I think a WoW clone tends to be a game that tries to emulate a lot of things WoW does, but does it poorly. So when the game is crappy, people are like "It is just a WoW clone".
They're not really clones, just inferior products that tried to copy a lot of core elements.
One core element I would list is quest based progression. The thing is though, that is basically the norm now, so you can't really call something a clone just because it has quest based progression. Can call it limited because of the lack of variety, but not a clone. Of course there is a certain feel about some games, that seem to try to do everything "WoW like"
All games borrow from each other. I think the last game that was really considered to be a WoW clone was that f2p one allods i think, I didn't follow it, so could have name wrong. In general most really aren't WoW clones, but they are trying to capitalize on some of the strong points of WoW.
Also, people these days, if they don't see enough of a change, it is a clone. If there is too much change, the game sucks and should have been more like WoW. It is a lose/lose situation.
This term reminds me of "Doom clone" from the 90s. The difference is Doom clone stopped being derogatory when it was attached to games like Duke nukem 3D, Blood, and Shadow Warrior. WoW clone is more or less always used as a insult. Regardless, neither of these terms should be taken seriously.
MMO made after WoW was released that is not FFA pvp.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
Nope you are wrong. By WoW clone these people (console gamers and their minions) mean an MMORPG, as opposed to an MMOFPS. The true origin of that which you listed is Anarchy Online (2001). The first AO clone IMO was SWG(2003), anyone who played them both should have felt the uncanny similarity in UI and game play.
So the “Call of Modern Battlefield” crowd wants and FPS with MMO size and a fantasy setting. They failed to achieve their prized elite status in their own games. So now they want to hunt MMORPG gamers. Who they see as weak and easy pray, in anything other than an MMORPG. This is why some many MMOs that listen to this crowded and try action combat fail to defeat WoW. Hence the anger and hatred felt by these FPS gamers for WoW.
Thing is Planetside offered the MMOFPS, but it was too much like their “Call of Modern Battlefield”, and they didn’t achieve elite status, once again. If only someone could make an MMOFPS that MMORPGers (fantasy gamers) would play so that they could be slaughtered by these non-elite FPS gamers. Then the use of “WoW clone” would end.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
For me, who has never played WOW or EQ the wow clone seems a very stark definition.
#1 quest based leveling. For most of my gaming from early UO all the way through TOR(when I finaly gave a wow clone a try thinking it wouldnt be btw) all lvling was done through skills and skill grind. A char didnt have a set level.
A char had stats and derived stats.
A chars power was based on skills and how the stats effected those skills. IE: a low str melee char would be ineffective though using melee would typically increase str if you used the char that way.
#2 Classes. Char classes were in my gaming experience based on what skills a player would choose to use. Every char had the opportunity to use all skills and all weapon though based on their STATS some skills and weapons were simply more effective.
#3 Crafting. Crafting was never a 2nd part of every char. It WAS the char. If you chose to craft to be effective at it you would need to dedicate most of the char to the profession. You didnt have crafters participating in PvP. That was just a bad idea.
#4 Economy. Based on the fact that if you wanted to be an effective PvE/PvE char you couldnt craft and that most drops were either so extremely rare or didnt come in "full character sets" players were dependent on other chars not only to support them on the field but also to fill in their equipment slots. That creates economy
#5 Instances. For most of my gaming experience there were no instanced areas. If you wanted to hunt a certain mob or gather a certain resource you needed to be a part of the community. When you entered the right area players would "scout" it and find out who was there. Sometime that meant friend sometimes troll. And that report would effect how players decided to proceed. Instances IMO are what killed community.
It has lots of quests that guide you down a predefined path.
Dungeons are instanced.
Crafting is very simple and fast.
There is no penalty for death.
Fast travel.
Marvel Heroes is like that ... but how can you call it a wow clone when clearly it is more a diablo clone?
I guess you can call it a WoW clone because it has all those features, is an MMORPG, and came after WoW. There are a lot of MMOs that have slightly different game mechanics overall, but still include that casual type of feeling that all MMOs have today.
What did WoW do that was original and exclusive to WoW?
Make MMOs accessible to people who didn't have a lot of time to play.
Ultima Online easily fell into that category.
I'm pretty sure I sunk a lot more time into Ultima Online. I spend hours getting crafting skills up, crafting items, and killing monsters. Many times I lost said items and have a reduction to skills because either I died to a monster or I died (more often) to a PvPer. That was a huge time sink. It took quite a while to raise skills up as I recall.
Fast travel, auction house, hand holding, lack of death penalty, quest based leveling, the same class system WoW uses, the same raid system WoW uses, the same quest system WoW uses, the same item system WoW uses, the same GUI system WoW uses. A shocking number of MMOs can fill all, or almost all of that criteria.
If it is an MMORPG being released after WoW launched, it will be called a WoW clone.
In reality, NONE of them are.
None might be taking things too far, there was a time when more than a few games were really close to Wow.
I don't really think that is the case anymore, but there were games that even looked like a cheaper version of Wow.
If a game really have the same gameplay, the same mecanics (not just levels but very similar classes, stats, skills, combat system), a very similar world and more or less the same races to play calling it a clone is not that wrong, clearly in that case were the devs trying to make a "new" Wow.
But frankly did all the games I seen that were so similar fail miserably anyways so the genre have moved on and try new stuff now even if there still are some similarities to Wow in most games.
What did WoW do that was original and exclusive to WoW?
Make MMOs accessible to people who didn't have a lot of time to play.
Ultima Online easily fell into that category.
I'm pretty sure I sunk a lot more time into Ultima Online. I spend hours getting crafting skills up, crafting items, and killing monsters. Many times I lost said items and have a reduction to skills because either I died to a monster or I died (more often) to a PvPer. That was a huge time sink. It took quite a while to raise skills up as I recall.
It was a very simple and easy to learn and play game. You just played the game, (hopefully being entertained and having fun) how was it less accessible?
I never liked WoW, so I dunno. Installed it one time, because my friends were playing it, and couldn't get into it. Then, a few years later, installed it again to see if I missed something. I can safetly say I missed nothing. It was just so... "betwixt and between and bore bore bore" to me.
I, personally, don't see any clones in games. I never though "Sonic" was a rip off of "Mario". Also, Mortal Kombat, to me, was never "Street Fighter with blood". Games may draw inspirations from other successful/well-known franchises, but I've never felt like I was playing the exact same game as another (that would be the purest, most correct definition of the word "clone"). While in Beta, I saw a lot of people comparing Wildstar to WoW. Though I can see how they are similar, they are totally different. Case in point: I actually enjoyed playing Wildstar, unlike I did playing WoW.
I guess, to me, what would make a WoW clone a WoW clone, is if it looked exactly like WoW and was called "World of Wizards". At that point, I'd admit, it was a WoW clone. But, having some friends who played WoW religiously, I can say- though many MMO's use some of the same mechanics (and probably wish for the same popularity/fortune), I don't really see too many MMO's ripping off WoW.
Worst Online Communities: WoW/WoD(the OG MMO Trolls), DayZ/WarZ, SMITE/LoL/DOTA, EVE Online, APB "Im ready for All the comparisons I think its dumb and its embarrassing Im switching off No longer listening Ive had enough of persecution and conditioning Maybe its instinct- Were only animal" - Lily Allen, Sheezus
I would say the term "WoW clone" doesn't refer to a specific feature set, it refers to the feeling you get while you are playing the game, which is going to vary from person to person. For me, TOR isn't a WoW clone, because the feeling I get from playing it isn't remotely similar. But most of the information I have seen on Wildstar absolutely screams WoW clone to me, not because the feature list is the same, but because the feeling evoked by the totality of the experience is the same.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
What did WoW do that was original and exclusive to WoW?
Make MMOs accessible to people who didn't have a lot of time to play.
Ultima Online easily fell into that category.
I'm pretty sure I sunk a lot more time into Ultima Online. I spend hours getting crafting skills up, crafting items, and killing monsters. Many times I lost said items and have a reduction to skills because either I died to a monster or I died (more often) to a PvPer. That was a huge time sink. It took quite a while to raise skills up as I recall.
It was a very simple and easy to learn and play game. You just played the game, (hopefully being entertained and having fun) how was it less accessible?
I wouldn't say it was simple and easy to understand. You were dumped into a world with no help on what to do. My first experience was walking out of town and having a fireball PvP hit me and dying. The PvP alone made it not casual friendly. I sure didn't like it much. You could also steal items off players and have them stolen from you. Figuring out things like how to craft and how to cast spells wasn't exactly simple since there wasn't a tutorial on how to do things. Everything required a large amount of time.
For me a "wow clone" is a game that feels like wow and takes things from wow to make players feel more at home and then they reskin and add something to make it "unique" but the end result is "wow clone". Many do this cause this is what we all know and have gotten used to.
Sure many games stray of the wow clone formula and create more action combat with no tab targeting or a total different setting like swtor or star trek online.
But in the end I think it comes down to that devolpers are afraid of straying to far off the winning formula and make a game that no one gets right of the bat.
We all scream for something different but do we really want it? Would we play it?
Sure we would but not many I guess, me I hate complicated controlls and I lack intresst when things aren't the way they should be. Does it mean that I want to play wow? NO I don't like the game, I hate tab targeting today and doing raids everyday for gear progression, but some people love it.
I play GW2 today and although it's doesn't look or feel like wow it has alot of things "borrowed" from it, like heart quest aren't any revolutionary idea it's a quest hub that has been made smarter. instanced pvp and the list goes on.
But do I consider it to be a wow clone? No I don't.
First of the word wow clone is totally wrong cause wow has had very few good ideas themselves. Like everybody else they stole most of it but tweeked it there own way. Just thinking about it I can't say one thing that wow has come up with at all, except for maybe being the first one to dumb down the game and make it easy for casual players to join in.
And no matter how much you hate wow you all still know that it's a good game with the best marketing department in the world. I don't think wow delivers anything special at all more then a stable game true to it's raiding community. If wow were to be released today do you think they would have 7.8 million players? No they wouldn't, they would not even reach a million and why?
It's because people have been playing this game for 5-10 years and invested alot of time into it, they don't wanna start over and I understand them, they have all of there mounts, achievments, gear, titles and so on that has taken years to come by, many of them will never leave.
Calling games wow clones are wrong because nothing about wow is theres. The whole World of Warcraft it self is borrowed from others.
"Wow inspired" thats what these games should be called not clones.
If this was music it would be like saying Pantera (metalband) is a blues clone, no one could say that Pantera sounds like blues but still they have borrowed alot from the blues genre.
Alot of things had happed to wow since there launch 10 years ago and did they come up with all of these ideas themselves? Hell no they "borrowed" from Warhammer online with there achievment book, they have taken on a cashshop and I don't think they were first with this idea either. The list goes on but it's not importent this is what all smart companies do they take good ideas from others and try to make them better. For us it's a win cause it keeps the market for mmos more competitve.
If there were some sort of law against taking ideas from others in mmos then I do belive we would be set back many years in devolpment and I would probably not play any mmo at all.
What did WoW do that was original and exclusive to WoW?
Make MMOs accessible to people who didn't have a lot of time to play.
Ultima Online easily fell into that category.
I'm pretty sure I sunk a lot more time into Ultima Online. I spend hours getting crafting skills up, crafting items, and killing monsters. Many times I lost said items and have a reduction to skills because either I died to a monster or I died (more often) to a PvPer. That was a huge time sink. It took quite a while to raise skills up as I recall.
It was a very simple and easy to learn and play game. You just played the game, (hopefully being entertained and having fun) how was it less accessible?
I wouldn't say it was simple and easy to understand. You were dumped into a world with no help on what to do. My first experience was walking out of town and having a fireball PvP hit me and dying. The PvP alone made it not casual friendly. I sure didn't like it much. You could also steal items off players and have them stolen from you. Figuring out things like how to craft and how to cast spells wasn't exactly simple since there wasn't a tutorial on how to do things. Everything required a large amount of time.
I spent my first couple hours sparring dummies after I made the mistake of attacking a chicken
I still maintain that it was a very accessible game. I'm going to be 50 this year, When UO released I was a 33yr old father with 2 young toddler's who demanded much of my time. I suffered from all the same danger's that you describe in game.
I guess some are just too worried about keeping up with the Jone's and always thinking of games as a competition. UO was a different beast, it was a world of adventure fraught with perils (at least for me). Many of the player's spent much more time and had many more riches, but that didn't matter to me . I met many a friend and had many an adventure and always found the game to be very accessible (when my modem would allow it)
I guess we all have a different way of perceiving things
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You make me like charity
I think a WoW clone tends to be a game that tries to emulate a lot of things WoW does, but does it poorly. So when the game is crappy, people are like "It is just a WoW clone".
They're not really clones, just inferior products that tried to copy a lot of core elements.
One core element I would list is quest based progression. The thing is though, that is basically the norm now, so you can't really call something a clone just because it has quest based progression. Can call it limited because of the lack of variety, but not a clone. Of course there is a certain feel about some games, that seem to try to do everything "WoW like"
All games borrow from each other. I think the last game that was really considered to be a WoW clone was that f2p one allods i think, I didn't follow it, so could have name wrong. In general most really aren't WoW clones, but they are trying to capitalize on some of the strong points of WoW.
Also, people these days, if they don't see enough of a change, it is a clone. If there is too much change, the game sucks and should have been more like WoW. It is a lose/lose situation.
--John Ruskin
"WoW Clone" is a term that any player that has been butt hurt by WoW uses to describe any game that has even one feature in common with WoW.
Nope you are wrong. By WoW clone these people (console gamers and their minions) mean an MMORPG, as opposed to an MMOFPS. The true origin of that which you listed is Anarchy Online (2001). The first AO clone IMO was SWG(2003), anyone who played them both should have felt the uncanny similarity in UI and game play.
So the “Call of Modern Battlefield” crowd wants and FPS with MMO size and a fantasy setting. They failed to achieve their prized elite status in their own games. So now they want to hunt MMORPG gamers. Who they see as weak and easy pray, in anything other than an MMORPG. This is why some many MMOs that listen to this crowded and try action combat fail to defeat WoW. Hence the anger and hatred felt by these FPS gamers for WoW.
Thing is Planetside offered the MMOFPS, but it was too much like their “Call of Modern Battlefield”, and they didn’t achieve elite status, once again. If only someone could make an MMOFPS that MMORPGers (fantasy gamers) would play so that they could be slaughtered by these non-elite FPS gamers. Then the use of “WoW clone” would end.Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
#1 quest based leveling. For most of my gaming from early UO all the way through TOR(when I finaly gave a wow clone a try thinking it wouldnt be btw) all lvling was done through skills and skill grind. A char didnt have a set level.
A char had stats and derived stats.
A chars power was based on skills and how the stats effected those skills. IE: a low str melee char would be ineffective though using melee would typically increase str if you used the char that way.
#2 Classes. Char classes were in my gaming experience based on what skills a player would choose to use. Every char had the opportunity to use all skills and all weapon though based on their STATS some skills and weapons were simply more effective.
#3 Crafting. Crafting was never a 2nd part of every char. It WAS the char. If you chose to craft to be effective at it you would need to dedicate most of the char to the profession. You didnt have crafters participating in PvP. That was just a bad idea.
#4 Economy. Based on the fact that if you wanted to be an effective PvE/PvE char you couldnt craft and that most drops were either so extremely rare or didnt come in "full character sets" players were dependent on other chars not only to support them on the field but also to fill in their equipment slots. That creates economy
#5 Instances. For most of my gaming experience there were no instanced areas. If you wanted to hunt a certain mob or gather a certain resource you needed to be a part of the community. When you entered the right area players would "scout" it and find out who was there. Sometime that meant friend sometimes troll. And that report would effect how players decided to proceed. Instances IMO are what killed community.
It's not time consuming.
It has lots of quests that guide you down a predefined path.
Dungeons are instanced.
Crafting is very simple and fast.
There is no penalty for death.
Fast travel.
Marvel Heroes is like that ... but how can you call it a wow clone when clearly it is more a diablo clone?
I guess you can call it a WoW clone because it has all those features, is an MMORPG, and came after WoW. There are a lot of MMOs that have slightly different game mechanics overall, but still include that casual type of feeling that all MMOs have today.
WoW Clone?
What did WoW do that was original and exclusive to WoW?
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Make MMOs accessible to people who didn't have a lot of time to play.
Ultima Online easily fell into that category.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I'm pretty sure I sunk a lot more time into Ultima Online. I spend hours getting crafting skills up, crafting items, and killing monsters. Many times I lost said items and have a reduction to skills because either I died to a monster or I died (more often) to a PvPer. That was a huge time sink. It took quite a while to raise skills up as I recall.
None might be taking things too far, there was a time when more than a few games were really close to Wow.
I don't really think that is the case anymore, but there were games that even looked like a cheaper version of Wow.
If a game really have the same gameplay, the same mecanics (not just levels but very similar classes, stats, skills, combat system), a very similar world and more or less the same races to play calling it a clone is not that wrong, clearly in that case were the devs trying to make a "new" Wow.
But frankly did all the games I seen that were so similar fail miserably anyways so the genre have moved on and try new stuff now even if there still are some similarities to Wow in most games.
It was a very simple and easy to learn and play game. You just played the game, (hopefully being entertained and having fun) how was it less accessible?
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I never liked WoW, so I dunno. Installed it one time, because my friends were playing it, and couldn't get into it. Then, a few years later, installed it again to see if I missed something. I can safetly say I missed nothing. It was just so... "betwixt and between and bore bore bore" to me.
I, personally, don't see any clones in games. I never though "Sonic" was a rip off of "Mario". Also, Mortal Kombat, to me, was never "Street Fighter with blood". Games may draw inspirations from other successful/well-known franchises, but I've never felt like I was playing the exact same game as another (that would be the purest, most correct definition of the word "clone"). While in Beta, I saw a lot of people comparing Wildstar to WoW. Though I can see how they are similar, they are totally different. Case in point: I actually enjoyed playing Wildstar, unlike I did playing WoW.
I guess, to me, what would make a WoW clone a WoW clone, is if it looked exactly like WoW and was called "World of Wizards". At that point, I'd admit, it was a WoW clone. But, having some friends who played WoW religiously, I can say- though many MMO's use some of the same mechanics (and probably wish for the same popularity/fortune), I don't really see too many MMO's ripping off WoW.
Loves: SMITE, WildStar, Project Zomboid, PSO2, DCUO,
Worst Online Communities: WoW/WoD(the OG MMO Trolls), DayZ/WarZ, SMITE/LoL/DOTA, EVE Online, APB
"Im ready for
All the comparisons
I think its dumb and its embarrassing
Im switching off
No longer listening
Ive had enough of persecution and conditioning
Maybe its instinct- Were only animal" - Lily Allen, Sheezus
here an intresting video bout MMO issue right now due to WoW
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Any game that looks like and plays just like WoW is a WoW clone. So...I guess Alganon? I can't think of any others that fit that description.
But around here a wow clone is any game that I don't like, I immediately call it a wow clone.
I wouldn't say it was simple and easy to understand. You were dumped into a world with no help on what to do. My first experience was walking out of town and having a fireball PvP hit me and dying. The PvP alone made it not casual friendly. I sure didn't like it much. You could also steal items off players and have them stolen from you. Figuring out things like how to craft and how to cast spells wasn't exactly simple since there wasn't a tutorial on how to do things. Everything required a large amount of time.
For me a "wow clone" is a game that feels like wow and takes things from wow to make players feel more at home and then they reskin and add something to make it "unique" but the end result is "wow clone". Many do this cause this is what we all know and have gotten used to.
Sure many games stray of the wow clone formula and create more action combat with no tab targeting or a total different setting like swtor or star trek online.
But in the end I think it comes down to that devolpers are afraid of straying to far off the winning formula and make a game that no one gets right of the bat.
We all scream for something different but do we really want it? Would we play it?
Sure we would but not many I guess, me I hate complicated controlls and I lack intresst when things aren't the way they should be. Does it mean that I want to play wow? NO I don't like the game, I hate tab targeting today and doing raids everyday for gear progression, but some people love it.
I play GW2 today and although it's doesn't look or feel like wow it has alot of things "borrowed" from it, like heart quest aren't any revolutionary idea it's a quest hub that has been made smarter. instanced pvp and the list goes on.
But do I consider it to be a wow clone? No I don't.
First of the word wow clone is totally wrong cause wow has had very few good ideas themselves. Like everybody else they stole most of it but tweeked it there own way. Just thinking about it I can't say one thing that wow has come up with at all, except for maybe being the first one to dumb down the game and make it easy for casual players to join in.
And no matter how much you hate wow you all still know that it's a good game with the best marketing department in the world. I don't think wow delivers anything special at all more then a stable game true to it's raiding community. If wow were to be released today do you think they would have 7.8 million players? No they wouldn't, they would not even reach a million and why?
It's because people have been playing this game for 5-10 years and invested alot of time into it, they don't wanna start over and I understand them, they have all of there mounts, achievments, gear, titles and so on that has taken years to come by, many of them will never leave.
Calling games wow clones are wrong because nothing about wow is theres. The whole World of Warcraft it self is borrowed from others.
"Wow inspired" thats what these games should be called not clones.
If this was music it would be like saying Pantera (metalband) is a blues clone, no one could say that Pantera sounds like blues but still they have borrowed alot from the blues genre.
Alot of things had happed to wow since there launch 10 years ago and did they come up with all of these ideas themselves? Hell no they "borrowed" from Warhammer online with there achievment book, they have taken on a cashshop and I don't think they were first with this idea either. The list goes on but it's not importent this is what all smart companies do they take good ideas from others and try to make them better. For us it's a win cause it keeps the market for mmos more competitve.
If there were some sort of law against taking ideas from others in mmos then I do belive we would be set back many years in devolpment and I would probably not play any mmo at all.
// Beelze
I spent my first couple hours sparring dummies after I made the mistake of attacking a chicken
I still maintain that it was a very accessible game. I'm going to be 50 this year, When UO released I was a 33yr old father with 2 young toddler's who demanded much of my time. I suffered from all the same danger's that you describe in game.
I guess some are just too worried about keeping up with the Jone's and always thinking of games as a competition. UO was a different beast, it was a world of adventure fraught with perils (at least for me). Many of the player's spent much more time and had many more riches, but that didn't matter to me . I met many a friend and had many an adventure and always found the game to be very accessible (when my modem would allow it)
I guess we all have a different way of perceiving things
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee