RSDancey replies to Goodman article (Forked Thread: Goodman rebuttal)

[Mournblade94]

I'm on the scene, and I have been for years. I do both, I talk to people that do both, and I do so on a wide scale. It's the naysayers that are in the dark.

Naysayer to what? Your post to me read as if the developers of MMORPG's are somehow superior to developers of Tabletop games. This is not in any way true. This is what I am addressing. Despite the little desire I have to play WOW I am quite well informed. More so than people that play regularly. My sources are top editors from Tentonhammer and mmorpg.com. I am always happy to provide names in private.

WOW is directly sprouted from TRPG's. Even the developers say so. If you want to speak to the success of MMORPG's over TRPG's, well there is an obvious difference MMO's win. I think the only reason they win is accessability and has nothing to do with development. Comparing D&D to WOW on this level is like saying the LORD OF THE RINGS movie is Vastly prefered over the books because the movies make more money. It is simply a different medium. It is more accessable to the general audience.

It in no way means that film is superior to books.

And yet WOW is far more popular and enjoys far great commercial success than D&D ever has, or ever will.

Correct.

The reason is that, quite frankly, players in general prefer what WOW offers over the tabletop counterpart.

Video game players prefer that yes. Not Roleplaying players.

Most of the WOW players I talk to (And I talk to a handful, not the millions that WOW has) would prefer to play Tabletop RPG's at a given moment (Note I am not saying... cancel WOW account and play D&D over WOW), instead of playing online.

When WOW guilds start holding their own conventions (and they do; mine's on its second annual convention this year), that's when you have something that the common gamer actually wants.

I am not sure how the above statement supports "proof of what gamers want". One can find a convention for anythign these days.

WOW (and all other CRPGs & MMORPGs) may not provide what TRPGs are about, but their superior commercial success and popular acceptance means that what TRPGs are about is not what the common gamer wants.

WOW also brought to the front a market share of people that were not into roleplaying but into a simple gaming experience. Many of the millions of people that play wow are not even potential markets for any other sort of game.

It doesn't matter if I can't play when I want, how I want, because I have to herd a bunch of cats into the same space at the same time. Time not spent playing is lost value; anything utterly dependent upon Network Externalities derives most of its value from not only the size of the user network, but also by how frequently you can utilize that network. I can play WOW damn near at any time, and I will be able to get a group for any group content I wish to enjoy; I can't do that for any TRPG.

If I want to play the game, and the common gamer does, the option that provides me superior convenience of access wins.

Right. Accessability.

That just means, to the common gamer, that you can play through that RPG scenario again. It's a feature, not a bug, and actually adds value for him; if were really that bad, no one would do it- and yet it's still the thing that put (and helps to keep) WOW on the top of the MMO heap.

Actually I think the reason they do it is because there is no way around it. My point is this is great from the gamist perspective, but not from the roleplaying perspective.

The TRPG market is better off letting the current common gamer go entirely, and instead targeting a new audience that actually clamors for TRPGs in the same way that common gamers clamor for MMOs, but that requires that the businessmen in the TRPG business reassess what it is that they product truly offers vs. what it takes to actually use it (and to stop arguing in favor of the competition).

I could not agree with any statement you have made more than this. It is absolutely true. D&D will not get people that want the WOW experience. What they will get are the roleplayers that discover they cannot get the story satisfaction they want out of MMORPGS.

 

[xechnao]

WOW also brought to the front a market share of people that were not into roleplaying but into a simple gaming experience. Many of the millions of people that play wow are not even potential markets for any other sort of game.

Why are you saying this? It does not make sense to me. There are other simple games around but they play WoW instead.

 

[Filcher]

I'm sure there's a name for this fallacy, but I don't know it. Anyhow, this idea that a new medium will eclipse all previous media hasn't held up in my (admittedly short) experience.

Plays should have been killed by movies. Movies should have been killed by television.

But I did a Google search and somehow it seems that I can still by tickets for that archaic "play" thing at someplace called Broadway. Or in any small town, for that matter.

I think that consumer trends show us growing more fractioned as a people, than less. There was a time when all of America watched the same television show at night. Now, programs that niche markets number in the hundreds, if not thousands.

Same, too, for RPGs and MMORGs. They deliver different experiences, and there are niches for both.

 

[xechnao]

I think that consumer trends show us growing more fractioned as a people, than less. There was a time when all of America watched the same television show at night. Now, programs that niche markets number in the hundreds, if not thousands.

This is my belief too. OTOH WoW has been grabbing a very big share of the market that many niches compete about. I think a very informative measure would be the average hours subscribers spend in playing WoW in comparison with other similar hobby activities they have or they might be having.