To be perfectly honest while a bit harsh most of his points are valid. I think VG has more potential than WoW simply because of the fact that it is in its infancy and while the game needs an absolute assload of work, the base systems are there to create a game that may not be the robot jesus of mmorpgs but will certainly be worth playing. WoW on the other hand has such a large fanbase and the things I don't like about it would require the game to basically be redesigned from the ground up. Tearing the rug out from under that many people would be bad bad business I thinks~
Things that I see as needing work if they want the game to be more than just the next step in every MMO hopper's journey through up and coming games (not really in any particular order):
1.) The world needs serious work to make it feel alive. The landscapes are cool looking, a lot of the creatures have pimp looking skins, the flora and fauna looks appropriately "real" etc... Unfortunately most of it feels pretty dead. Cities are the worst (keep in mind some of them were completely empty through most of beta so may have just had npcs thrown in "haphazardly" at the last minute). If you go to Stormwind in WoW you see children and such skipping around the streets, people moving about etc... In AO you have little robots running along the ground in Omni 1, huge billboards, loudspeakers spouting advertisements and propaganda etc... Things that make towns feel a little more lifelike. In VG most towns are filled with nothing but static NPCs. You have monsterous buildings and architecture that looks really fucking cool... Populated by random clumps of lifeless NPCs. Dungeons and such are similar. They need to feel more alive w/ backstory etc.
2.) Stability and graphical glitches and such need to be resolved. I don't want to deal with crashes, my group randomly disbanding, health bars not moving in PvP, etc.
3.) Performance is a huge issue. While this no longer really affects me having purchased a beefier system... The game runs like ass on anything mid ranged. And even on my newer PC I have some slow down in towns and when crossing chunks. Futureproofing your game is all well and good except that it's hard to grow your playerbase if everyone has to blow $1500+ on their PC in order to have reasonable performance. Performance imo is a place where you always want to keep the least common denominator in mind... WoW could run on a toaster.
4.) Quests etc are the same old tired bullshit you find in every MMO since the dawn of time. Some variety here would be nice.
5.) All of the systems in the game need to be polished up and linked together in some sort of cohesive fashion... Diplomacy and crafting spheres need to interract with adventuring more... All the spheres need to affect one another and open up new quests or alternate solutions to quests and such. Systems like naval combat, mounted combat, city building, etc etc need to be implemented and again integrated w/ the three different spheres of advancement...
Long story short they really fucked this game by throwing it out on the market without completing it. It's certainly playable and there are things about it that I still find to be a lot of fun. If they put enough work into it it could be a really good game even if it won't be the 3rd generation uber badass game to end all games they seemed to think it was gonna be back in early beta... It will never be the game that takes a chunk out of WoW's subscriber base. Sony doesn't seem to give enough of a shit about it to do what would be necessary to make the game more than it is~
Seriously these are the same fuckers that not only released the game early but released it the week after the fucking expansion for the biggest mmo ever was released?! How the fuck does that make sense?! *shrug*
I still like it and it's my MMO of choice at present but it is far from great.
