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Um because ... most of the people are reading this column because they don't play Wow any more or are looking for a decent alternative .....?

And what percentage of WoW's massive player base have brought or tried to buy the thing. A few thousand is it out of how many milions?

Surely you're writing a bit of a 'pot of controversy being stirred' piece yourself arnt you :)

I totally agree with you and I'll be happy to be wrong of course and will buy at least a sub if I am so as punishment :)

But given the way they slipped those extra quests into Dragon Age as DLC they may well give it a go. Sigh.

And DA wasn't that great anyway, a bit better than average at best, but this is not the place for that one :)

Ha ha, MT AND a sub... Another sensible recipe for an outstanding long term success...

I hope it just turns out to be a blizzard style pet store though, discreetly shoved away where no one will give a monkeys behind, or better still a pay by the hour kind of thing, why does no one ever do anything like that in the west anyway? Or would that be too sensible

My bet is modules like the DLC system in Dragon Age, but who knows what madness comes next

The Chinese government like to 'discourage' people from spending too much time online, anyone whose played AION will notice the hourly reminders (Yes, I know AION is Korean but it's in for the Chinese benefit as well) You're asking for trouble there when you open up monthly billing for unlimited usage. You get scrutinised a little heavier that way, plus you can screw people out of more cash which is nice :))

Plus there are other reasons, one of which is that kids don't really get handed out pocket money in the same way in the west, and in Asian countries you really are expected to be spending many hours after school each day at 'voluntary' revision classes. Cultural factors are always a tricky one.

Lets keep calm here, MT still isn't that magic bullet for some of these quality products that are out at the moment ;)

Skirmishes are fun the first few times round, but after that (for me personally) they were the most vile form of grind I've ever come across, and I really love LOTRO for PvE as well, big big fan overall.

The thing about grind is that it should feel as though you can step in and out at any moment otherwise it's just feels like a chore, and these things start to feel like they go on for hours after a few repetitions.

I'm with Wisdomandlore on this one, hurry up and get back to the big beautiful open world that makes (some) players fall in love with the game, I know I did. Turbine's starting to feel as though they are loosing the way now.

Nope, despite the current economic decline of western civilization, the war on civil liberties, even peak oil and climate change, nothing will stop people throwing money at wow clones of an ever decreasing quality. YAY

Only now you have to mess around with the payment model in order to make your game look really succesful but its a small price to pay I guess

Well ... Yes. It's one of the arguments against the things, for every Turbine DDO and its sensible item shop you're going to get a hundred Cryptic's, and it only takes one change high enough up the food chain (for whatever reason) and you could see the same thing happening in any game from a Turbine one to Blizzard.

You're always going to pay if you want a full experience so better to pay a little upfront then be expected to pay a lot more later on to cover for those who can't be bothered.

Then you get yourself over to AoC and ramp those settings way up. The game is beautiful if you have the rig to make it so, but you really do need some processing power to max it out.

If you find certain quiet spots in the desert zones with no mobs and pan around it's the most realistic looking MMO I've ever seen anyway, more so than even LOTRO.

Always thought we could do with a 'realistic' MMO, historical based with more armoured classes and archers, and no magic users or elves, or fantasy to spoil it. Maybe a Crusades MMO or something, but that might prove a bit too controversial sadly.

I'm looking for a good 'all rounder' myself. I can see the virtues in lots of games and can name quiet a few that are nearly it, but always seem to come up short on closer inspection.

For me personally LOTRO was nearly there, but as a fan of pvp (for fun) endgame play rather than blame raids it loses terribly. AoC was nearly there, but the instanced feel and bizarrely bad class balances killed it. None of the others came close for me; EVE though: much respect to those who can play it, a brilliant class of it's own, but not for me most nights after a long day.

Having played a fair few you know what I'm really looking forward too, and it sickens me to say it: Cataclysm. I'm going to do it I think I'm going to 'Go back to WoW' where nothing was great but everything was fun, had just enough depth (barely) could log in for an evenings raid or half an hours PvP Hell I could just log an alt and grind some mats. It was all there and I think once they over hall the graphics, so will I be.

Tragic huh :)

Hmm, his comments are fine if you ignore the bad grammar - not everyone has English as a first language maybe?

His arguments seem to be the generic anti F2P ones, holding up the biggest example of the subs model as his case point. A certain amount of "i told you so" may not be pretty but unavoidable here from the F2P sceptics.

At least be honest why you're picking on the guy/kid/whatever here, rather than pretending he doesn't have a point, however badly put. At least the others are honest about it.