Post by Morreion on Apr 22, 2014 15:11:57 GMT -5
Ask Massively: What's with all the WoW hate?
This is an interesting article. The author gives 6 reasons for the popular pastime of WoW-hating, here's one:
Resentment
Some folks blame World of Warcraft for all of the industry's woes. As a sandbox fan, I can often see where this type is coming from. WoW changed the MMOscape in a huge way and made it difficult until fairly recently for studios to break from that 2004 template and still see publishing and financial success. If you liked pre-WoW, non-themepark games, you've been out of luck for a long time, and it's hard not to resent the game because of it, even if you know it's not wholly responsible and even when you know you're neglecting all the impressive contributions WoW has made to the genre along the way.
That's probably my biggest reason to resent WoW
Here's Jef Reahard's take in the comments section (he's another virtual worlds fan):
I guess I fall under the resentment label, because no matter how you attempt to spin it, WoW was in fact directly responsible for the decline of MMOs as virtual worlds and the broadening of a niche market to the point where MMOs were designed for people who didn't like them pre-WoW.
We can play the hypothetical game and go 'if it wasn't WoW, some other title would have done it,' but that's, well, hypothetical and largely useless. It was WoW, and despite questionable claims of impressive contributions (questing? lol), the game singlehandedly diverted a genre and set sandbox development back by at least a decade.
Pre-2004 MMOs were largely sandboxes. EQ was the outlier. Even games that leaned more towards themepark sensibilities (AO) were crammed full of virtual world features that WoW subsequently failed to include. WoW's primary contributions to the MMO space were streamlining/feature removal and the corresponding number of muggles it sucked in via its combo of accessibility and recognizability (low sys req plus the Blizz name/marketing engine).
Which, as the OP mentioned, isn't necessarily a positive thing. More fans/people/diversity is great, until it turns baseball into football, screwing the baseball fans in the process.
Ultimately, WoW was conceived of and brought to market by EQ raiders who took EQ and made its pre-endgame experience soloable. And WoW's legacy reflects that joyless progression-porn anti-creative grindpark mindset to its core. I'm glad it's there for the people who need an MMO-lite experience, but I'm also glad that the genre has finally woken up from its WoW-induced malaise and is taking steps to recapture what originally set it apart from every other type of video game.
Does saying so make me a "hater?" Ok.
But imo "hate" implies that you spend lots of time thinking about something. The only time I think about WoW is when a WoW-was-innovative revisionist history discussion happens along
.
This is an interesting article. The author gives 6 reasons for the popular pastime of WoW-hating, here's one:
Resentment
Some folks blame World of Warcraft for all of the industry's woes. As a sandbox fan, I can often see where this type is coming from. WoW changed the MMOscape in a huge way and made it difficult until fairly recently for studios to break from that 2004 template and still see publishing and financial success. If you liked pre-WoW, non-themepark games, you've been out of luck for a long time, and it's hard not to resent the game because of it, even if you know it's not wholly responsible and even when you know you're neglecting all the impressive contributions WoW has made to the genre along the way.
That's probably my biggest reason to resent WoW
Here's Jef Reahard's take in the comments section (he's another virtual worlds fan):
I guess I fall under the resentment label, because no matter how you attempt to spin it, WoW was in fact directly responsible for the decline of MMOs as virtual worlds and the broadening of a niche market to the point where MMOs were designed for people who didn't like them pre-WoW.
We can play the hypothetical game and go 'if it wasn't WoW, some other title would have done it,' but that's, well, hypothetical and largely useless. It was WoW, and despite questionable claims of impressive contributions (questing? lol), the game singlehandedly diverted a genre and set sandbox development back by at least a decade.
Pre-2004 MMOs were largely sandboxes. EQ was the outlier. Even games that leaned more towards themepark sensibilities (AO) were crammed full of virtual world features that WoW subsequently failed to include. WoW's primary contributions to the MMO space were streamlining/feature removal and the corresponding number of muggles it sucked in via its combo of accessibility and recognizability (low sys req plus the Blizz name/marketing engine).
Which, as the OP mentioned, isn't necessarily a positive thing. More fans/people/diversity is great, until it turns baseball into football, screwing the baseball fans in the process.
Ultimately, WoW was conceived of and brought to market by EQ raiders who took EQ and made its pre-endgame experience soloable. And WoW's legacy reflects that joyless progression-porn anti-creative grindpark mindset to its core. I'm glad it's there for the people who need an MMO-lite experience, but I'm also glad that the genre has finally woken up from its WoW-induced malaise and is taking steps to recapture what originally set it apart from every other type of video game.
Does saying so make me a "hater?" Ok.
But imo "hate" implies that you spend lots of time thinking about something. The only time I think about WoW is when a WoW-was-innovative revisionist history discussion happens along
.
