I am a lapsed game developer in Austin, a lot of my friends work at Sony and NCSoft.
WoW is successful because it is a GAME first. All of the MMO devs I know talk about making perfect worlds and gigantic simulations - Koster disease. WoW does not do that - vendors always buy, people can't grief on PvE servers, resources are plentiful at low levels, the game is pretty, usable, obvious, helpful, and FUN FUN FUN.
Rumor: Further evidence of Star Wars: KOTOR MMO discovered
Mar 8th 2008 3:40PM (Joystiq)UCI Game Conference Spotlights WoW
Apr 21st 2006 10:27AM (WoW)WoW is successful because it is a GAME first. All of the MMO devs I know talk about making perfect worlds and gigantic simulations - Koster disease. WoW does not do that - vendors always buy, people can't grief on PvE servers, resources are plentiful at low levels, the game is pretty, usable, obvious, helpful, and FUN FUN FUN.
Everquest 2 isn't. SWG certainly isn't.
There you go.