If WoW was released today (without BC and WotLK), it would crash. It would be considered technologically inferior, too “flat”, no lore, and basically only playable because of the previous reasons listed.

But as I said – people forget fast.

IMO the only MMO games released that deserve the “polished” label is LOTR and WAR. They only suffered minor bugs and inconveniences.

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I just returned to EQ2 now after brief flirts with WAR, AoC, Tabula Rasa and WoW.

And I have to say that EQ2 is the deepest, most involving, most rewarding and challening MMO of them all.

I do enjoy WoW in its current state, but to return to the original topic of the article:

Yes, if both games were released now, there’d be a ton more players on the EQ side of things compared to the current situation.

Whether this be SOE’s fault or not, I think they should try and find funding for a large marketing campaign, because if people knew how good the game currently is, they’d play it (also hardware has caught up ).

My 2 c’s

Just because it has become a bad habit to publish unfinished games in the software sector, it doesn’t mean the customer doesn’t realize it and reacts accordingling. And recognizes finished products and buys them if there is no good alternative, disregarding a vague possibility of a better quality of some other game that might come or not after a dozen patches.

“Not polished” from SOE is just an euphemism for something half-finished that is not working yet. As you said, SOE just shouldn’t have tried to sell it in 2004, but still seems to think common customers are stupid enough to buy something like that if they just call it “not polished”.

However, the second problem is that “do know wrong” belief where blizzard is concerned. I hold that the vast majority of the gaming media where defacto Blizzard fanbois – players of Diablo and Warcraft – these are the people behind the opinions which helped WoW and hurt EQ2.