The Shrine

http://www.massively.com/2009/02/03/bre ... mber-31-2/

"Breaking 300k?" I think this story forgot about how they were up to 700k at one point.

Retention in MMORPG seems to be a pretty hard thing.

What's weird is almost any new game has to come from WoW's subscription base so it obviously doesn't take much to take a million out of WoW's playerbase so it's really not like everyone can't find anything better than WoW. It's just all the replacements somehow turned out to be much wores than WoW even though what made WoW isn't very hard to duplicate (just make it really really casual friendly).

Don you have a point, which is why I then claim that WoW's continued success has very little to do with the game itself and mostly to do with the user base. They managed to catch and hold a large population of gamers who normally would not have been interested in playing an MMO, but now that they're hooked they lack the interest of hardcore MMO players to try out new games; they're perfectly happy leveling up their 3rd character to 70. So this means that when a portion of the hardcore player base goes off to a new game like Warhammer, most eventually get pulled back to WoW due to all the friends they left behind who are still having fun without them. There's also the advantage WoW has on new games because it's been out so long... anyone who's played an MMO knows that if it lasts at least a year the game has dramatically improved in the year as well. I guess you could say the game itself levels up over time too and gains experience making it harder to be defeated by a new game.

On a separate note I wonder how LOTRO is doing... still love the game, just haven't had time or wanted to bother playing it lately, probably cause Shellie stopped playing too

WoW will probably be around for a long time, which sort of makes me sad. I don't feel like it's a very good game, on the whole.

Warcraft 3, which spawned it, however, is a PHENOMENAL game, and at this point there are semi-MMO mods for it which are probably as much fun as WoW and a lot cheaper.

It's a pity you despise me so these days, Tess...I'm loads better than I used to be. Which means I could probably smash you 1v1...or, we could AT again (I seem to remember we used to be up at 65% or so with that).

If you ever feel like rejoining the WC3 playerbase, I know a great clan on US West...

Pfft, clans are overrated, smashing your buddy 1vs1 however? That's always fun.

Manshoon and I used to have some epic epic battles in WC3.

actually, my clan has been coming up lately. we're 27th in solo games, 34th in 2v2 now on US West...

Eric wrote:Pfft, clans are overrated, smashing your buddy 1vs1 however? That's always fun.

Manshoon and I used to have some epic epic battles in WC3.

I just had a 1v1 where I ran the guy out of money with my towered base...the final battle was his lv.9 Tauren Chieftan, a few raiders and headhunters, and MANY peons against about a dozen ancients and my three heroes, one of which was a level 6 Keeper of the Grove. all i'll say is this - level 3 treant summoning plus Nature's Blessing (which increases treant armor from 2 to 5 and makes them WAY harder to kill) is so underrated it's incredible. a level 5 keeper with level 3 treant summon can send eight treants after the enemy base or army something like every thirty seconds and they're almost completely expendable.

Lvl 9? Geez, I'd never let the games stretch that long like at first it'd be lawl I have an 80 army and so do you, let's fight! But as time went on I found hit and runs, creep jacking, and just wearing down the opponent was far more effective. Most games my opponent's hero would never make it to level 5.

I actually have been playing more and more defensive strats, where I make sure first my base and then an expo can repel an attack, then focus on their weak points after that and wear them down/run them out of money.

Nature's Blessing is the shit - people walk in expecting a weak Elf base, then don't account for the three extra armor points and get destroyed. Once they get repelled once, usually my expo is up and secure too and it's just a matter of waiting it out.

Creepjacking is indeed a pro strat though...destroys new players.

Replay wrote:I actually have been playing more and more defensive strats, where I make sure first my base and then an expo can repel an attack, then focus on their weak points after that and wear them down/run them out of money.

Nature's Blessing is the shit - people walk in expecting a weak Elf base, then don't account for the three extra armor points and get destroyed. Once they get repelled once, usually my expo is up and secure too and it's just a matter of waiting it out.

Creepjacking is indeed a pro strat though...destroys new players.

Problem with early expo is if you fail to get it up, you fall way behind econmey/techwise.

if you try to expo and fail, you usually lose.

therefore, when i expo, i try not to fail

Replay wrote:if you try to expo and fail, you usually lose.

therefore, when i expo, i try not to fail

You play dirty filthy human don't you.

I don't think WoW has any ability to keep people from packing up because uberness in WoW is totally transient. If they deleted your character, assuming you still have your network of friends you'd be back to where you were in maybe a month, so it's not like it's a big commitment to leave the game forever.

I think most of the new MMORPGs just have some fatal flaws. For example WAR should have had some kind of cross server battleground/scenarios because they should have realized that a single server cannot possibly have enough people to fill all the instance battlegrounds. I mean they only have to look at WoW to see that if you only allow 2000 or 5000 or whatever the norm is on the server, you're not going to find 10 or 15 people at any random level bracket to do any PvP stuff. But you can't make a server have say, 100K people even if you have that much people, because then it'd be too big.

I see WoW's continued dominance not because it's a good game but that people failed to steal what worked out for WoW. I think the lesson from WoW is that plenty of people will pay $14.99 for an imaginery uber character even if everyone else is totally uber too. The notion that only some people can be uber, which seems to be the early MMORPG, is not a model where you can build great financial success upon. Originally it was said in MMORPG not everyone can win. But people don't like to be told they're losers. You might have a good game but it sure isn't going to make you a lot of money.

Eric wrote:

Replay wrote:if you try to expo and fail, you usually lose.

therefore, when i expo, i try not to fail

You play dirty filthy human don't you.

HELL no. night elf for life, beeyatch.

Don wrote:I don't think WoW has any ability to keep people from packing up because uberness in WoW is totally transient. If they deleted your character, assuming you still have your network of friends you'd be back to where you were in maybe a month, so it's not like it's a big commitment to leave the game forever.

I think most of the new MMORPGs just have some fatal flaws. For example WAR should have had some kind of cross server battleground/scenarios because they should have realized that a single server cannot possibly have enough people to fill all the instance battlegrounds. I mean they only have to look at WoW to see that if you only allow 2000 or 5000 or whatever the norm is on the server, you're not going to find 10 or 15 people at any random level bracket to do any PvP stuff. But you can't make a server have say, 100K people even if you have that much people, because then it'd be too big.

I see WoW's continued dominance not because it's a good game but that people failed to steal what worked out for WoW. I think the lesson from WoW is that plenty of people will pay $14.99 for an imaginery uber character even if everyone else is totally uber too. The notion that only some people can be uber, which seems to be the early MMORPG, is not a model where you can build great financial success upon. Originally it was said in MMORPG not everyone can win. But people don't like to be told they're losers. You might have a good game but it sure isn't going to make you a lot of money.

cosign.

death knights are a perfect example of that. "hey, pay a little more and you can start at level 55!"

Replay wrote: cosign.

death knights are a perfect example of that. "hey, pay a little more and you can start at level 55!"

That doesn't really make sense, everybody who bought the expansion got access to Death Knights.

When Blizzard offered triple XP for RAF (Recruit A Friend), a lot of people paid $20 (box + 1 month) to recruit themselves for the triple XP gain. While internet message boards are by no means an accurate gauge of reality, at least based on boards it looked like more people recruited themselves instead of recruiting others.

Recently Sony came out with Station Cash where you buy these points with cash (ala XBox Arcade) to buy stuff in game. So all the boards talk about how Sony has no integrity and this will kill the game, and tomorrow Sony announced that because too many people were buying this stuff they decided to use the money they were raking in to hire a new programmer to make even more stuff you can buy with cash. Perhaps the most telling was one post saying one of the useless decoration you buy gives you a passive 1000 HP buff, and then in that thread you have like 10 posts like "WTF I bought this and it didn't work!", even though it was stated this is just a pointless decoration up front (the guy obviously made it up).

Death Knight can simply be viewed as say give me $5 and I'll let you start at level 55 instead of 1. It also doesn't hurt they're probably the most powerful class for a while (accident or planned? Who knows?) If you think about it, even for a game with as little commitment as WoW, if Death Knights aren't more *special* why would you ditch your previous totally uber character for a new equally uber character?

I think Smed is right in that microtransaction is going to be the future. You just have to package in a way so that people don't think they're paying for extra XP or extra firepower. The WoW Death Knight is a perfect example.

I still don't understand how you can compare the Death Knight to any of that.

Burning Crusade came with a new Continent, dungeons, raids, loot, and gave both factions access to a new class with it's own starting area which which people abandoned their mains for.

WotLK came out with with a new Continent, dungeons, raids, loot, and gave both factions access to a new class with it's own starting area which people abandoned their mains for.

Nobody paid extra for a Death Knight, it was part of the expansion, and it was available to everyone. The Death Knight class in general is just fun as it doesn't use the archaic mana resource system, and is the love child between Rogue energy/Warrior rage.

4 Classes were overpowered at launch in PvP, Rogue/Paladin/Mage/Death Knight, so no it wasn't the most powerful class.

People who used the recruit a friend to recruit themselves are generally the types that run around with about 8 alts, and have 2-3 of every profession. Leveling for a normal person is fairly trivial as the grind has been nerfed twice since the game came out. 1->68 wouldn't take somebody longer then 2 days, which would get you to the expansion content.

Eric wrote:1->68 wouldn't take somebody longer then 2 days, which would get you to the expansion content.

WoW: So easy to use, no wonder it's #1!

there are too many sweet ass mods for WC3 for me to want to pay $15 a month for WoW.

i did have to admit the idea of having an avatar who could CAST STARFALL was kind of badass though

Eric wrote:Nobody paid extra for a Death Knight, it was part of the expansion, and it was available to everyone. The Death Knight class in general is just fun as it doesn't use the archaic mana resource system, and is the love child between Rogue energy/Warrior rage.

except people who didn't buy the expansion

you can't make a death knight with a trial account...one way or another you have to pay to get access.

props to blizzard, but WoW has WAY too much unimaginative grind for me to want to go in on it when WC3 is a way more challenging experience and still stimulates the shit out of the relevant parts of my mind.

by the way, given that the last ten posts or so have all been either about WoW or *WC3* - warhammer might be done for.

Replay wrote:
except people who didn't buy the expansion

you can't make a death knight with a trial account...one way or another you have to pay to get access.

But.....everybody buys the expansion. I guess I just don't get it.

Eric wrote:But.....everybody buys the expansion. I guess I just don't get it.

Right, everyone buys the expansion. That's what he's getting at: you have to buy it. You don't see the Death Knight as extra because you're assuming the purchase. He's looking at the Death Knight as extra because he doesn't assume the purchase.

Kupek wrote:

Eric wrote:But.....everybody buys the expansion. I guess I just don't get it.

Right, everyone buys the expansion. That's what he's getting at: you have to buy it. You don't see the Death Knight as extra because you're assuming the purchase. He's looking at the Death Knight as extra because he doesn't assume the purchase.

Why wouldn't you assume the purchase, or rather what's wrong with assuming the purchase?

I don't think there's anything wrong with it. You pay Blizzard $30, and they give you more content. But it's clear to me you guys are looking at it from different perspectives.

I don't see how you could go from 1 to 68 without someone AE PLing you in an instance. Not that that's hard but you got to at least know somebody who has a reasonably powerful character that's set up to do this. It takes a good 5-10 days /played (i.e. 120-240 hours) from 1-60 and nothing in the game has been changed significantly that'd allow you to get through this significantly faster. That's why people bought the RAF at $20 for triple XP just to level themselves up. At 60-70 you can probably get away with just someone running you through all the quests but even then I don't think there's quite enough quests to get you that far.

Don wrote:I don't see how you could go from 1 to 68 without someone AE PLing you in an instance. Not that that's hard but you got to at least know somebody who has a reasonably powerful character that's set up to do this. It takes a good 5-10 days /played (i.e. 120-240 hours) from 1-60 and nothing in the game has been changed significantly that'd allow you to get through this significantly faster. That's why people bought the RAF at $20 for triple XP just to level themselves up. At 60-70 you can probably get away with just someone running you through all the quests but even then I don't think there's quite enough quests to get you that far.

They reduced the required exp from 1->60 by 33% and 60->70 by 50%, they made it so you can get your mount at 30 as opposed to 40, once you get your mount it's relatively downhill.

Expansion content like Outlands(58->68)/Northrend(68->80) is extremely organized you can go from 58->68 without even finishing half the continent.

There are mods available that literally point you in the direction of where you need to go for quests. Questing/Leveling in WoW is trivial to say the least.

Instance AE grinding is a horrible horrible way to go about leveling, I attempted this for BC and WotLK and both times I was behind the leveling curve because of it.

Well if you're starting over you're not going to be able to do all the group quests by yourself, and even some of the solo quests are pretty tough depending on what class you are, so you still need some kind of help.

Don wrote:Well if you're starting over you're not going to be able to do all the group quests by yourself, and even some of the solo quests are pretty tough depending on what class you are, so you still need some kind of help.

Almost all group quests were nerfed heh. Most elite zones in the old world are normal mobs now.

Was actually think more about the BC elite mobs. They certainly weren't something you can easily solo with just quest gear. Though I guess there might be enough quests that you can just skip the group stuff, but if I recall there's a lot of elite quests toward the end as you move closer to Netherstorm.

Don wrote:Was actually think more about the BC elite mobs. They certainly weren't something you can easily solo with just quest gear. Though I guess there might be enough quests that you can just skip the group stuff, but if I recall there's a lot of elite quests toward the end as you move closer to Netherstorm.

Difference is you really don't need to do elite outlands quests(58->68) to level, unlike in classic where there were entire elite hubs with multiple quests and valuable exp.

Well before they reduced the XP in the 60-70 range you certainly needed some elite quests. I'm guessing after the reduction it's no longer necessary.