There were no Battlegrounds, no rewards, a long ressurrection timer once you had been killed a few times. Tell me, what's great about having to wait 5 minutes before you can ressurrect if your enemy has killed you a few times? Sitting in ghost form is exciting? Or maybe you only had PvP sessions that lasted a few minutes, so you never got the ressurrection timer? Any PvP session lasting longer than a few minutes in WoW vanilla would leave everyone with massive timers.
Who said everything about it was perfect?
I was on a PvP server, and I think you're blowing the issues way out of proportion. I generally didn't play massive PvP - but I stuck with small scale PvP, and in that way resurrection timers were a non-issue. The massive PvP was meaningless, so in that way I agree - and yet people had tons of fun with it.
I think the core combat system - with brilliant class/talent/skill design and super fluid responsiveness is absolutely incredible. The classes and the brilliance of their abilities and the talent tree is 100% unsurpassed still. Blizzard are masters of this, and nothing comes close.
Yes, I'm talking about on-release. I know there were unfinished/broken talents - but you really didn't notice it until much later in the game, and the CORE design and idea is what made it SO DAMN GOOD.
That's the core I'm talking about, and I remember having tons of fun - even with server crashes or lag based on having hundreds of people in the same place.
I also endorse penalties for dying, but WoW is too casual for my tastes anyway.
On the contrary, there were massive gaps in quests, as zones like Hinterlands, Searing Gorge, Silithus and so on were more or less empty at the time. They added a lot of quest hubs later on to make it smoother, but from the start you either needed to level almost exclusively with rested XP or in instances, or you'd experience a gap of 5+ levels in the 40-55 range where you had to grind mobs with no quests to do.
I played the european release - and I levelled from 1-60 without ever feeling it was a grind. I quested for the most part, and then I went to instances with friends. Sometimes I grinded mobs- but that was for my own pleasure because it was much faster than questing and I liked my rogue.
Look at this set, Lightforge for Paladins:
http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=188
What is this supposed to do? Spirit, Strength and Intellect on the same set? Paladins have never used Spirit for anything, Healadins can't use Strength, and DPS Paladins can't use Int. It was aweful. Paladins, at the time, had to either stick with Valor (a set intended for Warriors), or a set intended for cloth wearing spellcasters. Both cases would lead to an uproar when the Paladin wanted loot, as they "had Lightforge". Shamans were in the same boat, as were Druids (most Druids used Rogue items at the time).
If you released a loot system that bad today, people simply would not accept it. They want optimized items with a clear function, that boosts you in the right way according to your class/spec.
As I said, this is a balance issue that every MMO suffers from. It's pointless to point it out as specifically bad. People would not accept it? That's your subjective opinion.
I don't believe for a SECOND that people would stop playing WoW if itemization was like it was upon release.
On par with MMOs launched back in the days, certainly, but again - it's not something people would accept today. They'd want significantly more.
People always want more. I'm talking about the core design and execution of WoW upon release, and I'm talking about it as the primary reason people don't go to other places. It's excellent and unsurpassed in many important ways.
This is my whole point. At the time, WoWs launch was fairly smooth. However, if WoW was released today in the same state it was back then, it would not have been considered smooth. The launch of AoC, LotRO and WAR were all significantly smoother, with less downtime and less technical issues. I remember the first week of WoW, where everyone had a latency of 10.000 ms, and the servers were more down than up. Would that be accepted today? No, not a chance.
The reason WoW suffered, again, was primarily due to extreme popularity.
So your point is silly. If it wasn't as popular, it wouldn't suffer those problems.
Launch issues are a separate issue that you can't compare directly with modern day standards. It has little or nothing to do with the game design itself - but more the market and audience.
If WoW launched today, as it was in terms of design and features, Bliz would be fully aware of the modern day standard in terms of launches and would have adapted. It would STILL suffer from server crashes and what not, because they STILL wouldn't know just how popular their game would be. Also, computers are more powerful today, and as such the graphics would naturally have improved.
You just can't compare such things directly.
Right, but even the players that did have strong computers and liked the mature world, ended up quitting. Why? Lack of end content, despite the game having more end content than WoW did in its original form.
Why people quit? I was among them.
Funcom told endless lies and the game was in a horrible and hollow state. It didn't have any of the really cool features promised at launch. The siege system was non-functional for months, there was no PvP system (as promised), the game had gargantuan technical issues. DX10 wasn't implemented UNTIL A YEAR LATER - despite being listed as a feature on the box.
More content? Are you kidding?
WoW was at least three times as big, with a LOT more content. Yeah, AoC had endgame raids and a small handful of instances - but the game was so poorly balanced you could PuG through all content without even trying.
WoW's crafting was infinitely more intricate and fulfilling ON LAUNCH than the travesty that is AoC crafting.
It's absolutely incomparable in terms of content. You're thinking in rigid terms as in end-game content and not actual content of that content.
Originally, WoW had very few flightpaths. More were added later on. Most places could only be reached by (very slow) mounts, and noone had access to the fast mounts untill later on (900 gold at the time was a fortune that was practically unobtainable, as quests did not reward gold). It was not unusual to spend a good 20 minutes going from point A to point B in WoW, for example when going to an instance. Oh, and there were no summoning stones back then, so you had to wait for everyone to arrive.
Why do you insist on talking as if I didn't remember how the game was? I played it from beta, after all.
Yes, there were long travelling times in WoW - but I consider LOTRO considerably worse. I've played nearly every MMO in existence, and I think of LOTRO as probably the worst in terms of boring travelling quests - because they're the norm not the exception. LOTRO is a modern-day theme-park MMO, so there's really no excuse for forcing you to run around relatively samey HUGE areas doing basically nothing but errands. You could argue it's fitting with Tolkien lore - but to most people it's dreary as hell.
But I will concede that WoW was not particularly good in this way, and areas like Stranglethorn were quite painful. That said, at least areas were extremely varied and though flight paths were more scarce - at least they were cheap and easily affordable, unlike many in LOTRO where you don't ride because you don't want to pay the ridiculous prices.
Both LotRO and WAR have combat systems almost identical to WoW. I can't see how you can consider WoWs system so much better. Maybe you remember vanilla as if it was TBC? Back in vanilla, most classes had very few "strikes" or "abilities". Most talents were just passive abilities. For example, the Paladin class only had autoattack and judgements to deal damage, and had to simply wait around while attacking stuff. That goes for Shamans as well (no Stormstrike etc). Rogues and Warriors were somewhat decent, but most classes had very long cooldowns and very few abilities to actually use. It was far from the action packed system it is today, where everyone has an ability to smash almost at every global cooldown.
Obviously you have no idea what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the response time from pressing a key and your character reacting on screen and the "feel" of combat. I promise you I'm not alone in this, and WoW is generally considered to have the most fluid and entertaining combat system of all MMOs - with the possible exception of AoC. AoC has a great system as well, but unfortunately the game was plagued in the extreme and suffers from a VERY poor reputation now.
LOTRO and WAR use traditional press-and-wait combat systems, and the timing and animations are very poor in comparison. It's not something you necessarily notice if you don't enjoy fluid combat or maybe you just don't think about it. Some players care deeply about combat and how responsive it is, and I am one of those players.
I still think nostalgia is making people remember it as if it was somehow close to what it is today (or even better). The truth is far from it. It was very slow paced with long cooldowns, few abilities, long travel times, redicilously long ressurrection times and very few ways of doing anything without waiting for hours - even getting a raid going for Stratholme or similar could take half a day, because people kept going "I'm not joining if there's another Rogue in!", as they didn't want to share loot.
You can, of course, think what you will.
But I have a pretty solid memory of how the game was, and I mean it when I say I remember exactly what features were in place upon release and what features came later.
You should note that I'm not saying the evolution is irrelevant to other MMOs not standing a chance, but that I consider the primary reason to be the core features I orignally mentioned.
WoW, upon release, was not only exceptionally well crafted - it also understood how to appeal to the masses in a way that no other game has accomplished. It had an art direction that only the most dedicated "hardcore" players could have a problem with, and one that appeals to nearly everyone.
It had, and still has, the single most fluid and responsive combat system and engine in general - and it wasn't instanced except for, well.. instances.
No open world game since then has as fluid and responsive an engine, and that's another reason people don't migrate to other places.
It had an INCREDIBLE amount of variety in terms of area design and feel. Basically, every single area in WoW was like a world upon itself. I clearly remember being so impressed with this aspect, and it was like entering a movie set for each area. No other MMO comes close to this variety.
Oh, and let's not forget an absolutely amazing sound design. You can easily identify what is happening simply by sound alone. This is another area Blizzard understands, that WAR/LOTRO have no clue about. Every sound in those other games sound like anonymous "clinky/clanky" things and you generally don't notice you've been trapped/stunned/feared until it's too late. Even worse, many effects don't seem to have any distinct sound effect at all.
Just think of the stealth sound in WoW and what it does to the non-stealther hearing it. That's the power of excellent sound design.
It had the kind of pop-culture approach to light humor and dark settings that simultaneously draw people in and don't push anyone away. You can play it with family and friends and everyone can have a good time without being disgusted, offended, or scared. It's not something I personally enjoy, but I recognise the amazing drawing power of their approach.
It had a fantastic balance between challenge and fun. Nothing worthwhile was so easy as to be a push-over, and the game evolved without you really noticing it. Most other games are either way too easy, or simply too hard.
In WAR - PvE feels like a drone activity and you tend to know the outcome before you even start - because it's balanced like that.
Blizzard understands, and understood, how to introduce concepts without overwhelming people at the same time.
By calling it "quite rubbish" upon release, YOU are the one seriously mistaken - and even if everything is subjective, you can go look at the general reception based on both professional critics and normal players.
It was and remains a masterpiece.
Instead of insisting on this bandwagon opinion about WoW, try thinking about it for a second.
Why is Everquest 2 a failure in comparison? It targets the same kind of audience and it has just as long a development schedule as WoW has. It has followed much the same evolution?
Why is so totally and fully inferior in the minds of SO MANY people?
Do you really think it's by accident? Don't you think it has to do with how polished and well executed it was?
Aren't you completely underestimating how much content the game had at launch?
In fact, I'd argue that WoW had MORE content at launch than EVERY SINGLE MMO released since then has had upon launch.
You're simply being unfair, in my opinion.