I don't think it's so much that current games are WoW clones. I think it's that the high fantasy genre has been adhering to the same basic formulas in gaming, fiction, videogames, and film for a good 30+ years at this point. Basically, I think the high fantasy genre has become stale simply because it has reused Tolkien as the basis for its lore since the late sixties and tabletop D&D as the basis for its game mechanics and leveling since the seventies.
The races in 99% of high fantasy gaming and fiction have always been a loosely veiled bastardization of Tolkien lore (elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, etc). The leveling and class system in fantasy RPGs has been with us since tabletop D&D. WoW didn't bring anything new to the table. They blatantly ripped off the graphic feel of Warhammer (so much that when I bought WoW, I assumed that it was based on "that tabletop strategy game I used to see in the comic book shop as a kid").
Blizzard streamlined what existed before them and did a great job of it. They created a polished, accessible game, not a daringly original one.
"Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was originally supposed to be a Warhammer game For one reason or another, the deal was broken off with the Games Workshop and the game was given a new storyline and a new universe. The Orcs in Warcraft were originally modeled after the Orcs of Warhammer, and it is because of this reason they share a striking similarity."
Warcraft still owes Games Workshop, because the Orc Style that Warcraft uses (that being orcs being green and generally looking like that. Yes, Games Workshop invented the green, muscular, not-so-hairy and bulky orc i believe. Maybe not, but at least that specific design that warcraft uses. Tolkiens Orcs weren't green) is licensed by - surprise - Games Workshop. Who made warhammer if you didn't know that.
And BTW. The first Warhammer Online by Climax Online started developement in 2002 i think. WAY before the release of WoW. But it was cancelled and mythic got the job to make it.
Warhammer online, Age of conan, Pirates of the burning sea are all going to stink.
The next gen MMO is Darkfall Online. Get a peek at it.
Warning though, it is not for the faint of heart, or people you like shiny things.
It's not for the faint of heart, but just for those who believe in fairy tales and Santa.... i wonder when someone is gonna refer to the DnL syndrome and DnL clones... to stay on topic
The concept of a "WoW clone" needs to be viewed from a broader perspective. It has nothing to do with elves, dwarves, or fantasy, it has to do with the product being offered. Jack in the Box is a McDonalds clone, Pepsi is a Coke clone, Vault is a Mtn Dew clone, etc. WoW came alone to a market that was roughtly 800k (domestic) and quite literally CREATED another 2 million people for that market. The original 800k bounced from MMO to MMO and came to WoW with at least 1 prior MMO's experience, but these additional 2 million folks have only seen a single MMO.
WoW was created, by design, to be the McDonalds of MMO's. No snooty waiters, no reservations, just come in, get food you like, and come again tomorrow. Vanguard started before WoW came out and their press was all about "this is the next generation of MMO, we're going to top the market!" Then WoW hit while they were in development and beat them to death. Suddenly, they changed their tune and started saying "We're not going to be like WoW, we don't need 8 million customers to be successful, we're looking for discriminating customers!"
I'm sorry, but I call BS. Every MMO dev in his right mind wants 8 million customers. 8 million customers literally means INFINITE capital to develop whatever they want. WoW is paying for Starcraft II, Diablo III, etc. These guys are rolling in money, they could live Caligula's life if they wanted, paying midgets to perform hallucinations for them. Everyone that has ever started an MMO wants that kind of success, and any MMO dev (including Eve) that says otherwise is lying to you. That kind of success if every American's fantasy, especially American business owners.
Every MMO that is released from now on, regardless of format and genre, will be compared to WoW, because 75% of the market has only WoW as their prior MMO. And, since WoW set the bar so low, trying to make things harder or less fun will always result in failure. Sure, there will always be mom-and-pop MMO's that spring up next door to McDonalds, and they'll serve dozens of customers a day and call themselves happy, but just like indie film makers who publicly swear they don't want mega success, they secretly wish that they could serve billions.
People like you who dub games "wow" clones are completely oblivious to the thought and effort put into the game,
For example :
1:Warhammer Online, you like many others fail to realize, that the original idea of this game thought up by Games Workshop was stolen by Blizzard and then created into the infamous Warcraft franchise. So really, Blizzard has only been "cloning" the thoughts and ideas of Games Workshop for the past few years, and making a truckload of money from it as well.
2. If you even took some effort to do some research actually, you would find the website, www.Warhammeronline.com
And in that website is a bunch of neat things, like phone blogs and video podcasts, which your site actually emails to subscribers of www.mmorpg.com. You'll realize how many times the developers say and inforce the words, "we are nothing like wow" and you can even see it isn't.
3. The graphics in a game like warhammer might seem to be copied from WoW, but if you take a close look you'll realize its nothing like WoW at all. As a matter of fact, if im not mistaken the dev's at mythic are using the same engine from daoc, but buffed up alot. So who's engine was created first? Mythics.. Who's copying who? No one. Wow clone? Not really... Just because some idiots who can't tell left from right say somthing like, "OMG IT HAS WOW GRAPHIXX IM NOT GOING NEAR THE COPY CLONEZORZ OMGZARZ"doesn't mean its a crap game. And since when is it illegal to have a cartoony graphics engine? Have you ever seen anything from the warhammer or warhammer 40k universe? The models looks exactly like the units created in the MMORPG version, thats why the graphics are like that(so they can have a similarity with the board game).
Its not fair to judge a game, and compare it to something like wow. Its like basically comparing a new Ford to a McLaren or a Bugatti, it just can't size up. There has been some "clones" thou, and there is no mistaking it, but the games you mentioned are Faaaaaaaaaaaar from it. Age of Conan is also another game i could go into detail with, but im lazy www.ageofconan.com so i'll just let you figure that one out. To put it in a nutshell, 90% of the people who say cloning are handicapped/retarded or just f*king stupid <they clearly haven't looked at the game at all and what it has to offer> so they get a brilliant idea....... WOW CLONE YEEEEEWW... and there it is. Unfortunately this can't be stopped.
And to all those WoW fanbois, there is a cold hard fact, WoW is getting old, and blizzard isn't doing anything to fix it, so the only way it will be going is down. Warhammer or Age of Conan is the question thou
P.S. Rumor has it Starcraft Online is in the works <Starcraft 2 - TFT anyone?>..
There all just games in the same Genre. There are only so many ways that you can have an elf and a dwarf in a game fight a orc or something. All this clone talk is stupid. You know what, most MMOs play similar, even the fabled EVE, but to say that they're all cloning each other... crazy talk. WoW didn't "rip off" Everquest" any more than LOTRO "cloned" WoW. They're different games in the same Genre. F.E.A.R. didn't "steal" from Doom any more than Vanguard did from WoW. Developers take what worked from one game and apply it to their own. It's the way things are done. WoW's interface is pretty good and a lot of people like it, including, probably, the devopers of LOTRO. Should they have just made something that may or may not suck just so that it didn't look anything like WoW's interface? How many games use the WASD keys for movement? Should that be restricted only to the first game that ever did that? What about using function keys for different weapons or spells? If something works for a game, it would be stupid for other developers makeing similar games to NOT borrow from that. It's how things get better. Innovation is really just evolution. While it may not be visible from one generation to the next, it is there. Even if a game came out that's sole purpose was to copy WoW, there would still be things that they try that end up working better than the way WoW does it, and it wouldn't be an improvement to justt that game, but to every other game down the line when they see how much better things are with the new function/layout/skill/quest/etc.
At the same time though, the high fantasy stuff is getting tired. I have no problems with gameplay being similar or anything like that, but why, oh why, does everything have to be based in some tolkien-esqe fantasy world? Give me some horror, sci-fi, or modern crime fighting spy extravaganza. Something that doesn't have leather skullcaps and named swords. Enough is enough.
I am so sick of people referring to MMO's as "WoW clones". WoW is based on Warcraft, and if anything borrows concepts from other games to cross the Warcraft series into the MMO scene. The only thing that could be considered a WoW clone, would be if someone were to develop an MMO version of Command & Conquer, and even that wouldn't really be a clone. There are no WoW clones.
i disagree i think most mmorpgs are wow clones becouse game devs try to copy the best games out there to make a lot of money but im not saying that its bad to take the good things of game and mix them together. but making an exact clone?
I have to say i got the email about this article this morning and I knew i was going to love it.
This statement is really starting to get stupid because i think people are getting the games that came before World of Warcraft.
I played World of Warcraft at release. I just finished playing DAOC for about 2 years and gave WoW a try and i quit my lvl 32 shaman. The game wasn't for me. I didn't feel like I had to go comparing the game to other games, or did i feel like i had to go post around and let everyone know why I didnt like it. I actually thought the game was kind of interesting, but it just got boaring to me with all the quest and what not.
What is cloning? Because WoW has mounts, which by the way they're not evene close to being the first game to impliment mounts, nobody else is able to have mounts?
Because the lore-master is similar to a wizard, YOU CALL THAT CLONING? last time i checked a wizard is a damn wizard.... lol how different can you make them? Almost every MMO has a wizard type class.... again not the first to try this one out.
The list goes on, but i just thought those two were one of the most rediculous pieces for your wall of information there author. I guess I thought that most of the community on these forums were trying to end this "OMG WOW CLONE OMG OMG OMG" stuff. This just adds fuel to the fire, and the more i see people support the "WOW CLONE" theory the more this immature this community looks because the facts are that WOW had to get it's ideas from somewhere too. We need to think that MMORPG IS ALL THE SAME GENRE of games. Originality is great, dont get me wrong, but if it's in the same genre, how far can you really branch off?
ihave played a lot of games in the mmorpgheaven , but i never played WoW.... :=)
the reason: i read only the flame on the forums about griefing on the battlefield for the honourpoints , and so on...
a colleague is playing Wow, he sterted later playing , as I did in Vanguard, his Char is much higher then mine , thats another reason not to play Wow. It is to easy...
Another thing is , to compare games is , same to compare soccerteams, they all play soccer, but who has intent it ? ) The genre of Fantasy games, like Wow, EQ, Vanguard , or , or , or doesnt depend on one developer.Each game has his own advantages and mistakes, thats true. So I see each game as its own, and never compare it to anaother, sometimes a game i played , it is in my mind a pearl i discovered, but this is a subjective meaning....
Fantasy is not a mainstream interest. For example, in bookshops fantasy books are placed in a small section at the back (in the same way that porn in newsagents is located on the top shelf!)
You guys have got to get off the elves and dwarves crap, it's not about the content. If it is, then all fantasy are LOTR clones, and Eve is a clone of Star Wars, or better yet, 2001. There, all cloning accounted for.
As for graphics, there are only so many ways to design an avatar before they all essentially start to look alike. Tolkein established what elves and dwarves looked like, and artists have been rendering them, in one form or another, for years. Apart from varying degrees of stylization or cartooniness, they all look essentially the same.
What the "clone" discussion is about is the implementation. Take out the fantasy elements, the races, and the genre, and what's left? An extremely easy-to-play social game. Eve is hard, Vanguard was hard, LOTRO is hard, compared to WoW. This new generation of MMO players don't want hard, they want fun.
For example, a joke I always say about Vanguard from a quote by one of the devs, "Vanguard is for people who like corpse runs!" Who enjoys corpse runs? Or death debt? Or losing exps? Or losing hard-earned loot? For that matter, who decided "anything worth having should be very hard"? This Diku mentality of anything worth having should require 100's of players to get is riduclous, IMHO. WoW's raiding is only visible to about 5% of the total population, the rest of the game is designed (in theory) for smaller encounters, which appeals more to the masses.
typical WoW player ... an idiot. this is why i have always said, if you play WoW and you Enjoy WoW ... you're opinions should be null and void on any other MMO. Heck you should even be banned from other MMOs and be an outcast of normal MMO society.
only reason WoW is so popular is because it caters to the lowest common denominator. If the game was any easier the game would play itself while you watched.
Well, that was an article that should've been written by a politician - use a lot of words to say nothing! What a load of crap! MMORPG has really lowered their standards in the last few months; I guess they'll let just about anyone write for them now. Hey, maybe next month they can have Hillary write about how bad videogames are for us...
typical WoW player ... an idiot. this is why i have always said, if you play WoW and you Enjoy WoW ... you're opinions should be null and void on any other MMO. Heck you should even be banned from other MMOs and be an outcast of normal MMO society. only reason WoW is so popular is because it caters to the lowest common denominator. If the game was any easier the game would play itself while you watched.
Typical hardcore elitist snob who has no understanding of the market and only see's what's right in front of his nose.
MMO's are a business, and in the US, the purpose of a business is to make money. The business that makes the most money wins the market. This isn't rocket science, and since 100's of MMO's a year fail, often before they're even released, obviously the system works.
There is no need to bash an MMO just because you don't like it, but WoW is "the best" in the only sense that matters, the only objective sense that counts...it has the most customers and makes the most money. If it sucked, no one would play it, and it would go away, survival of the fittest.
But no, because you don't play it, you have to bash it, which makes you completely useless to discuss anything else because you can't see beyond the tip of your nose. Go back to Vanguard and leave the debate to the grown ups, please.
FYI, LOTRO was my 30th MMO, I've been playing them for over 15 years, and WoW was one of the MMO's I played. Personally, I enjoy CoH more, and if Sony had not chased me from SWG by ruining it, I'd still be playing it today.
"WoW clone" - and "EQ clone" - is interchangeable with "an MMOG aiming to appeal to the mass market", as the "original" is the most successful game of its time. Games like EVE, AO, CoH and WWII deviate(d) significantly from the mainstream to avoid such a tag, and I think that's what Petursson is wanting more games to do.
The MMOG business needs to prove that something else than Tolkien/D&D style fantasy can be successful, PvP focus or not.
typical WoW player ... an idiot. this is why i have always said, if you play WoW and you Enjoy WoW ... you're opinions should be null and void on any other MMO. Heck you should even be banned from other MMOs and be an outcast of normal MMO society. only reason WoW is so popular is because it caters to the lowest common denominator. If the game was any easier the game would play itself while you watched.
No, that would be EVE Online and Sword of the New World.
Both games I like actually. - But, deviating from my response to the quoting...
The fact of the matter is - its disgusting how people have become regarding game development. RPG's have always been a very diverse breed of game and tacking on MMO to it has made it even more-so. People no longer understand that every game genre follows basic developmental guidelines... and when you change those guidelines, you usually end up with a totally new genre of game, or perhaps a refined sub-genre. To be a so called 'WoW Clone' - all you have to do is have a third person MMORPG - based on what appears to be the complaint. But...
I remember watching the evolution of First Person Shooters and every time some ground breaking feature was introduced it became a -STANDARD-. When an FPS was released without that standard, people were relatively annoyed. Heretic and Hexen introduced spells - which was interesting. But then Duke Nukem came along and introduced Alt-Fire. Unreal had no problem using alt-fire. However, ID continued to make Quake games without an alt-fire component. Even if its aiming down the barrel of the gun, zooming in a sniper rifle, or -something- the idea of a jump/run/shoot FPS is terrible. Unless, of course, we're talking about Serious Sam or Painkiller which uses horde tactics - then its okay... because then its like classic Gauntlet in 3D. But even that gets repeatative.
Do you want to continue? Are there people who haven't caught onto the point yet? Then look at 2D fighting games. Some people think fatalities should be in every game (or used to). Some people think combos should be in every game. Most people don't even think 2D fighting games should exist anymore - and that they should all go 3D like Tekken/Soul Caliber/Virtual Fighter. But the fact of the matter is... this genre built upon the same concepts and 'refined' themselves to extraordinary levels.
So what's the problem? We're dealing with an MMO. A relatively new gaming engine/genre/concept/what-have-you. Just like we're dealing with a bunch of new gamers who have no clue... as well as an internet to hide their age and ignorance. (Of course, grammar and spelling is sometimes a good guage of one's cognative ability...) -
I, personally, get very angry when I see games that dont' have WoW's features. Why? Because WoW had set a new standard of quality - regardless of what anyone thinks, Blizzard works their butt off. When I play LotR:O I complain about character creation, lack of different armor textures, and the relatively small number of starting zones. When I play Vanguard, I complain about the ugly character designs - the crappy animations, the bad voice acting, and the ugly armor. When I play Everquest 2 I only really have a problem with the boring zones - lack of diverse starting zones - and the difficulty in finding low level characters.
I could go on and on... most are admittedly personal preferences. But really - Blizzard has just taken every element that's already been in MMO's and refined them. People call this 'easy mode' - the ease and user friendly interface. People call this 'easy mode' - the smooth progression ladder. People complain that the characters are ugly when - frankly - I could enjoy a cartoon using Warcraft's character models a lot more than something using any other game's models. Yes, its cartoony, but I can also be a total dork and try hundreds upon hundreds of 'outfits' in Wow, thanks to all the different textures they have for armor.
Anyways... this tangent has gone on long enough. But you have to ask yourself - do you play MMO's to beat the crap out of players, or to 'build' a character idea from the ground up? That's my problem. Once a game has -revealed- its ineptness to develope a character, graphically -and- statistically, I give it the boot. It doesn't matter if the game is a clone or not.
Once you realize: This is as cool as this game is going to get... - you leave.
No more fantasy MMOs please! They are not trendy. Think of something more original! Fantasy is not a mainstream interest. For example, in bookshops fantasy books are placed in a small section at the back (in the same way that porn in newsagents is located on the top shelf!)
I hope you are just trying to be funny, because either that or you haven't been in a book store before. Fantasy/sci fi section is one of the biggest sections in book stores, and usually right in the middle. Barnes and Noble even have their fantasy section on the main isle of their stores. If you ever traded books in, you'd also know that fantasy books are worth more then any other books for trade in.
So either you are a freaking moron, or trying to be funny and failed miserably. Furthermore fantasy games for any system are some of the best selling games around. Even old school nes fantasy games are still worth like $20-$30 at a used game store. The fantasy game market is huge and just for the simple fact that you are a member of a mmorpg site says as much, because in case you forgot RPG is role playing game, which if i'm not mistaken rpg originated with D&D paper games. Which omg is fantasy.'
The only games that I have found to earn the dub clone, are those chinese mmo's that are basically just carbon copies. Everything about them is the same except their maps. They don't even change up the combat system.
Ok, now that you've all vented about how you hate hearing "WoW clone", and ignored the section of the article where the author goes over the true roots of WoW's gameplay, let's talk about what the article was actually pointing out.
The clone syndrome has nothing to do with elves and orcs or WoW's UI. It has everything to do with the basic structure of MMOs that a lot of people (around here included) have just come to take as a requirement for the genre. When I see a new MMO come out that has a heavy PvE emphasis, restricted deathmatch style PvP, monster killing/xp based/gear based advancement and canned "Get 10 rat tail" quests, I label it a WoW clone. It's shorthand for saying, "This game is taking a genre with nearly limitless potential and repeating gameplay that has been in effect since the early days of MUDS."
It's the gameplay that's being cloned, not the setting or UI. I know a lot of people have an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality when it comes to this topic, but to me, it is broken. It's fun on a very rudimentary level, highly repetitive, and borders on work most of the time. Do I want games to include WoW"s level of polish and UI enhancements? Surely. Do I want them to repeat the exact same gameplay structure I've been seeing since the early 1980s? No thanks, I've had enough of that.
I think that's what this article is talking about, and on that level, yes, Lord of the Rings, Vanguard and Warhammer are all clones of WoW. It's the difference between an FPS like Prey being called a Doom/Quake clone, as opposed to Half Life 2 or Bioshock. The latter are games which use the base genre, but innovate like crazy to create a very new experience in that space. The former, while not direct "clones" (Hey! Prey plays with gravity!) still keeps their gameplay innovations very conservative, and therefore deserves being called a clone.
If a clone of me was made with red hair, a leather jacket, liked chocolate ice cream and had a moustache (none of which I have), he's still a clone.
typical WoW player ... an idiot. this is why i have always said, if you play WoW and you Enjoy WoW ... you're opinions should be null and void on any other MMO. Heck you should even be banned from other MMOs and be an outcast of normal MMO society. only reason WoW is so popular is because it caters to the lowest common denominator. If the game was any easier the game would play itself while you watched.
No, that would be EVE Online and Sword of the New World.
Both games I like actually. - But, deviating from my response to the quoting...
The fact of the matter is - its disgusting how people have become regarding game development. RPG's have always been a very diverse breed of game and tacking on MMO to it has made it even more-so. People no longer understand that every game genre follows basic developmental guidelines... and when you change those guidelines, you usually end up with a totally new genre of game, or perhaps a refined sub-genre. To be a so called 'WoW Clone' - all you have to do is have a third person MMORPG - based on what appears to be the complaint. But...
I remember watching the evolution of First Person Shooters and every time some ground breaking feature was introduced it became a -STANDARD-. When an FPS was released without that standard, people were relatively annoyed. Heretic and Hexen introduced spells - which was interesting. But then Duke Nukem came along and introduced Alt-Fire. Unreal had no problem using alt-fire. However, ID continued to make Quake games without an alt-fire component. Even if its aiming down the barrel of the gun, zooming in a sniper rifle, or -something- the idea of a jump/run/shoot FPS is terrible. Unless, of course, we're talking about Serious Sam or Painkiller which uses horde tactics - then its okay... because then its like classic Gauntlet in 3D. But even that gets repeatative.
Do you want to continue? Are there people who haven't caught onto the point yet? Then look at 2D fighting games. Some people think fatalities should be in every game (or used to). Some people think combos should be in every game. Most people don't even think 2D fighting games should exist anymore - and that they should all go 3D like Tekken/Soul Caliber/Virtual Fighter. But the fact of the matter is... this genre built upon the same concepts and 'refined' themselves to extraordinary levels.
So what's the problem? We're dealing with an MMO. A relatively new gaming engine/genre/concept/what-have-you. Just like we're dealing with a bunch of new gamers who have no clue... as well as an internet to hide their age and ignorance. (Of course, grammar and spelling is sometimes a good guage of one's cognative ability...) -
I, personally, get very angry when I see games that dont' have WoW's features. Why? Because WoW had set a new standard of quality - regardless of what anyone thinks, Blizzard works their butt off. When I play LotR:O I complain about character creation, lack of different armor textures, and the relatively small number of starting zones. When I play Vanguard, I complain about the ugly character designs - the crappy animations, the bad voice acting, and the ugly armor. When I play Everquest 2 I only really have a problem with the boring zones - lack of diverse starting zones - and the difficulty in finding low level characters.
I could go on and on... most are admittedly personal preferences. But really - Blizzard has just taken every element that's already been in MMO's and refined them. People call this 'easy mode' - the ease and user friendly interface. People call this 'easy mode' - the smooth progression ladder. People complain that the characters are ugly when - frankly - I could enjoy a cartoon using Warcraft's character models a lot more than something using any other game's models. Yes, its cartoony, but I can also be a total dork and try hundreds upon hundreds of 'outfits' in Wow, thanks to all the different textures they have for armor.
Anyways... this tangent has gone on long enough. But you have to ask yourself - do you play MMO's to beat the crap out of players, or to 'build' a character idea from the ground up? That's my problem. Once a game has -revealed- its ineptness to develope a character, graphically -and- statistically, I give it the boot. It doesn't matter if the game is a clone or not.
Once you realize: This is as cool as this game is going to get... - you leave.
... well, until the next major patch at least.
so basically you are a girl who wants to be able to change your outfit as often as possible and look pretty, got ya *rolls eyes*
Yeah I'm about sick of all of the WoW bashing. Most people want to be thought of as rebels so they naturally deride whatever is successful and popular. Well I've played every mmo out there, and I'm here to tell you that WoW is the only one that delivers what it promises.
And forget EVE. I have no interest in paying for a game that I won't be able to have fun in for at least six months after I subscribe. And even then I'd better have friends in the right places. If you got in on EVE at the ground floor, it would have been worthwhile, but for the rest of the world who only knew about it because SWG went in the crapper it's an uphill climb with no end in sight.
Well for the first part, for all the Darkfall fanboys, the game is still vaporware and if by some chance it ever gets into beta even you will see that will be quite far from the perfect game. Small design studios have a horrible record when it comes to MMO launches. They just do not have the staff to do a good one. The only one I know that survived was Eve and they were lucky because they had no competition in the genre. It had a lot of problems when it came out.
Back to the news topic. One fact completely escaped the writer in this article. Wow is an EQ clone. Blizzard's dev staff is made of up a bunch of ex-EQers who desire was to make a simpler easier EQ. That is exactly what they did. They enjoyed the raid game so they made Wow raid centric. Pvp in Wow was thrown in as an afterthought. It was designed as a pve game, just like EQ with the rigid class structures.
Vanguard is just Brad's view of improving EQ. Brad's problem was poor planning and execution. Picked a bad engine that they had to make major design changes too and did not have the skills to do it on the team. As usual, he tried to do too much and got stuck in a money crunch and had to release the game before it was ready.
Lotro on the other hand is completely governed by the tolkien world. Turbine had to exercise a lot of license with magic and healing in the game as they were facing some definite limitations because of lore and storyline. I think they did an excellent job of it.
Personally, I would much prefer a game that was more along the lines of a UO or Asheron's Call. Where there are no rigid class lines, you instead have skills to train and have limits on how many you can learn. This eliminates a big bugaboo in Wow clones, the constant need for specific classes such as a healer, as everyone can learn healing skills.
So in my opinion, Wow is not the perfect MMO, it is far from it. Just that no one else has put something out with the ease and simplicity that Wow has, yet.
War is just another Wow clone with rvr, built around another game of board game rules, much like DDO. It is also being done by Mythic or should I say nerf-a-lot.
AoC will be more innovative, but they still are going to be stuck with the rigid class lines so will be trumpeted as a Wow or EQ clone.
I think Pirates is going to be more like an Eve in the 17th century.
There are some games that do break the Wow mold coming up, Chronicles of Spellborn, has at least eliminated healing classes, as everyone can heal. Aion is supposed to be a new look for a MMO, and so is Tabular Rasa. But I do not see a game that comes close to my early joys of the genre in UO and AC1.
nothing should be labbed a WoW clone. because that would be making WoW the very first MMO game which it totally is not.
the very first true MMO is Ultima Online. before that it was the old single player RPGs. the only way for a game to be a clone is if they did what tales of pirates and pirate king online did.
its the same exact game only with a new name and new staff. that is the true mmo cloning at its finest...
to truely shed light on mmos you have to backtrack though everything that is an mmo. which is. lords of the rings.
almost all fantasy mmos are based off the LoTR's books. because everyone likes that fanasy style.
from there we get the basic premis for an mmo at which point you take ideas from other games on UI. and animation and such. so you can draw in the most players possible.
the one thing that angers me most is that everyone views wow as the maker of all. simply do to the uninformed masses that play it.
with WoW more people who never played MMOs started up. but from that more people who have no idea what an mmo is started making posts on mmos. which leads to flame wars with X game is a clone of wow.. even if the game is based on the battle of 1812...
WoW is a clone of Warhammer (table top. as warcraft was a rts based off that game. with a few tweeks)
wow it self is a fantasy clone of other games. if you pick apart anygame completely you will see UI, monsters, skills, towns, animation.. upgrade content ect. that are all taken from other mainstream and less mainstream games.
people dont like point and click so most mmos are going FPS. which could be construde as a clone of FPS... if you want to get all techy about it.
people shouldnt play games because they surmise that X game is a clone of X but because X game looks interesting and might be worth playing even if X game has many items taken from games A-Z
only true clone is a game that is 99,99% copied from another game.
just got to remember taking ideas from other games doesnt mean your game will beat out any other. only that your game play will be understandable and playable by people who played similer games.
Comments
I don't think it's so much that current games are WoW clones. I think it's that the high fantasy genre has been adhering to the same basic formulas in gaming, fiction, videogames, and film for a good 30+ years at this point. Basically, I think the high fantasy genre has become stale simply because it has reused Tolkien as the basis for its lore since the late sixties and tabletop D&D as the basis for its game mechanics and leveling since the seventies.
The races in 99% of high fantasy gaming and fiction have always been a loosely veiled bastardization of Tolkien lore (elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, etc). The leveling and class system in fantasy RPGs has been with us since tabletop D&D. WoW didn't bring anything new to the table. They blatantly ripped off the graphic feel of Warhammer (so much that when I bought WoW, I assumed that it was based on "that tabletop strategy game I used to see in the comic book shop as a kid").
Blizzard streamlined what existed before them and did a great job of it. They created a polished, accessible game, not a daringly original one.
Warcraft still owes Games Workshop, because the Orc Style that Warcraft uses (that being orcs being green and generally looking like that. Yes, Games Workshop invented the green, muscular, not-so-hairy and bulky orc i believe. Maybe not, but at least that specific design that warcraft uses. Tolkiens Orcs weren't green) is licensed by - surprise - Games Workshop. Who made warhammer if you didn't know that.
And BTW. The first Warhammer Online by Climax Online started developement in 2002 i think. WAY before the release of WoW. But it was cancelled and mythic got the job to make it.
The concept of a "WoW clone" needs to be viewed from a broader perspective. It has nothing to do with elves, dwarves, or fantasy, it has to do with the product being offered. Jack in the Box is a McDonalds clone, Pepsi is a Coke clone, Vault is a Mtn Dew clone, etc. WoW came alone to a market that was roughtly 800k (domestic) and quite literally CREATED another 2 million people for that market. The original 800k bounced from MMO to MMO and came to WoW with at least 1 prior MMO's experience, but these additional 2 million folks have only seen a single MMO.
WoW was created, by design, to be the McDonalds of MMO's. No snooty waiters, no reservations, just come in, get food you like, and come again tomorrow. Vanguard started before WoW came out and their press was all about "this is the next generation of MMO, we're going to top the market!" Then WoW hit while they were in development and beat them to death. Suddenly, they changed their tune and started saying "We're not going to be like WoW, we don't need 8 million customers to be successful, we're looking for discriminating customers!"
I'm sorry, but I call BS. Every MMO dev in his right mind wants 8 million customers. 8 million customers literally means INFINITE capital to develop whatever they want. WoW is paying for Starcraft II, Diablo III, etc. These guys are rolling in money, they could live Caligula's life if they wanted, paying midgets to perform hallucinations for them. Everyone that has ever started an MMO wants that kind of success, and any MMO dev (including Eve) that says otherwise is lying to you. That kind of success if every American's fantasy, especially American business owners.
Every MMO that is released from now on, regardless of format and genre, will be compared to WoW, because 75% of the market has only WoW as their prior MMO. And, since WoW set the bar so low, trying to make things harder or less fun will always result in failure. Sure, there will always be mom-and-pop MMO's that spring up next door to McDonalds, and they'll serve dozens of customers a day and call themselves happy, but just like indie film makers who publicly swear they don't want mega success, they secretly wish that they could serve billions.
For example :
1:Warhammer Online, you like many others fail to realize, that the original idea of this game thought up by Games Workshop was stolen by Blizzard and then created into the infamous Warcraft franchise. So really, Blizzard has only been "cloning" the thoughts and ideas of Games Workshop for the past few years, and making a truckload of money from it as well.
2. If you even took some effort to do some research actually, you would find the website, www.Warhammeronline.com
And in that website is a bunch of neat things, like phone blogs and video podcasts, which your site actually emails to subscribers of www.mmorpg.com. You'll realize how many times the developers say and inforce the words, "we are nothing like wow" and you can even see it isn't.
3. The graphics in a game like warhammer might seem to be copied from WoW, but if you take a close look you'll realize its nothing like WoW at all. As a matter of fact, if im not mistaken the dev's at mythic are using the same engine from daoc, but buffed up alot. So who's engine was created first? Mythics.. Who's copying who? No one. Wow clone? Not really... Just because some idiots who can't tell left from right say somthing like, "OMG IT HAS WOW GRAPHIXX IM NOT GOING NEAR THE COPY CLONEZORZ OMGZARZ" doesn't mean its a crap game. And since when is it illegal to have a cartoony graphics engine? Have you ever seen anything from the warhammer or warhammer 40k universe? The models looks exactly like the units created in the MMORPG version, thats why the graphics are like that(so they can have a similarity with the board game).
Its not fair to judge a game, and compare it to something like wow. Its like basically comparing a new Ford to a McLaren or a Bugatti, it just can't size up
And to all those WoW
P.S. Rumor has it Starcraft Online is in the works <Starcraft 2 - TFT anyone?>..
At the same time though, the high fantasy stuff is getting tired. I have no problems with gameplay being similar or anything like that, but why, oh why, does everything have to be based in some tolkien-esqe fantasy world? Give me some horror, sci-fi, or modern crime fighting spy extravaganza. Something that doesn't have leather skullcaps and named swords. Enough is enough.
i dont think so
Plays:
Urbandead
Outbreak
Runescape
WoW
Jail Riot
Unification Wars
I have to say i got the email about this article this morning and I knew i was going to love it.
This statement is really starting to get stupid because i think people are getting the games that came before World of Warcraft.
I played World of Warcraft at release. I just finished playing DAOC for about 2 years and gave WoW a try and i quit my lvl 32 shaman. The game wasn't for me. I didn't feel like I had to go comparing the game to other games, or did i feel like i had to go post around and let everyone know why I didnt like it. I actually thought the game was kind of interesting, but it just got boaring to me with all the quest and what not.
What is cloning? Because WoW has mounts, which by the way they're not evene close to being the first game to impliment mounts, nobody else is able to have mounts?
Because the lore-master is similar to a wizard, YOU CALL THAT CLONING? last time i checked a wizard is a damn wizard.... lol how different can you make them? Almost every MMO has a wizard type class.... again not the first to try this one out.
The list goes on, but i just thought those two were one of the most rediculous pieces for your wall of information there author. I guess I thought that most of the community on these forums were trying to end this "OMG WOW CLONE OMG OMG OMG" stuff. This just adds fuel to the fire, and the more i see people support the "WOW CLONE" theory the more this immature this community looks because the facts are that WOW had to get it's ideas from somewhere too. We need to think that MMORPG IS ALL THE SAME GENRE of games. Originality is great, dont get me wrong, but if it's in the same genre, how far can you really branch off?
ihave played a lot of games in the mmorpgheaven
, but i never played WoW.... :=)
the reason: i read only the flame on the forums about griefing on the battlefield for the honourpoints , and so on...
a colleague is playing Wow, he sterted later playing , as I did in Vanguard, his Char is much higher then mine , thats another reason not to play Wow. It is to easy...
Another thing is , to compare games is , same to compare soccerteams, they all play soccer, but who has intent it ?
) The genre of Fantasy games, like Wow, EQ, Vanguard , or , or , or doesnt depend on one developer.Each game has his own advantages and mistakes, thats true. So I see each game as its own, and never compare it to anaother, sometimes a game i played , it is in my mind a pearl i discovered, but this is a subjective meaning....
All in all i think this discussion isnt worth.
No harm meant
)
greetings
No more fantasy MMOs please! They are not trendy.
Think of something more original!
Fantasy is not a mainstream interest. For example, in bookshops fantasy books are placed in a small section at the back (in the same way that porn in newsagents is located on the top shelf!)
You guys have got to get off the elves and dwarves crap, it's not about the content. If it is, then all fantasy are LOTR clones, and Eve is a clone of Star Wars, or better yet, 2001. There, all cloning accounted for.
As for graphics, there are only so many ways to design an avatar before they all essentially start to look alike. Tolkein established what elves and dwarves looked like, and artists have been rendering them, in one form or another, for years. Apart from varying degrees of stylization or cartooniness, they all look essentially the same.
What the "clone" discussion is about is the implementation. Take out the fantasy elements, the races, and the genre, and what's left? An extremely easy-to-play social game. Eve is hard, Vanguard was hard, LOTRO is hard, compared to WoW. This new generation of MMO players don't want hard, they want fun.
For example, a joke I always say about Vanguard from a quote by one of the devs, "Vanguard is for people who like corpse runs!" Who enjoys corpse runs? Or death debt? Or losing exps? Or losing hard-earned loot? For that matter, who decided "anything worth having should be very hard"? This Diku mentality of anything worth having should require 100's of players to get is riduclous, IMHO. WoW's raiding is only visible to about 5% of the total population, the rest of the game is designed (in theory) for smaller encounters, which appeals more to the masses.
typical WoW player ... an idiot. this is why i have always said, if you play WoW and you Enjoy WoW ... you're opinions should be null and void on any other MMO. Heck you should even be banned from other MMOs and be an outcast of normal MMO society.
only reason WoW is so popular is because it caters to the lowest common denominator. If the game was any easier the game would play itself while you watched.
<p align=center><a target=_blank href=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm><img border=0 src=http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/20.jpg></a></p>;
Typical hardcore elitist snob who has no understanding of the market and only see's what's right in front of his nose.
MMO's are a business, and in the US, the purpose of a business is to make money. The business that makes the most money wins the market. This isn't rocket science, and since 100's of MMO's a year fail, often before they're even released, obviously the system works.
There is no need to bash an MMO just because you don't like it, but WoW is "the best" in the only sense that matters, the only objective sense that counts...it has the most customers and makes the most money. If it sucked, no one would play it, and it would go away, survival of the fittest.
But no, because you don't play it, you have to bash it, which makes you completely useless to discuss anything else because you can't see beyond the tip of your nose. Go back to Vanguard and leave the debate to the grown ups, please.
FYI, LOTRO was my 30th MMO, I've been playing them for over 15 years, and WoW was one of the MMO's I played. Personally, I enjoy CoH more, and if Sony had not chased me from SWG by ruining it, I'd still be playing it today.
*laugh* I'd never heard of this game and just checked out the current screenshots. It looks like EQ1 at best.
Next gen? Bahahaha, 10 years ago maybe.
Warhammer is going to be the next big thing. AoC will fall into obscurity for a lot of reasons and one of them being you need vista to run DX10.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
The MMOG business needs to prove that something else than Tolkien/D&D style fantasy can be successful, PvP focus or not.
No, that would be EVE Online and Sword of the New World.
Both games I like actually. - But, deviating from my response to the quoting...
The fact of the matter is - its disgusting how people have become regarding game development. RPG's have always been a very diverse breed of game and tacking on MMO to it has made it even more-so. People no longer understand that every game genre follows basic developmental guidelines... and when you change those guidelines, you usually end up with a totally new genre of game, or perhaps a refined sub-genre. To be a so called 'WoW Clone' - all you have to do is have a third person MMORPG - based on what appears to be the complaint. But...
I remember watching the evolution of First Person Shooters and every time some ground breaking feature was introduced it became a -STANDARD-. When an FPS was released without that standard, people were relatively annoyed. Heretic and Hexen introduced spells - which was interesting. But then Duke Nukem came along and introduced Alt-Fire. Unreal had no problem using alt-fire. However, ID continued to make Quake games without an alt-fire component. Even if its aiming down the barrel of the gun, zooming in a sniper rifle, or -something- the idea of a jump/run/shoot FPS is terrible. Unless, of course, we're talking about Serious Sam or Painkiller which uses horde tactics - then its okay... because then its like classic Gauntlet in 3D. But even that gets repeatative.
Do you want to continue? Are there people who haven't caught onto the point yet? Then look at 2D fighting games. Some people think fatalities should be in every game (or used to). Some people think combos should be in every game. Most people don't even think 2D fighting games should exist anymore - and that they should all go 3D like Tekken/Soul Caliber/Virtual Fighter. But the fact of the matter is... this genre built upon the same concepts and 'refined' themselves to extraordinary levels.
So what's the problem? We're dealing with an MMO. A relatively new gaming engine/genre/concept/what-have-you. Just like we're dealing with a bunch of new gamers who have no clue... as well as an internet to hide their age and ignorance. (Of course, grammar and spelling is sometimes a good guage of one's cognative ability...) -
I, personally, get very angry when I see games that dont' have WoW's features. Why? Because WoW had set a new standard of quality - regardless of what anyone thinks, Blizzard works their butt off. When I play LotR:O I complain about character creation, lack of different armor textures, and the relatively small number of starting zones. When I play Vanguard, I complain about the ugly character designs - the crappy animations, the bad voice acting, and the ugly armor. When I play Everquest 2 I only really have a problem with the boring zones - lack of diverse starting zones - and the difficulty in finding low level characters.
I could go on and on... most are admittedly personal preferences. But really - Blizzard has just taken every element that's already been in MMO's and refined them. People call this 'easy mode' - the ease and user friendly interface. People call this 'easy mode' - the smooth progression ladder. People complain that the characters are ugly when - frankly - I could enjoy a cartoon using Warcraft's character models a lot more than something using any other game's models. Yes, its cartoony, but I can also be a total dork and try hundreds upon hundreds of 'outfits' in Wow, thanks to all the different textures they have for armor.
Anyways... this tangent has gone on long enough. But you have to ask yourself - do you play MMO's to beat the crap out of players, or to 'build' a character idea from the ground up? That's my problem. Once a game has -revealed- its ineptness to develope a character, graphically -and- statistically, I give it the boot. It doesn't matter if the game is a clone or not.
Once you realize: This is as cool as this game is going to get... - you leave.
... well, until the next major patch at least.
I hope you are just trying to be funny, because either that or you haven't been in a book store before. Fantasy/sci fi section is one of the biggest sections in book stores, and usually right in the middle. Barnes and Noble even have their fantasy section on the main isle of their stores. If you ever traded books in, you'd also know that fantasy books are worth more then any other books for trade in.
So either you are a freaking moron, or trying to be funny and failed miserably. Furthermore fantasy games for any system are some of the best selling games around. Even old school nes fantasy games are still worth like $20-$30 at a used game store. The fantasy game market is huge and just for the simple fact that you are a member of a mmorpg site says as much, because in case you forgot RPG is role playing game, which if i'm not mistaken rpg originated with D&D paper games. Which omg is fantasy.'
The only games that I have found to earn the dub clone, are those chinese mmo's that are basically just carbon copies. Everything about them is the same except their maps. They don't even change up the combat system.
The clone syndrome has nothing to do with elves and orcs or WoW's UI. It has everything to do with the basic structure of MMOs that a lot of people (around here included) have just come to take as a requirement for the genre. When I see a new MMO come out that has a heavy PvE emphasis, restricted deathmatch style PvP, monster killing/xp based/gear based advancement and canned "Get 10 rat tail" quests, I label it a WoW clone. It's shorthand for saying, "This game is taking a genre with nearly limitless potential and repeating gameplay that has been in effect since the early days of MUDS."
It's the gameplay that's being cloned, not the setting or UI. I know a lot of people have an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality when it comes to this topic, but to me, it is broken. It's fun on a very rudimentary level, highly repetitive, and borders on work most of the time. Do I want games to include WoW"s level of polish and UI enhancements? Surely. Do I want them to repeat the exact same gameplay structure I've been seeing since the early 1980s? No thanks, I've had enough of that.
I think that's what this article is talking about, and on that level, yes, Lord of the Rings, Vanguard and Warhammer are all clones of WoW. It's the difference between an FPS like Prey being called a Doom/Quake clone, as opposed to Half Life 2 or Bioshock. The latter are games which use the base genre, but innovate like crazy to create a very new experience in that space. The former, while not direct "clones" (Hey! Prey plays with gravity!) still keeps their gameplay innovations very conservative, and therefore deserves being called a clone.
If a clone of me was made with red hair, a leather jacket, liked chocolate ice cream and had a moustache (none of which I have), he's still a clone.
No, that would be EVE Online and Sword of the New World.
Both games I like actually. - But, deviating from my response to the quoting...
The fact of the matter is - its disgusting how people have become regarding game development. RPG's have always been a very diverse breed of game and tacking on MMO to it has made it even more-so. People no longer understand that every game genre follows basic developmental guidelines... and when you change those guidelines, you usually end up with a totally new genre of game, or perhaps a refined sub-genre. To be a so called 'WoW Clone' - all you have to do is have a third person MMORPG - based on what appears to be the complaint. But...
I remember watching the evolution of First Person Shooters and every time some ground breaking feature was introduced it became a -STANDARD-. When an FPS was released without that standard, people were relatively annoyed. Heretic and Hexen introduced spells - which was interesting. But then Duke Nukem came along and introduced Alt-Fire. Unreal had no problem using alt-fire. However, ID continued to make Quake games without an alt-fire component. Even if its aiming down the barrel of the gun, zooming in a sniper rifle, or -something- the idea of a jump/run/shoot FPS is terrible. Unless, of course, we're talking about Serious Sam or Painkiller which uses horde tactics - then its okay... because then its like classic Gauntlet in 3D. But even that gets repeatative.
Do you want to continue? Are there people who haven't caught onto the point yet? Then look at 2D fighting games. Some people think fatalities should be in every game (or used to). Some people think combos should be in every game. Most people don't even think 2D fighting games should exist anymore - and that they should all go 3D like Tekken/Soul Caliber/Virtual Fighter. But the fact of the matter is... this genre built upon the same concepts and 'refined' themselves to extraordinary levels.
So what's the problem? We're dealing with an MMO. A relatively new gaming engine/genre/concept/what-have-you. Just like we're dealing with a bunch of new gamers who have no clue... as well as an internet to hide their age and ignorance. (Of course, grammar and spelling is sometimes a good guage of one's cognative ability...) -
I, personally, get very angry when I see games that dont' have WoW's features. Why? Because WoW had set a new standard of quality - regardless of what anyone thinks, Blizzard works their butt off. When I play LotR:O I complain about character creation, lack of different armor textures, and the relatively small number of starting zones. When I play Vanguard, I complain about the ugly character designs - the crappy animations, the bad voice acting, and the ugly armor. When I play Everquest 2 I only really have a problem with the boring zones - lack of diverse starting zones - and the difficulty in finding low level characters.
I could go on and on... most are admittedly personal preferences. But really - Blizzard has just taken every element that's already been in MMO's and refined them. People call this 'easy mode' - the ease and user friendly interface. People call this 'easy mode' - the smooth progression ladder. People complain that the characters are ugly when - frankly - I could enjoy a cartoon using Warcraft's character models a lot more than something using any other game's models. Yes, its cartoony, but I can also be a total dork and try hundreds upon hundreds of 'outfits' in Wow, thanks to all the different textures they have for armor.
Anyways... this tangent has gone on long enough. But you have to ask yourself - do you play MMO's to beat the crap out of players, or to 'build' a character idea from the ground up? That's my problem. Once a game has -revealed- its ineptness to develope a character, graphically -and- statistically, I give it the boot. It doesn't matter if the game is a clone or not.
Once you realize: This is as cool as this game is going to get... - you leave.
... well, until the next major patch at least.
so basically you are a girl who wants to be able to change your outfit as often as possible and look pretty, got ya *rolls eyes*
Yeah I'm about sick of all of the WoW bashing. Most people want to be thought of as rebels so they naturally deride whatever is successful and popular. Well I've played every mmo out there, and I'm here to tell you that WoW is the only one that delivers what it promises.
And forget EVE. I have no interest in paying for a game that I won't be able to have fun in for at least six months after I subscribe. And even then I'd better have friends in the right places. If you got in on EVE at the ground floor, it would have been worthwhile, but for the rest of the world who only knew about it because SWG went in the crapper it's an uphill climb with no end in sight.
Well for the first part, for all the Darkfall fanboys, the game is still vaporware and if by some chance it ever gets into beta even you will see that will be quite far from the perfect game. Small design studios have a horrible record when it comes to MMO launches. They just do not have the staff to do a good one. The only one I know that survived was Eve and they were lucky because they had no competition in the genre. It had a lot of problems when it came out.
Back to the news topic. One fact completely escaped the writer in this article. Wow is an EQ clone. Blizzard's dev staff is made of up a bunch of ex-EQers who desire was to make a simpler easier EQ. That is exactly what they did. They enjoyed the raid game so they made Wow raid centric. Pvp in Wow was thrown in as an afterthought. It was designed as a pve game, just like EQ with the rigid class structures.
Vanguard is just Brad's view of improving EQ. Brad's problem was poor planning and execution. Picked a bad engine that they had to make major design changes too and did not have the skills to do it on the team. As usual, he tried to do too much and got stuck in a money crunch and had to release the game before it was ready.
Lotro on the other hand is completely governed by the tolkien world. Turbine had to exercise a lot of license with magic and healing in the game as they were facing some definite limitations because of lore and storyline. I think they did an excellent job of it.
Personally, I would much prefer a game that was more along the lines of a UO or Asheron's Call. Where there are no rigid class lines, you instead have skills to train and have limits on how many you can learn. This eliminates a big bugaboo in Wow clones, the constant need for specific classes such as a healer, as everyone can learn healing skills.
So in my opinion, Wow is not the perfect MMO, it is far from it. Just that no one else has put something out with the ease and simplicity that Wow has, yet.
War is just another Wow clone with rvr, built around another game of board game rules, much like DDO. It is also being done by Mythic or should I say nerf-a-lot.
AoC will be more innovative, but they still are going to be stuck with the rigid class lines so will be trumpeted as a Wow or EQ clone.
I think Pirates is going to be more like an Eve in the 17th century.
There are some games that do break the Wow mold coming up, Chronicles of Spellborn, has at least eliminated healing classes, as everyone can heal. Aion is supposed to be a new look for a MMO, and so is Tabular Rasa. But I do not see a game that comes close to my early joys of the genre in UO and AC1.
nothing should be labbed a WoW clone. because that would be making WoW the very first MMO game which it totally is not.
the very first true MMO is Ultima Online. before that it was the old single player RPGs. the only way for a game to be a clone is if they did what tales of pirates and pirate king online did.
its the same exact game only with a new name and new staff. that is the true mmo cloning at its finest...
to truely shed light on mmos you have to backtrack though everything that is an mmo. which is. lords of the rings.
almost all fantasy mmos are based off the LoTR's books. because everyone likes that fanasy style.
from there we get the basic premis for an mmo at which point you take ideas from other games on UI. and animation and such. so you can draw in the most players possible.
the one thing that angers me most is that everyone views wow as the maker of all. simply do to the uninformed masses that play it.
with WoW more people who never played MMOs started up. but from that more people who have no idea what an mmo is started making posts on mmos. which leads to flame wars with X game is a clone of wow.. even if the game is based on the battle of 1812...
WoW is a clone of Warhammer (table top. as warcraft was a rts based off that game. with a few tweeks)
wow it self is a fantasy clone of other games. if you pick apart anygame completely you will see UI, monsters, skills, towns, animation.. upgrade content ect. that are all taken from other mainstream and less mainstream games.
people dont like point and click so most mmos are going FPS. which could be construde as a clone of FPS... if you want to get all techy about it.
people shouldnt play games because they surmise that X game is a clone of X but because X game looks interesting and might be worth playing even if X game has many items taken from games A-Z
only true clone is a game that is 99,99% copied from another game.
just got to remember taking ideas from other games doesnt mean your game will beat out any other. only that your game play will be understandable and playable by people who played similer games.