Before WoW we had other MMOs. They did some stuff alright, but nothing really awesome. We had seen games that started in other genres bend themselves to fit into another niche, but nothing like what WoW was trying. The beta of the game was wildly successful. Even before the game came out people wanted to play and were ready to dedicate time and attention to WoW. I'm wondering if this might have been because WoW released at a time when EQ was a bit long in the tooth (about the age WoW is now) and DAoC just hadn't quite done as well as people had hoped (they released the game unfinished, yes... unfinished, they figured they had time to finish it while you were grinding to cap). Could it really be timing or an aging MMO market?
Let's be honest, EQ was cool. It was the first time we got to see a lot of that stuff done in that particular fashion. Yes, we had other MMO type games, but EQ gave us a whole different look and feel. One that is still copied to this day. It had a lot of inventive ideas that we also still see today. The game was solid, but it was just a little too old and in some cases way too hard core. The dedication to raiding and the ability to "get phat lewtz" was pretty intense. Though EQ gave us what we now call talents in WoW, but they gave you those as an alternate progression once you reached a certain level. EQ was a game changer, but it was old.
When we talk about old in gaming terms, we are mostly talking about the engine and the graphics. Most engines allow for graphic overhauls, but you can't take something developed in the mid 90s and expect it to compete in the mid 2000s. Even with all of the updates that EQ tried, it didn't bring the games level of beauty up to where some players wanted it. The leveling times in EQ were also brutal. You would invest weeks and weeks into leveling. The idea of questing for larger chunks of experience existed, but it hadn't been fleshed out. There were lots of repeatable quests that asked you to collect incidental items from mobs, but nothing like what we know today. Grinding through mobs where most of the time you couldn't go though more than two before sitting to med was pretty lame. To much downtime caused excessive time to be essentially wasted in the game.
WoW came out and fixed those things. You felt like a hero almost from the start, you were thwarting evil and performing multi-part quests all over the place. You could endlessly kill mobs and if you did have to sit down your downtime was minimal. It was a fast and furious pace and the cartoonish, but polished world look amazing. The art design was over the top and you felt like you were in the world that you had seen in the RTS games. It was actually pretty cool. They didn't do anything special, they just did it a little better and in a prettier package with less hassle.
WoW has had several games come out that could have hurt it. Age of Conan and Warhammer Online are two large ones. Warhammer sucks for various reasons, I've discussed those a couple times. I just recently ranted about it after they sent me a "come back for 2 weeks, it's awesome now" email. I just saw AoC was going F2P and decided to finally turn in my free 30 day key and give it a shot to see if it'd be something worth getting in to. Nope. It's terrible. I played AoC at release and it was a hot mess of bugs and bad. AoC is a little more complete now and it looks very nice, but it also sucks. The combat feels good, but a lot of things feel awkward and clunky. The game engine looks good, but the animations of combat look sad. I didn't make it far in AoC, but so far... I don't wanna play it again. I couldn't see myself playing to max level, because I would probably be bored to tears before I got half way there.
Aion was poised to take down WoW. Turns out it just looked pretty and had a sparkly UI. Within 2 months that game fell pretty far. The first month people were hoping more would be added, the second month people were let down, realized flying sucked and understood why Lineage in the sky wasn't gonna make it. The latest game to test WoW is RIFT. RIFT has done a decent job of pulling in subs, but just a few short months after release and you can see people looking for something new again or complaining about how the game sucks. I gave RIFT a shot for a few days and just didn't like the feel of it. It also didn't seem complete and polished, especially since that is what so many people were boasting about. It felt weird and it looked even weirder. The awkward rubber banding of people and mobs also pissed me off. Ugh.
What is next? What will REALLY give WoW a run for it? What is going to be a good enough game that I can cancel my sub and wait to play it next expansion? ToR continues to release info that makes me less and less happy with it. Planetside Next just doesn't seem to want to come out and Sony doesn't help when they keep firing people. FireFall looks neat, but can't seem to get on track either. Guild Wars 2 looks great, but we still have almost another year until it's going to release. Secret World looks creative and interesting, but I'm afraid it'll be a crappy reskin of one of the terrible Cryptic games that we had the misfortune of stumbling upon at one point or another (none of them were even good enough to mention as WoW competition).
We need another good MMO, any good MMO really. WoW is almost 7 years old and it's a bit long in the tooth. The new Blizzard project might be really good. I don't know, they refuse to leak info on it. And we all know that since it's a Blizzard game it might fall into oblivion for 10 years *COUGHSTARCRAFTCOUGH*.
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