"the state WoW is in"
"story-driven MMO is so different"
"WoW is just dry and bland and this and that"
Really, people, I know WoW isn't popular-- personally, I'm a devotee of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and have been for over a year now, coming off 4 years of WoW-- only in word-of-mouth because of this, that, and the other thing. But honestly, quit deluding yourselves. Nothing has debunked WoW yet, and given the state of the majority of gamers nowadays, I highly doubt something that forces wordiness down players' throats (as opposed to WoW's click-click-done style) is going to appeal to everyone but, as has been repeated numerous times, a niche.
WoW's not a good game when compared to others. I won't deny this. What it is, however, is accessible and popular. Friends play it. Friends of friends play it. Getting into the swing of WoW is so easy, and nowadays, you can tank most anything but a raid half-asleep if you've been playing more than four months. With a friend who's in-game-savvy, twenty minutes of tweaking can mod your interface to calculate and crunch everything for you, further reducing the technical time needed, allowing you more hack-and-slash action to keep the wordy-woes away from you. Why do RPGs fall flat? People can't stand sitting there and listening to that 'boring drivel.' They need something that keeps moving, moving, moving, in gameplay and in story. Most people don't even care about a story, and in a player-based environment, honestly, only the devoted fans will care. And I'm sure everyone here is a devoted fan of one failing niche or another... be that DDO or WAR or maybe they clung to Galaxies. I don't know.
I'm not trying to be a jerk. Honestly, I hate WoW and I'd love to see it topple, because it might encourage other MMOs to be a little more conservative and offer, say, 14-day trials right on launch so players don't need to subscribe and find out they've blown 80$. They don't have that leisure, because 14 days is enough for 70% of a prospective population to decide WoW was better, leaving the last 30% to disperse this way and that. It almost happened to WAR; I was around when they went from some 20 servers or within that range to FOUR. Things do not kill WoW. No, the MMO community is a forest. Everything is frolicking animals. There are a few grizzlies in there, too, that eat the animals.
And then WoW is the giant robot-bear that has laser-eyes, jetpacks and rocket fists, a flamethrower in its mouth and a railgun somewhere in the pelvic region. Things do not kill WoW; WoW simply laughs as everything scatters before it, because it is so hard-cemented into the MMO community that not only have they already roped a rough 40% as devoted players, they've got another 40% on such tight leashes that even if they go to other MMOs, they will still subscribe to WoW.
You wanna refute me, then please, do so with some numbers and facts. WoW's successful, and moreso than others, or it wouldn't be on Expansion #3 with the highest grossing subscriber count out of all MMOs, probably topping on the charts with PSN and XBL to make things worse, and that's completely self-evident. A new MMO has a chance at being successful. It does not have a chance to 'kill WoW,' and when WoW remains as steadfast as ever in the face of franchises that existed ~25 years prior to it, I hope you'll remember that being a fanboy of any one franchise does not mean that an MMO heralding its name will topple WoW.
Most WoW players don't even know WoW lore, to be frank. They just play the game. If 'story-driven' is a strong argument FOR the SW MMO, you might want to consider the gaming community of today. If the story isn't brief and point-form, it's probably going to get glossed over.