The biggest game phenom in 20+ years: World of Warcraft [update 1]

@ 10.6 yards:

EQ and UO were far too specialized, niche games. They were noticed for being different, but it took WoW to prove that such a game format could succeed on such a grand scale. This is about more than just number of games sold; the future of computing, I believe, lies in virtual worlds, where games, applications, communications, office programs, and more will be interfaced in 3D spaces (kind of like the Otherland series of novels, minus the sentient program-assistants and giant brains in space). A game had to establish smashing financial success in the MMORPG area to being laying the commercial ground for this kind of transition, and I think WoW is doing just that.

But if you want to boil it just down to time spent playing per game, there are a few other things to take into consideration. One is the way in which SMB was shipped with every NES unit - you kind of have to put an asterix next to its sales numbers, given that one didn't have much of a choice. And if, after one month of playing, you had said "Hey...if you want to keep playing SMB3/64/Sunshine/Galaxy, you have to pay 10 bucks every month to be able to play"...would anyone accept this? It is a whole new ballgame when the world is as changing and dynamic to that extent. Besides, Mario was a fat italian in a small pond...he dominated in an era where there wasn't much else you had in the way of options. For a game to be so dominant NOW, when there are just a ridiclous number of awesome games out there - is a vastly more difficult feat.

Tetris and Pokemon - also aren't really incredibly influential (and Tetris also carries the original SMB's asterix next to its record due to the Game Boy packaging). They are both really big deals, but absent them, most other forms and types of video games would be intact just fine. An analogue would be the difference between the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and the indie film Sex, Lies, and Videotape. While the former is posting ridiclous box office numbers, it doesn't really add anything new to the world of film making. Meanwhile, SL&V basically invented the indie film scene, and profoundly affected a number of filmmakers, who would influence others, etc. etc. The entire cinematic world would be very different absent that leap away from the vapidness that pervaded blockbuster 80s movies.

I wouldn't say it so simply as, Pac-Man and WoW are the most important games ever, and everything else is just a runner up...it is far more complex than that. But I don't think that, even if you are right about more time having been spent playing Mario games (and given how WoW is a new kind of game where you can't exhaust its possibilities, that doesn't look like a race Mario is likely to win in the long term)...that isn't the only criteria that should be weighed.

As far as WoW being original..

I played WoW, EQ and UO. When I first played WoW it was almost exactly like EQ right down to the colors of the chat screen.

What WoW did was make MMO's more accessible, by cutting down on the time to levels and removing some of the factioning. Make a good looking game that did not require a high end graphics card to enjoy. Some Hardcore MMORPG'ers don't like WoW because it is not hardcore enough. Since I play casually now though I apprevciate it.

To the person saying if you ever do a high end raid you are not on auto pilot..I've got to put an asterick next to do there. Once you do an instance enough times you are essentially on autopilot, you know like when people say we have Nef on farm status that means the guild pretty much auto pilots BWL and if you wipe someone just did something stupid.

I don't know how Mario got in here but really quickly in terms of the history of gaming it doesn't matter how far you go back the article mentions Pac Man so I guess Mario is fair game. Mario has influenced far more games(even outside of nintendo) than WoW ever will. More non gamers will know who Mario is than WoW for sure. More non-gamers will know who bowser is over Illidan.

WoW may influence other games in the future, but essientially all it is is EQ1 reskinned and modded and simplified with different lore.

WOW JOJO29 I wouldn't answer you, but you called me a fanboy and that is something I can't stand for. Being as I didn't mention the PC world and just WORLD OF WARCRAFT, I must say you really don't read to well. I more than enjoy world of warcraft and I am giving blizzard the benefit of the doubt but gamers like you are the exact reason why blizz will end up destroying what they have created.

Only a fanboy says cause of your past creations anything you make in the future is gold, it is a premiss so incredibly bias that it ruins your whole idea. Have you looked at the expansion, the destruction of the lore? The poor attempt at class balance, no I bet your didn't. I am guessing you are one of the attention seeking whores who spam LFG channel with idiotic jokes of chuck norris and murlocs. Fans like you have deluged World of Warcraft, with constant complaining, and constant whinning about having to do the least amount of work in the game, while picking the easiest class, and blizz has continually catored to you idiots time and time again.

Like I said I want to give WOW the benefit of the doubt so I wanted to save my rant, but then I see wow fanboys like you and it just makes me sick. You don't care about player balance or a unqiue gaming experience, you just swallow what ever blizz gives you at this point, and if somebody disagrees you call them a fanboy. Check the forums smart guy, the class balance is taking a huge hit, because blizz never made one in the first place. Have you ever even heard of Everquest? Seriously EQ pre-dated WOW you ever, talked to somebody who has played, looked it up, anything? IF you think WOW is the most original title of its time, it is because you DON'T PLAY ENOUGH GAMES! What blizzard did right was make a MMORPG accessibly to the non-hardcore MMOrpg gamer. To some extent this hurt them, and to some it helped. They way it helped is it expanded a genre of gaming to a massive audience that thought they could never be part of that world because it was to complicated. The way it hurt was it let anybody in, with out the complexity to weed out the people who truely cared about the game and having a good experinece instead of just galloping around IROnFOrge on their epic mount, yelling everybodies gay.

WOW is every hardcore gamers, fear, but every casual gamers joy. It is not that everybody that got into wow are horrible, but most just give a damn about their Warrior being able to do Massive damage, or their mage being able to take down a warrior in seconds. Blizz seeing the money cators to the most popular effect, even if it creates this giant inbalance in the classes, in which it then affects raiding, in which they complain again, in which blizz caves in again, and so on and so forth. Blizz continually caves in until the game is completely ruined because they are to busy trying to keep the same amount of revenue they have amassed.

Blizz creates a faction with differences and unqiueness, fans who are just lazy complain, they make the factions the same, and cause fanboys like you just started playing, and only give a damn about your own individual standing you don't see the game going to hell in a handbasket.

What pisses me off the most is from reading my little rant I sound like a WOW fanboy, as if all I do is play wow. The turth is I play alot of games, but I have really absorbed the wow experience, and would like it to grow rather than stagnate. It is just gamers like you who can't take criticism of a company they like in a sane way that is really destroying the world. Because WOW, isn't hardcore, the present install base majority always expects it to be easy, but having a constant IWIN button or Shamans(Sorry had to get that joke in) isn't always the answer to having a fullfilling gaming experience.

I don't like Pac-Man and I don't like WoW. It makes sense, though, that these "truly global video-games" don't appeal to me, since I've found myself disagreeing with a lot of things in the world, and especially in my country, lately.

Although we seem to be analyzing this largely in terms of societal impact, the impact that these games have had on GAMING should be what defines their importance. (as for the aforementioned societal status, Pokemon blows everything else out of the water, WoW by far, but Mario too.

But as to my first point. What repercussions has WoW had in the gaming world? What games have been derived from the core gameplay, or idea, or success of WoW? unlike the rest of Blizzard games, WoW just took something that had already been done a thousand times and made it more interesting. But nothing other than MMORPGs will ever be affected by WoW, not even other PC games.

Mario, on the other hand, made it possible for console games SIMPLY TO EXIST. we would have no snes, no gcn, not even PS or XBOX without Mario. It wholly resurrected a forsaken industry, and is the sole reason we still play video games. And as for the platforming, i cant believe anyone would say you could take mario out and it wouldnt be anything special. There are so many subtleties and so much depth to Mario that it is wholly unparalleled in its genre, and still is the standard for greatness when it comes to sidescrolling.

Cliffs: Pokemon is a bigger societal phenom
Mario affected games, WoW didnt

Seriously, did I just see someone claim that Tetris didn't do anything new in video gaming?

Tetris, by far the most popular video game ever made (and the various PC versions factor in for its success much more than the original GB version, especially seeing as that's probably the most inferior version of the game out there).

Tetris created the puzzle genre.

Tetris gets played more than any other game mentioned in this thread worldwide.

Tetris obsession is still such that people can easily clear 20 hours per week on it.

Design principles on Tetris (from the usage of naive gravity to its stress on filling in gaps) are a staple of the industry now, used in all sorts of video games.

Finally, why do you think that Nintendo packaged the original Game Boy with it? Because throwing in Tetris was a guarantee to make sure thousands of Game Boys would sell. The Game Boy didn't make Tetris a hit; Tetris made the Game Boy a hit.

As for a game being so dominant... Let's look at it this way: in the United States alone, approximately 2/3 of the population plays video games - we're talking over 200 million. WoW has 6.5 million users worldwide. That's 3% of the US gaming population, and that's not counting the millions in Japan, Australia, and Europe that play games. WoW is not taking up nearly as much pond as its users would like to think.

Finally if you think portable video gaming would be nearly what it is today without Pokemon, then you obviously don't understand the industry at all. So many people bought new Game Boys just to play the game. It influenced design choices when making games (the collection game subgenre is all because of Pokemon). Portable games are built with the goal of becoming the next Pokemon. And that's not even getting into the societal impact. Anyone who plays any portable today, PSP or DS, is directly influenced by Pokemon and how it shifted the video game industry.

KR -

That is a bit of a stretch. All 5 Warcraft single-player games plus World of Warcraft easily take down Mario games. The original Warcraft probably doesn't factor much into the equation, but Warcraft 2 and expansion garnering hours upon hours of Battle.net time, then being picked up by Warcraft 3 and expansion plus Battle.net time will slaughter the total Mario hours. The Warcraft series has 20 million units out there, and two of them (Warcraft III and WoW) pull in a dozen hours a week from millions of players.

In a year or two, World of Warcraft may theoretically surpass Mario, even with the current expansions to the Mario universe like Galaxies and Strikers.

Though, as it stands, WoW is far from a phenom. Even in the world of PC gaming, it is far from being anywhere from the top. Starcraft, Blizzard's other wonder franchise, is far more successful than WoW and can be considered a phenom given it took over an entire nation, S. Korea. It could also be The Sims or Myst, both selling far more copies. Myst even legitimized the PC as a mass-market platform for gaming and The Sims expanded the market beyond the core gamer from the 90's.

So, um, what if I watch TV while playing WoW... where do I stand, err, sit? :)