Unfortunately when it comes to the gaming market to, i've noticed that many people will play a game entirely out of spite of a games competition. I have friends who felt at certain points 'betrayed' by blizzard and turned to a new MMO in order to exact their revenge. The problem is most of them disliked the gameplay of AoC compared to WoW, but once again many people were expecting AoC to translate into WoW with more blood/pvp!

Personally i Agree that different is going to be the key but I don't believe different will work to its max potential for some time, as many people are now very comfortable with WoW. It has dominated the market with its game, and like it or not, people have become engulfed in its gameplay to the point of nearly having an automatic distaste for any games not designed like it.

If there is one thing i can note about blizzard, its that they make their games in a fashion where you will distaste any other game of the genre if its not like the blizzard version. Starcraft/warcraft did that to me with strategy games and Diablo II made me hate all other rpg's that didn't have its fast pace/control.

They definetly are good at what they do, i do hope for some competition to role in sometime soon, but i can't see it lasting unfortunately.