The difference for me is that I want to support something that doesn't have big corporations and capitalist money grubbing a$$es (dollar sign pun entirely intended
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] ) being the "bosses", because to corporations it's more about what brings in the most people regardless of how long they stay to make a quick dollar, and then scrap the game if it doesn't hold people once they've squeezed as much profit out of the game as possible.
If you take a look at the foundational principles you'll see that MJ even talks about how it's so nice for him to be able to not have to worry about if he's going to piss off the boss because he wants to take a risk at making a more "niche" game or take a risk for the "fun" of the game instead of what will bring in the most "tourists" to the game who buy the game, play for a month, and then go on to the next game.
His focus is to make a game that will hold long-time players and not the FoTM themepark mmo Kiddies who come in expecting everything handed to them on a silver platter. Even if that what that means is losing out on a lot of money from that type of crowd. He doesn't want that because it's for the betterment of his game to have long-time followers and a solid strong community instead of the constant stream of players who just hop in, try it for a month and then leave. This game is going back to a lot of the roots of RPGs, thing like a full statistical distribution during character creation for example. You bork your stat distribution during creation, tough, deal with it. No AH, so people can actually you know, auction, haggle, and ... god forbid INTERACT with people on a MMORPG (yay p99 and EC tunnel here!!). Very limited forms of fast travel, no mounts (or if there are, they will never be faster than the class that provides speed buffs is the promise there), and a more meager mapping system so it's not a perfectly detailed GPS system which more allows you to look at your surroundings and have that sense of immersion and discovery, etc.
Anyone who has their doubts, please give their
kickstarter page a gander, or at the VERY least, read through the
foundational principles and then base your decision from there.
Those of us that play on P99 are here (at least a good portion of us) because we're sick of the themepark based MMOs of today that take away from the realism, immersion, discovery, exploration, interaction, and socialization. We like the challenge that our favorite old MMORPGs gave us back in the days of the UO/EQ/DAOC era, the choices available, and non-pigeon holed linear gameplay that today's MMOs are based around, and most importantly IMHO, this is a NEW game without a large corporation and publisher telling them what they can and can't do to make a game.
Obviously all of these reasons are outside of the fact that this game is offering an MMORPG with its entire focus on making an awesome RvR game for the best open world pvp available, and a player made economy (instead of player driven) because all of the worth while gear will be made by crafters in the game instead of being drop/token based.