[MUD-Dev] Changing Midstream (SWG's New Look)

[Caliban Darklock]

> -----Original Message-----
> On Behalf Of Sean Howard
> Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 11:29 AM
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Changing Midstream (SWG's New Look)
> 
> The market is growing fine - it's just growing over at World 
> of Warcraft.

Is the MMO market today like the RPG market of the 80s?

Basically, is there always going to be one game to rule them all and in
the darkness bind them, while a number of other games languish alongside
it with their faithful adherents and brave experimenters? 

I used to like an RPG called "Man, Myth, and Magic". A friend in the
military liked a little game called "Battlelords of the 23rd Century" (I
kind of liked it too). Another member of our group was big on "Ars
Magica", one guy was into the "Arduin" system, and of course we had our
complete RPG freak who bought everything and always wanted to play some
freaky system he found on the discount shelf of a hobby store in
northern Belgium last month. But we all met over an AD&D table. We might
occasionally dabble in one of our favorite toy systems, but we always
tossed it aside after a couple weekends and went back to an AD&D
campaign. 

Is that what WoW has done? Are the other MMO games on the market
inevitably going to be viewed as "the next WoW" or "a WoW clone" or "a
WoW wanna-be"?

I don't think that's necessarily a BAD thing, but I'm wondering what
other people think. AD&D eventually had two major competitors in the
form of Games Workshop's Warhammer and White Wolf's Storyteller series,
both of which attracted a slightly different demographic of the gamer
community with similarly rabid dedication. Are we waiting for WoW's
different-demographic counterparts to show up? Are they likely to show
up? Can the market handle more than one or two MMOs? 


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