How did WoW dethrone Everquest?

[Goodsport]

A friend of mine who's been playing Wow for the past month or two offered me a 10-day Friend Pass, which I accepted last weekend. After playing WoW for a few days (but moreso on the weekends than on the weekdays, due to work and such), I can honestly say that I'm having fun playing it.

But I was curious: for the longest time since its introduction in 1999, Everquest seemed to be the 800 lbs. gorilla of the MMORPG world. Many MMORPG's came and went while others are still around, but no one MMORPG ever seemed close to toppling EQ from the top-spot until World of Warcraft came along in November 2004.

From what I heard, WoW sold better than Everquest 2 and had become the MMORPG world's new 800 lbs. gorilla. What is it about WoW that allowed it to take the top-spot, an achievement no other MMORPG was able to accomplish against EQ?


-G

 

[Captain Tagon]

It's much more casual friendly. There is a much smaller death penalty. All in all it is just a much easier game to get into than EQ and EQ2 ever were.

 

[2WS-Steve]

It blew out all previous expectations of how many subscribers a MMO could get even before the good news about how much fun it was could get around. That implies that Blizzard's excellent reputation combined with the Warcraft brand brought in a whole bunch of people who had previously not tried MMOs.

Then a bunch of them stuck around and started spreading the word due to the quality.

 

[Vigilance]

It blew out all previous expectations of how many subscribers a MMO could get even before the good news about how much fun it was could get around. That implies that Blizzard's excellent reputation combined with the Warcraft brand brought in a whole bunch of people who had previously not tried MMOs.

Then a bunch of them stuck around and started spreading the word due to the quality.

Yeah, I think a lot of Diablo love helped WoW get off to a fast start and then the fact that it was a lot less tedious than EQ (especially at low levels) really helped sell it.

Chuck

 

[BlueBlackRed]

You can't forget the EQ forced you to sit down and do nothing for long periods of time.
I heard they did actual studies of how long they could get a player to camp in a spot.

WoW removes the "sit & wait" for your mana return.

 

[KenM]

WoW removes the "sit & wait" for your mana return.

You just have to wait when you are in a quewe for a battle ground, or getting a raid together, or having to wait to log in.

 

[Vigilance]

Oooo and lest we forget... Sony customer service was *such* a joy to deal with too. So polite... never abrupt or uncaring or just plain rude...

Dang... there's so many reasons for WoW's ascendency lol.

Chuck

 

[werk]

It's newer and better?

 

[Rackhir]

I remember how one of the guys in my gaming group at the time was telling us how he was going to have to rent a beeper, take a few days off from work and never be more than like 5 minutes from his computer for 3 days, so that he could be ready if this one monster spawned that he had to kill as part of this massively convoluted and complicated quest sequence to get the epic weapon for his class in EQ.

While some of the Raid (Up to 40 character) instances (AKA dungeons) in WOW can be very complicated and take a substantial number of hours to go through, I've not heard or seen anything in WOW that requires anything close to spending 3 days next to your computer, just to BE READY for something.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

They dumbed it down and removed all the challenge or depth. Although they did keep the raids, which were the worst part of the EQ endgame.

Less snarkily, WoW attracted a lot more casual players, who recruited their casual-gamer friends. The longevity of these games depends on the social networks that arise -- the more people who have an attachment to and play with on a regular basis, the less likely you are to stop playing entirely or hop to another game.

Having played pretty much every MMO since Ultima Online to max (or close to it), WoW is probably the one I've liked the least, and even I feel the tug to return occasionally simply because of the friends I have that play it.

What sucks is that every potential MMO developer now feels that they have to achieve WoW-levels of subscribers to be considered a success, so we're starting to see the same repeition and type of formulaic crap in the MMO market that you see in other forms of mass entertainment. I suspect my days of hard games with meaningful death penalties, actual travel and exploration, etc., are long gone.