Rift Developer: WoW's Current State is ''Samey''
Trion Worlds' Will Cook says that World of Warcraft's problem is that it really hasn't changed over the years, offering more of the same.
Trion Worlds' Will Cook said that the studio wanted to take credit for the decline in World of Warcraft subscriptions over the last few months, as its own popular fantasy-based MMORPG Rift is getting ready to reach its 1-million-unit-sold milestone. But eventually he admitted that users are probably just tired of the same gamplay, and that Cataclysm didn't do enough to revitalize the social raiding and level grinding.
"Well a lot of people said no game would kill WoW, WoW would sort of kill itself," he said. "And while I know we’d love to take credit for it, and I don't know, I mean it's almost shameful that this giant launch window that we have, nobody is releasing anything. A lot of luck has come our way but I don't think we're sitting idle. We have worked really, really hard to keep the momentum, to keep people playing, and we have a lot of plans for where we will take the game."
Back in May, Activision Blizzard reported during an earnings call that subscriptions to World of Warcraft had fallen to pre-Cataclysm subscriber levels: from 12 million to 11.4 million by the end of March. CEO Mike Morhaime blamed the drop on the fact that players swooped in and consumed Cataclysm faster than any previous expansion, and thus dropped back out of sight. Later on Blizzard said that future expansions may be on a year-to-year basis instead.
But Trion Worlds' David Reid actually believed that Rift was the cause of World of Warcraft's dip in subscribers. "It was a pleasure to see that in the latest Activision Blizzard earnings call, they inquired about Rift when Blizzard announced that their subscriber numbers went from 12 million to 11.4 million. You can do some math... we know very well where those 600,000 people are," he boasted.
While it's possible those gamers have switched over to Rift, Cook blames part of World of Warcraft's decline on the fact that it simply hasn't evolved enough to keep players hooked. "It seems like WoW is these days...not lackluster...but it feels like everybody was worried Cataclysm was going to change too much," he said. "And the feeling I got was that it didn’t change enough. It is the samey kind of thing."
"It's phenomenal, the phasing is great, it's essentially the same game it was six years ago in a lot of ways," he added. "But it's not different enough and most people I know are sort of fading from it. It's still the raiding game and social game that kept me in it for so long, kept me re-upping, but people seem to be fading from that."
Rift launched on March 2, 2011, a fantasy-based MMORPG featuring a dynamic world named Telara. "Rifts" randomly appear across the landscape, portals that bring invading monsters out to conquer the surrounding territory. These invaders consist of six classes – earth, fire, air, water, life and death – which despise each other. The game uses the Gamebryo engine and supports DirectX 11, SLI and Nvidia Vision 3D.
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Tried Rift, was just a WOW clone with combat not as good, didn't buy it, was too samey.
WoW indeed was 'samey' at its release (it didn't really introduce any new features to the MMO genre) and is even more so after all these years.
But Rift's devs should be the last to criticize that: they were content to make an uninspired copy of an uninspired copy (WoW).
I'm not sure what the WoW developers expected. They effectively spent 2 years to release 5 levels and 5 zones (iirc), rebuilt the whole rest of the world (that wasn't even broken) so that players might go through it one more time perhaps. This was after saying that they would release an expansion per year.
Perhaps what they should have doen with those 2 years was release a *massive* expansion with *new* content instead of rehashing all the old stuff.
If they had, I would probably still be playing.
I think WoW is dead (or at least dying), but just doesn't realise it yet.
Maybe if they ditch the idiots making the current decisions, they might come back from this.
I'm not sure what the WoW developers expected. They effectively spent 2 years to release 5 levels and 5 zones (iirc), rebuilt the whole rest of the world (that wasn't even broken) so that players might go through it one more time perhaps. This was after saying that they would release an expansion per year.
Perhaps what they should have doen with those 2 years was release a *massive* expansion with *new* content instead of rehashing all the old stuff.
If they had, I would probably still be playing.
I think WoW is dead (or at least dying), but just doesn't realise it yet.
Maybe if they ditch the idiots making the current decisions, they might come back from this.
I'm not sure what the WoW developers expected. They effectively spent 2 years to release 5 levels and 5 zones (iirc), rebuilt the whole rest of the world (that wasn't even broken) so that players might go through it one more time perhaps. This was after saying that they would release an expansion per year.
Perhaps what they should have doen with those 2 years was release a *massive* expansion with *new* content instead of rehashing all the old stuff.
If they had, I would probably still be playing.
I think WoW is dead (or at least dying), but just doesn't realise it yet.
Maybe if they ditch the idiots making the current decisions, they might come back from this.
Oops! Sorry bout that
WoW is taking casualties. From the divided community, to the stale content, damage PvP and the mentality Blizzard has allowed to grow and fester among the player-base, it's only a matter of time until WoW realises that it's lost itself. It's all instant gratification now - gear, gear, gear; thrills, thrills, thrills. What actually made the game popular in the first place (the lore, the stories, the deep settings, the morality of the world, the depth and scale and the atmosphere) have all been pushed under the carpet in favour of 'faster this', 'better that', 'simplified the other'. Homogenisation killed the depth, the increased use of phasing segregated the community and made the game more linear, and the way in which Blizzard only focused on PvP and PvE really damaged the game, as they didn't used to be the only things of value in the game. Furthermore, World PvP was one of WoW's selling points, but WoW has now 'evolved' past that, because it was seen as pointless or irritating because people didn't understand that value isn't always in the form of a reward, and so cried for it to be removed. It also doesn't help that players (who, let's face it, will usually take the easiest route) can level just as easily by staying in cities and not even experiencing the game world (which incidentally has been redone and in the doing lost its soul somehow - all atmosphere has gone from the redone zones in favour of flashy quests and lots of attention grabbing gimmicks.)
Ohh well, it'll be good for the MMO genre to unseat WoW from its throne - it'll allow the genre to refresh itself and offer us players more options (which is always a great thing.) Let's just hope they learn from their mistakes and don't allow Titan to damage itself/its players in the same way WoW did/is doing.
-Nih
Have been playing retail WoW since December 2010, cancelled my subscription last week. After raising two level 85's and getting another to 74, I'm sick to the back teeth of wow. I played private wow for over a year before retail but that was just a PVP server. Perhaps I should of tried to get PVP gear on my 85's but meh, I spent most days logging on, doing dailies, logging off. I'd come back for a new expansion or huge content update (4.2 isn't big enough for me to come back).
Hmmh, a 600k drop from 12million can hardly be considered as "Dying." I wish Rift the best of luck, and in a year or two we will be discussing how rift is Un-rifting.
Wow has just simplified the spec trees making them impossible to customize to your play style, thats 1 thing that made me cancel my account and secondly the time and effort to get the full tier sets from icc 25 man heroic onlyto get it replaced with bloody green item drops from questing whats the point, in 5 months time itll be the same old story again . wow is on its way out imo