In response to the enlightening 9/14 letter/rant about WWE DoR2 and No Mercy:
In many ways I want to agree with this person. Simply put, there are many many little things that could've been added to DoR2 that would have made the game infinitely more enjoyable. Customizable Royal Rumble for example. More (real) wrestler music, create-a-belt, elimination style fatal 4 way, and the list goes on and on. Hell, in some ways DoR2 is a step BACKWARDS from DoR1. Numerous CAW glitches, and some that even randomly lock up the game were just not present in DoR1. But really, the comparisons to No Mercy need to stop. The Aki you knew then is no more. Yukes has a few of them, EA has a few of them, and that's all there is.
So what if DoR2 has less wrestlers? Do you REALLY need Rosey, Val Venis, Maven and Charlie Haas (two of four who are no longer with the WWE, I may add) in the game? They are so generic anyway that you could easily recreate them yourself. As for the loss of backstage area fights, when was the last time you saw a backstage fight on WWE's programming? The hardcore era ended 4 years ago, get over it.
Having played all of the Yukes' efforts on the GC, I sincerely don't get the feeling that they aren't trying to improve. One thing to remember is that the Wrestlemania/DoR series for GC is Yukes own creation, not going off a template that Aki set way back on WCW vs NWO. A fair comparison would be towards the early Smackdown games. It took several tries for that series to reach the level it's at today. Some additons may be stiffled by publisher influence or by their own lack of competence, but that's not something we'll really ever know. I seem to recall a decision to have some wrestlers and features exclusive to Smackdown and some exclusive to DoR to create different gameplay experiences. Sounds like a publisher decision to me, and one that probably set the development of DoR back quite a bit. I think with DoR2 they nixed that idea though and future games should get all the goods on both sides.
B&P matches need to die.