Made a funny (?) note for myself today: there are no blogged responses to my yesterday's plea for features and aspects of WoW which make it so much better than, say, EQ2. I made that remark to Twitter and got my eyes opened by Stargrace and Kadomi: as the two launched at around the same time, most of the WoW players have never even tried EQ2.
Now I'm not saying that it's a fact or the truth to void all other truths, but this may be the case. Dechion mentioned that he wouldn't know if (quote)"EQ2 would come to my front door singing christmas carols"(end quote).
Also a good note was that WoW players don't seem to have a reason to defend their choice of game in the same extent as the ones playing the underdog EQ2. As it was mentioned in the comments of the post, EQ2 started with no backing from the previous IP (being EQ) while WoW had strong backing of Warcraft-series and especially the Frozen Throne expansion. EQ2 was also very resource heavy on the then current computers compared to WoW which still would run on a (pretty high end) toaster.
But the idea or note which struck my fancy was the fact that if majority of the WoW players have never tried EQ2 or any other MMO so far, how can they say that WoW is the best MMO or the best for them? Considering the current selection of active and devoid MMO's available, there has been a lot from where to select the daily medicine dose. EQ2, Warhammer Online, EQ, Age of Conan, Aion to mention some on the fantasy side.
Thinking of this it's no wonder why the term "wow tourists" has been coined and from where it brews from. The players who have entered MMO's with WoW as their first ever who have tried the competing one only to notice that the game cannot deliver the same playability, stability and content from the start as their first choice after (currently) five years of honing and tweaking, patching and nerfing casual friendliness.
The point of comparison is scewed and thus makes the appearance of a single WoW killer impossible. Everytime a new MMO launches, it will be compared with the updated, upgraded WoW, even though everyone should know that any MMO launches incomplete. So did WoW, but that truth is lost in time already.
So what are we to expect from the future. Small baby steps from different companies slowly gnawing the player base of WoW? "WoW2" or similar from Blizzard to make the doors of Azeroth close once and for all? (IMO Cataclysm is this)
Or that one game that comes from the left and takes the whole MMO population off guard?
But the only thing I'm sure of is that the current games have a comparison point which is not on level with the launching games at all.
Too bad: so much wasted effort only because people want more of the same.
We are so lazy, comfort seeking and selfish after all.
