Does WoW Influence Warhammer Online?

OGX writes "While old school geeks & gamers know that Warhammer predated Warcraft, there are many MMORPG fanatics these days that don't know the history of both franchises, and comment that Warhammer Online resembles World of Warcraft. OGX has an article about this very question with some input from Mark Jacobs (Studio GM EA Mythic, VP EA)." From the article: "This history factors heavily in the present situation wherein the Warhammer Online game looks, to many, to be a descendant of the success of World of Warcraft in a market filled with many games trying to be just that. It's easy to see how this confusion would arise, and I asked Mark Jacobs, Studio GM EA Mythic, VP Electronic Arts, to share his thoughts about the situation." Warhammer may have influenced WoW, but WHO's interface still looks like a WoW rip-off to me.

Re:Missing Link?

[Wylfing]

Interesting that the timeline in the article doesn't mention Dungeons and Dragons. Given that Games Workshop was at one time the sole importer of D&D into the UK (prior to the design of Warhammer) I think I'd be quite confident in alleging they were influenced by it.

Warhammer was very certainly influenced by D&D. The origin of Warhammer is that they wanted to cheaply clone Chainmail [wikipedia.org].

Re:Warhammer fantasy was a bad idea from the start

[GundamFan]

I am with you... EVE is probably the closest we have... and yet the learning curve is soo steep and the diffrence between haves and have nots is so great... it is impossible to get into without becoming and staying a small time thug, something I won't do.

Re:Missing Link?

[Shaper_pmp]

More than that, GW are widely reknowned by their own employees and fans as serial IP-copiers.

Many races have been blatantly ripped off from film or TV, with the original Genestealers [wikipedia.org] (confirmed repeatedly by insiders as "borrowed" from Alien) being only the most egregious. Throughout the 80s and early 90s they ripped off ideas from all and sundry, then slowly modified and retconned them over time to hide their origins somewhat.

However, the worst case has simply has to be Space Marine "power armour" - the original idea for power armour was taken more or less verbatim from the Robert A. Heinlein novel "Starship Troopers" - design, function, the lot.

In ST (the book) the mobile infantry wear strength-enhancing "powered armour" suits, giving them a fighting chance against enemy combatants. In the film, the mobile infantry are essentially cannon fodder, diving headlong into combat wearing little more than a glorified bodywarmer.

The reason for this (I have had on good authority, from several ex-staff members) is because during the preliminary work on the film Starship Troopers, GW got wind of the development. They decided that the idea of "powered armour" was a little too close to their "power armour", and threatened to sue the film-makers unless they removed all reference to powered armour from the film.

Yep - that's right. They copied the idea almost verbatim from the book, then asserted ownership and threatened legal action when someone tried to use the source material in the (licenced) film.

This last point is directly from an ex-staff member, who was on socialising terms with the GW high-ups at the time and afterwards.

GW are many things, but original they ain't.

Is Hell Cooling Down?

[Avatar8]

I cannot believe the day has come that I must admit to something I never thought would happen: I agree with what the EA exec said.

ALL fantasy (books, film, TV, table games, RPGs, video games, MMOs, etc. ad infinitum) "borrow" from the root sources: mythos.

I don't know the truth and I doubt it will ever be revealed, but it sounds like Blizzard offered Games Workshop a video game to evolve their tabletop game and GW declined. Blizzard therefore changed the content enough to make it original by legel terms and ran with it all the way to multiple banks. This can definitely be seen as "borrowing" IP but recreating it in your own fashion. I'd compare this to me trying to paint the Mona Lisa. Sure there are some similarities, but you would definitely see my differences and personal artistic style.

GW in their turn "borrowed" from Dungeons & Dragons and all the spinoff franchises (books, artwork, cartoons, figures, etc.) to fashion their own IP.

Gary Gygax will freely admit he and Dave Arneson were completely influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth books. They, too, fashioned their own IP.

While I gladly accept the title of "Father of Modern Fantasy" bestowed upon Tolkien, in any of his biographies it is well known that he drew his ideas from numerous resources: C.S. Lewis, religion, Norse mythos and Finnish mythos. He gave England a bolder, more legendary history to counter the only other fantasy that existed at the time: fairies. While you may see pieces similar to legends and other stories, it is unarguable that the compilation is original and completely Tolkien's.

Finally all of that mythos, regardless of the country, came from the collective story telling, exaggeration and imagination of our ancestors as they sat in the dark, pondered the meaning of life and tried to explain what they didn't understand.

So what we're now playing and will be playing in the future are just extensions and evolutions of those original stories told around fires. The only reason this becomes an argument of who owns what or who created what is because of another evolution, the legal system. MMO's are just another form of storytelling, one in which we get to play a part and be involved in the story. Who knows what form storytelling may take in the next century.