WAR will be a niche game - Page 10

Grondoth · 08-25-2008, 12:45 PM

Yes, Warhammer does not have all the things WoW has. This is on purpose.
Because, when you get down to it, you've got a couple choices when entering the MMO market. You can try and compete directly with the giant leader, trying to make a game that's the same but better, or you can try something different.

Mythic went different. Because seriously, why would all those people who you mentioned ever leave WoW? Why would the raider leave to play another raiding game? Wow's only 4 years old, and they've been all about the raid content. Why would the arena players leave wow? They're catered to, and spend massive amounts of time playing in their sub-game of choice.

All those other little minigames are all over the place, too. Fishing? Lotro and FFXI have it. Vanity items? CoH had vanaty cosume pieces, FFXI has all sorts of crazy costumes, Lotro has a system where you can buy clothes and have them show up as your armour, even when you're wearing your armour. From what I've heard, EQ2 had the same thing. Alt-Rolling? That's the most time honored tradtion in MMOs. An AH gamer? EVERY mmo has an AH. Including Warhammer, it's just not active yet.

Warhammer isn't going to be able to be sucsessful by trying to be WoW 2: This time it's WARhammer. They have to do it by being different. That's why there's a strong emphasis on the conflict in the game. That's why they're always talking about the PQs and the ToK. Because noone's going to come play a game that says that it's the same as the one you're playing.

The game's not just a one trick pony, either. Yes, it's a horse show, as opposed to a circus, but it's got plenty of other things. Fighters are welcome in it, the whole game's about the conflict between the sides. But explorers who venture off the beaten path will be rewarded with puzzle jumps and unlockable rooms and secret quests and items. There's barrels of explosives just waiting to be found by people who don't like to stay on roads, there's secret bosses that have to be unlocked by having the right people stand on the right diases. There's a series of hidded items around the world left by a famous dwarf traveller that exist soley for explorers to find. The ToK is a godsend for obsessive completionists: that rep grinder? He's got 72 bars to fill per side. There's a massive amount of things to unlock in it, just go look at it.

No, there's not a lot of long instanced PvE. But that's a design idea, they wanted this game to be much less about the kill a big guy and get his stuff and much more about fighting through armies as members of an army yourself. No, there's not an arena, that is the antithesis of what the game's whole idea is. Warhammer is absoutley tring to be different, as you can't strive to be all things to all people when there's someone much richer, bigger, and has had time to create all the things for all those people.

Eleazar · 08-25-2008, 04:50 PM

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Originally Posted by 3Z3VH

I am not defending WoW... seeing as I quit that game over a year ago. i am just showing you how narrow-minded your rebuttal was, and to try to see what the other person was trying to say, rather than focusing on telling them they are wrong.

You are defending it and doing a rather weak job. Nothing you defended even comes close to the point he was trying to make. Picking up epics while fishing isn't a crafting or gathering skill, it is giving you a loot table of items to keep you happy until they actually added FISH, hence the term FISHING. Do you want to go mining and come across fish and shields? No, it is a crafting skill, not a mob loot table.

There were maybe what, 10 pets at release? Collecting all 10 is a niche? Grinding reputation for a system that wasn't in place until 2 years later is a niche? As far as I know the Frostsabre wasn't in at release but even if it was, collecting that ONE mount gives WoW a niche status for mounts? The AH example was not even remotely close to what he was talking about.

I'm quite aware of what he is saying and nothing that differs WoW from WAR was evident when WoW was released. Unless you think broken boring tradeskills where you watch a bar move and collecting 20 useless pets makes WoW a huge niche gathering market. I'm sure they could throw those in just for the gigantic bar watching pet niche though.

Dirigible · 08-25-2008, 05:32 PM

Blizzard are the luckiest bunch of guys in gaming to date. They really got lucky with WoW and hit it out of the park. Don't bulls**t me otherwise, Blizzard has never worked on an MMO in any capacity prior to this so they have no track record!

Say WAR will be a niche game is like saying, "tomorrow, water will be wet". Every game, and yes this includes WoW, is a niche game. There are 6 million MMO subscribers, according to MMOGChart.com, who are not interested in what WoW has to offer. That is of the appoximately 16 million MMO subscribers currently out there to date.

You see, niche is a fancy word people like to throw around to make themselves sound more intelligent. Niche neglects 100%. Of those 16 million subscribers, 10 million subscribe to WoW...62% of the market, that's a niche. WoW isn't the end all be all, and it is in fact a niche market. This whole argument is the equivalent to the console wars. It will never end. There will never be a clear winner.

It's good to debate these things though, people start to think about what they're playing rather than just mindlessly sitting at their computers clicking away. Niche was the wrong word to use though, because it can be argued down to the point where you're wrong...and you don't want to be thought of as wrong. I do want to point out the obvious point behind the original idea of this thread. WAR appears to not have enough of a polish to entice the massive audience that WoW did. WoW will always be more popular, and just like in highschool, that's all that matters.

This forum, from what my meager literacy skills have offered me, is about Warhammer Online. In the end, this is a place where debates about whether or not WAR will be less or more successful than WoW don't matter. What matters is that WAR is released so that those of us who do want to play it will get that opportunity. We all (well most of us) also hope that in supporting WAR that it gets the chance to flourish and offer us the great MMO experience we're all expecting of it. I for one am not going to play WAR to compare it to WoW. It's like comparing a Red Delicious Apple to a Granny Smith Apple...in the end their both apples and it's all about which you prefer.

I would offer that arguing "WoW is better" is a complete waste of time in a community that is focused on playing WAR, but it will only fall on deaf ears.

liquidrage · 08-25-2008, 06:38 PM

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Originally Posted by Dirigible

Blizzard are the luckiest bunch of guys in gaming to date. They really got lucky with WoW and hit it out of the park. Don't bulls**t me otherwise, Blizzard has never worked on an MMO in any capacity prior to this so they have no track record!

I've been playing MMO's for over 10 years. And Blizzard games for over 15 years. Blizzard, before WoW, was considered by many to be the luckiest game development house around. Warcraft II, Diablo and Diablo II, StarCraft. They all sucked. It was pure luck that had them look at the commercial success of EQ and to a lesser extent AC and DAoC, and bring about the most successful MMORPG to date. It's pure luck. And anyone telling you different is feeding you a line of crap.

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Say WAR will be a niche game is like saying, "tomorrow, water will be wet". Every game, and yes this includes WoW, is a niche game.

Exactly. People all the time try to use words that need to be taken in content. There's really no room for that in my world. I prefer to argue semantically. Language, it's digital, not analog.

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You see, niche is a fancy word people like to throw around to make themselves sound more intelligent.

Exactly. To be honest, I think it's a made up word.

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Niche neglects 100%. Of those 16 million subscribers, 10 million subscribe to WoW...62% of the market, that's a niche. WoW isn't the end all be all, and it is in fact a niche market. This whole argument is the equivalent to the console wars. It will never end. There will never be a clear winner.

Great point. If "niche" were a real word, I think it would most likely mean "to win". If you don't have 100% you don't win. End of discussion.

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Niche was the wrong word to use though, because it can be argued down to the point where you're wrong...and you don't want to be thought of as wrong.

It's not even a real word, I think you hit the nail on the head.

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This forum, from what my meager literacy skills have offered me, is about Warhammer Online.

Don't be modest. Without people like you, other unclean people would go around making up words left and right.

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I for one am not going to play WAR to compare it to WoW. It's like comparing a Red Delicious Apple to a Granny Smith Apple...in the end their both apples and it's all about which you prefer.

I would offer that arguing "WoW is better" is a complete waste of time in a community that is focused on playing WAR, but it will only fall on deaf ears.

I think you're right here as well. A better title for this thread would have been, "WAR. Compared to WoW it's not t he same thing." And personally, I think the more apt comparisons are to Shadowbane.

Datura · 08-25-2008, 06:40 PM

Well, it looks like I've found my niche.

Teljor · 08-25-2008, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by liquidrage

That's not a contradiction. Since a few have wrongfully agreed with your point, I'll take a minute to explain.

A niche is not a definition of size except unless put in relation to a whole. A niche is a segment. A niche can be a few. Or a few million. Hockey is often thought of in America as a niche sport. Yet it's a billion dollar enterprise. Even if you wanted to argue hockey being more then a niche sport, the word itself does not mean small or unsuccessful.

that falls apart when you compare it to other american sports, witch is what certainly will happen in war.

if you stack hockey and NFL next to each other in america, NFL is much more massive.

it all depends on what you consider sucsess, if you consider LOTRO a sucsess, then by all means this will be a very good sucsess.

liquidrage · 08-25-2008, 06:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Teljor

that falls apart when you compare it to other american sports, witch is what certainly will happen in war.

if you stack hockey and NFL next to each other in america, NFL is much more massive.

it all depends on what you consider sucsess, if you consider LOTRO a sucsess, then by all means this will be a very good sucsess.

Exactly. That's the proper context. World of Warcraft is the NFL. WAR will be a success. It is too good a game not to be. And the NHL is a successful league. There's room for a lot of successful MMO's even if there's already and 800lb gorilla in the room.

Mark Jacobs has an interview discussing WoW in brief thanking it for expanding the player base dramatically. EQ was successful when it hit 100,000 active accounts. Today that wouldn't be a success. Mostly because production costs are many times higher then back in '99 when EQ was released. WAR will easily break 100,000 active accounts. The preorders already do. But WAR is not going to be the NFL. It doesn't offer enough play styles (at least in its current incarnation) to be a mainstream choice like WoW. The attraction will be much more limited in scope. But it will be a success.

Alreya · 08-25-2008, 07:00 PM

Bashing Blizzard is as pointless as constantly comparing other games to Blizzard's games. It's kind of beside the point. Blizzard sets out to make mass market games -- that is their "design niche", they do it extremely well, and they have a huge wad of cash to finance it. Other developers aren't going to be able to compete with that on its own terms, realistically, from the staffing and financial perspectives. That's just reality.

So what you do is you create games that appeal to a certain portion of the market, rather than the mass market. That's what WAR is doing. It's a sound strategy, from the business point of view. Trying to appeal to the mass market and go head to head with Big Blue is a recipe for disaster, honestly, and a road to nowhere. This way, we get the best of both worlds: the boys and girls in Irvine making accessible, fun, mass market games, and other developers making more focused titles aimed at this or that corner of the market. It can make for good games overall, if we're patient enough to avoid comparisons that don't make any sense to begin with.

Randolph · 08-25-2008, 07:01 PM

Arguing semantics is silly, the spirit of the OP's comment is that WAR will mainly appeal to a section of the larger MMO market, however, since the MMO market has grown to massive proportions, you can still be successful in terms of profitability, longevity and subscribership without being the leviathon that is WoW. I 100% agree with the OP, in that WoW has many, many facets to its experience, and that is one of the reasons it has so many players. WoW has found a way to offer something to almost every type of MMO player, although the quality of all the aspects varies greatly. There are definitely games that offer a more hardcore raiding scene, a better crafting system, a deeper player controlled economy, more area to explore, a more elaborate character advancement system, more exciting combat or more mindless timesinks, however there is no game that combines these aspects so well. WAR isn't trying to be everything to everyone like WoW, instead it is taking the path of being a game that is better for people who love PvP and just want to focus on that; like the many other games that do one thing better than WoW, it will probably not ever have the subscriber numbers that WoW has, but if it is good enough at what it does (and after the Preview Weekend I would say that it is), it can certainly find success in its own right.

ajones67 · 08-25-2008, 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alreya

Bashing Blizzard is as pointless as constantly comparing other games to Blizzard's games. It's kind of beside the point. Blizzard sets out to make mass market games -- that is their "design niche", they do it extremely well, and they have a huge wad of cash to finance it. Other developers aren't going to be able to compete with that on its own terms, realistically, from the staffing and financial perspectives. That's just reality.

So what you do is you create games that appeal to a certain portion of the market, rather than the mass market. That's what WAR is doing. It's a sound strategy, from the business point of view. Trying to appeal to the mass market and go head to head with Big Blue is a recipe for disaster, honestly, and a road to nowhere. This way, we get the best of both worlds: the boys and girls in Irvine making accessible, fun, mass market games, and other developers making more focused titles aimed at this or that corner of the market. It can make for good games overall, if we're patient enough to avoid comparisons that don't make any sense to begin with.

I agree with this in spirit.

But the flip side is, It's pointless to talk about games of the genre without talking about WoW. The impact of WoW is hard to understate.

They created the mass market. Developers have to look at what WoW has done, and how they can do better. After all, Big Blue did "fall". They missed a changing market, and let others grab the personel computer business. Nothing in business history says that WoW is invunerable to someone doing things better.

It's not out of line for people to compare the two.I know Hammer is diffferent from WoW, but it's not entirely different.Civ 4 is entirely different. There are many simularites between Hammer and WoW.

Mbj · 08-25-2008, 07:25 PM