All of the examinations over WoW's success gets pretty tedious at times. Some people are still baffled by it, many have mistakenly taken it as everything Blizzard does is golden. It makes me weep for the designs of future games, because the WoW-cloning (and itself a clone of EQ) is going to get tired really fast.

Want to know the real secret? I'm not just rambling here, flat out I'm completely positive this is the very core of WoW's breakthrough mass-market success:

WoW was the first MMORPG that wasn't ugly.

That's it. All of it. Right there. Go ahead, list a bunch of other features, they're important too and some of them no doubt keep people playing, but that reason right above is the only one that matters when it comes to explaining how WoW captured such a huge audience in the first place.

The MMORPG genre was all set to take off, it had since before it's conception, virtual worlds are a blessed idea straight from the gods themselves. It didn't have to be done right, that's bonkers, it just needed to be pretty. I'm painting with broad strokes, there are parts of other MMORPGs that were nice to look at, but they've been horribly inconsistent in their styles until WoW. Blizzard's art direction was notable at a glance.

Never underestimate the ability for screenshots to sell a game.

Presentation is everything.

I didn't come up with these tenets, they've been widely known since the dawn of videogames and probably could have been theorized before they existed. We're a visually obsessed species. Sure, gameplay is king once the game is in the hands of the gamers, but in order for gameplay to sell games a namebrand needs reputation first. Blizzard had that too mind you, but seriously, it wouldn't have sold a tenth as much if it was as ugly as EverQuest.

I'm thinking the same thing with Spore. A few months back, I was wondering if it may flop even after all the hype and press. Then the creature creator came out and there's no doubt to me that Spore will be a runaway success, because you can't make a creature that isn't cute. Even the phallic ones. Damn cute.

It even affects why we leave one game for another. I had all sorts of gameplay beefs with WoW after 3 years of Blizzard's blandification of their best property, but in the end the main reason I left for Age of Conan? I was sick of staring at elves, dwarves and orcs. Evem the best graphics can feel shallow after a long while and I've had my fill of WoW's cartoonish style.

Feel free to keep debating the gameplay features tho. =)

As a nice cap to my adventuring in City of Heroes thus far, I've added a photo album of my favourite screenshots from the game.

Some of the shots are amusing and others just highlight my various characters and the heroes that I've teamed with. I don't think I've ever felt such comradrie in a game before and I've played many many multiplayer games (since pre Doom folks). In a couple of years those screenshots will be quite the nostalgia for me.