WAR is a good game, and haters are always gonna hate. But on the other hand, WoW enjoys economies of scale. Also, Blizzard can throw more money at the problem and can have more and better talent on their payroll. Their salaries are competitive with similar positions in other industries --- the talent at Blizzard is no longer made up of 2nd-grade people who couldn't get work in more mainstream industries. Then there's the factor of sheer manpower. As hard as each person at Mythic works, they will struggle to compete with the multiple people Blizzard can afford to assign to the same task. This especially makes a difference for development tasks like creating new content or fixing bugs. WoW has the upper hand and it will be the constant vortex that sucks people away from niche or up-and-coming games. The pressure is on the little guys to grab and hold the attention of the gamers. Furthermore, because of the mature state that WoW is in, it is freer to innovate or make drastic changes (Cataclysm) while the new guy is still busy carving out his niche or ironing out bugs. Then again, WoW doesn't even need to innovate. MMO startups like WAR can have brilliant ideas, but WoW is in an awesome position to steal them. You can bet that whatever good idea that is well-received in WAR is already considered or will be considered for assimilation into WoW. Blizzard runs WoW like a good business and that's something good businesses can do. It just takes a few false steps from WAR and WoW will be waiting to slurp the unsubscribers into its belly.
However, it's not entirely WoW's fault. What you see is really a product of WAR's current policy. Mythic has been a shy about recruiting since the initial ruckus. Now, it's as if they want people to come to WAR, but only on their own terms and in their own time. It's a more hippie approach to running a business. Compare WAR's approach with WoW's marketing attacks and things like their super attractive recruit-a-friend program: triple XP, free game time, rewards, free summons to each other, free levelling, etc. WAR is intentionally taking it slow. They want people to discover the game by themselves and form their own opinion about it, instead of getting blasted with a huge population influx and not be able to support it; or getting everyone hyped and not being able to deliver (again). So what we see today is a result of WAR's own low and slow marketing/recruiting: many people are just peeking over the fence and forming their opinions from there.
All that aside, one thing that bothered me about WAR (being the small little-guy hippie game), was that I never really felt like I was ever rewarded for being a loyal customer. What's wrong with sending me double renown tokens in the mail every few months? Unique vanity items or dyes or trinkets to decorate my armor with? Tome unlocks? Or even some free game time? These things cost nothing to give out in the digital world, but they are meaningful as a token of gratitude saying, "Thanks for sticking with us through thick and thin; we appreciate your support". They can give bigger rewards to the people who stuck it out since the beginning, or those who have stayed subscribed for 1 year, 2 years, etc.
Mythic has made very bad management decisions in the past. They made even worse decisions when EA came into the picture and they tried to make it more like WoW. They should have just figured out what they wanted to do from the start, and focused on that. It sounds like they're finding their niche now as Bioware-Mythic and they're making better decisions, but the odds are against the little guy and...
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