Massively

The assumption that WoW needs to be challenged, beaten, 'killed' even seems to essentially presuppose that the size of the MMO market is not expanding.

If it *isn't* actually expanding, maybe you don't have to look any further than publishers focusing on the notion that WoW must be beaten to figure out *why* it isn't.

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"Will current players suddenly think 'Thank the gods, there's an alternative! I can escape my slavish chains!' and then recapitulate their drudgery with the new game?"

It's funny that you should write that. When I was still playing WoW, I saw that comment numerous times on the forums. It seemed there were a number of players that would rather *pay* for a game they didn't enjoy as opposed to play nothing at all...almost as if they felt forced to play. And then they would bitch about having to pay. It seemed rather odd.

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I want that dog, it's vicious and adorable at the same time!

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People just want to see something THEY like suceed. Look at WoW, ten million players enjoy it. It's pretty commonplace to like it. Essentially, I think people just hate it because it's mainstream.

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I agree with Wildhammer.

I think that a lot of smaller-group MMOs are getting away from trying to beat WoW. While I'm sure that WAR and Conan devs would LOVE to be the one to steal WoW's thunder, the "is this the WoW Killer?" question invariably comes from the press. A lot of niche MMOs can make a pretty good profit (enough to keep operating, at least) with a fraction of WoW's subscribership. While every dev would love to create the next 800 pound gorilla, I'm sure they'd also like to win the lottery and date models as well.

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LOL! 10 mill is not mainstream. 10 mill is 'holding the dominant market share".

As I have said here in the past, I believe WoW is sub-par, or rather it is not as good as it is touted to be. WoW is on top mainly due to effective marketing. I do not HATE WoW.

I do not want to see a WoW killer (a WoW killer would utimately mean unemployment for a large number of people). I want to see another game as successful as WoW, hopefully, when it happens, it will be a better build than WoW is.

...not killer, as successfully...

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Everyone focuses on beating the WoW game without consideration for the WoW social structure that has evolved. Just convincing a bunch of people try your new and improved MMO isn't enough. You also have to convince them that they'll be left behind by the crowd if they don't play. WAR's play for the PvP crowd may have the best shot at this, but most developers just offering us the same ol' game in new pixels.

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I think people are just using the phrase "wow-killer" because they're lazy. In my opinion, what they're trying to get at is: "WoW came along and surpassed exponentially every other online game on the market... perhaps another game could come along and surpass WoW to the same extent".

They just need to say what they mean, and be less dramatic about it.

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It's interesting the way people think about MMORPGs just like other games.

People say things like Halo-killer, Counter-strike killer, Starcraft killer, etc. and it holds some weight. At any point in time a game can come along that's 'better' and take away audience from another game. When this happens gamers rejoice as they've just gotten a better game.

It's not like this for MMORPGs nor are players entirely better for it when it does. There's a cost associated with switching MMORPGs, and it's quite a high cost. You basically are forced to start over and reinvest in your characters and render all work previously done in the old MMORPG 'useless'. The time you spent in the old MMORPG was (should have been) fun so there's some worth there but you're no longer building on your existing foundation when you hop MMORPGs, you're starting from scratch. This comes out to be a cost, and if you act like the MMORPG playing was work then it's actually quite expensive (potentially tens of thousands of dollars worth of time). The bottom line ends up being that better games still have to be worth the investment to jump ship for many players so once a game gets settled it's going to be a stubborn old cow and no go anywhere for quite a while. The more time invested in the game (in terms of hours played by the community combined) the more stubborn the old cow is going to be. For examples of this just look right at UO and EQ both of which are still going 'strong' given their initial populations and age.

So don't expect the 9million pound cow to be moving out of the way anytime soon.

This brings me to the second part. The gamers are better for MMORPGs being able to stick around and stay a while. Not only do competitors have to try much harder to get a piece of the pie but having too many new successful MMORPGs releasing in succession would hurt the gaming scene.

Think about it, constant releases of hit/big budget MMORPGs would be constantly shifting the player population around and working against the social scene that develops over time in MMORPGs. In addition you'd miss out on the fine tuned balance and progression that an MMORPG is only able to offer as it begins to ages. As a last piece to the puzzle having an 'mmorpg king' for any given sub-genre allows for a larger player base which provides the developer to provide more content (free or charged) over a period of time. These expansions and updates, if done right, provide a way for someone to get more mileage out of an MMORPG for their initial investments and reduce the amount of time the player has to spend getting attached to their character(s).

In short cause this turned into a long post, WoW isn't going anywhere any time soon nor should it as it's long lasting existence as the top dog Fantasy PvE MMORPG is good for gamers who want developed social interactions, a refined game play experience, and continued reward for their investment of time.

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I dont want wow to die just be maimed a little bit..enough to make its devs do something with the game to make me want to play it again,

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Am I the only person who could honestly care less if WoW gets 'killed'? I mean, I play it because it's fun, not because of the 10 million people that play it. GW Bush, anyone? 10 million people can and will be wrong. Go with what you want, not the sheep.

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I played it for a while. Yeah, it was fun. But:

WoW achieved one very important thing for me. It corraled all the retards into one nice, neat little area that I can easily avoid, and keeps them away from the games I enjoy much more.

Please. DO NOT kill WoW.

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As far as "WoW killer" goes there really can't be one, at least not one thats any good. WoW is to MMOs what Brittany Spears or NSync is to music. Its easy to digest, not particularly rewarding or deep but very marketable. Between the two (if you include solo crap from Nsync member spin offs) hundreds of millions of songs and albums have been sold, but not due to quality. Can you say Green Days American Idiot should be the Brittany Spears killer, after all its better in just about every way artistically.

The truth is being "better" artistically isn't enough because usually artistically better means appeals to a higher end consumer who is more intelligent and more discerning. For every 1 person who enjoys the political commentary and rock opera styling of American Idiot there's at least 100 who will instead buy whatever new single Brittany releases from her latest bout with rehab. Similarly WoW is the pop of the MMO world; any idiot can get to 80, its easy to get into though not very rewarding and casual friendly to a fault.

They recently added a bunch of rewards equal to top tier raid gear you can get by doing basic dungeons a few hundred times, and made it so gear only the top players in the arena received a few months ago is gettable by doing battlegrounds a few hundred times win or lose. That keeps the millions playing and paying even if it loses some of the higher end consumers (such as myself) who constantly are looking for more. If a few high end consumers leave though who cares, there's a million more Nsyncers waiting in the wings.

Thats the truth of all art and activities, the elite crowd is infinitely small compared with the base. It also can't be changed, the above average intelligence crowd will never be the majority and if anything the average has been dropping in the last few decades (see the movie Idiocracy for why). If something "kills WoW" it will be another even easier even more approachable game certainly not anything better. I mean remember when we thought the Spice Girls were bad? They were replaced by NSync which was really bad, which in turn was replaced by Justin Timberlakes solo career which has been even worse.

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