I wrote this reply as a blog update, so that's why it is so... cheeky. But since it was a reply to you, figured I ought to cross-post it, too.
Originally posted by Dvol
I just want to know when im going to get a new game thats not a clone of EQ or WoW.
Uhm… Soon!
Seriously, we’re going to have a flood of all sorts of different MMOs. Not even all MMORPGs, some may provoke arguments as to whether they are real MMOs. Or even as to whether they are real games.
There’s a crazy amount of MMO diversity in Asia, and anything not coming here directly, is going to be influencing the games being made here. Then those other games’ sequels will come here, too.
Some of the same ‘ol, but some different stuff.
Even if you personally avoid MMO console games, you’ll still benefit from the gameplay examples they set for PC MMOs. Some new, different things will come of that, even without just straight copying the console gameplay.
And with straight copying? Well that’s still an improvement over just the one thing we have to copy now.
Of course there will also be other games. Little things, briefly entertaining, many even online (just almost in that special way we like, but not quite). Though merely distractions to pass time while we wait for a non-clone MMO, they can be enjoyable online activities.
Some may even be more fun than griefing Wikipedia, if not quite as sticky.
Annnnnd… Well, do you like pirates?
This year it’s all pirates. Somewhere between 4 and 37 pirate MMOs rolling out, since that was the unique idea for an MMO that everyone embraced two or three years ago when all their Viking MMOs were canceled.
After pirate-year…
The Eve Online devs are not going to make a stock-MUD, tanker-nuker-healer, three-diku World of Darkness game. There’s just no way, no how. Impossible. I refuse to entertain the thought. Shup!
That one is less than a half-decade away, still practically riding on the heals of the 80’s Vampire-chic fad, when you consider how long Vampires live.
Ok, so otherwise, maybe there will be some WoW-clone failures, and some Second Life-like flops, and possibly a revelation some day that there are so not millions of people really playing… one of those two.
And on top of that, this:
Wonderland quotes Raph Koster as saying:
I would say we are about to see a truly massive explosion in the quantity of online worlds, like Korea saw. The vast majority will not be retail box products. We’re starting to see… you saw darkstar just open sourced a perfectly viable MMO engine. You can pick it up for free. We’re going to start to see a helluva lot more… stuff.
So there’s a bright future out there, just over the horizon at the very spot your superstitious pirate-crew believes the ocean runs off the edge of the earth, down into the mouths of monsters. A bright future indeed (in spite of the fact that your crew may be correct in their beliefs, it being a videogame ocean and all).
Not today, but someday, Game and World will meet. They’ll fall in love, or at least settle, and have some normal kids.
Not tomorrow or the next day, either.
Old-timers - as we will all be by then - might even fail to recognize normal when we see it. Odds are stacked against us, we who jumped the gun, started playing MMOs before they were even good.