Yesterday, in the comments of our Daily Grind about nice things we can say about games we don’t like, MOP commenter Squid posted a provocative comment that spawned some fun discussion that I thought would make a good Daily Grind question all to itself.
“WoW is probably the only reason this genre still exists,” he wrote (and he meant it as a good thing!).
I’m not entirely sure I agree; I’ve argued that World of Warcraft sucked a lot of the air out of the room in terms of investment and innovation, setting the genre on some pretty narrow rails that busted up the diversity of the MMO field back in those early years.
On the other hand, without WoW, it’s not entirely clear how many other studios would have entered the mad rush to copy WoW. “Would Elder Scrolls ever gone MMO if not for WoW?” Squid mused. “Would Trion exist without WoW?”
What do you think? What would the MMO genre look like in 2018 without WoW? What if World of Warcraft had never happened?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
