I enjoy crossovers, so while I typed this in his blog’s comment window, I cut the text and pasted it over here (also because it’s pertinent to a few other things).

Answer to this.

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I’d accept your reply if it was accurate against my point, but it isn’t.

I’ve never represented that kind of critics that judge things based on personal aesthetics in spite of popular success. Instead I take into consideration popular success because I believe that popular success is ALWAYS motivated and proves a point.

If I say MEO is mediocre I don’t intend FOR ME, if I don’t specify that precisely. I NEVER judge things from my very own preference if not stated, especially when I write observations about the whole industry as in that case.

What I meant is: another LotR that isn’t just a bland WoW clone could have been easily MORE successful.

And: because MEO is a poor WoW clone, it won’t be successful.

Then you can argue that this is not going to be the case, that making it a WoW clone means making it MORE successful. I accept that point of view (while disagreeing), but I don’t accept if you say that I’m whining because they didn’t build a game for ME.

What I said is that MEO is another huge wasted potential. And for “potential” I NEVER, in any case, intend a kind of niche and selected audience. I never write with a niche audience in mind and I never mistake my personal preference for what everyone else must like as well. This is valid both for my opinions as for my design ideas. The great majority of things I write here are intended to be in the interest of the majority of people, hopefully, but not obligatorily, including me.

And I surely don’t believe that SWG wasn’t successful because NOT COMPLETELY a diku in space. That’s a wrong lesson that you and many others have learnt. Or better, a wrong assumption.