"WOW it’s basically a remake of EverQuest." -Lord British
In an interview with the NY Times Richard Garriott, the Godfather of MMOs, puts forth some wise words about the MMO genre. The Lord turned General mentions one of the faults of one the most popular MMO in the article, he says,
"As many kudos as I would like to give World of Warcraft, it’s basically a remake of EverQuest, just incredibly polished and refined.There are harbingers of failure in that model. Everyone in these games is obsessed with the concept of how much damage-per-second they are inflicting and maximizing their D.P.S. When you do that, you are no longer playing a role; you are playing an inventory-management game.”
This is pretty much right on the money, anyone that plays WoW has to have met at least one of these twinks running around asking to duel everyone around their level to see how their set up is, right? Hell, the whole concept of twinking proves his point.
Here is the NY Times article with Lord Genius so you can get learned.
Richard Garriot is one of the best game designers of all time. I think hes being extremely kind when giving his position on WOW, or at least, choosing his words very carefully. WOW isnt just a rip-off of everquest, its a rip-off of everquest with (FAR) less content, fewer classes, simplified classes, fewer races, and a simpler graphics engine. Blizzard is good at marketing, but theyre the McDonalds of the MMO world.
Speaking of Garriot, i just got a copy of Tabula Rasa this weekend, and was very impressed. My only qualm is that from the story/graphics/physics perspective, its just an MMO version of Halo (for XBox). From a sheer gameplay perspective, its got enough uniqueness, new concepts, rebirth of older-but-good concepts that died off when EA bought out OSI, and many other niceties that remove a player from that feeling like he/she is playing every other MMO with different graphics. Def the first MMO ive liked since DAoC came out. Im only just scratching level 10, but its a really rad game so far. My oh-so-humble opinion may change by the time my free subscription runs out, but I doubt it.