MMO Launches: Why The Heavy Criticism?

Massively Multiplayer Online Games, To those of us who play them we often hear through word of mouth that a new game is coming out. We watch the trailers and we start following the developers around like loyal followers (or lost puppies, take your pick). Jokes and criticism aside, The main focus of this is when the game goes into launch.

For those who have participated in MMO Game Launches, you know for the first week or 2 You will have to sit and wait for server queues (Some are an outrageous amount of times. Going from 1 hour and beyond.). Ok, So once you finally fight for a spot to get in, you can now try to level up and progress through the laggy servers to establish your presence online. Sometimes you happen to read chat and it ALMOST never fails to read a comparison to "World of Warcraft". I don't know about you, but it surely has me slightly irritated that every MMO has to be compared to that game as some sort of measuring bar.

For any veteran to MMOs you may come in contact with, they will tell you at one point and time where when WoW launched, that they had to hear it being compared to Everquest or Ultima Online at the time. Now that WoW established itself over the years it's been out games are being compared to it. Not to say that it is a bad thing, but they had TIME to update their game in order to cater from the casual to hardcore base. This is what I never seemed to understand, on how people can criticize a game so heavily That hasn't even been out of the public for a month.

What even has me wondering more, is on what bases are they establishing their review on? When all people see is "Oh they took this and that from WoW", "WoW is better because of this and that" etc. Lets get one thing clear, Alot of the things that are in WoW are siphoned from other MMOs. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the revamped the game again down the line to have nothing but Voice overs like SWTOR has. This more or less has everything to do with the whole Game Devs catering to the Player base, in which case isn't always the best idea.

My opinion on Game Launch Reviews:

Stop comparing a game that hasn't even been out for a month, to a game that took 7 or so years to Develop. To many, World of Warcraft is a wonderful game, and I won't take that away from them. Obviously if they still have over a million subscribers, then I have to say they are still doing something right. But please.. bare in mind, that WoW (like any other Game launch) has to have time to improve with their patches and updates. Don't be so quick to write it off as a "WoW Clone" when WoW clones ideas from these very same games.