To an outsider it might seem like World of Warcraft have succeeded in being a game that never ends. Two years after release people are still playing it, a lot of them people who didn't spend all their time playing other mmorpgs before it. But with the recent expansion I think that a lot of people in the game realized the opposite - that this is not a game to play forever. We could finally all see that it doesn't matter how much content is added, it's still the same game and will probably stay that way. There are a lot of people who are starting to feel done with WoW and that are looking for a worthy successor. A WoW-killer.

We are just days away from the release of Lord of the Rings Online in the US. Sadly, after playing the a bit on the beta I don't think this is where WoW is going to meet it's death. Not that there isn't any interesting new stuff in LotRO. The monster play where you set out in monster form to hunt down players seems promising for example. But it doesn't have that ability to instantly capture you that WoW had. I'm talking about that special power that had you start up the game - blink - and then realize that it was 17 hours later and you probably should eat and sleep in life as well, but you didn't really want to. Then there are those small unpolished details in LotRO that hurts the oh-so-important first impression. Like the elves. These are the creatures that Tolkien described as being so graceful that they are able to walk on a gravel path without making any sound. I made an elf character in LotRO and she runs like a bandy-legged kangaroo. The proportions of her body also feels wrong somehow. Seems like we wont see WoW's murderer emerge until Warhammer Online or maybeAge of Conan.

To make a truly endless games I think some new ideas are needed - or at least a better use of old ones. For example: a story line that is constantly progressing and that every player in the game can feel that they are really taking part of. The tricky part is then of course to make thousands of players all feel important to the story at the same time. Another way to make the game never ending could be to let players contribute to the content to a high extent. Then there would surely be so much ever-changing content in the world that you could never see it all. The risk with this is to end up with something like Second Life where there are lots of stuff but all of it is ugly and there is no uniformity to the world. Something would have to be done to prevent that from happening.

All in all I'm not so sure it really would be healthy for me if the game that never ends actually is created someday, but I can't help but hoping for it anyway.