If someone is able to provide a good explanation of why it’s fair to compare WAR at launch to WoW and its problems 4 years ago, I’d really appreciate it.
Unlike many people, apparently, I am not forced to hop in a time machine and go back four years if I want to play WoW. So, why should people say “WoW sucked at release, give WAR a pass on the issues with the game”?
When I played WoW, I wasn’t thinking “well, DAoC was buggy at launch, and City of Heroes had it’s issues, so I’m going to play this game no matter what.” Instead, I simply made the choice of which game, WoW or those others, offered a better experience. I liked WoW more than the other games, so I cancelled my subscription to City of Heroes (already had cancelled my DAoC subscription), and instead played WoW.
If you think that WAR doesn’t offer as good an experience as WoW, and want to play it anyway, you are telling the developers that you support them enough to release a product which is inferior, but gosh darnit you like them, and they should have your money.
This is a very different statement to make than liking Mythic’s game more than Blizzard’s and playing it for that reason.
If you play WAR because you like it, if you don’t have issues with it, that’s great.
If you play WAR, and bring up how bad WoW was when it launched, you sound like a person determined to give Mythic your money regardless of the quality of their product. That’s sounds a lot like fanboism
Sure, if you love WAR, tell people how great it is, what you like about it. I think that it has some fantastic concepts. However, you weaken your own position in the eyes of a WAR player who brings up (what he feels is) a legitimate concern when you bring up four year old history of a different game.
My stance?
Mythic decided to release the game to compete in the market now. They chose to play with the big boys, so let them fight it out on their own merits. Don’t coddle them like an overprotective mommy.
Note, the only valid explanation I can think of for the comparison in question deals with present values of future returns, so if you would like to expound on that and the mental calculations and psychology of it, feel free to use the comments section to provide a rebuttal.
