WoW Under Siege, or Is It?

I've watched several different MMOs come out over the last few months, several trumpeted as "the WoW Killer" and some that just quietly slip onto the scene and fill in a niche area that was lacking in the past.

From Charge and Gore to Decapitation and Bloodspray
One of the major ones I participated in was the Age of Conan Open Beta, and then in AoC itself for the first month. This game had been screamed as a WoW Killer, that it would be big, bad, and bloody. It was bad, and bloody - that at much it lived up to. The fatalities were awesome- with a decent system, if you didn't have a good system (IE: most WoW capable PCs fell on their face) you'd better not have fatalities running, or the game might crash. But it didn't get WoW's numbers and after that first week membership started dropping because of glitches, and just the general UI issues. It also didn't help that the game had tried to build a reputation as a "mature" MMO, yes AoC had a little M on the back of the box.

I can sit here and list its issues with ease... 1. You had to upgrade your system in a big way just to play. I myself came from WoW and had to upgrade my processor, Ram, and video card. Would have had to upgrade my motherboard if I'd not decided to spend a tiny bit more when I first build my Pink Monster. 2.Everything in the game was instanced. Town/countryside/actual instance/you-name-it it was all instanced, which kinda made it hard to group up if you didn't know exactly what to click... and no, it wasn't obvious! 3. Auction House wasn't displaying half its items. 4. Certain Professions could not vendor finished products to at least make back a portion of the cash spent in the creation. 5. Occasional system crashes due to a major memory leak on the highest end systems, and with certain video cards as well, it seemed.

This game was suposed to Kill WoW, it had more issues than WoW did when it started... and I remember the complaints and server issues with WoW, it was not fun for the first few weeks... WoW was constantly releasing new servers and they were filling as fast as they came on line. AoC was hyped, and fell far short. I left after my free month was up, it wasn't worth the cash I'd paid to buy it.

From Fast Fingers to Study the Wind
I remember when Pirates of the Burning Sea came out. It was by no means hailed as a WoW Killer, in fact it didn't even make a blip on the WoW radar, unless you liked sailing around the Caribbean in a ship and blowing the crap out of other ships at a slower pace that allowed you to think before you reacted. I played for a little bit, at the insistence of my guy... believe me, he really wanted me to play, buying me the Pre-Order + the actual game. So, what could I do other than try it? This was at a time when I was no longer raiding in WoW, but was still playing Yazmin pretty heavily, and I'd just begun to level my orc warrior. I did get a Naval Officer to about level 37 on that game, then it just kinda lost all the fun because the game merged the server I was on and was tossing out transfers like bad fish off a garbage truck.

I hated the server I just transferred too... lost the community feel of Kidd. Believe me, on Kidd Spain was getting its ass kicked by the French, but it was a friendly rivalry. And if a little Spaniard accidentally wandered into contested French/English Territory, the French were kind enough to let the poor Spaniard escape without harm. Now, I wouldn't have put it past the English to try and screw me over (largest faction out there - no honor) but; for the French, when Furett spoke, everyone listened on the French side... 108 guns non-withstanding.

The new server had an honor problem... people forcing port battles at odd hours where there wouldn't be any defense by the other side, because a large portion of its membership just could not be on at 2:00 AM.

I got sick of it, and refused to play any-more. Suspended the account and there it sits. The guy on the other hand? Has gone back to the game, determined to enjoy PvP... hmmm.

I see so many games hyped as Killers by the Fans of these games, and then watch so many do what I did, play for a month, loathe it, and then come back to the tried game that has figured out most of its glitches and fixed them. I will watch Warhammer with interest, because I believe that there isn't as large of a threat from War... Blizzard ran on the Warcraft NAME, and proved a good product. War has to do that + manage to grab a giant portion of WoW's business just to be believed as a "Killer". I don't think I'll be seeing a David to this Goliath any-time soon.

Rogue's Eye View on WoW Killers