Does WoW Influence Warhammer Online? 69
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.
Only because I was just reading it.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Warhammer fantasy was a bad idea from the start (Score:2, Insightful)
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WTB a good scfi-ish mmorpg...
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Outside of all it's launch issues, AO was probably the best scifi mmo to date. I didn't like how it's combat worked (it felt disconnected), but the world was large and the tech was cool (implants, computers, weapons, etc...)
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I would like to see a MMO that is not an EQ clone or a WoW clone with a unique engaging Sci-Fi story (it doesn't have to be wierd... just not a carbon copy), but I don't think anyone would take the chance right now with WoW messing up the market.
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* Mobs: Who can you fight in a futuristic society? Not dragons or Firelords or giant mutant spiders, but people (maybe with a few cyborgs thrown in too). Not that exciting
The Warhammer 40K setting has a plethora of alien races and other nasties.
* Weapons: Guns. Lots of guns. Guns which are small, not that much fun to wield (from a MMORPG standpoint) and
"Small" is the worst word you could ever use to describe the Warhammer 40K weapons. Try "oversized".
* Fights: Think about a gunfight. There's a lot o
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* Fights: Think about a gunfight. There's a lot of ducking for cover, poking your head out, firing a few times, and then repeating. Not exactly conducive to a MMORPG environment.
Oops, somehow snipped out my reply to this. It has been done before and can be done again hopefully better.
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Mixed environment SHTF/TEOTWAWKI MMORPG (Score:2)
You could nix the projectile pathfinding woes (and aimbots) pretty easily by simply having 'autoaim' by default. Basically, the aiming system used by third-person shooter games like GTA: the person controls the movement, target equisition, and when to fire, making it seem like you've got finite control, but the actual attack communication is pretty much just "player X attacks
Payback? (Score:3, Informative)
It all started as... (Score:5, Informative)
Missing Link? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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What they're talking about is the stylized, oversized weapons and armor. Take the huge, rounded shoulder guards of Warhammer vs. Warcraft (also in Starcraft vs. Warhammer 40K) as just one example of what they're talking about.
-stormin
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And in fact the first Citadel miniatures to feature this style as we know it today were C
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Warhammer was very certainly influenced by D&D. The origin of Warhammer is that they wanted to cheaply clone Chainmail [wikipedia.org].
Re:Missing Link? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Yes, this is OT (Score:2)
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Shakespeare wrote one truly original story in his whole life (A Midsummer Night's Dream), but he is still regarded as the best English-language playwright and poet. It wouldn't have mattered if R&J was based on Pyramus and Thisbie instead - it still would've been Shakespeare's words and stagecraft that made it great. With this in the back of my mind, I think it's kind of stupid and shallow to say that Warhammer and Warcraft are anything alike because of The Warp vs. The Twisting Nether or Chaos vs. The
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I totally agree and I think there's nothing wrong with derivative works. GW blatantly ripped off a lot of other concepts (Alien, Starship Troopers, Tolkein) and I didn't mind this at all, they took other people's ideas and weaved it together into their own universe to make decent wargame-lite settings. I think they took other peoples stuff, made it their own and took it somewhere else, and this is very different to blatant plagiarism. It sounds like Blizzard did the same.
It's pretty horrible if they truly
To answer the question... (Score:3, Funny)
Here's your sign.
Journalists stated that GW ripped off Blizzard?? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've always figured that everybody knew that Blizzard 'stole' ideas from GW. My, how times have changed.
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Warhammer influence. . . (Score:1, Redundant)
They better have been (Score:1, Insightful)
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Sure you probobly need a tank because its a good strategy (then the healer only has to heal one person) but it isnt just warriors who can tank. Druids can tank almost anything, and I have seen plenty of shammans or hunter/warlock pets tanking and doing just fine. When it comes to healing, priests are best at it but you dont need the BEST healing until you hit the very end of the game...druids, sh
Of course. (Score:5, Insightful)
At this point, the MMORPG market is basically WoW with a few outliers. I'm sure I'll get some EVE Online heat for that comment, but it's true. For much of the population, "MMORPG" is defined to be "World of Warcraft" the same way RTSes were defined by Starcraft. Blizzard has a knack for taking what's great in all its competition, putting it in one spot, and polishing it to a mirror shine. It's what they do.
Game developers aren't stupid. They see the phenomenal success of WoW and know that if they want to compete they have to provide at least the same level of play as their competitor (to get the former WoWers like me) and hopefully surpass their competitor (to get current WoWers). So, WAR takes the UI from WoW and probably steals a few of its other features to ease the transition until they get you hooked.
WAR is hoping provide a PvP alternative to WoW, which primarily focuses on PvE. Even low-level WAR quests involve some form of competition with the opposing faction. One preview I read had a Giant who you would either (a) get drunk to help fight for you against the other faction, or (b) destroy the first faction's alcohol to prevent the giant from getting drunk and thus fighting against you. And that was a newbie quest.
I'm hoping that the WAR team (BTW, that's their preferred acronym, for "Warhammer: Age of Reckoning") delivers on its promises. Give me WoW with a heavy focus on PvP and Realm-vs-Realm and they'll get my money for a few months.
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Of course EVE's infrastructure would probably implode if a monstrous jump in new players occurred, but that's a different story.
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I can understand the disliking of mechanics of EVE, but what kind of real "goal" does WoW have (or any MMORPG for that matter)?
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One of the Eve devs put it exellently. Eve and WoW/clones are different types of games, at root. It's the sandbox compared to the amusement park. One isn't inherently better than the other, but they have their own advantages, and their own appeals. A lot of people who like one will get rapidly bored with the other.
It's fine to point out various advantages, and when someone comes along c
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Well, in EVE, you had many long and short term goals. Short term you had a ridiculous amount of agent missions and complexes you could do, all of which gave the game a short-term focus. I would talk with my co-workers about what missions or complexes we would be facing that night in our adventures. Long-term you have max
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Obtaining phat lewt.
Seriously. As a group techies tend to be all about inrecmentally making something better and better. The hardware guys upgrade their systems on cyles measured in weeks when everyone else keeps a computer for years. It doesn't matter than it's goint to cost $400 for an extra 100Mhz. It's better. The software guys who just like to tinker will go through making
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Oh, and I love your comics
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WAR appears to be taking that route, and I'll definitely drop my WoW account to play it if it can deliver what it's pr
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I don't think WOW is that good of a game. I think what Blizzard did best was leverage their existing fan base and get them to try an mmo. Personally, I was bored with WoW after 3 months and quit (as did my friends who I started playing with). Keep in mind that we all played DAoC for at least 3 years, so we weren't new to mmos either.
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In in the end I don't think WoW is this revolutio
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Every MMORPG from here on out will be compared to WoW and will have s
I'm tired, and I'm going to be blunt: (Score:2, Funny)
Fuck you Zonk. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Inflammatory Headline (Score:1)
What is suspicious is that just when WoW became popular, GW decided that there needs to be a Warhammer Fantasy (the version noone gives a damn about) MMORPG that takes its MMO implementation mostly from WoW (WH wasn't an MMORPG so Bliz could hardly have stolen those parts from WH). I mean, why not WH40k? Everyone would love that, if just for the change of setting from the MMO-standard Tolkienesque (Tolkien invented Orcs, the mythological figure is the Ogre) to futuristic. After all, they canc
Blizzard is ripper-offer, but so what (Score:5, Insightful)
All three major Blizzard properties are rip-offs of someone else's ideas. Diablo was a rip of Rogue (and all Rogue-alikes everywhere); Warcarft was a rip of Warhammer; and Starcraft was a rip of Warhammer 40,000.
Big deal, I say. It's not like Games Workshop didn't draw on others' ideas too -- Moorcock and Herbert being prime examples. A messianic god emporer? Gosh, where could that have come from [dunenovels.com]? This is the way it's supposed to work. Inspiration breeds inspiration. It's not so much "your" idea as it is your little twist on all the ideas you've absorbed from other people. You don't "own" it, because the person you got your ideas from didn't "own" theirs either. This stuff's not supposed to be locked down and inaccessible. If it was, we'd never have got Warhammer or WoW or any of the rest of it.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_North [wikipedia.org]
sure you can (Score:2)
Smart business, really (Score:2)
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Damn; Tolkien ripped off reality!
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Warning: (Score:1)
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Imitation is.... (Score:1)
i applaud blizzard for most of what they have done, but i also appreciate the original for what it offered; where would the copy/copies be (or would they even be?) without the original(s)?
my hat is off to you inventors of great themes/systems/ideas/eng
Of course (Score:2)
The real ironic part is that most of the original Warcraft lore was almost blatantly lifted from Warhammer all those years ago.
WoW. This generation? (Score:1)
Who the hell cares? (Score:1)
Seriously - who the hell has time to even think up this crap?
Is Hell Cooling Down? (Score:2, Interesting)
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 term