GW2, lacking subscription and containing fluent questing makes the game very casual friendly. Many casual players have quit the subscription-based MMOs because they could not keep up with the grind, nor play enough to warrant their sub.

Me, I am pretty tired with the grind, and if I enjoy GW2 so much I may not play (much) MoP because I know MoP will be another grindfest to keep people busy in the game. That is how good subscription-based games work.

Keep in mind patch 4.3 was much more casual-friendly than Cataclysm 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2. This patch was released 3 weeks before SWTOR was released.

I don’t expect game companies to release their games within a short time (2-3 weeks) of each other and I don’t expect MoP to be ready in a few weeks so I expect MoP to come in october. As for the state of MoP we’re currently raid testing, final balancing, and the 5.0.1 patch containing the MoP changes in Cata as well as the pre-event will soon be tested on PTR.

Given the Maya prophecy I’d find it ironic if Blizzard would release MoP on that date and end the Cataclysm there. I always found the name of expansion quite ironic in that light.

The fact Blizzard are taking a huge risk in releasing as late as October tells me that they’re either not worried about the competition at all, which would be arrogant, or the bean counters just don’t care about their players. We were promised that the Icecrown dearth of content would never happen again, yet here we are suffering the same raid starvation.

Only, it’s worse thanks to the smaller number of individual bosses and the fact that Dragon Soul is utter crap.

And I honestly don’t think that WoW has much competition from GW2. I’ll probably just pick up both and spend a month or two with both of the games.

This is a situation that may not concern hardcore MMO players, but it should. MMOs are a niche market –a niche within a niche, really– and if MMOs are going to grow and get more people into the fold, they need to expand their reach.

I know a lot of gamers like to laugh at LOTRO but it seems it is still some kind of threat if one of the biggest new games of the year is trying to pee on its parade.

The audience isn’t growing for any of these games. It may have reached the limit, which is why everyone is fighting for the same group of eyeballs. Players only have so much free time to devote to games even free ones. And since free games depend on players buying little fancies, it is imperative that they have a dedicated fan base. Which goes back to LOTRO is direct competition to GW2.