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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6665557" data-attributes="member: 37579">There's no one reason Warcraft is king. Being easy on casual gamers does help: it gets them in the door and keeps them hooked. Gameplay keeps everyone involved, as does the myriad little sub-mechanics and mini-quests in the game. That really makes WoW and is something every other MMO fails to do. Content is another huge one: even vanilla Warcraft had two factions spread over two continents, with different level bands in multiple zones. So you could play the game twice with the two factions and have completely different experiences. Even playing the same faction provided a wealth of new story provided your race and route through the continents was different. My biggest problem questing in WoW was usually that I ended up outlevelling the content and had to move onto the next zone with the current zone unfinished. Compare that to every other MMO where there's often barely a single playthrough and often gaps in in the content so you need to grind for a level or so. Now, with five expansions under its belt, WoW has an unassailable advantage with content. Even power leveling and ripping through content there's months of playtime in the game. It's biggest challenge is getting people to the endgame. The world of D&D is barely an advantage. Lots of other games have had just as detailed a world. None have succeeded. The world is the smallest element needed to succeed at making a good MMO. And most other properties with a world (Star Wars for one) have a lot more fan pull and money than D&D.The problem is one of time and money. It takes millions of dollars to make an MMO. Millions of dollars and years of time. WoW cost $50 million at a time when most MMOs cost $5-10 million (and four plus years), making it a huge gamble. Because graphic expectations have risen since then, most MMOs are now far more expensive and time intensive. This is because the worlds are so large and so much content is required. You're hard pressed to make a more expensive product than an MMO game. And the content takes months to make but hours to play through. The game you spent years designing someone will blow through in a fortnight and then move onto other games. Which makes MMOs hard to sustain, and why most end up going to the Free2Play model. The fact of the matter is, making a good MMO is likely to cost $10+ million dollars each year. Which is likely twice the total profits of D&D. Which is kinda the definition of a bad investment.</blockquote>

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