Moving down the elitist MMO ranking chart, we find ourselves in the nebulous category of tier two games, also known as “MMOs that are not WoW.” As expected, WoW players still consider themselves superior to gamers who waste their time and money on these titles. Here’s the scoop on the higher profile titles that WoW plays turn their noses at.
Above: Part two of our MMO hierarchy.Click hereto enlarge
EVE: Online
EVE: Online is just one of the many MMOs that WoW players look down on. There’s a reason why EVE’s economy system is the thesis topic for just about every economics major looking for a way to get out of doing any real research. EVE is all numbers. Profits and losses get it on with supply and demand as you trade your way up from the pilot of a junker vessel to the pilot of a larger junker vessel with more storage space to sell more garbage for more profits.
Lord of the Rings: Online
Continuing down the queue of MMO communities that WoW players feel superior to, we reach Lord of the Rings: Online. An MMO set in Middle-earth with characters, creatures and locations from Tolkien’s epic tales should be awesome. Unfortunately, the glut of generic high fantasy MMOs makes LoTRO anything but fantastic to the WoW player.
The game’s rich lore and the thrill of forming your own fellowship are lost on WoW players who have trained themselves to click through any boxes with text as quickly as possible lest they waste valuable farming time reading.
There’s even an animated emote programmed into WoW that lets you poke fun of the Lord of the Rings films. Just type ‘/joke’ for an automated jab at the entire series. You can watch this fan-made machinima version of Blizzard’s in-game parody below.
Below: See WoW make fun of Lord of the Rings for yourself courtesy of Vanrir and the Smolderthorn guild
EverQuest
No. We’re not talking about EverQuest 2. We’re talking about the original EverQuest. To the WoW player, the idea of playing EQ - let alone paying to play it - is difficult to handle. As terrible as WoW looks, it’s still way more impressive than the bland landscapes EverQuest has to offer. EverQuest is pushing on its ninth year in service and it totally shows.
Above: EverQuest. Yes. It still exists. Check out those textures!
Guild Wars
Guild Wars may look a bazillion times better than WoW, but WoW fans would argue that ArenaNet’s MMO isn’t an MMO at all. What kind of MMO tosses you into an instanced area every time you leave a town? Where’s the vast persistent world MMOs are known for? Where’s the option to waste hours on end grinding towards a ridiculously high level cap? Where’s the ability to jump? Without these features, WoW players casually brush off games like Guild Wars as faux MMO that’s more like a Diablo 2.5 dungeon crawler than anything else.
Above: To WoW players, Guild Wars seems less like an MMO and more like an instanced dungeon crawler where everyone dances naked
Second Life
In the eyes of a WoW fan, Second Life and its virtual citizens sit at the bottom of the tier two MMO sphere. A deadly combination of people who wished they were cats, deluded marketing nuts who think Second Life is their portal to the Web 2.0 craze and forlorn gamers in search of some cyber-love makes Second Life’s community one of the most deranged and frightening groups in the online space. Staunch defenders of SL insist that everyone who’s not backing the Linden just “doesn’t get it.” Maybe WoW players don’t get it. But we have the feeling that they don’t care either.
