It's another fantasy mmo, douchebag

I apparently need to make new gaming friends, because my current ones are short-sighted, xenophobic addicts who are afraid of change, who don't want to accept new ideas, and really, aren't willing to try something new. I can't hold a conversation with people who can't think past their own current obsessions.

But anyways, my biggest annoyance in the video game industry is the lack of a sci-fi mmorpg. Anarchy Online was the closest thing, and well, let's face it, it wasn't that impressive. I loved it though, I loved the different kinds of guns. I loved having different types of ammo.

Games Workshop has a franchise called Warhammer, which is basically a table top strategy game and hobby. It's a fantasy world where you take armies of miniatures that you have painted and battle against someone elses army of painted miniature army. Think of it like a giant game of chess, with alot more specific rules for different situations.

GW spawned a seperate franchise called Warhammer 40k, where the rules were similar, except the world was 40,000 years in the future. It was a sci-fi version of the same game.

So all that backstory needed to be said because GW along with Mythic Entertainment has decided to make an MMORPG based on Warhammer. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR). Unfortunately, if you do some research, the game sounds too similar to Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Pick a race? Join a faction? Gain power and gear and then go fight the other side to control the realm? Great unique pvp system and areas where both the pvp and pve actions will affect the overall status of the factions?

Why did they bother making an MMORPG that would be compared to world of warcraft, a game that has 7 million subscribers, all of which are willing to trash WAR and never give it a chance for WOW.

It could have been Warhammer 40k. I'm sure GW would say that the following for 40k is smaller than the follow for fantasy, but in all seriousness, they're both probably immensely small compared to the sheer amount of players WoW has.

At least with a sci-fi mmorpg player vs player type game, you could attract the sci-fi players--players like me who have longed for a sci-fi mmorpg alternative.

One of my friend's brought up that a sci-fi game would involve too much ranged combat. The reason why fantasy games do so well is the face to face, sword to sword fighting that goes on. But really, there are already fantasy games that exist that have immense ranged combat. Guild Wars for example. Only 2 of the 8 classes available right now fight in melee range. With the Nightfall expansion due out in a month, that will be raised to 3 classes out of 10. Before Guild Wars had any expansions, the only melee class was a warrior, so the ratio was 1 and of 6.

Success with only ranged combat fighting? Two expansions later, Guild Wars is surviving, and it's pvp oriented, no less.

So besides the fact that an mmorpg with mostly ranged combat would succeed, you have to take into account that a sci-fi game isn't all ranged combat. Sure, high tech guns are appealing, but there's always power armor and power weapons, weapons that are devestatingly accurate at close range, and do immense amounts of precise damage.

It existed in Anarchy Online, and it would also exist in a game like 40k.

Unfortunately, Mythic Entertainment is going to jump on the band wagon of player vs player based MMORPGs instead of being a trend setter and creating a sci-fi version of what would be the same kind of game, same kind of structure, and same kind of rules, except the added perk of being a unique kind of game: a Science Fiction MMORPG.

I guess i'll just have to wait for World of Starcraft.