WoW Podcast Roundtable

There is a great round table discussion over at WoW Podcast.

They've got some of my favorite podcast personalities, including Brent from VirginWorlds.com, Ryan from Massively Online Gamer and Brendan from FalconTwin.com. Actually, it was really funny to hear Ryan on a WoW podcast (those who listen to Massively Online Gamer understand why)

Some interesting topics, not just about WoW, but with MMOs in general.

They talked about potential MMOs that are coming out that can steal away from WoW. I'm not really sure about the value of the question. Think of it this way. WoW currently has around 7 million subscribers. If any MMO comes along and only steals even just 3% of their players, 210000 subscribers, then they can call their MMO a success. If you look at the latest MMO charts, this is a nice comfortable average and puts them in the same number league as EQ2, Eve, UO etc. Not too shabby. I think the better question is what feature set would an MMO have to have in order to beat WoW? That gets us thinking about what new innovations are needed for the next generation to be successful. Besides, if the average MMO gamer is anything like me (and God help you if you are), then they'll probably keep their subscription to WoW while playing another MMO. This, of course, wouldn't hurt their numbers at all.

They also talked about communities in MMOs. Is WoW's community worse than others? The two best communities that I've come across hands down are Ryzom and Eve. The communities there are helpful, respectful and mature. WoW, IMHO, is one of the worst that I have had the pleasure of interacting with. Brent brought up the reason why. It's because of the large numbers and the anonymity that those large numbers bring. Just the other day, my wife was doing a quest killing something or other with her friend. This other toon was also hunting the same thing. This player got pissed at this and started to fear the mobs and proceed to call her and her friend "bitches" etc. There were plenty of mobs there...he just didn't like the idea of others hunting in the same area. It would be like going to the grocery store, and then verbally abusing the person picking from the same bushel of apples as you are. If you did that, there would be real social consequences. In the virtual world, there are no consequences for acting like an anti-social prick.

That's it for now.

D out.