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Does WoW Influence Warhammer Online?
OGX writes "While old school geeks & gamers know that Warhammer predated Warcraft, there are many MMORPG fanatics these days that don't know the history of both franchises, and comment that Warhammer Online resembles World of Warcraft. OGX has an article about this very question with some input from Mark Jacobs (Studio GM EA Mythic, VP EA)." From the article: "This history factors heavily in the present situation wherein the Warhammer Online game looks, to many, to be a descendant of the success of World of Warcraft in a market filled with many games trying to be just that. It's easy to see how this confusion would arise, and I asked Mark Jacobs, Studio GM EA Mythic, VP Electronic Arts, to share his thoughts about the situation." Warhammer may have influenced WoW, but WHO's interface still looks like a WoW rip-off to me.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10 So no, I didn't RTA, and I don't know much about either WoW or Warhammer. But the comic fits!
It is pretty stupid for Warhammer Online to even be considered. Warhammer 40000 is about twice as popular as Warhammer, and will not be a direct, very similar competitor to the most successful MMORPG in the history of Earth. It is rumoured that Blizzard even tried to do a deal with Games Workshop to get Warhammer IP for Warcraft, but were declined as GW thought they could do it themselves. Blizzard now make more money from WoW in a month than GW make per year (in turnover, by profits it is an even more ridiculous diffence). GW are known for fairly terrible management and until it is changed or updated they deserve what they get. The best example is the fact that they conduct almost NO market research at all, claiming it is alright not to worry since they are a niche market (and they even state this on their investor relations pages!)
Warhammer forums
If I recall currectly, the orginal warcraft games were heavily influences by warhammer (Failed to get the rights to use the "Warhammer" from games-workshop I believe). So as far as characters, fiction etc. No. As for the interface, likely. But then again, if it works why change it? (Law suit isn't the answer:P)
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
Interesting that the timeline in the article doesn't mention Dungeons and Dragons.
Given that Games Workshop was at one time the sole importer of D&D into the UK (prior to the design of Warhammer) I think I'd be quite confident in alleging they were influenced by it.
No. Everyone knows that game designers never, ever, borrow ideas from other games.
Here's your sign.
I've always figured that everybody knew that Blizzard 'stole' ideas from GW. My, how times have changed.
Yes. Next question?
At this point, the MMORPG market is basically WoW with a few outliers. I'm sure I'll get some EVE Online heat for that comment, but it's true. For much of the population, "MMORPG" is defined to be "World of Warcraft" the same way RTSes were defined by Starcraft. Blizzard has a knack for taking what's great in all its competition, putting it in one spot, and polishing it to a mirror shine. It's what they do.
Game developers aren't stupid. They see the phenomenal success of WoW and know that if they want to compete they have to provide at least the same level of play as their competitor (to get the former WoWers like me) and hopefully surpass their competitor (to get current WoWers). So, WAR takes the UI from WoW and probably steals a few of its other features to ease the transition until they get you hooked.
WAR is hoping provide a PvP alternative to WoW, which primarily focuses on PvE. Even low-level WAR quests involve some form of competition with the opposing faction. One preview I read had a Giant who you would either (a) get drunk to help fight for you against the other faction, or (b) destroy the first faction's alcohol to prevent the giant from getting drunk and thus fighting against you. And that was a newbie quest.
I'm hoping that the WAR team (BTW, that's their preferred acronym, for "Warhammer: Age of Reckoning") delivers on its promises. Give me WoW with a heavy focus on PvP and Realm-vs-Realm and they'll get my money for a few months.
Does anyone really care? They're all too busy playing, surely...
Warcraft is quite obviously a ripoff of Warhammer. Similarity of interface in one particular game is nothing in comparison to what Blizzard have done to Games Workshop.
All three major Blizzard properties are rip-offs of someone else's ideas. Diablo was a rip of Rogue (and all Rogue-alikes everywhere); Warcarft was a rip of Warhammer; and Starcraft was a rip of Warhammer 40,000.
Big deal, I say. It's not like Games Workshop didn't draw on others' ideas too -- Moorcock and Herbert being prime examples. A messianic god emporer? Gosh, where could that have come from? This is the way it's supposed to work. Inspiration breeds inspiration. It's not so much "your" idea as it is your little twist on all the ideas you've absorbed from other people. You don't "own" it, because the person you got your ideas from didn't "own" theirs either. This stuff's not supposed to be locked down and inaccessible. If it was, we'd never have got Warhammer or WoW or any of the rest of it.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Ok guys for those that do not know. What became the "Warcraft" and "Starcraft" series both started as "concepts" and "demo" versions that they sent to Games Workstop for a computerized version of the Warhammer and Warhammer40000 game systems. GW said no because they felt that they could do either a better job or for some other reason (possibly the whole, we didn't make it thus don't like it mentality). Blizard felt that they had a good thing going, so they changed some things around slightly and still continued creating/developing the games under the new name of "Warcraft" and "Starcraft". And so you have it, the reason they seem similar is because the whole idea of the warcraft and starcraft games to begin with was to be the computer versions of Warhammer and Warhammer40000.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
ALL fantasy (books, film, TV, table games, RPGs, video games, MMOs, etc. ad infinitum) "borrow" from the root sources: mythos.
I don't know the truth and I doubt it will ever be revealed, but it sounds like Blizzard offered Games Workshop a video game to evolve their tabletop game and GW declined. Blizzard therefore changed the content enough to make it original by legel terms and ran with it all the way to multiple banks. This can definitely be seen as "borrowing" IP but recreating it in your own fashion. I'd compare this to me trying to paint the Mona Lisa. Sure there are some similarities, but you would definitely see my differences and personal artistic style.
GW in their turn "borrowed" from Dungeons & Dragons and all the spinoff franchises (books, artwork, cartoons, figures, etc.) to fashion their own IP.
Gary Gygax will freely admit he and Dave Arneson were completely influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth books. They, too, fashioned their own IP.
While I gladly accept the title of "Father of Modern Fantasy" bestowed upon Tolkien, in any of his biographies it is well known that he drew his ideas from numerous resources: C.S. Lewis, religion, Norse mythos and Finnish mythos. He gave England a bolder, more legendary history to counter the only other fantasy that existed at the time: fairies. While you may see pieces similar to legends and other stories, it is unarguable that the compilation is original and completely Tolkien's.
Finally all of that mythos, regardless of the country, came from the collective story telling, exaggeration and imagination of our ancestors as they sat in the dark, pondered the meaning of life and tried to explain what they didn't understand.
So what we're now playing and will be playing in the future are just extensions and evolutions of those original stories told around fires. The only reason this becomes an argument of who owns what or who created what is because of another evolution, the legal system. MMO's are just another form of storytelling, one in which we get to play a part and be involved in the story. Who knows what form storytelling may take in the next century.