Building Better Worlds - an MMO Tale

Exactly this. Persistence is king and the exact reason why I find WoW more immersive than any other game in the genre.

Nice article.

Maps don't equal worlds.

One of the problems I found also with Dragon's Age too.

Yeah, I'm slowly getting into TOR at the moment, but it feels like a game made up of specially designed quest areas, whereas WoW has always seemed like a world that quests occur in; very few people have managed to recreate that. If you see a mountain in WoW, chances are you can climb it (Even in the old days before Azaroth flight you could pretty much get anywhere), in TOR things like distant mountains are just background scenery.

Still, I live in hope someone will get this right again one day. It's just a shame how closely games seek to emulate WoW, while ignoring the one aspect which hooked me in the first place

WAR fell down because of this. The "world map" clearly showed the tiers and tree for each faction and completely broke any sense of immersion whatsoever. It was just an interconnected series of maps, not a world.

If yousee a mountain in WoW, chances are you can climb it

Joke post surely?

WoW has always been on rails... no exploring whatsoever. Only the early MMOs had real exploring. SWTOR huge worlds help... but they still pale to stuff in UO and AC for example. AC even had random world spawning dungeons that people only stumbled upon by pure luck. They next day the dungeon could be on the other side of the planet. SWTOR still lacks a bit of exploring... you never go anywhere unless there is a quest pointing you there... who knows... maybe in the future true open world MMOs will make a comeback. Maybe an Elder Scrolls MMO?

It's one of TOR's biggest problems for me, along with the overwhelming familiarity i'm feeling, and the way worlds just drag on too long, and the difficulty in assembling FP groups at times.

So many happy memories of Asherons Call which along with UO and Everquest which presented open worlds for you to explore. Been playing SWTOR for less then a month and alreay bored at level 28 of the whole experience. If you have not played any of these older games you will not see how on the rails SWTOR is and not a true world.

@Dizzy Why should it be a joke? If you see something on the horizon in WoW you can reach it. Not so in SWTOR. For all its empty size, which makes it boring and time consuming (Hoth is about the size of Northrend) it is far less of a world than in WoW

LOTRO's world is always worth a look - it's actually quite expansive now, reasonably inhabited and you can go from the Shire all the way to Isengard without loading portals or screens, and it's not the shortest trip if you don't use fast travels either.

With things such as the festivals, (of which the most recent included a return of the Winterhome village which has its own storyline that isn't level-gated) the world has oft felt very real.

Someone MUST have thought seriously about an Elder Scrolls MMO.
That is a game just waiting to be made surely!

The reason why I hate MMORPGs is because of the combat mechanics, I just dont like that dice rolling thing going on in the back, I prefer more immediate stuff like in Skyrim where you really feel like you are in control of the action.

I also hate grinding.

Another thing I dislike about MMOs is that their worlds don't feel credible due to people hopping around like clowns wearing silly dresses simply for attentions sake. That really breaks the illusion in my oppinion.

An Orc should be an Orc in a fantasy world.

The only games that have come close to emulating the persistence open-world immersion that WoW creates has been EvE to a great degree, and DarkFall to a much lesser degree. Unfortunately DarkFall has many many other problems which break immersion, but as far as feeling like your 'in the work' it has done as well as WoW IMO.

I remember seeing a forum back in the early days of WoW asking what was ure greatest moment in WoW. The best answer i saw was a GM who said, "when I logged into WoW for the first time, getting that feeling of 'i'm entering INTO warcraft'".

Quality tagline on this one.

Absolutely ridiculous article.

Quit WoW a year ago purely because I'd grown tired of the same gameplay mechanics over and over. But...

The thing that really drew me in in the first place was something so utterly stupid yet something so massively important...rain.

You can have as much real dialogue as you want but it's hard to play a role when the world you're in doesn't feel real. I'm enjoying SWTOR in fits and starts but the planets feel devoid of life. Nothing random ever happens. Everything has it's place.

I haven't read the article yet but I'm loving the wire quote as a tag line.

@Eisenstein If you see something on the horizon in WoW you can reach

Sorry that is bullshit.

@jonfon

WAR fell down because of this. The "world map" clearly showed the tiers and tree for each faction and completely broke any sense of immersion whatsoever. It was just an interconnected series of maps, not a world.

Couldn't agree more. The single reason I cancelled my sub.

Immersion plays a massive part in my MMO gaming and any system that neatly slices areas up, or over instances the game world just doesn't feel 'right'.

@Dizzy

Sorry that is bullshit.

Yeah, it might not be 100% accurate for the entire game but the fact remains that if you have a flying mount you can generally reach anything you can see.

With a land mount, you can make it a fair way there.

the biggest problem I have with MMO is that they are not populated by Role Players but what I would call power gamers. People only interested in boosting their stats to maximum power rather than making descions based on their race, alligence and personality.

I'm a pen, paper and dice RPG player at heart though.

I agree that world building is essential to MMOs. Most of my fondest memories come from this, including in Ragnarok Online where a friend took me on a trip to a town called lutie because it was the only place in the game world that sold ygdrassil leaves (resurrection item). Each town in Ragnarok had something unique to it, whether it was the home town of a class (you all start as novices and gain a class at level 10 by going to the class's corresponding town and training at their guild) or being the only place to get certain items and travelling to each either involved a decent walk through winding paths or buying your way there via a helpful priest player's teleport.

I'd also like to see it go beyond just the environment though. I'd like to see races become more than just a simple modifier and more of a choice of gameplay in themselves. Imagine how the world would feel if one or two races were mostly restricted to the water (with a limited breath bar if you go on land) and had plenty of underwater content. There's be trade for stuff you can only find on land or in the water and if you're currently playing a land-lubber race you'd find yourself wondering what those fish people get to see regularly. Travelling to their city would be an epic adventure requiring a full bag of underwater breath spells or crafting an underwater helmet and some oxygen tanks. Another example would be a tiny race (maybe with the ability to fly to make getting around easier... or not). It'd be like always playing in the 'rats' games from counterstrike or Duke Nukem and you'd get to see a lot of things the big folk would never even be aware of including shops hidden inside abandoned cotton reels and dungeons inside an old boot full of creepy crawlies or a wasps's nest. If you wanted to be particularly ambitious you could even make the larger players and enemies themselves a kind of 'random dungeon' shadow of the colossus style, with the layout being based on what armour/clothing they're wearing

There's a lot of rooms for MMOs to explore and WoW's playstyle is already well catered to by existing titles so I always hold out hope to see things branch out more soon in the future. One can always hope right? :3

@Cosquae Bioware are not very good at this, although the epic scale of Dragon Age went somewhere to ameliorating this. In my opinion, the best people at doing this are Nintendo with Zelda. The world of (whichever) Hyrule is very map-like, with clear 'entering dungeon' gates and the like, but it feels like a coherent place. I'm not sure how they manage this, but I think it probably helps that the world map always has very gradual transitions to set you up for each dungeon, and the places interlock and interlink in 'real' space very smoothly.

To me UO is still the game to beat in terms of true scale for an MMO... no one has got close to it yet... well maybe WOW a little... but still. I want a Ultima MMO please!!!

Edit: Why Neg me for my opinion on what is the best MMO i've played... god there are so internet knobs out there..

Nothing beats Star War's Galaxies (per-NGE) for me. These were the good days.

@whatfruit I wouldn't blame the players for not roleplaying much: the mechanics of these games themselves encourage that kind of behaviour in many ways. Think about it, all the rewards you get are +xp or sword +1 or talent points or the like. All stuff that points to the numbers, the grind and ever-ridiculous accumulation of power where you become so strong the only things left to fight are the gods themselves. There's no encouragement to think about the personality behind your virtual doll.
For a more role-play friendly game you'd ideally want a game that focusses on 'in-game' choice and consequences over statistics and talent trees (or 'meta' choices as I call them) It's interesting because you'll see a lot of players praising TOR's story for these 'in-game' choices with the action choices during cutscenes where you can blow someone out of an airlock or save them and whatnot giving them a better sense of 'who' their character is; probably more so than their 'build' or 'talent spec' ever did :3

@Fatum I feel like I missed a trick passing on Star wars galaxies. The sandbox feel of it appealed to me but I never gave it a shot due to not really being much of a star wars fan. In hindsight I should've given it a go but... too late now :/

So this article sounds like, Eurogamer try to say sorry for giving SWTOR an 8. It is been said even in beta that SWTOR is nothing but loading screens with tunnels to follow through. When you get to the open areas, it is lifeless and empty.

Nice "The Wire"'s Omar quote.

I take the point the author is making, the general lack of loading screens for WoW is a great thing. However.. he tells of one of his fondest memories of WoW, as a night elf travelling to Ironforge.. pretty much 5 minutes into that journey, there would have been a loading screen as you transition to the other continent. WoW still has loading screens - whenever you transition between major land masses - the three azeroth continents or through the dark portal. Then there are also transitions whenever you enter an instance.

I also made the mistake of choosing a night elf (because all my friends had gone human or dwarf and i wanted to be different I guess). I made the same journey, for different reasons, i HATED the darkshore quest area, it was terrible. The journey was quite fun. The first time. Start making other characters and it got old very very quickly.

I played WoW on release day (00:04 I think i first logged in, just moments after the servers came up) and I actually never saw any of these problems with server downtime and lag, although i see this metnioned all the time. Weird.

I love SWTOR, but the transitions between planets are a problem. Not because of any loss of immersion (travelling around for me isnt immersive, no matter how you do it), but just because they take too long and make traveling to areas like the republic fleet far more effort than they really should be (even if you can use quick travel once a day to get back there). I'm hoping they resolve this over time. I intend to get an SSD soon to cut down on loading times, not just because of this, but because they were stoopidly long in BF3 as well. I think as SSD's become more common, this issue of loading transitions will fade away.

@Geminosity thats what i think swtor has really changed in their approach. It is actualy a MMORPG, as in .. you pay a role, not a mindless avatar. My first character i wanted to play the full on hero, but i found myself making choices that I knew would slow my progress towards completing the light side tiers. I actually had to think pretty ahrd about a number of choices I had to make and they do actually have an impact - both in the flashpoint instances where they coud lead to shortcuts or different encounters and rewards, or in the general stroies, where different outcomes, rewards and follow on quests become available.

There are some choices on there that i was tempted to make just to see what would happen, because they were so extreme as to make me incredibly curious as to what the outcome would be and very clearly a completely different outcome to what I eventually chose.

Another great op on swtor and mmorpg's in general. I totally agree...the instancing and phasing of AoC, W:AoR, TR, and now SW:TOR have all made for short stays for me. I have spent many months in WoW, LotRO, and Rift open worlds though. But only half the gaming pop seems to feel this way. Something is to be learned from this.

IMO WOW is the largest snorefest ever created.

What happened to the likes of asherons call, where dying actually had some kind of ramification.

WOW is like dark souls, only with utterly shit combat and grind fests that last months on end. edit- and with no repurcussions for failure. a nice pat on the back, "its ok just fly back as an invulnerable ghost"

Drivel.

watching any video clip of this game makes me fucking sick.

Edit 2: SWTOR is exactly the same, Shit combat based on clicking a couple of buttons and watching a bad uninteractive move happen one after another.

I'm sure other people love it, but i fail to understand how.

Such a dis-connected feel from the game, every move being a roll of the dice rather than a timed, executed decision.

@Dizzy "AC even had random world spawning dungeons that people only stumbled upon by pure luck."

Yeah AC was an actual game though.

Stuff mattered, things happened, you bothered to try not to die for a reason.

I was thinking of picking up World of Warcraft this weekend. Is it still worth it? Or will I wait a while until SWTOR is more fleshed out?

Good article. For me, a good MMO is all about a bit of escapism, a home away from home.

This is something i've been finding a bit disappointing about TOR, there's a few strong worlds which draw you in (Tatooine in particular is excellent), but many are simply quest corridors along the levelling tunnel - Coruscant & Nar Shaadar for example are simply quest areas connected by Taxis.

@WeakOrbit

It's still a great game, particularly if you've never played it. You can play for free up to level 20 of you're not sure - you can get a client here: www.trywarcraft.com

I loved Dark Age of Camelot in the old days. Big open world where areas didn't have a small entrance somewhere. It was just completely open. The only thing that could help, was the compass and the paper map you got with the game. It was so exciting to actually find your way to the different dungeons yourself, without being able to press 'M' and see all the places you've discovered or are about to discover.

WoW completly changed that and all the mmo-worlds since then have consisted of small areas with two or three entrances to get in and out of the areas.

Bioware's issue here. It is why ME2 felt horrible and DA even worse. Bioware struggle with persistence. Funnily, BG series felt more consistent between maps.

@Jauffre Thanks for that mate. Also all four are going very cheap on amazon. Hmm.

I played WoW from release and have slowly gotten bored with the whole thing. As I was never in a Big guild the Endgame content was lost to me and with no real stories or decisions to make it just felt like a big grind. I started just using it as a way to chat to may mates rather than MSN or phone.

I realise that the SWTOR quests are exactly the same but the fact that they are narrated give them a more 3 dimension feel and makes you feel like the people giving you the quests really does need your help.

As long as the future content and patches improve on what's already there I can see me staying with SWTOR for a while yet.

@Eisenstein You can reach it now perhaps, but until Cata came out there was a high change you couldn't reach it. For example the dwarfen Airport where you would fly over if you flew from Ironforge to Menethil Harbor, you couldn't reach it.

Also can the WoW fanboys stop burning every other MMORPG down and stop your stupid silly noobish comparing? Its pathetic, its stupid cause you people including the journalists forget one thing. WoW wasn't even a shadow of what it is today when it came out. So why o why can't you people give other MMORPG's time to grow hm? That you don't like it fine. I don't like milk yet im not gonna shoot milk companies down for it. Let others enjoy their game and Eurogamer you should be ashamed of yourself. You have had 3 articles now where you praised WoW over SWToR and kept naming SWToR's flaws. Did Bioware do something against you or something that is became Eurogamers personal mission to write 3 aritcles in a short time where you mention flwas and companre it to a game that even today still struggles with balacing and isn't as polished as Rift for example. Rift who came out a year ago was more polished than WoW was last year. Let people enjoy their games, it begins to get anoying how all the game sites appearantly have picked games they really love and gonna be a mean bitch to any other game in the genre. I still don't get it why SWToR scored a 8 cause with all you bitching articles i would exspect a 5 or so.

Also for all the noobs here. Offcourse questing is like WoW or EQ or any other MMORPG. Haven't you noticed? MMORPG's is a goddamn genre. Like you shoot every fucking bad guy in shooters in MMORPG's, hell in RPG's you do the same freaking quests, thats part of the genre. I can't believe how many people shout and cry that a game is a WoW clone for the simple fact that the quests feel the same. WoW never been orriginal at all, Blizzard in fact never invented shit. Warcraft? Ripped from Warhammer, Starcraft? Ripped from Warhammer 40k. Is that bad? No cause they made awesome products out of it, but please people don't pretend like Blizzard invented the wheel. Stop the stupid comparing if you don't know the history and if you can't even see that its genre specific. Fuck you do the same fetch and kill quests in thousands of singleplayer rpg's who came long before WoW do i hear you people compare current MMORPG's or even that beloved WoW to that?

@Jorendo I completely agree with you that Blizzard ripped everything from Warhammer but the creative director of Blizzard is one Andy Chambers. The guy who designed Warhammer 40k 2nd edtion and the warhammer spin off games of the 90's. In fact if you look at alot of Blizzard desgin staff you will find alot of GW vetrans work for Blizzard. These guys worked for GW when GW actually cared about their product and not selling rip off toy soldiers.

Getting from Darnassus to Ironforge as a lvl 12 rogue back in 2006... one of my favorite moments in gaming.

Of course the problem with WoW is that they built this amazing world and put a linear levelling treadmill in it. It's definitely a point in WoW's favour that it disguises it a lot better than, say, WAR (which was the most artificial non-world I've ever encountered in a MMO) but it's still there.

It'd be nice to see another sandbox MMO that wasn't aimed squarely at the hardcore PvP crowd.

@BigJonno theres an interesting looking one that NCSoft are developing at the moment. Kind of an unusual style to it. There are some trailers for on eurogamer somewhere. Uses dyanmically generated quests based on what you are doing, rather than fixed quests. It's an interesting aroach and probably worth checking out.

ah this is it EG Trailer

@BigJonno

Of course the problem with WoW is that they built this amazing world and put a linear levelling treadmill in it. It's definitely a point in WoW's favour that it disguises it a lot better than, say, WAR (which was the most artificial non-world I've ever encountered in a MMO) but it's still there.

Not sure I understand. WoW presents a number of paths for the player to choose to level up in, in terms of areas, quests, dungeons etc. That's far from being linear.

Linear is when there's no option to deviate. Linear is TOR.

@George-Roper The problem with WoW is, desite the world being more open .. theres no reason to deviate. You still just follow the line of quests they give you, once you finished quests in one area, you are given a quest go to anotehr.. then you ick up those quests and carryon as before. Sure you can go and randomly kill mobs in one of 2-3 zones your level for xp etc.. but you can do that in TOR as well.. but why would you? Maybe WoW hides this better than other games, but its still exactly the same. Dont get me wrong, i enjoyed many many hours in WoW, but it isnt this mazing open world, open choice experience that people seem to claim it is.

@fatallyflawwed "I played WoW from release and have slowly gotten bored with the whole thing. As I was never in a Big guild the Endgame content was lost to me and with no real stories or decisions to make it just felt like a big grind. I started just using it as a way to chat to may mates rather than MSN or phone."

The exact same thing happened to me, one of my friends was completely hooked though and convinced me to get cata after it came out, explaining the changes and that, i had fun, started a couple of chars, played for like a month or two and got bored again... Never did get into end game even though my friend was big into it. However altogether i did get up to 2 even 3 years of playing that game on and off. Longest i ever played a game!

Strangly while i will prob never go back i would always recommend friends who have never played it to try it! Vanilla will always hold special memories for me though, even the trip to IF, me an a friend teamed up with a stranger to get there! oh what a n00b i was....

Bang on, Age of Conan was going to be great until they released the information that it wouldn't be a seamless world. I have a friend who laughs at me and says it makes no difference, but it's actually a 'deal breaker' for me and MMOs. Even in single player RPGs I find it hard to stomach (see Dragon Age when that first came out).

@varkdm

The problem with WoW is, desite the world being more open .. theres no reason to deviate.

But that's an entirely different issue to progression being linear.

The point is, in WoW if you want to explore, you can. If you, for no particular reason want to see what's at the top of that hill in the distance you can run/ride/fly and try to find out.

You can start your questing in Elywn then travel over to Darkshore to continue. You're not forced into a single level progression path.

Linear progression paths are a cheap way out. WAR suffered from it quite badly. Diversity is what keeps games fresh. Vanguard, at the start had this in oodles. It was the Everquest mentality of a race starting in their home town and there were many. At a point, zones converged of course but the journey to that stage was still unique.

WoW is an open and largely seamless world. Continent transitions and dungeons aside, you can travel from the Plaguelands all the way down to Booty Bay, on foot and never see a loading screen. That's what makes it pretty special still, as even Everquest had loading screens between zones and that's considered to be the grand daddy of open world, instanceless MMOs.

The genre has to be careful that it doesn't dilute down too much.

I think what 'broke' wow for me was the ability to get anywhere in the world within about 2-3 minutes. The world shrunk drastically from that point onwards.

Does anyone remember that first time they set out into that 'huge' world, only hearing snippets of the greater things to come? Feeling like scholo and strat where miles away and that first journey from Arathi to the the wetlands took an absolute age?

I felt like a small ant in a huge world. And it was great.

Once i was able to get around with the drop of a hat, and the world had shrunk, it stopped being a world to call home. The illusion was shattered and broken.

Anyway, I am now playing TOR, and it does things in a different way. Yes the maps are still huge and after landing you ship and venturing forth you do feel like youve gone a long way, but as pointed out because that maps are a little disjointed and a bunch of random corridors cobbled together at times, and you know what? It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter becaue the world feels more alive to me than ever.

I love that feeling of taking off from a planet in my ship. I love the thrill i feel when i 'punch it' and go into hyperspace and the planet i am orbiting shifts rom my cockpit window and those telltale stars blend into infinate white strips. I love that feeling as i land at a new planet. I feel like I am important and making a difference in that world. I feel that every colourful character i meet has an equally colourful story to tell. I feel like I care about the lives of the bunch of pixels on screen telling me about their problems and woes (if I don't shoot first! ) and that makes the world more believable than any other mmo that has gone before.

Maybe when i hit the cap i will think differently. When the illusion in shattered and the galaxy feels small through finding all the speeder taxi and getting the fastest mount. And the people have no more stories to tell.

But right now i feel like a small ant in a huge galaxy. And it is great.

Roll on Guild Wars 2.

An MMO that actually encourages players to explore and do their own thing.. You aren't confined to walking down the beaten path with repetitive quest chains. Scalable content and Dynamic events in particular should be able to keep the game fresh, especially when it's been said that a fair portion of the 'DE' interlink with one another.

The combat will also be a breath of fresh air for an mmo..

@George-Roper

George, seriously, you're going to claim that WoW isn't linear? And that TOR is somehow a different beast entirely than WoW?

here's a link to a blizzard employee saying themselves that cata became too linear

MMO Champion

We all know you hate TOR (have you even played it?), but i'm asking you again, stop making stuff up in an attempt to prove your point.

Cata in particular was a straight line game from the revamped leveled 1 to level 85. For God's sake, in every zone there was a least one uncontrollable mount that took you from one quest hub to the next..

As for choosing different zones to level, you certainly can. At max level. At level 1-10, you have no choice were to go. At level 10-80, you may be able to select one or two zones to go to, but you can't go into too high a level zone. I never once saw a level 31 dandering around the plaguelands. There were no level 60's questing in Netherstorm. In fact, you can't get quests in most zones until you reach the level cap.

At any given level bracket, you have about two zones you comfortably quest in, with a third that might be pushing it level wise, but you wont quests in that zone. If i compare that with TOR, at any given point, you have two zones to quest in. Truth be told , questing in TOR is far superior to WoWs

I'll admit that being able to walk from one tip of a continent to the next is cool, but its also hard to reconcile the game with what i read in the RPG rule books. Settlements which are supposed to be hubs and cities, which are little more than a collection of buildings. Only Stormwind and Ogrimmar feel like real cities. But even with all that exploration, thats an end game thing. And very, very few subscribers will ever do the walk. I've done it, as i did my crazy drive in WOTLK to get world explorer, but most i know just ran from zone to zone.

What WoW did well was create a wonderful story, and characters i loved. Sadly, with Cataclysm, the death of cairne, the removal of thrall, and the introduction of varian, the story has become a mess. WOTLK was WoW at its best, Cata, i fear, the game at its worst. Maybe MoP will solve that, but its hard to take the game seriously with its pandas, and pokemon pet battles.

I've said it before, i'm enjoying TOR. The zones are massive, and believable, but that comes with the caveat that they're also a bit dry and lonely. But then, shouldn't a desert like tatoonie be dry and lonely?

I quit from WoW some months ago, now I'm on SwToR but I struggle to enjoy it as I imaged I could.
Still right now, the most dear moment I remember in an MMO was in WoW when me and a gnome friend decided we wanted to quest in Desolace.. coming from the friendly shores of the Eastern Kingdoms.

Damn, that was a trip! Long.., in places we both never been before.. just the zooning of the ship to the other continent then right into the heart of the Orde zones. The burning steppes, thousand needles and so on. My rouge friend sthealting all the way... me as an hunter alway on the look for ordes players on the horizon.

Playing the game of the cat and the mouse with some enemy player that looked me armless alone into the wild, while I had my friend near me.. then finally we arrived at Desolace.. and man that was a "desolation" really painted well for those that went there for the first time.

No other trip felt so full of wonder, unknown and adventure like that.. it was the 2005.. nothing came close to that moment from then on, in many other MMO I played since... and in many I played before WoW. I still tank Blizzard for that.

Good article, I miss the early days of wow when everything was new and unknown I remember an early alliance warlock quest where I had to go and find someone deep within horde territory to complete a quest it took me hours and miles behind 'enemy' lines but it was one of the most fun and rewarding gaming experiences I've had, a proper adventure into the unknown.

@whatfruit True and Blizzard worked for GW under a different name back then to make games but i believe the deal was off before they could release the games. But my point was that many people keep shouting that others copied WoW but the fact remains that WoW is a copy of other products. Like with many other games, it isn't a bad thing but i get a bit tired that with every new MMORPG people go shout this. People who before WoW never even heard of the term MMORPG now pretending they know it all and come with silly shouts like "its a WoW clone cause you do the same sort of quests" without even thinking for one moment.

And always the same bullshit from both sides. The new MMORPG fans shout "this is gonna be a WoW killer" and the other side "WoW is king the rest are clones". There are a few facts. Not one MMORPG will ever succeed in what Wow did. WoW made MMORPG's populair. And to "beat" WoW you need to have more amount of players each year then WoW had at the same time back then. However WoW isn't what WoW was anymore, Blizzard done a lot of Lore rapping and made things insanely easy to please new gamers. They actually did exactly what Activision wants from them, screw the old fans who played the game from the start in order to win new gamers hearts. People who will play a few months and leave again. Raids used to be freaking hard and took you many many many hours if not days to complete. And you where there with 40 or so people. These days it is what, 10 or 20 people for a raid? And you can complete the feckers in a fraction of the time they used to take up. Im no raider but i heard the many complainments from raiders when i still played WoW a year ago. WoW keeps alienating the old fans to win the hearts of those that didn't play before but if they haven't played it yet the changes are they never will. Sure some will jump on the bandwagon to see what all the fuzz is about now that you can buy it for cheap or try it for free till what ever lvl they implanted for the free to play model.

Thing is, articles like these and the many WoW fanboys are actually the reason why the MMORPG isn't evolving. Can you blame MMORPG makers for trying to make a game that looks like WoW? No you can't, making a MMORPG is the most expensive form of game making. If you fail you can close your doors cause thats it, CoD is only uses a small ammount of the money compared to a MMORPG (next to making the game there are servers costs and the many crew members like GM's, Forum crew, maintaince guys, etc). Anyway what we see is when a game tries to be different its typical for todays game journalism to cry and shout that it doesn't look like any of the big games atm so it scores worse by defeault or they gonna look for something that has been done in the big name games and burn it down cause its not worked out the same like in the big name game (like Warhammer 40k Space Marine didn't had a active cover system like in Gears of War while both games where the same in eyes of todays top notch game journalism). With MMORPG's if you aren't doing what WoW does many gamers won't try it. Why? Because WoW made MMORPG gamers dumb. Hate what i say? Well to bad but its the freaking truth. WoW holds your hand, it has a giant arrow pointing you in the direction. People here actually complain that other games don't have the sense of exploration. Yeah wonder why that is? O that is right cause if they don't trow in a huge ass arrow saying where you need to go to people won't play cause its "to hard" to find a location. Okay it isn't WoW's fault entirely. Afterall AoC or Warhammer online was there first with showing the area of your quest zone on the map. But WoW took it over (hey how about that, WoW wasn't the first to do it, infact they cloned it from a clone of theirs..my god did the fanboys of WoW knew this, probally not, gods their world will collaps now). Exploration is a long lost thing in a MMORPG thanks to WoW populairity. WoW effectively made sure future MMORPG's stopped evolving.

And what do we see now? SWToR comes out and tries things a bit different, yet bets on the save side. They made a MMORPG that sticks to the MMORPG basics (yes MMORPG basics, i refuse to say WoW cause WoW sticks to the MMORPG basics, the basics that where there before WoW was made). They sticked to the basics but also evolved in some areas over any other current MMORPG. It is fully supported by voice acting. Yet people gonna whine about that not every voice is done so great...who gives a fuck, sorry in RL not everyone has great voices too live with it. Its more then WoW delivered on voice acting. Out of the thousands of voices you can bet some aren't that great no. I bet half of the people writing here have a aweful voice in RL too, so what gives? SWToR focuses for now on the adventure, the story telling, WoW focused on End game. People who don't even play SWToR whine about no end game, yet they forget that WoW when released hardly had end game either. SWToR might not be perfect, and hell it isn't gonna pull the WoW gamers over to play it, cause both are different games you can't really compare beside that both are MMORPG's. They are way to different. SWToR is sci-fi where WoW is a fantasy game, if you don't care for Sci-Fi you won't like SWToR same goes for those who don't like fantasy they will not play WoW or any other fantasy MMORPG. WoW has big planes to travel without loading zones, but what many people forget is that SWToR does need to have many different zones with seperated loading zones (though they aren't as massive as some make you believe, sure they are there when you travel planets but the planets are big if not huge..those who are on Tatooine know what i mean). Every NPC has a voice in SWToR, there are hundreds of NPC's on a map. Any idea how much gig that is per map? If you had a galaxy without loading then most PC's wouldn't be able to run the game cause it would demand to much from the memory. Atleast its not as bad as AoC where maps where a 5 minute walk and then you had another long loading screen. Also it are different planets how do you want a galaxy without loading screens? There aren't even singleplayer games who can pull that off with such detailed planets. Seriousely you want to jump in your ship, fly up and fade into space without a loading screen then fly your way to another planet to land there without a loading screen? Yeah that would be awesome but i can see people complaining about the many hours it takes to travel then. And that their pc can't run the game even though they have a NASA pc cause beside a artistic point of view you also face technical problems.

SWToR unlike other MMORPG's that came out atleast improved some things here and there. It perhaps isn't the next big thing. But the next big thing won't come out in MMORPG land for a long time. Not until the current MMORPG scene changes..namely stop crying about things being cloned and don't cower in fear by the thought that they have to explore and find things out on their own again. WoW killed that, so please WoW fanboys stop your pointless whining about other MMORPG's faults cause you can blame your own game for it if you want to be such a bitch. Everyone should enjoy the games they like. If you don't like the others fine, but you don't have to be a elitetist about it without really knowing the facts and what you talk about. Infact i bent 80% of the current WoW fanboys doesn't even know what shape WoW was in during launch. If they knew they would understand MMORPG's take time to improve and grow. That a lot of the content is added later in either free patches or expension just like their favorite time spender did.

And if we want MMORPG's or hell all game genres in general to evolve then sites like Eurogamer shouldn't be a damn fanboy about certain games and keep producing articles like these who are aimed against new games who try different. Cause this is the third article where they are a bit negative towards a new player on the scene. Having to name the big name again. Instead they should give others a opertunity to grow as well.

@zuluhero "I think what 'broke' wow for me was the ability to get anywhere in the world within about 2-3 minutes. The world shrunk drastically from that point onwards."

I agree but then these changes were also made for the experienced players who complained about it taking ages to get to, or do what they wanted. The world 'feeling' smaller a downside to accommodating this. A tough balancing act for any developer, but you have to say (at least back then) Blizzard did generally listen to their community, even if it took them ages to patch it!

I was largely a 'casual' (albeit addicted) player of WoW and i remember being frustrated i couldn't afford say, a flying mount. But then they made it cheaper, i got one - and everyone had one so it lost its appeal somewhat as a result...

I think that people have to realise that THIS is what MMO's ARE. Of course there are titles that are suggesting they will change the format and style of these games (Guild Wars 2) but they are a genre like any other game, its like sayin COD looks like Battlefield!! And i think that warrants such a claim 100's of times more so! Did we hear that criticism so much when both were released!?

I haven't played SWOTOR however i do intend to. I'm not expecting a massive difference in gameplay to WOW...

@George-Roper
"The point is, in WoW if you want to explore, you can. If you, for no particular reason want to see what's at the top of that hill in the distance you can run/ride/fly and try to find out."

You can do that in TOR as well though. Im not sure how much you ahve played, but there is often a criticism of TOR about how linear and closed the environments are. Thats usually because the first areas are indeed pretty closed off. But once you get onto the main planetary zones - Tatooine, Hoth, Correllia, Voss, Quesh, Balmorra and Belsavus, they are open world areas in the same way as they were in WoW. You cant seemlessly walk between them, but thats because they are planets in their own right and so would be a bit odd to do so...

Nice Serenity call out in the header

"As a result, and long before I became just one of many heroes, I was an explorer who earned his right to heroism, rather than being shoe-horned into a level-appropriate zone on a conveyor belt to destiny."

As with most of these things, UO did it first