Was WoW the ultimate MMO?

WoW is without a doubt the best mmo ever... the millions of people playing it is proof of that...personally i prefered my time playing uo or swg more... but technically wow has everything
 
DJammyRasta said:
WoW is without a doubt the best mmo ever... the millions of people playing it is proof of that...personally i prefered my time playing uo or swg more... but technically wow has everything
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Millions of people watch coronation street and eastenders. Does that make them the best programmes ever made? :)
 
Teki187 said:
Oh my god, i didn't ask for comparisons, i just asked for your personal feelings and opinions about WOW if it was being released today and you knew nothing about the game.

Is that too hard to ask for? :eek:
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lol, how can anyone have 'personal feelings and opinions' about something that they know nothing about? What the hell.
 
Interesting arguement, and clearly the OP went about with his question in all the wrong way.

It is clear for me that I have really missed out, the first MMO that I played was Guildwars, so the joys of UO have alluded me. In total I have played Guildwars, WoW (for a month) and LOTRO and to me they all offer something different.

I played Guildwars firstly as it appealed to me, and it also offered something that no other current MMO offers and thats a subscription free service, and it gives GW an advantage over what others are offering. They have 3 million plus players, I know that compared to other MMO's this is not a lot, but it means the game is well populated and having only one server per continent means its well populated and people can find it easy to get groups.

They provided regular updates and released expansions on a yearly basis which was the only expense people had to pay out to play.

WoW I played with friends for a month, and it wasn't for me. Honestly, its because its too cartoony, and there are a lot of immature people around. I prefer playing MMO's with realistic looks having buildings and people with outragous colours doesn't interest me. However, that aside, the game works, the 10 million subscribers support that. It isn't everyones idea of the perfect MMO, and this can be judged by the previous 3 pages of posts. However, currently, it is considered as the best MMO currently being played. Whatever Blizzard have done to make it successful they have done well, whether it was what they intended to do from the start is a different matter. It is also the blueprint on what all newer and future MMO's are based on, so it must be doing something right. That said, for previously mentioned reasons, and mine above, it isn't perfect, and doesn't do enough to keep the mature English players interested.

LOTRO is what I currently play. I have a lifetime membership to the game so no future subscriptions for me. Its been out for over a year, and whilst I don't know the subscription numbers I am guessing it runs into several million. The game appeals to me because it has a storyline, yes, it follows the WoW mould with the quest patterns and go here and go there, kill this and that, it has raids etc but I like it. I was a huge fan of the books, so playing the game allowed me to related to this, and the films. The characters and the backdrop are not cartoon like in the way WoW is, and this gives the game alittle more depth.

As you can see, I have only played 3 MMO's and each have their appeal, none are perfect, and I don't think anyone will say that there has been a perfect MMO in everyway, that is why people are still trying, and releasing new MMO's with different ideas until they find one that truely works. Hellgate London is different again, and no doubt I expect Warhammer and AoC to offer their own pluses and minuses to the arguement.

My ideal MMO wont have quest lines, it will still have quests, for example find x or kill x (simple form) but thats it, there is no go here and kill x. Your quest will be to kill x but your not going to know where he is. As the game day moves on so does the target. In the morning he might be in the town of XY but come night, he might have travelled with his merry men/women to the city of YZ some 100 miles away. Your job is to track him down and kill him then claim your reward and find another quest. Whilst on the hunt you can kill/pick up adventure anyone/thing/where you like to build up XP to advance. No set way of playing.

Sorry for the long rant, and that I couldn't answer the OP's question without making a comparison.
 
Twinblade said:
I played Guildwars firstly as it appealed to me, and it also offered something that no other current MMO offers and thats a subscription free service, and it gives GW an advantage over what others are offering. They have 3 million plus players, I know that compared to other MMO's this is not a lot, but it means the game is well populated and having only one server per continent means its well populated and people can find it easy to get groups.
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Don't be fooled by WoW's freakishly large subscriptions. 3 million players is A LOT, for any MMO. I'm aware that GW doesn't have subscribers per se, but it doesn't matter.

To put it into perspective, EQ1 had at it's heights 450,000 subscribers. And that was raking it in. Most modern day subscription MMO's need /around/ 100-300k subscribers (depending on the game) to get into the black and start making a profit.

The most important thing for an MMO is longevity. You can get by with a low subscirber base as long as you keep the numbers steady for as long as possible. You don't need the numbers Blizzard gets, you just need a passionate dedicated fanbase that sticks with you.
 
The thing is, what criteria does an MMO need to fulfill before it can be labelled the 'ultimate MMO'?

There isn't a perfect MMO out there, because all games have their flaws, all of the MMOs out now have things that other games do that they don't, bugs, things they could do better - and most importantly, it's all subjective. While one person may absolutely hate RF Online, and give a list of reasons, another person can just as easily turn around and say they like RF Online and give a list of reasons why.

WoW's popularity is undeniable and regardless of how you feel about the game, you can't deny that it has reached a major success in attracting subscribers. Now, I don't like WoW, but that's because I played it once, gave up when I hit the endgame because at the time I didn't have eight hours to raid MC. Oh, but before that I needed to grind endlessly so I could have +1 fire protection otherwise I was dropped like a lead balloon. I played it a second time, got to roughly level 40 (this was just after the Before The Storm patch which ruined it for me), got hacked, and got zero help from Blizzard. So I quit.
There were many things I could say that were and are wrong about WoW, but there's almost certainly another person just waiting to say why they think it's an amazing game.

So unless you can come up with some sort of objective critera with which to define the Ultimate MMO, it's pointless to try and discern what is the ultimate MMO.
 
Indeed.

But games like UO and Doom was what started the whole MMO and FPS to develop in what they are today.

Can't find the article, but it does have a pretty good point that without these games then we may have not had WOW and things like CS yet.
 
Because every games developer on the planet sees that WoW has 10 million people paying a monthly sub, and wants a piece of it. So they're doing everything they can to copy the things that made it a success, rather than risking any innovation whatsoever.

You might think sandbox games like UO and preCU SWG are the pinnacle of mmo gaming, but your average WoW player is just going to get confused and scared by the lack of hand holding and drop the game like a shot.

Sad, but true.
 
Money - It's a big risk developing the perfect mmo. Making the game is just one small step. You need the bandwidth, servers, customer support staff, ingame support staff, future planning and development etc.

The list goes on and on - and when your MMO is truly successful, you've got to invest massively into a sequel for the masses, and thats where things go pear shaped, developing a successor to please everyone.
 
I've played a lot of MMO's, including WoW since release (I did stop just after TBC but returned about 3 months ago), but for me it isn't the ultimate MMO. Sure, it's got a hell of a lot of good things about it, but there are a lot of things that I miss that games like UO and SWG had. A dynamic and well-thought out skill system for starters. This level-based system sucks, but it seems to be the way all MMO's are measured now. The beauty of UO was that you could just change what you were whenever you felt like it. Bored of being a mage? Then pick up an axe, start chopping trees and become a lumberjack. You see someone with a lot of money, a nice house, a boat, and you want a piece of the action? Train some thief skills and pickpocket their key (using a cleverly devised method of course) and steal that house or boat from them. Want to tame dragons? Sure thing, learn Animal Taming and Lore, and off to Destard you go. Just be careful, they bite! How about becoming a Blacksmith, and selling your wares to everyone in the world? Well, that's easy. Buy a house deed, set up your shop, and off you go. Keep your vendors topped up and you're in the money :)

UO was truly fantastic, such an amazing game with so many avenues you could explore. PvP in that game was unrivalled. As has already been mentioned by someone else in this thread, it was the only game that actually made you CARE about the outcome of a fight, so much so that it was unbelievably hard controlling your excitement and the adrenaline pumping through your veins when you were fighting a PK, struggling to stay alive and save your "Emminently Accurate Broadsword of Vanquishing" and your "Valorite Plate Set" that was newly made by the shard's top Blacksmith. If you lost that fight, you would end up losing more than just the time of a corpse-run. It was truly a fantastic game, it made you feel real emotion and you had none of the stupidity and idiocy that WoW has brought along with it's millions of kids that seem to latch on to it.

Don't get me wrong, I really like WoW. I've got a level 70 Rogue, a 65 Priest, and I've started levelling a Druid for PvP, and I enjoy the game immensely. But if pre-publish 16 UO was still around, and was as popular as it used to be when I originally played it many years ago, I'd be there like a shot. While there are free shards available, they're usually customised to the hilt and are pretty crappy in comparison to what the real thing used to be. I played on a few some years ago and gave up after trying over 10 shards.

The same goes for SWG, although I was disappointed that there wasn't much penalty other than repair charges (initially) for death in PvP. But SWG used a similar skill-based system to UO, albeit slightly more restricted, but the crafting in SWG was second to none, and it was literally another life within a game. MMO's need to strive more at becoming this style of game, instead of just being the generic template that we have now. Skill-based with the ability to truly exist within the universe is how it should be.
 
Also if you wanted to catch a couple cybering in their house, kill yourself and once you appear as a ghost just go into the house and spook them! :o OoOooo!
 
Lol I remember "ooOOooOOOOOooOOooo" rofl. It was always entertaining when a ghost appeared next to you in a dungeon and said "oooooOOOOOoOOOOOOooOooo" and you'd be like "I can't understand what you're saying" etc even though you knew they wanted a res. Then you'd go looking for their corpse to loot it instead :D
 
Referring to the original post...

If a game purported to contain all those things then yes, it would appeal to me. However, all MMO's would state they offered these things, even if they didn't.

I don't get why you're asking if WoW was the ultimate MMO ever, which would require prior knowledge of the game and experience in playing it to offer any kind of opinion that might answer the question in the topic title and we're being asked to pretend we know nothing about the game.
 
Teki187 said:
Strip all feelings back and personal experiences aside and read/contribute this discussion from a completely none biased view. Dont compare it to other games.

Considering what WoW has to offer:

Freedom to roam
Polish
Huge open land
Easy to learn combat
Massive amounts of customization
Good PvP

And many more

If WoW was being released today and you knew nothing about this game, what would be your opinion?
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My opinion would be having known nothing about the game, apart from maybe hype prior to release, and based on the popular Warcraft universe from Blizzard. I'd get home and within a month find out that most of those points are bull**** :)
 
kkbigal said:
I don't get why you're asking if WoW was the ultimate MMO ever, which would require prior knowledge of the game and experience in playing it to offer any kind of opinion that might answer the question in the topic title and we're being asked to pretend we know nothing about the game.
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Because there's a lot of ex-UO/SWG/EQ1 vets on this board who seem to know their apples from their pears, if he just asked "whats your favourite mmo" most people wouldn't say WoW.

By narrowing the options, he wanted to skew the answers so people would be forced into favourably talking about WoW.

Just by going off the title of this thread, you can see he thinks WoW is the ultimate MMO. He wanted everyone else to agree with him, and creating an unreasonable set of rules was the only way this could happen.

It was a loaded question right from the start, but it backfired.
 
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Going by pure repute alone and word of mouth by players...(and reviews also but less so) Though ive only played UO a little myself. (as well as about 4 other MMOS)

i would say the ultimate MMOS are in ranked order.

1. Ultima Online
2. EQ (above SWG mainly because its the first pioneer of 3d FP sorta mmos that was hugely popular)
3. SWG pre-cu
 
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