ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!!! I want an MMO that’s like the Elder Scrolls series, not like stupid WoW with its button-mashing simplicity, boring grinding, lack of physics and so on. I want to get away from levels and “gear” and more towards Elder Scrolls-style skill. If Bethesda won’t do this, and it sounds like they won’t, then someone else should take up the task and build such an MMO. Oh, and make the game world at least as large as the massive one in Daggerfall (possibly the largest game world EVER), and place ALL of the MMO’s players in that world, unless perhaps you want to have separate PvE and PvP type servers. That’s one WoW-ism I’d consider leaving in, as different players do feel very differently about it. But the rest… go opposite, go Elder Scrolls-like. I’d be all over a game like that, and I’m sure it could even be the long-awaited WoW-killer.

I believe that the pie can be made larger by designing MMOs that appeal to console action game players. At present, TERA Online is the only AAA subscription title that offers some promise of doing so. Some other titles we will see in North America before long are RaiderZ, Kingdom Under Fire 2, Continent of the Ninth and Monster Hunter Frontier. One that I would very much like to see is Berkanix but it will be years before it is available in the West.

I agree that you can’t woo the WoW player base away with games that use exactly the same basic mechanics. That is why I believe Rift will go the way of Age of Conan.

I lost interest in WoW several months ago after years of addicted play. For now, I putter around with Vindictus and a couple of other F2P games until something better comes along. I’m hoping that it will be TERA Online.

My name is Jeremy Keat and I approve this^ message ^.

Exactly my thoughts and What I have been saying for at least the past 2years, bravo I always wanted to make a wall of text article like you on my concerns. I will patronize this message to the fullest.

I am a long time WoW player I spent more time than most and have 10 lvl 80s in full epics. I know hate the game to an extent, I am burnt, endgame sucks, relying on tanks and healers not being able to play the fun roles or getting stuck waiting sucks. I only owe the reason to ever being a fan of blizzard to Warcraft mainly Warcraft 3, epic story with epic play. WoW leeched off its previous successful game, that is all.

I can’t wait a for a new skill based game and finally game developers are catching on. I am also one of those people working right now at a pre-production level of an MMO at my college witha group of guys motivated into getting our game out there, we are also seeking to grab a totally different style of play than any other game I have yet to hear, all this ranting gets me exited. Legend of Pandora, I hope you guys hear of again in the future.

hmm i agree with most points there, but i dont think that the goign free was an act of desperation, at least in respect to LOtRO. i believe it was just that turbine works better that way. i mean D&DOnline turns in a tidy profit and apparently, so did LOTRO and even more so now.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104176-Free-to-Play-LOTRO-Do ubles-Revenues
as evidenced by that article

i agree with that familiarity eases new players into the world (a good idea with today’s ADD crowd, ive read a lot of comments against EVE because they stubbornly refuse to feel like newbies in a new game) but its a double edged sword because that very thing is what prevents the game from feeling fresh and unique lowering its grasp over the stolen wow players, they might leave wow because they are bored but they will go back when they get new content

new companies just do not have the resources to keep adding more stuff to the game from day 1 to keep the players from getting bored, many even make the huge mistake of trying to slow the content consumption down (/me looks at the FXIV stupidity although there is a lot more wrong with that game), i doubt even EA is prepared to burn the house down to keep supporting TOR for months while it builds up its player base

if Blizzard ever felt threatened by another mmo all they have to do is announce a new expansion/release new content, wow clones would get smited unless they have a big chunk of their players not willing to go back to wow

hell, i imagine Cataclysm’s release will weed out most of the wow clones that managed to survive so far

I was there at launch, and most newcomers weren’t MMO newbies, but people who already played one (mostly EQ, Lineage or DaoC). It took time for the game to reach its critical mass and start creating its customers, though I concede it was pretty damn fast (couple of months).

You say the MMO market is tapped, and I certainly agree. The only sensible design decision for a MMO trying to emulate WoW’s success is to copy it, because most of its required 1 or 2 millions subscribers are going to come from WoW players, not haters. Making it somewhat similar actually eases the transition. It needs to roughly be the same, but better in very concrete terms. It’s not like WoW is perfect, as Blizzard proves times and again when they release patches and expansions adding new features that would now be sorely missed, like the random dungeon grouping.

Ditching high level characters to start anew is difficult, but most high level players I know are pretty bored with the game and would be ready to do it for a WoW v2. They tried alternatives, usually with a good part of their guild to bring friends along, but always found WoW to be better, which is why they came back.

no way, WOW might have copied everquest but EQ was never as massive plus WOW created its customers it didnt steal them, you cant compare that with what is happening today

right now the mmo market is tapped, there will no more tsunamis of new players (at least not without some MAJOR change), if they want millions of players they need to steal from other mmos

and then no clone with a “good idea” is going to steal players who have spent hundreds of hours on an mmo, have all their friends there, spent hours getting to know their way around the world and game rules to just drop all that for something that tastes the same

I disagree that new MMOs need to be aimed at WoW haters. WoW itself didn’t invent anything : it copied Everquest’s gameplay and polished it up, while using Blizzard’s well-known and established Warcraft setting. I was among the first batch of subscribers, and most of these were people playing similar games before, who decided to migrate to the new game because it did everything the old one did, but better.

The problem with most WoW-clones I’ve seen over the years is that they either make a carbon-copy of it in a different setting, or “improve” on it by adding unimportant or purely cosmetic features. More often that not, they also include their own “awesome idea” that isn’t awesome at all and is more detrimental to the experience. They’re sometimes similar, but never better than the original, that’s why they fail and early subscribers hoping for an improvement over WoW just go back.

Let’s not forget that Blizzard has shown over the years that WoW can, has been and probably will still be improved upon, as more patches and expansions get released. They’re milking the cash cow but also taking very good care of it. While having a lot of updates isn’t uncommon, Blizzard takes the time and resources to test each of them thoroughly and avoid any major screw-up. These frequent quality updates are part of the WoW package, and history has shown few games, if any, can keep the same promise.

The Old Republic might succeed if they manage to get everything WoW has right, and improve over its few remaining flaws. That’s what BioWare is doing by adding a story to the game, but as far as I can tell the only thing that makes a multiplayer game succeed in the long run is gameplay. Then again, if they have a truly good idea, they’d do well to keep it hidden until release so they don’t get copied in the meantime.

agreed completly, i’d like to also point out (altho you sort of do it yourself) that you can tap the “i hate mmo games” market with single player games that have been sadly thrown aside by the mmo craze recently

im starting to sigh every time i read “supports online multiplayer!!!” in games features because 9 times out of 10 means the sp component will be just an afterthought or a tech demo

im hoping that when the current “most-expensive-and-hyped-reskined-wow-of-the-year” The Old Republic fails theyll go back to sp games but so far they ve been ignoring epic mmo fails like APB, Hellgate, Warhammer and so many others for not being epic enough or for being related to crazy business management flaws

@ Luke Maciak:
It will be free to play like the first one.