Name one game on the market today that isn't a "rip off" (whatever that means) of some other game that came before it.
Look at the indie market. Lots of innovative, not to mention new ideas there. Those big developers develop big games with lots of money involved so their risk-taking is held on a very low level. Indie developers don't have that limitation. Sure, their games may not look as some bloody AAA title but they're stock-full of new ideas.
Name one.
I named 3 actually in a previous post. Go back a page or two...
Oh yea those are copied in so many games.
lol..who talked about copied stuff? I talked about new, innovative ideas. Way to miss the point there...
Anywat, mmo's aint exactly known for bringing new ideas to the table. Copycats all of them. On that note, how is taking a fps idea and something that been done in dozens on shooters and bring it to an mmo pvp arena innovative?? If that's innovative, then mech fighting mmo's are innovative.
Phasing nothing new either. Go play almost any singleplayer game, and some multiplayer and watch that happen. Hell, even the old Baldur's Gate changed the scenery as you played the story. Phasing, funny to give new fancysmancy words to old crap done a hundred times before, is an old idea and people trying to sell it as something new need to learn about videogames other than mmo's.
Blizzard always worked like that, take ideas, polish them and release the product. Hell, I love Blizzard games as much as any gamer, but I'm not some blind fanboy ignoring the history of gaming to praise the product. Some people act like their lover or close family member being badmouthed when an mmo gets the trashtalk.
heh...Kinda pathetic actually. They are just bloody games.
Originally posted by slask777 lol..who talked about copied stuff? I talked about new, innovative ideas. Way to miss the point there... Anywat, mmo's aint exactly known for bringing new ideas to the table. Copycats all of them. On that note, how is taking a fps idea and something that been done in dozens on shooters and bring it to an mmo pvp arena innovative?? If that's innovative, then mech fighting mmo's are innovative. Phasing nothing new either. Go play almost any singleplayer game, and some multiplayer and watch that happen. Hell, even the old Baldur's Gate changed the scenery as you played the story. Phasing, funny to give new fancysmancy words to old crap done a hundred times before, is an old idea and people trying to sell it as something new need to learn about videogames other than mmo's. Blizzard always worked like that, take ideas, polish them and release the product. Hell, I love Blizzard games as much as any gamer, but I'm not some blind fanboy ignoring the history of gaming to praise the product. Some people act like their lover or close family member being badmouthed when an mmo gets the trashtalk. heh...Kinda pathetic actually. They are just bloody games.
Quoted for truth.
cfurlin - "When are you flakey gamers going to realize that game development is a business."
Name one game on the market today that isn't a "rip off" (whatever that means) of some other game that came before it.
Look at the indie market. Lots of innovative, not to mention new ideas there. Those big developers develop big games with lots of money involved so their risk-taking is held on a very low level. Indie developers don't have that limitation. Sure, their games may not look as some bloody AAA title but they're stock-full of new ideas.
Name one.
I named 3 actually in a previous post. Go back a page or two...
Oh yea those are copied in so many games.
lol..who talked about copied stuff? I talked about new, innovative ideas. Way to miss the point there... Anywat, mmo's aint exactly known for bringing new ideas to the table. Copycats all of them. On that note, how is taking a fps idea and something that been done in dozens on shooters and bring it to an mmo pvp arena innovative?? If that's innovative, then mech fighting mmo's are innovative. Phasing nothing new either. Go play almost any singleplayer game, and some multiplayer and watch that happen. Hell, even the old Baldur's Gate changed the scenery as you played the story. Phasing, funny to give new fancysmancy words to old crap done a hundred times before, is an old idea and people trying to sell it as something new need to learn about videogames other than mmo's. Blizzard always worked like that, take ideas, polish them and release the product. Hell, I love Blizzard games as much as any gamer, but I'm not some blind fanboy ignoring the history of gaming to praise the product. Some people act like their lover or close family member being badmouthed when an mmo gets the trashtalk. heh...Kinda pathetic actually. They are just bloody games.
Tell that to the trash talkers.
Like someone else said: Guys on mmorpg.com take double standards when they talk about WOW and Blizzard. From patch 3.1 to 3.3 you get dual specs, PvP leveling, Exp shut down option, clustered server dungeons, gear equiper, some touching even upon the core mechanics. If only ONE of those above features were in a new game, these same guys would be screaming of God send features. Blizzard does this in a few months time and they vomit on it. Even finding just a little tiny hole to put through any meaningless critics about anything. Take the huge boost in the cluster of dungeons will have on the game. Ninja. Just as if a server/roll doesn't exist. People don't understand the significance WOW has on this industry. Without WOW, mmo's would never have the same mainstream intrest (and funding). Lately I saw some changes in the editorial behaviour on mmorpg.com. At least THEY are beginning to see it now. It was about time.
Being mainstream doesn't always make something worth the price. So far, my inclination is to believe that WoW has set back MMO's in terms of creativity - if nothing else. This to me, means that the price of getting more people into the MMO world wasn't worth it if it stagnates progression of the genre. WoW is a social phenomenon much more so than a gaming one. It has some fantastic polish and was well produced. I give it credit for those things but the price that came with WoW was too great.
Blizzard is not responible for the duds either. It simply raised the standards in PC gaming so high, people no longer are content with anything thrown at them.
You know for once, and I can't believe I'm saying this. I actually agree with you. Blizzard did nothing more then raise the bar. None of those failures can be blamed on Blizzard.
Being mainstream doesn't always make something worth the price. So far, my inclination is to believe that WoW has set back MMO's in terms of creativity - if nothing else. This to me, means that the price of getting more people into the MMO world wasn't worth it if it stagnates progression of the genre. WoW is a social phenomenon much more so than a gaming one. It has some fantastic polish and was well produced. I give it credit for those things but the price that came with WoW was too great.
You can ALWAYS go back to the MMORPG's before WOW of course.
Oops, I forgot they hardly have any players left.
If Wow doesn't have "gaming" as you put it .... and if it is only thriving on a social phenomenon, WHY does it have 100 times the number of PAID subscriptions?
Does it even remotely occur to you that - actually - it COULD have tremendous gaming value to massive amount of players.
WOW is simply the most played game in our western PC gaming world.
Be lucky it is there to push other developpers to do their utmost best to bring polished games.
Blizzard is not responible for the duds either. It simply raised the standards in PC gaming so high, people no longer are content with anything thrown at them.
I think the rabid fanboy side of you has overtaken your logical brain side. Instead of reading my post for what it was worth, you took it as an insult to something that you evidently love. (WoW) I never once said that it doesn't have "gaming" - I said the price that gaming has paid for the social phenomenon that is WoW is too great. You are taking my statements out of context and interjecting them into a situation where they don't fit.
I would rebuttal your sentence of "it could have tremendous gaming value to massive amount(s) of players" with the idea that the social phenomenon has clouded your mind. People who look for somewhere to belong and for a community will act like a sheep and go for the game that their friends play. Which means that you have undoubtedly had your friends join up with WoW or you yourself were a convert from another game brought to it by friends.
While I don't hold Blizzard as a company responsible for the actions of anyone outside their company, I will say that the creativity engine has been inadvertently stagnated by the WoW phenomenon. It is because of this that the same rehash of games continues to come out with no new concepts. Eventually, it will pass as all things do - but I will reiterate that to me the cost of bringing MMO's to the mainstream has sold the creativity to the people in place of selling the concept of a MMORPG. That is to say that it has corporations trying to make their own phenomenon unsuccessfully at the cost of the genre as a whole.
Originally posted by slask777 Anywat, mmo's aint exactly known for bringing new ideas to the table. Copycats all of them. On that note, how is taking a fps idea and something that been done in dozens on shooters and bring it to an mmo pvp arena innovative?? If that's innovative, then mech fighting mmo's are innovative.
I think that your logics is a tad faulty. According to your logics, inventing car ment nothing as wheel, engine and all the other parts already did exist before. Similarily with virtually everything innovated during the past hundred years. An innovation is finding an use to something in a new environment. Much like programming languages used innovations of natural language modeling as their foundation and noone denies their innovativeness. Therefore, your criticism seems to forget the law of excluded middle -- you either accept the innovativeness of derivative science and art or you don't. It is there for all the games or it is there for none of them.
Originally posted by slask777 Phasing nothing new either. Go play almost any singleplayer game, and some multiplayer and watch that happen. Hell, even the old Baldur's Gate changed the scenery as you played the story. Phasing, funny to give new fancysmancy words to old crap done a hundred times before, is an old idea and people trying to sell it as something new need to learn about videogames other than mmo's.
As with above. On top of that, you are actually describing a totally different phenomenon. In a single-player game the world has changed irrevocably, whereas in WoW's phasing another player can perfectly well see the world in a different state. Hence, the states "phase" in gradually for users where everyone has at start a phase A but those who have performed said deeds see the phase B. It does not override the phase A for the others and allows their seamless interaction with the world regardless of other players being able to see phase B. If you can name "some multiplayer [games]" where this is in similar use you certainly might have a rational claim but situation in Baldur's Gate is much like in Breakout, you break a tile and the state of the game is altered.
WoW set back mmo's?? How did it do that? It brought the mmo's to the mainstream, bringing funding, talent and big names to the genre. If anything, WoW breathed, is that even a word; brothe??...Anyway, WoW brought new life to the genre and revitalized it.
Just look at the impact WoW got on the genre. WoW force developers to actually work hard on their games today, else they be the laughingstock. Also the general public expect alot more from todays mmo's than they did in the past.
Hell, look at some of the horrible launches pre-wow. As much as I loved AO, to take that as an example, I must admit it had one of the worst launches ever in gaming history. Funcom is, and will be for many years to come, remember for that flunder and the nazi-approach they took to moderating their forums and the ridiculous claims they made back then. They even told reviewers to hold their reviews till the game war bugfree, and that was post-launch. Hah, even today AO got it's full share of bugs.
A release like that today would bury any developer, but back then it was possible cause people expectations where quite low. They aint anymore today thanks to WoW.
On the other hand though, big money equal little to no risk taken as developers since the stakes are so high so few new ideas hit the table. So it's success got a bad side too but I think the positives far outweight the negatives. We may get few new ideas but what we got is quality products, polished and quite good. We do the same old stuff in them but atleast its pretty old stuff
Being mainstream doesn't always make something worth the price. So far, my inclination is to believe that WoW has set back MMO's in terms of creativity - if nothing else. This to me, means that the price of getting more people into the MMO world wasn't worth it if it stagnates progression of the genre. WoW is a social phenomenon much more so than a gaming one. It has some fantastic polish and was well produced. I give it credit for those things but the price that came with WoW was too great.
You can ALWAYS go back to the MMORPG's before WOW of course.
Oops, I forgot they hardly have any players left.
If Wow doesn't have "gaming" as you put it .... and if it is only thriving on a social phenomenon, WHY does it have 100 times the number of PAID subscriptions?
Does it even remotely occur to you that - actually - it COULD have tremendous gaming value to massive amount of players.
WOW is simply the most played game in our western PC gaming world.
Be lucky it is there to push other developpers to do their utmost best to bring polished games.
Blizzard is not responible for the duds either. It simply raised the standards in PC gaming so high, people no longer are content with anything thrown at them.
I think the rabid fanboy side of you has overtaken your logical brain side. Instead of reading my post for what it was worth, you took it as an insult to something that you evidently love. (WoW) I never once said that it doesn't have "gaming" - I said the price that gaming has paid for the social phenomenon that is WoW is too great. You are taking my statements out of context and interjecting them into a situation where they don't fit.
I would rebuttal your sentence of "it could have tremendous gaming value to massive amount(s) of players" with the idea that the social phenomenon has clouded your mind. People who look for somewhere to belong and for a community will act like a sheep and go for the game that their friends play. Which means that you have undoubtedly had your friends join up with WoW or you yourself were a convert from another game brought to it by friends.
While I don't hold Blizzard as a company responsible for the actions of anyone outside their company, I will say that the creativity engine has been inadvertently stagnated by the WoW phenomenon. It is because of this that the same rehash of games continues to come out with no new concepts. Eventually, it will pass as all things do - but I will reiterate that to me the cost of bringing MMO's to the mainstream has sold the creativity to the people in place of selling the concept of a MMORPG. That is to say that it has corporations trying to make their own phenomenon unsuccessfully at the cost of the genre as a whole.
WoW is a good game, because they do things right. They implement a lot of features, and they work. They've been innovative, and have added to the genre, causing other MMO's to implement the same features (trying on clothes for example). WoW has a fantastic story, good raiding, good dungeons, good solo content and they keep the game patched with bug fixes, balances, and new content/features. My first game was DAoC, which I love more than any other MMO, and I don't have one friend in real life that plays MMO's, so I'm not a victim of your social plague. While there are some seriuosly tedious things in WoW (what MMO doesn't), the game is head and shoulders better than any other on the market.
Don't forget that other games have tried being creative, but have mostly failed and gaining a solid customer base (DDO, TCoS, Fury, GW, Darkfall...etc.) Now you'll probably argue with me until you're blue in the face, but I don't think you know what you're talking about. Play WoW, to lvl 80, do some raids and the rest of the content, pay attention to the big and little things, and then go play a MMO that came out before WoW. I weant back to DAoC recently and instantly missed many features that DAoC didn't have, that WoW did have.
You all seem to think that I am bashing WoW. I am not, if you'd read the first post that I made, I give the devil it's due. Hell, I was the second High Warlord on Eonar back in the day. Among the first of the guilds to kill off Ragnaros and certainly the first on my server to do it. I've came back to explore the expansions as they have came out. Doing so for the story more so than the gameplay though. I do have a level 80 Death Knight and a level 80 Druid. I like to finish up both sides, Horde and Alliance.
I'll even concede to the fact that the thing that I will always remember WoW for head and shoulders above the rest is the polish they put on the game. All the little things that make the world seem more fluid and even the layout of the world making sense - so you dont enter a desert area and zone or move into directly, a tundra. It makes more sense.
The bad side of that coin that, to me - outweighs the good things it brought. It totally inadvertently destroyed creativity because to get the funding to make a game that has some is very very very hard because they expect a WoW clone. And by they, I mean corporations or investors. They want to know that the game is going to be a clone.
I mean if you boil it down to things that I think that WoW has in the past done better than other MMO's. I'll even add to the pool PvE - I dont think any other game has done PvE nearly as well. It is my opinion that the PvP portion of WoW has always been lacking though. PvE has since been decreased in difficulty over the expansions and certainly with the WoTLK expansion pack. The game itself seems to cater to the idea that you shouldn't have to work hard for anything. This will inevitably cause other developers to walk the same path and to me decreases the overall progression of MMO's.
I used to look forward to seeing new MMO's come out because they all wanted to add something to the pile and one up all the rest of the MMO pack by adding things that the others didn't have. By expanding the crafting system and the economic stratus in the game much in the way that SWG did. Or have a classless system like Ultima Online had setup.
WoW is kind of like having a whale in a lake. Sure, the first time you see a whale in a lake you are in awe. Then once you go catfishing and find out there aren't any fish left in the lake. Only the whale, there is a problem.
WOW is simply the most played game in our western PC gaming world.
no matter how much you say that, it won't make it true. The Sims has always been ahead of WoW.
And I have yet to see zorn list one original feature. everything he claims is original is from a game a few years older that he just hasn't happened to play yet.
WoW is a good game, but lets not spout out that it is anything like original. its like Mario 3. yes it was almost exactly like mario 1, but we all liked it a lot more.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
Comments
Look at the indie market. Lots of innovative, not to mention new ideas there. Those big developers develop big games with lots of money involved so their risk-taking is held on a very low level. Indie developers don't have that limitation. Sure, their games may not look as some bloody AAA title but they're stock-full of new ideas.
Name one.
I named 3 actually in a previous post. Go back a page or two...
Oh yea those are copied in so many games.
lol..who talked about copied stuff? I talked about new, innovative ideas. Way to miss the point there...
Anywat, mmo's aint exactly known for bringing new ideas to the table. Copycats all of them. On that note, how is taking a fps idea and something that been done in dozens on shooters and bring it to an mmo pvp arena innovative?? If that's innovative, then mech fighting mmo's are innovative.
Phasing nothing new either. Go play almost any singleplayer game, and some multiplayer and watch that happen. Hell, even the old Baldur's Gate changed the scenery as you played the story. Phasing, funny to give new fancysmancy words to old crap done a hundred times before, is an old idea and people trying to sell it as something new need to learn about videogames other than mmo's.
Blizzard always worked like that, take ideas, polish them and release the product. Hell, I love Blizzard games as much as any gamer, but I'm not some blind fanboy ignoring the history of gaming to praise the product. Some people act like their lover or close family member being badmouthed when an mmo gets the trashtalk.
heh...Kinda pathetic actually. They are just bloody games.
---
Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
Quoted for truth.
cfurlin - "When are you flakey gamers going to realize that game development is a business."
Blocked - MMO_Doubter, Angelof2070
Being mainstream doesn't always make something worth the price. So far, my inclination is to believe that WoW has set back MMO's in terms of creativity - if nothing else. This to me, means that the price of getting more people into the MMO world wasn't worth it if it stagnates progression of the genre. WoW is a social phenomenon much more so than a gaming one. It has some fantastic polish and was well produced. I give it credit for those things but the price that came with WoW was too great.
You know for once, and I can't believe I'm saying this. I actually agree with you. Blizzard did nothing more then raise the bar. None of those failures can be blamed on Blizzard.
You can ALWAYS go back to the MMORPG's before WOW of course.
Oops, I forgot they hardly have any players left.
If Wow doesn't have "gaming" as you put it .... and if it is only thriving on a social phenomenon, WHY does it have 100 times the number of PAID subscriptions?
Does it even remotely occur to you that - actually - it COULD have tremendous gaming value to massive amount of players.
WOW is simply the most played game in our western PC gaming world.
Be lucky it is there to push other developpers to do their utmost best to bring polished games.
Blizzard is not responible for the duds either. It simply raised the standards in PC gaming so high, people no longer are content with anything thrown at them.
I think the rabid fanboy side of you has overtaken your logical brain side. Instead of reading my post for what it was worth, you took it as an insult to something that you evidently love. (WoW) I never once said that it doesn't have "gaming" - I said the price that gaming has paid for the social phenomenon that is WoW is too great. You are taking my statements out of context and interjecting them into a situation where they don't fit.
I would rebuttal your sentence of "it could have tremendous gaming value to massive amount(s) of players" with the idea that the social phenomenon has clouded your mind. People who look for somewhere to belong and for a community will act like a sheep and go for the game that their friends play. Which means that you have undoubtedly had your friends join up with WoW or you yourself were a convert from another game brought to it by friends.
While I don't hold Blizzard as a company responsible for the actions of anyone outside their company, I will say that the creativity engine has been inadvertently stagnated by the WoW phenomenon. It is because of this that the same rehash of games continues to come out with no new concepts. Eventually, it will pass as all things do - but I will reiterate that to me the cost of bringing MMO's to the mainstream has sold the creativity to the people in place of selling the concept of a MMORPG. That is to say that it has corporations trying to make their own phenomenon unsuccessfully at the cost of the genre as a whole.
As with above. On top of that, you are actually describing a totally different phenomenon. In a single-player game the world has changed irrevocably, whereas in WoW's phasing another player can perfectly well see the world in a different state. Hence, the states "phase" in gradually for users where everyone has at start a phase A but those who have performed said deeds see the phase B. It does not override the phase A for the others and allows their seamless interaction with the world regardless of other players being able to see phase B. If you can name "some multiplayer [games]" where this is in similar use you certainly might have a rational claim but situation in Baldur's Gate is much like in Breakout, you break a tile and the state of the game is altered.WoW set back mmo's?? How did it do that? It brought the mmo's to the mainstream, bringing funding, talent and big names to the genre. If anything, WoW breathed, is that even a word; brothe??...Anyway, WoW brought new life to the genre and revitalized it.
Just look at the impact WoW got on the genre. WoW force developers to actually work hard on their games today, else they be the laughingstock. Also the general public expect alot more from todays mmo's than they did in the past.
Hell, look at some of the horrible launches pre-wow. As much as I loved AO, to take that as an example, I must admit it had one of the worst launches ever in gaming history. Funcom is, and will be for many years to come, remember for that flunder and the nazi-approach they took to moderating their forums and the ridiculous claims they made back then. They even told reviewers to hold their reviews till the game war bugfree, and that was post-launch. Hah, even today AO got it's full share of bugs.
A release like that today would bury any developer, but back then it was possible cause people expectations where quite low. They aint anymore today thanks to WoW.
On the other hand though, big money equal little to no risk taken as developers since the stakes are so high so few new ideas hit the table. So it's success got a bad side too but I think the positives far outweight the negatives. We may get few new ideas but what we got is quality products, polished and quite good. We do the same old stuff in them but atleast its pretty old stuff
---
Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
You can ALWAYS go back to the MMORPG's before WOW of course.
Oops, I forgot they hardly have any players left.
If Wow doesn't have "gaming" as you put it .... and if it is only thriving on a social phenomenon, WHY does it have 100 times the number of PAID subscriptions?
Does it even remotely occur to you that - actually - it COULD have tremendous gaming value to massive amount of players.
WOW is simply the most played game in our western PC gaming world.
Be lucky it is there to push other developpers to do their utmost best to bring polished games.
Blizzard is not responible for the duds either. It simply raised the standards in PC gaming so high, people no longer are content with anything thrown at them.
I think the rabid fanboy side of you has overtaken your logical brain side. Instead of reading my post for what it was worth, you took it as an insult to something that you evidently love. (WoW) I never once said that it doesn't have "gaming" - I said the price that gaming has paid for the social phenomenon that is WoW is too great. You are taking my statements out of context and interjecting them into a situation where they don't fit.
I would rebuttal your sentence of "it could have tremendous gaming value to massive amount(s) of players" with the idea that the social phenomenon has clouded your mind. People who look for somewhere to belong and for a community will act like a sheep and go for the game that their friends play. Which means that you have undoubtedly had your friends join up with WoW or you yourself were a convert from another game brought to it by friends.
While I don't hold Blizzard as a company responsible for the actions of anyone outside their company, I will say that the creativity engine has been inadvertently stagnated by the WoW phenomenon. It is because of this that the same rehash of games continues to come out with no new concepts. Eventually, it will pass as all things do - but I will reiterate that to me the cost of bringing MMO's to the mainstream has sold the creativity to the people in place of selling the concept of a MMORPG. That is to say that it has corporations trying to make their own phenomenon unsuccessfully at the cost of the genre as a whole.
WoW is a good game, because they do things right. They implement a lot of features, and they work. They've been innovative, and have added to the genre, causing other MMO's to implement the same features (trying on clothes for example). WoW has a fantastic story, good raiding, good dungeons, good solo content and they keep the game patched with bug fixes, balances, and new content/features. My first game was DAoC, which I love more than any other MMO, and I don't have one friend in real life that plays MMO's, so I'm not a victim of your social plague. While there are some seriuosly tedious things in WoW (what MMO doesn't), the game is head and shoulders better than any other on the market.
Don't forget that other games have tried being creative, but have mostly failed and gaining a solid customer base (DDO, TCoS, Fury, GW, Darkfall...etc.) Now you'll probably argue with me until you're blue in the face, but I don't think you know what you're talking about. Play WoW, to lvl 80, do some raids and the rest of the content, pay attention to the big and little things, and then go play a MMO that came out before WoW. I weant back to DAoC recently and instantly missed many features that DAoC didn't have, that WoW did have.
You all seem to think that I am bashing WoW. I am not, if you'd read the first post that I made, I give the devil it's due. Hell, I was the second High Warlord on Eonar back in the day. Among the first of the guilds to kill off Ragnaros and certainly the first on my server to do it. I've came back to explore the expansions as they have came out. Doing so for the story more so than the gameplay though. I do have a level 80 Death Knight and a level 80 Druid. I like to finish up both sides, Horde and Alliance.
I'll even concede to the fact that the thing that I will always remember WoW for head and shoulders above the rest is the polish they put on the game. All the little things that make the world seem more fluid and even the layout of the world making sense - so you dont enter a desert area and zone or move into directly, a tundra. It makes more sense.
The bad side of that coin that, to me - outweighs the good things it brought. It totally inadvertently destroyed creativity because to get the funding to make a game that has some is very very very hard because they expect a WoW clone. And by they, I mean corporations or investors. They want to know that the game is going to be a clone.
I mean if you boil it down to things that I think that WoW has in the past done better than other MMO's. I'll even add to the pool PvE - I dont think any other game has done PvE nearly as well. It is my opinion that the PvP portion of WoW has always been lacking though. PvE has since been decreased in difficulty over the expansions and certainly with the WoTLK expansion pack. The game itself seems to cater to the idea that you shouldn't have to work hard for anything. This will inevitably cause other developers to walk the same path and to me decreases the overall progression of MMO's.
I used to look forward to seeing new MMO's come out because they all wanted to add something to the pile and one up all the rest of the MMO pack by adding things that the others didn't have. By expanding the crafting system and the economic stratus in the game much in the way that SWG did. Or have a classless system like Ultima Online had setup.
WoW is kind of like having a whale in a lake. Sure, the first time you see a whale in a lake you are in awe. Then once you go catfishing and find out there aren't any fish left in the lake. Only the whale, there is a problem.
no matter how much you say that, it won't make it true. The Sims has always been ahead of WoW.
And I have yet to see zorn list one original feature. everything he claims is original is from a game a few years older that he just hasn't happened to play yet.
WoW is a good game, but lets not spout out that it is anything like original. its like Mario 3. yes it was almost exactly like mario 1, but we all liked it a lot more.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.