01-28-2014, 08:21 PM
(01-28-2014, 05:22 PM)Wastelander Wrote: World of Warcraft is an interesting phenomenon in the sense that I have no idea how it's still around besides it having a massive core of fans that are basically addicted to the game like it's crack.
One thing that you can not fault Blizzard on is that they know how to keep a story up for as long as they want to. The game has changed quite a lot since Vanilla WoW and I recently came back a month or so ago and the changes from now and back when Cata launched are really shocking but I am still enjoying the game because the game still has enjoyable people I can get to know.
(01-28-2014, 05:22 PM)Wastelander Wrote: Adendum: Don't get me wrong, I think it's a well designed game, but it's outdated and surpassed on a lot of levels. And the subscription isn't helping matters either. By all accounts, it should have petered out long ago.
This is where I disagree with you. The subscription model, Pay to play if you will, may seem like an outdated business model due to many MMOs going free to play. But there is something that is missing with many of these MMOs, backstory. Warcraft has been around years before World of Warcraft came out and thus the franchise had a backstory to use to help further the plot and also for the expansions. But I digress; the pay to play model works due to the online shop having zero items that boost your character in any way where other games are free to play but allow players access to items to boost their power which will cause an imbalance with the game. Another game that was recently announced as a pay to play game is Wildstar. This MMO is highly anticipated by many regardless of the business model due to how the game plays and how the devs are handling all the details in the game. Blizzard still tries to listen to their fans which has faulted them in the past, which I am sure is one of the reasons why they lost so many subscribers lately, but I still believe they have what it takes to keep WoW alive for a long time. Not to mention with their new expansion, the character models are getting updated, which is something fans have been wanting since around Wrath of the Lich King.