Vigilant Walrus said:
The thing is that you are right now projecting on what has come to pass since then. What I am talking about is state of the MMO industry in 2004, and back then, the standards WoW had was among the most polished MMO experiences ever made. In 2004, it was still hard to launch a game without having technical difficulties that made the game hard, or impossible to play at launch.
For reference, see the many reviews that praised it, for it's level of polish. At the time it was unlike anything else, and it raised the bar. LOTRO and Guild Wars(if you want to count that game) are probably two games since then, that had even more smooth launch periods, when they came out in 05.
The thing is that, people didnt know about the end-game content, the pvp systems(which got delayed to after launch in beta.. it was all just promise). If you think about it, WoW has changed into a much much better experience over these 6 years, no matter what nostalgia might tell you.
But maybe I am also saying this as I was not affected by the honeymoon of WoW at all. I had been through the "wonders" of a big sprawling world in other games, and this is something I suspect many of the people who started with WoW will be surprised by when they try SWTOR.
There is simply something, fundamentaly strange going on with your first MMORPG, when you really get hooked on being part of the whole world. It's like, you're in such awe of it all that you forgive it more for the mistakes, as you also saw at launch in WoW, people where much more forgiving and biased, as there was still a sense of wonder.
For people who had tried that half a decade ago, it was just another world, though a nicely realised world with levelling and some standard PvE and RPG mechanics.
I clearly remember reviews going on about how polished WoW was because you could go all the way to max level without grinding. You could basically do quests the entire way through. If I recall at launch, there was a few places in the 40s and 50s where it was seriously thin with quests, but the sentiment behind it was that, it had never been done like this before, even though it was just a baby step in a certain direction.
People who reviewed games in 2004 barely played MMORPG's. Hell, most of the most popular game journalists don't play them now.
What drew people like myself into World of Warcraft was the look at feel of the game and the fluidity of the combat and leveling experience. Those aspects were fantastic for an MMO. No MMO on the market was as "next-gen" looking, unique or well crafted as World of Warcraft was. It's world literally separated it from games like SWG and Everquest.
The combat was extremely smooth, the animations transitioned well and the leveling experience was fresh and fantastic compared to grindfests like EQ and SWG.
Outside of that though WoW was totally broken. From the combat mechanics down to the servers. It was a complete mess.
I still remember when people would claim a class was unbalanced and Blizzard would just ignore it and Blizzard apologists would claim the game was perfectly balanced. Of course now that we have been playing the game for so long and know every single detail about the mechanics involved down to the complicated math we know how broken and unbalanced it was.
In terms of content a lot was bugged, not in the game or placeholders. Most people didn't see a lot of the problems because it took people 3-6 months to hit level 60 on their very first play-through. Unless you were in the beta you didn't level very quickly at all. Simply due to how new it all was, everyone wanting to see everything, world pvp and most people taking their time and not worrying about rushing to end-game. An end-game that wasn't fully implemented and most people didn't even know existed.
It was nothing like it is today. We all know the dozens upon dozens of revamps that have been done to the game. From levelling to mechanics, it has all changed.
That being said Blizzard stuck with it. Since they provided players with such a next-gen and amazing world people kept playing. Blizzard fixed the game and although WoW isn't perfect right now, it's easily the most polished MMO on the market.
MMORPG's don't have that advantage today. Most of the players coming into WoW were new to MMROPG's. What WoW'd them (no pun intended) was not just the world Blizzard created but the CONCEPT of an MMO. A lot of the people I got to play the game couldn't believe you could play on persistent server with thousands of other people. They thought that was the coolest shit every. combine that with an addicting atmosphere and it was a wrap.
Most people who will be playing MMORPG's for the next little while are now completely jaded to that experience. Because of WoW they now understand MMO's and know what they want from one. They expect it to be perfect and will be able to stand there and tell you why it's broken. They will be able to find the little faults in the mechanics of the game they didn't even know existed when they first started playing MMO's. Since alot of people literally grew up playing WoW they have learned in-depth all about the genre. It's like any first-time experience you have. After a while the novelty wears off and the more you learn the more picky you become.
So Bioware and other companies no longer have the advantage WoW did. Which is bringing in millions of new people and selling them not only on your game but the MMORPG genre in general.
In my nerdiest of nerd days I probably played WoW at a higher level then anyone else on this forum. Competing for world firsts, putting videos out on Curse-Gaming and overall just poop socking it for a while. I know the game and genre inside and out and every-way in between. World of Warcraft is easily my favourite game of all time with nothing coming close. That being said, trust me, the game was not polished or mechanically sound at all when it came out. Some aspects were, but they were mainly just aesthetics. Something reviews couldn't get past since most of them couldn't get past level 40.
I won't be playing SWTOR or any game like I did WoW back in the day, as I no longer have the time. However SWTOR has a lot infront of it to become successful. Like I said it doesn't have the advantage WoW did when it came out. An MMORPG has to be as polished as WoW is NOW to survive. Not as good as WoW was when WoW came out. That version of the game is obsolete now.
