Quote:
Originally Posted by lawll
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People only stuck with EQ because nothing was remotely close at the time. The mass exodus after wow came out pretty much says thats what the players wanted in a mmo game.
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Not sure I agree with this entirely. I think WoW released at the best possible time and had some things go it's way to become what it is. Couple of things I think affected it that weren't necessarily because of EQ.
WoW released at a time when people had devoted more time to EQ than most generally any other game they had ever played. At first EQ was new to them, and they played it religiously. Then came along something new. Much like DAoC it took a lot of EQ players initially. The thing WoW had was a niche market. The casual gamer. A lot of people simply did not have the time to devote that EQ requires. So they played WoW because they could accomplish a lot more for their time invested.
And once the ball got rolling so many people started playing WoW that everyone else fell in line and played it because that is where everyone was at. If you can play a game with several of your friends opposed to a game you couldn't your going to choose the game where all your friends are.
There was no doubt WoW had some very intriguing features and things that other MMO's didn't. But it didn't take long for every MMO to copy and paste all the features that people liked. So it wasn't so much the features that kept people playing. It was an easy playing environment, with a vast subscription base, and most of all it didn't require a monster of a computer to run (not that EQ did) but other games released after WoW were graphics intense and had several issues. With WoW you could basically go out and buy a Wal Mart machine and run it fairly well.
I think there was many things that added to WoW's success. I refer too it as "the perfect storm". As a game, the lore isn't all that great, graphics are sub par, and gameplay is average at best. I tried it a couple of different times because all my friends were playing it. But it didn't take me long to get burnt out on it. The recurring theme was people left the game and you knew they were going to be back.
Another variable I think plays into it is the fact that many people started playing WoW because the MMO industry had gotten so big. And there was so many people playing it that for many WoW was their first MMO experience. And we all know how that first experience feels. It's hard to let go. I remember playing Counterstrike and the guys in my clan disappeared to play WoW. A kind of game they had never even tried. They mostly played FPS's It was amazing to me at the people who were actually playing the game.
But as I said once you have 3 or 4 million subs everybody you know is playing it and it's "the place to be"