If you didn't grow up with Pac-Man, you're not going to like Pac-Man it's a very old, dated game. If you grew up on Mario 64, you probably don't like Super Mario Bros. Classic doesn't mean anything anymore, a game has to be truly brilliant to be classic instead of dated. SMB was great for its time, no one's arguing that, but that was a long time ago.
RO was an amazing MMO for it's time, it has amazing fundamentals, but it fails very hard, and if you don't believe that, I suggest you look at the ingame population. There are just downright terrible games that have more players. RO is fundamentally sound, but the development and management have dragged it to hell. It deserves to be so much more popular, but one of it's biggest flaws is that it's so off putting to new players.
WoW is insanely popular for a reason. It is fundamentally sound, before Cataclysm development was managed well. It has decent graphics, a massive world, lots of skills, classes, and races. The tutorial is so engaging and user friendly, so well thought out. A very deep lore that you can actually read about on its homepage. I mean it's intriguing, someone put a lot of thought into the history of the WoW universe AND YOU CAN READ ABOUT IT. RO has about two paragraphs of history you can read on the homepage. I know there's a deeper story, and only a handful of people know what it is. A deep, ACCESSIBLE lore immerses people into the game's universe.
To pretend similar HUD's make games identical is retarded. Putting a heath bar at the bottom left instead of the top right doesn't
change anything. Yes they're similar, at the very core most games are similar. But generic 3D MMOs and WoW are so vastly different in so many aspects. And there's a reason WoW is insanely popular, it's a good game. The only terrible games that are popular are zombie games. Part of WoW's popularity is from Blizzard's amazing track record, but you sound retarded when you say a terrible game is popular because it's developer makes excellent games. Bethesda made Hunted, do you even know what Hunted is?
Is LoL insanely popular because Blizzard is popular? That's interesting...LoL is the biggest thing right now, and it isn't a clone. Yeah there's health and mana bars, and they are somewhere on the screen that may in fact be the same place as another game, but that doesn't make it a
clone.
As far as RO2 is concerned, if they took all the depth of the stat/skill/class system and made it into a functional 3D MMO in the vein of WoW, you would have a
hit on your hands. If they took everything that is right with WoW, and removed the balances and market problems of RO, you would have an incredible game. Make an engaging tutorial, it's not impossible, not by a long shot. Make classes balanced, it's possible, look at the fundamental paradigms of classes. I'll
list them again if you want me to.
There are still amazing games out there. Have you played Bubble Tanks 2? That game is
raw. Have you played Desktop Dungeon? It is so well done. Very simple, yet profound games. RO has so many things that these modern games lack. It has more customization than Skyrim. It has more classes than WoW. It has so much to give, but it is strangled but its fatal flaws.