Blizzard Gamers - I was fortunate enough to land a ticket for Blizzcon 2011, and attended it with great enthusiasm. It was awesome, and I'll hold it as one of my greater geek experiences for years to come. This was the year that Diablo III was about to be released, and they announced the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria.
Diablo fans had been waiting a long time for the third installment in their saga, and drooled over every single detail the developers were willing to disclose during the convention. I can't blame them for that, I do it with every MMO beta I follow...and I was glad to see their excitement. Almost universally, the attitude was "this is going to be the greatest Diablo game, and I'm going to play it all the time." And, to be fair, a lot of them are definitely living up to the latter portion of that line.
But, as time went on, the excitement waned with word about new developments. A required internet connection and a real-money auction house began to form rifts between fans. No PvP at launch didn't help. Next thing you know, people are getting bitter about this game that they've been waiting years to play.
They still played it, and most of them quieted their weeping and gnashing of teeth over the changes down to subtle griping. It's a little disheartening, given the absolutely palpable anticipation regarding the game back in October.
I'm a fan of WoW. There are a lot of great things being done in the game and the story is interesting. Since I liked delving in the lore, I wasn't overly surprised when we were shown the announcement trailer for Mists of Pandaria. Since this was at the end of the opening ceremonies, I took the break before panels to text friends and fill them in, since some of them had work and other things keeping them from following the stream (side note: how awesome is it that we can stream huge events like this conveniently and reliably nowadays?). The reaction was almost unanimous: "ugh, pandas? really?"
I'd read up on what little Pandaren-related lore there was a few months previous, when speculation and rumors had stirred along this being the possible expansion setting...so I tried to reserve judgement until the panels elaborated on it.
I left excited, but there was very vocal majority of the WoW fanbase that began and continued its ranting about how dumb they thought the idea was.
I challenge any of you to find a WoW fansite that doesn't drip with anticipation for the expansion now.
Bioware Gamers - I'm hesitant to mention Mass Effect 3, since I'm not that familiar with any of that particular storyline, but I figured it'd be fair to mention. Again, huge build-up from the fanbase, but there was evidently a letdown for the game's ending, to put it mildly. It was a big enough deal that Bioware had to knock out a new ending for download. I'll call this a win for gamers, but I'm not sure it's a good precedent for storytelling in video games. After all, tales don't have to end in a way that pleases you.
Then there's Star Wars: The Old Republic. It was an exciting prospect for fanboys, a point of nervous apprehension for well-established players of Star Wars Galaxies, and a bit of an oddity for other MMO players. With its emphasis on storytelling and inclusion of NPC companions for all player characters, it was kind of a strange creature for the millions of us that had primarily experienced MMOs in the form of WoW and its many clones.
Launch was...shall we say, not smooth if you're only used to games that have had 8+ years to fine-tune their infrastructure. Servers rarely crashed, to their credit, but there were queue times, and I guess waiting in line is hard if you've no idea how to do it.
The game was fresh as a wee baby, containing more features than several MMOs ever started out with. But, players were used to WoW. This wasn't WoW. Why can't this be more like WoW? We'll just conveniently forget that we gave it a try despite it not being WoW and insisted that it be more like WoW.
I wish I was exaggerating. But, players wanted a streamlined and well-ironed-out product at launch...guess they'd never experienced a launch that was actually kind of rough.
Then, the mass exodus of ~300k players after the free month (with purchase of game) expired happened. The anti-anything-but-WoW crowd touted this as a victory. Bioware kind of shrugged it off and went back to work.
But, as time went on, the excitement waned with word about new developments. A required internet connection and a real-money auction house began to form rifts between fans. No PvP at launch didn't help. Next thing you know, people are getting bitter about this game that they've been waiting years to play.
They still played it, and most of them quieted their weeping and gnashing of teeth over the changes down to subtle griping. It's a little disheartening, given the absolutely palpable anticipation regarding the game back in October.
I'm a fan of WoW. There are a lot of great things being done in the game and the story is interesting. Since I liked delving in the lore, I wasn't overly surprised when we were shown the announcement trailer for Mists of Pandaria. Since this was at the end of the opening ceremonies, I took the break before panels to text friends and fill them in, since some of them had work and other things keeping them from following the stream (side note: how awesome is it that we can stream huge events like this conveniently and reliably nowadays?). The reaction was almost unanimous: "ugh, pandas? really?"
I'd read up on what little Pandaren-related lore there was a few months previous, when speculation and rumors had stirred along this being the possible expansion setting...so I tried to reserve judgement until the panels elaborated on it.
I left excited, but there was very vocal majority of the WoW fanbase that began and continued its ranting about how dumb they thought the idea was.
I challenge any of you to find a WoW fansite that doesn't drip with anticipation for the expansion now.
Bioware Gamers - I'm hesitant to mention Mass Effect 3, since I'm not that familiar with any of that particular storyline, but I figured it'd be fair to mention. Again, huge build-up from the fanbase, but there was evidently a letdown for the game's ending, to put it mildly. It was a big enough deal that Bioware had to knock out a new ending for download. I'll call this a win for gamers, but I'm not sure it's a good precedent for storytelling in video games. After all, tales don't have to end in a way that pleases you.
Then there's Star Wars: The Old Republic. It was an exciting prospect for fanboys, a point of nervous apprehension for well-established players of Star Wars Galaxies, and a bit of an oddity for other MMO players. With its emphasis on storytelling and inclusion of NPC companions for all player characters, it was kind of a strange creature for the millions of us that had primarily experienced MMOs in the form of WoW and its many clones.
Launch was...shall we say, not smooth if you're only used to games that have had 8+ years to fine-tune their infrastructure. Servers rarely crashed, to their credit, but there were queue times, and I guess waiting in line is hard if you've no idea how to do it.
The game was fresh as a wee baby, containing more features than several MMOs ever started out with. But, players were used to WoW. This wasn't WoW. Why can't this be more like WoW? We'll just conveniently forget that we gave it a try despite it not being WoW and insisted that it be more like WoW.
I wish I was exaggerating. But, players wanted a streamlined and well-ironed-out product at launch...guess they'd never experienced a launch that was actually kind of rough.
Then, the mass exodus of ~300k players after the free month (with purchase of game) expired happened. The anti-anything-but-WoW crowd touted this as a victory. Bioware kind of shrugged it off and went back to work.
Gamers are an interesting lot.
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