Wow made it easily accessable to all by having a low difficulty curve, low system requirements, fast leveling system compared to previous mmos. Wow clones usually fail as they do not innovate enough or have a strong reason for players to stay and play. The original Wow did many things right even in building virtual relationships and having unique memorable characters. Even a trial version of wow is better than over 90% of the shovelware mmos out there right now.
First they have to get the world done right and have characters you will actually remember 5 minutes after you finish a quest. A story driven game is always good and pushes you forward vs grind x items for y hours to get z rewards especially if it is manditory quest. Upgrading low level items to your character level should always be an option. Ex you are helping a level 10 player, it drops a epic item for your class or a general weapon you use, but your ally will not. You should definitely be able to harvest and upgrade that somehow to your 50 either that are somehow take the a stat/stats off the item to attach to another.
Single player end game vs grouping end games. Similar items should drop for both, but for huge groups going out just to fight there should be individual rewards + group rewards for most healing/damage dealt/taken/most hits per second/ most reduced stats/damage. For many players visual upgrades to items are fine even with no stats.
Wow clones that do not offer any reason to play with no defining features or benefits are not clones they are just shovelware and needs to be tossed out with the rest of the garbage.
Let's be fair here. If I wanted to play a WoW clone, I'd play WoW. Themepark aside, I don't want a tongue in cheek fantasy game with lackluster combat, pointless quests, and a character customization that is unimaginative. Far too many games go the route of trying to be a "WoW Clone" with minimal innovation. It doesn't matter what setting you put it in or what storyline you give it. A WoW clone is still a cheap knockoff.
What gets people into the game and initially interested is the mechanics of the game. The story, or something truly different. It isn't the endgame. Sure, endgame keeps people playing, but if the road to the endgame is boring; then players won't even stay to SEE the endgame. That is where devs fall short. In the process of being like WoW, they become too WoW-like.
For a themepark game, WoW is solid. They took something and ran with it. They innovate little, but improve greatly on other ideas. That is what made WoW good for a lot of people. The sooner other devs realize that if they want to succeed, they need to improve on the genre, the quicker we can end these "WoW Clone" dicussions and start talking about this is an "Elder Scrolls Clone" or "Wildstar clone" (as examples).
It will happen. First there was the EQ Clone, then came the WoW Clone.
Raquelis in various games Played: Everything Playing: Nioh 2, Civ6 Wants: The World Anticipating:Everquest NextCrowfall, Pantheon, Elden Ring
Originally posted by Tierless A fairly good launch, a pretty clean game and fluid combat. Beyond that WOW has done far more harm than good and clones of it have failed to improve those positive things rendering them plain worthless aka FTP
Harm? To what? What has WoW harmed?
Seems to me, they made a good game. Blizzard didn't release all those lesser quality games.
Ok ill say it like its a bad thing: Wowclones suck.
World of Warcraft is a game that is Ten years old. Its a linear quest model game, using out dated graphics, and now targeting he 12 year old age group like Chinese Developers. ... Does this sound like something to be proud of? We have a steadily declining population in World of Warcraft since the Wrath of the Lich King hit about its 9th month or so. The population has been in a down ill slide since wrath. Neither Cataclysm nor Mist of Pandaria picked the numbers up.
With todays programing tech, the work in AI, and NPC behaviors. there should be a mountain of games pushing the envelope on who makes the next big thing.. and only one I know of is even trying...
If I want to play something with WoW's features and WoW's level of polish, I'd play WoW. Mechanical/progression issues in the game aside, if you can't deliver "WoW, but better," then you better be introducing your own quality, revolutionary features. That is why WoW clones are bad ... because everybody is lacking the ability to pull off a better WoW, whether it is because of lack of money, talent, or understanding of what made WoW memorable for millions of players.
But even more than that, the landscape is constantly changing, WoW continues to retain many players for social aspects and the struggle humans have with cutting their losses every bit as much as its gameplay IMO. Making a WoW clone today is trying to force a decade-old model on today's players. Technology and the gaming community evolve. I'm the first person who will acknowledge that there will always be a place for throwback type of games, but we don't need a market full of them.
I haven't played very much UO or WoW, but in my small experience the two are nothing alike really. I can't see how WoW could have built on ideas in UO.
Sure "WoW clone" is a compliment if you like WoW, or judge games purely on their success, but personally I do neither. And its not so much an insult as a description of a genre of mmorpg's. Since a huge proportion of mmorpg's have near identicle gameplay to WoW, such a term is useful to those who did not enjoy WoW.
The term mmorpg has become a dirty word that some developers avoid to escape wrong assumptions being made about their games. to the vast majority who don't play many mmo's the term mmorpg literally means "WoW with different graphics".
Yes very much this. Calling a game a wow clone very concisely sums up how the game is going to be played. In general it's going to have quest hubs, instanced dungeons, level-based zones, gear grinds, etc. Sure each game will have some inconsequential unique mechanic that they throw in so they have something to talk about in interviews, but the features I listed are what is going to dictate how you're playing that game.
As for the term being an insult: some people do, others don't. If people use it as an insult, it's because they don't like wow or at least don't like the games that are trying to ride on wow's coat tails. I'm not really sure what the problem is or where the confusion is coming from. Is being called a wow clone an insult? Not if you like wow enough to play a game that is extremely similar but probably with a different skin/graphics and almost definitely less content.
I personally think MMOs shouldn't be all about the end game, "don't get me wrong" this doesn't mean there should be less of a End Game, just I feel there should be more to do before the
End Game, from lvls 1-?? what ever is max lvl. I would love to see slower progression and mid game raids and other content that would add lore to the story of the game, and progression to max lvl.
but I have a feeling we will not see this happen, everyone is too involved in the idea that faster is better, so they need to rush to end game in 24 hours of gaming. and completely miss the mid part of the game, if there was one.
Well I do not see any problem using some "clone" of Porshe, Mercedes, Bmw, ... or other top quality maker as long as quality of "clone" is acceptable. :-) For the rest I can only understand as compliment being Wow clone or Porshe clone or Mercedes clone .... :-)
while i hate word clone because everything is clone of something that was previously already there. id say trying to make wow with new coating is not a bad thing. same with bicycles they always the same but the looks mainly differs. so dont try to invent wow again with new innovative already doomed ideas just make wow with new candy.
Blizzard is good at refactoring content and building upon it (I won't say they build better things out of everything, as they can spend more time trying to fix half baked ideas -- arenas come to mind, as they claim it's one of their biggest mistakes they made, but each patch cycle they continue to add content to not only PvP [again, which they claim isn't the focus of the game]? Arenas. -_-).
In truth Blizzard is like Microsoft. They make the largest MMO and distribute it through a vast network of retailers. But is the product the best? No. They have the marketing appeal, and will blanket the shelves with boxes; have fancy very expensive commercials with celebs and actors; and try to appeal to that shooter 15 to 21 year-old market, with class mechanics that really don't belong in a MMORPG as it interferes with the RPG development (especially when fighting is more important than lore and roleplaying!). Before the staff cuts, there was a lore dev that would work with the community...she was laid off with the other 600+ employees. But Lore, the now dev, and all got hired, as they concentrate on the fighting in raids.
RPG game but with spotty ingame lore, and roleplaying is a second thought (maybe because of the bad PR about Moon Guard's Goldshire)? A RPG is a roleplaying game, not a hack and slash eSport dexterity matching system.
I came to WoW not due to ads or boxes seen on the shelves, but because of the Holy paladin sub-class. My interest in that sub-class was due to all the off-healing my EQII paladin was doing (if I heal that much might as heal full time, deal), and was flat burned out on TSO shard runs in EQII. Blizzard as a company I didn't follow or even played their games (Warcraft wasn't appealing to me, hack/slash games isn't D&D style character building that I love. Games like Morrowind, or even my favorite Deus Ex, is what excites me). But I gave WoW a shot, and despite it's godawful community (it is the worst in gaming, FPS games have nicer people!) I stick around to character develop my Holy paladin, it's the only thing in WoW that's appealing to me now since these class/talent/mechanics changes. Tradeskilling is boring. Loot RNG system is borked (19 weeks of raiding to finally see a shield of the most popular healer in WotLK drop, yeah, borked beyond belief). And an auction system that really doesn't support selling efficiently, makes the appeal of WoW not for the whole package, but very selective parts you "make do" with.
It's a "cobbled" game of what you can get out of it to have fun, but a fantastic game (like Morrowind and Deus Ex were/are, not by a long shot -- because in their effort to themepark the game to please everyone [or selectively, like raiding and arenas, Blizzard is notorious in flip flopping on their design goals] they lost the very meaning of the term, MMORPG. Each expansion we have even less stats to mess with, turning the game to eventually a hack and slash kiddie game with little depth, less character development and even less presence in the game itself (I don't want to be Thrall's baby sitter because Chris Metzen is his voice actor; or having Blizzard's heroes kill the main villain and being but a pawn in the world itself).
No to that type of cloning. Other games can borrow aspects of WoW that's universally appealing in the genre and that's fine, but don't copy what we already have, then insult us their world is "new". Improve on what is there as WoW isn't "the best", it's simply the most popular due to marketing (looking for a Holy paladin style sub-class that can heal, not watch GCDs or be permastunned for an expansion, and good in ONE thing no other classes can outdo, not this Jack of all trades master of none gameplay that favors FoTM development [which is shoddy class design...yes, shoddy]).
I haven't played very much UO or WoW, but in my small experience the two are nothing alike really. I can't see how WoW could have built on ideas in UO.
Sure "WoW clone" is a compliment if you like WoW, or judge games purely on their success, but personally I do neither. And its not so much an insult as a description of a genre of mmorpg's. Since a huge proportion of mmorpg's have near identicle gameplay to WoW, such a term is useful to those who did not enjoy WoW.
The term mmorpg has become a dirty word that some developers avoid to escape wrong assumptions being made about their games. to the vast majority who don't play many mmo's the term mmorpg literally means "WoW with different graphics".
Yes very much this. Calling a game a wow clone very concisely sums up how the game is going to be played. In general it's going to have quest hubs, instanced dungeons, level-based zones, gear grinds, etc. Sure each game will have some inconsequential unique mechanic that they throw in so they have something to talk about in interviews, but the features I listed are what is going to dictate how you're playing that game.
As for the term being an insult: some people do, others don't. If people use it as an insult, it's because they don't like wow or at least don't like the games that are trying to ride on wow's coat tails. I'm not really sure what the problem is or where the confusion is coming from. Is being called a wow clone an insult? Not if you like wow enough to play a game that is extremely similar but probably with a different skin/graphics and almost definitely less content.
The thing is while WoW has tons of stuff in it, when you look at it from the amount of play time offered WoW doesn't offer that much more than anyone else. All of the old content has been sped up so fast that it won't keep you busy very long, and old content is done once you blow past it. So add up time played until you hit max with any new game and they aren't that far apart, and the new game actually may even have more. With the free 90 it will offer even less play time.
As far as calling game WoW clones goes, most of the things people associate with WoW aren't WoW inventions. They took the formula and made it accessible but they didn't add anything really new except maybe quest hubs, and I am not entirely sure WoW was the first game to have them. But I suppose even though WoW wasn't the first they are the biggest so the mistake is understandable.
Originally posted by MrG8 It is a bad thing... because when I feel a game is a wow-clone I feel like "Bah, why dont game-developers try to come up with something new?
they have been trying with failure so best to stick with the pony.
HAHA! The last time I posted an article EXACTLY like this, MMORPG.COM removed it and banned by account (my 5th account here) because they considered this kind of article "Negative that leads to trolling"....Now look at the hypocrites. Posting it on their main feed page. This is by far the most out of touch, edited, and controlled website around. What a joke.
Any ways, back the subject at hand...WOW. WoW set only 1 standard. EASY MODE. Not allot of mmorpgs were doing that. MMORPGS wanted grouping to be done very early. Final Fantasy, Everquest, etc.. Get that group early or die. It was survival mode in most fantasy lands. WoW took that and let us enjoy solo player online rpg with the chance to interact for groups or group content. RAIDS being the only real thing any one would ever want to get together for.
Enter consol gamers, moms, dads, and any one that could read and follow point and click instructions. Guilds, and real life relationships were made as all other elements fall in place easy (chat rooms, video sessions, etc..) I have allot of friends today thanks to WoW...oddly, none of us play WoW any more...
Like before, the system evolves. The new crowd and direction of wow has changed. Gone are those mid 20 getting older gamers trying something new, enjoying it, meeting up with friends, then quitting as our children took our credit cards and ran their own guilds. That and Blizzard catered to getting the kids to use the credit card more, and less to the veteran feed back. Hence the game breaking expansions and RIP Vanilla.
Of course other games will want to suck in the void of leaving players. They also know half of the people jumping ship are addicts and trying to pump in any excuse of a game. I know so many people that say "I quit wow, my time with kids and wife was absent". They take like 3 month stop, try to get social IRL again, then fall on an excuse title: "Look honey it is Star Wars Online, not wow" *Face palm* SAME THING! A EASY mode game playing on your sentiments of WoW mmorpg elements to get you to swipe your credit card. The funny thing, these addicts spend the same time on all these other "clones", but just can't get back into wow. I think it is the psychological shame knowing they are all playing clones as an excuse to play the real thing. It is like your blonde hair wife divorcing you and all you do is date blondes to try and get that old feel back, but all the new girls are just excuses and never fill the gap.
Smart on the market end. Sad on the consumer end. And difficult to change, because, really, who is man enough to turn the EASY mode off? To many kids with credit cards. I have no problem with easy mode. I just am not liking wows graphics any more. To cartoon like. I like more blood. I like interactive story. I like an mmorpg geared for adult players, not one bending and conforming to US child consumers. (Blizzard China even takes out the bones in the zombies because it is against their beliefs...US covers up boobs in korean games, etc..)..
Thankfully, DayZ is out, and I will force you all Bananas.
... WoW didn't do it better, that's the problem. Most of the games out haven't done it better. Everquest when it first came out, before Luclin was a hard, challenging game that didn't baby people. You want to take on a dragon? Fine by us, but if you die, be to lose everything as well as experience.
When WoW came out, they cloned everything from Everquest but the challenge. They copy/pasted spell and skill discriptions and effects. There is a reason people dislike it.
While what they did is sad and pathetic as well as completely unorigionial, you cannot fault them for it. They marketed well and pulled in the people because of how easy it was to get into and be good at.
But no games (with the possible exception of Star Citizen) are bringing a true challenge to the gamer. They are affraid of peoples reactions to it. They are scared that people will quit or give their game a bad review if you can't get to to max level and be a bad ass in a days time.
It has gotten to the point where if you see a fantasy style MMO on the horizon you automatically jump to the conclusion it is a clone.
some gamers call any themepark a wow clone -- as if themepark and WOW mean the same thing
Exactly. I would only call a game a 'WOW clone' if it copied the unique properties that Blizzard introduced to the MMORPG genre and nothing else. Maybe gear sets or battlegrounds?
WOW contains pretty much all the proven MMORPG elements up to that point, just packaged and delivered extremely well.
World of Warcraft has been great for the genre of MMO's, but at the same time is has stagnated the innovation of them.
Its casual appeal has opened up the MMO to the casual gamer, made them easy to play and understand. Yet other companies see their success and try to cash in on it by copying the game style with just different names and textures instead of using the World of Warcraft models and textures.
Strip all recent MMO's down to the bare bones and they all look the same.
Quests to level up a class.
Talent trees.
Quest hubs in areas where players of your level play.
TAB targeting
Auction Houses
Raids
Instanced dungeons
No modern MMO that has been released has even tried to break away from this formula until recent years. The first one to break this was The Secret World with their skill system and the way they populated their world with missions. Gone were the kill XX amount and return missions now we had riddles and puzzle missions to complete. I really enjoyed this game and urge anyone yet to play to try it. Somethings within it are still like WoW because its just the way things work on the PC, but the new ideas Funcom had are great.
Then you have Eve Online its a complete opposite of WoW and it fills that niche in the market that WoW just can not do. CCP do a brilliant job with the game and the community.
So for the past decade the mmo game has sat in a mire of stagnation with each and every release looking and feeling the same as WoW. This is not Blizzards fault though, its the developers who are after that piece of pie that Blizzard has.
Moving onto 2014 and the MMO's to be released. We are now seeing a shift in design away from WoW, with SWTOR being the biggest failure in MMO's to date because of the stale game play they employed from WoW. Yes SWTOR is just WoW in space.
We see games like TESO , Repopulation, Nether, Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen starting to enter the arena of the MMO. All trying to break away from the WoW formula to some extent they feel and look fresh.
TESO takes ideas from Funcoms TSW with the skill system which I think is great and places it in their world of The Elder Scrolls. With the RvR from DAoC something the mmo genre has not seen since DAoC went live. This in its self will fill a huge hole left in the MMO market.
Repopulation has taken the crafting system from SWG and the skills system from UO and placed it in their own world. I am looking forward to seeing more from these people and hope their game does well because something like this is sorely needed in the genre.
Nether if you like your survival horror first person shooter take a look at this. I am rubbish at FPS games so I wont play it but looking from the outside I like the idea behind it and sets the atmosphere well.
Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen two games from two of the biggest power houses in yesterdays gaming era. David Braden and Chris Roberts. Both from Kick Starter like Repopulation and both space sims with a organic economy and FPS space flight. Something the PC gamer has been without since Freelancer because companies like EA have said that the space sim is dead and that PC gaming is dead. For information Star Citizen broke the $36 million mark over christmas.
I look forward to CCP's development on World of Darkness and will keep a eye on it as I am a fan of the world they are putting it in. CCP is not afraid of innovation when it comes to games and will try new things in them. This is the one that will shake the very foundations of the MMO genre when it is released.
Here's a question: Do you get involved in a new game world or universe because of the creatures, lore and game world? Or are you more interested in new mechanics, game systems and clever approaches?
It's the same argument with tabletop RPGs. [...]
I really like this concept, but do I understand it correctly, thinking that WoW[-clone]-fans would fit in the first group? It seems that way to me, because then it would explain the difference between PvE-gamers, who would be all about immersion, personal character development and maybe community, and the fans of games like Dark Ages of Camelot, Warhammer Online, those awaiting Camelot Unchained, or, as in my case, Champions of Regnum, who focus on sieging successfully, tactical play and community. [Feel free to include GW2 to this. I won't, because sh*t.] [I stated community twice, because I wanted to summarise their purposes for playing as precisely as possible, and this is simply a big part for any group of MMORPG-players - although not for every indivual player. :§]
Now, if I have understood correctly, which category you would put the WoW-target-/fangroup in, that would still not suffice to describe who understands "WoW-clone" as a compliment, and who does not.
There are players who have come very annoyed with the fighting-systems of MMOs based on hotbar-skills, or tab-targetting. Some people can not enjoy a game that does not base economy singularly on players. Others only feel "immersed" into their world, if they do not play from rthe view of first person. Neither of these desires is a direct part of one's preferrence for immersion, or game mechanics.
I have to conclude that while I liked your description, the category of "Lore/Immersion-Player vs Tactical Player" only works aside from many other systems that players care for, and you can not really judge by it, what the term "WoW-clone" means to someone. However, by the same line of arguments, I find it quite proven that amount of people who do not [any longer, maybe?] wish to play games that follow the principles of WoW: With all the PvP-players, plus anyone who is simply put off by old mechanics, or lack of player-based content, there has to be a great potential in anything that manages to unite those who oppose WoW.
The problem is that they are not WoW clones, if they were they would have the quality of WoW. Instead we have MMOs mostly built on the cheap that use the same game design as WoW.
So there are two issues, firstly we have nearly all MMOs made only one way and secondly they are poorly made.
Just ask fans if their game is a WoW-clone. Many times the answer is a resounding no, even if the features of the game are very similar to WoW. It doesn't sound like a compliment to me.
worse
common trash talk i hear in other games is "go back to WOW"
I did go back to WOW and I am enjoying the heck out of Timeless Isle.
Timeless Isle is, to me, one of the reasons that Blizzard does end game best. Epics drop everywhere. I have almost all my 7 level 90 toons in epic gear. Yet, these epics are still 40-70 points below raider gear. That is the genius of Blizzard. You give the welfare epics to please the masses but the best gear is found in the high level pvp and hardest dungeons. WOWclone critics point to welfare epics as a bad thing yet I believe it is one of the reasons that WOW lives on. I quit SWTOR after I started playing the Timeless Isle. Yup, I am definitely a WOW baby.
WOWclone is intended as an insult but I have played lots of games since WOW and keep returning. Nearly every AAA MMO released since WOW has some form of innovation yet the WOWclone critics don't care. If there is even a whiff of something WOW they trash the game. Even the Secret World, which I consider the most non-WOW MMO released in the last few years gets short shift from these critics.
All the WOWclone critics have done for me is to make me look twice at any games that they disparage. This is one of the reasons that I am really interested in Wildstar. A WOW clone? Cool, let me check it out.
"WoW clone" is indeed an insult, because MMO gamers are tired of playing the same stale MMO for the past 10 or so years. There is a reason WoW isn't as highly rated on this website, this is a website for people who you know, actually enjoy MMOs. WoW is a MMO that tends to do nothing innovate or changing for the genre, yet it is THE game that shapes all other games.
I don't know if I speak for anyone else here, but frankly it's time WoW lost its crown and we got a new more worthy King.
Imagine the genre without WoW's success. When I played FFXI for the first time I was literally blown away and knew the future of gaming was MMORPG's. Then I started playing more and more MMORPG's I quickly realized FFXI was one of a kind.
If I see people riding mounts through clusters of enemies that follow for 5 seconds and turn back I can't play that particular game, it tells me too much. Seems everything except FFXI was like this.
WoW made mediocrity acceptable and expected in the MMORPG genre and now it's the standard.
Comments
"Those who stay will be champions"
Wow made it easily accessable to all by having a low difficulty curve, low system requirements, fast leveling system compared to previous mmos. Wow clones usually fail as they do not innovate enough or have a strong reason for players to stay and play. The original Wow did many things right even in building virtual relationships and having unique memorable characters. Even a trial version of wow is better than over 90% of the shovelware mmos out there right now.
First they have to get the world done right and have characters you will actually remember 5 minutes after you finish a quest. A story driven game is always good and pushes you forward vs grind x items for y hours to get z rewards especially if it is manditory quest. Upgrading low level items to your character level should always be an option. Ex you are helping a level 10 player, it drops a epic item for your class or a general weapon you use, but your ally will not. You should definitely be able to harvest and upgrade that somehow to your 50 either that are somehow take the a stat/stats off the item to attach to another.
Single player end game vs grouping end games. Similar items should drop for both, but for huge groups going out just to fight there should be individual rewards + group rewards for most healing/damage dealt/taken/most hits per second/ most reduced stats/damage. For many players visual upgrades to items are fine even with no stats.
Wow clones that do not offer any reason to play with no defining features or benefits are not clones they are just shovelware and needs to be tossed out with the rest of the garbage.
Let's be fair here. If I wanted to play a WoW clone, I'd play WoW. Themepark aside, I don't want a tongue in cheek fantasy game with lackluster combat, pointless quests, and a character customization that is unimaginative. Far too many games go the route of trying to be a "WoW Clone" with minimal innovation. It doesn't matter what setting you put it in or what storyline you give it. A WoW clone is still a cheap knockoff.
What gets people into the game and initially interested is the mechanics of the game. The story, or something truly different. It isn't the endgame. Sure, endgame keeps people playing, but if the road to the endgame is boring; then players won't even stay to SEE the endgame. That is where devs fall short. In the process of being like WoW, they become too WoW-like.
For a themepark game, WoW is solid. They took something and ran with it. They innovate little, but improve greatly on other ideas. That is what made WoW good for a lot of people. The sooner other devs realize that if they want to succeed, they need to improve on the genre, the quicker we can end these "WoW Clone" dicussions and start talking about this is an "Elder Scrolls Clone" or "Wildstar clone" (as examples).
It will happen. First there was the EQ Clone, then came the WoW Clone.
Raquelis in various games
Played: Everything
Playing: Nioh 2, Civ6
Wants: The World
Anticipating: Everquest Next Crowfall, Pantheon, Elden Ring
Harm? To what? What has WoW harmed?
Seems to me, they made a good game. Blizzard didn't release all those lesser quality games.
Ok ill say it like its a bad thing: Wowclones suck.
World of Warcraft is a game that is Ten years old. Its a linear quest model game, using out dated graphics, and now targeting he 12 year old age group like Chinese Developers. ... Does this sound like something to be proud of? We have a steadily declining population in World of Warcraft since the Wrath of the Lich King hit about its 9th month or so. The population has been in a down ill slide since wrath. Neither Cataclysm nor Mist of Pandaria picked the numbers up.
With todays programing tech, the work in AI, and NPC behaviors. there should be a mountain of games pushing the envelope on who makes the next big thing.. and only one I know of is even trying...
Citadel of Sorcery.
And imagine that.. its NOT a wowclone.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
If I want to play something with WoW's features and WoW's level of polish, I'd play WoW. Mechanical/progression issues in the game aside, if you can't deliver "WoW, but better," then you better be introducing your own quality, revolutionary features. That is why WoW clones are bad ... because everybody is lacking the ability to pull off a better WoW, whether it is because of lack of money, talent, or understanding of what made WoW memorable for millions of players.
But even more than that, the landscape is constantly changing, WoW continues to retain many players for social aspects and the struggle humans have with cutting their losses every bit as much as its gameplay IMO. Making a WoW clone today is trying to force a decade-old model on today's players. Technology and the gaming community evolve. I'm the first person who will acknowledge that there will always be a place for throwback type of games, but we don't need a market full of them.
Yes very much this. Calling a game a wow clone very concisely sums up how the game is going to be played. In general it's going to have quest hubs, instanced dungeons, level-based zones, gear grinds, etc. Sure each game will have some inconsequential unique mechanic that they throw in so they have something to talk about in interviews, but the features I listed are what is going to dictate how you're playing that game.
As for the term being an insult: some people do, others don't. If people use it as an insult, it's because they don't like wow or at least don't like the games that are trying to ride on wow's coat tails. I'm not really sure what the problem is or where the confusion is coming from. Is being called a wow clone an insult? Not if you like wow enough to play a game that is extremely similar but probably with a different skin/graphics and almost definitely less content.
I personally think MMOs shouldn't be all about the end game, "don't get me wrong" this doesn't mean there should be less of a End Game, just I feel there should be more to do before the
End Game, from lvls 1-?? what ever is max lvl. I would love to see slower progression and mid game raids and other content that would add lore to the story of the game, and progression to max lvl.
but I have a feeling we will not see this happen, everyone is too involved in the idea that faster is better, so they need to rush to end game in 24 hours of gaming. and completely miss the mid part of the game, if there was one.
/shrug
Blizzard is good at refactoring content and building upon it (I won't say they build better things out of everything, as they can spend more time trying to fix half baked ideas -- arenas come to mind, as they claim it's one of their biggest mistakes they made, but each patch cycle they continue to add content to not only PvP [again, which they claim isn't the focus of the game]? Arenas. -_-).
In truth Blizzard is like Microsoft. They make the largest MMO and distribute it through a vast network of retailers. But is the product the best? No. They have the marketing appeal, and will blanket the shelves with boxes; have fancy very expensive commercials with celebs and actors; and try to appeal to that shooter 15 to 21 year-old market, with class mechanics that really don't belong in a MMORPG as it interferes with the RPG development (especially when fighting is more important than lore and roleplaying!). Before the staff cuts, there was a lore dev that would work with the community...she was laid off with the other 600+ employees. But Lore, the now dev, and all got hired, as they concentrate on the fighting in raids.
RPG game but with spotty ingame lore, and roleplaying is a second thought (maybe because of the bad PR about Moon Guard's Goldshire)? A RPG is a roleplaying game, not a hack and slash eSport dexterity matching system.
I came to WoW not due to ads or boxes seen on the shelves, but because of the Holy paladin sub-class. My interest in that sub-class was due to all the off-healing my EQII paladin was doing (if I heal that much might as heal full time, deal), and was flat burned out on TSO shard runs in EQII. Blizzard as a company I didn't follow or even played their games (Warcraft wasn't appealing to me, hack/slash games isn't D&D style character building that I love. Games like Morrowind, or even my favorite Deus Ex, is what excites me). But I gave WoW a shot, and despite it's godawful community (it is the worst in gaming, FPS games have nicer people!) I stick around to character develop my Holy paladin, it's the only thing in WoW that's appealing to me now since these class/talent/mechanics changes. Tradeskilling is boring. Loot RNG system is borked (19 weeks of raiding to finally see a shield of the most popular healer in WotLK drop, yeah, borked beyond belief). And an auction system that really doesn't support selling efficiently, makes the appeal of WoW not for the whole package, but very selective parts you "make do" with.
It's a "cobbled" game of what you can get out of it to have fun, but a fantastic game (like Morrowind and Deus Ex were/are, not by a long shot -- because in their effort to themepark the game to please everyone [or selectively, like raiding and arenas, Blizzard is notorious in flip flopping on their design goals] they lost the very meaning of the term, MMORPG. Each expansion we have even less stats to mess with, turning the game to eventually a hack and slash kiddie game with little depth, less character development and even less presence in the game itself (I don't want to be Thrall's baby sitter because Chris Metzen is his voice actor; or having Blizzard's heroes kill the main villain and being but a pawn in the world itself).
No to that type of cloning. Other games can borrow aspects of WoW that's universally appealing in the genre and that's fine, but don't copy what we already have, then insult us their world is "new". Improve on what is there as WoW isn't "the best", it's simply the most popular due to marketing (looking for a Holy paladin style sub-class that can heal, not watch GCDs or be permastunned for an expansion, and good in ONE thing no other classes can outdo, not this Jack of all trades master of none gameplay that favors FoTM development [which is shoddy class design...yes, shoddy]).
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
The thing is while WoW has tons of stuff in it, when you look at it from the amount of play time offered WoW doesn't offer that much more than anyone else. All of the old content has been sped up so fast that it won't keep you busy very long, and old content is done once you blow past it. So add up time played until you hit max with any new game and they aren't that far apart, and the new game actually may even have more. With the free 90 it will offer even less play time.
As far as calling game WoW clones goes, most of the things people associate with WoW aren't WoW inventions. They took the formula and made it accessible but they didn't add anything really new except maybe quest hubs, and I am not entirely sure WoW was the first game to have them. But I suppose even though WoW wasn't the first they are the biggest so the mistake is understandable.
they have been trying with failure so best to stick with the pony.
HAHA! The last time I posted an article EXACTLY like this, MMORPG.COM removed it and banned by account (my 5th account here) because they considered this kind of article "Negative that leads to trolling"....Now look at the hypocrites. Posting it on their main feed page. This is by far the most out of touch, edited, and controlled website around. What a joke.
Any ways, back the subject at hand...WOW. WoW set only 1 standard. EASY MODE. Not allot of mmorpgs were doing that. MMORPGS wanted grouping to be done very early. Final Fantasy, Everquest, etc.. Get that group early or die. It was survival mode in most fantasy lands. WoW took that and let us enjoy solo player online rpg with the chance to interact for groups or group content. RAIDS being the only real thing any one would ever want to get together for.
Enter consol gamers, moms, dads, and any one that could read and follow point and click instructions. Guilds, and real life relationships were made as all other elements fall in place easy (chat rooms, video sessions, etc..) I have allot of friends today thanks to WoW...oddly, none of us play WoW any more...
Like before, the system evolves. The new crowd and direction of wow has changed. Gone are those mid 20 getting older gamers trying something new, enjoying it, meeting up with friends, then quitting as our children took our credit cards and ran their own guilds. That and Blizzard catered to getting the kids to use the credit card more, and less to the veteran feed back. Hence the game breaking expansions and RIP Vanilla.
Of course other games will want to suck in the void of leaving players. They also know half of the people jumping ship are addicts and trying to pump in any excuse of a game. I know so many people that say "I quit wow, my time with kids and wife was absent". They take like 3 month stop, try to get social IRL again, then fall on an excuse title: "Look honey it is Star Wars Online, not wow" *Face palm* SAME THING! A EASY mode game playing on your sentiments of WoW mmorpg elements to get you to swipe your credit card. The funny thing, these addicts spend the same time on all these other "clones", but just can't get back into wow. I think it is the psychological shame knowing they are all playing clones as an excuse to play the real thing. It is like your blonde hair wife divorcing you and all you do is date blondes to try and get that old feel back, but all the new girls are just excuses and never fill the gap.
Smart on the market end. Sad on the consumer end. And difficult to change, because, really, who is man enough to turn the EASY mode off? To many kids with credit cards. I have no problem with easy mode. I just am not liking wows graphics any more. To cartoon like. I like more blood. I like interactive story. I like an mmorpg geared for adult players, not one bending and conforming to US child consumers. (Blizzard China even takes out the bones in the zombies because it is against their beliefs...US covers up boobs in korean games, etc..)..
Thankfully, DayZ is out, and I will force you all Bananas.
At this point using WoW as the benchmark is like saying "Asheron's call clone!" or "EQ1 clone!!!"
Just drop it altogether for christ sakes..
... WoW didn't do it better, that's the problem. Most of the games out haven't done it better. Everquest when it first came out, before Luclin was a hard, challenging game that didn't baby people. You want to take on a dragon? Fine by us, but if you die, be to lose everything as well as experience.
When WoW came out, they cloned everything from Everquest but the challenge. They copy/pasted spell and skill discriptions and effects. There is a reason people dislike it.
While what they did is sad and pathetic as well as completely unorigionial, you cannot fault them for it. They marketed well and pulled in the people because of how easy it was to get into and be good at.
But no games (with the possible exception of Star Citizen) are bringing a true challenge to the gamer. They are affraid of peoples reactions to it. They are scared that people will quit or give their game a bad review if you can't get to to max level and be a bad ass in a days time.
Exactly. I would only call a game a 'WOW clone' if it copied the unique properties that Blizzard introduced to the MMORPG genre and nothing else. Maybe gear sets or battlegrounds?
WOW contains pretty much all the proven MMORPG elements up to that point, just packaged and delivered extremely well.
World of Warcraft has been great for the genre of MMO's, but at the same time is has stagnated the innovation of them.
Its casual appeal has opened up the MMO to the casual gamer, made them easy to play and understand. Yet other companies see their success and try to cash in on it by copying the game style with just different names and textures instead of using the World of Warcraft models and textures.
Strip all recent MMO's down to the bare bones and they all look the same.
Quests to level up a class.
Talent trees.
Quest hubs in areas where players of your level play.
TAB targeting
Auction Houses
Raids
Instanced dungeons
No modern MMO that has been released has even tried to break away from this formula until recent years. The first one to break this was The Secret World with their skill system and the way they populated their world with missions. Gone were the kill XX amount and return missions now we had riddles and puzzle missions to complete. I really enjoyed this game and urge anyone yet to play to try it. Somethings within it are still like WoW because its just the way things work on the PC, but the new ideas Funcom had are great.
Then you have Eve Online its a complete opposite of WoW and it fills that niche in the market that WoW just can not do. CCP do a brilliant job with the game and the community.
So for the past decade the mmo game has sat in a mire of stagnation with each and every release looking and feeling the same as WoW. This is not Blizzards fault though, its the developers who are after that piece of pie that Blizzard has.
Moving onto 2014 and the MMO's to be released. We are now seeing a shift in design away from WoW, with SWTOR being the biggest failure in MMO's to date because of the stale game play they employed from WoW. Yes SWTOR is just WoW in space.
We see games like TESO , Repopulation, Nether, Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen starting to enter the arena of the MMO. All trying to break away from the WoW formula to some extent they feel and look fresh.
TESO takes ideas from Funcoms TSW with the skill system which I think is great and places it in their world of The Elder Scrolls. With the RvR from DAoC something the mmo genre has not seen since DAoC went live. This in its self will fill a huge hole left in the MMO market.
Repopulation has taken the crafting system from SWG and the skills system from UO and placed it in their own world. I am looking forward to seeing more from these people and hope their game does well because something like this is sorely needed in the genre.
Nether if you like your survival horror first person shooter take a look at this. I am rubbish at FPS games so I wont play it but looking from the outside I like the idea behind it and sets the atmosphere well.
Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen two games from two of the biggest power houses in yesterdays gaming era. David Braden and Chris Roberts. Both from Kick Starter like Repopulation and both space sims with a organic economy and FPS space flight. Something the PC gamer has been without since Freelancer because companies like EA have said that the space sim is dead and that PC gaming is dead. For information Star Citizen broke the $36 million mark over christmas.
I look forward to CCP's development on World of Darkness and will keep a eye on it as I am a fan of the world they are putting it in. CCP is not afraid of innovation when it comes to games and will try new things in them. This is the one that will shake the very foundations of the MMO genre when it is released.
I really like this concept, but do I understand it correctly, thinking that WoW[-clone]-fans would fit in the first group? It seems that way to me, because then it would explain the difference between PvE-gamers, who would be all about immersion, personal character development and maybe community, and the fans of games like Dark Ages of Camelot, Warhammer Online, those awaiting Camelot Unchained, or, as in my case, Champions of Regnum, who focus on sieging successfully, tactical play and community. [Feel free to include GW2 to this. I won't, because sh*t.] [I stated community twice, because I wanted to summarise their purposes for playing as precisely as possible, and this is simply a big part for any group of MMORPG-players - although not for every indivual player. :§]
Now, if I have understood correctly, which category you would put the WoW-target-/fangroup in, that would still not suffice to describe who understands "WoW-clone" as a compliment, and who does not.
There are players who have come very annoyed with the fighting-systems of MMOs based on hotbar-skills, or tab-targetting. Some people can not enjoy a game that does not base economy singularly on players. Others only feel "immersed" into their world, if they do not play from rthe view of first person. Neither of these desires is a direct part of one's preferrence for immersion, or game mechanics.
I have to conclude that while I liked your description, the category of "Lore/Immersion-Player vs Tactical Player" only works aside from many other systems that players care for, and you can not really judge by it, what the term "WoW-clone" means to someone. However, by the same line of arguments, I find it quite proven that amount of people who do not [any longer, maybe?] wish to play games that follow the principles of WoW: With all the PvP-players, plus anyone who is simply put off by old mechanics, or lack of player-based content, there has to be a great potential in anything that manages to unite those who oppose WoW.
The problem is that they are not WoW clones, if they were they would have the quality of WoW. Instead we have MMOs mostly built on the cheap that use the same game design as WoW.
So there are two issues, firstly we have nearly all MMOs made only one way and secondly they are poorly made.
I did go back to WOW and I am enjoying the heck out of Timeless Isle.
Timeless Isle is, to me, one of the reasons that Blizzard does end game best. Epics drop everywhere. I have almost all my 7 level 90 toons in epic gear. Yet, these epics are still 40-70 points below raider gear. That is the genius of Blizzard. You give the welfare epics to please the masses but the best gear is found in the high level pvp and hardest dungeons. WOWclone critics point to welfare epics as a bad thing yet I believe it is one of the reasons that WOW lives on. I quit SWTOR after I started playing the Timeless Isle. Yup, I am definitely a WOW baby.
WOWclone is intended as an insult but I have played lots of games since WOW and keep returning. Nearly every AAA MMO released since WOW has some form of innovation yet the WOWclone critics don't care. If there is even a whiff of something WOW they trash the game. Even the Secret World, which I consider the most non-WOW MMO released in the last few years gets short shift from these critics.
All the WOWclone critics have done for me is to make me look twice at any games that they disparage. This is one of the reasons that I am really interested in Wildstar. A WOW clone? Cool, let me check it out.
Only other MMO I have played that I would consider a WoW clone is Allods online. Why? Well...yeah.
I liked WoW, over it now though. Would I play new games similar to it? Sure, new lore, new worlds, characters, people, excitement, adventures!
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
"WoW clone" is indeed an insult, because MMO gamers are tired of playing the same stale MMO for the past 10 or so years. There is a reason WoW isn't as highly rated on this website, this is a website for people who you know, actually enjoy MMOs. WoW is a MMO that tends to do nothing innovate or changing for the genre, yet it is THE game that shapes all other games.
I don't know if I speak for anyone else here, but frankly it's time WoW lost its crown and we got a new more worthy King.
Imagine the genre without WoW's success. When I played FFXI for the first time I was literally blown away and knew the future of gaming was MMORPG's. Then I started playing more and more MMORPG's I quickly realized FFXI was one of a kind.
If I see people riding mounts through clusters of enemies that follow for 5 seconds and turn back I can't play that particular game, it tells me too much. Seems everything except FFXI was like this.
WoW made mediocrity acceptable and expected in the MMORPG genre and now it's the standard.