There is also no auto attack. You have to attack every attack, even your 'attack' attacks. Which, personally, I like. All of its builder/finisher based also.
There are a lot of reasons why not having an auto-attack is really, REALLY awful in these games but most of them involve completing content at higher levels where stat juggling for a 5% increased output actually matters, not that anybody here would ever advise playing an MMO endgame.
I want to play Everquest 2. It's F2P now and is basically WoW's asperger twin!
Yeah, I feel like the 'we don't have an auto attack feature!' is their way of trying to seperate themselves from WoW without realizing the long-term consequences that decision will have on gameplay balance and endgame stability.
I'd go with "way more sensitive to latency and other performance issues even with a decent command queueing system" over that complaint, but yeah. I also don't think the genre is particularly suited to button mashers. A great example of why is actually Dragon Age II on consoles.
"I'm sorry, we are only accepting applicants with static IP cable connections or FiOS" would be a pretty hilarious reason to get an app denied from a raid guild.
But considering the reasons Age of Conan (or, if you prefer, City of Heroes) never got a stable endgame, both statements are true as to why it's a bad idea. It's hard to develop content and balance classes around constant nonstop ability use. What you're going to end up with is some combinations and classes that feel really, really weak in the endgame and balancing them will become an ever more complex issue, esp. when you get player skill and latency involved.
There's a reason we never saw any raids after Hamidon in CoX. It was basically impossible for the developers to create a balanced class spread and if you're literally telling a portion of the players they can't raid because they chose to pick a class with more passive damage boosts and fewer active abilities or not enough energy regeneration or whatever the fuck you're just asking for trouble.
Also, standing there doing nothing at all and getting hit because you're out of resources and cooldowns is pretty horseshit from a funfactor perspective.
Since I've decided that EA is dedicated to making business decisions I disagree with, could someone please explain why "hotkey MMO" is a worse descriptor than "WoW Clone" for Old Republic?
For your next feat, I'd like you to explain why "First Person Shooter" is a worse descriptor than "Doom Clone" for Half-Life.
First Person Shooter was a good descripter for half-life rather than doom clone for the following reasons that differentiated it massively from the doom clones on the market:
1. It had uniquely different gameplay and focus
2. It was not on the Doom Engine, which immediately put it above 3/4s of the FPSes on the market at the time
3. It was actually worth fucking playing and had lasting long term appeal
4. It was not trying to copy the success of Doom.
Some of the above may apply to TOR, but don't expect people to call it anything but a WoW clone until it proves to actually be successful and substantially different from WoW. EA literally trying to copy WoW's success and stating that that was their goal (like they did with Warhammer Online) has not helped this image at all.
