I found it interesting browsing my feeds this morning just how much bloggers repeat themselves.
Keen was (and the entire comments thread besides Cuppy) slavishly fanboying over WAR, despite the game not being out. Again. And yes I know betas, but saying 'WAR is not WoW' leads directly to the quote about Age of Conan in Zero Punctuation because yes it is, thats the way games markets work.
Tobold was discussing the merits of grouping, or lack thereof, in WoW. The specific thing that caught my eye was the numbers for the grouping exp boost, which I'm sure he's posted before in a similar context.
Shamus regularly posts about DRM being the devil and wrong, which is correct, but preaching to the choir a bit by now.
Maybe I'm generalising a bit, but it was still funny to see Keen posting an image from Penny Arcade about beating a dead horse, while doing exactly the same himself.
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Keep at it long enough, and it can become an unavoidable problem. Eventually, all your relevant thoughts on the subject will have been documented; I guess a blog can become 'finished', in a way.
Mind you, I'm not sure its fair to expect every reader to work backwards through a year or more of posting, just to bring themselves up to speed on an author's viewpoints, so a little repetition doesn't hurt now and then. :)
I try to avoid it by just sticking to 'What I Did Last Night' type posts lately, which at least have the benefit of being new *for me*, even though many other players will have gone through roughly the same experience themselves, on their own blogs some months ago.
The alternative is linkposts; editorial on someone else's news - that can be kept fresh for a while, certainly.
The 'MMO Topics' stuff can get used up quite rapidly though, and can cause repeats if you forget what the hell you were going on about six months back :)
I was open about and knowingly beating a dead horse - that's why the picture was posted saying "I love beating a dead horse". However, that does not change the fact that when people post misinformation saying something is one way when I know it to be another I feel duty bound to set the record straight.
This goes well beyond the intrinsic similarities that you will find in every single game. This can go on forever and be said about EVERY game. All shooters are not wolfenstein or counter strike clones. All puzzle adventure games are not mixed up mother goose clones. People are being entirely too closed minded. But where does THAT get us? Let's look at the games individually.
WAR is not a WoW clone just as WoW is not an EQ clone. Having a deeper understanding of mmorpgs beyond WoW helps this knowledge but some people, even with a decade of experience, fail to grasp the tenets of this industry.
Without spilling over into the huge argument that your comment thread has unfortunately turned into Keen, my personal opinion is that yes, WAR is WoW repackaged. It is however looking to be quite a shiny and well-crafted new package.
I understand your point that you can say the same of all games, but challenge that the comparison shouldn't be Wolfenstein vs Counterstrike, but Team Fortress 2 vs Counterstrike. While both are very different, they are at heart team-based fps games to complete objectives. Each of them has their merits, and TF2 would not be the game it is today without CS.
The difference is, people are more likely to play both CS and TF2 that two MMOs, and, like consoles, once you pick one, there's a niggling feeling to justify your choice. I would at one point be forcefully claiming that WAR is a crappy knock-off of WoW, but also thought Vanguard would be the WoW killer, and that I would ship off to there when it released. As it is now, WoW is the ten ton gorilla, WAR probably isn't for me, and, as my quote in your comments thread implies, I think everyone wants a bite of WoW's shit ton of money, and as they're the only ones who have managed it, they must be doing something right, so every new MMO copies quite a bit from it. Of course, without WoW, most new MMOs would probably be crap.
TL;DR version: WAR probably will seem like WoW repackaged, but if it wasn't it'd be crap.
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