A lot of people lately have been comparing AO to a lot of different games, it usually falls under three categories:
- Trolls. I ignore those because it doesn’t really matter what you say/do.
- People who want to make AO into a clone of X, because X is dead. I engage with those, showing that maybe the reason why X is dead is because they were not perfect games, or maybe they were not a good fit for the time.
- People who want this game to succeed, so they use whatever game they had an awesome time with as an example to try an improve this game. This is where I fit in. I had an awesome time with UO. I know it’s strengths and weaknesses. I want AO to learn from UO’s mistakes and use the good stuff they had and don’t try and repeat some of the mistakes UO did.
The truth is the game steals ideas from so many different games that at this point you can’t compare it to anything.
Some examples:
- The combat system is borrowing elements from many MOBA games, but the macro design of PvP is taken from UO.
- The economy is borrowing ideas from EVE Online, Archeage, WoW and Black Desert Online.
- The GvG system is a mini game that is a copy and paste of Domination from countless games, but mostly resembles CoD’s Domination.
- PvE is unique in the game, but is also probably seen as the most boring and mundane content in the game currently. Most people wish they’d find a game to copy PvE content from.
The game isn’t a copy of another game, and just because it worked there probably doesn’t mean it will work here.