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WoW was an abomination and started the trend of subscription gaming. It also ended the much beloved RTS series Warcraft, and Warcraft II.
Edit: Say what you want, WoW popularized subscription models for games. Mainstreamed it.
As someone that has played EverQuest consistently for 25 years.... no, no it did not.
Runescape started their subscriptions 2 years before WoW came out. Ultima Online had it in the 90s. I'm sure there were others.
WoW is still nostalgic for many of us. I grew up on Runescape but also tried WoW private servers and man did it have an awesome world for its time.
RTS just fell out of favour and isn't popular as a genre anymore. StarCraft was the only one that endured, and even that was a niche interest. If the genre had any appeal then someone else would have taken up the mantle (as we saw with MobA's).
Subscription gaming was going to happen regardless.
wdym lol, AOE2DE has 22k playing right now, which is Diablo 4 tier player count, slightly behind rpgs like Skyrim or Cyberpunk 2077
I miss my RTS topdown style games, I could never get into WCII but like, I agree its a dying genre
Beyond All Reason is building some pretty good momentum. It's more of a TA/Supreme Commander style RTS, so a bit different compared to Warcraft. But it's a modern RTS in active development and growing userbase, which is pretty rare over the past decade.
I don't meet the prereqs.
You know what that means. Time to build a new rig 😅
I'm reading Jason Scheier's book about Blizzard and it specifically says that subscriptions were already the norm for MMOs. In fact, battle.net was revolutionary at the time because it was free while a lot of contemporary systems charged by the hour
started the trend of subscription gaming
Edit: [...] popularized subscription models
It's neat to see the goal posts move in the same comment.
Ultima, everquest, anarchy online, star wars galaxies. All were popular MMOs with a subscription fee and predate world of warcraft.
I don't care about subscription models. It's the scummy MTX that I don't like (that and the gameplay changes).