Quote Originally Posted by fusional View Post
actually, the first thing any marketing researcher worth their salt learns is that the things any particular demographic CLAIM they want are not always the things they ACTUALLY want. ie: no matter how much people CLAIM they don't like the status quo, WoW dominates. and no matter how much people CLAIM they don't like the status quo, titles doing things differently (tera's combat, xi's open world NMs, etc) either flop outright or only appeal to a very tiny segment.

you can't just take what the layman says at face value, because they often don't actually know what they want. they only think they do... until they're presented with new/different choices.

in marketing, to get the answers and data you seek... you must first ask the right questions. and since all we have so far is a mountain of evidence contradicting everything people SAY they want... it's clear the right questions aren't being asked.

until that happens, companies just won't be able to provide the solutions/products people don't even realize they're looking for... and the cycle continues.

(and as a side note, i should mention most of those forums you listed are filled with the kind of gamer that CLAIMED guild wars 2 will be the savior of MMOs, a true revolutionary, and that every other MMO should follow in its footsteps and be f2p and the like........................... only to stop playing gw2 after a couple weeks. hard to take that terribly seriously as reliable data)

Regardless, there is still a unanimous voice claiming to want something better than WoW. Even if the people claiming to want this don't know what they want, they certainly still claim it all the same. Copying WoW will result in people being inclined to say "nothing new to see here, move on people" before even trying it in that case.

There are a lot of nuances involved in the failure of MMOs, and the success of WoW, and copying WoW will not ensure victory. Any market researcher worth their salt should knows that. There are enough recently deceased MMOs which learnt that lesson the hard way.

TERA didn't lose subscribers because of its combat, either. Nor did FFXI lose subscribers because of open-world content. It doesn't take a lot to realise there were flaws with TERA that drove people away from that game despite its combat-system which alot of people praised and enjoyed.

Looking at why certain games failed despite their achievements (rather than because of their achievements) would provide a better recipe for success than taking the simplistic approach that WoW has the most subscribers, therefore we must copy everything WoW does even its flaws.