I know I'm not the only one who has noticed the quality of WoW has decreased a lot in the last year. And I think the lack of competition. Blizzard realizes that there really isn't anything they have to compete with and so they haven't been trying as hard. I think a little competition is exactly what WoW needs.

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WoW is like Apple and the iPod.

It will be VERY hard to compete.

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The only game that looks like competition is Warhammer.

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There is really nothing on the horizon that will replace WoW as the juggernaut of the MMO world. AoC and Warhammer will put a dent in their numbers, but neither of them will have the general broad base appeal of WoW. If the game can make my mom interested enough to play, then that is the formula. My brother plays alot of different games and WoW was the only one she wanted to try.

Blizz set the bar pretty high and took a route that alot of other games aren't taking. WoW is stupidly simple. Its ok looking but doesn't require current gen graphic cards. It doesn't abuse the players in obvious or frustrating ways (ie no major death penalties.) The game is polished and pretty smooth. They planned ahead for stuff of people to do. There are constant updates with new content to keep people going and its a fairly regular thing.

Any MMO looking to knock off WoW needs to be simple, able to be ran on a wide variety of computers, appeal to a wide audience, be pretty much ready to go and not a work in progress at release and be fun to play.

Everything that I've seen coming out in the future is more targeted at a niche. It is difficult to know if one will break out of the pack, because I pegged WoW as a niche game when it came out.

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I've gotta say, I think Blizz is doing a mostly great job at keeping WoW the best game on the market. They're constantly adding new content and features. It may seem like it's not very often to us gamers, but it's very often in the game development world.

Of course, there is still a lot of stuff that needs fixing, and a lot of it is stuff we've been waiting on for a long time. (I don't want to get into specifics because it seems like all I do is complain about it these days, but it involves one of the classes, which was formerly horde-only.)

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Wow is great and all, but saying that it is innovating itself or anything is pure rubbish, it is using already well proven formulas from previous mmorpg's and polishes them, that's it.

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World of Warcraft is a great game. The gameplay is great. The worlds it takes you to are beautiful.

The problem Blizzard will face is that their important content will be only for the tiniest portion of the WoW population. Many people do not or have not the interest in large scale raids and the time constraint they impose. And Because ALL the best content is for these large scale raids, then this portion of the player base will constantly be left out.

I expect I'll be leaving WoW the second Gods and Heroes comes out. It has Epic small scale content for no more than 5 players at a time. For the vast majority of WoW players that never experience anything more than 5man content, they will finally have a game made for them.

I for one welcome competition. It will finally mean blizzard will no longer be able to ignore their long term player base that has been restricted time and again from the "end game". If they don't change then they will finally lose.

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@1
Did you play wow when it first came out? Compare that to what we have now, that game was Terrible. UI was rotten, lots of game-breaking bugs, no pvp, raiding was dead on impossible due to how combat worked, lots of areas where just empty(silithus), horde where missing a lot of quests aimed to get past level 50-53. End-game instances where almost impossible to take down unless you put them into raid-option, so end-game questing was worthless. No objective to do end-game quests due to no-money for XP. Doing 5-man runs took hours upon hours often more time then raiding does today. Gear was crappy and drops where old-fashion and made for repetitive gameplay.

Please, WoW today puts the WoW post Beta to shame.

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VERY YES

WoW is a monolopy, which is why it has the worst customer service on the planet

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@10

Go play City of Heroes and City of Villains then let me know about customer service. At least the in game support I've encountered involved people who had a general idea of what the game was, could answer in coherent English, and didn't blow you off immediately.

Further, CoH had no problem just shutting down servers, not telling the reasons why, how long, or whether there would be rolling restarts.

There was 'Customer Support' via email as well, which involved the same canned phrases no matter if your problem was grahics glitches, lag, server disconnects, or your computer had caught on fire. It didn't matter; the same email telling you to do the same thing always showed up.

WoW's customer service is nothing short of spectacular compared to that crap.

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@11

City of heroes/villains also has no monthly fees. So it's not a viable comparisson.

WoW rakes in $100,000,000+ a month... City of Heroes takes in... $0

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@12

Hu? it's $14.99 just like WoW.

You're thinking about that other one, guild wars.

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@12

Man, I wish it had no monthly fees. It was 15 bucks a month. NCSoft publishes CoH/CoV, and Guild Wars--and Guild Wars doesn't have a monthly fee. I'm not sure where the CoH monthly fees are going. Probably to hookers and booze because the fees are certainly not going to customer support, or end-game development.

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I'm only a casual player inching closer to 70 with little to no desire in running hours long raids...I don't see myself creating new characters that will only run into the same problem.

Its not really a fair comparison, but I'll probably switch to Hellgate: London when it arrives. All I really wanted out of WOW was something similar do D2 anyway.

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Back in the day, no one thought Everquest could be overthrown either. At the GDC we all sat around talking about it, with Brad. Compared to what we thought a fantasy MMO would pull in subscriber base, WoW has hit the mark and passed it.

At some point something will tear down WoW. First, there is always the game engine. Eventually the graphics will just be too far behind the others. Then WoW2 will blow, because they will try to make it too much the "same". Check out other MMO sequels to see what I mean.

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Prepare yourselves, for a shocking truth is about to unveil before your eyes. I stand before you, a casual player, that has gone on RAIDS.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not, it IS possible for casual players to experience endgame content. I have a girlfriend, a family, and I run Cross Country for my high school team. It took me a year to get to level 60. But I joined a small guild that was working on raid progression, proceeded to raid every friday and saturday night for about 2-3 hours each night. When the expansion hit, my druid was decked out in full tier2. The trick is to find other casual players like you to guild up with.
So stop complaining that the "vast majority" of players will not experience the end game content. I'm sick of it! In the expansion now there are various five mans with good loot, as well as the heroics. Even the "unattainable" raid instances are only 25-man now. Blizzard is working on it. So chill out, y'all

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Oh yeah, and about the whole purpose of this article.
I agree with 4.
The new games are niche games. I've been an avid warcraft fan since the strategy games, and I was actually very suprised at how universal wow became. It's just the perfect formula. Easy to play, no large penalties, requires NO innovation on the part of the player. It's the perfect monopoly device. Don't get me wrong, I love wow and will continue to play it until something better comes along. However, I don't see anything worthwhile on the horizon. Looks like it'll still be wow for me when I hit college.

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WoW works well because it is easy and hard. My son (who is 6) can play and have fun. He doesn't get to high level but he has a couple characters in the mid 20's. As other posters has stated WoW attracts casual gamers. Leveling is easy anyone can do it and have fun doing it. Many of the 5man instances are fun, interesting, and a reasonable amount of time (now). However as you progress in endgame the games gets harder. WoW will stay competitive for another couple of years because of Burning Crusade. New 5man content is great for making casual players stay. Reduced size for the first 2 25man also helps with making endgame progression easy. Gruul's lair isn't much bigger than onxyia and mag's lair is the same size. In 2 hours you can get 3-4 wipes on each. That makes attempts much more reasonable.

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I don't think they will ever make a WoW2. Look at EQ2, what a flop. I think Blizz will take a Jim Carrey stance on this issue, no sequels. I think another 2 expansions for them, another 3 years and we will start to see some great competition, but I believe it will end up being multiple games that will eat at WoW's player base, not a single juggernaut such as WoW. I don't think we'll see anything like WoW for quite some time, I don't want to say never, because like someone posted earlier, look at EQ. We thought that was a huge game, although that was a different age of the internet, at the time, it was an amazingly huge game. Again, EQ2 was the worst idea ever. Blizz will never make that mistake, they will go down gracefully and will always retain being one of the best MMO devs ever. Only the future will tell, but currently, WoW will remain the bright star in the sky.

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@17

Your in High School. Graduate College. Get a job. Pay Rent. Have expenses. Real life chores. And get back to me on how viable this game is for a person with a life that does not revolve around this game to raid.

You even said it yourself. You raided every Friday and Saturday night, and you were decked out in T2. This does not make a casual player. Casual players are players who play when they can, not around a schedule.

When I raided, my life revolved around the game and I was anything but a casual player. Now the game revolves around my life, and all end game raiding will forever be out of reach as long as it requires 25 people. 25 people means you need a schedule to play, and a schedule means you cannot be a casual player.

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