Yeesh
Hopeless Curmudgeon
Yes, those 11 million people play WoW because it's such a good game. People still subscribe to UO to keep their property? Fascinating. And has that fact made UO the dominant player in the very competitive MMORPG space and one of the most popular games of all time? Where do you even come up with that as an anaolgy? How could people reluctantly still paying subscriptions to old boring WoW account for the fact that the game keeps adding A MILLION NEW PLAYERS every time you turn around?Do those 11 million all actually play wow because its such a good good game? Or do they play it - year after year - for other reasons? There are people who till subscribe to Ultima Online just to keep their property. Compared to that WoW is the facebook of MMOs.
Facebook? I'm not even going to try and decipher that. Facebook, by the way, is free, and spending time on it doesn't make people assume you're a nerd. WoW on the other hand... Yet people do indeed play it. En masse.
I guess my overarching theme is this: If 11m people play a game (with a monthly fee, no less), that doesn't make it a great game. (See? I get that.) BUT massive popularity should at least give a game a presumption in your mind that it's fun. And massive popularity in a very competitive genre, where the game came out of nowhere (remember 4 years ago when WoW and EQ2 launched at the same time?) to become the titanic market leader with more people still signing up all the time... That really implies to me a good game.
What does it imply to you, WoW-haters? What's your alternative theory as to why people play WoW? It seems to me that BY FAR the simplest and most obvious explanation is: people play it because it's a high-quality (quantity and quality of content and gaming experience) and FUN game. More high quality and more fun than all the others. Would that explain its position as market leader? Yes it would.
What's your alternative explanation? Secrect addicting gas hidden inside the retatil packaging? What do you propose that is more plausible than the simple and obvious fact that WoW is a very good game and people love it?