Let's compare early WoW with early TOR

[Chromiie]

And for the unteenth time you simply can not compare a game that had 7+ years of continued development polish and content wise to a game that has come out a month ago.

 

Yes you can! How about instead of trying the same thing and not even getting it right try something new? I'll be playing ToR until Guild Wars 2 because that looks different from anything Bioware tried so far.

[Garbald]

Uhm, being different has nothing to do with the grade of polish or the amount of content available...

and both will not be up to par with long running games, I can pretty much promise you that.

 

GW2 has some good ideas though I give you that

[Offended]

WoW was out 7 years ago it was sold on 5 cd discs

 

Voice Cover ALL the quests you would need like 80gb of hard drive space just for WoW

 

 

The Original game was 4 CD's, still have the original discs. the 2nd copy of wow i bought bout 3 months later had 5 CD's. Not sure when they added the 5th CD>

 

Voice overs for all the quests for wow? you would need WAY more than 80gb.

 

http://www.wowhead.com/quests?filter=cr=34;crs=1;crv=0

9896 quests found

 

there are 5545 quests for lvl 1-60 alone.

 

933 quests found for lvl 1-10 characters.

 

There probably isn't more than 900 quests in the entirety of swtor.

[PjPablo]

The Original game was 4 CD's, still have the original discs. the 2nd copy of wow i bought bout 3 months later had 5 CD's. Not sure when they added the 5th CD>

 

Voice overs for all the quests for wow? you would need WAY more than 80gb.

 

http://www.wowhead.com/quests?filter=cr=34;crs=1;crv=0

9896 quests found

 

there are 5545 quests for lvl 1-60 alone.

 

933 quests found for lvl 1-10 characters.

 

There probably isn't more than 900 quests in the entirety of swtor.

 

For TOR there 4267 missions. 304 for 1-10.

[lrage]

And for the unteenth time you simply can not compare a game that had 7+ years of continued development polish and content wise to a game that has come out a month ago.

 

You kinda have to because that your options of what to play. No one says, "well iPhone's came out first so I'll buy an Android and give them 2 years to catch up". They say, "What has the features I most want right now."

 

The only way another game will beat WoW that isn't from Blizzard itself (since Blizzard will easily implement all WoW features into their new game) is to come up with something extraordinary that makes people ignore the lack of *insert features here*

 

SWTOR has a few things that they tried to go down this road with that stand out to me:

 

Complete story driven leveling

Companions

 

 

And it might work to buy them some time. I've probably got about another 45 days I can happily play this game by leveling another class or two before I get to: "OK, now what?"

 

In that time they need to raise the bar of content. And really, I'm not totally thrilled with the leveling experience. Orange items should have been level 50 only because I don't upgrade crap, just "mods". And even then a "change item to X look" would have been better then the mods. Orange gear/mods have totally taken away my "ooooh shinies" new loot thrill for me.

[Grabemx]

WoW on release was FAR better than SW:ToR.

 

It also had way better PVP.

 

This statement proves you weren't around for WoW's release.

 

You are completely wrong on both counts.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Grabemx

[Manxus]

To the OP: why bother? At all? You can't compare their launches when they released in an entirely different gaming climate. When WOW was released, MMORPGs in general had insane learning curves, counter-intuitive interfaces and ridiculous system requirements. WOW came along and was the first really accessible MMO to the common man so yeah of course it remains a milestone.

But holy hell that was...8, 9 years ago? Now the market is flooded with quality MMORPGs (although their forums would have you believe all of them are universally terrible) and Star Wars literally has nothing to do with WOW. I doubt they're even competing for the same audience.

[genmyke]

And yet its the most successful MMO ever. Odd.....

 

a game selling well despite it flaws doesnt mean it was very good at its time

 

look at CoD games..... it is the best selling fps to date and yet they get worse on each game

 

i wouldnt say MW2 or MW3 were successful games they both offered some of the worst MP with balancing issues and lag and hit detection.

Edited January 23, 2012 by genmyke

[Offended]

For TOR there 4267 missions. 304 for 1-10.

 

the torhead database is a mess.

http://www.torhead.com/missions/level/1-10/reqlevel/1-10

Look how many duplicates there are with the change being caps or some have a tooltip some don't.

[PjPablo]

the torhead database is a mess.

http://www.torhead.com/missions/level/1-10/reqlevel/1-10

Look how many duplicates there are with the change being caps or some have a tooltip some don't.

 

I know but the same goes the wowhead as well. figure the issues cancel each other out.

[GalacticKegger]

the torhead database is a mess.

http://www.torhead.com/missions/level/1-10/reqlevel/1-10

Look how many duplicates there are with the change being caps or some have a tooltip some don't.

APIs aren't fully opened up yet. Once they are the database should populate more accurately. Edited January 23, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Kryttos]

why do people compare TOR to WoW. WoW is NOT the standard for MMO's and sure as hell wasn't the first.

 

 

Did anyone play Everquest 1? It had way more problems. and was still an enjoyable game.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Kryttos

[Offended]

I know but the same goes the wowhead as well. figure the issues cancel each other out.

 

old wowhead did that, but the new cache formats solved that issue and they cleaned up the database quite a bit.

[GalacticKegger]

idd it takes time, just like SWTOR will.

= lost on too many.

[pawnstar]

god i hate this comparisons, its a game that came out in 2004 vs a game in 2011 that's a HUGE difference. Yes MMO launches WILL have bugs at launch, no denying it nor getting around it but its been 7years to learn from those mistakes. I for one am not mad cuz SWTOR is buggy as **** but cuz they left out so much that is common ground in mmo's. Stuff like combat log, customizable UI, guild banks, weather, water physics, AA, a freaken endgame. I mean this is stuff that already exist in other games, and it works, so that should be your base line. Now all they had to do was make it better. Instead they cut corners and spent it all on VO. now they have and a stellar RPG with co-op. Then they have the audacity to want us to get excited about guild banks and AA that are coming in a few months?, woot! amazing!. Seriously BW, miss the 2007 boat there.

 

TL:DR version:

Players expectation values are much higher now then 2004 and MMO community as a whole is far less forgiving.

 

If u go buy a phone today and they give u a brick size cell phone and tell u , "its cool man, no worries in a few months with upgrades you'll catch up to everyone else, just stick with it" you shove that phone so far up... well u get it.

[genmyke]

= lost on too many.

 

ALL mmos need time to get better WoW just happen to be the MMO most forgiven its problems right now people are seeing the truth about WoW now and quitting the game and it is not even burn outs the raid content sucks and pvp is so bad it is almost at the level of vanilla right now blizzard gave clear signs cataclysm is a failure even their lead dev stepped down (ghost crawler)

[Coramac]

I think this is a good comparison to make- not just from a SWTOR vs. Vanilla WoW, but MMOs in 2004 vs. MMOs in 2011/2012.

 

First, WoW was not really very innovative. WoW has never been innovative. WoW has been very good at stealing and improving on ideas from other games.

 

Flight paths are very similar to Luclin and PoP ports. Everquest had mounts before EQ. Instances were in Everquest before WoW. I'm pretty sure DAOC had quest markers above NPCs before WoW did and changed up the quest system from Everquest's /say based system before WoW. On that note, it's actually good to look back a bit further. Everquest was basically a MUD with graphics. WoW, on the other hand, wasn't.

 

 

 

1.) In terms of game orientation, there are a lot of similarities between Vanilla WoW and Everquest that are radically different from modern MMOs. Everquest had camps. You basically camped NPCs until they dropped the gear you wanted. This isn't too far removed from how WoW was at release. I was a maintank and helped out with raids in Vanilla WoW for a strong raid guild. I had to gear people up. I basically had a list of what ever class BIS was for 5 mans. We went to those zones- you had to travel and while it was no epic journey like cross continent travel in Everquest- it took a lot of time. We ran the same instance repeatedly until the target gear dropped then moved on to the next one. Gearing up in 5mans was frequently a multi-week at least process. Gearing up in raids was significantly longer. If you were casual, it was going to take you a very long time to get in all blues unless you were lucky and then they wouldn't all be good blues.

 

2.) Guilds mattered. You can say they matter in the modern MMO, but guilds are less than a shadow of what they were. My guild in Everquest had somewhere around 100-120 active members. Raids were almost always 70+. The guild was really your attachment to the game more than anything else. I think that's why so many people go back to Everquest only to be disappointed. There were different types of guilds- cutting edge raid guilds, casual raid guilds, family guilds, PvP guilds on Rallos, recruit guilds, etc. Your guild really was the single most defining aspect of your gameplay. This really wasn't that different in Vanilla WoW. Like in Everquest, if you weren't in a guild that raided, you weren't doing any raid content that was completely outdated. The raids guilds I was in for Vanilla WoW all had well over 50 active members. It wasn't uncommon see more than 50 people logged in. You could do /who on many guilds and have too many members to list. This hasn't been the case in a long time. TBC really started the change although you could Bliz's direction shift with ZG and AQ20. By continually pushing content to be available to the greatest number of people, guilds were essentially shattered.

 

3.) Bugs and downtime. I don't know what people are talking about when they say WoW was down for 20 of the first 30 days or that it was completely bugged. A few years from now we're probably going to hear how WoW had a bug that infected you with AIDs, caused unwanted pregnancies, or killed your first born child. There were bugs. There weren't THAT many bugs and few if any real deal breakers. There was a tremendous amount of lag in most areas and on most servers. This is what happens when your sales and subscriptions increase at like a million every months or so and you aren't expecting it. SWTOR doesn't have a lot of "bugs." Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't feel that the stutter bug is so much of a "bug" as it is a design flaw. I guess it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, but there was nothing like this in WoW Vanilla. There were issues. They were FAR less irritating issues. Latency issues are very frustrating, but at the same time, very understandable. Ability delay not due to delay is very frustrating and not earily forgivable.

 

4.) Add Ons, UI, Macros. All of these were in WoW at release. If you think otherwise, you are wrong. I used Satrina's combat parser far in advance of BWL to parse out a single roll hit table. It would be a complete and total nightmare to do this in SWTOR. Even if you don't like the ability to use macros for abilities (which honestly, I do mind to some extent), you should want them for superior targeting options. I'm a minimalist when it comes to UIs. I think it comes from PvP roots in RZ where you had to be on your toes all the time. Playing on Illidan sure didn't help the paranoia. Seriously, how many people actually bind camera reverse (to quick check behind you)? It's very cluttered, disorganized, and takes up far too much space on the screen. I've already played more SWTOR with the default UI than I did in WoW and I played WoW for 5+ years.

 

5.) Far superior and greater content. This is counter intuitive to a lot of people. There's more group instances in the game. The difference is that Vanilla WoW content did not just "get cleared." Raids were a combination between careful military like planning and sychronized swimming. Those of you who did Garr with nothing but Hunter's Mark probably know what I'm talking about. First, you had to organize 40 people. This wasn't nearly as hard as people like to claim it was if you weren't in a casual guild. Second, you had to have prepared for the raid too- flasks, potions, etc. Third, you had to discuss the fight which before something was on farm status could sometimes take a while. This was also found to a large degree in 5mans albiet on a much lesser scale. You didn't just "pull." You assisted off the tank for the kill order or Hunter's Mark if you had one. CC was coordinated in advance without the use of marking for the most part. This plays into content because it made things take longer. I can do three flashpoints at least in the time it took to clear a Vanilla dungeon before grossly outgearing it. MMOs are easier. Content goes faster.

 

6.) Here's a big difference. Player orientation. If you don't think WoW was in tune with it's player base in Vanilla, you are just wrong. It was. It was an MMO designed by MMO players for MMO players. I hate Furor and Tigole. I played a hybrid in Everquest. You can talk about the "whiners" and "ragers" all you want. WoW was very, very largely influenced by two of the biggest of them in gaming history. Furor was banned from EQ forums. He organized server crashes when he felt Warriors were getting shafted (granted, they frequently were).

 

http://forums.evercrest.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=43271

 

Here's a post about one of his epic tantrums.

 

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-rehabilitation-of-blizzards-alex-furor-afrasiabi/#7018

 

Another interesting post about him.

 

Say what you want, but he knew the MMO genre inside and out.

 

Compared too Gabe Amatangelo.

 

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/devbios/gabeAmatangelo.php

 

The difference here is very simple. Look at his favorite games listed:

What are your favorite video/computer games of all time? What games are you playing right now? What game should the reader be playing if he’s not?

Starflight, Starflight 2, Ultima IV, Ultima VII, Ultima VII part 2, Ultima Online, Wing Commander, Wing Commander 2, Command and Conquer Red Alert, Unreal Tournament II, Bauldur's Gate, Bauldur's Gate II and Neverwinter Nights.

 

I am currently playing Burning Crusade and just finished Lord of the Rings Online.

 

I'm not saying he's a bad guy or isn't smart or anything like that. Furor (aka Alex Afrasiabi) was a tantrum throwing MMO addict who despite being a complete expletive has a tremendous (or at least had) wealth of information on what makes an MMO excellent. Gabe is a marketing guy- and he does that exceptionally well. It just don't think he's ever really been immersed in the gamer side of the culture. It shows.

[Daedricshots]

I played WoW on release, and although it did have some bugs it didn't have nearly as many problems as SWTOR does. SWTOR problems include everything from light rays shooting through the world, becoming invincible in combat by dancing, glitching mana to have infinite healing, duping items in your mail box, all combat actions delayed by half a second, having high-res textures vanish, etc.

 

There is a difference between having some bugs and having a BROKEN, UNFINISHED GAME.

 

over exaggerate more

[silverlobo]

I'm not going to read through all of this, but in case someone has not already mentioned it.

 

Everquest was released in Nov of 1999, and was the dominate MMO when WoW released in Mar 2004. Not only was WoW better then EQ straight out of the box, it absolutely blew it away. EQ had 4.5 years of "polish" but it mattered little.

 

SWTOR should be compared to current products, and it fails to offer as much as WoW atm.

[genmyke]

god i hate this comparisons, its a game that came out in 2004 vs a game in 2011 that's a HUGE difference. Yes MMO launches WILL have bugs at launch, no denying it nor getting around it but its been 7years to learn from those mistakes. I for one am not mad cuz SWTOR is buggy as **** but cuz they left out so much that is common ground in mmo's. Stuff like combat log, customizable UI, guild banks, weather, water physics, AA, a freaken endgame. I mean this is stuff that already exist in other games, and it works, so that should be your base line. Now all they had to do was make it better. Instead they cut corners and spent it all on VO. now they have and a stellar RPG with co-op. Then they have the audacity to want us to get excited about guild banks and AA that are coming in a few months?, woot! amazing!. Seriously BW, miss the 2007 boat there.

 

TL:DR version:

Players expectation values are much higher now then 2004 and MMO community as a whole is far less forgiving.

 

If u go buy a phone today and they give u a brick size cell phone and tell u , "its cool man, no worries in a few months with upgrades you'll catch up to everyone else, just stick with it" you shove that phone so far up... well u get it.

 

so about that no end game how i am grouping up with my guild killing bosses in a RAID or how there is pvp gear i can get at 50 by doing alot of pvp.

 

who wants swimming in this game? most annoying this in a MMO

 

you act like Bioware CODED WoW there is a big different between Coding a game and playing a game you are not going to figure out a game code by playing it.

[Doomsaga]

ALL mmos need time to get better WoW just happen to be the MMO most forgiven its problems right now people are seeing the truth about WoW now and quitting the game and it is not even burn outs the raid content sucks and pvp is so bad it is almost at the level of vanilla right now blizzard gave clear signs cataclysm is a failure even their lead dev stepped down (ghost crawler)

 

wow is still heavily populated dunno what ur talkin about. i play both and even got ppl comin from this game saying how awful this is

[genmyke]

I'm not going to read through all of this, but in case someone has not already mentioned it.

 

Everquest was released in Nov of 1999, and was the dominate MMO when WoW released in Mar 2004. Not only was WoW better then EQ straight out of the box, it absolutely blew it away. EQ had 4.5 years of "polish" but it mattered little.

 

SWTOR should be compared to current products, and it fails to offer as much as WoW atm.

 

that is because they brought out EQ2 which was a huge waste of money

 

SoE proves they do not need to be in the mmo market for all the dumb mistakes they did SWG NGE lol.....

[Doomsaga]

I think this is a good comparison to make- not just from a SWTOR vs. Vanilla WoW, but MMOs in 2004 vs. MMOs in 2011/2012.

 

First, WoW was not really very innovative. WoW has never been innovative. WoW has been very good at stealing and improving on ideas from other games.

 

Flight paths are very similar to Luclin and PoP ports. Everquest had mounts before EQ. Instances were in Everquest before WoW. I'm pretty sure DAOC had quest markers above NPCs before WoW did and changed up the quest system from Everquest's /say based system before WoW. On that note, it's actually good to look back a bit further. Everquest was basically a MUD with graphics. WoW, on the other hand, wasn't.

 

 

 

1.) In terms of game orientation, there are a lot of similarities between Vanilla WoW and Everquest that are radically different from modern MMOs. Everquest had camps. You basically camped NPCs until they dropped the gear you wanted. This isn't too far removed from how WoW was at release. I was a maintank and helped out with raids in Vanilla WoW for a strong raid guild. I had to gear people up. I basically had a list of what ever class BIS was for 5 mans. We went to those zones- you had to travel and while it was no epic journey like cross continent travel in Everquest- it took a lot of time. We ran the same instance repeatedly until the target gear dropped then moved on to the next one. Gearing up in 5mans was frequently a multi-week at least process. Gearing up in raids was significantly longer. If you were casual, it was going to take you a very long time to get in all blues unless you were lucky and then they wouldn't all be good blues.

 

2.) Guilds mattered. You can say they matter in the modern MMO, but guilds are less than a shadow of what they were. My guild in Everquest had somewhere around 100-120 active members. Raids were almost always 70+. The guild was really your attachment to the game more than anything else. I think that's why so many people go back to Everquest only to be disappointed. There were different types of guilds- cutting edge raid guilds, casual raid guilds, family guilds, PvP guilds on Rallos, recruit guilds, etc. Your guild really was the single most defining aspect of your gameplay. This really wasn't that different in Vanilla WoW. Like in Everquest, if you weren't in a guild that raided, you weren't doing any raid content that was completely outdated. The raids guilds I was in for Vanilla WoW all had well over 50 active members. It wasn't uncommon see more than 50 people logged in. You could do /who on many guilds and have too many members to list. This hasn't been the case in a long time. TBC really started the change although you could Bliz's direction shift with ZG and AQ20. By continually pushing content to be available to the greatest number of people, guilds were essentially shattered.

 

3.) Bugs and downtime. I don't know what people are talking about when they say WoW was down for 20 of the first 30 days or that it was completely bugged. A few years from now we're probably going to hear how WoW had a bug that infected you with AIDs, caused unwanted pregnancies, or killed your first born child. There were bugs. There weren't THAT many bugs and few if any real deal breakers. There was a tremendous amount of lag in most areas and on most servers. This is what happens when your sales and subscriptions increase at like a million every months or so and you aren't expecting it. SWTOR doesn't have a lot of "bugs." Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't feel that the stutter bug is so much of a "bug" as it is a design flaw. I guess it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, but there was nothing like this in WoW Vanilla. There were issues. They were FAR less irritating issues. Latency issues are very frustrating, but at the same time, very understandable. Ability delay not due to delay is very frustrating and not earily forgivable.

 

4.) Add Ons, UI, Macros. All of these were in WoW at release. If you think otherwise, you are wrong. I used Satrina's combat parser far in advance of BWL to parse out a single roll hit table. It would be a complete and total nightmare to do this in SWTOR. Even if you don't like the ability to use macros for abilities (which honestly, I do mind to some extent), you should want them for superior targeting options. I'm a minimalist when it comes to UIs. I think it comes from PvP roots in RZ where you had to be on your toes all the time. Playing on Illidan sure didn't help the paranoia. Seriously, how many people actually bind camera reverse (to quick check behind you)? It's very cluttered, disorganized, and takes up far too much space on the screen. I've already played more SWTOR with the default UI than I did in WoW and I played WoW for 5+ years.

 

5.) Far superior and greater content. This is counter intuitive to a lot of people. There's more group instances in the game. The difference is that Vanilla WoW content did not just "get cleared." Raids were a combination between careful military like planning and sychronized swimming. Those of you who did Garr with nothing but Hunter's Mark probably know what I'm talking about. First, you had to organize 40 people. This wasn't nearly as hard as people like to claim it was if you weren't in a casual guild. Second, you had to have prepared for the raid too- flasks, potions, etc. Third, you had to discuss the fight which before something was on farm status could sometimes take a while. This was also found to a large degree in 5mans albiet on a much lesser scale. You didn't just "pull." You assisted off the tank for the kill order or Hunter's Mark if you had one. CC was coordinated in advance without the use of marking for the most part. This plays into content because it made things take longer. I can do three flashpoints at least in the time it took to clear a Vanilla dungeon before grossly outgearing it. MMOs are easier. Content goes faster.

 

6.) Here's a big difference. Player orientation. If you don't think WoW was in tune with it's player base in Vanilla, you are just wrong. It was. It was an MMO designed by MMO players for MMO players. I hate Furor and Tigole. I played a hybrid in Everquest. You can talk about the "whiners" and "ragers" all you want. WoW was very, very largely influenced by two of the biggest of them in gaming history. Furor was banned from EQ forums. He organized server crashes when he felt Warriors were getting shafted (granted, they frequently were).

 

http://forums.evercrest.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=43271

 

Here's a post about one of his epic tantrums.

 

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/the-rehabilitation-of-blizzards-alex-furor-afrasiabi/#7018

 

Another interesting post about him.

 

Say what you want, but he knew the MMO genre inside and out.

 

Compared too Gabe Amatangelo.

 

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/devbios/gabeAmatangelo.php

 

The difference here is very simple. Look at his favorite games listed:

 

 

I'm not saying he's a bad guy or isn't smart or anything like that. Furor (aka Alex Afrasiabi) was a tantrum throwing MMO addict who despite being a complete expletive has a tremendous (or at least had) wealth of information on what makes an MMO excellent. Gabe is a marketing guy- and he does that exceptionally well. It just don't think he's ever really been immersed in the gamer side of the culture. It shows.

 

pretty much stopped reading after "First, WoW was not really very innovative". when wow first released it was one of the most innovative mmos in its time.

[Ralkora]

I played WoW on release, and although it did have some bugs it didn't have nearly as many problems as SWTOR does. SWTOR problems include everything from light rays shooting through the world, becoming invincible in combat by dancing, glitching mana to have infinite healing, duping items in your mail box, all combat actions delayed by half a second, having high-res textures vanish, etc.

 

There is a difference between having some bugs and having a BROKEN, UNFINISHED GAME.

 

Wow's bugs were just as similar.

 

wow had the ground disappear half the time and you fell beneath it.

 

Reckbombs oneshotting world bosses.

 

glitched Presence of Mind buff to repeatedly have instant cast pyroblasts no matter how much you cast it.

 

Wow had duping as well.

 

High res textures vanish? There was a large period where peoples heads appeared as checkered boxes and i recall shoulder pads were shrunk at one point.

 

The same problems. Just nobody remembers it.

[genmyke]

wow is still heavily populated dunno what ur talkin about. i play both and even got ppl comin from this game saying how awful this is

 

 

did you not see 2 million people quit during cata? in 1 year alone... they are doing a conference call with blizzard soon to talk about how many people did they actually lose and their lead dev stepping down is actually a blessing to the game the guy was a moron and he made the game worst since wotlk.

 

cataclysm was a failure no matter how you look at it because it lost instead of gaining or maintaining.

Edited January 23, 2012 by genmyke