And yes this game is made by a small indie company with no corporate bean counters directing them to do things the "safe' way. They had TOTAL freedom to make any kind of mmo, and they come up with this. Pathetic.
I was bitching about that aloud yesterday. Not only is that pointless and dumb from an artistic and gamer POV, but there is no way for a high fantasy MMO to compete with WoW at this point. You need to offer something else. Sci-fi is the simplest route, but I know plenty have been calling for a steampunk MMO.
Or just anything! Goddamn![/QUOTE]
No MMO period will touch WoWs sub numbers, But a a high fantasy MMO can still be successful if it brings something new to the table that wow doesn't have. For example, thought not my cup of tea, Aion seems to be doing pretty well for itself so far subscriber-wise. Why? Because it offers something that wow isn't the best at, and that's large scale open pvp (rather than arena/battlegrounds), and centers the game around that. There's an audience that's been craving it for a while, the same audience that were disappointed by WAR and AoC which both claimed to have the same thing but failed miserably at it. My old guilds in both those games moved to Aion.
Honestly what I'd like to see though is a complete revamp of traditional mmo combat. Technology is at the point now that MMOs don't need autotarget and autoattack anymore, and can instead use manual aiming, and more visceral twitch-like combat. Darkfall and Spellborne have already done this, but those are both very niche games without a lot of popular appeal. But take that kind of real time combat system (thinking along the lines o oblivion's combat system) and combine it with a crowd favorite like a DOAC style RvR system, and do it well, and you'd have a real winner on your hands.
