Here's the kicker: This game that I loved so much? That I speak so fondly of? That I think did so much so well? It's the same EverQuest known for it's laughably bad quest system, insane grinds, ridiculously long camps, crappy interface, extreme difficulty to solo, broken mechanics, enormous raid sizes, XP loss on death, naked corpse runs, and a whole host of other complaints. And I still play it from time to time. If I'm that attached to my first MMOG, even with all of those negative aspects, how do you think people whose first game was World of Warcraft are going to feel about it in years to come? WoW gold took the EQ formula and fixed everything that sucked. There are lots of things that suck about WoW, but honestly, other than the familiarity, it's as much fun to pick up and play today as it was during my first day of beta. That's not the case for EverQuest. WoW did so much right that it's hard to significantly improve on the formula, as many studios are discovering--- see Scott Hartsman's comments on that topic in this interview, for example.

So what does all of this mean? Well, getting back to the original point I was making, I'm not convinced that any game will persuade first time MMOG players who enjoy WoW to leave it. Those people who are hunting for new games, who are tired of the old, who want something new... they tend to be people who already have hopped games once or more. When players find a game they like, a game that really grabs them, a game that defines the MMO tcos gold genre in their minds and lays out what an MMOG should be for them, it's going to take either a serious blow to their game (Blizzard announces that they're done making expansions) or a serious improvement to the game style (on the EverQuest --> WoW level) to lure them away. I don't think that even Blizzard has really realized how powerful people's connection to their game of choice is (Michael has a great article on this from last week, actually). Had EverQuest 2 been as slick, polished, and fun as WoW at launch, you can be damn sure that I'd have been playing that for the last four years instead, just because the setting was familiar. I miss my Monk, Bard, and Enchanter classes terribly.