How do you even compare games?

Russell Williams, CEO of Flying Lab, the makers of Pirates of the Burning Sea, made some very interesting comments on Mystic Worlds. He says:

We’re not using WoW as our yardstick. We don’t have 65 million dollars, huge teams, or a backlog of work to draw upon. And that’s why we didn’t build another fantasy game, because we knew we’d be a fly on WoW’s windshield. Frankly, if what you’re looking for is a game that matches WoW on this level, you may as well just stop playing new MMOs until Bioware comes out with theirs, or you’re always going to be disappointed.

What I can tell you is that our ship combat kicks ass. Period. And it’s a damn sight better than WoW’s. We have to do new and different things to differentiate ourselves because for all of WoW’s strengths, it’s not everything. I do think you’ll be happy with us going into the future, because now that we’ve finished the foundations of the game, we’re just going to keep polishing and expanding it.

And yeah, he is totally right. PotBS's ship combat is way better than WoW's. Because WoW doesn't have any. But the comparison is still important because people are not going to buy PotBS for the features that are similar to those of WoW, they are going to buy it for the features that WoW doesn't offer: ship combat, production and trade, conquering cities with PvP, etc.

I think the people that should get nervous when Pirates of the Burning Sea comes out are the makers of EVE. Because PotBS's feature overlap more with EVE's, and in many aspects Pirates of the Burning Sea is more accessible and more user friendly than EVE.