Do Not Go Up Against Wow....

[CheeseMan42]

My roommate freshman year played WoW. That was enough for me to never want to go near it. He would go on "raids" till like 4AM every day and talk on his headset the whole time. He barely went to class, rarely showered, never left the room, and just got on my nerves constantly.

[Kuronin]

Wow, you got lucky. I have heard stories about people dropping out of school for WoW and even Runescape, not sure if they are anything more than stories though.

Right now, I am obsessed with overclocking, it consumes my thoughts. I hate you all.

[Marne_Aeok]

i play wow. been playing since Feb 06. I play casually. yea graphics could use some improving. so .ing what lol. i do it to pass the time. i have my GF of 8 years, im going to school and i have NO qualms whatsoever to be like oh look real life . to do *laptop lid slam* - in game ppl get pissed all the time at me but im like dude whatevr its a GAME. dont care if were in the middle of a boss fight or whatevr. i dont give this game any kind of play on my life. if i got stuff to do i got stuff to do. uber nerds can kiss my grits.

[Verran]

oh and too add on that age of conan blew wow out of the waters with graphics actually collision detection and gameplay! done! people are just too stupid too see a good thing

That's one of the major reasons why it failed. By having high performance graphics you severely limit your player base. You really limit it to just people who have killer machines, and that's not actually that many people. WoW runs on darn near anything with a processor and because of it everyone and their brother can (and usually does) play it.

 

You want a bigger player base? Start by making sure they can actually play it.

 

Really though, I'm not surprised at all. I never played AoC but from all the reviews and such that I read, it never seemed like it was going to have any real substance.

[Propane]

WoW's gameplay is really amazing, espically near the end game. I play but not enough for it to be a problem with my life. I'm still not 80, and the friends who play ALL the time are bugging me all the time to level up, but you know what? I have better things to do with my time (learn, be social, etc).

 

Blizzard makes amazing games... they are good at what they do.

[Sandwich]

Well, WOW was fun for me because I enjoyed killing other people. Its much more degrading then say a FPS because people spend hundreds of hours, they name it, they dress it, they give it facial hair, they do allll the quests, they equip it....only to have someone else kick their .....hahahah I loved degrading people, and they would actually take that . sooo seriously. But, ya Ill never play again. Getting married and going to Vet school + WOW = disaster

[Kamikaze_Badger]

See, that's where some people get attached. They develop their own little persona on the game. That and there are constantly new goals to achieve on the game. That's where the others do. I got a toon to 70, got bored, and sold it. Started again in October, got to 51, saw no more appeal, and quit for good. Most of it for me was not having the old community of friends I had when I got to 70, which is another big thing about WoW.

 

AoC's main focus wasn't general enough. One of their advertising points was nudity and gore. There goes most female or more sensitive gamers on the scale of WoW. High end graphics? Good bye those of us who can't afford to upgrade every six months. Also, having a heavier PvP focus, it lost a lot of appeal to the average WoW player who's too much of a wuss to play on a PvP realm. AoC was too centralized. That and the lack of end game content early on definitely hurt.

[sYstEmATiC]

Meh, I play, go to college full time with good grades, and spend weekends with my girlfriend (she goes to another college). It's not that addicting. Just something fun for me.

I'm the same way. I started playing about 2 months ago and im still just level 21. Ill play for 2 hours or so every few days. I actually get bored and have to switch to something else just like every other game I play.

 

OH and dont get me started on the amount of running that you have to do....this is usually when i quit. Run for 15 minutes, then complete a quest that takes 2 minutes...run 15 minutes back to turn it in. This right here is why I havent renewed my acct yet. I dont have the patience it takes. FPS and RTS for me. While not so much anymore, I used to be known to on occasion stay up till dawn playing AOE/AOK/EE1,2,3

[Psywar]

I am an addict! Xiaolinmonk (Wildhammer US) Moondoggie (Wildhammer US)

I love it!

 

Love end game content the most, I am very much in to raiding.

 

As Verran said, it runs on damn near anything.. My PC still runs it.. Not well.. but I can do what I need to do.

[Double Density]

I guess you could say I'm a dedicated, although not hardcore WoW gamer. I've been playing since early beta and have played at least a little almost every day since. It's a rare day that I spend more than two hours in the game. I've been playing MMO's since the very earliest. MUD's on BBS', Kesmai on Compuserve, Yserbius on Sierra/INN, the SSI Neverwinter Nights (as opposed to Bioware's) on AOL, and virtually every game since for at least a little while.

 

WoW is the only one I've ever put more than two years in on, and that's because nothing better has come along to replace it. My take on it is that the entire reason it's so successful is that for the most part, it's mindlessly easy. WoW rewards people for time spent in the game...not for being good at the game. Anyone can level a character to 80 in WoW. Anyone can learn to quest and raid effectively enough to obtain nice gear (which is really all there is to do endgame). Anyone can craft. It doesn't take a hardcore gamer. It just takes a dedicated one. The only exception is PvP. While everyone who participates in PvP is rewarded a bit, only the best receive the best rewards. That's a big difference from WoW environmental play.

 

Other MMO's can coexist with WoW. They just have to offer a decent entertainment value for the money. There are quite a few in the market, some have been around considerably longer than WoW, and will likely keep on going for years to come.

 

New games are coming up almost monthly. I'm looking forward to Stargate Worlds personally. This looks to be the most tactical of all of the MMO's. If they can keep from going bankrupt before launch, they're going to have the makings of a fine game. The comic geek in me will certainly play around with DC Universe Online for a while, but doubt it will have any longevity.

[moiraesfate]

I seriously cannot stand wow. The game is MMO light and the community is full of leetspeaking children.

 

Age of Conan is closing its doors because it offered nothing unique about gaming and had some serious issues. Its also the same old fantasy claptrap that we've all seen a billion times over.

 

I'm personally waiting for the release of Star Trek Online, Stargate Online, and Knights of the Old Republic. In fact, I can pretty much almost guarantee that I'll probably dump all my games (even though I've been an avid EQ2 lover since it was released) to play Knights.

[Double Density]

I seriously cannot stand wow. The game is MMO light and the community is full of leetspeaking children.

 

That community certainly exists in WoW, as well as communities of just about every sort of gamer you can imagine. The roleplay servers in particular tend to have the largest groups of older players. I'd never call them mature...they are there to play a game after all! I won't label them adult either...adult roleplayer sounds a bit too much like ERPers....which is another large (and somewhat disgusting) WoW community. Having fun in WoW is all about finding the community (or communities) that best suit the individual gamer. You'll almost never encounter leetspeak on a roleplay server. When the kiddies show up, place them on ignore, and they go away. Depending on the individual guild, you may even be able to avoid the renaissance faire crowd, who I find almost as annoying as the l33t d00ds.