Unless this hypothetical person has a friend who plays, there’s not much of a chance a game like Guild Wars 2 will catch their eye at Walmart, but if they recognize a franchise they like they’re significantly more likely to give it a try. Those people, however, can probably identify several super heroes and have seen at least some of the Star Wars movies. I know it’s hard to imagine, but there are people out there–gamers even–who have never played an MMORPG and know absolutely nothing about Guild Wars, EverQuest, or possibly even (gasp) World of Warcraft. Let be honest, MMOs are businesses, businesses need to market their products, and brand recognition is huge. While ultimately gameplay is what makes a game good or bad, I think a licensed IP can actually be a really good thing for a game. As someone who just got back into Lord of the Rings Online for the umpteenth time, I actually disagree with this rather strongly. It also opens the developers up to all sorts of criticism for “breaking lore” (don’t bring up the Rune-Keeper in LotRO global chat it’s still a huge sore spot in the community over seven years later). Their reasoning was the usual since the creators do not “own” the story, they are limited in what they can do with the lore. I saw a player proclaiming in Guild Wars 2 the other day that he or she would never play a game based on an unoriginal intellectual property.
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