There is sort of a public outrage about Bartle’s latest interview with Michael Zenke of Massively (I posted about this in my last blog post). I’ve never heard so many idiotic sounding replies about this article in my life. One blog post in particular that I need to highlight is Tobold’s. Now normally, I’m a fan of Tobold and enjoy reading his blog – but this blog post had some things that just NEEDED to be commented on.
WAR is no more identical to WoW than WoW is to Everquest.
Bartle could have said Everquest. He said WoW because it was a better comparison in today’s current market. These games are all the same. I don’t care what everyone says is so different about WAR, it’s still fundamentally the same. Once you’ve done the grind, leveled up to max level and done the end game thing in one of these games – you’ve done it all. If you had fun with it and want to do it again in a different setting with different people, that’s where buying and playing another MMO comes in. It’s not because you’re looking for a radically different and unique play experience (if you are, then you’re sort of foolish IMHO) it’s because you’re bored with one game, have done what you can do in it, and need to move on. The better way to phrase that sentence could have been “WAR will be exactly as overwhelmingly identical to WoW as WoW was to Everquest.”
In the genre of MMORPGs the games of today already appear to be much different from Everquest.
Wait, what? They do? They’re the same game with different hardware requirements, art, and a bit of added usability. Is that a problem? Not for me, because I liked Everquest. I’d still play it today if my friends were still playing it. If my friends moved onto WAR, I’d be there too. If my friends went back to EQ2, I’d play there. It doesn’t matter what game it is…it’s the same leveling, it’s the same pvp, its the same questing, grinding, raiding, etc. Really it just depends on A) where your friends are, and B) what setting/art style you enjoy.
All this outrage about his comparison about a game that hasn’t even been released yet. Even those of you in beta, you are wasting breath supporting a game that isn’t out yet against the comments of one of the most intelligent people in the industry. Bartle was giving his opinion on WoW in that article, that’s it. His opinion based on having played three level 70’s (which is two more than me, btw). Part of being a good blogger is taking a step back and being objective, even when the topic is on a game you’re anticipating and salivating for.
That is why Richard Bartle’s statement of WAR being the same as WoW only makes him look foolish.
I don’t see that at all. I see it as an intelligent man making an opinionated comment (probably with a grin on his face) from a designer’s standpoint that players/bloggers just can’t comprehend. I think the fools are all the people who’ve responded with comments like “Sure, he made MUDs 10 years ago, but what now?”. Players/bloggers who’ve never made a game calling a man foolish who is the grandfather of MMOs, who is an advisor for many of the game companies you’re following, who lives and breaths this industry…who is the fool?
Richard Bartle is the co-author of MUD, one of the ancestors of modern MMORPGs. But as he failed to patent any of the inventions he did while creating it, all he got was a Wikipedia entry.
I don’t really have anything to say about that comment except, wow. If I were to come up with a comment it would probably include the words “fuck” and “asshat” but I’m too professional for that. =)
