New MMO Players Ignorant?

Recently I've been keeping tabs on the discussions going on at the Stargate Worlds forums. It seems many people there are interested in the upcoming MMO just because its Stargate, not because its an MMO. One person I saw post today in the beta test forums was looking forward to beta but had never played an MMO before, he was interested only because it was Stargate.

Now, this is good on some level. I know players in LotRO who have never played an MMO before, and were drawn to this one because it was based on the lore in the books. In other words, they're fans of the media off which the game is made, not the game genre itself. More fans of the books equals more players, which equals a more successful game, right?

Something just disturbs me about all these people asking about beta invites for Stargate Worlds who openly admit they've never played an MMO before and are completely ignorant when it comes to this genre of games. If I was a developer, there's no way I'd send out beta invites to these people. To be successful, the game must be an MMO first, and a Stargate lore machine second. This means the testers need to be looking at it with that mindset, not an "oh look, this was in episode 315!!!" mindset.

While LotRO has a very comprehensive, while still fairly strict, license for The Lord of the Rings book trilogy and The Hobbit, you still see plenty of areas where they are forced to take creative license to make it work as an MMO. This is something I still don't think some fans of the books who started playing LotRO because of that aspect alone realize. Come to think of it, this problem plagues any MMO that has a deep, rich back story, even mega hits such as World of Warcraft.

I also think some potential players are ignorant in what they expect to see in an MMO such as Stargate Worlds. People seem to have high expectations, mostly based off of vague statements that the developers have made. They read things into their words and assume the game is going to be just like they or the developers envision it. In reality, it rarely works that way.

Maybe I'm just jaded from being around MMOs for quite a while - I've seen developer's unfulfilled promises, game lore altered or added for the sake of game play (which is a good thing) and just about every aspect that goes along with playing an MMO. Some people, especially people who are drawn to these MMOs because of the franchise, not because its an MMO, have no idea what they're getting themselves into. And yes, this bothers me on some level.