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Why BioWare's Star Wars MMO May Already Be Too Late
Since the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, many gamers have been hopeful that its high budget, respected development team and rich universe will be enough to provide a real challenge to the WoW juggernaut. An opinion piece at 1Up makes the case that BioWare's opportunity to do so may have already passed. Quoting:
"While EA and BioWare Austin have the horsepower needed to at least draw even with World of Warcraft though, what we've seen so far has been worryingly conventional — even generic — given the millions being poured into development. Take the opening areas around Tython, which Mike Nelson describes in his most recent preview as being 'rudimentary,' owing to their somewhat generic, grind-driven quest design. Running around killing a set number of 'Flesh Raiders' in a relatively quiet village doesn't seem particularly epic, but that's the route BioWare Austin seems to be taking with the opening areas for the Jedi — what will surely be the most popular classes when The Old Republic is released. ... the real concern, though, is not so much in the quest design as in BioWare Austin's apparent willingness to play follow the leader. Whenever something becomes a big hit — be it a movie, game or book — there's always a mad scramble to replicate the formula; in World of Warcraft's case, that mad scramble has been going for six years now. "
I think after six years it's safe to say that trying to beat WoW at its own game is futile. If you want to surpass WoW as the world's leading MMO, you can't just copy their model.
The approach that ArenaNet appears to be taking with Guild Wars 2 is more sensible. They've thrown out many things which could be considered as fundamental in an MMO, but are actually limiting or frustrating. This includes things like grinding, quests that have no impact, text based plot and more subtle concepts such as the DPS/tank/heal arrangement.
If any game is capable of surpassing WoW, my money would be on GW2.