the point. The point is Zenimax could have tried something, anything differently, and it would probably have been received more positively. This insistence on using established MMO tropes rather than attempting genuine innovation in the genre has long amazed me. It's as though publishers and developers looked at World of Warcraft's subscriber base and thought, wow, that game had 10-15 million players, we should get in on that action. Um, no. How about thinking of a way to get the hundreds of millions of people who don't play MMO titles interested in the genre? I'm no game designer, so it's not like I'm sitting on the perfect answer, but surely there are hints to be found in the way non-MMO games are structured that could point them in the right direction? Games like Red Dead Redemption, ArmA and even Mount & Blade can show, in different ways, how large worlds and/or large numbers of players can co-exist on the same server and provide fresh gaming experiences that don't simply revolve around clicking until you collect eight goat's tails. Upcoming games like Tera and Guild Wars II are even better reference points: both MMOs in that they're designed to be played by large groups of people, but both offering radical departures from Everquest and WoW's tired old formula, most appealing of which is Tera's use of actual combat, which is enough to get me excited despite my track-record with the genre. People walking away in large numbers from a Star Wars