Age Of Conan Developer: WoW Is Losing Its Appeal

Age of Conan quest designer Joel Bylos believes people are getting tired of World of Warcraft.

While Bylos' claims are contradicted by the ridiculous profits still enjoyed by Blizzard thanks to their MMO, he cites a "feeling on the Internet" that people are now looking for something different from the genre.

Based on that sentiment, Bylos believes his game will succeed where so many other MMOs have failed. "I think one mistake a lot of people make is they design a game to be WoW and WoW was successful on its own two legs and that's what Conan is going to do," Bylos says.

While I can't say I agree with his assessment that World of Warcraft is losing its luster -- WoW could lose half of its population and still be the most successful MMO to date -- I wholeheartedly concur with his last point. Too many games try far too hard to beat Blizzard at their own game, yet almost no developers have the time or resources to compete on anything resembling an even-footing with them.

The only way to make a mark in the genre at this point is to create something new and inventive and hope players will respond to it. I'd love to see the Age of Conan developers create something drastically different yet compelling, but market forces have a way of forcing every MMO into being a WoW clone despite the best intentions of developers.

Age of Conan dev: Gamers tired of Warcraft [Videogamer.com]