Not that long ago, this quote appeared on Massively:
The December first launch of the game “should never have happened,” and Smart is working to fix this. Among other things, he says the “WoW lookalike rubbish” is gone. The design team is throwing it out and working in a completely different direction to give the game its own unique look and feel. “You don’t go competing with WoW when you don’t have a WoW sized budget or the manpower to match.”
They copied World of Warcraft, realized it was a dumb idea, and are going to take all that WoW rubbish out.
Then I get the Alganon launch email and it has this quote:
“Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,” Derek Smart continued. “In Alganon, in addition to these we’ve added the fourth pillar to the equation; a story.
Where have I heard that before? Oh right, Star Wars:The Old Republic. Also, nice spelling. Multiplier?
Traditionally MMOs are built on three pillars; Exploration, Combat, and Progression. We at BioWare and LucasArts believe there is a fourth pillar: Story.
Do they have any original ideas? They didn’t have a WoW budget but they do have a SWTOR budget?
– Ethic