So I work in IT and constantly see how projects get ruined or are successful because of scope control.

Imagine a triangle with these 3 points:

1) Time

2) Quality

3) Money

In the center of that triangle is "scope".  If any project (or game) has too much scope 2 of the points of that triangle suffer.  Scope is basically "requirements".. ie What are you planning on having in your game?

Any game that comes out can not feasibly have the same content level as WoW because the game will either be horribly over budget, take forever, or have shitty quality.

Most likely it'll have 2 of those.

So here's the question now that you know the basics:  Do you think it's feasible that a new mmorpg have as much content as WoW? 

The prevailing thought is no (from IT work and from when I was in college).

It's impossible to make nearly 8 years of content within the course of a standard MMO development cycle.

Even if you did somehow, it would probably end up being 99% open flat land with a bunch of monsters scattered all over the place.

Yes, but it would literally take them years to catch up to the sheer amount of content in WoW. It may take them a long time to develope content but WoW released their content over... how many years old is WoW now?

You get the idea, slow and steady wins the race.

i dont expect a new game to have as much content as a game that has been out for years and years. but what i do expect is a game that isnt so damn easy that i can get max level and do all the content within the first free month. and thats why in my opinion alot of these new games fail so bad.

but on the other hand if they slow down the leveling and make the content harder then you have thousands of crying little kids saying its a grind fest.

*Mainly made this post because of a rl friend who said he'd never leave WoW because he doesn't see a point if a new game doesn't come out with more content.

(verbatim)

This is why the themepark model isn't a sustainable nor viable one. It is 100% reliant on Developer created content.

WoW has had almost a limitless fund for developing content, and have an entire section of their studio dedicated to new quests, content, etc.

Sandboxes however, are more like 40% developer driven & created content. So when a new AAA Sandbox releases it can easily compete with other Sandboxes that have been out for 4+years.

Answer: Of course it isn't feasible.

I'll be honest, that's a dumb question and the results show that.

MMO developers aren't expected to match WOWs content from vanilla to now.  They are expected to have implemented features that are deemed standards today.  Saying it wasn't standard when WOW released misses the point completely.  As seen with SWTOR.  This includes group finders and rated PVP.  Addons would be nice but they always fall to the wayside as a nice but expensive/complicated feature.

For me, MMOs are not about amount of content. They are more about interesting ideas. Minecraft comes to my mind. Does it have comparable amount of content to WoW? No. Does it have potential to be an insanely successful game? In my opinion, yes.

I think it is more about ideas, new mechanisms, designs. I believe that the key to exceed WoW's population and keep it is not making a themepark with more content in different setting. It is about making something different. I would like to play an MMO which will feel like nothing I have played before.

Hire 8x as many developers and make the working structure 100x more efficient (more devs<>more production).

But it doesn't matter if it's feasible or not.  It's plausible. 

Someone will always be expecting the two to mean the same thing.

Originally posted by Aelious
I agree with faded, what kind of content we're talking about is key. Tailor designed themeparks? Nope, that's what WoW is and they have both a head start and polish.

A large world with a loose story and a lot of developer and player sandbox tools? Yes. I think the future of good MMOs will be in generation tools that make developing easier and cheaper. Building everything from the ground up is too costly and people burn through it way too easily.

I hope you're right, but for the foreseeable future, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed in the future of "good" MMOs.

Originally posted by MMOExposed
are you comparing to each expansion of WoW individually?

because old content becomes useless during each expansion, so I wouldnt count that.

and without counting that stuff I would say yes.
How many new Raids and Dungeons did WoW Cata add? how much content in total did Cata add? Compare that to what Rift has in terms of content in total since its lifetime.

The dungeons are still relevant even after new expansion hits. When you level from 1-90, you will most likely go through all the dungeons that have been added in the previous expansions. If you decide not to do dungeons, you go through the zones and quests added in the previous expansions which are also still there and pretty much useful in the levelling process.

The raids become irrelevant. You may do them, but you do not have an incentive to do so. However, you may do the raids for cosmetics, so that people may be happy doing them as well. Certain group of people actually prefer doing raids for cosmetics rather than gear as we learned recently...or at least I did. The problem probably would be that there is no downscaling, so that the old raids are too easy to provide sufficient amount of fun.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Hire 8x as many developers and make the working structure 100x more efficient (more devs<>more production).

But it doesn't matter if it's feasible or not.  It's plausible. 

Someone will always be expecting the two to mean the same thing.

I personally would rather something be feasible than plausible.  The appearance of potential success doesn't match the actual ability for something to succeed.

I think that the answer isn't more devs, or more dollars, but BETTER devs that are making the game they desperately want to play.  Devs nowadays only make games to cater to the masses in order to increase their bottom lines.  It's true that gaming as an industry has always been about money, like any industry, but you can see the difference in quality from AAA MMO games in years past as opposed to today (in my opinion).

Originally posted by Angier2758

*Mainly made this post because of a rl friend who said he'd never leave WoW because he doesn't see a point if a new game doesn't come out with more content.

(verbatim)

thats a short sighted perception

for 5 years, 1999 - 2004

Everquest was the most popular MMORPG in US/EU 

(Lineage was bigger but not in US/EU)

when WOW launched,

WOW had less content than EQ and its 8 expansions

The Ruins of Kunark (April 2000)
The Scars of Velious (December 2000)
The Shadows of Luclin (December 2001)
The Planes of Power (October 2002)
The Legacy of Ykesha (February 2003)
Lost Dungeons of Norrath (September 2003)
Gates of Discord (February 2004)
Omens of War (September 2004)

using the same reasoning,

if your friend was a EQ player PreWOW, he would have never left Everquest

No.

Having said that, as a casual player I rarely get through all the content even on games that other players 'complete' in a couple of weeks. Usually by the time I'm mid level I'm playing in a ghost town because most other players are max level.