[MUD-Dev2] Fallen Earth

Sean Howard squidi at squidi.net
Sun Sep 20 22:42:33 CEST 2009


"Damion Schubert" <dschubert at gmail.com> wrote:

> How different does an MMO have to be before it's *different enough*?  Are
> MMOs the only game genre where the existence of one market leader means
> that no one else should ever do any features that are at all similar?

MMOs used to be a varied and exciting genre, filled to the brim with risky
opportunity and educationally fascinating discourse. WoW killed that, more
or less. So I see any features that are overly similar to WoW as a
stagnation of the genre. Sure, WoW didn't invent leveling, but leveling
used to be different for every game. Now it's not. It's all WoW leveling,
all the time. Which games DON'T have little flashy icons over the heads of
quest givers these days?

> Not to say that every game should be a WoW clone, but I've seen way too
> many MMOs come on the market with way too much half-formed wild-assed
> experimentation that turned out to be broken, unbalanced, not well
> thought out or just plain not fun.

You learn more through your own failures than by getting a passing grade
by copying off the kid next to you (who in this case, is a wiz at copying
himself). People failing at something new is always more exciting than
someone barely passing at the tried and true. So the question becomes, do
you want to improve or do you want to get a good grade? I'm not convinced
it is impossible to do both - just more difficult.

-- 
Sean Howard




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