Originality is an mmo killer

Have you ever wondered why some of the most original MMO's have a criticly low playerbase and are on the brink of shutting down? I think the first thought that comes to your mind is, how can a game be original when there are so many of them? If someone would ask me if i know any games in the time of "the three kingdoms" i could tell that person at least five games without even thinking. The same thing would happen with games in the "time" of the "silk road" and "sci-fi" games.

But how many games do you know with a persistent game world and that are not RPG's? Most people would find that quite challenging. As many of you know the now shut down game APB (All Points Bulletin) developed by Realtime Worlds.
It would have been a realy hit, if it lasted more then three months. This open-world game inspired by GTA (Grand Theft Auto) and Crackdown was a realy great idea. Unfortunately on the 16th of September 2010, Realtime Worlds announced that the servers will be shut down. Rumour has it that Epic (the makers of Gears of War, and Unreal) are going to buy APB Good luck to them, lets hope they do a better job with the game (being a big company and all).

Another game title almost went throught the same thing. Came up with a great idea to make a game based on a very popular role playing game. But no one played it, so the company that released it, "Turbine" had two options, close it down or make it free to play.
And they did the right thing, made it F2P. Can you guess what it is? Thats right, Dungeons & Dragons Online, ever since it went free to play, the playerbase almost litteraly exploaded, and Turbine can be proud for keeping that number.

I think everyone that played more then one MMO knows the term "Clone". Every-now and then, a new online game releases and the players often express they'r thoughts about it, the first thing we hear about a game is, if its a clone or not. If you played World of Warcraft (WoW for short) and Runes of Magic (RoM for short, even the acronyms are made in the same way) u can almost instantly tell that RoM is a WoW clone, the art style looks like WoW, and some other small stuff. So basicly a clone is a "different" version if an already popular game. But not every game copy's World of Warcraft, some of you may know a game called "Maple Story", that game is fairly old and well aged might i add, thats the reason why other games thend to copy it like the game "Ghost Online".

Every little feature makes a game unique and different in its own way. But what about the big changes? When we install a game, we just log-in, make a character, get into the game world. Then click on an enemy, and grind the key's 123456789-=\.Thats just about it. But have you ever wanted to play a game that actualy takes some skill? Where gear isint everything? Then try and find an MMORTS (Real Time Strategy), the only one i know thats actualy free and has a good playerbase is BattleForge by, EA (yes, Electronic Arts).

In conclusion, i think that there are alot of original and fun games out there, but they need to have a realy well
known publisher, or be a real jaw-dropper to hold up gainst all those games that are made in a standard "mould".