We've also yet to identify the "addictive quality" of WoW. Various people have claimed various things but we have no definite, clear, and distinct "addictive quality".
Probably because there isn't one.
Everytime I mention something people tell me that Im wrong. If its not the obligation or duty fealt to help others out after they helped you out (whether its 4 other people or 24 or 39, whatever), then how about the daily urges to continue arena battles so you dont fall behind the other teams or in the case of the pvp system so you dont actually lose points for not killing other players and potentially losing rank and the ability to use gear you earned and picked. With a raiding guild it gets more complex because some guilds have attendence tracking systems for who gets what item in what order or the fact that if you dont log in the guild wont be able to raid at all, making you feel guilty or bad. It could be the achievements system.
Any way you look at your investment of your character is a visible means of displaying your prize and the validation of knowing your achievements are worn on your shoulders like a lowered sports car wears its modifications. That competitive feature is enough to make some people never quit.
Single player addictions aside, I think most end-game WOW players end up in familiar territory. I will just leave it at that with my 2 cents since everyone will disagree with me.
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kaleeditySometimes science is more art than scienceRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
mmm deterioration (for james)
_J_, I'd argue that WoW was unique in its timing and craftsmanship since its release, and thus was able to generate and hold onto more subscriptions. It doesn't do anything truly unique, but it pulls together an aggregate of eclectic qualities that hasn't really been matched yet by games of its genre.
Any aspect of WOW that can be found addictive by oneself is applicable to any game.
Exactly. There is nothing inherently addictive about WoW which is unique to WoW and not found in any other game.
Well I was speaking of single player amusement. Any argument to any game about single player addiction is universal and has no bearings on mass addiction any more than video games themself have mass addiction.
Joshua Smyth recruited 100 college students to play one of four randomly-assigned video games free for a month. They played the games on their own time, in a campus "game laboratory" (or in an arcade for the arcade group). The only requirement was that they play the game for at least an hour a week. The arcade group could play any of the games in the arcade; one group played Gauntlet: Dark Legacy on a PlayStation 2; one group played Diablo II on a computer, and the final group played the MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot.
The MMORPG group differed significantly from other groups after 1 month, reporting more hours spent playing, worse health, worse sleep quality, and greater interference in “real-life” socializing and academic work. In contrast, this group also reported greater enjoyment in playing, greater interest in continuing to play, and greater acquisition of new friendships.
The thread I just linked has some rather interesting arguments.
Say, by El Jeffe, first post.
Mod Diablo 2 so that you level at a MMO pace and see if it's just as fun.
It is the nature of the beast that MMOs are designed to be time-consuming long-term commitments, because they earn more the longer you play.
_J_, I'd argue that WoW was unique in its timing and craftsmanship since its release, and thus was able to generate and hold onto more subscriptions. It doesn't do anything truly unique, but it pulls together an aggregate of eclectic qualities that hasn't really been matched yet by games of its genre.
Yes. It has lots of players, lots of community, constant pvp battlegrounds in 24/7 availability, is being constantly updated with new content with a developer who is in constant communication with what they are going to be introducing.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
We've also yet to identify the "addictive quality" of WoW. Various people have claimed various things but we have no definite, clear, and distinct "addictive quality".
Probably because there isn't one.
People have pointed out repeatedly how MMOs replicate the effects of operant conditioning (with variable reinforcement to boot). Unless you want to split semantic hairs over the difference between "addictive" and "designed specifically to generate compulsive behavior", there's no issue here.
I don't think that's unique to WoW, it's just an example par excellence of the type. The social or MMO aspect probably adds to that, if nothing else because your pokeymans aren't going to bitch you out over IM for not showing up for the big raid.
I would say rewards are good and all, but a reward that shows how much of a badass you are to other people looking to get the same rewards is much stronger, more compelling reward. Especially one you can use to kill them with.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I would say rewards are good and all, but a reward that shows how much of a badass you are to other people looking to get the same rewards is much stronger, more compelling reward. Especially one you can use to kill them with.
As far as I can comprehend what you've written it doesn't appear to have any bearing on anything I said at all. Back up and do some reading on conditioning and behavior-modification.
I've fought off the shackles of MMO addiction, a few times now.
I've also lost a few friends to WoW, one has become so absorbed she doesn't talk to anyone and deleted all her online group thingies like myspace and facebook. Noone's been able to get ahold of her, hell we don't even know if she's alive anymore.
In an interesting side note, a girl I went to school with starting gaming, unfortunately her first game was Diablo 2 and she didn't leave her house for 2 months until her friends had to literally pull her away from the computer and take her out on one of their weekend outings. So don't start gaming with online RPGs kids! In fact I got addicted to D2, was my first online game but I went outside at least.
I never understood D2 addiction. I'm not judging here, I'm just saying that when I beat D2, I was done with it.
It was a narrative game to me. I probably played a little more afterward, running instances with friends, but after that...
Yeah looking back it's a fun pick up and play game but grinding the same thing hour after hour got way boring way too fast, I guess it's the "fat loots!" aspect + some of the stuff is hard as hell to get.
I would say rewards are good and all, but a reward that shows how much of a badass you are to other people looking to get the same rewards is much stronger, more compelling reward. Especially one you can use to kill them with.
As far as I can comprehend what you've written it doesn't appear to have any bearing on anything I said at all. Back up and do some reading on conditioning and behavior-modification.
That is why I didnt quote you. I was reinforcing your point with social overtones. If we wanna talk about psychology then I think Premack's principle fits WOW pretty damn well.
Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I fail to see why I shouldn't be extremely suspicious of the programmers of something that survives on monthly fees.
Has anyone mentioned Kingdom of Loathing yet? Because there's an MMO that is decidedly nonaddictive despite being freakin' awesome, because it purposely limits how much you can play a day to a practical level of (at most) an hour. They can afford to do that because its free.
I've fought off the shackles of MMO addiction, a few times now.
I've also lost a few friends to WoW, one has become so absorbed she doesn't talk to anyone and deleted all her online group thingies like myspace and facebook. Noone's been able to get ahold of her, hell we don't even know if she's alive anymore.
In an interesting side note, a girl I went to school with starting gaming, unfortunately her first game was Diablo 2 and she didn't leave her house for 2 months until her friends had to literally pull her away from the computer and take her out on one of their weekend outings. So don't start gaming with online RPGs kids! In fact I got addicted to D2, was my first online game but I went outside at least.
This rings true to me. When I played MMOs I'd always cringe when someone was bragging about introducing their girlfriend/brother/significant other to the game.
I was thinking about how dissapointed they'd be when their dreams of playing together went up in smoke as their friend became addicted and leveled past them, then joined a new guild that required them to attend raids every night so they stopped hanging out.
They say no MMO experience comes close to your first, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. When people who don't play many games, or have never tried an MMO before start they're in awe of how large the world is, and how it seems like there are so many things to do. Meeting people from around the world and teaming up to fight monsters sounds awesome to a person who has never ground out levels for hours and hours to equip their next piece of gear.
Inexperienced players seem to get drawn in in by the scale of it all and the social interaction, then get wrapped up in the level treadmill and loot whoring that runs rampant at mid to high levels. At least that's what I've noticed in my experience.
Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I fail to see why I shouldn't be extremely suspicious of the programmers of something that survives on monthly fees.
It would be in their best interest to extended such fees by making the content more conducive to frequent, short gaming sessions.
For instance, if the average player experiences 400 hours worth of content, then it makes more sense to create a game that promotes 800 30-minute sessions than 100 4-hour sessions.
The same amount of server and support resources are being used but you've extended the monthly fees a lot longer. I think we're seeing more of this with rest xp and daily quests and cooldowns and such; such mechanisms reduce the real problematic addictive behaviors by making it less rewarding to sit at the computer for long periods of time.
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every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Rest XP is a pretty halfassed way of encouraging people to play less though. Most people I knew that actually cared about rest XP simply played an alt when they ran out of rest XP. Same with daily quests.
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Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I fail to see why I shouldn't be extremely suspicious of the programmers of something that survives on monthly fees.
It would be in their best interest to extended such fees by making the content more conducive to frequent, short gaming sessions.
For instance, if the average player experiences 400 hours worth of content, then it makes more sense to create a game that promotes 800 30-minute sessions than 100 4-hour sessions.
The same amount of server and support resources are being used but you've extended the monthly fees a lot longer. I think we're seeing more of this with rest xp and daily quests and cooldowns and such; such mechanisms reduce the real problematic addictive behaviors by making it less rewarding to sit at the computer for long periods of time.
Yeah, I found that I don't really benefit from sitting on WoW for more than maybe two hours at a time max, and it certainly doesn't do anything for me that beats going out drinking with friends. Honestly if we're going to go the pure "evil capitalist" route, your programmers should be designing their monthly-fee game to make sessions of play as short and infrequent as possible, maybe shut off XP gains entirely after fifteen minutes worth of progression and make you rest a week before you can gain XP again. It's an access-based fee, not a usage-based fee. If WoW charged by the hour Cat's argument would make some sort of sense.
Rest XP is a pretty halfassed way of encouraging people to play less though. Most people I knew that actually cared about rest XP simply played an alt when they ran out of rest XP. Same with daily quests.
worked for me. my previous MMO experience though was EQ - where leveling was usually about as fun as digging a fucking ditch, except way slower.
Rest XP is a pretty halfassed way of encouraging people to play less though. Most people I knew that actually cared about rest XP simply played an alt when they ran out of rest XP. Same with daily quests.
worked for me. my previous MMO experience though was EQ - where leveling was usually about as fun as digging a fucking ditch, except way slower.
Yep, and if you couldn't be online for at least four hours there was no goddamn point to logging on at all
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Yeah, MMOs are kind of designed to be open ended. I mean, look at WoW. It started off as a 1-60 game, and then they came out and said plainly that they never intended for 60 to be the end-game.
Rest XP is a pretty halfassed way of encouraging people to play less though. Most people I knew that actually cared about rest XP simply played an alt when they ran out of rest XP. Same with daily quests.
Rest XP is useful for helping casual players keep from falling -too- far behind. I use it for Alts, as well. I have my main character I play on average an hour or two a day, and I have my alt, which I play once every ten days, until I use up my rest XP. It's an alt, just so I can have a character on both sides of the fence.
Also, apparently there's already talks about a third expansion circa late '10 or so. Lot of discussion about what it will be. Of course, this isn't a WoW chat thread, it's a WoW bitch thread, so, yeah.
Rest XP is a pretty halfassed way of encouraging people to play less though. Most people I knew that actually cared about rest XP simply played an alt when they ran out of rest XP. Same with daily quests.
worked for me. my previous MMO experience though was EQ - where leveling was usually about as fun as digging a fucking ditch, except way slower.
Yep, and if you couldn't be online for at least four hours there was no goddamn point to logging on at all
and then youd get some shit luck, die a couple times and youd need to add on 6 hours to make up the lost experience.
I believe WoW was also the first MMO to have absolutely no XP related punishment for dying, either.
SWG didn't have one. It had an open corpse when you die kinda of thing but then the corpses kept bugging so they removed that within a week of release.
I believe WoW was also the first MMO to have absolutely no XP related punishment for dying, either.
SWG didn't have one. It had an open corpse when you die kinda of thing but then the corpses kept bugging so they removed that within a week of release.
Ah, see....I never really played MMOs before WoW. I made characters for Dark Age and City of Heroes on friends' accounts, but that was just to understand what the heck an MMO is.
Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I fail to see why I shouldn't be extremely suspicious of the programmers of something that survives on monthly fees.
It would be in their best interest to extended such fees by making the content more conducive to frequent, short gaming sessions.
For instance, if the average player experiences 400 hours worth of content, then it makes more sense to create a game that promotes 800 30-minute sessions than 100 4-hour sessions.
The same amount of server and support resources are being used but you've extended the monthly fees a lot longer. I think we're seeing more of this with rest xp and daily quests and cooldowns and such; such mechanisms reduce the real problematic addictive behaviors by making it less rewarding to sit at the computer for long periods of time.
Yeah, I found that I don't really benefit from sitting on WoW for more than maybe two hours at a time max, and it certainly doesn't do anything for me that beats going out drinking with friends. Honestly if we're going to go the pure "evil capitalist" route, your programmers should be designing their monthly-fee game to make sessions of play as short and infrequent as possible, maybe shut off XP gains entirely after fifteen minutes worth of progression and make you rest a week before you can gain XP again. It's an access-based fee, not a usage-based fee. If WoW charged by the hour Cat's argument would make some sort of sense.
Except that a) there's a point where you cut meth so far that people won't buy it - consumers would probably catch on at a certain point if they did the things you're talking about and b) hypothetically not everyone at Blizzard is equally satanic and C) it's easy to just let people have tons of characters and give them tons of shit that takes forever to do, so there's no direct dichotomy - they can create an addicting experience without adulturating quality and D) they maintain their edge over the competition by providing superior access and uptime.
Your argument bears a striking resemblance to "I don't understand alchoholics - I can have one or two drinks and it's no problem."
I believe WoW was also the first MMO to have absolutely no XP related punishment for dying, either.
Thank the gods for that, I quit EQ2 purely because of the retarded dying mechanic. That game can rot.
The dying mechanic in WoW solves two problems in one since you reduce the gold inflation as well.
WoW does a lot of things in new original ways, which I think is a huge part of their success. The rest system is a nice little way of making casuals feel a little less attached to the game when they log off.
MMOs may have an incentive to encourage short and sparse play sessions (prolonging game content over multiple months, and reducing server load) but they also have an incentive to make sure players are invested. Because they don't want them to decide they'd rather spend that two hours a week doing something else, and/or that $15 a month really isn't worth it for as little as they play.
Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I fail to see why I shouldn't be extremely suspicious of the programmers of something that survives on monthly fees.
It would be in their best interest to extended such fees by making the content more conducive to frequent, short gaming sessions.
For instance, if the average player experiences 400 hours worth of content, then it makes more sense to create a game that promotes 800 30-minute sessions than 100 4-hour sessions.
The same amount of server and support resources are being used but you've extended the monthly fees a lot longer. I think we're seeing more of this with rest xp and daily quests and cooldowns and such; such mechanisms reduce the real problematic addictive behaviors by making it less rewarding to sit at the computer for long periods of time.
Yeah, I found that I don't really benefit from sitting on WoW for more than maybe two hours at a time max, and it certainly doesn't do anything for me that beats going out drinking with friends. Honestly if we're going to go the pure "evil capitalist" route, your programmers should be designing their monthly-fee game to make sessions of play as short and infrequent as possible, maybe shut off XP gains entirely after fifteen minutes worth of progression and make you rest a week before you can gain XP again. It's an access-based fee, not a usage-based fee. If WoW charged by the hour Cat's argument would make some sort of sense.
Except that a) there's a point where you cut meth so far that people won't buy it - consumers would probably catch on at a certain point if they did the things you're talking about and b) hypothetically not everyone at Blizzard is equally satanic and C) it's easy to just let people have tons of characters and give them tons of shit that takes forever to do, so there's no direct dichotomy - they can create an addicting experience without adulturating quality and D) they maintain their edge over the competition by providing superior access and uptime.
Your argument bears a striking resemblance to "I don't understand people who claim that alcohol manufacturers deliberately encourage alchoholism - there are distinctly diminishing returns on both ends."
Fixed.
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JohnnyCacheStarting DefensePlace at the tableRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
Dude, whatever. You don't think alcohol manufacturers or bar owners are aware that addictiveness plays a part in their business model?
Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I fail to see why I shouldn't be extremely suspicious of the programmers of something that survives on monthly fees.
It would be in their best interest to extended such fees by making the content more conducive to frequent, short gaming sessions.
For instance, if the average player experiences 400 hours worth of content, then it makes more sense to create a game that promotes 800 30-minute sessions than 100 4-hour sessions.
The same amount of server and support resources are being used but you've extended the monthly fees a lot longer. I think we're seeing more of this with rest xp and daily quests and cooldowns and such; such mechanisms reduce the real problematic addictive behaviors by making it less rewarding to sit at the computer for long periods of time.
We also have shorter instances now, too. It was touched on in TBC, and it was something they reiterated on in WotLK.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
Here's what you should do:
1) Log on to his account
2) Put everything in his inventory and all his equipment on the AH for one gold "buy-it-now"
3) Profit
I believe WoW was also the first MMO to have absolutely no XP related punishment for dying, either.
Thank the gods for that, I quit EQ2 purely because of the retarded dying mechanic. That game can rot.
The dying mechanic in WoW solves two problems in one since you reduce the gold inflation as well.
WoW does a lot of things in new original ways, which I think is a huge part of their success. The rest system is a nice little way of making casuals feel a little less attached to the game when they log off.
The problem with WoWs economy is that, when you complete a quest, if you are at max level, it converts the quest's XP into money, and it's a set exchange rate, so doing the daily quests that you have to do to gain the reputation to get into end game content ends up giving you tons of gold. That's why, on the AH, silver ore is now more expensive than gold.
Dude, whatever. You don't think alcohol manufacturers or bar owners are aware that addictiveness plays a part in their business model?
I don't think it plays a part in their business model, no. I think some of the money that they get they get because people are addicted, but given that there's more than one bar if you build your business model on the addictiveness of alcohol you can't compete. Unless you're, like, adding cocaine to people's drinks, or something.
The problem with WoWs economy is that, when you complete a quest, if you are at max level, it converts the quest's XP into money, and it's a set exchange rate, so doing the daily quests that you have to do to gain the reputation to get into end game content ends up giving you tons of gold. That's why, on the AH, silver ore is now more expensive than gold.
Well, silver is used in arguably more recipes than gold, though little known fact; gold ore is more valuable than gold bars because it isn't hard to convert it and it is very effective at powerleveling mining.
Not sure how all of that relates with the inflation though, that's just supply and demand in a free market.
The problem with WoWs economy is that, when you complete a quest, if you are at max level, it converts the quest's XP into money, and it's a set exchange rate, so doing the daily quests that you have to do to gain the reputation to get into end game content ends up giving you tons of gold. That's why, on the AH, silver ore is now more expensive than gold.
Well, silver is used in arguably more recipes than gold, though little known fact; gold ore is more valuable than gold bars because it isn't hard to convert it and it is very effective at powerleveling mining.
Not sure how all of that relates with the inflation though, that's just supply and demand in a free market.
Yes, but when you're paying upwards of 80g for a full repair (plate, neutral faction) it evens out.
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See, I defend the game, and I still think this is untrue.
Everytime I mention something people tell me that Im wrong. If its not the obligation or duty fealt to help others out after they helped you out (whether its 4 other people or 24 or 39, whatever), then how about the daily urges to continue arena battles so you dont fall behind the other teams or in the case of the pvp system so you dont actually lose points for not killing other players and potentially losing rank and the ability to use gear you earned and picked. With a raiding guild it gets more complex because some guilds have attendence tracking systems for who gets what item in what order or the fact that if you dont log in the guild wont be able to raid at all, making you feel guilty or bad. It could be the achievements system.
Any way you look at your investment of your character is a visible means of displaying your prize and the validation of knowing your achievements are worn on your shoulders like a lowered sports car wears its modifications. That competitive feature is enough to make some people never quit.
Single player addictions aside, I think most end-game WOW players end up in familiar territory. I will just leave it at that with my 2 cents since everyone will disagree with me.
_J_, I'd argue that WoW was unique in its timing and craftsmanship since its release, and thus was able to generate and hold onto more subscriptions. It doesn't do anything truly unique, but it pulls together an aggregate of eclectic qualities that hasn't really been matched yet by games of its genre.
Well I was speaking of single player amusement. Any argument to any game about single player addiction is universal and has no bearings on mass addiction any more than video games themself have mass addiction.
Stop saying incorrect things.
Here we go.
Direct quotes shamelessly stolen from the OP.
The thread I just linked has some rather interesting arguments.
Say, by El Jeffe, first post.
Mod Diablo 2 so that you level at a MMO pace and see if it's just as fun.
It is the nature of the beast that MMOs are designed to be time-consuming long-term commitments, because they earn more the longer you play.
Yes. It has lots of players, lots of community, constant pvp battlegrounds in 24/7 availability, is being constantly updated with new content with a developer who is in constant communication with what they are going to be introducing.
People have pointed out repeatedly how MMOs replicate the effects of operant conditioning (with variable reinforcement to boot). Unless you want to split semantic hairs over the difference between "addictive" and "designed specifically to generate compulsive behavior", there's no issue here.
I don't think that's unique to WoW, it's just an example par excellence of the type. The social or MMO aspect probably adds to that, if nothing else because your pokeymans aren't going to bitch you out over IM for not showing up for the big raid.
Drez was very clearly attacking me. I dont think Ive really said anything incorrect. I just dont think people like my English.
As far as I can comprehend what you've written it doesn't appear to have any bearing on anything I said at all. Back up and do some reading on conditioning and behavior-modification.
I've also lost a few friends to WoW, one has become so absorbed she doesn't talk to anyone and deleted all her online group thingies like myspace and facebook. Noone's been able to get ahold of her, hell we don't even know if she's alive anymore.
In an interesting side note, a girl I went to school with starting gaming, unfortunately her first game was Diablo 2 and she didn't leave her house for 2 months until her friends had to literally pull her away from the computer and take her out on one of their weekend outings. So don't start gaming with online RPGs kids! In fact I got addicted to D2, was my first online game but I went outside at least.
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It was a narrative game to me. I probably played a little more afterward, running instances with friends, but after that...
Yeah looking back it's a fun pick up and play game but grinding the same thing hour after hour got way boring way too fast, I guess it's the "fat loots!" aspect + some of the stuff is hard as hell to get.
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That is why I didnt quote you. I was reinforcing your point with social overtones. If we wanna talk about psychology then I think Premack's principle fits WOW pretty damn well.
Has anyone mentioned Kingdom of Loathing yet? Because there's an MMO that is decidedly nonaddictive despite being freakin' awesome, because it purposely limits how much you can play a day to a practical level of (at most) an hour. They can afford to do that because its free.
This rings true to me. When I played MMOs I'd always cringe when someone was bragging about introducing their girlfriend/brother/significant other to the game.
I was thinking about how dissapointed they'd be when their dreams of playing together went up in smoke as their friend became addicted and leveled past them, then joined a new guild that required them to attend raids every night so they stopped hanging out.
They say no MMO experience comes close to your first, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. When people who don't play many games, or have never tried an MMO before start they're in awe of how large the world is, and how it seems like there are so many things to do. Meeting people from around the world and teaming up to fight monsters sounds awesome to a person who has never ground out levels for hours and hours to equip their next piece of gear.
Inexperienced players seem to get drawn in in by the scale of it all and the social interaction, then get wrapped up in the level treadmill and loot whoring that runs rampant at mid to high levels. At least that's what I've noticed in my experience.
It would be in their best interest to extended such fees by making the content more conducive to frequent, short gaming sessions.
For instance, if the average player experiences 400 hours worth of content, then it makes more sense to create a game that promotes 800 30-minute sessions than 100 4-hour sessions.
The same amount of server and support resources are being used but you've extended the monthly fees a lot longer. I think we're seeing more of this with rest xp and daily quests and cooldowns and such; such mechanisms reduce the real problematic addictive behaviors by making it less rewarding to sit at the computer for long periods of time.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yeah, I found that I don't really benefit from sitting on WoW for more than maybe two hours at a time max, and it certainly doesn't do anything for me that beats going out drinking with friends. Honestly if we're going to go the pure "evil capitalist" route, your programmers should be designing their monthly-fee game to make sessions of play as short and infrequent as possible, maybe shut off XP gains entirely after fifteen minutes worth of progression and make you rest a week before you can gain XP again. It's an access-based fee, not a usage-based fee. If WoW charged by the hour Cat's argument would make some sort of sense.
worked for me. my previous MMO experience though was EQ - where leveling was usually about as fun as digging a fucking ditch, except way slower.
Yep, and if you couldn't be online for at least four hours there was no goddamn point to logging on at all
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Rest XP is useful for helping casual players keep from falling -too- far behind. I use it for Alts, as well. I have my main character I play on average an hour or two a day, and I have my alt, which I play once every ten days, until I use up my rest XP. It's an alt, just so I can have a character on both sides of the fence.
Also, apparently there's already talks about a third expansion circa late '10 or so. Lot of discussion about what it will be. Of course, this isn't a WoW chat thread, it's a WoW bitch thread, so, yeah.
I believe WoW was also the first MMO to have absolutely no XP related punishment for dying, either.
and then youd get some shit luck, die a couple times and youd need to add on 6 hours to make up the lost experience.
just thinking about it makes me furious.
SWG didn't have one. It had an open corpse when you die kinda of thing but then the corpses kept bugging so they removed that within a week of release.
Ah, see....I never really played MMOs before WoW. I made characters for Dark Age and City of Heroes on friends' accounts, but that was just to understand what the heck an MMO is.
Except that a) there's a point where you cut meth so far that people won't buy it - consumers would probably catch on at a certain point if they did the things you're talking about and b) hypothetically not everyone at Blizzard is equally satanic and C) it's easy to just let people have tons of characters and give them tons of shit that takes forever to do, so there's no direct dichotomy - they can create an addicting experience without adulturating quality and D) they maintain their edge over the competition by providing superior access and uptime.
Your argument bears a striking resemblance to "I don't understand alchoholics - I can have one or two drinks and it's no problem."
I host a podcast about movies.
Thank the gods for that, I quit EQ2 purely because of the retarded dying mechanic. That game can rot.
The dying mechanic in WoW solves two problems in one since you reduce the gold inflation as well.
WoW does a lot of things in new original ways, which I think is a huge part of their success. The rest system is a nice little way of making casuals feel a little less attached to the game when they log off.
Fixed.
I host a podcast about movies.
We also have shorter instances now, too. It was touched on in TBC, and it was something they reiterated on in WotLK.
1) Log on to his account
2) Put everything in his inventory and all his equipment on the AH for one gold "buy-it-now"
3) Profit
no wait, that other thing
bankruptcy
The problem with WoWs economy is that, when you complete a quest, if you are at max level, it converts the quest's XP into money, and it's a set exchange rate, so doing the daily quests that you have to do to gain the reputation to get into end game content ends up giving you tons of gold. That's why, on the AH, silver ore is now more expensive than gold.
I don't think it plays a part in their business model, no. I think some of the money that they get they get because people are addicted, but given that there's more than one bar if you build your business model on the addictiveness of alcohol you can't compete. Unless you're, like, adding cocaine to people's drinks, or something.
Well, silver is used in arguably more recipes than gold, though little known fact; gold ore is more valuable than gold bars because it isn't hard to convert it and it is very effective at powerleveling mining.
Not sure how all of that relates with the inflation though, that's just supply and demand in a free market.
Yes, but when you're paying upwards of 80g for a full repair (plate, neutral faction) it evens out.
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