I've been covering pretty much every MMORPG that either is out or will be coming out. I've been playing WoW since european closed beta and I have beta-tested almost every MMORPG since then: Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online, Dungeons&Dragons Online, Dark and Light (yes, even the crappy ones)and now Wrath of the Lich King. Also, I'm keeping an eye for the upcoming ones like NCSoft's Aion.
The market is pretty much on fire, maybe for the first time since World of Warcraft's launch.
This year, Age of Conan launched; Warhammer Online launched yesterday; World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online are shipping much-awaited expansions in November. In early 2009, NCSoft will release Aion, a promising MMORPG featuring Crytek's famous Far Cry engine.
After four years of World of Warcraft, A LOT of people want to try other games, and this is increasingly evident judging by the early success of Age of Conan(at launch) and now Warhammer Online. I know this for a fact; I'm into a lot of online communities, both European and worldwide ones. People are TRYING these new games to actually decide which to play: World of Warcraft has bored lot of people, myself included, and Wrath of the Lich King is only more of the same thing we don't want anymore.
Fact is, people are confused because at the moment there isn't a clear winner. I puzzled myself with those MMORPGs, trying them all, but everyone has something the other hasn't, respectively....Actually I've been so dubious myself that I even tried Tabula Rasa with a buddy key!
World of Warcraft is now boring and tedious, with a ridiculously static game-world and incredibly old-graphics (yes, that's counting dynamic shadows). Still, it has its fair share of attraction: the dungeons are probably still the best, and the animations are great for its combat system (whilst not varied enough). PvP is still a joke, confined in a single region where people get crazy over gaining a temporary buff for their faction...
Warhammer Online has a great underlying mechanic and the Tome of Knowledge is a NEAT idea (Sirillion, take note of it for AoC
), but it also has the crappiest animations of all MMORPGs right now, taken directly from DAOC. This makes for the most sluggish and weak combat system, basically erasing whichever advantage the inherently fighting mechanic would give to RvR battles. The graphics is superior to WoW in some things (polygons mostly) but inferior in others (some textures and pop-in, draw distance) which makes it almost a draw in the overall visual impact with a four-years-old game. Also, character customization is ridiculously limited, both for faces and weapons (an example? male Warrior Priests can only be bald and wielding a two handed hammer...), and honestly the game as whole seems just a multiplayer PvP game with some RPG thrown in. Fun for a while, but that's it: I think they pushed the RvR concept too much.
Lord of the Rings Online has great graphics and ambience, it has a great storyline to draw from....But that's also one of its limits: you always know what is going to happen and you actually won't even be able to alter in any possible way the events. Also, in my opinion the classes aren't really interesting, nor is the combat, which is totally average. The game has a lot of nice and cute features, but very few endgaming raiding and PvP content....With the expansion they are only adding one raid and no new PvP zone. In short, it's not attractive enough for me to pay it and I think it will surely remain a niche game.
Aion has a lot of promises, but if you check some videos on YouTube you'll soon understand why it can't succeed in the Western market as it is right now: the combat is basically Final Fantasy's one, without turns. It's super fast, and honestly I would never pay to play something like that...and the mass here would not as well. Also the setting is way too oriental for Western mass market, and for me as well.They keep their silly design stereotypes of "innocent women" or "sexy, b!tchy women", "gentle men" or "wild, aggressive men". We're making so much effort in order to drive away those idiotic myths here in the West, even in MMORPGs (think about Blood Elves in Horde and Draenei in the Alliance, and the humanization of orcs/taurens)....
Finally, Age of Conan. I've not ventured really deep into the game yet, but from what I played and what I read/saw it is evident that it currently is the roughest one. But it's a rough diamond, actually. It had bugs and crashes from launch since the latest patch (memory leaks, mostly), and they made everyone crazy; it also lacked and still lack endgaming content.
But these are things that a committed team can iron out in a few months. Just think about World of Warcraft's launch. I was there, and whilst the game was almost bug and crash-free, the content lacked in the SAME way it is now lacking in AoC, except WoW didn't have any competitor at times. At launch there was no PvP system exactly like Aoc and it stayed that way for months. At launch there was no Battlegrounds, no Arenas, nothing at all. At launch, you had two 40-men PvE raids: Onyxia, which is one boss, 10-15 minutes fight, and Molten Core. That's it.
What held the game together was the great combat system, mostly because of the smooth animations. It was the game's accessibility, its bug-free status and its optimization for low-end computers. It was the beautiful and nice graphics (back in 2004).
Now, Age of Conan has the best combat system right now, basically the only one which has skill involved in any MMORPG. It has amazing graphics, its world has a fresh, mature, realistic feel that sets it apart from any other game in the genre right now. It has great underlying mechanics which have to be expanded, like the guild-based PvP and city systems, but that other MMORPGs simply lack. Hence, it has far more overall potential to become the experience we were promised, and most of us want out of such a game; it needed a direction, a spin, and here comes Sirillion with his great communication skills that impressed so much people in here, me included.
It is time, then, to realize this potential. Iron out the bugs, the performance issues, optimize the game and add the endgaming content people want! Listen to our feedback, and maybe together we can not only make the common jokes on this game a relic of the past, but actually make Age of Conan what it can still be: a definite improvement over World of Warcraft's generation in most areas.
A quick suggestion, Sirillion: after the game has become stable, possibly slightly before the release of Moria and WOTLK, launch a TRIAL - REFERRAL system and possibly also a Scroll of Resurrection one. As I said, reading the forums there is a lot of undecided people; old-time WoW guildies contacted me to check which game I was going to (being a former Guild Leader), and Age of Conan definitely was an option. Also, everyone with an AoC account, even if he/she froze the account and maybe has a F A I L C O M avatar, WILL keep track of the game now that you took over and patches are rolling. Get the chance for them to check how's the game in two months or so...And get new people chances to check how the game is at all! AoC active subscribers will gladly spread the voice if they will have a free month. It works, believe me...I did it with WoW previously