It seems this has been an odd year for the genre in general - it was initially looking like 2007 would be the year when a fairly large number of AAA titles were going to be launched, possibly earmarking the start of a 'third generation' for MMOs.
Instead, this year has played out as more of a cautionary tale for both developers and investors alike. Most of the bigger titles have had their release dates pushed back until '08, and at this point I won't be entirely surprised if at least one of them is held back until '09.
I think your comments about 'polish' are pretty spot on. At this point the term, at least for myself, has more or less lost its meaning. Then again that's somewhat symptomatic of how loosely the term was thrown around when fans of WoW talk about their favorite game, and how 'highly polished' Blizzard's releases are. It's another collective consciousness phrase very similar to 'I was burned by SoE once, I'll never trust them again'. It strikes me as just being one of those fanboi terms that people use without even stopping to truly consider what it means.
I must have been playing on the 'special' WoW server at launch - you know, the one that had all of the game breaking bugs and class imbalance issues, useless talent trees and constant server crashes long before they'd maxed out their initial server structure. The one that had broken quests and would leave my character stuck in the 'loot position' for 10 minutes at a time.
I would describe that particular release as 'content rich', which I think is what more games need to aim for at launch. When PR people talk about a title needing 'more polish time' I tend to tune out. IIRC that was the phase G and H was in prior to their announcement that the game was on indefinite hold.
Oh, and the other thing that comes to mind when I hear the term is a line from Steven King's Christine: "You can't polish a turd."
Blog - Delays, Delays, and a...Release?!
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