No it wasn’t. Experience with the game makes it look easier now. In the moment, it was challenging enough wherever it needed to be, be it dungeons or battlegrounds or word pvp. which was why the epic gear and all the game content felt special. Nothing is new or special forever. Besides, the real challenge was the social aspect, finding guild mates, finding someone to run dungeons, playing guild politics to get your spot in the raid. Having fun with other people, rather than just having fun with an object. This was the genuinely rewarding part of the game, and now the gamedoes it all for you, like any other hint of a challenge, to keep the unskilled from unsubscribing. Social skill does not matter to the developers anymore, and that was the only skill worth developing at all
>No it wasn’t.
lol yes it was
every EQcuck back then complained that the genre became a kiddie roller coaster because you had to grind for 80 hours instead of 200 like in old "hardcore" games like EQ and Camelot or whatever it was called
Yes it was, by the sheer fact you could solo your way to the level cap within a reasonable time. That shit was unheard of back then. It was also refreshing because the leveling was more than just group up and take turns farming the same mob camp for 8 hours.
Of course in the end, this would also prove to be the genre's downfall. Forced grouping just to advance meant the shitters got filtered out early on. Now all these games sprint you to the endgame as fast as possible. You constantly meet people at the level cap that didn't have a basic understanding of their class.
It was the first of many MMOs to really popularize the idea of not being punished as hard from death. No losing a quarter of a level's worth of exp, no super excessive grinding (nowhere near EQ's grinding at least), you could mostly get to level 60 on your own if you grinded enough, etc. Those things didn't exist in other games at the time, which gave a much more casual experience. Hell, even plenty of the raid encounters in WoW were usually intended to be beaten comparatively quickly vs. other games where it could take several straight hours to beat an end game raid boss. This isn't even accounting for WoW having instances dungeons and raids so you didn't have to worry about others coming in to frick with your raid.
It was made by Blizzard back when that meant something and they still had a stellar reputation.
It released at the perfect time. MMO's were up and coming, EQ and Ultima were the best at the time but WOW offered full 3rd person.
These are ALL true by the way. Perfect combination of very high production values and IP and timing. Once in an industry history kind of coincidence like stars align
and it's the sole reason people still play it
you don't just give up on a game you've played for 20 years even when the people making it aren't the ones who made it special to begin with
>you don't just give up on a game you've played for 20 years
I remember quitting WOW, it takes some willpower depending on circumstances. For me it was during Cata and I did /played and my play time was over a year and a half. I quit there and then and barely told my guild who I was main-tanking.
Don't forget the game having an art style that ages well because they went for a stylized look.
The game also has very few loading screens and had a world that felt connected because of it.
They also managed to hit a perfect sweet spot with the game's effort/reward ratio so players feel properly rewarded and get that sweet dopamine hit.
It's like you said, the conditions were perfect, I would love to see all the technical stuff the game has behind the scenes because the classic game is a genuine masterwork in so many aspects of video game development.
Sure a lot of it was client side magic but you have to admit it ran smooth as frick compared to any other online game at the time, and it's really impressive
it had server problems because it was so successful but that’s not the net code, it was made in that perfect time around 2000 where you still had to accommodate dialup and couldn’t halfass net code, it feels better than some single player games which is crazy, later in wrath/cata they started tweaking the combat log to lag less
Those were good days. Everything they put out was instant gold, they had people playing multiple genres of games just because their name was on the box.
>How did 12 year olds get their mom to pay for this monthly subscription at the time?
I didn't. I had a neighbour who had an active sub. He shared his account with me cause he was really friendly.
>What made WoW so successful compared to the other MMOs of the time?
- The audience wasn't only nerds
- A lot of sponsors and TV spot
- Meme culture and a lot of machinima
- Mont fee while other classic mmo moved on the toxic "Free in your way system" or F2P and P2W models
- Expansion radically changes the gameplay
- Rule34
It was babby easy compared to other MMOs
It ran on toasters compared to other MMOs
It had a built in established fanbase compared to (most) other MMOs and was created by one of if not the hottest company in the industry at the time (Blizzard pre Activison acquisiton)
Because it's by far the best game in the genre, particularly in the areas that count the most. Yes, factors such as being a part of a bestselling series did help, Blizzard's then-stellar reputation helped, being able to run on low-end machines helped, being accessible(*) helped, being a themepark more so than MMORPG probably helped, too. But above all, it feels really snappy and responsive even in high-latency environments - even things like running animations simply "feel good", the atmosphere is some of the best in vidya, etc, etc, and these sort of core aspects that you are interacting with for 99%+ of your time playing the game matter A LOT, especially for a game that you are kinda supposed to play for hundreds or even thousands of hours, at which point even the most voluminous expanses of content dry out and the honeymoon period of exploring even the most complex of systems ends, while moment-to-moment gameplay is as important as it was since you first start playing. That no other game has been able to match WoW in these maximum-priority areas is the reason as to why even neo-WoW retail, disastrous as it is in almost every other respect, still manages to appeal to some people.
*) For the record, accessibility is strictly good. Whether or not it was lacking in difficulty or complexity or if it was only a matter of removing "artificial difficulty", well, it empirically was "difficult enough" for even the best players and groups to be challenged, and skill cap was demonstrably high enough that no player reached a level that by contemporary standards could be considered even competency.
>even things like running animations simply "feel good"
WoW had incredible polish at release compared to anything else on the market at the time, and to this day the animations are among the best in the industry.
I dropped it around 2008 or so, but it was a fun ride until then.
Know how most console fps games kind of sucked until halo nailed the control scheme? WoW was like that, but for MMO features. Bosses on the world map sucked, but instances for example made killing bosses something people who weren't terminally online could actually be able to do. The fact that kills saved on a weekly basis meant people with jobs and lives had a chance to make it to the end of a dungeon and kill the big bosses, getting the major loot.
The art also scaled really well for high end or low end computers so a lot of people were able to play, leading to healthy player counts. The world had built-in lore so even mundane quests felt like they were part of a bigger picture while the bigger stuff hadn't existed long enough to be retconned multiple times. PvP was also good for people who didn't give a frick about quests or dungeons while not having harsh penalties for losing.
It was before social media, but player-ran voice chat was available so the sense of community flourished.
Right time in the right place appealing to the right audience. Biggest issue with WoW as a whole is that they fricked up and began chasing the hardcore players and never implementing evergreen content. All people have gotten was what, battle pets? Everything else has been made irrelevant due to the way they structured their expansions. Who knew designing the game around the top .001% of players who PAY people to write weakauras was a bad thing?
Even now they STILL don't have the balls to ban combat mods. Even then, the game is fundamentally poisoned. Blizzard has found themselves in a situation where the people who are in charge of it do not have the game's interest at heart - these people just want short-term profits and THOSE morons hired the dumbest fricking diversity hires so inbetween making retention systems to keep people playing for longer they're murdering the fricking feel and lore of the game
first one to be tied to a major franchise i would guess? people were already familiar with Warcraft through RTS and this played up alot of unique fantasy elements. not to mention it was one of the first places people met online friends and found ways to talk to them.
Well, I have some idea >Made off of an already successful IP >World was much bigger and seen as better graphically. The art style helped it to stand out and the game was generally smoother >The idea of massive world PVP was exciting. While other games had PVP, you were maybe only fighting 5 other people at most. WoW offered hundreds of people at once and you could invade other faction space outside of a dedicated PVP zone >Being able to find people that held a similar interest as you. Social aspect in WoW use to be high, it was practically the entire game and the sense of accomplishing something together was something a lot of people didn't realize was a part of MMOs
it looked good, especially so for an mmo at the time
it felt good, blizzard had made such addictive action-rpg skinner boxes loot grinds before, with diablo 2
though it's true it casualized the genre originally intended for actual roleplayers with it's lax death penalties and generally no player influence on the world, like housing and such things.
before wow youd be setting up your own macros for each skill, quests werent ! nodes, grind that is unimaginable for modern players, pre-set pvp teams. Was the first one to really introduce the genre to casual players
>grind that is unimaginable for modern players
Is it? Sure, reaching max level in WoW doesn't take long at all compared to most of its contemporaries, but I think of grinding as something that always fills the empty space: if leveling grind doesn't take long then you'll engage in a PvP rank grind or something, and if raids don't take long then you'll (once you come across the idea, anyway, it clearly was an unintuitive concept until someone first thought of it) fill the time by running multiple splits instead, etc.
Now consider this: many players in WoW's top raiding guilds came off from those older games, but despite the fact they rarely even did the consumable grind, despite the obvious power advantage it would give! Nowadays, even mid-tier might expect full buffs, even if it's just for the sake of killing bosses in 15 seconds rather than 30, and it's not even about progression! I would suggest that contemporary (high-end) players are actually much more willing to grind, but because the void isn't shaped like 200 character levels each taking 10 hours, it's not as easy to notice the grind from the outside. Like, if some contemporary WoW guild runs 20 splits, are they not, as a matter of fact, grinding twice as much as some pre-WoW guild that's willing to put up with killing bosses that take 10 times longer?
I never played Everquest or Ultima. In fact my first MMO was a short lived Runescape experience and then Knight Online for like a month.
However, from what I've heard original "!" quests in WoW were a sort of tutorial system to help establish the lore and teach the players basic gameplay in the starting zones.
Once those got finished the design of the game originally abandoned them. The presumed game then basically became a grind in the overworld including dungeons for extra EXP.
Beta testers loved the quest system though, so blizzard expanded it starting with Eastern Kingdoms. Kalimdor was rushed which is why the horde questing experience wasn't nearly as complex and inter-zoned.
What this tells me is other earlier MMOs did not utilize quest sytems in the same way blizzard did. Knight Online if I recall had occasional npcs that would give a quest via a dialog but it wasn't "recorded" and it was more like "If you get this item and remember to talk to me you'll get shit".
I think the general idea of early MMOS was just explore, kill shit and kill harder shit with friends to get stronger. Little side missions that expanded the setting and gave you a reason to go to places weren't nailed down yet.
>Beta testers loved the quest system though, so blizzard expanded it starting with Eastern Kingdoms. Kalimdor was rushed which is why the horde questing experience wasn't nearly as complex and inter-zoned.
the first vertical slice of wow that the devs pitched to investors was elwyn-westfall-redridge-duskwoods iirc. thats why those quest zones are super interconnected and fleshed out, the future of the entire game was on the line. the rest of the world wasnt made with that much detail because funding was secured
So if you were to start retail now, there is no way to level through each expansion's quests slowly in tandem, if that is your prerogative?
You're railroaded into speeding towards max level?
You can lock your experience, and the areas are level-scaled so you can do any zone of any expansion at any level. That being said, it's not just about the quests (for the most part) still being there: the surrounding class and progression mechanics matter as well and those are completely different, whether it's a matter of having powerful AoE, self-sustain, personal cooldowns, etc, for TBC content that was designed in context where few classes had any, or Legion quests no longer boosting your artifact weapon, and the items that drop off Lich King have the same stats as those you can get from Borean Tundra quests. For pre-WoD expansions, you'll get a far more authentic experience on private servers of the respective expansions (there are quality servers for MoP, but not for WoD+, so retail would still be the preferred way of experiencing WoD/Legion/BfA/etc quests).
It was the only one that didn't play like sludge and the world had great environmental design
Seriously go back and try that shit, I liked boomer MMOs and played my fair share but they're a chore to just move around in and the zones are just fields with trees stuck in them
It was revolutionary for its time for example Everquest which was very popular during this era made you load into each zone while one of WoWs big selling points was it had no loading screens which was one of the weird set backs shadowlands brought back to the game and is also one of the big reasons starfield flopped. Starfield literally has more loading screens then 1999 Everquest.
they advertised it and grabbed a lot of first time mmo players
it was the first mmo where it was viable and even optimal to solo since they designed it around chaining filler quests and also made the world less convenient for old school group grinding
instance we really innovative for the time, even if in retrospect I don't like the direction mmos went in because of them they were exciting back then
the game ust felt good to play
ultimately I think it was bad for mmos and a bad mmo, but it was a really fun and good game experience
it was much easier
No it wasn’t. Experience with the game makes it look easier now. In the moment, it was challenging enough wherever it needed to be, be it dungeons or battlegrounds or word pvp. which was why the epic gear and all the game content felt special. Nothing is new or special forever. Besides, the real challenge was the social aspect, finding guild mates, finding someone to run dungeons, playing guild politics to get your spot in the raid. Having fun with other people, rather than just having fun with an object. This was the genuinely rewarding part of the game, and now the gamedoes it all for you, like any other hint of a challenge, to keep the unskilled from unsubscribing. Social skill does not matter to the developers anymore, and that was the only skill worth developing at all
>No it wasn’t.
lol yes it was
every EQcuck back then complained that the genre became a kiddie roller coaster because you had to grind for 80 hours instead of 200 like in old "hardcore" games like EQ and Camelot or whatever it was called
>Camelot
Dark Age of Camelot. Also Asheron's Call and Ultima Online.
thank you
Explain how not losing all your gear and some xp in death isn't easier. Show your work.
Yes it was, by the sheer fact you could solo your way to the level cap within a reasonable time. That shit was unheard of back then. It was also refreshing because the leveling was more than just group up and take turns farming the same mob camp for 8 hours.
Of course in the end, this would also prove to be the genre's downfall. Forced grouping just to advance meant the shitters got filtered out early on. Now all these games sprint you to the endgame as fast as possible. You constantly meet people at the level cap that didn't have a basic understanding of their class.
yes it was zoomer, don't pretend you played this back in 2004/2005
It was the first of many MMOs to really popularize the idea of not being punished as hard from death. No losing a quarter of a level's worth of exp, no super excessive grinding (nowhere near EQ's grinding at least), you could mostly get to level 60 on your own if you grinded enough, etc. Those things didn't exist in other games at the time, which gave a much more casual experience. Hell, even plenty of the raid encounters in WoW were usually intended to be beaten comparatively quickly vs. other games where it could take several straight hours to beat an end game raid boss. This isn't even accounting for WoW having instances dungeons and raids so you didn't have to worry about others coming in to frick with your raid.
WoW was created as the casual alternative to EverQuest. It's a game for casual normies at its core.
sHut the frick up child, you know nothing
These are ALL true by the way. Perfect combination of very high production values and IP and timing. Once in an industry history kind of coincidence like stars align
and it's the sole reason people still play it
you don't just give up on a game you've played for 20 years even when the people making it aren't the ones who made it special to begin with
>you don't just give up on a game you've played for 20 years
I remember quitting WOW, it takes some willpower depending on circumstances. For me it was during Cata and I did /played and my play time was over a year and a half. I quit there and then and barely told my guild who I was main-tanking.
Don't forget the game having an art style that ages well because they went for a stylized look.
The game also has very few loading screens and had a world that felt connected because of it.
They also managed to hit a perfect sweet spot with the game's effort/reward ratio so players feel properly rewarded and get that sweet dopamine hit.
It's like you said, the conditions were perfect, I would love to see all the technical stuff the game has behind the scenes because the classic game is a genuine masterwork in so many aspects of video game development.
good controls/net code
WoW had terrible net code at launch.
Sure a lot of it was client side magic but you have to admit it ran smooth as frick compared to any other online game at the time, and it's really impressive
it had server problems because it was so successful but that’s not the net code, it was made in that perfect time around 2000 where you still had to accommodate dialup and couldn’t halfass net code, it feels better than some single player games which is crazy, later in wrath/cata they started tweaking the combat log to lag less
futa wieners
Die
Warhammer III.
It was made by Blizzard back when that meant something and they still had a stellar reputation.
Those were good days. Everything they put out was instant gold, they had people playing multiple genres of games just because their name was on the box.
It released at the perfect time. MMO's were up and coming, EQ and Ultima were the best at the time but WOW offered full 3rd person.
>3rd person
Final Fantasy XI beat EQ to market by 2 years
How did 12 year olds get their mom to pay for this monthly subscription at the time? I missed out on the greatest mmo experience ever for this reason.
You weren't the target audience. I was 18 when WOW released and I worked nights to save up for a gaming PC.
Lots of people my age grew up with WoW too
It was massive, that's true.
>How did 12 year olds get their mom to pay for this monthly subscription at the time?
I didn't. I had a neighbour who had an active sub. He shared his account with me cause he was really friendly.
lucky bastard
I asked my parents and 15 a month is a helluva lot cheaper than Legos. My step dad put restrictions on my account tho so I couldn't play constantly.
warcraft 1 2 3
its a crime that more than half wow lewd art in 3d garbage rather than quality stuff like op posted
>What made WoW so successful compared to the other MMOs of the time?
- The audience wasn't only nerds
- A lot of sponsors and TV spot
- Meme culture and a lot of machinima
- Mont fee while other classic mmo moved on the toxic "Free in your way system" or F2P and P2W models
- Expansion radically changes the gameplay
- Rule34
Trifecta of the following:
It was babby easy compared to other MMOs
It ran on toasters compared to other MMOs
It had a built in established fanbase compared to (most) other MMOs and was created by one of if not the hottest company in the industry at the time (Blizzard pre Activison acquisiton)
Because it's by far the best game in the genre, particularly in the areas that count the most. Yes, factors such as being a part of a bestselling series did help, Blizzard's then-stellar reputation helped, being able to run on low-end machines helped, being accessible(*) helped, being a themepark more so than MMORPG probably helped, too. But above all, it feels really snappy and responsive even in high-latency environments - even things like running animations simply "feel good", the atmosphere is some of the best in vidya, etc, etc, and these sort of core aspects that you are interacting with for 99%+ of your time playing the game matter A LOT, especially for a game that you are kinda supposed to play for hundreds or even thousands of hours, at which point even the most voluminous expanses of content dry out and the honeymoon period of exploring even the most complex of systems ends, while moment-to-moment gameplay is as important as it was since you first start playing. That no other game has been able to match WoW in these maximum-priority areas is the reason as to why even neo-WoW retail, disastrous as it is in almost every other respect, still manages to appeal to some people.
*) For the record, accessibility is strictly good. Whether or not it was lacking in difficulty or complexity or if it was only a matter of removing "artificial difficulty", well, it empirically was "difficult enough" for even the best players and groups to be challenged, and skill cap was demonstrably high enough that no player reached a level that by contemporary standards could be considered even competency.
>even things like running animations simply "feel good"
WoW had incredible polish at release compared to anything else on the market at the time, and to this day the animations are among the best in the industry.
I dropped it around 2008 or so, but it was a fun ride until then.
taking an already established story to next gen heights
it was like the move from 2d gaming to 3d
Know how most console fps games kind of sucked until halo nailed the control scheme? WoW was like that, but for MMO features. Bosses on the world map sucked, but instances for example made killing bosses something people who weren't terminally online could actually be able to do. The fact that kills saved on a weekly basis meant people with jobs and lives had a chance to make it to the end of a dungeon and kill the big bosses, getting the major loot.
The art also scaled really well for high end or low end computers so a lot of people were able to play, leading to healthy player counts. The world had built-in lore so even mundane quests felt like they were part of a bigger picture while the bigger stuff hadn't existed long enough to be retconned multiple times. PvP was also good for people who didn't give a frick about quests or dungeons while not having harsh penalties for losing.
It was before social media, but player-ran voice chat was available so the sense of community flourished.
Right time in the right place appealing to the right audience. Biggest issue with WoW as a whole is that they fricked up and began chasing the hardcore players and never implementing evergreen content. All people have gotten was what, battle pets? Everything else has been made irrelevant due to the way they structured their expansions. Who knew designing the game around the top .001% of players who PAY people to write weakauras was a bad thing?
Even now they STILL don't have the balls to ban combat mods. Even then, the game is fundamentally poisoned. Blizzard has found themselves in a situation where the people who are in charge of it do not have the game's interest at heart - these people just want short-term profits and THOSE morons hired the dumbest fricking diversity hires so inbetween making retention systems to keep people playing for longer they're murdering the fricking feel and lore of the game
Streamlining the mechanics that various MMO's added during the years and making it all more approachable.
can't you nerds see this is a coom thread. stop writing paragraphs and post more WoW boobs
Frick you
It's a serious thread, I just utilise lust provoking images to get attention to the thread.
first one to be tied to a major franchise i would guess? people were already familiar with Warcraft through RTS and this played up alot of unique fantasy elements. not to mention it was one of the first places people met online friends and found ways to talk to them.
Well, I have some idea
>Made off of an already successful IP
>World was much bigger and seen as better graphically. The art style helped it to stand out and the game was generally smoother
>The idea of massive world PVP was exciting. While other games had PVP, you were maybe only fighting 5 other people at most. WoW offered hundreds of people at once and you could invade other faction space outside of a dedicated PVP zone
>Being able to find people that held a similar interest as you. Social aspect in WoW use to be high, it was practically the entire game and the sense of accomplishing something together was something a lot of people didn't realize was a part of MMOs
Elves made my pp hard
Suicidegirl pussy
honestly i think it was just name recognition and good marketing.
warcraft was huge at the time and all the big MMOs were foreign IPs.
LOWEST
COMMON
DENOMINATOR
it looked good, especially so for an mmo at the time
it felt good, blizzard had made such addictive action-rpg skinner boxes loot grinds before, with diablo 2
though it's true it casualized the genre originally intended for actual roleplayers with it's lax death penalties and generally no player influence on the world, like housing and such things.
the fluidity of movement. its unmatched to this day. compared to other mmos in 2004? lol, lmao even
First MMO that was easy to learn and play
before wow youd be setting up your own macros for each skill, quests werent ! nodes, grind that is unimaginable for modern players, pre-set pvp teams. Was the first one to really introduce the genre to casual players
>grind that is unimaginable for modern players
Is it? Sure, reaching max level in WoW doesn't take long at all compared to most of its contemporaries, but I think of grinding as something that always fills the empty space: if leveling grind doesn't take long then you'll engage in a PvP rank grind or something, and if raids don't take long then you'll (once you come across the idea, anyway, it clearly was an unintuitive concept until someone first thought of it) fill the time by running multiple splits instead, etc.
Now consider this: many players in WoW's top raiding guilds came off from those older games, but despite the fact they rarely even did the consumable grind, despite the obvious power advantage it would give! Nowadays, even mid-tier might expect full buffs, even if it's just for the sake of killing bosses in 15 seconds rather than 30, and it's not even about progression! I would suggest that contemporary (high-end) players are actually much more willing to grind, but because the void isn't shaped like 200 character levels each taking 10 hours, it's not as easy to notice the grind from the outside. Like, if some contemporary WoW guild runs 20 splits, are they not, as a matter of fact, grinding twice as much as some pre-WoW guild that's willing to put up with killing bosses that take 10 times longer?
>Is it? blah-blah
Yes, it is.
before wow it was actual grind. you would sit there grinding the same mobs for hours to get 1/4th a level. Leveling with quests was not a thing
I never played Everquest or Ultima. In fact my first MMO was a short lived Runescape experience and then Knight Online for like a month.
However, from what I've heard original "!" quests in WoW were a sort of tutorial system to help establish the lore and teach the players basic gameplay in the starting zones.
Once those got finished the design of the game originally abandoned them. The presumed game then basically became a grind in the overworld including dungeons for extra EXP.
Beta testers loved the quest system though, so blizzard expanded it starting with Eastern Kingdoms. Kalimdor was rushed which is why the horde questing experience wasn't nearly as complex and inter-zoned.
What this tells me is other earlier MMOs did not utilize quest sytems in the same way blizzard did. Knight Online if I recall had occasional npcs that would give a quest via a dialog but it wasn't "recorded" and it was more like "If you get this item and remember to talk to me you'll get shit".
I think the general idea of early MMOS was just explore, kill shit and kill harder shit with friends to get stronger. Little side missions that expanded the setting and gave you a reason to go to places weren't nailed down yet.
>Beta testers loved the quest system though, so blizzard expanded it starting with Eastern Kingdoms. Kalimdor was rushed which is why the horde questing experience wasn't nearly as complex and inter-zoned.
the first vertical slice of wow that the devs pitched to investors was elwyn-westfall-redridge-duskwoods iirc. thats why those quest zones are super interconnected and fleshed out, the future of the entire game was on the line. the rest of the world wasnt made with that much detail because funding was secured
So if you were to start retail now, there is no way to level through each expansion's quests slowly in tandem, if that is your prerogative?
You're railroaded into speeding towards max level?
You can lock your experience, and the areas are level-scaled so you can do any zone of any expansion at any level. That being said, it's not just about the quests (for the most part) still being there: the surrounding class and progression mechanics matter as well and those are completely different, whether it's a matter of having powerful AoE, self-sustain, personal cooldowns, etc, for TBC content that was designed in context where few classes had any, or Legion quests no longer boosting your artifact weapon, and the items that drop off Lich King have the same stats as those you can get from Borean Tundra quests. For pre-WoD expansions, you'll get a far more authentic experience on private servers of the respective expansions (there are quality servers for MoP, but not for WoD+, so retail would still be the preferred way of experiencing WoD/Legion/BfA/etc quests).
>the areas are level-scaled
thanks, not gonna even bother lol
timing, better gameplay and better netcode.
It built upon the foundations laid out by EQ and improved them. That's... Pretty much it.
They advertised it.
The inclusive array of colors, genders and races you could play as.
i could fix them
blue butthole
It was the only one that didn't play like sludge and the world had great environmental design
Seriously go back and try that shit, I liked boomer MMOs and played my fair share but they're a chore to just move around in and the zones are just fields with trees stuck in them
It was revolutionary for its time for example Everquest which was very popular during this era made you load into each zone while one of WoWs big selling points was it had no loading screens which was one of the weird set backs shadowlands brought back to the game and is also one of the big reasons starfield flopped. Starfield literally has more loading screens then 1999 Everquest.
they advertised it and grabbed a lot of first time mmo players
it was the first mmo where it was viable and even optimal to solo since they designed it around chaining filler quests and also made the world less convenient for old school group grinding
instance we really innovative for the time, even if in retrospect I don't like the direction mmos went in because of them they were exciting back then
the game ust felt good to play
ultimately I think it was bad for mmos and a bad mmo, but it was a really fun and good game experience
SNIFF
When you jump off a cliff there's almost never an invisible wall to stop you.
cringe thumbnail poster
Oh Syvlvanas, Wotlk truly ruined you.