What makes a good mmo?

I have been following the mmo market for quite some times and as of late I have been following a few debates about why mmo’s keep “failing”, and the comparisons keep coming back to wow.

One of the most used arguments in these discutions is that “new mmos looks too much like wow” and that is a reason why a mmo wouldn’t succeed,
Also you keep hearing about 1 mmo after the other with people arguing whether the game is going to be the “wow killer”.

I really don’t buy into any of the two, first of it’s not that it looks like wow or some of the mechanics works like wow’s, hell wow got most of their game mechanics from other games as well, that didn’t make them “fail”, it’s all about polish, and having enough depth / features.

Features is simple if you restrict the players from doing what they are used to be able to do, ie. Make guilds, send mails trade goods and a lot of these seemingly ordinary/simple features that people are used to you will see customers disapearing.

Depth, for a game to be fairly interesting there got to be some depth in the mechanics that makes it interesting and fun to play.

Polish, where I guess really a lot of the companies who have been releasing mmo’s have been lacking, it’s the last 20% that takes 80% of the time, time companies don't want to spend. This is a major mistake especially when we are talking about games, polish is what make everything feel right as it should feel, games are really a lot about the feeling you get if something feels off or wrong or simple just doesn’t work it is really going to turn people away especially in a game where you are expected to use a fairly large amounth of hours.

Why did wow succeed, well there are several reasons one being just hitting with the game at the right time. But one of the things that I believe truly made I difference is the one thing Blizzard excels at In comparison to all other gaming companies, they always ship extremely polished games, even in beta they are already more polished then most other games are at launch.

About the “wow killer” that’s just not going to happen, the only way wow is going to die or get beaten number wise is by Blizzards own next mmo, that being said there are room for other mmo’s but talking about beating wow is just nonsense.


For me the next mmo I am going to play is SWTOR, mostly due to kotor1 and 2 just being awesome, wheatear I am going to play the game as an mmo or just enjoy it as a single player playing through with a few different classes well, that will depend on the quality of the game, but I have no doubt the story part is going to be just as good as what I have come to expect by Bioware!