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Title:EVE Online CEO Asks 'Why Clone WoW?
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| Date: July 19 2007 |
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Despite a somewhat rough start, sci-fi MMO EVE Online has proven to have some real staying power among hardcore fans. With continued updates and a strong community focus holding the subscriber base steady at roughly 200,000, EVE has set itself apart from the pack in a number of ways. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, developer CCP Games CEO Hilmar Petursson expressed just how important that originality is for their game.
Perhaps referring to the recently-released Lord of the Rings Online or the struggling Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Petursson said:
'I just don't understand why people do yet another fantasy game. Why make a clone of World of Warcraft? ...World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this [genre]. It's been done. Do something else.'
Are all future MMOs doomed to be WoW wanna-bes? Let's take a brief look at some upcoming MMOs currently planned for release in 2007:
Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising -- While this upcoming title from Sony Online Entertainment and developer Perpetual Entertainment is sort of fantasy-based, it's also got the mythological Roman background that hasn't been explored much in massive online games. There are also no elves or dwarves to be found.
Dungeon Runners -- Currently beta testing on NCSoft's website, Dungeon Runners is definitely traditional fantasy, but differs from WoW thematically by being firmly humor-focused and gameplay-wise by comparing much more to, say, Diablo.
Pirates of the Burning Sea -- Here's one that you'd be hard-pressed to compare to WoW. With the draw of the game being owning a ship and sailing the wide seas, most of the swords-and-sorcery jazz seems to be out.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures -- While Age of Conan is one MMO that does resemble World of Warcraft in a lot of ways, that's got to be expected from a game based on a franchise that helped create many modern fantasy genre conventions. Age of Conan also has the gameplay twist of being completely single-player for the first twenty levels.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning -- It seems really wrong to call Warhammer a Warcraft rip-off when the original Warcraft lore draws so heavily on the Warhammer tabletop games. That said, it's impossible to ignore how similiar Warhammer Online looks to World of Warcraft.
This is just a sampling of the bucketloads of MMORPGs in the works, but at least things don't seem dire in terms of innovation. Perhaps MMO-makers realize, as Petursson suggested, that World of Warcraft already has the market largely cornered on traditional fantasy titles and everyone would be better-served with more original titles.
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