By Alec Meer on September 6th, 2008 at 2:25 pm.
If you’ve been following the 200+ comments in the thread below our recent discussion of our experiences in the Warhammer Online closed beta, you’ll have spotted that a vocal minority of the WAR community, having made their way here thanks to a link on the warhammeronline.com frontpage, are absolutely furious with us. All those that were simply critical remain, but there were at least another 50 abuse-filled tirades we deleted, consisting of the usual expletives, judgements about our intelligence and sexuality, and a surprising amount of racism towards the British. It’s true: we do drink a lot of tea.
Whether expressed politely or furiously, there were three or four central complaints about what we said – but one stands above them all.
We said it’s got its similarities to World of Warcraft. Well, in fairness, John said it was exactly like World of Warcraft, but clearly the fact he went on to list several ways in which it wasn’t meant the tongue-in-cheekiness of that statement was lost on some folk. (My sneaking a WoW screenshot into the post as a gag was probably a bad idea in retrospect, but it made me giggle). We did, admittedly, come back to the comparison quite a lot, but that we were generally very positive about the game was either dismissed or unnoticed – the simple fact of making that comparison enraged a fair old slice of the WAR community. All the incensed comments weren’t a surprise, nor were they especially distressing – this is, after all, the internet – but I think there’s more at play than simply another case of Angry Internet Men.
A similar outpouring of abuse happened to Richard Bartle when he made a somewhat reckless judgement about WAR’s WOWiness a while back, and I’m sure similar venom’s been poured on a thousand forum posts and news stories the web over. So I’m aware that this post is a little akin to saying ‘Candyman’ into the mirror three times, and fully expect further fury below, but let’s try and have some considered conversation about this.
It’s without a doubt true that dismissing WAR as a WOW clone would be wrong and stupid – there are important differences, and with its perma-war theme and PvP foundations it’s genuinely aimed at achieving a different overall atmosphere than WoW’s cartoon high-jinx and endlessly repeated dungeon runs.
There are also important similarities. Huge similarities, in both its mechanisms of play and its appearance. It’s bizarre that so many people won’t allow this observation to be made. WoW was not the first of its kind, and no-one here is saying it is. It is, however, by far the biggest of its kind, and as a result of that it’s the grandest inspiration for any current MMO developer: 13 million subscribers means cash and glory beyond almost anyone’s wildest dreams. WAR exists because of World of Warcraft. Of course, it also exists because of a number of other factors and influences (including Mythic’s own earlier Dark Age of Camelot). It’s also very true to say that World of Warcraft might not exist without the Warhammer tabletop game, as many WAR fans never tire of mentioning.
The reason we don’t explicitly state that Everquest did it first and Blizzard borrowed from Games Workshop and yadayadayada every we talk about Warhammer Online is not because we don’t know it – of course we know it – but because it doesn’t alter the simple truth that EA’s interest in making and funding WAR is, I have no doubt, because they want a piece of Warcraft’s pie. WAR does a lot of stuff better (and some stuff not as well), and in being so PvP focused does ultimately head to a slightly different place, but WoW’s landmark success is why Warhammer Online looks as it does, why major elements of it play as they do, and most of all why it’s being released now.
I think it’s going to work out, too – I’m expecting an awful lot of dispossessed WoW players to head WAR’s way. It bundles in some new ideas at the same time as evolving and streamlining certain core WoW/Everquest concepts that had, over time, proven themselves a little tired, and that’s enough to make the game seem newer and fresher than it perhaps fundamentally is. There is nothing wrong with that; MMO players have every reason to hope WAR will be a rewarding place to spend their online time.
Still though – why are these guys so angry? There are, I think, two root causes for the unchecked fury. One is that ‘WoW’ has become a negative term to a lot of gamers. It carries connotations of grinding and repetition and dumbed-down cartoon noobishness or whatever – witness too the anger around Diablo 3′s art style. There’s also the simple fact of its popularity – Coldplay sell a lot of records, and it’s for precisely that reason (as much as the fact they make awful music) that a lot of people despise ‘em. The ubiquity is cloying. There’s crossover with the Sims too – the games’ own interestingess ignored by a certain slice of gamers because they consider them aimed at a different audience, thus somehow beneath them. So WoW is a dirty word, interpreted as an insult even when it’s not intended as one.
It’s beyond simply gamers’ own distaste for WoW, though. In the wider world, that is to say the tabloids and worried mothers, WoW is a by-word for the worst stereotypes of PC gaming: anti-social fat guys, killing pretend boars for 24 hours a day, speaking in tongues of statistics and cod-Shakespeare. While the stereotypes may be largely inaccurate, no-one wants to be associated with that – you say WAR is like WoW and people feel insulted. While there are plenty of concrete reasons to be given why WAR is not the same as WoW, it’s telling that a great many of the angry comments haven’t listed them – they’ve just called us stupid and wrong (and much worse). And it’s because they’re offended as much as because of traditional web tribalism. With its darker theme and focus on all-out war, Warhammer Online is considered cool where other MMOs are not. Say it’s like WoW and people feel you’re undermining its cool, and that you’re accusing it of being old news rather than this impossibly momentous upcoming event in their lives.
Which leads onto the second reason. MMOs aren’t like other games. They’re closer to a lifestyle choice, for a lot of people defining how their spare time is spent, how their lives are lived. So if you criticise the game, you criticise the player. God knows there are plenty of non-MMO games that people treat as though they’re bound to their very souls – witness the pile-on for Eurogamer’s MGS4 review, or even the outrage about various RPS writers being down on Stalker: Clear Sky – but it’s even worse with MMOs. Telling a WAR player that his game is similar to WoW is like telling a goth that he’s emo. No-one wants to be told they’re not unique and interesting, to be dismissed as a stereotype they’re not.
WAR is not WoW. But it is a lot like it in a number of crucial ways, and for one essential reason: money. I suspect Mythic and EA aren’t too concerned about the comparison themselves – they might disagree with the sweeping generalisation, but if they didn’t want to be compared they would have gone for an entirely different interface and art approach. Saying WAR is like WoW is not the same as saying it’s a bad or a lazy game, but unfortunately there are guys who do intentionally make the comparison unfavourably, and that’s perhaps understandably made a lot of WAR fans very touchy. I wish they wouldn’t take it so personally, but it can’t realistically be stopped.
We’ll be talking a lot more about WAR over the coming weeks, and will be able to better discuss the RvR/PvP elements that were so marginal in the underpopulated EU closed beta, but I suspect we’ll still end up making the occasional WoW comparison. It’s not meant to be an insult.
06/09/2008 at 14:37 Real Horrorshow says:
It’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky! ARGH You’re all stupid and gay, and British.
I’m starting an online petition about something…
06/09/2008 at 14:37 Schtee says:
A very calm and reasoned article, Mr. Meer. I like how if you said “WAR is a lot like one of the (generally accepted) best games ever”, it has an air of positive. However, if you say LOLzWAR’sLikeWoW it’s a massive blow to everything the game stands for. WAR has clearly been inspired (that sounds nice and diplomatic) by the bits of WoW that worked and fitted with the specification for Warhammer. Which is fine. It just needs to have added enough of its own personality to merit a new game.
06/09/2008 at 14:42 Bas says:
I missed all the drama mentioned, but it sounds pretty sad. It’s just a game. If you enjoy it, good for you.
06/09/2008 at 14:47 Ben Hazell says:
I’m a fan, but I’m not sure Warhammer is cool. Quite the opposite – aren’t there a lot of people who wouldn’t touch it with that license? If I played I wouldn’t want to mention it where I’d have no problem with WoW or AoC.
That’s how it always seemed/felt to me, but maybe we live in enlightened times?
06/09/2008 at 14:51 no says:
I don’t think you understand what the word ‘racism’ means.
06/09/2008 at 14:53 sbs says:
Aw man, I missed the shitstorm. Now I have to wait for the next piracy-thread to satisfy this need.
I fully expected to see an “Angry internet Men”-Tag at the bottom of the post, and I was not disappointed. Hooray for RPS <3
By the way: I found it rather strange that, to me as someone who does not play either WOW or WAR, the Impressions read really positive.
edit: Then again, that may not be strange at all, it actually explains a lot.
06/09/2008 at 14:55 shon says:
I am curious if the nasty comments are indicative of the typical WAR player. I find the population of an MMO to be more important than the game sometimes. City of Heroes players for example made up for the game a lot of time, while WoW players often made me consider reading a book.
I am amused by the idea of insulting the Britishness of a reviewer on a game like WAR. Doesn’t being British make you more qualified to review a game based on a British property?
06/09/2008 at 14:56 Lorc says:
Perhaps it would have gone down better if you’d said “Much like World of Warcraft, it’s fundamentally an Everquest clone”.
Actually, scratch that. There’s not much point in mincing words to avoid offending people who don’t actually read the article.
06/09/2008 at 14:56 Kieron Gillen says:
No: The UN disagrees with you.
KG
06/09/2008 at 14:59 Schtee says:
(and you don’t want to e-fuck with the UN).
06/09/2008 at 14:59 Michael says:
Alec, if you are surprised that knaves behave like knaves, than I am surprised with you.
06/09/2008 at 15:00 mooey poo says:
I think is says a lot that Warhammer is frequently abbrieviated to WAR on this post, whereas World of Warcraft retains its unabbrieviated dignity.
06/09/2008 at 15:01 kadayi says:
“I don’t think you understand what the word ‘racism’ means.”
He does, but you don’t apparently.
06/09/2008 at 15:14 Octaeder says:
@mooey poo:
Try actually reading the article again and actually notice how many times the abbr. WoW is used.
06/09/2008 at 15:18 Styngent says:
To be perfectly honest, having played WoW for the one month I could stick it without stroking out over boredom I can recognise and sympathise with a fraction of mmo communities seeing it as a derogatory comparison. Having siad that, it doesn’t matter an inch because quite frankly, anyone with a critical head screwed on can see the inspiration of WoW in WaR. From the graphical style to the gameplay (which in all honesty has been seen in more than one mmo) WoW can’t help but heavily influence developers since it pieced together popular elements of current MMOs and through in a pinch of Warcraft legacy to make it the mother of all cash cows. So, in turn, it’s nothing short of insanity to think it wouldn’t get worked into future games.
I’m willing to stab wildly into the darkness and say the anger is more likely derived from the threat to their “niche” status. Like it’s been said in this article, WoW sucks because it’s fun for all the family. In comparing the two games you compare these fat guys in their home made wizard robes to the hardcore, eat their own guts and ask for seconds, mmo gamers who, god forbid, play pop games that require zero skill.
At the end of day, the proof will be in the pudding, so right now all we can do is revel in the ACME land graphics I swear I’ve seen somewhere before.
Good article, hits the nail on the head!
06/09/2008 at 15:21 Patrick says:
Um. I won’t pretend to have paid any attention so far to this conversation, and I also won’t indicate that I really care much, since I don’t care for MMOs personally and never played Warhammer, but my primary objection to the statement “Warhammer Online is a WOW clone!” is that Warcraft, all the way back to the first, was basically just a computer version of Warhammer the tabletop mini game. I always found it quite shocking that Blizzard didn’t get their little pants sued off.
So, you know. Credit where credit’s due – maybe it’s a clone because the existing thing stole the source material.
06/09/2008 at 15:24 Inhocmark says:
It’s like being compared to WoW is bad or something. WoW managed staggering subscription numbers because they did something right. I was no Warcraft fan when I started playing WoW but that didn’t stop the game from being awesome.
WoW is an evolutionary step in MMO development and any game following it will always borrow what worked from it.
06/09/2008 at 15:28 Nny says:
Omg, this page seems not to use any styles at all under Chrome and looks hideous – please fix! :P
EDIT: Funnily enough, just as I posted it, Chrome displayed the css – you guys are great ;).
06/09/2008 at 15:35 Apollo says:
As you admitted yourself, the RvR was sparce in the UK beta. This is problematic as that IS the game. Some of the described angst my have been due to an attempt at a game review that only focused in on what most would consider to be the packaging in which the real gameplay is to be found. This is flawed as the article was merely your “impressions” and not an all out attempt at a review.
06/09/2008 at 15:36 Heliocentric says:
i see wow and war have positive traits. But they are both designed as all mmo’s, like abusive relationships. They treat you badly and make you think its normal, or worse your own fault.
06/09/2008 at 15:40 onkellou says:
Very good article, but I am not sure about the “cool” factor, either. The Warhammer franchise makes even Dungeons & Dragons look like base-jumping, I’d say. While hugging sharks.
06/09/2008 at 15:42 Alec Meer says:
I could well be wrong, but I think in the wider world’s eyes WAR and Games Workshop will seem oddly disassociated. Even I often forget that it’s GW-related while playing it – it’s much more about being The Next Big Fantasy MMO than it is about being A Warhammer Game.
06/09/2008 at 15:43 brog says:
I had to look quite closely to figure out which of the screenshots in that article was the WoW one.
In fact, I’m still not 100% sure. They all look very similar and very WoW-ish. It’s the last one right? Or is it the third one? I haven’t played either game, so perhaps it’s obvious to those who have.
06/09/2008 at 15:45 Rudolf says:
I just have to say, I really love your style of writing. And while this arcticle is a meta commentary disguised as an article, I still read it and it feels worthwile. You could be writing about dishwashers, I’d probably still read it.
That said, fanboys will be fanboys will be…you get the idea. The interesting bit here is that a lot of those now bashing any comparison to WoW probably were hardcore WoW players themselves, which quit the game and now harbor hard feelings. These feeling bubble to the top now and again. Still no excuse to assume the English drink tea, whoever came up with that idea? =) …probably from the Asterix comics ;)
06/09/2008 at 15:49 Styngent says:
Apollo – it’s painfully obvious RvR isn’t just the game otherwise you’re stating that the RPG and elements out of the PvP battlefield are just worthless.
Not only this, but the same claims were made about Dark Age of Camelot RvR, only to find that in game a lot of the lower level PvP stuff wasn’t worth bothering with it was so unrewarding and late game you could only compete in an elite group and while in possesion of the best equipment. To get to these levels you need hours of prep work while not directly competing with players. Hence, developers make a profit by charging per month. Without this “grind time” the mmo genre falls on it’s ass. It either burns out to quickly or no one wants to play it because there is no hard work involved in making your player different/better/worse than anyone elses.
06/09/2008 at 15:57 BaronTwelve says:
Of course WAR is like WoW, they are both big mmos made in the same decade!
06/09/2008 at 15:57 Nick says:
Damn British with your good looks and your oversized sexual organs.
Charming devils the lot!
¬_¬
06/09/2008 at 16:00 Mark Stephenson says:
Warhammer cool? Bwah-ha-ha!
Oh seriously? Fat nerds into their Chemical Romances with Iron Maidens?
I don’t think there’s been such a serious miscalcultion of core market since 2000AD kidded themselves they had an audience of hip hop DJ dance heads.
Warhammer fans are below Furries on the cool scale.
I’d still rather have a pint with one of them than a furry but cool … no that’s a stretch too far.
06/09/2008 at 16:06 Paul S says:
Sweet sexy Jesus. I just had a wander through the comments on that beta piece you did. I’m looking forward to WAR, but if that’s the community…
06/09/2008 at 16:06 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
I wasn’t here when the shit-fan-convergence occurred, but apparently there were still a few stragglers in the other thread up until a few hours ago. I wonder if those poor, angry, angry internet men are too emotionally wounded to try reading the follow-up.
Which, of course, is just a polite way of saying I’d like to catch, if not another great fan-frenzy, then at least the aftershocks. Not to jinx your servers or anything, I just hate being left out.
I wonder how many WAR beta-testers have ever kneaded out their own globs of the green stuff? Do they properly store their leftover globs in the freezer for longevity? Do they realize that what I’m talking about isn’t the least bit indecent–except possibly in some parts of Wyoming and Utah?
I’m not quite sure what to make of the idea of WAR having a wide fanbase not the least bit interested in the Warhammer franchise at large. And I’m not even that old. I think.
EDIT: And Mark, I reject your coolness and replace it with my own! I’ll have you know, all the sexy kids say cardigans are the new Havarti.
06/09/2008 at 16:11 Alec Meer says:
Put it this way: how many people signed up for Age of Conan because they were Conan fans? Or even WoW because of Warcraft?
06/09/2008 at 16:30 Snarf says:
I signed up for AOC because after 3 years of WoW i was seriously bored of it. Had done most of the End Game (went into SWP a few times), and really couldnt be arsed with WoW any longer. Most of our WoW guild is gonna try WAR, the starting areas have 10 times more character than WoW’s and its something new. I dont care that it takes aspects from WoW, aslong as it’s the good ones. I want something new, with new mechanics and fun PvP, hopefully WAR will delivery. AOC certainly didnt. Oh and Goths getting angry when called emo isnt to do with the fact of being unique, it’s being linked with crap music :p
06/09/2008 at 16:37 Butler` says:
Warhammer raging fanboy/nerds rock.
06/09/2008 at 16:40 I don't understand this comment system says:
MMORPGs are a plague upon the industry, much like the FMV games of the mid 90s.
06/09/2008 at 16:41 friday says:
Your impressions about beta article actually sparked my interest in the game. Before I read it I was just brushing it off as another mmo that was going to suck. The one thing that pissed me off a little bit was when the developers said they were not trying to compete with WoW, like then what are you doing? Trying to make a shit game?
06/09/2008 at 16:52 Garreth says:
Maybe I’m making a massive judgement error here (and clearly I have) but I would have expected a group of people who have the patience stand around a table for hours taking turns to charge small models at one another (not that I have anything against that) would be slightly less angry about comparing WoW and WAR when they are both based, to a certain degree, on the same thing.
06/09/2008 at 16:53 meeper says:
I’ll agree that FMV games were a plague on the industry, but I hardly think MMORPGs fall into that category. Nobody truly enjoyed the FMV games, yet millions enjoy MMORPGs :)
06/09/2008 at 17:16 mateo says:
It’s simply further proof of John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. What amazes me the most is how people will make such a big deal about how different the games are, when the similarities vastly outweigh the differences. But then, people do that about all kinds things, including other people (hello racism and homophobia), so I suppose I should stop being surprised.
06/09/2008 at 17:35 Willem says:
How about you drink some pee-flavoured tea, Alec? PEEEEEEE
TEEEEEAAAA
>: |
06/09/2008 at 17:45 Jayof9s says:
Clearly the real issue is that today no one seems to understand the difference between ‘being critical’ and just being plain insulting. And so gamers especially seem to take any critical writing of their favorite new fixation (even if its only critical in their eyes), whichever game it might be and instead of saying “huh, that’s a valid point” or even just accepting it as some nutters opinion its; ZOMG U HATES WAR U HATE ME!!!!1One (substitute war for halo or some other horrid fps that people play for no apparent reason when there are dozens of good alternatives or any other game really.)
06/09/2008 at 18:07 Will Tomas says:
Personally I really disliked the idea of FMV games and although one or two were okay I agree that they blighted the industry – it was patent cheating. However some people do seem to have absolutely adored them – as the number of comments on Eurogamer’s review of MGS4 shows.
06/09/2008 at 18:17 Joseph says:
Bottom line is, WAR is a WOW clone, and there is no amount of bitching that it’s already vocal fanboys can do to change the game. Having played the beta now, the game is a carbon copy of World of Warcraft with a splash of new, non-innovative ideas thrown on top to make it seem shiney.
06/09/2008 at 18:53 Noc says:
Hmm.
I think the sticking point here is that comparing a game to WoW involves tacitly saying that it’s a “WoW clone.” Being an anything clone is a bit of a dismissal; I mean, just think about all the times we’ve heard “Oblivion with Guns” tossed about recently. It doesn’t matter if “Oblivion with Guns” would actually be a really cool game or not . . . if it’s “just another clone” it, in a sense, doesn’t count. It’s “just a spinoff,” and it lacks the legitimacy of a more original title.
More pragmatic observers, including yourselves, it sounds like, aren’t entirely concerned with this. If at the end of the exercise, you’re left with a better game (or even a game that better fills a different niche), then all is well. But pragmaticism has little to do with fandom; you don’t really become a “fan” of something (much less a “fanboy”) because you experienced it and thought it was pretty good, really. Fandom is about pride and tacit ownership, and dismissal, even implied dismissal, strikes pretty deeply at that.
And it’s even worse if the dismissal is something that’s so believable. Which is, honestly, because there are several really big knobbly grains of truth wedged in the center. You folks’ve listed a ton of them. But the problem is that the idea that WAR is just (or even mostly) like WoW is such a believable idea. If I went up to anyone I knew and said “Well, I played the beta, and WAR’s pretty much like WoW,” they’d shrug and say “Alright, that’s what I thought.” It’s a very believable position to take, and it’s a dismissal. That right there is a recipe for a sore spot.
[Edit: the fellow who simulposted me is an excellent example of this. It's not a matter of people not liking the game; it's a matter of the dismissal, in many people's eyes, being so self-evident. In the manner of "You're stupid to think otherwise." It's a little silly to ignore all the similarities too, neither side is really being reasonable, are they?]
It’s like . . . I play PnP RPGs. And every so often, among people unfamiliar with the process, the subject comes up. And they say something about silly people running around parks with foam swords and wizard hats, and I feel compelled to point out that I am not a fucking LARPer. It’s not even that I’ve any personal distaste for the practice (certainly not enough to warrant the expletive), it’s just that the sentiment feels like a dismissal, and consequentially that’s an image I want to distance myself from.
Run that through the filter of the Internet, and factor in people not approaching things with a critical mind, and you get what you’ve got.
06/09/2008 at 18:57 kenoxite says:
Wait… aren’t goth and emos the same?
Oh! *snap*
06/09/2008 at 18:58 arbitrary says:
Well, I loved the review!
06/09/2008 at 19:08 Radiant says:
WoW is to WaR what Coldplay is to MGMT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtUI5MC9tVM
06/09/2008 at 19:16 Gerfervonbob says:
Whats with the jab at Coldplay? Not cool, you’ve hurt my feel bads!
06/09/2008 at 19:25 malkav11 says:
I think it’s basically just that a lot of people who want to play MMOs other than WoW have already played WoW and either disliked it or burned out on it. The suggestion, therefore, that they’re getting the same cake with different frosting is horrifying.
I got similar reactions when I talked about how fundamentally WoW-like LOTRO was, when I was beta-testing that. And while I can’t speak to WAR, LOTRO really is mechanically almost identical to WoW. This is a good thing. It takes all the stuff WoW does right and riffs on that with a new, well-beloved setting and some cool new ideas like monster play and the deed system. But god forbid anyone should acknowledge that/god forbid anyone should recognize that WoW is successful because it does a lot of basic gameplay things entirely right.
I don’t know that it would be accurate to describe WoW as an Everquest clone, though. (This may be slightly hypocritical, I realize.) I mean, yeah, they both have levels, spells, quests, and thwacking things on the head with sticks, but there’s a major paradigm shift between the two. The elements they have in common date back to the earliest games in the genre – MUDs. EQ moves beyond them mostly in adding graphics and upping the scale. WoW fundamentally alters how things work. And yes, I know, the whole Blizzard “polish vs innovation argument”. In this case it’s a bit of both. The basic building blocks Blizzard’s assembled are mostly the same (battlegrounds possibly excepted), but the way they’ve assembled them makes for a radically different, imho vastly better, gameplay experience.
06/09/2008 at 19:26 EyeMessiah says:
Angry people on the internet are angry. Just ignore them!
06/09/2008 at 19:39 Jahkaivah says:
Noc summed it up perfectly.
Yes those comments were unjust knee-jerk reactions because your impression (not a review) was actually a fair one.
But having followed WAR some time myself (don’t think I will get it, but who knows) I know how irritating being told the game is a WoW clone is when the things that really matter are completly differant.
I think we need an unwritten rule that judging a MMO (or even just an online game) by screenshots and Gameplay videos is a very bad idea.
Incidently, has anyone seen Yahtzee’s review of EvE? He produced alot of justified criticisms that some up why you may not want to play the game.
But unfortunatly, he failed to explain the good parts of the game and because of this he deemed it “just like WoW”.
Possibly the last MMO in existance to deserve that title.
I imagine hearing his review is a bit like being told WAR is a WoW clone.
06/09/2008 at 19:49 graham says:
LOUD NOISES
06/09/2008 at 20:38 EyeMessiah says:
Yahtzee does what it says on the tin though – sometimes in less than 3 minutes. Personally I agree with him about Eve, but in this case I did feel that he was a little harsh (I wouldn’t call my worst enemy a wowclone). But then, that’s what he does!
(Unless we are talking about spore or clear sky) I don’t really need the reviewer to dwell on what is so great about a game as much as I need them to dwell on its faults. When it comes to games I just don’t find that the good stuff “makes up” for the bad.
I bought COD4 on his recommendation, not so much because he said it was very good, but because he said it was very good and not that broken.
06/09/2008 at 21:03 ape says:
This has probably been said but most everyone knows that Warcraft is itself a ripoff of Warhammer. I am never one to say the r word but in this case it is true… hmm, but I guess nerd rage is inevitable.
06/09/2008 at 21:16 Yhancik says:
Play Love, not WAR.
06/09/2008 at 21:29 Arnulf says:
I wonder what WAR would have looked like if WOW never (or at least not yet) had happened?
WOW did some things to the MMO world that could be taken for granted now, but were back then quite astonishing. Effectively no zone borders, thus eliminating loading screens when moving through the world. Removing the level grind. Allowing to customize and extend your user interface. And tons of little things more.
What if Games Workshop would have decided to create a Warhammer MMO without prior WOW experience? I dare say that it would have been clunky, and its only appeal would have been the Warhammer setting. That’s just not good enough nowadays.
Believe it or not, WOW set a new standard. And newcomers (and old blokes alike: Mythic/SOE) better take a hard close look at what makes a MMO successful.
06/09/2008 at 21:34 Nick says:
Eh, plenty of MMOs had no zone borders before WoW. I’m not sure how it removed level grind… again customizing interface was there before WoW as well.
It wasn’t innovative at all. What it was was very polished, easy to use and well presented which is Blizzard’s trademark.
06/09/2008 at 22:31 The Hammer says:
Okay. I’m a huge fan of Blizzard, and a vocal supporter of World of Warcraft here. It’s my favourite game of all time, and the release of WoAoR isn’t going to change that, because it’s less about the games’ mechanics and more about the settings and the players I adventure with. To me, WOW has a better world. I like my orcs with a sense of humility. I don’t want ONLY WAR. I want a chance of peace, I want usually opposing factions working together against even more dangerous foes. I want to find out what happens to Thrall, Jaina, Arthas, Tirion, the Cenarions… basically, I’m absorbed in both the narrative and the community that WOW offers. As an RPer I’m slightly different to the rest of the playerbase (which, I admit, a large amount of them are immature and mean to the extreme), in that these things -will- matter more, but I’m in no way saying that these are views that represent most of WOW’s players.
That aside, y’know, I was reading an article about Fable 2 about how although fantasy is meant to be the most varied of genres, gaming fantasy at least tends to mostly feature orcs, which are Tolkien’s creation, so creativity is often hampered by always using already accepted concepts and symbols.
And this is true in two ways for this issue. Firstly, yes, Warcraft as a franchise is very similar to Warhammer. There is a very strong reason for that. Warcraft: Orc and Humans was going to be a Warhammer RTS until Games Workshop decided they didn’t like what Blizzard were doing, and cancelled their involvement. This was pretty late on in development, and Blizzard, a company that needed to get something out really bloody quickly cobbled together their own lore and modified the least amount of assets they possibly could, and ended up getting this in the shops. As it was a brilliant RTS (what game of Blizzard’s hasn’t been brilliant?), it did well, and Blizzard found themselves with a popular franchise, and GW spent the rest of the years after kicking themselves, in all likelyhood. It’s a bit like the ol’ Nintendo/Sony deal, although this one was based on IP and actual creative worlds than technical malarkey and marketing. But, in the same way that Blizzard took a lot of inspiration from Warhammer (both almost avoidable, and probably on hindsight a wise move), Games Workshop took a lot of inspiration from Tolkien and Gygax and co. Warhammer ain’t original. It’s derivative. Orcs didn’t exist before Tolkien created them. They’re not steeped in folklore, they’re steeped in the mind of one who lived in the 20th century and never thought about getting them patented.
So, Blizzard was always meant to be making a game in the Warhammer world, and that -is- reflected in Warcraft, yes. Over the years however, they have successfully distanced themselves. Night-elves, dragons, redeemed orcs, many new breeds of foes and protagonists, and also a great amount of detailed characters. Gosh. I am really licking ass here.
But, the main point I am trying to make is not about setting, but about those same game mechanics I mentioned before.
Warhammer Online follows the traditional MMO system of both exploration and combat. You have a map. You have an action bar at the bottom full of abilities which you click in order to hurt your foes. Your character’s quality is based not only on “talent” choices, which you gain every level, but also equipment which comes with stats, such as Stamina, Strength, and Agility. You advance through zones as you advance through the levels. A low level character will find higher level zones impossible for PVE, and a high level character will find low level zones pointless. It is not a game wherein strafing, ducking behind obstacles and flanking your opponent is important. You approach your enemy, engage combat, and hope you choose the right abilities, and have the best skillset and armour possible.
It is D&D style mechanics, and right at the minute, it defines roleplaying games. Stat crunching, and how they are related to the world, and the NPCs and quests in the world have changed very little from WOW. THAT is how it is similar, and that is how, from a layman’s point of view, the two games are two peas in a pod.
No matter the RVR combat, no matter the Tome of Reading, no matter the similarities in setting and tone and colours and shapes and what have you. Looking at the interfaces of both games, and playing a battle of both games, and exploring the world of both games is very similar. Cooldowns, hitpoints, class roles… they all feature in Warhammer Online, and they are all in very steep traditional fantasy RPG territory, because that is what has been tried and proven and that is what sells.
Warhammer Online is with World of Warcraft and Everquest in the group of MMOs like that, away from your EVE Onlines and Planetsides. Those are the innovative titles out there, whereas WoAoR, whilst looking lovely, is only innovative in slight areas, invisible to the layman’s eye.
06/09/2008 at 22:44 projectmayhem says:
In fairness, all WAR and WOW fans are ubar ghey because they don’t have the l33t skillz of FPS players.
Word to your guild master, bitches.
As a serious point though, I’m someone who’s completely outside of the MMO community. I’ve never really set foot in one, as they don’t appeal to me. If Blizzard went with World of Starcraft I’d sign up immediately, even if it meant the loss of vital organs.
I like the IDEA of MMO’s, but their fantasy-wank setting really doesn’t sit with me at all… and that’s actually the only reason I don’t play ‘em. That and I spent a lot of money on my PC to make sure textures don’t look like that…
…But I digress. My point is actually that I’m surprised at the vitriol WoW is getting. I was under the impression (as an outsider) that WoW was the be-all, end-all god of MMO’s and not having a girlfriend. If it has an entire episode of South park dedicated to it, it HAS to be good, right? Apparently not!
As per the discussion of truely interesting and new mechanics in such games, just wait for ActiBlizzard to get World of Call of Duty going. The MMOFPSRPG, filled with stats padding and double XP bonus weekend bonanza madness.
06/09/2008 at 22:58 Elikal Ialborcales says:
I am sorry so many people felt it necessary to attack you. I am a vivid gamer for about 25 years now, and I love my games and MMOs like any other guy, but heck, its damn PIXEL games! Some defend “their” game with the religious zeal like in some MF crusade! I can argue about any detail, but why so many always get aggressive an personal over some trivial HOBBY is beyond me.
I like your writing style, and your humor, guys, so I hope you keep it up! If some people are so aggravated, you obviously must have stung into the right place, innit? ;)
06/09/2008 at 22:58 Tamrielo says:
“Warhammer Online is with World of Warcraft and Everquest in the group of MMOs like that, away from your EVE Onlines and Planetsides. Those are the innovative titles out there, whereas WoAoR, whilst looking lovely, is only innovative in slight areas, invisible to the layman’s eye.”
What’s interesting here is that, by and large, the WoWs and WARs of the world are the games that are *popular*.
Successful game development is not just about innovation, it’s about learning from your predecessors and, essentially, giving people more of what they like.
How many times have you completed an excellent game and simply wanted to play more of it? More levels, more character interaction, more everything.
Innovation is only one piece of the pie, and honestly it’s a very small one. People can claim to want something totally new and different, but their purchasing habits and analyses of the actual games they play belie that.
Warhammer Online is derivative of World of Warcraft, which is derivative of Everquest, which is derivative of multiplayer RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, which are directly inspired by pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons, which is, when distilled, simply a storytelling device, and stories have been told for thousands of years.
06/09/2008 at 23:24 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Alec: Well, you’re right. Still makes me feel old, though.
Tamrielo: Mentally, I translated that as…
“Warhammer Online is derivative of World of Warcraft, which is derivative of Everquest, which is derivative of multiplayer RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, which are directly inspired by pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons, which is, when distilled, simply a rip-off of Tolkien.”
06/09/2008 at 23:32 Jahkaivah says:
@Tamrielo
This is where WAR fans get irritated, you say “Warhammer Online is derivative of World of Warcraft”, what you mean to say is “Warhammer Online is a derivative of Dark age of Camelot”.
Because, theres a bit of differance between killing loads of enemy players in large conflicts and organising and carrying out attacks against scripted AIs.
06/09/2008 at 23:33 Gap Gen says:
Yeah, I mean they *are* both MMO saddos, right?
07/09/2008 at 00:20 BrokenSymmetry says:
Good remarks, The Hammer. In fact, I didn’t even know that orcs were completely invented by Tolkien, such an inherent part of our fantasy culture they seem.
07/09/2008 at 00:28 Tamrielo says:
@Dorian
“… which is, when distilled, simply a rip-off of Tolkien.”
See, but Tolkein isn’t the be all end all of fantasy storytelling, either. Tolkein has his inspirations, which have their own inspirations, and so on more or less forever. Everything Tolkein “created” has a direct line to older stories, except *possibly* orcs, and there are even still some parallels there, although arguably he didn’t use them.
@Jahkaivah
“This is where WAR fans get irritated, you say “Warhammer Online is derivative of World of Warcraft”, what you mean to say is “Warhammer Online is a derivative of Dark age of Camelot”.
Because, theres a bit of differance between killing loads of enemy players in large conflicts and organising and carrying out attacks against scripted AIs.”
No, I said what I meant. The parallels between WoW and WAR are much more prevalent than the parallels between WAR and DAoC.
Certainly WAR and DAoC offer Realm-versus-Realm combat which differentiates them from the more small-group oriented PvP of WoW, but saying that WAR draws more from DAoC than WoW is incorrect. WAR has its share of PvE (what you call “attacks against scripted AIs”), and WoW has its share of PvP (Arena and battlegrounds, against enemy players). The difference is largely the focus, but there is no denying that WAR draws heavily from WoW.
Just because something is derivative doesn’t make it bad. The best and most successful inventions in the world are almost universally the *second* ones of that type, because (as I mentioned above) innovation isn’t everything.
There *isn’t* very much difference between killing loads of enemy players in large conflicts and carrying out attacks against scripted AI, if what you’re talking about is programming (assuming multiplayer infrastructure exists on the scale you need). The basic, core mechanics are still nearly identical, just the targets are different. Everything after that is balance (which is no small task, mind you).
07/09/2008 at 01:01 EyeMessiah says:
projectmayhem says:
“In fairness, all WAR and WOW fans are ubar ghey because they don’t have the l33t skillz of FPS players.”
BOOM! HEADSHOT!
07/09/2008 at 01:24 J.A. says:
I don’t dislike Coldplay because they sell a lot of records, I dislike them because they make terrible, bland music I am forced to endure from the radio during worktime! No, give me Fugazi, give me Black Flag, give me Okkervil River! Save us from slick Apple commercials, give us powerful imagery and important issues with amazing music on top!
In all topic-related seriousness: I think a lot of the anger stems from old rage. Can you folks remember back when WAR was first announced?
Some said: It’s a WoW-killer!
Others said: It’ll be great!
Most said: WoW ripoff!
Over the past few years during the development of this game, there’s been a steadily growing fanbase supporting this game, bravely fighting off all doubters, sneering at forumites from all the game forums in the world: “You don’t know it’s a WoW clone, you haven’t played it!” All along not even grasping to the hope that WAR isn’t a WoW clone, but believing in it as a zealot believes in his God.
And then comes hopping along the “reviewers” of RPS, whose words they’ve been reading in pauses from defending their precious game, and says within the first couple of sentences: “This is WoW!” (naturally you didn’t but that seems to be the general fanboy perception).
They’re hurt, confused and soon turn to anger, posting wildly about soppy british tea, bad teeth and, uh, masturbation, for some reason.
07/09/2008 at 01:38 Major McMuffin says:
1) It is pretty much impossible to discuss a MMO without mentioning WoW, it being the industry leader. All other MMOs just have to reconcile the fact that their market is essentially already playing WoW.
2) The British may drink a lot of tea, but I’m convinced that we Irish drink more tea per person.
3) Once (if) the Pokémon MMO is released, all other games will be swept up by it, so this discussion will ultimately become moot.
07/09/2008 at 03:02 Bhlaab says:
I once accidentally walked into a hobby shop thinking it was a craft/art supply store and I have to tell you that Warhammer is not at all cool.
07/09/2008 at 04:26 Dean says:
Those throwing criticisms at you guys are either those that played WoW and burned out on it, so now dismiss it as a boring ‘grind’ – in which case you can’t help but point out how much they must have enjoyed WoW to start with to have spent 500+ hours playing it.
Or they’re people that never played WoW and have chosen to hate it because of what it represents or on principle because it’s so successful. They obviously hate the comparison because the fact is there are similarities and frankly if you like one of the games, there’s a high chance you’d like both. But they don’t want to believe that they might actually like WoW if they tried it, so have to maintain that they’re totally different.
I doubt there’s many that get upset that just played WoW a bit, figured it wasn’t for them and moved on after a month.
And it’s interesting because for both the aforementioned groups, if it wasn’t a fair bit like WoW they wouldn’t play it. Not that they’ll ever admit it. If it was a hardcore Korean-style grind they wouldn’t like it. If it were an EVE-like player-driven open world they wouldn’t like it. If it were more twitch and action-based they wouldn’t like it.
The actual gameplay mechanics on a micro level have to be similar to what’s already been done to attract people and give an air of familiarity. Where it differs is is on the macro level. Total War’s skirmishes are similar to Command and Conquer on a basic level. There’s a different flavour, different scale, but the basic mechanics are the same – select units, move them around, send them at enemy, certain units counter others. But beyond that they’re hugely different games.
So with WAR and WoW, the difference being that in MMOs you don’t really see the big picture and notice the big changes until the endgame.
07/09/2008 at 04:33 Ben Abraham says:
Great piece Mr Meer. Onwards and upwards for the good ship RPS!
07/09/2008 at 04:35 Doug F says:
mateo: or for a more topical bit of PA…
More like World of Warhammer. Online. Craft.
07/09/2008 at 05:20 CoS says:
I’m playing WAR right now, and I didn’t think you’re review was negative. WoW comparisons are inevitable. It’s Coke and Pepsi…
07/09/2008 at 05:58 xeno says:
Frankly, I hope it’s exactly like WoW, only PvP. Then it’ll leech all the assholes away from World of Warcraft and leave a game that’s actually fun to play.
07/09/2008 at 06:53 Nick says:
It wasn’t a review.. how hard is it.. *hair falls out*
07/09/2008 at 08:05 sigma83 says:
Personally, I’m still anti-WAR for the simple reason that it wasn’t 40k online. To me they just missed the single greatest opportunity to niche carve since the invention of single layer velcro.
I cannot think of a single reason (but am entirely happy to be enlightened) for choosing Warhammer over 40k that isn’t to do with the fact that it would sell better.
The inevitable World of StarCraft (let’s face it, it is coming) is going to be both niche AND fun, and will end up selling even more cause of both.
Massive opportunity wastage imo.
07/09/2008 at 09:53 Björn says:
You really should have compared WAR to some Warhammer MUD*. I’m sure the term MUD would have confused and angered many of the Angry Internet Men!
* Googling shows that there used to be one called Wolfenburg, which was endorsed by Games Workshop, but it looks like there was a falling out or something. Perhaps the WAR publishers didn’t want any other games endorsed by GW.
07/09/2008 at 09:53 sinister agent says:
Hmm. So the formula is “wow warhammer piracy fallout”. We’re getting there, lads!
07/09/2008 at 09:56 Abriael says:
I’m not surprised to see so many people angry at an article that iterates the comparison between Warhammer Online and WoW so many times. Sorry my friends, I don’t feel much sympathy for that for the simple reason that such comparison is quite improper in many ways.
Sure, Warhammer Online shares WoW’s mechanics in the same way as WoW has milked other previous games of theirs. But that’s most definately not a reason to deem Warhammer Online similar to WoW more than it’s similar to DAOC, Everquest, LOTRO or to any other fantasy MMORPG with a classic approach to combat.
You say that Warhammer being RvR oriented brings it in a “slightly” different direction. No, I’m sorry. It doesn’t. It brings it in a COMPLETELY different direction compared to WoW. While WoW’s PvE is entirely grind and farm based (or better, it’s Blizzard farming it’s players) with an entirely meaningless (and still grind/farm based) PvP thinly painted on top of it, Mythic did their best to avoid the grind as much as possible both in PvP and PvE (and even in crafting), expecially with an extreme variety in content (both PvE and PvP) and with the ability of exping entirely in RvR (fully, from level 1 to level 40, if one wants. RvR isn’t just a matter of endgame like some think, and is just as efficent as a leveling way as PvE), This not to mention that the RvR campaign has a completely different scope that WoW’s meaningless and honestly boring PvP. And that’s the core of the game. Sorry that you guys didn’t get to try it properly, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
It’s a 100% different approach to how the game is played.
Not even the art is similar. It’s quite improper to say that whatever doesn’t have an hyperrealistic style (like AoC’s for instance) can be defined cartoonish. While WoW purposedly imitates a late 20th century amercan cartoon (like Masters of the Universe or Prince Valiant), Warhammer’s style is clearly inspired from illustrations, GW’s illustrations to be precise. And to say GW’s illustrations have any similarity to He-Man would be quite funny to say the least.
War -> Complex models
WoW -> Simple models
War -> Texture design oriented towards detail
WoW -> Texture design purposedly simplified, with a lot of flat color areas
War -> Realistic equipment and armor
WoW -> Extremely overexaggerated armor, with immense shooulders and lots of bling
War -> Varied but not overly saturated color palette
WoW -> Extremely saturated color palette
Almost every element in the art style of the two games goes in entirely opposite directions. It’s like comparing Dragonball to Spawn because they’re both drawn on paper.
having short beardy dwarfs and green orcs isn’t really enough to make them the same or even similar.
There are plenty other difference across the board, that, IMHO, far outweight any similarity. Which one is better is a matter of taste, even if personally, after seeing the 4.1 version in the last couple days on the US preview Weekend plus, I can definately say that Warhammer went over WoW by a notch or two in basically every aspect of the game (in addition to the ones in which it already was superior to the competitor by a landslide, like PvP).
So yeah, if you compare Manowar to Tokyo Hotel, some are gonna laugh it off, some are gonna shrug and walk the other way and some are gonna be irritated.
07/09/2008 at 10:14 Meat Circus says:
@Abriael:
Sure, Warhammer Online shares WoW’s mechanics in the same way as WoW has milked other previous games of theirs. But that’s most definately not a reason to deem Warhammer Online similar to WoW more than it’s similar to DAOC, Everquest, LOTRO or to any other fantasy MMORPG with a classic approach to combat.
Um, I can’t think of a *better* reason to deem the two games ‘similar’. Angry Internet Men should learn what words mean.
BTW, being similar to the most successful MMO in existence is only really an insult if you share the opinion that being a MMO fan is gaming’s equivalent of being in a violent, abusive relationship that you never end because you’re periodically told “I love you”.
07/09/2008 at 10:19 Okami says:
I think that the angry internet men really made a difference. After reading all their fair and fact based arguments brought forward in such a polite and intellectual way, I’m really looking forward to spending time in an online world populated by them. They did their religion of coice a great service.
All hail the angry internet men!
07/09/2008 at 10:21 The Hammer says:
Oh, so taking part in RvR does not grant you points which, when you have culiminated enough, let you upgrade your gear and stats?
RvR might be a major change in terms of the subgenre of Fantasy Level-Based MMORPGs With Goblins In Them, but it is not a major change for the MMOs as a whole. It’s minor, and is a recycled formula from Camelot. It may indeed influence future Fantasy Level-Based MMORPGs with Goblins In Them Or Maybe Space Marines If We’re Thinking Outside The Box, but again, this is a sub-genre of quite conservative, D&D style gaming on a wider scale.
No one is saying this game, mechanics wise, is more similar to WOW than it is is to Camelot. Sure, WOAOR probably is more similar, but Camelot isn’t the most popular MMO on the market right now. Camelot does not have a similar setting to WOAOR. WOW does. That is why people are making the comparison too, because the settings are similar. Again, we come back to the layman’s point of view, and as WOW has appealed to a lot of laymen, then it’s understandable that these laymen might make the comparison much more strongly.
Additionally, games can be similar to more than one of their peers. Half Life 2, with its aliens, is similar to Halo, and with its geekiness, to Deus Ex. Making one comparison is not akin to negating the others, and when you have an elephant in the room in WOW, it’s pretty impossible not to talk about Blizzard’s money maker.
And the art style IS similar. Saying “similar” is not saying “the same.” Exxagerated limbs and heads for the small goblin characters. Similar builds to the orcs, and dwarves. The same kind of snowy mountain/enchanted forests/desolate wasteland/underground city archetypes of regions. Yes, it has been desaturated, and yes, the models are more complex, but the former doesn’t negate the silhouettes, and the latter comes from this game coming out four years after WOW, and the development team evidently deciding that they can take the risk of boosting the necessary system specs. It’s a bit like saying that Timesplitters 2 doesn’t look like Timesplitters 1 because the graphics are better. Or maybe Morrowind doesn’t look like Oblivion. This is a given, but not an extensive given.
07/09/2008 at 10:31 myname says:
thanks for taking the bull by the horns – i agree with the observations WOW/WAR. Noone likes their love to be scorned
07/09/2008 at 10:42 Meat Circus says:
I think all this talk has pretty much helped me make up my mind to skip this year’s slate of MMOs.
I was going to pick up Conan and/or Warhammer in the first half 2009 games lull. However, I just don’t think they’re *enough* of an incremental improvement to make it worth my while.
If WoW was the epitome of MMORPG 1.0, WAR and AoC are aiming for MMORPG 1.5. Unfortunately, I’m looking for MMORPG 2.0.
Guess I’m waiting for Age of Darkness or The Secret World or APB or The Agency or Champions then, to see if any of those deliver.
07/09/2008 at 10:44 Gap Gen says:
Abriael: As Meat Circus says, that was exactly what RPS said. So I’m not sure why you felt the need to say it again, but as if you were disagreeing with them.
07/09/2008 at 12:25 JM says:
I’m just not sure why you’re surprised that your “beta review” of a PVP game that basically ignored PVP was given abuse.
07/09/2008 at 12:27 Alec Meer says:
BECAUSE IT WASN’T A REVIEW.
And I wasn’t surprised, in the same way I’m not surprised about your comment.
07/09/2008 at 13:29 Myros says:
Im with Meat Circus on this one. Nothing recently or upcoming in the near future has anything appealing for me. They all seem to offer the same things Ive done over and over … and over and over … etc
Oh I might give football manager live a try though, no swords and spider hunts in that one at least :)
M
07/09/2008 at 13:34 Meat Circus says:
@Myros:
In the meantime, we have Spore. Massively single player win.
I note with some interest Walker’s Purple Tentacle and Brian the Bunny creatures.
07/09/2008 at 14:07 Jahkaivah says:
@Tamrielo
You lost me… if WoW is “mostly PvE” then is derivative is EQ which is “Mostly PvE”,
If WAR is “Mostly RvR” than its derivative is Daoc which is “Mostly RvR”.
Thats how I see it.
@Meat Circus
Heh is it me or has your opinion of WAR actually improoved? I recall you ruling it off as a “WoW Clone” before now, not “MMORPG 1.5″.
Nevertheless I agree with you. I definatly am waiting for MMORPG 2.0 as well, which will hopefully be “EvE without the boredom-factor”.
07/09/2008 at 14:17 Kommissar Nicko says:
@sigma83 : HERE HERE! I support this message.
Truly, verily, there is no greater untapped wellspring of wholesome goodness more sizable than those of us with an ache in our loins labeled Warhammer 40k. I think Tabula Rasa was graced with even an extended stare on account of the fact that it was a major Sci-Fi MMO label, and hasn’t been done since.
A WoW clone in space would be difficult to spot.
I think it’s actually great that MMOs mimic WoW anyhow. When I picked up Age of Conan, I found it aggravating that “C” didn’t bring up your character, and “L” didn’t bring up your quest log, etc. It’s one of those situations where–imagine!–if in Dawn of War, to build a base for the Eldar you had to play some sort of unconscionable Guitar Hero-style QTE that played the song to shape your buildings out of the warp or whatever. Sure, innovative gameplay! But who the fuck wants to do that shit when you could just make a COMMAND AND CONQUER CLONE and push a button to build the base to poop out the mans which do the shooting. One of the largest barriers when I try a new MMO is figuring out where all the WoW-clone-y bits fit together to accomplish the same things you always are trying to accomplish in MMOs.
07/09/2008 at 15:15 Meat Circus says:
@Jahkaivah:
I haven’t played it. I applied to join the beta when I was a Wow-head, on the grounds that it sounded like a better WoW.
I didn’t get accepted on the beta, but I hear from those who have that it’s basically a better WoW.
Also, I never said that Warhammer or Conan achieves MMORPG 1.5, because I haven’t played them. But it and Conan are both aspiring to it.
In any case, being a better WoW is not a bad thing if you like WoW. I did for a long time… I’m better now.
07/09/2008 at 15:56 JM says:
Alec
“BECAUSE IT WASN’T A REVIEW.
And I wasn’t surprised, in the same way I’m not surprised about your comment.”
OK. It was a discussion that was fairly judgemental. If it hadn’t been, it was pointless. However the discussion did almost completely avoid the rasion d’etre of the game, which is my point.
As for why you’re not surprised at my post – why? Not everyone defending WAR has come from some other site – I’ve been reading RPS and engaging in discussion for some time now. As a beta test myself (on EU servers no less) I felt you had ignored things unfairly and the excuse of no RVR being available was frankly completely untrue.
07/09/2008 at 16:47 Abriael says:
@ The Hammer
Sorry mate, but i’m afraid you lack a clear idea of what “style” means. “The same kind of snowy mountain/enchanted forests/desolate wasteland/underground city archetypes of regions. “and “Exxagerated limbs and heads for the small goblin characters. Similar builds to the orcs, and dwarves.”.
So going by your reasoning, Record of Lodoss War and Lord of the Rings have similar art styles? They share such elements after all.
Obviously not. Sharing some common basic fantasy archetypes doesn’t mean at all that the art style is similar or anyway near.
I could make you hundreds of examples of movies/animated productions/games /comics that share the same extent of archetypes or more, but don’t share the art style at all.
As of gameplay, it takes quite a bias to see any peculiar similarity beyond what’s included in basically the whole genre. So, are all FPSs similar? Or all RTSs similar? Doubt it, and the similarities between them go much beyond the similarities between Warhammer Online and WoW.
Ultimately:
“Oh, so taking part in RvR does not grant you points which, when you have culiminated enough, let you upgrade your gear and stats?”
There’s a determining difference both in scope (Warhammer’s RvR is extensive and varied, WoW’s PvP is smallish, underdeveloped and simply boring) and expecially purpose. WoW’s only purpose is gaining new gear, levels and ranking. Warhammer Online includes that purpose, but the ultimate purpose is the RvR campaign. Quite a radical difference.
@JM: “OK. It was a discussion that was fairly judgemental. If it hadn’t been, it was pointless. However the discussion did almost completely avoid the rasion d’etre of the game, which is my point.” Quite well said.
07/09/2008 at 17:00 Paul Barnett says:
Beatles, Led Zepplin.
07/09/2008 at 17:14 Alec Meer says:
JM/Abriel – we don’t deny for a second that the RvR is very, very important to WAR. But the game is not only PvP, and you’re kidding yourself if you can claim it is with a straight face. As are you if can say it’s mechanistically significantly different to EQ-lineage PvE/P. Regardless, it has a hugely substantial PvE element that is massively and consciously in the WoW mould, and one that people can and will play whilst almost entirely sidestepping the RvR content. No, WoW did not invent that mould. Yes, WAR does it because WoW does it. It makes no sense that anyone would claim otherwise, unless they’ve taken personal offence because they consider ‘WoW’ an insult.
JM – My experience of RvR in the closed beta (before the switch to l30 characters, at least, which the Impressions were written long before) was empty, empty zones and scenario queues without end. I genuinely envy your more ideal experience, and I’m genuinely excited about doing it for myself in the open beta (which I’m currently alt-tabbed out of).
Paul – both decades-outdated traditionalist rock bands that middle class white guys listen to again and again and again instead of willingly embracing something new and different? Sounds about right ;)
07/09/2008 at 17:23 Paul Barnett says:
As you can see Alec it just gets better the more you think about it.
07/09/2008 at 17:28 Paul Barnett says:
Beatles Led Zep
If you don’t like either then hate both, they are both stuck in the past, they are both hugely popular, they have almost fanatical followers. They both basically stole stuff, they both plundered from the past yet have people claiming they innovated. People gripped in the joy seem willing to accept any old rubbish as long as it has their name on it. Things where always better in the good old days, you had to see them live or you where a looser. Wasn’t the early stuff better? People who love them seem incapable of seeing the joy and wonder in other music and people who don’t care for them don’t see what all the fuss is about.
Yep, it just keeps on giving.
Me, I love led Zepplin, but I also think those Beatles where FAB.
07/09/2008 at 17:30 JM says:
“WAR. But the game is not only PvP, and you’re kidding yourself if you can claim it is with a straight face.”
Indeed. Which is why I never made such a claim. I just said that the game was focused on RvR/PvP…
You know full well the game, the skills, the talents, the class compositions are based around PVP/RVR first and foremost, yet you chose to ignore it *completely*. Is that fair?
And if you failed to get into any RVR or PVP scenarios during your entire beta testing career, I don’t know what to tell you. Everyone else seemed to do ok.
07/09/2008 at 17:37 Alec Meer says:
“You know full well the game, the skills, the talents, the class compositions are based around PVP/RVR first and foremost”
They’re about being a glossy EQ-lineage MMO first and foremost, equally adaptable to both PVP and PVE and most of all about being highly appealing to WoW players, dissatisfied or otherwise. We’re a little off-topic I think (you’re probably best off critiquing the Impressions piece in its own thread), but to get back on it, saying “It’s not much like WoW because you can spend more time beating up other players instead of characters who look like players” doesn’t persuade me because I don’t consider the distinction all that profound. I appreciate not everyone feels the same way – it’s a little like the RTS/RTT argument, I suspect.
07/09/2008 at 17:41 The Hammer says:
Okay. If I’m having a discussion with someone who then claims that I lack the ability to perceive things accurately, I’m gonna sit the rest of this one out, even if my point still stands.
07/09/2008 at 17:45 malkav11 says:
I’d actually disagree. WoW did essentially invent that mold. The PvE experience in WoW is leaps and bounds beyond the PvE experience in games like Everquest. The commonalities are commonalities that date back to the earliest multiplayer games of this type – MUDs. And going back to *those* would be something of a shell shock these days.
(Okay, EQII, from what I understand, has some of the same mechanics, executed less proficiently. I don’t know, I’ve never played it. But it’s definitely not the inspiration for the other MMOs that have employed those mechanics since.)
07/09/2008 at 18:28 spirit7 says:
Without wanting to open a massive can o’worms or change the subject TOO much, has anyone been following the mayhem caused by GOA’s horrific WAR open beta launch today? The Warhammer Alliance forums have turned into a lynch mob.
07/09/2008 at 18:34 Paul S says:
It’s all rather exciting, innit?
I think people need to cut GOA some slack. Everyone’s getting far, far too excited.
07/09/2008 at 18:41 spirit7 says:
This was so inevitable, though! Creating the account pages hours before the launch of the beta? Of course their site was going to crash!
GOA have a reputation for this kind of incompetence, I hear, as ex-DAoC players will attest to. I personally am not overly bothered: I just hope the same mistakes aren’t made for early starters and on launch day.
07/09/2008 at 18:45 Alec Meer says:
Yeah, the beta launch has been a hideous experience.
07/09/2008 at 18:49 Paul S says:
This is still only the beta, though. If they balls up the actual launch, I think people will have a right to be pissed off. Hopefully, they’ve learned their lesson and that won’t happen. We’ll see, I suppose.
07/09/2008 at 18:56 rei says:
Not as much as you might think. I’ve been playing MMOs since UO, but I still occasionally log on to my MUD of choice, and it’s doing as well today as it did in the mid 90′s. It’s a very different experience and I don’t see MUDs dying out anytime soon. There’s yet to be an MMO that offers even a tiny fraction of the interactive potential of a MUD.
07/09/2008 at 19:07 spirit7 says:
Unlikely they’ve learned their lesson to be honest. They made these kind of mistakes frequently throughout the DAoC years.
07/09/2008 at 19:42 MadTinkerer says:
It really doesn’t matter how much or how little WAR is like WoW. Saying the two are similar is just redundant to a silly degree.
WAR is not ripping off WoW, simply because WoW would need to have an original idea in it for that to be possible. That’s not necessarily a criticism of Blizzard, despite the fact that GW games are a particularly obvious influence. (And I’m saying that a little tongue-in-cheek because WoW was the original MMO to have two distinct rival factions/race alliances of players. I’ll give them props for that.)
I remember when Everquest was an Ultima Online ripoff. Ultima Online, in turn, was just jumping on the MUD bandwagon by updating the Ultima VII world and style and adding network multiplayer. All of the above mentioned games are ripoffs of D&D, which itself is a magnificent ripoff/distillation of an entire literary genre attached to some genuinely original (at the time) game mechanics.
At this point, pretty much anything made in the swords & sorcery genre is a “ripoff” of HUNDREDS, if not thousands, of things that came before it, so any comparison to a specific iteration means comparing what that iteration does differently. You may as well try to make the claim that Watchmen is ripping off The Dark Knight.
Really, anyone at RPS who didn’t realize years ago that fans would react this way really needs to read more comics.
07/09/2008 at 20:21 fanciestofpants says:
Ah, angry men of the internet, will you ever learn?
Seriously though. So many die-hard WAR fans just fly into a tard-rage whenever some knave dare speak WoW in their enlightened presence. For example; the Lead admin of Only-war.com.
Anytime someone mentions wow in relation to WAR(for eg, guy saying “Oh hey guys, I played a rogue in WOW, what WAR class is for me?”) he responds with flaming doom acid in condensed word form, unleashing the fucking fury of “THIS IS WAR NOT WOW” at the drop of a hat. It’s even his goddamn sig.
And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in beta for a good whack of time so far, got the CE on preorder and eagerly await release, but please. Comparing WoW to WAR is not only inevitable but utterly correct. There is nothing wrong with this.
tl;dr:
It’s a great game.
It’s(quite) a bit like WoW.
These two concepts can live in peace together.
07/09/2008 at 20:38 Pus Filled Sac says:
Something of an insight into the much revered maturity of the WAR community. I’ll take my tea drinking elsewhere.
07/09/2008 at 21:49 sinister agent says:
Something of an insight into the much revered maturity of the WAR community. I’ll take my tea drinking elsewhere.
I’ve no interest at all in either WOW or WAR (frankly, I’ve yet to see anything to change my view that all MMPORMGPORGs are exactly the goddamn same), and know neither community. But I bet the shouty morons are not representative of the WAR lot, whoever they are. Don’t let a few vocal tedes tarnish a whole bunch of people who probably have as much contempt for them as you do, if not more.
Every game has them, anyway.
07/09/2008 at 22:30 Orange says:
GOA are shocking, they will undo any positive work by Mythic on the game.
07/09/2008 at 23:01 Derek K. says:
My wife’s first comment upon logging in: “This looks a lot like WoW.” I explained the linkage and the history, and she said “Oh, that makes sense. How is it different from WoW then?”
The fact remains: To those people that have been exposed to the Swords and Sorcery genre primarily via WoW, everything looks like WoW. ;)
So far, I like it more than WoW. I assume the glitches are due to beta and stress. I’m certainly picking it up at Launch. There’s only one other game I’ve done that for (well, one other MMO). Can you guess which? ;)
07/09/2008 at 23:25 Rudolf says:
if the communications and technical disaster that is GOA don’t prompt shouting, nothing will.
07/09/2008 at 23:33 Alexander says:
The reason I tend to be put off by such comparisons relates to something briefly mentioned in this article.
Before Blizzard made the first Warcraft, they wanted to make a Warhammer strategy game. Games Workshop said no. So, they took the Warhammer look, the Warhammer setting, and tweaked it somewhat, and came out with Warcraft, their own version of Warhammer.
So now people go around talking about how Warhammer is copying Warcraft because they simply don’t know the history of it. It’s actually Warcraft that’s copied Warhammer.
08/09/2008 at 00:06 Paul S says:
For Christ’s sake. Will people PLEASE read a thread before mouthing off? If one more person posts the “Actually, WoW copied Warhammer…” story or links to that Penny Arcade comic, I will not be responsible for my actions.
08/09/2008 at 00:16 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
To Everyone Pointing Out That Warhammer is Not A Ripoff of Warcraft: We know. We know. The whole story, it’s common knowledge at this point. Or it is to anyone who follows more than one kind of game, anyway. And nobody’s saying that Warhammer ripped off Warcraft. Hell, some of us say the opposite whenever we get the chance to.
What the discussion was about was that the game WAR was similar to WoW, in ways that to the unbiased eye are pretty obvious, though justifiably so.
Take what Meat Circus said to stab to the heart of the reason this comparison even exists:
If WoW was the epitome of MMORPG 1.0, WAR and AoC are aiming for MMORPG 1.5. Unfortunately, I’m looking for MMORPG 2.0.
When you do something as obvious as model the fundamental play elements of your game after WoW, naturally people who aren’t MMO-obsessed are going to notice. It’s not like WAR’s modeled after EVE Online, after all. Just because they’ve made incremental improvements to those fundamentals doesn’t change the fact that the feel is similar enough to notice.
And though it’s an obvious enough point to make, it’s not necessarily a bad one. Since WoW’s so damned popular, successful, and user-friendly (as far as MMOs go), being compared to WoW is hardly an insult.
However, those who honestly think that it is, and who’re getting their ruffles feathered by it, are always worth a chuckle and a half.
08/09/2008 at 00:16 M.P. says:
I still regularly say (to the scorn and derision of several WoW players who disagree with me) that WoW’s early sales success at launch (far outpacing the sales expectations of both Blizzard and their publishers, and leading to widespread server downtimes due to overcrowding) was largely due to its launch coming mere months after the cancellation of the original (Climax’s) Warhammer Online.
Neither Blizzard’s reputation, nor the fanbase of the Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft games, nor the people who came over from other MMOs can account for the sheer number of people who signed up for Warcraft when it first came out – people who mostly hadn’t played MMOs before, and who didn’t even wait for the reviews, but bought straight into it at launch. So my theory is that those numbers were significantly swelled by all the people who had been watching WHO’s development with interest and a stab of nostalgia – mostly 20- and 30-somethings who had given up on the Warhammer hobby, some due to lack of time, some due to outgrowing it, some because GW had been constantly changing the look and rules of the games and models to appeal to ever-younger fans for the better part of 10 years. Then, suddenly, you had a game that seemed to have been based not on the GW days of 2004, but on the look and feel of the hobby from the 1980s! People whose lead models had been rotting in the loft for years, and who had never played an MMO (many might not have been fans of computer games at all) were finding themselves tempted to delve into that world again. Then it was cancelled and all those poor sods, having been tantalized with the possibility of a Warhammer game straight out of their childhood, were left a bit lost and forlorn, so, my theory is, a lot of them went over to WoW because it was somehow familiar and evocative of Warhammer Online.
Sure, WoW is a good game (so I’m told, only played the 10-day trial myself), and, post-launch, it capitalised on its initial success through strong reviews and word-of-mouth and grew its playerbase to its current gargantuan proportions. I’m not dissing the game, just to explain why it was such an unexpected success AT LAUNCH and in the first few weeks thereafter. And IMHO, while it might have eventually swelled to 6 million players eventually anyway, the early sales glut was helped ENORMOUSLY by its visual similarity to the Warhammer lisence.
The REAL irony isn’t, as Alexander said, that people are accusing WAR of copycatting WoW when WoW was derivative of the Warhammer lisence first. The irony is that, back in ’04 when the first Warhammer Online was cancelled, it was strongly rumoured in the WH community that GW corporate was displeased with the direction Climax had taken with the game graphically. GW had been redesigning its miniatures to be chunkier, more cartoony, and more appealing to younger gamers, combined with a greater use of plastic components and the removal of lead from those models still cast in metal, so that they could legally market them to younger kids. However, the people they sent over to work with Climax on WHO were chaps like Rick Priestly and Robin Dews, people who had been there since the 80s, in whose imaginations Warhammer was still a dark and gritty place. Consequently, Climax built a game which (as screenshots of it confirmed) looked NOTHING like the Warhammer of its time. GW didn’t want something like that – they wanted something like, oh, I don’t know, WoW. :)
08/09/2008 at 00:23 Kid_Amnesiac says:
God, I love you guys.
08/09/2008 at 00:30 M.P. says:
(Of course, I know that the rumour that WHO was cancelled for being too “dark” is probably just a rumour, or at best was only part of the reason for its cancellation. And of course there’s loads of people who were tempted to play WHO who never bought WoW, like me. But the debate on whether WAR is derivative of WoW just gets this extra touch of hilarity for people who were watching what was going on back then!)
08/09/2008 at 00:34 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
M.P.: That’s pretty darn funny.
08/09/2008 at 01:15 JM says:
Funny? It’s hysterical!
Frankly I was sold on WoW when someone described it as “sort of like Diablo in the Warcraft world”. Warhammer never came into it (and I’m a huge Games Workshop nerd, though more 40k than fantasy).
08/09/2008 at 01:44 Paul Barnett says:
Came to my senses.
08/09/2008 at 02:02 malkav11 says:
Mm. I’ve yet to find a single MUD that has an expertly crafted 1-max PvE experience signposted by quests and characterized by lots of exciting exploration. Every one I have ever played, even the best of the lot (LP-based MUDs, mostly), relied primarily on the model EQ adapted wherein you find the right mobs to kill for optimum experience, and you rinse repeat. The LPMuds had more elaborate class design, some decent (text-adventure-like) quests, and such, but it’s still basically the same mob-whacking experience. I don’t think I could go back to that. And that’s what WoW saved us from.
Also, I’ve never encountered one that made grouping a winning prospect. Simply because MUDs have pretty much always had much lower populations of both players and monsters. MMOs compensate for the exp split with enhanced killing speed and efficiency. MUDs would also, except that you run out of appropriate monsters to kill and you’re not so much more capable as to move well outside your solo comfort range.
After my ~six hour 190 MB patch download (crazy slow, and they had to have known that would be a problem if they only gave us patch ability midway through this morning), I’ve been loving WAR so far. It definitely plays like WoW, but the world seems much more alive and the Tome of Knowledge and Public Quests are awesome improvements to the formula.
08/09/2008 at 02:27 MrNeutron says:
Really great piece. I too missed the eDrama, but the outpouring of Nerd Rage doesn’t surprise me at all. There’s something about MMOs that brings people like that out of the woodwork, and I think your analasis of the possible reasons for that is a compelling one. I think it’s definitely a “Stickin’ It To The Man” thing. I don’t play MMOs, and can’t really see myself ever doing so, but my girlfriend is a big player of them (Guild Wars mainly, but a lot of others here and there), and one thing I can’t help but notice is that she never, ever resists an oportunity to put the boot into WoW. I think there’s a lot of old-school MMO players out there who like their games with a slightly different style, and who heartily resent Blizzard for popularising their own brand of MMO. Now, my uneducated eye can’t tell the difference between any of these damn things, but I’m assured that the difference is there, that it’s big, and that it’s something to be bitter about. *Shrug*
WoW is a “dirty word” though. Even to me. It’s easy to pin the blame for the changing landscape of PC gaming on Blizzard. They made a metric ass-load of money and now, in the eyes of non-PC players, WoW is the only game the platform has. That’s something that I know frustrates me. They’re the 800 pound gorilla in the room whenever you talk about any sort of gaming on PC, and so they’re a tempting target for any scorn you may be feeling.
I guess I should be thankful that my resentment and scorn is far outweighed by my aloof and icy indifference to the whole thing.
08/09/2008 at 04:34 Abriael says:
@Alec “we don’t deny for a second that the RvR is very, very important to WAR. But the game is not only PvP, and you’re kidding yourself if you can claim it is with a straight face”
Actually the game is “centered” around RvR (which doesn’t mean it’s ONLY RvR), even if it still has a very varied, complete (and fairly awesome) PvE Element, everything is ultimately aimed towards progression in the realm war (PvE included. Yes, PvE contributes to the success of each faction). Also, since you can progress from your first hour of gameplay to level 40 cap entirely trough RvR, I would say that for many people the game WILL actually be “only PvP” (and with 23 different scenarios, open RVR, keep sieging and such there’s plenty variation to go from start to cap without an hint of boredom). This alone puts the game in a totally different shoe box compared to WoW.
“No, WoW did not invent that mould. Yes, WAR does it because WoW does it. ”
No, WAR does it because it’s the classical MMORPG gameplay, that was invented (and adopted by Mythic itself) much before WoW was even an idea, and because, since it works well, there’s no need to change it.
08/09/2008 at 05:04 Tinman_au says:
Lazy reviewing will always lead to issues like this. And yes, a bunch of guys sitting around discussing the points of a particular game, especially what they like and dislike, is a “review” in most folks view.
Not that I blame you too much, it’s way easier to point to something and say “It’s just like that” than to actually describe it (technical writing courses like to point these types of issues out, but I guess you guys haven’t done any? :)). It works like this:
WoW is to WAR, like the English are to Americans. The English have 2 arms, 2 legs and talk funny just like Americans, therefore they are just like each other!!
When you create a “set”, it’s subjective in some ways. On one level “Englishmen” and “Americans” belong to the “set” known as “humanity”, but the member of those sets will more than likely argue the differences between them than the similarities ;)
All diku based MMO’s are pretty similar anyway (WoW, WAR, EQ, yada yada yada), so you can probably get away with the term “…like most diku MMO’s” and not rile too many feathers.
08/09/2008 at 05:15 Jim Rossignol says:
Do they teach how to be hopelessly patronising on these courses?
08/09/2008 at 05:24 Noc says:
Tinman, perhaps you’re missing the point?
A “review” is an exercise in hindsight. Hence: RE. VIEW. A Review is when, after looking at the item as a whole, you sit down and attempt to form a cohesive judgment of it.
On the other hand, lets say I go to school. I go through my first day of classes. I get back home, and my roommate asks “So how did your first day of classes go?” Now, when I talk about my first day of classes, and say “American Lit started out alright, but from what I’ve seen it looks like it’s covering a lot of the same material as my previous classes,” I am not “Reviewing” that class. I am sharing the IMPRESSION of that class I got from the first day.
No one in their right mind would listen to me talk about my first day of class and say “Dude, you’re such an idiot. This class is so much different from previous courses because of it’s unique critical treatment of Hemingway. You can’t give a review of the class without talking about that.” No sane person would lambast me for not giving a comprehensive review of the course, because I am clearly talking about my impressions from the first day.
The article in question was clearly labeled “RPS IMPRESSIONS.” They disclosed how much they’d played, and talked about their experiences during that time. I understand how people throughout the internet have a habit of jumping to conclusions without actually reading or thinking about the article in question, but this is not a complicated concept, and it baffles me how you can try and make an intellectual case for the opposition.
This is not a concept that’s evolved from technical writing. This is a concept that’s evolved from having ever talked with anyone before in your life. For God’s sake, why do we all just forget all of that when we step onto the internet?
08/09/2008 at 06:02 john t says:
God this whole thing is hilarious. I have never played WoW or WAR, but I did watch some of my friends play everquest for a while when it first came out. It looked amusing, until they all lost their jobs and girlfriends and became depressing to hang around. I’ve never quite figured out how WoW is different from Everquest, let alone how WAR differs from WoW. They all look the same to me. They’re all the ‘destroy your social life’ game, in the end, aren’t they?
08/09/2008 at 06:36 Tinman_au says:
“Do they teach how to be hopelessly patronising on these courses?”
No Jim, “the Internet” is the best teacher there.
Like could people possibly see it as patronising when “a bunch of guys sitting around having a discussion of their impressions of WAR, tea and masturbation” (happy now Noc? ;)) say “Your game is just like WoW”?
I guess it depends on your opinion of WoW and that’s what puts all this in context, isn’t it. Kudos to Alex for spotting that at least.
Once you add in that most folks looking to play WAR, or any other MMO for that matter, more than likely have “an issue” with WoW (or they’d be playing it) and is it any wonder folks don’t like a “it’s the same” comparison?
@Noc: Yeah, perhaps I am missing the point. But then that’s a pretty common theme on any blog site really.
08/09/2008 at 06:50 Noc says:
Tinman, I’m not sure if “patronizing” means what you think it means.
08/09/2008 at 07:12 Tinman_au says:
Adjective; Patronising ; (used of behaviour or attitude) characteristic of those who treat others with condescension.
Dunno what you think it means…
08/09/2008 at 07:39 Noc says:
Right.
So “condescending” means carrying on with an implication of the superiority of the speaker. Or, more specifically, the inferiority of the listener. Saying “We’ve played this game and a lot of it looks very similar to this other game” does not do that. It’s an observation about a game. Is it a fair one? Is it accurate? Is it representative of the experience as a whole? Well, that’s the discussion. But it’s not a condescending sentiment, and it’s not patronizing.
Patronizing would be saying to the developers, “All right, you did a very good job, really, and I’m sure you worked very hard. It looks just like WoW and is really a bit crap, but it’s a good effort. Really.”
Patronizing would also involve saying to the players, “Well, it’s just like WoW, but you guys are used to that and we all know that you folks have a hard time adapting, because you’re a bit dim in the head, haha. But that’s alright, we don’t think any less of you for it, and it’s really very good of the devs to make the game accommodating to your sort.”
I read through the article again just to make sure, and none of that comes up. In fact, they don’t address the audience at all. So there’s not really any patronizing going on in this article. According to, you know, our shared definition.
There are other words, which mean different things, that could describe what I think you’re talking about. Arrogance, maybe? Cheek? Approaching the rabid WoW vs. WAR debate with flippancy that suggests that they’re above the whole thing? That’s a more cynical reading of the passage than I’d go with, but it’s a legitimate position. But calling something smug, or arrogant, is a very different thing than calling it patronizing.
I mean, you took a technical writing class, you should know this.
08/09/2008 at 07:50 malkav11 says:
No, really, Mythic has never made a game using the post-WoW PvE paradigm before. So yes, they are drawing from WoW for that, because everyone does.
I played WoW for a long time. I just played something like six straight hours of WAR (PvE). The experiences were quite directly comparable except, of course, that WAR had more world interactivity, the Tome of Knowledge, and public quests. All of which improve things immensely. But it does owe a great debt to WoW for the foundation on which to build. Which is fine, because it’s an excellent foundation.
08/09/2008 at 08:33 Kaylon says:
Not sure if this has been mentioned but I will anyway…
What upsets a lot of WAR fans when talking about the art style is the fact that everyone always says it copied WoW… when in truth WoW copied WAR.
Warhammers art style has been around since 1978 when the first edition was made… sometime during the 80′s a group of computer game developers saw Warhammer table top and thought “wow…lets make that into a computer game, we can’t call it warhammer so we’ll call it Warcraft, but we’ll keep that art style cos it’s great” That company was Blizzard.
The prob we now have is WoW is out…Warcraft has used the Games Workshop art style for years but has never really been in direct conflict with a Games Workshop product…now it is…so of course they share visual styles, you can’t have Warhammer NOT looking like Warhammer :)
It’s kinda like the chicken and the egg…which came first, in art style..Warhammer came first and WoW actually copied it…however WoW got the recognition for it first.
K
08/09/2008 at 08:58 Larry-Steve says:
The comments that argue WoW’s PvP is in any way unique is inaccurate.
WoW’s BG system and their original honor system were both developed from DAoC’s low level BG system.
WAR’s RvR was developed from DAoC’s, as it IS the same company.
I won’t argue that WAR doesn’t have anything in common with WoW, as it does, but to argue that WAR is a WoW knock-off is inaccurate.
I’m an ex-DAoC’er and to be entirely honest, what I’ve read from people who’ve played WAR for the first time, but never played DAoC, isn’t any of the new features, NOR the WoW’ish features. The features hailed as great by reviewers of WAR, with no DAoC experience, were the features implemented in WAR that Mythic used in DAoC; RvR, keep warfare (siege and defense), group reliance (solo is no-no), and the necessity of competent and coherent strategies in PvP combat.
I’ll be the first to admit, WAR took their item ranking system straight from WoW, but that isn’t what players are liking about the game.
Also, it would probably help to know WoW’s and WAR’s histories before you make the argument that WAR is based on WoW.
DAoC released approx. 3 years before WoW, and WoW used pieces of DAoC, EQ, and a number of other successful MMO’s at the time to build their game. Granted, the lore is ‘mostly’ theirs (A LOT can be directly paralleled to original Warhammer lore though) and they did add new things to the genre of MMO’s (as ALL new games are expected to do), but WoW wasn’t the first, nor is it completely unique. Seeing as most WoW players have never played another MMO, most of your judgements will be inherently bias; sorry, you’re a WoW’er, not an MMO’er. Arguements used such as “well they took this from WoW” don’t support well, when that same mechanic can likely be linked to another MMO that WoW modeled it from.
All MMO’s use mechanics from one another; its how business works. If one idea worked well, why not include the same in our game. Please, don’t argue WAR took from WoW. WAR took from many games within the Genre, BUT SO DID WOW. Also, you have to understand that Mythic has YEARS more experience with MMO’s than Blizzard does.
08/09/2008 at 09:08 Alec Meer says:
Going to delete any and all further “actually Blizzard ripped off Warhammer” comments. It says that in the article. Please read it before you shout.
08/09/2008 at 09:42 spirit7 says:
YES! SUCCESS! I AM FINALLY IN THE BETA!
Graphics are a bit shoddy? Well, the landscape textures from a distance, anyway…
08/09/2008 at 10:08 Super Teddy says:
like telling a goth that he’s emo
<3
08/09/2008 at 10:45 frymaster says:
WoW is the ipod of MMORPGS – not first, and with no innovative functionality*, but polished and easy to use and has managed through a combination of circumstances to be the product that defines its genre.
I don’t actually like the ipod – I have itunes-aversion – but every mp3 player ever will be reviewed in comparision to it. There are better players on the market this minute, but it will still be the ipod that things are compared to. It’s the standard benchmark that everyone knows and can relate to. Everyone has a nice “mental model” of it.
I trust the analogy is obvious?
I’m not going to play a MMORPG until university is done and dusted (and I was considering WAR in front of WoW), but this thread is beginning to put me off WAR. PvP (or RvR) is going to be pretty much mandatory? Boo, then, because I prefer co-op play to getting griefed by someone who can devote more time to learning the game than I can.
*By which I mean, couldn’t play any new formats, wasn’t higher capacity or batter life, didn’t have a radio or make toast or play videos or anything like that. I’m specifically not talking about the UI, which rocks.
08/09/2008 at 12:54 fbatista says:
I think this article is uber bullshit… it shows the narrowed view of someone that clearly only focus on mainstream mmo’s… There are lots of other mmo’s out there worth playing. And they absolutely cover all types of gameplay styles.
Just to give some examples:
- Action Focused: Cabal online (dont play the EU version cause it’s managed by a retard company)
- Competitive play: Guildwars. Best Competitive game in the genre, no room for discussion here. If you dont believe it, go grab 7 more ppl and do some GvG or Hero’s Ascent…
- Mass pvp: RF Online (Rising force). This game has awesome, absolutely brilliant mass pvp. It’s a 3 way game, with 3 races that fight against each other on the world. No instances except for dungeons. Mass pvp takes place at given times and winners get huge bonuses for some time. Has a simply amazing political system of electing race leaders. Economy is also excelent since all trades on the tradeposts have a tax that goes towards the race leader so he can buy nukes to use at wars. I have yet to see a game that can reach the toes of RF Online in terms of mass pvp awesomeness. But , since there’s always a but, RF is a fairly old game and since its a korean product its fairly difficult to lvl up at high end.
08/09/2008 at 12:59 Apaperbackhero says:
Its ok for WAR fans to be angry about the WoW comparison. Just ignore them, because they know deep down that when WofLK comes out they are going be bored of pressing the same buttons on WAR and are going to come back to pressing the same buttons on WoW. I bet half the people who are hating on you guys still haven’t even terminated their subscriptions with WoW.
08/09/2008 at 14:19 Beefeater says:
The debate is pointless and overdone. This thread, however, is horribly fascinating. No cloud without a silver lining and all that.
08/09/2008 at 15:13 Menders says:
It’s actually like telling a scene kid he’s an emo: barely any difference at all, except that one has more pink in it than the other.
08/09/2008 at 15:46 Noc says:
Fbatista, you’re actually making a rather strong point for the WoW model, here. Let me explain.
Cabal is one of those games that shouldn’t be an MMO. It’s “Press The Hotkeys” style gameplay is slightly more action oriented than other MMO’s “Press the Hotkeys” gameplay, but all you really do is kill monsters. It’s a credible enough hybrid of Action RPG and RT RPG to make the harvesting interesting for a while, and that’s one of it’s strong points. The other strong point is the fact that the endless string of “Kill 10 of this” and “Bring 10 of that” quests are strung together into an actual storyline. But still, it’s basically a single player experience that’s hampered by the fact that it’s an MMO.
Guild Wars, on the other hand, I don’t think is really an MMO at all. This isn’t the usual “Instanced areas, not persistent, blah blah,” argument. Instead, I’m saying this because structurally, it bears more in common with the multiplayer FPS than anything else. I don’t think the experience would be unduly harmed if they scrapped PvE and made the out-of-game interface lobby based. It’s multiplayer, but it only seems to do the MASSIVELY multiplayer things because it feels like it’s supposed to, with the PvE and the necessity of leveling up new characters and such. It’s another game that’s hampered by trying to be an MMO instead of settling into a more comfortable genre.
I haven’t played RF Online, because, from what I’ve seen, it looks a bit like a Lineage clone, and those have spawned some of the worst gaming experiences I’ve had to date. Actual awful experiences: not just “Wow, this game isn’t very good, I’ll stop playing.” But “Holy shit, I slipped into Grind Hypnosis for hours because I thought I was heading for something interesting. I feel sick, dehydrated, exhausted, and betrayed. I’m going to go lay on the floor of my bathroom now.” Games that actually give me a sick, knotted feeling in my gut that makes me regret the time I spent with them.
Beyond that, though, the things you’re talking about are also in EVE. Which has the advantage of not being . . . that.
I’m not a huge fan of the game, but it would be silly not to admit the strengths of the WoW model – specifically the fact that it’s one of the few models that actually draws on the strengths of it being an MMO. Instead of the games you mentioned, which are uniformly (and interestingly!) hampered by the conventions of their chosen genre. Cabal would have room to create more interesting areas and scenarios if it didn’t have to resort to Monster Fields. In a single player game, it could make the worlds properly persistent, and have them actually altered by the story as it progresses. GW could focus more on it’s core multiplayer experience, instead of the “back of the box” features people expect of the game just because it’s an MMO. And RF Online could let me play it without having to pause to throw up every few hours.
It’s hard to imagine WoW, though, being anything other than it is. Except . . . hmm. Maybe they could make an RTS out of it. Has anyone else thought of that?
08/09/2008 at 16:06 Heartless_ says:
The real problem is that WAR can be played like WoW, so many players go ahead and play it like WoW, ignoring most of the aspects that make WAR a much more social and engaging experience. Then we get the WoW-clone tripe.
Anyone that has played Mythic’s DAoC should immediately feel WARs similarities to DAoC. WAR, surprisingly enough, plays a lot more like a Mythic game than WoW. It is just tough to convince people to change their attitudes towards how things should work in a diku-like MMO.
08/09/2008 at 17:04 Nick says:
Noc: “It’s multiplayer, but it only seems to do the MASSIVELY multiplayer things because it feels like it’s supposed to, with the PvE and the necessity of leveling up new characters and such.”
You can create a PVP character without having to level anyone up and use points from PvPing to unlock skills (or, now buy unlock packs for a pittance should you desire).
It was definitly more of a mix of singleplayer RPG and MMO, with competetive PvP added in, they went to a decent effort to have a working storyline running through the experience, which is something more MMOs should attempt I feel.
08/09/2008 at 17:21 Abriael says:
@Apaperbackhero
That sounds a lot like a wow fanboy’s wishful thinking, doesn’t it? :D
WAR inspired by WoW? It seems to me that WOTLK is in many ways a (very) pale imitation of Warhammer Online.
08/09/2008 at 17:35 Nick says:
You’d have to be stupid to think any MMO released post WoW wasn’t influenced in *some* way BY WoW itself, even if it was only that it got the green light and funding BECAUSE of the success WoW had in fact it pisses me off so many liscenes are being turned into fucking MMOs after that, as they’ll mostly turn out crap. As an aside, I hate WoW.
For fun analogies, people compared music at the same time to The Beatles, not Buddy Holly or whoever else they were influenced by.
08/09/2008 at 17:36 Marcelo.Abans says:
WoW is like the old GF you are sick of and War is what everyone is hoping to be the new hotter GF. That’s until you realize she’s just the same nag that the other GF was.
WoW has changed the landscape of how MMOs are done. It’ sad to see how people validate their “corness” or “maturity” by the game they play. All you have to do is realize that perhaps WoW is just not the game for you.. Just like you realized you couldn’t kick a goal in football, or throw a 95MPH pitch.
As far as for mythics experience, good I’m glad they used all that experience into take a deep MMO in DAoC, sadly I saw no fun there but doesn’t make it a bad game just not for me.
08/09/2008 at 17:43 Klaus says:
Yeah – take that, you tea drinking… scallywags??
08/09/2008 at 19:07 cyrenic says:
@frymaster
WAR seems to be more of a co-op game than WoW, actually. Public Quests and Open Groups encourage impromptu grouping better than WoW does. Basically WAR encourages group play right from an early level, while WoW assumes 1-LevelCap will be mostly solo questing. PvP focus aside, I think this is the most progressive thing WAR does for MMO’s.
And the way they have RvR set up, I have yet to figure out how it’s possible to grief someone on the Core ruleset servers. Not that I’m a griefer or anything :P.
08/09/2008 at 19:21 Gorgeras says:
I’ve been at Center Parcs all weekend without internet since thursday. I estimated a 60% chance that GOA would screw something up in spite of the warnings which they ridiculed and encouraged others to ridicule(bordering on personal abuse). I guessed at 20% that the extent of the damage would be ‘F.U.B.A.R’.
I’m now reading sites as fast as I can to catch up on the situation before actually plunging into beta. Can anyone summarise what’s happened? IanC has apparently said something racist allegedly and Mark Jacobs has made a blog post stating he ‘disagrees with what IanC said’ in quite an apoligetic tone. So, ‘sup?
08/09/2008 at 20:05 cyrenic says:
Gogeras, I think this is the quote you’re talking about:
“A lot of what was said yesterday here and on other forums was entirely out of line. Of course you were disappointed and criticism is certainly warranted but frankly many of the posts made about the situation were borderline sociopathic. If having delayed access to a beta test really drives you to such depths of anger and fury that you felt compelled to make the death threats, racial slurs and other deeply unpleasant posts then – and there is no polite way to put this – there is something wrong with you.”
Entirely up to the reader to decide how out of line he was. Source: http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1384848#post1384848
08/09/2008 at 20:10 Gorgeras says:
IanC had no problem encouraging others to break the forums rules over at WHA in order to make critical posters shut up. That quote would count in my list of his failings as the incessent passive-aggressiveness he’s becoming famous for. It’s a ‘everybody is attacking me unprovoked’ attitude he has, but he knows he deliberately winds people up. Black is white, up is down.
09/09/2008 at 01:42 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Abriael:
The irony of your statement should probably have hit you by now. Apaperbackhero definitely sounds like less of a WoW fanboy, more of a snarky cynic. He’s making fun of both WAR and WoW at the same time. Not to mention the more outspoken fans of either, who in his–and I’ll admit, my–eyes are just more of the same noise.
09/09/2008 at 15:22 Dr Cocktopuss says:
Bad RPS! Reminding people that they’ve only transferred their addiction from one product to another… no wonder they’re all cross! That’s cognitive dissonance.
09/09/2008 at 17:32 Rock Sceptre says:
Paul Barnett keeps claiming that they want to be the “Led Zeppelin” to Blizzard’s “Beatles”, however I think this misses the whole point. Neither project is really a musical work of “art”, but a product designed for monetary efficiency and mass appeal.
Mythic is the “Burger King” to Blizzard’s “McDonald’s”, and to claim more is to put on airs of innovation unbecoming either team.
09/09/2008 at 23:45 malkav11 says:
Something WAR has that WoW does not: skinning other player races. In quests.
10/09/2008 at 10:48 Unz says:
I, for one, am surprised Games Workshop didn’t get the pants sued off of them for ripping off Tolkien wholesale.
Since “warcraft” ripped off “warhammer”, maybe we can talk about the real inspiration for both.
10/09/2008 at 22:54 Drunken Pandaren says:
Bottom line is, AC is a EQ clone, and there is no amount of bitching that it’s already vocal fanboys can do to change the game. Having played the beta now, the game is a carbon copy of EverQuest with a splash of new, non-innovative ideas thrown on top to make it seem shiney.
11/09/2008 at 11:40 Tinman_au says:
@Noc You put way too much thought into that mate :)
All facetious comments aside, and taking Noc’s comments into account, and what Alex posted, I accept your apologies and am in turn sorry if I hurt your feelings. Welcome to the Cult of War….WAAAAGH!!!!!
@ the “WAR vs WOW” folks. Who gives a ***** who copied who, what matters is if it’s 1. a decent game (stable, relatively bug free) and 2 FUN! So far WAR is both (IMHO :))
11/09/2008 at 11:45 Tinman_au says:
@Drunken Pandaren
Considering EQ released March 99 and AC Nov 99, Turbine must be really, really good to have “cloned” EQ in that time ;)
Seriously dude, just the “AC is a EQ clone” comment alone disqualifies you from this conversation. Sorry :(
13/09/2008 at 23:01 Icewolf says:
Sigh wisd id read this earlier. Doesnt matter if u can draw similarities between war and wow, Ghandi and Hitler, Mother Teresa and 50 Cents. The point is that bringing wow into a war discussion is hurtful to us, the mmo community. We want to play a new game without the blues tagging along like a case of bad luggage. I can almost guarantee that PB isnt copypasting wow script and also guarantee that when i saw the first trailer, wow did not enter my mind once. This article is silly, coz trying to explain away the dmg makes noone feel better and makes some look like hypocrites.
14/09/2008 at 20:18 Gylfi says:
WAR has many similarities with WoW except RvR… it’s more than obvious.
I believe some ppl will deny this because they consider those similarities as the very foundation of the genre MMO.
Which is ofc ridiculous, it’s just them never having plaid UO and planetside.
Others just don’t like it when someone’s telling a truth they don’t wanna hear about their favorite gamey.
Thank God there still unbiased folks like you RPS buds. Don’t ever worry, We got your backs.
16/09/2008 at 13:31 The Faeries' Soulcrusher says:
The name Gylfi comes from one of Tolkien’s primary sources for dwarf and elf names in the icelandic sagas of the Elder Edda. Originality is overrated. I prefer fun for it’s own sake and was entertained by both WAR and the early impression of it on this website. Apparently some people take their tea and self-flagellation more seriously than others.
16/09/2008 at 17:00 Gylfi says:
Gylfi is a real name for pity sake, just elf my butt off.
I would really like to buy WAR.. the main problem is quests.. quests are what you do in the game for at least 50% of your overall /played. And they feel exactly as they felt in WoW. They’re bla and brawl (except ive been told the tome quests seem very interactive, with puzzles and some brain-food, both a rarity and a poison for today’s “cry for hints” players). As far as i’ve seen PvP is nowhere near fun, it feels more like NatGeo lions vs zebras, hunting groups of hungry beasts waiting for a pup to slow down and separate from the bulk… besides the engine and interface which inevitable drag back to the same old playstyle.
Im not dumb enuff to pay for a game i’ve already played in the past (at least 50% of it).
Average players are and will pay for it, instead, because they don’t know/don’t care that they’re playing basically copycats. The community is made mostly of office-crazed freaks who just want to vent their frustration in a user-friendly, cozy, FAMILIAR, and easy to handle game full of presto achievements, so they will not put one in their heads. And it’s easy to realize that WAR’s main goal is to make things user-friendly, just as WoW did with the games before it. WAR is based on dumb-down, in the end… for god sake my character couldn’t even WALK and SIT! This is the rule of mass market, this is what happens when ANYTHING becomes mass and has to appeal to millions, it-gets-dumbed-down.
While some people like new game mechanics and interesting things to do, others are happy with easy to use games, addictive and with familiar interfaces that don’t require thought to be mastered. And WAR tries to give ‘em that and prolly succeeds. But please do NOT tell me about beatles and Led Zeppelin, because WAR is just good marketing.
17/09/2008 at 16:52 Shawn says:
Bravo, bravo RPS. Great writeup and follow up, although I missed the firestorm, it’s doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of ignorant ass fellow American’s came on here making it personal(probably McCain/Pailn supporters anyway). Moving on.
No, I don’t always agree with RPS, but isn’t that the whole goddamn point? If we all lined up like soldiers and vowed not to have different opinions or sway too far from the message, how shitty would the world become? Isn’t that just the same as politics and political parties? I thought the original article was spot on, but never bothered to read those comments for whatever reason.
Now, I’m in the camp that disagrees with RPS’s STALKER CS opinions, we all can’t like the same games and the same functions within our games but that doesn’t take away from how much I enjoy this site, and that absolutely doesn’t warrant me to come here and make it personal. It’s almost like the WAR community is just like the WoW community, but their a bunch of infants, since there game is in it’s early stages of release. Once the game is out, it can speak for itself, and I suspect just like we saw with Age of Conan, it will die down after a few months due to a lack of content, which seems to be the problem in almost every MMO. If Mythic can do anything, it’s to make sure they hire a room of 500 people making content for this game, because they’re gonna need it or suffer the same fate.
The bottom line is, RPS is the best PC news editorial aggregate site on the net. Nothing even comes close. PC Gaming magazines are obsolete by default with a site like this, and if you enjoy reading on the pot? Print it out, it works fantastically..
14/11/2011 at 09:16 larrymayson says:
I am very glad that I find your regular post here. Which seems to be very important and it made good time pass for me. I will always give a nice thrust look in to you from my bookmark feed. I don’t actually comment and don’t like to spend time & English tuition in typing the comment. But here I have to do this because this deserves a good like.