The Forums Are Aflame!

Sometimes, I'm feeling particularly stupid and peruse a few message boards on the Internet. I know, I know, what am I thinking? Every so often, I manage to actually help someone on a board so I like to pop in here and there.

Anyways, I've gotten slightly back into World of Warcraft lately, so I figured I'd check a few message boards for the game out. It has been six months or so since I played heavily and I really didn't keep up with the game in the meantime. I wasn't really expecting to find anything useful or accurate but was curious about some things I knew people would be bitching about.

I was (not really) surprised to find that a majority of the posts on the WoW forums were about The Old Republic, seeing as how it just released officially today. These posts ranged from "Why TOR is better than WoW" to "I give up on this game; I'm going to TOR" to my personal favorite "I bet this game will crash and burn now."

These posts always pop up when a new MMO hits the scene and I can't help but be amused each and every time. Aside from the fact that two MMO's could be vying for entirely different groups of people, most of the MMO's that were released in the last five years after WoW came out have either collapsed or gone free-to-play to keep their business going. WoW is one of the few remaining MMO's to not have any microtransaction-supported free-to-play element in their game.

I don't see how TOR would be any different. I spent a bit of time with the beta and you know what conclusion I came to? WoW with Star Wars and Bioware conversation wheels. Sure, the fully-voiced dialogue and Jedis are fun, but it isn't really the next evolution of the genre; it just settles for a pretty exact copy of the hit MMO. WoW still wins out overall for me for the one reason it always has - it just feels smoother than other MMO's (a minor thing but key in my book).

EA isn't really expecting to make their money back on this thing anyways. The MMO craze seems to be dying down, since even Blizzard's subscriptions are starting to drop off. Another MMO to split the market isn't really going to make anything better. I wish Bioware all the luck with this game but I won't be surprised if it fails. In fact, I would be more surprised if it took off.

I just wish people would stop demanding their game is the better one, just to feel superior to others. Every AAA game that comes out has to be compared to others and you are only supported if you make the "right" choice. I personally like to enjoy a wide variety of games and don't feel the need to compare them all to one another. If a game is a fun time, it's a winner in my book.