The Elephant explained

Now after my extremely odd and probably pretty bad metaphor/story in my previous post I think I should offer an explanation.

New developers of mmorpgs nowadays will do anything and everything to avoid being labelled as just another wow clone. This leads to so many problems that will continue to occur until someone realises that their efforts to be unique (Meaning having something original that Blizzard have not even thought of thinking of doing) are not working. Ignoring the Elephant (WoW) and pretending that it doesn’t exist will not work. Trying to think up an idea that has nothing to do with the Elephant or any thing that makes it so smooth, and popular (The disco parties) will not only be extremely hard but also pointless.

Developers are terrified of being pictured as a WoW clone, so they try to stay away from aspects of mmorpgs that WoW are extremely good at, instead coming up with something that offers something completely new, refreshing, and exciting. These ideas (hardworking ants) while original are often lacking is sustenance. But the fans don’t need to know little irrelevant stuff like that, so they take these ideas and flaunt them to death, making them sound like the best piece of gooey gaming goodness since, well, since WoW, although that name is never mentioned under pain of cloney humiliation. They churn out as much propaganda as they can to keep the hype up and rush through everything to get the game ready for use. Needless to say the party goes wrong and nobody knows what is going on, everyone is confused and unhappy, until Blizzard does something that seems awesomeingly cool and everyone tramples off.

(That may have been a bit harsh on mmorpg gamers’ judgement and mentality and I apologise, but for the most part it is true.)

WoW clones are only bad because they are half-hearted. Imagine this; If one developer came out and made a mmorpg that was the definition of a WoW clone, with the same auction house system, mailing system, talent system, questing system, pvp system, and raiding-system, and flaunted all of them. Giving no apologies, shamelessly making a copy and then using Blizzard’s mistakes and gamers advice adjusting and perfecting these aspects. Releasing the game during a slow period of WoWing and adding tons of new content to keep people happy for the first year, releasing a expansion a few months after Blizzard’s, adding same and some new original stuff to them every time. If all this happened, how do you think the game would go?