Originally Posted by Synapse
Relax everyone! No one is going to copy PS2, for the same reason no one copied Eve Online and everyone copied WoW.
The WoW model is about building content for your players and then leading them through it. Its fairly easy to code, well proven, everyone knows how it works and that it does fine, and it can be played casually. Its a broad market game.
Eve and PS2 are both in the realm of games where content comes from the playerbase interacting with itself. You're not building quests and hunting dungeons for them, at least you shouldnt be if you understand it. Its a harder sell to investors and frankly harder to do right.
Eve and PS2 are not a model for capturing the MMO market. Its a niche because you're playing to hardcore gamers who want to be closely interacting with your world. It's not a casual thing. That MEANS a smaller market, but also a more fanatic one.
Any marketing person can tell you this. You don't build something for your hardcore users and expect it to capture the broad market.
PS2 will sit in its niche and it will do well. It will stay there and make good money for a long time, I expect. It will never unseat casual MMOs and we shouldnt expect it to.
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A long time ago a company called SOE made a game called Everquest. It was really innovative and cool, so other companies tried to copy it. One of these companies, Blizzard, released a game called World of Warcraft which completely stole Everquest's thunder.
Also, PS2 is trying to be a more mainstream game than its predecessor. This is part of what is causing every other thread on this site to be complaints that some feature is being changed from how it worked in the original Planetside.
The sort of thing that this thread is concerned about has happened before, and it has especially happened to SOE before. I don't think anybody really needs to worry about it for at least the next year or two, but if PS2 is successful somebody is going to want to steal a share of the money.