Yeah, I'd have to put almost every classic open-world mmo above vanilla wow. It's got polish, but gameplay is uninteresting. Not that it's bad, it's an ok time waster, but at least it's not bad like older wow. But most definitely I'd list UO, EQ, SWG (pre-CU), EVE above it.
WoW doesn't even really feel "open world", more like a full on themepark progression level grinder. It's early success is mainly due to the Blizzard brand name, all their existing gamers insisting Diablo be recognized as an mmo, and Blizzard cashing in on that with wow to their fans that never really played an mmo before and got hooked on their first. As wow gained subscriptions from Blizzard fanbois, it became "popular" (trendy) and more people were drawn into it thinking it was the antithesis of cutting edge gaming.
Then hoards of "mmo players" flooding the genre begging every mmo developer to either clone wow (they were bored between expansions) or revamp existing mmo's to be more like wow. The ones that listened to the fickled wow players ruined their games and/or made pathetic wow clones no one wanted.
Then when failure turned to desperation, they started cranking out F2P's trying to capture this elusive army of wow players that really only wanted wow. And when they realized that the new mmo's may not be successful in stealing away players from Blizzard, they focused on big fat whale players: the few willing to spend big money in the cash shops of F2P's and development focused primarily on such players, those bored between wow expansions. The rise and fall of mmo civilization.
Nah, I had been on Nos for several months before it was shut down, I don't think I'm going to pick it up again.
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