One of these things is not like the other

In fact, they could hardly be more different.

Two huger-than-huge MMOs are creeping towards their rabidly awaited releases and they're starting to get some time in the German sun at Gamescom. We've all been tripping over our own tongues in rushing to devour any tidbit from either, and these two videos are the best look at gameplay yet. Both feature co-operative combat against a boss-level PvE NPC and comparing the two is...revealing.

And then:

I grew up on Star Wars and I consider BioWare one of the best developers in the galaxy, but the video seems to confirm what I've heard for a few months. The Old Republic looks and plays very generic. The tank and melee engage the front line, healer at range and support DPS stationary in the back attacking other targets who are plinking them in the face, and all of it is pretty stationary until the melee DPS dies and it all goes to crap. Most disappointing is that the fight appears to lack any sense of dynamism or engaging fight mechanics. Stand there, take a beating and hope your healer can out-lengthen your life bar against the enemy life bar. The visuals and animations look nice and the lightsabers look awesome but they stop looking awesome when they have to whack a single droid several times to take it down. Then they start looking like oversized Jedi rave glowsticks.

The Guild Wars 2 clip also confirms what has pretty much universally been said by people who've seen it or gotten some hands-on time: It's great bordering on amazing. While the SWTOR vid rubs a warm glowstick on my expectations and gently lulls them to sleep, the GW2 vid yanks them out of my brain, impales them on a bone wall, summons zombies to stomp on them, gnashes them in a dragon's maw, tail-swipes them into the far horizon, then dares me NOT to pre-order.

If the BioWare game did not have the Star Wars property rights and Galaxy Far, Far Away styling, no one would be interested in it. They will sell a million-plus boxes on fanbase alone no doubt, but I don't think it will appeal long-term to MMO gamers. It's following a standard MMO formula that's starting to wear thin with gamers and is based on the golden triangle of tank-heals-DPS. Once the self-touted "BioWare-quality story" is finished I wonder if it may go the way of DC Universe Online with little replayability and not enough endgame for player retention.

If the ArenaNet game had the Star Wars property rights and that video featured 30 Jedi or Sith taking down a giant Rancor, the entire Internet including Jack Thompson and Pedobear would be wetting their pants and camping out at GameStop tonight. I've played Guild Wars off and on for a couple years and it never really grabbed me like other games, but GW2 may succeed in turning those oh-my-gawd-it's-great murmurs into a roar by release time. There will be no class golden triangle in the game and the world will dynamically change based on your questing decisions as you play through, and encounters like the video above are scattered throughout the game.

ArenaNet has been confidently open talking about their intent of new MMO design and gameplay and each video they release appears to back up the promises. BioWare has fueled the hype that any studio should when developing a long-awaited Star Wars game (and spending a rumored $300 million plus) and pounded the marketing buzzword button, but each content reveal milestone to the press and public has been met with a resounding "Meh." I do not yet think that SWTOR should be written off by any means, and I don't think GW2 will necessarily be the MMO genre changer that some think it will be. But now that each game has released its first substantial combat feature video to the public and they can be compared side by side it's easy to see where the SWTOR ennui and GW2 hype is coming from. It's also obvious that these two games are diametrically opposed in design philosophy. As they continue down their divergent paths toward release, the fickle and often brutally judgmental MMO gaming crowd waits with its expectations, a fanboy beast that will turn on its master the moment the fun runs out and disappointment sets in.

If I were one of these game studios I would continue working with quiet confidence. If I were the other I would be worried that marketing hype may not buy me enough time to feed the beast.