Stop the Madness! Wow Bashing

One of the things that amaze me about the MMOG player community is the amount of people that are Anti-World of Warcraft. I’ve seen quite a few posts saying how simple or shallow it is, the amount of nasty children that play, what have you. The bottom line is that they say WoW is not a good game and is not successful.

What's an MMO game supposed to have to make it a 'success'? A huge subscriber base? That's one indication, obviously, because it shows how many people are interested in the game.

 

Innovation? While I'd think that would be a requirement, it really isn't. How many things in life are reproductions of a formula following a tried and true format? Take something and do it as close to 100% and it'll draw people every time. Could be a movie, a book, a food dish, whatever.

So what makes a MMOG a success? The answer is a simple one; it needs to be fun. The MMOG can be brand spanking new and innovative to the nines or it can be the classic formula tweaked here there to the best it can be. The latter is what Blizzard did.

WoW took the 'old school' format from MMO's (a tried and true formula) refined it, and stripped away anything that could detract from someone's play experience: Steep learning curve, Harsh Death Penalty, Large Time Investment, High End Computer requirement and a 'Members Only' type of community/atmosphere. When people sign up and play WoW, they have fun and that is the only requirement that any MMO needs to be considered successful.

While WoW isn't my favorite MMO, I think it is one of the best MMO's of all time. Every MMO player out there has different tastes on the way they have fun in such games and just because it doesn’t meet the expectations of some doesn’t mean the game’s a failure. You can’t please all of the folks all of the time. We’re all entitled to our opinion and while we may think they’re right, it’s not always the case. A little more respect for the opinions of others is needed though.

 

WoW is incredibly fun, bringing more people to the gaming genre that never bothered with such games before. It did wonders for the industry, drawing more investors, thus creating a growing market. We might not like it, but we owe WoW and the boys and girls at Blizzard for making it a success. Why? Because now we can look to the horizon for future MMO's to find a game that'll give us, the players, more of what we want. More games are out there waiting to be born knowing they have to take on the big WoW gorilla on the block. It’s just a matter of time and patience to see what steps up to the plate and wins.

 

Darke