WoW Vs. CoH/CoV

[Rael]

As a player of both games, I've been kicking it around a bit to figure out why WoW draws so many people compared to CoH/CoV. They are both excellent games in their own regard, yet WoW is the undisputed champ. Lets kick this around.

Is it the genre? Comics are in the middle of a Hollywood fueled renaissance, at a level that draws your average joe, not just fanboys. LotR didn't hurt the fantasy genre as well.

Is it the graphics/playability? CoH has always been superior in my opinion.

Is it the nature of the games goals? That is CoH's instance based, Vs. WoW's open world questing.

Is it greed? WoW is drop/loot based, where CoH is not.

Is it elitism? In WoW a full time raiding player can accumulate godlike gear.
CoH has no such mechanic, just about everyone can get the same SO's/HO's/IO's with a little effort.

Is it power/ability/talent customization? WoW has that in spades, yet it seems to lead to more elitism rather than anything else. CoH seems to have purposely kept to a standard archetype, to keep players balanced.

Is it the team/solo issue? In WoW it is primarily solo, until you get to something you can't handle, because your exps are nerfed. In CoH, the game is built on the group dynamic. Solo is possible, but teams are the way to go.

Lets have some feedback folks, please no ranting with no reason, just intelligent discussion.

[Jade_Dragon]

IBT move to either Debates or the Asylum in general.

:D

[Rael]

I'd be happy to move it. I just don't know how. Does a moderator do it, or can I as originator?

[iggy880]

I'd be happy to move it. I just don't know how. Does a moderator do it, or can I as originator?

Its mod based


Either way, I believe this question has been raised at least once or twice here. Personally, I tried WoW for a while and never really liked it. I believe WoW's teaming is more big thing or if you have close friends playing it you can group and good off with them. The powers and such system are truly great in CoH where as I feel the ability system or what have you in WoW is dull(though I played CoH first and as my first MMO so the powers every 2 or so levels spoiled me) I find that the instanced was better as its either hunt like in WoW or an instanced thing, and the hunting is some will drop what you need some won't. Also, its the character custmization that sells it...theres probably more but thats top of my head.

[D'Arkaine]

For me it's all about the chance to play a super hero. I can fly! No fantasy MMO has that same draw for me as a modern super hero mmo. Now when the Marvel and DC MMOs are finished ... I can't say for sure where I'll be. I'll defintely be trying them out.

[Seadevil]

Yeah, I remember the last one. It's over in Debates, I think. Don't remember if it got closed or not.

[Rael]

For me it's all about the chance to play a super hero. I can fly! No fantasy MMO has that same draw for me as a modern super hero mmo. Now when the Marvel and DC MMOs are finished ... I can't say for sure where I'll be. I'll defintely be trying them out.

I understand what your saying, but I'm not asking why you like CoH over WoW. I'm trying to figure out why WoW is a more popular game, over CoH, to the gaming community at large. There has to be a reason, I'm just trying to put a finger on it.

Edit- I read the old thread. A running arguement about why one game rocks/sucks more than the other. That's not my question.

My question simply put. WoW- 8 million players. CoH/CoV- a fraction of that number. Why?

[razoras]

There isn't a single reason, but the many reasons are obvious, I should think.

First, it's Blizzard. A wildly popular development house, they're effectively the rockstars of development houses.

Second, this is Warcraft. Warcraft is hugely popular, and is what made Blizzard what it is today.

Third, accessibility. This covers both the hardware requirements and the gameplay itself. Blizzard went with hardware requirements that guaranteed pretty much anyone could play the game. Then look at the gameplay... they distilled other tried and true MMO aspects into things that are simple and easy to do. Quest givers with exclamation marks, no real need to know the lore of the game, very straightforward combat mechanics, quests whose challenge levels are child's play compared to previous MMOs but a more challenging raid game for the less casual players.... the list goes on.

Another good one is experience... the crew making and designing WoW are clearly not novices in actual programming or game design. The crew is also gigantic and well-funded.

Compare that to COH.

Publisher is NCSoft. Not exactly well known pre Guild Wars, which COH/V is. The developers are completely unknown.

No established gameworld. They had to introduce a new world, and the genre is likely limited in interest when compared to fantasy.

COH isn't as nearly as accessible as World of Warcraft. CoV is even less so. Gameplay wise, City is even more simple and easy to pick up but is also fairly shallow. We only just got something besides combat to do with our time. Before that it was badges. Then we have the hardware requirements... which totally narrows the amount of players we'll be getting. To play this game with settings that make it really pretty requires a rig most potential players don't have, and even at the lower settings the game is really beginning to experience an upward requirement creep with every issue (narrowing the field even more).

Then, of course, the experience of the developers. It should be obvious to anyone that this development house is very fresh. From design to actual implementation, there have been many mistakes that a more experienced crew would not have made. There are also clearly issues with how clean and modular the code and engine are, which has caused incredible delays in some issue releases. We got up to over 220 days for Issue 7.

These are only some of many potential reasons. Ultimately, it's not a fair comparison because WoW is Fantasy and CoH is Superhero. Why did D&D outsell all the super hero Pen and Paper games, while we're at it?

[Graphite]

WoW is number one because it is backed by Blizzard. Fundamentally, it is no better than Everquest was back in its original release. However, since that time the internet and its user base has largely expanded. Also alot of people around the world know Blizzard from their products. So when they made an MMO there was massive media, publicity, and excitement simply on the name and world alone. Add the Viral Marketing as friends invite friends and then friends of friends for realisticly is a very good game, then the number ballons to 8 mil. This isnt just WoW vs Coh. Wow is the single largest MMO in the history of video games, certainly with in the US, and is beating everyone else combined. For the novilty of the product, limited distribution, and originality of the design, City of is doing exceptionally well.

For me personally, I won't be playing WoW due to time, friends and interest. I don't have the ablity to play that heavily (we are talking days of play time to get any where of real value), no one I know really plays the game (most hap hazardly and none in my close circle of friends), and I played the traditional style of MMOs to death years before WoW even came out (Dark Age of Camelot where Coh and WoW are the majority of players first MMO). Why I stick around with CoH is I love the world, have been for near five years. I'm so immeressed that I wrote a two thousand word rp charter just for my new 'guild'. Combined with the quick style play, sidekick features, ablity to play multiple characters easily, and a good network of people online... realisticaly if it remains a quality product I could play CoH for the next five. Its sad to admit, because I believe we have a really good thing here, but most people don't know about Coh let alone share the passion, putting us into a relatively small manority of players with in the extremely large gamer community.

[Jade_Dragon]

Yeah, WoW is a tested and well known formula which is known to be a success. It is backed by Blizzard and set in an environment that is well known to the gaming community. And seriously, while CoH has made significant inroads in an area outside of the sword and sorcery genre, elves and wizards and dragons are still what most people think about when they think of role playing. It remains the most popular genre and probably will continue to be the most popular, simply because it's got the momentum.

CoH has actually been a huge success when you consider that it had to come up with a lot of new concepts without any previous examples to go on, as well as overcome the so called "superhero game curse". It's really only in its infancy, while WoW is working with mature, stable concepts that were developed long ago in other games. Not just Dungeons and Dragon, but also many of the early MUDs, (it wasn't called a Multi User Dungeon for nothing) and of course the single player games like Zork and Balder's Gate, all the way up to Everquest.

As for the PvP and crafting mechanics, again, those things could be fitted into WoW from the start because they had already been tried in other games, and the WoW devs already understood how they would work. The CoH devs have had to make it up as they go along. In some places it hasn't worked perfectly, and it hasn't been neat or clean, and meshed well with what came before it, because they really didn't know what was going to end up being implemented. But at least they didn't try to fit a bunch of untested concepts into the game all at once and end up neglecting some part of the game to a point where the whole thing was broken.