What Would Matt Do

I don't know this Tobold, but I like him. He starts off his post like this:

  Reading through mine and other people's Vanguard impressions, it struck me that they come out a bit too negative.

So you start to think, maybe he likes Vanguard. Which is against what probably everyone else but the die hard EQ guys thinking all of this change in MMORPGs of late is disconcerting and scary. But if you keep reading, he comes up with this gem:

If I had been in a coma for the last 5 years and gone straight from Everquest to Vanguard, I would totally have loved Vanguard. Besides the obviously better graphics, the gameplay improved a lot from EQ to Vanguard. The death penalty is less harsh, you get a chance to summon your corpse for 10% of the xp to next level; costly, but better than losing all your gear. There are a lot more quests in Vanguard than in EQ. And the downtime between fights is a lot shorter. The diplomacy system is great. So what is not to like?

The problem is that I haven't been in that coma, and while Vanguard moved in the right direction compared to EQ, World of Warcraft had already gone much further in that direction. So from a WoW perspective Vanguard is moving backwards.

Right… so Vanguard ignored, in this case purposely I believe, a LOT of what makes WoW so popular. Why did they do that? Well, it's a whole other topic about Brad McQuaid. He's basically a jackass who really has no idea what makes a game good. He's one of those jokers stuck back in the idea that EQ was the pinnacle of MMORPG up to this point. But that's beyond reasoning, so we'll just let it go with a chuckle a special place in hell for all the misery Verant in general and Brad in specific put into EQ. Whew, that was a lot of talking, I need to stare at my spell book now to regain some mana. Fuckers.

The point being, rambling aside, when you make your MMORPG, don't ignore the 40 bajillion pound gorilla in the room. I hear so much abot how WoW has ruined MMORPGs and it's a bad thing for the industry, etc. I call that whining. Yeah, it's horrible for the game industry. It's horrible to have MMORPGs that are polished. It's horrible to have well thought out, extensible UI. It's horrible to be attracting casual gamers into the PC gaming market. It's horrible to have Blizzard printing their own money… Why is it horrible? Well, I can't be sure, but I think it's because it'll create a lot of new gamers, it'll generate a huge amount of interest from the money folks (i.e. – publishers) which get other MMORPGs created and it'll definitely serve as a bar.

That'll ruin gaming for sure.

What Would Matt Do: I'm going to smack the next person that says WoW is bad for the industry. Really. It's a horribly good thing. The industry as a whole will grow because of it, the MMORPG will grow because of it AND (my favorite), developers are going to have to beat WoW at their game or do something different than another cookie cutter MMORPG. Yep, definitely killing the industry.  

P.S. – Vanguard is pretty weak. And it's definitely for the die hard asshats who like corpse runs. Ugh.