th 2006 at 11:00AM
Love it or hate it, WoW has changed the face of the MMO genre. The Escapist considers how things have changed since WoW has taken over. When you have such a successful game, how can in development games break hope to break into the market? There are a lot of up and coming games dealing with exactly this issue. Now, whether the next big MMO will simply be a further refinement of WoW's model or something entirely opposite - only time will tell. But the MMO's of the future can't help but be a response, of some sort, to WoW's huge success.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Xinhaijian Jun 7th 2006 1:30PM
Sort of reminds me of the time when everyone was talking about what fps would be after Goldeneye, haha.
Josh Jun 7th 2006 11:14PM
WoW will not be extremely difficult to unseat as it seems. It owes its success to adopting a more "casual" gameplay style than the previous lot of MMORPGS.
However it still didn't go far enough. I remember WoW in its alpha stage. It was actually even more casual friendly and about 10 times more fun than its release version. I've often said WoW beta was the best MMORPG ever made (and it's a shame we can't play it today).
That was back in the days when the blizzard team actually held true to their "is it fun?" litmus test for each features creation.
Someome will make a faster MMORPG, with phatter loot (think diabloII), quicker progression, faster kills, and better AI and battle play. And it will rival or surpass WoWs popularity.
I'm a huge fan of WoW. They took the next step in the right direction. But there are many many more steps that can be taken.
A huge failing of Blizzard is they keep thinking that the way to keep people paying/playing is to make more rigorus/difficult/repetitive/grinding at the highest level with top level dungeons. But this thinking is extremely flawed (and also why I will probably quit soon). It turns its back on the casual players that made WoW a scuccess in the first place.
They would do better to introduce a whole new continent of level 10-50 areas and dungeons for the casual member base that comprises the majority of where their money comes from. Keep them rolling new characters and spending more months leveling them up.
For every 1 hardcore player who can stomach going on 15 MC raids to get 1 peice of gear. There are 20 casual players who hit 60 and just don't think it's worth their time.
Some game will address this at some point. Many of the current MMORPG set will hate this. But they don't matter, becuase the players that will love it will outnumber them.
Perhaps the next game will have it's MC equivilent only the boss drops 40 peices of loot so everyone gets something. Maybe it will be smart enough to know what class you are and always drops something for you. "There are a million ways to make a MMORPG more "causal" and if WoW is any indicator, casual is where the big money is.
DeepPriest Jun 9th 2006 7:12PM
Who says WoW ever has to end?