Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I know i heard steven say something to imply he's not so sure about some addons being allowed because it can make some players feel bad...that wasnt his words i para phrased . But all i could think of is "oh guess they dont want dps meters"...
2, wow HAD a loyal playerbase, but it was in the past, and they left expansions ago...
Ofc addons aren't the only one reason, but with it basic gargbage interface, it would be much less popular...
(And note here that there are even features that used to be addons in the past, but they was so popular that blizz added them by default.)
So yes, addons helped wow becoming what they are, even if you are dumb to see it, the facts not goign to change...
Yes, there are other games that run on a toaster but they did not have the fortunate run that WOW had....it came out when people were craving a good MMO, Blizz already had a loyal fanbase and it stuck. Pure and simple.
Your logic is as follows. People do not buy a Ford for the car, they buy it for the seat covers you can get for them. The fiesta is the most popular selling car in the world....I am certain that the people who make the cars thank their lucky stars for the people who make seat covers for them....had it not been for those seat covers, that change the appearance of the inside of the car, fiestas would of bombed years ago.
I can tell that you want addons...so much that your apparent..."OMG addons saved WOW" argument is literally all that you have.
Make a well thought out game and addons are moot.
The vast majority of WoW players had never played an MMO before WoW released.
There were many MMOs before WoW. Star Wars Galaxies (RIP, what did they do to you?!) was my MMO of choice when WoW was released. I also played original EQ, Dark Age of Camelot, many others I can't even remember anymore. MMOs weren't new when WoW was released, actually the first 3D graphical MMO was Meridian 59 which came out in 1995 (and still ran until 2010!) which was almost a decade before WoW.
But Noaani's point is valid. A lot of people who went to WoW were loyal to the Warcraft franchise (Warcraft III was hugely successful and came out 2 years earlier). And as it became popular it attracted a lot of people new to MMOs. Many younger online gamers think of WoW as the first MMO because to many people it was the first MMO for them.
As to Mobrechael's point... True. People were craving a good MMO. Because people are always craving a good MMO. They still are.
Well at the start wow didn't had that many players though, it took 2more expansions to reach 12m+ concurent sucribers.
Althrough afterwards they rapidly lost the wast majority of palayers thanks to the **** and casual friendly deseign afterwards...
Also the addons helped much. wow had terrible UI at the start (which improved but still terrible). Addons was simply a mus to have, and appart from few players most use a great amount of addons even today...
Pre-WoW, the total MMO population was less than 4 million.
So yeah, the vast majority of WoW players had never played an MMO before WoW launched.
Even though it obviously has a persistent world, with the way the dungeon finder works, the game functions more as a MOBA, with both PvP and PvE options, and an over the shoulder camera perspective.
The game itself is more of a lobby to the dungeon finder.
It's true players have made some great add-ons. It's also true it would be better for the developers to focus more on quality of life improvements. Allowing add-ons allows for lazy devs. And in most games you end up with ones that solve too many problems for the players.
It has a persistent world - the defining characteristic of an MMO in my mind. Thing is, unlike any other MMO, that persistent world can be largely ignored and treated as nothing more than a lobby/waiting room.
This makes the game function - as I said - more as a MOBA than an MMO, even if it technically is an MMO.
MOBAS are - in fact - MMO-s too, so you aren't really know the meaning of MMO it seems.
Also it won't be any different in aoc either. In wow there are 40 vs 40 bg and 120 vs 120 outdor PvP bg. It won't be any bigger here either, so by logic aoc wouldn't be mmo either...
lol most combat would not be even close to the 40v40 as most player's pc could not even handle it...
What this means is that if you want to form a group or a raid, whether for PvP or PvE, you have to actually find people to go with you, locate them in the world, invite them to your group and then physically move to the part of the in game world that the content you want to do is actually located.
In WoW, you open a window, pick a dungeon and wait.
You are the first person I've ever come across to try and call an MOBA an MMO. I'd like to hear what definition of "MMO" you are using to come to that conclusion.
MOBA = Multiplayer Online Battle Arena
Conclusion is that MOBA is not a MMO. Both are multiplayer games, but the difference comes with word Massively. In MMOs massive amount of players are playing at the same time, in the same large world. In MOBA just few are playing in the same arena at the same time. It is very easy to draw the line there.
In wow the reason behind the dungeonfinder aren't the lack of ingame chat, or place to find palyers... in fact you can - and some do - get the groups by yourself and walk to the dungeon entrance and go in.
However the fact is that it's a very slow an booring process and the players doesn't like it. You can ignore this fact, but you can't change it.
At the begining it will maybe work, but after years, ppls going to get bored of countinous half - one hour chat spamm just to find the missing player for a 15min dungeon....
Well you will going to see, especialy after the inital hype vanishes and the playerbase starts to drop...
And?
In lol millions of players plays (online) at the same time. More players, than all MMORPG combined. If you call them MMO, it's the bare minimum that you call lol too...
You only play with the words. In fact every battle in lol happens in the same world, the world of Runeterra, so?
Not to mention that you said world in the mmos, but zone in lol, however - in fact - even in MMORPG-s, there are onyl few players are in a single zone, so what?
MOBA-s treated as MMO's by market analyst companies, so they are. The massive in MMO means the size of playerbase, regardless whether they play together in the same area/zone/world or not.
Massive in MMO does not mean size of the playerbase and that is where you go wrong direction with your argument. It especially means number of players you are playing at the same time, where you have a possibility to be at straight contact with thousands (or even tens of thousands) of players. In MOBA you are playing with about ten players at the same time.
Right.. I guess you have not played WoW's end-game raid content and how you would need specific addons or you would not have a chance to compete. I was a hardcore player back then (not anymore) and used the same mandatory addons like others. I hated it how we needed to rely something outside of the game (and constant update) and how much those gave benefit over newcomers or casuals for example and how dps meters did everybody dicks. And yes there was guild rules for specific addons you needed to RBGs' and raids or you could not attempt.