I dont see what the problem is with comparing ESO to WoW, they are both MMOs. I have played wow for 7 years, and GW for 6 months, thats my MMO experience, so obviously when I talk about features in the game, Im going to compare them to the two games I have played. The reason so many people use wow comparisons, is because wow has by far the biggest playerbase of any MMO.

There are some generalizations that people make about wow that really should be made about MMOs in general, those can be annoying.

Saying this mechanic worked or didnt work in wow is fine.
Saying "if this game is like wow its fail" is juvenile. But then the game is rated for teen so I guess some of that is expected, right?

Agreed.

Im not a Wowophile but surely if you are going to compare an MMO anything you would compare it to the most commercially successful MMO? Haters will always hate but wow is and has been top dog for such a long time whether we like it or not its doing/done more things right than its competitors.

i agree...

1.) will this be TES but Online ???
or
2.) will this be Online MMO with TES lore???

everyone says it will be 1.) ... so if there should be a comparison, than compare it with other TES games (at least in most cases)
IT SHOULD BE MORE COMPARABLE WITH TES SingleP. games than WoW....

"Can we all please stop..."

Yeah, sure. I'll get right on that and pass a memo around to the citizens of the globe. BRB.

Has there been an MMORPG released in the last few years that wasn't compared to WoW?

It's funny. I was just looking at the new Galaxy S4 yesterday, and I read a lot of people expressing annoyance that every new phone is dubbed an "iPhone killer". Same deal. It's not that Apple/Blizzard make the best products in their respective markets. They're just the most famous.

So yeah, it can get old at times, but it isn't going to change. Thankfully, the good folk that peruse these forums have a wide breadth of experience, and as such a number of other MMOs are often brought up.

Im my experience of MMO's the best ones I have played are Ultima Online, DAoC and Eve Online. All these had something that no other mmo has at present. UO we have full loot rights and open world pvp and freedom in many other aspects. DAoC we have RvR with realm boosting relics and pvp dungeons. Eve Online for its freeform of being able to do anything you wish even scam other players out of their ISK.

It should be the more open MMO's that we should be looking at too compare TESO with not a themepark battleground gear grind fest like WoW.

Vangard and SWG (pre NGE) had some of the best crafting in any land based mmo, where the crafted items could match or even outshine dropped world loot if you had the right resources. This is what I would like to see in TESO, not some grind that you have to raid for endlessly and hope to get the drop like you do in other mmo's.

Eve Online has the best player driven market in any mmo, this is down to the fact that open world pvp keeps items and in game money flowing round in a circle. Item destruction means people will have to buy new items to replace those that are lost and so this creates a market void for people to fill. UO had the same kind of drive all though it was basic it is far better than the auction houses that WoW introduced to the genre.

The Secret World did away with the gear grind until the WoW players got involved and started to moan about lack of equipment, this destroyed the game for me because now people will rush through a dungeon missing all the lore locations just to kill the main bosses to get the shiny equipment. The game also did away with the "holy trinity" which was a realy good idea, problem was people are so blinkered by WoW they demanded it put back into the game and so now we have a group finder with the holy trinity listed in it to help the players who do not wish to think outside of the box.

To keep compairing new mmo's to WoW is just a very short sighted and blinkered view on the whole genre when other games have done things a lot better than WoW ever did.

I want to see TESO to be a mmo based on TES single player games, not some horrible WoW clone with gear grinding through endless raids. When you look at the basics of WoW thats all it is, an endless gear grind that numbs the brain into not thinking. Its created a generation of players that are lazzy. And so those other players who wish for something different and new have to put up with the constant moaning of these people who are looking at WoW 2 rather than a new IP.

COD is the same for FPS as well, never played the game never will. I realy see no point to the game, now I do play Dust 514 on occassion its in open beta but when its released it will have a real purpose and meaning behind it, as you can help effect the game world in which it is set. Its also the first of its kind on the PS3 as it will be the first mmo that has the capability to interact with PC players within the Eve Universe.
CCP are the maverick developers who create games that others say wont work. They do not listen to the general consesus of other big developers, and this is one reason I like their way of thinking. They break away from the normal (WoW) and try something new and innovitive to make a great game.

So stop looking at just GW2 and WoW as examples of how TESO should be, instead look at the whole genre and single player games of TES. Or are you all realy that blinkered all you can see are Panda's?

Ehurm,I havent seen ESO Being compared to wow for a while. Mostly when it got announced and we got the first info some people raged. But they didnt know much

You don't like WoW that's all well and good. But MILLIONS of other people do and it's had a tremendous impact on the gaming and specifically MMO community.
You know what irks me? When people make posts telling other people what they shouldn't do.

The gear treadmill is necessary and present in almost any MMO. In case you hadn't heard, TESO is a themepark MMO with a gear treadmill.

Are you kidding? The problem isnt that people are saying teso should be like wow. No one says that. The problem is that someone says "I think teso should have X because that worked great in eq1" and the response is "this isnt wow, that would svck". The people making the comparison are using wow as a godwin.

Who are you to say "WoW is a bad game"?

Most people loved and still love the game and WoW did more good things for mmos than any other game wether you like it or not.

Chances are youll have to accept playing with thousands of former wow players in TESO so stop assuming everybody hates the game.

Correction #1: Most people loved WoW and now have too much time and money invested in it to quit.

Correction #2: WoW didn't bring all that much new to the table, it simply took everything of past MMO's and put them into one popular game thus bringing these systems into the large scale public view and making them genre standards.

but then 'everyone' will be disappointed.
you don't write a whole new engine for server and for client with all that comes with it for a game that isn't aimed for the very top.
you don't publish the spin-off to one of the bestselling RPGs without planing to make it one of the bestselling MMOs.

(just my humble opinion)

I ....frankly am sick ...I mean sick of those who don't accept the vision of Matt F for this game.I really cannot stand to go to forum after forum with people experssing their "concerns"(which are really criticisms and attempts to influence dev decision makers on the direction they are taking the game).
I'm just going to have to play SKYRIM more and avoid the incessant expressions of "concern" a lot more.

i have spent about 250 hours in skyrim and i have only done about 2-3 of the main story missions. i never even finished that game cause of everything they have to do in it. ES is nothing like the super short fly through games companies tend to churn out now

Can we also stop comparing smart-phones to the iPhone? This thread pops up often in about every MMO forum other than WoW.
People dont stop doing it. Why? Cause its useful, everyone knows it, common language, common comparisons. Can you please
not try to have other people act in a way you like? That normally doesnt work on a forum...unless youre a mod or something and
then only cause you can ban

Why wouldn't people compare this to WoW? It's the biggest video game in the world, and it's the same (comparable) genre. People NOT comparing it to WoW would be more of a surprise.

Also, I don't see how SWTOR is WoW in anyway. From what I understand, SWTOR is heavily focused on the single player story and campaigns right? That's not very WoW.

We'll stop when we stop comparing fast food chains to McDonald's, sodas to Coca-cola, search engines to Google, MP3 players to iPods, FPS to CoD...

Its compared more to Dark Age of Camelot and perhaps Guild Wars 2 than any other MMO as far as I can see. It's not Blizzards fault for being successful, get over it.

actually, it's pretty obviously 2.

WoW ist still the Cashcow in the MMORPG World, so ESO will be compared to it, but nevermind Eso was also compared to many other MMO's. RIft, GW2(not an MMO)
Tera etc...

I think its not bad to compare MMO, we do it everywhere so why not in MMO's.

And I really wish people would quit saying stupid [censored] like this. People do not compare new MMOs to WoW because they want then to be like WoW, but rather because it is a reference that is most reliably understood. WoW has reached by far the largest number of players in the genre so it is by far the best way to get across your point when trying to explain the way you would like to see a mechanic work.

Just to get one thing straight, ESO certainly isn't WOW 2, this is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0TdsPVLna4

Sure ESO have elements from WOW as well WOW had elements from other MMO's before that when it was released. Such is the MMO industry these days. However, ESO also have elements from DAOC and I am sure from other good MMO's as well.

Mungo, it seems to me you want a unique and hardcoe MMO (full PvP loot is for hardcoe PvP niche games, and you will never see that in an AAA MMO like ESO). As much as I understand and agree with most of your points you need to understand this:

- ESO is a HUGE project and a LOT of $$$ has been invested.
- Those investors want the MAX return on that investment, hence they want the game to appeal to as many players as possible.
- WOW is the most successfull MMO ever, so that is what the investors in ANY MMO want to aim for.

On the background of this many MMO's turn out to be just bad WOW clones, BUT...
Luckilly for us (ES fans) ZOS has a huge and very experienced development team who understands both the MMO industry and the ES fan-base much better than the investors do. That is why they have developed a game that has the look and feel of ES, and far from the cartoonish WOW, but also have the themepark elements, gear grind etc. that will bring in the cassual MMO crowd and also appeal to the WOW fan-base that they naturally want to attract as much of as possible.

Having said that personally I see the dangers in applying WOW elements to ESO, but fully trust that this development team can get it right and give us a game that is very far from WOW 2 or a WOW-clone.

I hope to see alternatives to the themepark elements appealing to more old-school MMO players and the single-player ES fans alike. This is just my personal hope, but I really think that this development team can pull it off and create a game that greatly appeals to both the cassual gamers, the WOW players, the old-school MMO fans and to the ES fan-base alike