What's interesting is they seem to be talking at cross-porpoises. Here's Mighty Marvelite Ames Kirshen:
“World of Warcraft is a success because of accessibility to the user. It's a pick up and play MMO, same with City of Heroes. Having tried Final Fantasy XI and EverQuest, it was easier to jump in [to CoH or WoW] and customize your character and play.”
So... basically, simple = a winnar.
Meanwhile, over at Cryptic, Jack “Emmett” Emmett goes for the gameplay:
“In CoH it was a goal that the game had to be fun to play. But what CoH didn't engage in, that a game like WoW does, is an economy system. Playing the auction house in WoW is a game in and of itself, how does that interpret and how does that translate to the Marvel universe? We've got to figure that out.”
Which sounds suspiciously like, “boy did we screw the pooch by leaving out all the fun complexity WoW has”.
Maybe they're just hoping talking about how cool WoW is will cause its success to rub off on them. But I think they're missing what really made WoW the 6 million subscriber success it is: Blizzard's long history of good multiplayer games that resulted in a large fanbase that plays online games. Oh, and Elf pr0n.