Will eso give world of warcraft a run for its money?

ZiRM

Wow was a perfect storm in the MMO business. I prefer ESO much more.

Reavan

Wow nailed community right with its forums and server communication.
This is one thing we lack here much like gw2.

knightblaster

There are two kinds of players, generally, in theme park MMO games (sandboxes are a different beast): (i) people attracted by the lore/setting/world and (ii) for lack of a better term, "the MMO Community".

Most (not all, but certainly most) MMOs that have been made since WoW have lore tie-ins. The lore may be pre-established in the gaming world in another genre (as was the case for WoW, as is the case here), or from outside gaming (LOTRO, Conan, super hero games, etc.). These will attract a certain number of people who play not because it is an MMO (in fact, some will have never played any other MMO previously), but because they like the lore and setting. This group has fewer MMO expectations, and enjoys a kind of "smell the flowers" type of gameplay because they are enthralled by the lore and setting of the game and have a blast just spending time in it.

The second group, the MMO Community, generally plays (at least tries, if only in beta) every theme park MMO. Most have spent a lot of time in WoW, some a lot of time in EQ2, over the last ten years or so. This group, while appreciating lore and graphics/setting to some extent, is much more interested in numbers, mechanics, build efficiency, coefficients, hard and soft caps for attributes, gear caps, best in slot, and min/max. In other words -- this group is all about the gamey side of the game, because they like the *genre*, beyond the specific setting, and are generally looking for a mix of these kinds of things that they find interesting or enjoyable from the gameplay perspective, relative to every other theme part MMO that has been released in the last ten years or more.

WoW's design has had a huge impact on the expectations of the MMO Community type of player. From the emphasis on mechanics to the emphasis on gear upgrading in a specific way, to the de-emphasis on crafting, to the focus on endgame (rest of the game is just a long tutorial), to a keen interest in quality of life aspects which make the game easier to get in and out of. Note that this group is NOT all "hardcore gamers" (although it includes them) -- it also includes mostly casual players who are just into MMOs and the specific aspects they generally offer, and many of whom have been influenced by WoW, either positively or negatively. That is, some people want other games to be more like WoW and others want other games to not have a single thing WoW has in it -- WoW is polarizing in that way among this community, although there are more that have been positively influenced by it (in terms of setting expectations for other games) than negatively, even if the former are currently burned out on WoW.

TESO will appeal, generally, more to the first group than to the second. I think this is by design, and is an intelligent way to approach the design. The reason is that no other theme park MMO released since WoW has ever successfully competed with WoW among the second type of player in a major, sustained way, for various reasons -- all of those reasons amalgamating into the larger one of "WoW does WoW's kind of play better than anyone else does and likely better than anyone else ever will, when everything is taken together". A part of that is the fact that it has ten plus years of development, including pre-release, behind it. A part of it is that its norms have shaped the expectations of millions of players as to what an acceptable baseline is, and what core functionality an MMO should have. But taking all the reasons together, game after game has learned that it is very hard to out-WoW Wow.

So, no, this won't kill WoW. Not designed to do so. Success for a game like this will be to retain a good portion of the TES fans (many of them are in the first group who are more TES fans than MMO fans) due to the setting and the way that they have made the game more like a TES game. I think it has a good chance to succeed in that effort.

Korah_Eaglecry

loco wrote: »

wrlifeboil wrote: »

loco wrote: »

Eso probably hasn't broken 400k players yet, judging by forum accounts and patch note views and extrapolating from there.

I would bet against you on that. Easily over a million. Probably over 2 million between North America and Europre.

.

If that were the case Zeni would have included it in the silly info thing they did. I'm just basing it off the data i can find. If you look at here on the forum, the PvP campaigns, forum accounts, patch not views... Highest I could see it going right now is 700kish world wide. No more than 400k on the NA server.

What are you basing your numbers off of?

So youre basing it off of data that cant possibly reflect the real numbers?

You do understand that the Forums are a microcosm of the community. Most will not visit the forums. As theyre too busy with the game.

Osi

I would say it will. Trying to compare ESO less than two weeks after launch to a game that has had... how many years to fix and balance hundreds of thousands of bugs and design oversights?

As it is right now, with no support, no it would not. But given the, in all honesty, insanely positive feedback ZOS has given during Beta and in the last week, I have very high hopes.

The problem is convincing people that it will get better over time, and to stick around to see that.

Musonius

As of now I would have to say no. I am undecided, at the moment, whether I will extend my sub beyond the initial 30 days included with the game purchase. At best I am 50/50 to continue or not. The game is, graphically, very good and the quest system, when not bugged, is also very good. The UI is poor, the economic system is terrible and, despite being told 2 years ago the game would NOT be a "buggy mess", the game IS a buggy mess. I have not yet tried PvP but have heard good things about it.

And please do not give me this BS about, "oh this is a smoother release than WoW or (insert game title here) and all MMOs are buggy at the start, give them time". Just because it it may be somewhat less buggy than other titles, it is still buggy. Bethesda and the rest of the game industry continue to feed us buggy crap and we, the gaming community, continue to lap it up. I have a list of Publishers I will no longer even consider purchasing a game from unless it has been out for 1 year and I have read they have done a decent job of bug killing. EA, Rockstar and Ubisoft were already on the list. Now Bethesda has been added.

Nox_Aeterna

Mate , i dont know the future , but if i had to bet , i would get a freaking huge amount of money , on the "no".

Musonius wrote: »

And please do not give me this BS about, "oh this is a smoother release than WoW or (insert game title here) and all MMOs are buggy at the start, give them time". Just because it it may be somewhat less buggy than other titles, it is still buggy. Bethesda and the rest of the game industry continue to feed us buggy crap and we, the gaming community, continue to lap it up. I have a list of Publishers I will no longer even consider purchasing a game from unless it has been out for 1 year and I have read they have done a decent job of bug killing. EA, Rockstar and Ubisoft were already on the list. Now Bethesda has been added.

What i find really funny about this argument , is that people make it sound like it matters.

WoW had a buggy launch 10 years ago? Sure , it did.

But that was 10 years ago , ESO is not competing in the MMO market of 10 years ago.

Today there are TONS MMOs left and right, if you want to remain with this sub/month path , they need to be one of the best right now , not in 3 years.

Jambo

simple answer.. no.. no game will

Qyr

ESO won't, but not because it is bad. ESO is a great game, ok it has his bugs and surely not everything is perfect, but the game as it is is great.

However, WoW is popular not good, and many people play the popular games since they think they are good. They get used to these games and think everything has to be like this.
The Players that think a bit, take a look might play ESO or other Games. I really love ESO for being a game that forces you to think and be active in combat and not simply press your 1,2,4,5,7,8 all the time and perhaps move all 5 minutes a bit. For those that are tired of WoW like playing style that can be / is great, but for those who like this, it might not.

I hope that ESO would get "quality" players instead of an quantity of "oh this is famous this must be good" uhm persons who cry all day n night for nerfes because they are too stupid to think or find a way to beat another class without having a instant-kill button.

alewis478b14_ESO

Davidm wrote: »

Will elder scrolls online give world of warcraft a run for its money?

You must be playing a different game than I have. ESO couldn't give....actually I can't think of a game bad enough to compare it to.

Tiyamel

World of Warcraft? loooooooooooooooooool the only MMO i've avoided playing in my long gaming career

R0M2K

Of course, it was foretold

Shimond

alewis478b14_ESO wrote: »

You must be playing a different game than I have. ESO couldn't give....actually I can't think of a game bad enough to compare it to.

So why are you playing it then?

Zorak

Tiyamel wrote: »

World of Warcraft? loooooooooooooooooool the only MMO i've avoided playing in my long gaming career

/facepalm

Granite

Wow is wow and I think no game can beat it till there is something HUGE that changes the gaming. That might be when virtual reality takes over the MMO scene. But it doesnt mean that there wouldnt be good/better games than wow.

Firmament

I do not like the disney-like graphics from WoW (I mean, cartoonish)
So for me, hell yeah. But really, why keep on comparing games. Who wants to play WoW, awesome. They are different.

Soul_of_Wrath

Davidm wrote: »

Will elder scrolls online give world of warcraft a run for its money?

As much as I enjoy this game, no. ESO is a fun change from WoW but I see the active combat as a limiting factor in appealing to the mass market of players. I myself used to only play first person shooters, doom quake unreal tournament, but as I've gotten older I'm just not as good at and don't enjoy twitch-based game play.

Imryll

They're different games. I expect folks who want to play WoW will do so, and, assuming some critical bugs get fixed, folks who want to play ESO will do that. It really depends on what sort of experience you're looking for.

zaria

Granite wrote: »

Wow is wow and I think no game can beat it till there is something HUGE that changes the gaming. That might be when virtual reality takes over the MMO scene. But it doesnt mean that there wouldnt be good/better games than wow.

WOW was on the right spot and with the right features to become an facebook style phenomena. You get an snowballing effect then so many was playing everybody knew somebody who played so they joined too.
ESO is not in this position, its also not causal enough, later games who have managed this has been hyper causual games like angry bird or farmvile.

However on consoles its another issue, here eso has an good position with been early of the MMO and has an decent chance of staying largest for an long time if done right.

Crumpy

Ziz wrote: »

Right now, no. People won't be able to log in on Sunday.

ESO can't even beat Swtor at this point.

Thought they had maintenance yesterday (Friday)?

loops73

Davidm wrote: »

Will elder scrolls online give world of warcraft a run for its money?

rofl, that's funny...eso will be free to play in 6 months

alewis478b14_ESO

Shimond wrote: »

alewis478b14_ESO wrote: »

You must be playing a different game than I have. ESO couldn't give....actually I can't think of a game bad enough to compare it to.

So why are you playing it then?

I'm not but I still have a month of forum access and I'm still bitter enough to come here to nerd rage for a few more days.

If I could actually load Cyrodil or if I didn't get 3 second freeze ups every minute or so then I might have continued playing until something new came out.

Zordrage

Wildstar is the only mmo that have a chance aggaints wow

SlickCat

To ask such a question is traditionally understood to invite the doom of ESO, please stop doing it, nothing good (for ESO) will come from asking players to compare World of WarCraft with ESO in their minds.

That being said, I've cancelled 1 of my 3 WoW accounts, and am considering temporarily doing the same with the other 2, at least until WarLords of Draenor comes out. Please note that I already pre-ordered the digital Collector's edition on my main account, and digital regular edition on my second account. Because the 3 accounts are linked under the same Battle.net ID, I get access to the CE mount and pet on all of them anyway. I have 13x 90s (one was a boost, the other boost hasn't been used yet), 17970 achievement points, and 584K gold. Suffice to say that WoW has been quite an enjoyable and affordable pastime.

I will further note that this is the first time since 2007 that I've considered (temporarily) switching games, the chief reason being that I played a fair bit of DaggerFall and MorrowWind prior to getting hooked on WoW. Skyrim wasn't enough to pull me away from the polished glory that is WoW. In short I had an emotional connection to the Elder Scrolls franchise that preceded WoW.

So far I have found ESO to be quite charming and its own game - the longer it is its own game the better for it. I want to see how keeping certain things hard and/or 'unconvenient' plays out, I suspect that WoW perhaps should NOT have offered all of the conveniences that it does to players because they tend to scream bloody murder when Blizzard tries to take them away (see the kerfuffle about them wanting to limit flying on alternate-timeline Draenor until well into content patch 6.1).

Short answer: ESO has until just before WoD's pre-patch launch to prove itself (versus WoW).

Two things that ESO needs RIGHT now:
1.) our @LoginName IDs need to be masked with something else, I can't believe someone signed off on letting one half of the login pair be visible... fail
2a.) it should note take 30-45 seconds to report spam be it incoming through zone chat, by whisper, or by in-game mail - 2-4 seconds tops! that is the Gold standard that WoW (heck my WoW spamfilter addon automatically reports most spammers to Blizzard, the rest only take 2-4 seconds of clicks)
2b.) reporting someone for spam should automatically have you ignore them on their whole account and ignoring someone should do the same - Zenimax have an opportunity to do something basic but crucial _better_ than Blizzard does, let's hope that they take it

SlickCat

Zoliru wrote: »

Wildstar is the only mmo that have a chance aggaints wow

Lol at Wildstar! Sorry, maybe you like it but if the first thing out of its mouth is that 'it is not a WoW clone' then it has already failed in my mind.

If you are a fledgling MMO, DO NOT COMPARE yourself with WoW for it is a big honking dragon and YOU taste good with ketchup.

Eris

I think that people don't necessarily understand what it would take for any game to beat World of Warcraft because they don't really see what they are up against. It is not a matter of software engineering, it is a matter of social engineering.

One problem that I've had with some of my friends is that I say hey I'm going to play X game and they say have fun. I ask why they don't want to try a different game and they say... I have so many friends on World of Warcraft, I don't really see the need to change games.

So many people play the games for social that all World of Warcraft has to do is release enough content to keep people interested and the players do the rest of the work keeping each other in the game.

Sure some people leave for other games but a lot of them go back for new content releases and such and think oh yeah I have a lot of friends here, I'll hang out awhile and see what's up.

It keeps the attrition down and makes it hard to get people to leave for other games regardless of the design or content.

A true WoW-killer would have to be excellent software engineering but even better at social engineering. So far, nobody has managed to do that.

DragonMother

No, because ESO and WoW are two very different fish in a very big ocean.
ESO is designed around immersion, and a lore that has spanned about thirty years in the making.
WoW basically is the ten year old baby just getting it's act together and throwing more and more hissy fits to gain new players left and right.

ESO community is built for the long haul, WoW community is slowly decaying and falling apart in a way that no restorations, no rebuilds, and no expansions could ever recover. While we are jaded from previous experiences, we are extremely hopeful to see ESO grow and flourish for roleplayers, pve players, and pvp players together.

zaria

loops73 wrote: »

Davidm wrote: »

Will elder scrolls online give world of warcraft a run for its money?

rofl, that's funny...eso will be free to play in 6 months

Why? note that this is just a few months after the console release.
I'm also a bit surprised you play a game you don't like, I assume you was in beta so you know how the game would be like.
Only a few players was not in beta.

We have no knowledge of the numbers of players yet, obviously its far fewer than in beta who had both people who would buy and people who did not.
Cyrodil is no indication as during beta you had far more people in PvP than currently as during beta it was little else to do while now most players are still leveling up.

Moraisu

A MMO lifeblood is it's community and this game has none, it's as someone made a The Elder Scrolls Single-Player game and then went "oh, I forgot, this is a MMO! Let's add some public zerfests... I mean, public dungeons and some instanced griefers spawning grounds... I mean, group dungeons".

Look, the game is great, love the story, love the art direction, love the game engine, but it's not MMO material, it's a good Single Player The Elder Scrolls game and a mediocre MMO one.

oh, and the fact that Wildstart will be out in less than two months followed by what should be of the most important expansions in World of Warcraft, no... not only this game won't even come close to what World of Warcraft was... it won't even be able to survive in a subscription based system.

Why am I being so negative? I am in a MMO and I haven't been able to find a PuG group, why? Because the grouping tool is broken, the first three group dungeons I did all bugged out, I'm serious, three differente group dungeons... they all bugged out and we had to restrart them...

So, yeah... the game is buggy... very, very buggy...

And the fact that they want me to pay a monthly fee when the EU servers are not even in the EU, resulting in lag, constant rollbacks, abilities just not responding...

Want to "save" this game? Give First Person View FOV sliders, enable native controller support, true FullScreen, Real AA, fix the Public Dungeon zerging and give us loot and group tools for group dungeons (as in the ability to kick someone out of the instance, Roll windows for looter chests and real loot drops, not green items from the final boss of a group dungeon).

knightblaster

Eris wrote: »

A true WoW-killer would have to be excellent software engineering but even better at social engineering. So far, nobody has managed to do that.

It's true that the social aspect is what keeps people there -- that, plus the investment (in time/achievements) that they already have there. But that wasn't really engineered, per se. It came about due to a confluence of events that cannot be replicated. A main factor is that the market is so big now overall, that, apart from WoW, which retains its playerbase for the reasons mentioned, the overall MMO playerbase is splintered between a lot of games. That's very unlikely to change, because unlike when WoW was released in 2004, there is just a lot more competition in the space now, and a lot more games to cater to different niches (and a bigger MMO playerbase overall, as well, of course). I don't think you can socially engineer the kind of loyalty people have to WoW for any new game.

It's possible that Blizzard's next MMO will come closest to that, because there are still a lot of "Blizzard fans", and that may give it an initial boost when it launches that it can rely on -- and perhaps a lot who are currently in WoW will move to the new one, and that will replicate, to some degree, the situation WoW had. But for anyone else to replicate what happened with WoW between 2004 and 2006, when the number of subscribers ballooned in a way that no-one in the gaming industry ever expected, including Blizzard itself, is extremely unlikely. Just a different situation now than then in the market and the industry.