It's very refreshing to hear that Blizzard won't be going with one of their existing IPs for their second foray into MMOs. I was both wondering how they could manage with their somewhat derivative existing choices, but I have to admit I also assumed they would, given their history of game design and IP choices.

I'd just finished listening to an interview with 38 Studio's Curt Shilling and Steve Danuser and was equally encouraged with their take on the advantages of going with an original property. Just so long as it's done well.

Games we've seen recently have delved deeply into the most revered universes. As a player though, even if / when they recreate the world well, it's still a recreation and just lends that Theme Park feeling even more. I'd love to immerse myself in something new and well crafted from scratch.

Without going on at length about it, I think this screenshot comparison speaks volumes on its own. It's sort of a UI evolution.

(click for the full image that demonstrates it best)

1999 = Asheron's Call
2002 = Asheron's Call 2
2004 = World of Warcraft
2007 = Lord of the Rings Online.

Note: Kudos to Jim @ MMOG Chronicles for compiling this image.

Found a link to Blizzard's forums which led to this:

Sure to be removed quickly, because I don't recall a Blizzard employee that has ever referenced another MMORPG on their forums before. They corporately maintain some kind of fog-of-war over that stuff.

It's perfectly sane and reasonable of course, you can't expect people to play their own game much, if at all, but they've got an interest in these kind of games so there has to be an outlet in competing products. There's a bunch of other normal reasons, too many to list really.

Much of the fanboi trash talk seems so silly when (during the trade-shows especially) it's probably usual for the devs, CMs and employeees of these companies to sit down together over coffee to discuss what they have in common. Many of them have worked together in the past, the talent is related and interwoven this way. You can catch competing devs smiling at each other on discussion panels and they're honest smiles at that.

I've always liked Eyonix, even back when Warlocks saw no love and as the Warlock CM rep he was too busy enjoying his Mage. =P

I found the link for this on the AoC forums in a thread with the sensationalist topic "Even Blizzard employees play AOC", right underneath "AoC is the Ralph Nader of MMOs" and right above "Is Funcom Gutlessly Caving In To The Prudes..?" which just goes to prove that regardless of any differences in the games themselves, the general forums are exactly the same.

**Post & comments deleted because fanboi ire is pointless over a game I won't be playing anyway**

Just like I'd done with WoW a few years back, I've intentionally skipped the Beta opportunities with Age of Conan. These are two games with so much potential that I don't wish to ruin my experience testing a beta that can be wildly different from the full game.

I've played enough betas (especially MMO betas: Ultima Online, Everquest, Guild Wars, etc.) to expect frustrations and disappointments that can all be avoided with a bit of patience for the actual game.

As expected, I'm seeing a variety of first impressions from the current 'Open' Beta of Age of Conan, that's very reminiscent of beta info leaked from World of Warcraft before its initial release. None of those reviews are fair of course, whether glowing praise or doom and gloom. You just cannot rate a game based upon its beta, no matter how close to release it is. At the most, you can get a general impression of gameplay.

The WoW comparison:

If WoW had to survive on the merits of its release (let alone beta), it would have failed miserably. Penny Arcade actually withdrew their 2004 Game of the Year award due to WoW's lack of server stability. The real test that Blizzard passed was in halting the game sales (yeah, they did that), refunding time to players and addressing the stability issue, although it took them months. At the time, WoW had sold just over 600,000 copies of the game, which was a great achievement but a far cry from the millions they have now.

As a player in 2004, I was thrilled to be playing WoW. I rarely commented on the bugs & problems (first day: fell out of the world, got stuck numerously in flower-picking pose, disconnected from server continuously) since I had expected them. I expect Age of Conan to have its share of issues too, in fact I'd assume more, it's designed to a much higher standard of visuals compared to WoW (which was hardly state of the art in 2004, let alone now).

The real test for any MMORPG if you ask me, is twofold:

• Is the gameplay fun? This is subjective of course. What's fun for me isn't necessarily for you, but there are some commonalities to mass-market fun. WoW certainly meets most player's standards, otherwise it wouldn't be so popular. Age of Conan's PvP beta gained some glowing reviews, though personally I'm more interested in PvE fun so I'll just have to wait to see, but what I've seen during development looks good and the RPG world certainly suits me.
• Are they a standup company? If there are problems, will they fix it? Or will they just cave, count their losses and dump the whole thing? I don't think I need to give examples of companies that are not what I'd consider standup in the MMORPG field, some of them are notorious and have either outright mismanaged their game developments or have let good games die on the vine.

  Blizzard is clearly a standup MMORPG company, they pulled their socks up when they needed to. I'd say Funcom's experience with Anarchy Online shows they are legit and worthy of faith too.

Funcom doesn't want a repeat of their nearly disastrous Anarchy Online launch. Proof that they're working to avoid that is in their current beta, which is clearly a stress test complete with heavy-duty debugging software. The downside is the impression they're leaving on the beta-testers while they try to push the client and servers to the breaking point, because as expected, things are breaking. That's the nature of the beast.

I'm pretty stoked with the pending release of Age of Conan, from what I've seen this game will suit me better than any that have come previously. I'm really looking forward to watching the game mature as it goes along.

Hell, I'll just be thrilled to play a fantasy MMORPG with no elves!

Considering that I let my WoW account lapse into suspension around Christmas, I was a bit surprised to get an email response today regarding a GM complaint I made in October.

It was a pretty simple matter of a griefing player, but the GM that answered in-game originally gave a form response of "disputes on PvP servers are expected to be handled by PvP resolutions". Except Silvermoon is a PvE server and the complaint wasn't about PvP per se (nobody was flagged). So at the time, I sent off a simple GM feedback complaint that the GM hadn't taken the time to check the server-type.

It's rather amusing that a complaint of a lax GM gets responded to months later.

Overall, during my 3 years playing WoW, I would say that the customer service was good. Especially the in-game customer service. Blizzard made it very clear early on that they intended to have in-game solutions to stop gold farmers, griefers and other player-involved disruptions. Indeed, the GMs I'd spoken to expressed policies that they wanted players to report to GMs more, not less.

After Burning Crusade however, the situation seemed to change. Blizzard's customer service went downhill in a big way, both in-game and out. GMs were poorly trained, slow to respond and sometimes acted like they were being bothered rather than happy to help. This became more and more evident as players explained their GM experiences on the forums, then the forum posts themselves started getting removed.

Honestly, it wasn't a big factor in my leaving WoW. I left because of gaps in the game. But it's indicative of changes with Blizzard: they were once a company that focused on the details.

I'm quietly waving goodbye to World of Warcraft after 3 years.

I considered leaving as far back as last year, during the Burning Crusade beta. After such a long wait for WoW's first expansion, it didn't deliver much ooomph for me.

Sakkara, Nelg and I began started discussing other games (mostly Warhammer at the time) over our usual dinners out. Eventually we all decided that our next 'online home' would be Age of Conan, in fact our entire guild will likely migrate to Funcom's upcoming MMO. At first we worried that AoC was coming out too soon, but then it got delayed and now here I am, ready to leave WoW while AoC is still a few months away.

I won't have troubles finding things to occupy my time, if anything I have too much on my plate for hours of gametime anyway.

I was going to write some sappy stuff here about my experiences in WoW, but maybe later. I did do the cheesy forums goodbye post. Right now there are two days left on my account and I think I'll login to transfer my collected materials and gold to the guild bank.