Yes, I'm sure the fact that it's also a fun game has nothing to do with its success. Thats debatable, especially at release, where its original subscriber base subscribed because of the reasons SkyCaptain mentioned. So +10 million people from all over the world are only playing it because they don't know any better? That's not what they're arguing. They're saying the reason WoW is so much bigger than everybody else is that they had advantages at the start that no other MMO prior had, and as a result, had far higher subscriber numbers than most MMOs on release, which led to word of mouth spreading like wildfire and them tapping into a whole new market. The fact that it is an excellent example of easy to access content that has been streamlined far beyond anything else on the market is as much a reason of it's success, probably the biggest one, but it is far from the only one.

So +10 million people from all over the world are only playing it because they don't know any better? It didn't have 10 million people at launch, it grew to that over time as the game improved. But thats what other MMO developers seem to be comparing their success to, WoW now rather than comparing themselves to WoW at launch. But gamers do the same thing, and compare the gameplay and feature set of new MMOs to an MMO with 4+ years of extra development time. Which is why companies need to stop making WoW clones, because they are simply not going to see the same level of success. The only MMO on the horizon that might be able to compete is The Old Republic because Bioware is known for quality games and the Star Wars franchise is well known. Hopefully its not just a WoW clone anyways.

Yes, except the original argument I was responding to completely excluded actual qualities of the game as playing a factor in its success. I didn't say it succeeded only because it was fun, I said it also succeeded because it was fun.

WoW is nothing more than a run of the mill fantasy grind/raid/gear progression MMO. EQ2 has the same kind of qualities that WoW does. What EQ2/SOE lack, is branding, a playerbase that didn't play MMO's, and low end system requirements. WoW was so overwhelmingly popular right at release because they had a playerbase no one else could draw from. They had a game that could run on damn near any computer built in the last ten years. And most important of all, a community was built on their servers. A very vocal community that brought WoW into the mainstream. No other company could do that. That is why WoW is so successful. It had nothing to do with "fun". The thing that makes or breaks games like EQ2 and WoW and Eve and every other MMO out there is the community that builds up around the game. Wow is as equally boring to me running around by myself as Eve is running around mining veldspar or running missions. Boring does not equal fun in my opinion. So what makes the boring parts tolerable? Oh right. Community. Friends, family, people you know. That's what keeps people* playing. * People being the majority. Raiders are the minority in most games.

Man, so much sticking fingers in ears and going lalalalala.

WoW is nothing more than a run of the mill fantasy grind/raid/gear progression MMO. EQ2 has the same kind of qualities that WoW does. What EQ2/SOE lack, is branding, a playerbase that didn't play MMO's, and low end system requirements. WoW was so overwhelmingly popular right at release because they had a playerbase no one else could draw from. They had a game that could run on damn near any computer built in the last ten years. And most important of all, a community was built on their servers. A very vocal community that brought WoW into the mainstream. No other company could do that. That is why WoW is so successful. It had nothing to do with "fun". The thing that makes or breaks games like EQ2 and WoW and Eve and every other MMO out there is the community that builds up around the game. Wow is as equally boring to me running around by myself as Eve is running around mining veldspar or running missions. Boring does not equal fun in my opinion. So what makes the boring parts tolerable? Oh right. Community. Friends, family, people you know. That's what keeps people* playing. * People being the majority. Raiders are the minority in most games. Except that your point is completely invalidated by the statement "It had nothing to do with "fun". No, there weren't 10 million people at launch, but there were several million. And EQ2 should have had a significant advantage being the sequel to the biggest kid on the MMO block. But that success didn't carry over at all. To say that WoW's success had nothing to do with fun and to claim that EQ2 failed because they didn't have branding is just asinine and completely oblivious to reality.

EQ2 didnt do that great because it was pretty much the same exact game as EQ1 and I already beat that game

Oh please. SOE has the worst reputation when it comes to MMO's and EQ1 was never as big as WoW was initially. Blizzard drew players from Warcraft, Starcraft and more importantly, Diablo 1 and 2. No other company could do that. They had a ready made player base just waiting to buy anything they put out. All that was left was word of mouth and making the game dumbed down enough for even the most casual player to "have fun". They still continue dumbing down the low levels so that new players can get to the "fun" parts faster. I prefer Eve as a model because there are some great decisions made by CCP in their design methodology. The problem is they and their players are so entrenched in the game as is, they can't change it to something more enjoyable to casual players that just want to blow other people up without ruining the game and becoming a SWG NGE fiasco. Jumpgate and Black Prophecy had/have the chance to be the next step up from Eve, but they're trying to be WoW instead. Which is the wrong way to go.

It's quite telling when you realize that WoW broke MMO sales records and stuff even as it just was released The game was the most successful MMO even before it was available on the market The hype was huge and it drew in large crowds of people who had never played an MMO before. It spread from there

(WoW) was the most successful MMO even before it was available on the market This is really the key issue. Nobody's saying WoW didn't hit the "fun" nail on the head (or at least I'm not about to say that), but I AM going to say that WoW isn't as popular as it is because it's more fun than other MMO's. It's as popular as it is because Blizzard opened and understood intimately a brand-new consumer base that the other companies just didn't have access to. Now, unless you know those customers better than Blizzard (unlikely), or can make them as rabidly fanatic about your stuff as Blizzard can (again unlikely, unless MAYBE you're Bioware working on SW:TOR), OR you can identify a brand-new, huge market that only YOU can tap into, you're not likely to replicate WoW's success and shouldn't try to. At best, all you'll get is WoW-ish gameplay, and your product will then be compared to WoW. And likely poorly, I should add. The more reliable way to strike it rich* these days with an MMO is to target a pretty specific niche with a laser focus, and ensure that both your business model and server setup can handle any number of players. (*Rich being a word with wide and varied definitions. For the sake of the average MMO though, I'll call it "anywhere above profitable, given the abysmal results of many MMOs out there.")

Man, so much sticking fingers in ears and going lalalalala. Couldn't agree with you more. Wow has a playerbase made up of 'normal' people and has casual appeal. The playerbase is not made up of blizzard fans and many people playing dont know any other computer games (it runs on the barest of specs.) Someone said that SOE had a bad reputation, among who? mmo gamers? sure it had a bad rep with them but look at Wow's playerbase, it's not made up of mmo gamers I can tell you that right now. Skycaptain doesn't enjoy the game as he has seen it all before. For the majority of people they haven't and all their friends and family play the game so it is enjoyable. Every damn MMO thread is visited by bitter gamers like him that like to slam wow, slam SOE and just generally pump out negative spin like some grizzled mmo war veteran. It's best to just ignore them. Personaly I don't care what the company (or it's sinister wow obssessed investors) are aiming for with JGE but if it has fun space combat and I can play it with friends then it will get a buy from me and maybe a subscription. Not everyone wants the next hardcore, permadeath, player controlled ultra complex sandbox. In fact most people dont want that but this is the internets and internet tough guys and loud mouths love to run around telling companies thats what everyone wants (even if they don't know it). Fortunately some companies listen and those guys go play their games for a while, giving the rest of us a break from the crap in the online communities.

Someone said that SOE had a bad reputation, among who? mmo gamers? sure it had a bad rep with them but look at Wow's playerbase, it's not made up of mmo gamers I can tell you that right now. That bad rep means no word of mouth like Blizzard was able to pull off. Skycaptain doesn't enjoy the game as he has seen it all before. For the majority of people they haven't and all their friends and family play the game so it is enjoyable. Um, that's not what I said. I have played both WoW and EQ2 and enjoyed them. However, I don't enjoy playing them long term as it's the same old retread crap over and over. I buy the expansion, level up a character or two through the quests, and then cancel until the next expansion. I enjoy the storyline and quests that give you background info on the world. Every damn MMO thread is visited by bitter gamers like him that like to slam wow, slam SOE and just generally pump out negative spin like some grizzled mmo war veteran. It's best to just ignore them. No, it's best just to ignore people like you. I didn't slam WoW, didn't slam SOE, and I told it like it is. Blizzard had the playerbase that no one else had. Blizzard had the good reputation that no other company had. Blizzard had three working titles with a rabid fanbase ready to buy anything they put out and spread the word about their games. That is why WoW has 11 million people. It reached a critical mass and instead of leveling off like most mmo's do, it continued to grow because the game was so easy and it ran on pretty much any damned computer out there. WoW did not do anything new to push the MMO genre forward. They just improved on different aspects of every mmo before them. That's not being negative, that's just how it is.

Well then even from reading all your posts I can't quite understand what you're looking for but keep telling people how (you think) it is. If JGE turns out to be fun then that's fine by me. Player created factions, permadeath, perma item loss etc are antiquated invitations to griefing and are not player friendly. Limiting gameplay may be how things used to work but they dont any more and it's not just MMO's that have this shift in design.

If JGE turns out to be fun then that's fine by me. Player created factions, permadeath, perma item loss etc are antiquated invitations to griefing and are not player friendly. Limiting gameplay may be how things used to work but they dont any more and it's not just MMO's that have this shift in design. I never advocated permadeath. Only the permanent loss of your ship when it's blown up around you and you wake up in a cloning vat somewhere. Permanent loss of items is crucial to the workings of a real in-game economy that is healthy and sustainable at all levels of play. For example, if I craft ten Maldarion assault frigates and ten players buy them, that's ten players that will never need to buy another Maldarion assault frigate. Where's my incentive to keep crafting those frigates? Where's my incenvtive to spend my time purchasing or mining the materials required? Now expand that example to a thousand players each crafting one hundred Madarion assault frigates (because that's how many frigates you have to craft to get to the next ship, assuming that crafting increases your skill). Now there's 100,000 assault frigates on the market that will never go away. The surplus knocks the price down to materials cost only or below, due to undercutters just wanting to sell the ships. It's not the way to run a healthy in-game economy. The solution is to make ships affordable enough to lose frequently. In Eve, the maxim is that you only fly what you can afford to lose. If you can't afford to lose it, you shouldn't have bought it in the first place. It's called being smart and having some common sense. Then again, look at the housing market in the United States. People bought what they couldn't afford to lose and now they've lost it and they're screwed.

Player created factions, permadeath, perma item loss etc are antiquated invitations to griefing and are not player friendly That is a ridiculous statement. Except for permadeath, which is silly, but then I can't even recall a decent MMO with that mechanic anyway. 'Player created factions' is what defines the metapolitical content in sandbox MMO's. 'Item loss' is what defines the economy. Without those two elements you would lose a great deal of what a sandbox MMO is. They have nothing to do with "griefing". They are just gaming concepts associated with MMO's that let players tell the story instead. Both the WoW/EQ archetype ( themepark) and the UO Archetype ( sandbox) are proven and successful concepts. To call either antiquated is silly at best and ignorant at worst. It is all about how they are conceptualized and then realized in-game.

I like the themepark descriptor of WoW/EQ2. It's perfect.

Most sandbox games today are developed by very small indie companies to boot. Most people do not even consider that fact when they go off ranting, comparing WoW to the handful of sandbox examples on the market today. We've yet to see what an established, well funded and well marketed company like Blizzard could do with the genre. They alone brought the EQ model of MMO gaming from a niché standpoint to a mainstream one. To claim that The Concepts of sandbox gaming are antiquated because one or two indie companies who actually tried the sandbox model and ended up with niche games (EVE, Darkfall, Shadowbane) is just such a strange leap in logic. What people should look at is how a company that had to release a board game to fund their development of their sandbox MMO managed to not only survive for 6 years but also flourish and grow (CCP). And while CCP's EVE is a prime example of what potential the sandbox genre has, it is limited to a niché market by everything from the dull and overly complex combat to the lack of avatars and the very setting itself. Most of these indie MMO's have these trappings. The sandbox-y concepts themselves (player created content, open warfare and item loss) are probably what sustains them while it is the lacking gameplay, polish and design which bleeds them on new players. To me the sandbox genre is the future. Players have responded well to freedom and open gameplay in other genres. We've just not seen a modern, well crafted attempt at such a game in the MMO genre yet.

I could create an awesome sandbox mmo if I had the funding. =(

Yeah, it's odd that "permanent item loss" seems to equal "OMG GRIEFING" in this thread. That's not necessarily the case. It's how a lot of games have handled it, but it's not the way it HAS to be. Properly designed, you'll lose your shit, shrug, go easily buy new stuff, and move on again. Frankly I like the permanent item loss because it focuses the game away from the mindless gear upgrades, which is what really killed WoW for me. Eventually, the game just turned into a neverending quest for another purple that enhances my character's capabilities by another 0.0001%. I'd LOVE to see what Blizzard does with the sandbox MMO, yeah. And you know what? We might be able to. They said they were working on a new MMO with a new IP, so... Maybe? And you know they've got the marketing and technical knowhow to pull it off, too.

I dunno... some folks only find Social Darwinism fun when they're on top.

I dont see a true player economy working without permanent loss. Eve does it fine, granted the insurance system helps. Thats another thing though, if they do it that way the developers will have to keep up with the economy in terms of insurance payout so as to not break it ( for good or bad )as we see in Eve.

Sorry guys but I've been out all day and by permanent item loss I mean upon death. I have no problem at all with the durability bound items of SWG for example that gradually became broken and had to be replaced. It's up to a developer to balance the risk vs reward in those situations and I've not seen someone handle it well so far. I also haven't ranted or compared wow to a sandbox game. I've played both sides of the fence on this one and for me I prefer the pick up and play aspect of average mmo's to the time investment and high risk factor offered by the indie sandboxes. To call either antiquated is silly at best and ignorant at worst. It is all about how they are conceptualized and then realized in-game. It's neither in fact as I don't feel a sandbox MMO has be implemented effectively yet.

Sorry guys but I've been out all day and by permanent item loss I mean upon death. I have no problem at all with the durability bound items of SWG for example that gradually became broken and had to be replaced. It's up to a developer to balance the risk vs reward in those situations and I've not seen someone handle it well so far. I also haven't ranted or compared wow to a sandbox game. I've played both sides of the fence on this one and for me I prefer the pick up and play aspect of average mmo's to the time investment and high risk factor offered by the indie sandboxes. To call either antiquated is silly at best and ignorant at worst. It is all about how they are conceptualized and then realized in-game. It's neither in fact as I don't feel a sandbox MMO has be implemented effectively yet. Wouldnt Eve be considered a sandbox MMO?

Yes it would but I'm not personally a fan.

Ok, but its still a successful sandbox MMO. If they could transfer that level of player economy to JumpGate I would be more then happy to jump on board. I was never a fan of WoW ( quit after maybe 3 weeks ) but it was really friendly to casual players. After playing Eve off and on for nearly two years I could not give it the time it seemed to require. I refuse to pay a monthly fee ( or fees with regard to people with 5 alts ) jsut to have another job.