Is World Of Warcraft a masterpiece?

My friends, the term "masterpiece" is slung round a lot. Much of the time, it's bluster from over enthusiastic game media flapping hands around trying to convince me Naughty Dog games are amazing (thankfully Adam Sessler is going away forever).

But, given an MMO like World Of Warcraft has had iteration after iteration and refinement after refinement, would we, the colllective mass of video gameyers label "world of Warcraft" as a genuine bonafide masterpiece?

It seems this is the 21st century equivalent of King Arthur.

Not by long shot. Its not entertaining, its addictive. Its an evil Masterpiece

No one is your friend here.

Of course it is, Vanilla WoW is one of the biggest masterpieces in gaming history. The expansions ruined the game for me in a way, just got burnt out but the original was just so ahead of it's time.

@ clone01

Shut up.

Considering it'll turn 10 next november and still going strong with over 10m subscribers

The environments in Northrend are some of the best seen in any game to date. Truly visionary.

Also it has a sexy dragon cartoon lady wearing a thong.

What happened to Sessler?

Up to BC? sure, after that it just went to shyt.

Up to lich king. After that it's been a huge failure.

Online games are the exact opposite of masterpiece.

1) Before cows pop up, TLoU is not a masterpiece. It did not influence pop culture the way WoW or COD did. It's just a good game with a decent story that won GOTY in a weak year, where the only other contender really was Bioshock.

2) To be completely honest with you, I've never played WoW. Although it definitely has negative connotations (see the South Park WoW episode), I think it's impact on gaming is too huge to ignore. It's been out for 10 years in is still going strong. It still has one of the largest player bases of any game and is the pinnacle of the MMO genre.

IMO, for a game to be considered a master piece it has to shape Pop Culture in some way.

The Mona Lisa is a master piece, the Sistine Chapel is a masterpiece, WoW is a modern classic, trend setter and benchmark but it didn' hit the nail on the head with the first hit so it's most definitely not a master piece.

No. Call of Duty Ghosts is a masterpiece.

I haven't played it and even I am fully aware of how monumentally influential it is. Arguing against World of Warcraft's merits is kind of like arguing against D&D's: You may not have played them, you may have played them and not really liked them, but they were game-changers. There was a before and an after World of Warcraft.

I don't think this topic is about WOW's influence in gaming history, because nobody can deny that, and only someone who literaly lived under a rock would create a thread asking about its influence.

Maybe he's just asking if its good ? But then again thats another pointless question because it isn't it good. :)

So to sum things up, WOW is to gaming what The Black Plague was to Europe all that time ago. :p

Prior to Cataclysm, it was.

Visually / atmospherically? ABSOLUTELY.

It's just a beautiful world to explore... I'd actually recommend any gamer play WoW for a week, or so. It's just great to look around.

I haven't played a ton but gameplay looks like a mixed bag. Some elements are even still the gold standard for MMOs, others are dated, others are now overly casual.

... and the whole gameplay experience is fundamentally made to consume your time. It's been extremely successful at this, but masterpiece isn't the right word here.

The graphics are not masterful, maybe 7 years ago yes but not now, even after the updates.

The gameplay is flawed and has never reached a proper balance, however I did it play it for a long time and while it is a 9/10 in terms of the universe, the story, the world, the content it just doesn't feel like a "masterpiece" on any level. It's just that it does each individual thing better than most games can do as a whole. Look at every other MMO and you see it excel massively in one area to flounder in pretty much every other area. WoW just doesn't do this, it does every area "very well" but never perfect.

Masterpiece? Nah, but yes for masterpiece money maker.

Anyone who says World Of Warcraft is not a masterpiece has either never played the game, or dislikes MMO's in general. These are facts.

I used to play it but I have grown tired of MMOs. Always the same concept, kill bosses, pvp arena. Leveling -> Kill 10 sparrows, repeat, congrats you are now max level.

I suppose it can be considered a masterpiece. I dislike it alot, not my kind of game, but I will not shy away from accepting it for being the mammuth that it is. WoW took something that was getting popular, and it tqeaked it to near perfection for what that genre was at the time.

I still hope that an MMO that I would like comes by, but so far? nope.

Attention, system warriors, that is how sensible human beings talk.

As someone who played from the original beta to now, off and on, I can definitely say that it fits that term. You have only to look at the massive subscriber base, due to the considerably addictive gameplay, thanks to the multitude of ways that we as players earn rewards while playing. Blizzard is nothing if not a master of gamification, that is, rewarding gamers for putting massive hours into seemingly mundane tasks, like grinding or daily quests. You can find this in most of their games though. Look at Diablo, you're constantly getting rewarded for playing, new levels, new loot, new powers, piles of gold, access to new areas, etc. We as gamers, and as people in general enjoy being rewarded and getting these achievements. There have even been recent studies linking these in game rewards to the pleasure center of the brain, where the happiness inducing drug dopamine is released whenever we as gamers do something particularly noteworthy in a game.

After ten years it continues to define an entire genre, so I don't know what else you'd call it. While it's superior relative to other MMOs, WoW hasn't been at its peak level of quality in a while and WoD is looking like another Cataclysm-level disappointment.

@Allicrombie

Its the Ultimate SkinnerBox.

You know what we call doing something and getting a reward for it...... Its called a chore. Because you wouldn't do it for free or just for fun.

It would be better if it was designed in a way that the gameplay was its own reward.

no it's a pretty shit game honestly.

So,have you ever played it?

Aaaaaaaand, ladies and gentleman. Here is a good example of your average peasant, judging a game he has never played. (probably a FPS fan to the boot!)

It was good till WotLK, afterwards it turned into shit. The massive sub drops kinda shows it. The game at this point hardly innovates and its still the same boring ''kill 10 X collect 5 Y'' quests over and over again. I like some of the new boss fights, but most of the time its nothing new mechanic wise.

to be fair, its kinda hard to keep a game fresh and interesting after 10 years.

My friend, you make an excellent point that highlights exactly how dumb his point was. At best, it's a reactionary anti-comment for the sake of being an anti comment. Negativity is much easier for the weaker mind to adopt to make someone feel special.

As a long time hardcore pc hardcore pc gamer, I remember all the challengers. The obnoxious potty mouth comments in regards to Lord Of The Rings Online, Age Of Conan, Warhammer Online and the much hyped genocide that was Old Republic.

All proclaimed to add something significant, to be the next thing. Yet they die, world and or warcraft continues, like that man in Bram Stockers Dracula, ever immortal.

my friend, its gotta be one of the most successful games of all time, if not the most - and i don't play it.

masterpiece ...well, in terms of video games it does have some elements of outstanding workmanship. according to the data i can access it seems wow's been by far and above the most subscribed mmorpg of the last 8-9 years.

that kind of success is rare. it was above 10M subs for about 4 years, ok that is basically more than the population of 'Sweden'.

i don't know if the word masterpiece is a good word for video games. but I'd imagine many developers themselves would look at WOW as an example of a hugely successful game.

what comes close? the sims? pokemon? well they also had longer. WOW's timeframe for success is relatively compressed.

from any angle its done pretty bloody well.

It's a masterpiece for herms. It's their only goty exclusive for the past 10 years.

And you were claiming we didn't have any for the past 10 years

lolz, someone's got owned and flip flopped

hahah WoW

It's very odd how people say Mona Lisa is masterpiece but not World Of The Warcrafts. It's just a painting. Blizzard have created a world. A culmination of years of effort by hundreds of people working on each and every aspect, It's more of an accomplishment than a silly painting by Santa claus.

That's a new low

No, because it has terrible gameplay and it isn't fun.

There is nothing cool about not being social. Bumming me out with that depressive talk.

But it sold 6 million units is 20 minutes and 90+ metacritics.

Perhaps you're not very good. Ever think about that?

The content of WoW tends to be aiming at "causing minimal offence", which is an effective strategy when it's the player interactions and societies that are keeping people in the game, not the content. In other words, the content is fine as long as it doesn't drive people away; the content does not have to be good. Another reason WoW is so successful is because it has very good support compared to many other MMOs, whether it's balancing, helping or enforcement. Of course, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than other MMOs relatively spekaing. WoW is like a country with people and communities you'd like to see everyday and a strong government that rules well. Even if the grass is not green, the environment is a bit polluted or the pay isn't exactly stellar, you'd still enjoy your time there.

On the other hand, many recent entries in the MMO genre focus too much on content. It's as if they've built this very beautiful kingdom, except they poorly implement all the social features and make forming communities difficult or meaningless, and the king is always asleep and makes tons of bad decisions on a daily basis. Those MMOs attract people, but fail to compel people to stay. SWTOR is certainly an example - beautiful world, average social and suppport eventually drove the game to F2P. ESO is a good recent example - very beautiful buggy world, poor social designs and absolutely dreadful support/patching/balance that's slow to react, slow to address and slow to learn. On the other hand, MMOs that manage to master the social and support aspects of a MMO on top of content have met some some success, examples include LOTRO that learnt the way of support a bit late into the game, or EVE that has its social aspect maxed through the roof.

A lot of new MMOs are coming out, both AAA and indie, including WildStar, ArcheAge, EverQuest Next or even kick-started Pathfinder Online. Since content is the only thing a MMO can effectively advertise before release, we can only wait and see whether these news MMOs will do a good job with social and support aspects.

i hate it but i respect it. In terms of what is the bigger cash cow, World of warcraft or Call of duty? I'd say world of warcraft.. When WOW was sporting 13+ million subscribers who were paying $15 a month + $60 for the game.. I dunno how COD could compare. Blizzard got so big they literally bought Activition one could say.Hence Activition/blizzard. Is it a masterpiece? i dunno cause i hate mmo's but if judging by the success. Its obviously a masterpiece if you into mmo's

@lunar1122: Blizzard never bought activision. They were merged under vivendi so all of they shares in their video game companies could be organized into one company.

I agree with this.

It's always amusing watching random forum gamers pretending to understand the industry better than a critically acclaimed billionaire company.

My friend, for more than half a decade lots of new, amazing World and or Warcraft titles have been punted as the killer. Wouldn't get too excited.

Tally my vote in the "yes" column