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It may sound absurd but the general consensus is that the success of the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft lies on men in tights. Damion Schubert, Lead Combat Designer, Bioware elaborated on this phenomenon through a talk he gave at the recently concluded Austin Game Conference titled "Moving Beyond Men in Tights."

"I think that we as an industry are very myopic about what people really want, what they're actually looking for in terms of the innovation side of the industry," says Schubert. Adding that too many people are focused on replicating the success of World of Warcraft, that being revolutionary goes out the window.

He pushes the metaphors further by saying that "WoW is Coke," and unless you have some Pepsi money you can never topple this giant. But the biggest question is how did WoW become a Coke and everybody else a Pepsi? Is it really the men in tights?

Before this goes anymore cockeyed, Sony Online Entertainment game designer, Raph Koster, has narrowed it down to five reasons - combat-oriented, classes, grindtastic, men in tights (of course), and gamey games.

Combat-oriented doesn't necessarily mean that gamers are looking for a new way to whack somebody, but that they are looking for something repetitive. And to quote Koster, "People WANT to play these games for hours and hours a month because this is where they spend their social time."

Classes as Schubert pointed out, makes a lot of sense for the developers. As an example he says if a developer were to add a new skill to a system without class limits, the problem would not be easily solved. "You basically have to compare a billion possible combinations to a billion other possible combinations," Schubert said. "Classes help keep that under control."

Probably the most irreplaceable of all the ingredients that make up an MMORPG are the experience points and levels. Not only does it allow players to know where they are in the food chain, but also the promise of new abilities, fame, riches, and glory that comes along with it.

Men in tights embodies the fantasy genre that majority of MMOs are built on. Schubert expounds on this stating that fantasy is suited to MMO games because it's ideally suited to the player's sense of progression. It can start players out against giant rats and move along to orcs, dragons, demons, and other nastier creatures.

An admitted gamey guy, Koster has this to say to developers, "Make a world, but don’t depend on players finding their own fun. Some enjoy it, but most don’t. In the Sims online, there was a way to find the stuff tat was good — you don’t want users to wade through crap."

If men in tights are really what gamers are looking for, should we stick to the successful men in tights formula? "I'm not saying don't innovate," Schubert emphasized. "I'm really not… but I really want you guys to be sure that you're not over-innovating, that you're not going out of bounds. Be sure that your innovations are things that players want."