Why people say WoW clone

[Biscuity]

So, whenever I see an argument online it seems like a majority of players are unable to have a rational discussion about the similarities of this game and wow. It doesn't take very long for the "trolling" to begin. OMG WOW HAS RIGHT CLICKS AND THIS GAME HAS RIGHT CLICKS AND SO DOES MINESWEEPER THEY ARE ALL THE SAME, ect. How WoW borrowed/stole just as much content or more and ideas and mechanics and everything. When people like myself, at least, make a comment that swtor borrows too heavily from WoW I'm not talking about using a mouse and keyboard similarities, or using bag spaces, or crafting, or pvp or anything like that. Noone cares about those similarities. Thats like comparing first person shooters for all using weapons, in first person. I have (as well as others im sure) played an embarrassing amount of WoW over the years, as well as rift, warhammer, eve online, and other games that probably died too fast for me to remember. Of course they all share/borrow/steal whatever a lot of ideas and mechanics from each other. When warhammer had knockbacks it wasn't long until wow had to add them, which I thought was kind of funny.

 

Anyways, a lot of the arguing is simply opinions, which get very escalated very quickly. I just wanted to make a peaceful post, showing how someone could FEEL like this game borrows too heavily. The worst thing I have seen is the lightning sorc(or sage for rebels) talent tree, as I used to play an elemental shaman for years in WoW. Some of these comparisons you will find in any talent tree in any spec(damage increase, crit increase, spell duration ect) but i added them due to almost identical amounts.

 

 

COMPARISON: Lightning sorc versus elemental shaman(wow)(current and past talents)

 

(Shaman talent: Lightning sorc talent)

 

[Convection](from wow): Reduces damaging spells mana cost by 10%

[Electric Induction]: Reduces the force cost of force attacks/heals by 9%

 

[Concussion]: Increases damage done by lightning bolt, chain lightning, thunderstorm, lava burst, and shock spells by 6%

[Convection](yes, this talent is actually sharing the name of the first shaman talent, but this time its for swtor): Increases the damage done by lightning strike, crushing darkness, chain lightning, and thundering blast by 6%

 

[Elemental Reach]: Increases the range of Lightning bolt, Chain Lightning, Fire Nova, and Lava burst spells by 10 yards, and increases the range of shock spells and searing totem by 15 yards.

[Lightning Spire]: Increases the maximum range of Lightning strike, Chain lightning, and thundering blast by 5 meters.

 

[Elemental Focus]: After landing a non-periodic critical strike with a Fire, Frost, or Nature damage spell, you enter a Clearcasting state. The clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next 2 damage or healing spells by 40% (there is also a talent called feedback, which is Your Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning spells reduce the remaining cooldown on your Elemental Mastery talent by 3 sec.)

[Lightning Effusion]: Force attacks that critically hit have a 100% chance to grant Lightning Effusion, reducing the force cost of your next two force abilities by 50%. Additionally reduces the cooldown of Force Speed by 10 seconds.

 

Glyph of flame shock(not a talent, but a glyph from wow, the version before the current changed one now): Increases the duration of flame shock by 50% (or 6 seconds)

[Exsanguinate]:Increases the duration of affliction by 6 seconds.

 

[Lightning Overload]: (patch 3.3.5 wotlk) Gives your Lightning bolt and Chain lightning spells a 33% chance to cast a second, similar spell on the same target at no additional cost that causes half damage and no threat.

[Forked Lightning]: When you activate Lightning Strike or Chained Lightning, there is a 30% chance the ability will produce a second arc of lightning that strikes the same targets for 30% damage.

 

[Eye of the storm]: (patch 3.3.5 wotlk) Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Lightning bolt, Chain lightning, Lava burst and hex spells by 70%.

[subversion]: Reduces the pushback suffered while activating lightning strike, chain lightning, and thundering blast by 70%. In addition, lightning strike has a 100% chance to increase your force regeneration by 10% for 10 seconds. Stacks 3 times.

 

 

[Lava blast(ability)]: You hurl molten lava at the target, dealing 1395 to 1777 fire damage. If your flame shock is on the target, Lava burst will deal a critical strike. 2 second cast, 30 yard range, 8 second cooldown.

[Thundering blast]: Sends a thundering blastwave at a target that deals 841-906 internal damage. Thundering blast automatically critically hits targets affected by your affliction.

Cast time 2 seconds, 30m range, 9 second cooldown.

 

Elemental Mastery: cooldown 3 minutes. When activated, your next lightning bolt, chain lightning, or lava burst spell becomes an instant cast spell. In addition, your Fire frost, and nature damage is increased by 15% and you gain 20% spell haste for 15 seconds.

Polarity shift: cooldown 2 minutes. Your connection to the force shifts, granting 20% alacrity(haste) for 10 seconds.

 

[Earths grasp]: Grants your Earthbind Totem a 100% chance to root nearby targets for 5 sec when cast.

[Electric bindings]: Overload has a 100% chance to bind its targets in electricity, immobilizing them for 5 seconds. Damage dealt after 2 seconds ends the effect prematurely.

 

 

Earthquake: 2.5 second cast, 35 yard range. You cause the earth at the target location to tremble and break, dealing (325 + $SPN * 0.11) Physical damage every 1 sec to enemies in an 8 yard radius, with a 10% chance of knocking down affected targets. Lasts 10 sec. (it used to be channeled, with a 15 second cooldown, with a 20% chance knockdown, lasting 10 seconds)

 

Force storm: channeled 6 seconds, range 30m. Calls down a Force storm over the target area, dealing 1626 - 1818 energy damage over 6 seconds to all targets within 8 meters. Affected enemies are additionally slowed by 30% for as long as they remain in the area of effect. In addition, standard and weak targets have a 33% chance to be stunned by the storm each second.

 

Chain lightning(wow):30 yd range 2 sec cast 3 sec cooldown. Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing 1020 to 1164 Nature damage and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Each jump reduces the damage by 30%. Affects 3 total targets. (with glyph of chain lightning, increases to 5 total targets, but lowers initial damage by 10%.)

 

Chain lightning(swtor): Cast Time: 3 seconds Cooldown: 6 seconds Range: 30m Delivers an arc of lightning that deals 1085 - 1149 point damage to up to 5 targets within 8 meters.

 

Purge(wow): Purges the enemy target, removing 1 beneficial Magic effect. (it used to remove 2. as of patch 4.0.3 it was nerfed to 1)

Purge(swtor): Purges a friendly target of up to 2 negative mental or Force effects.

 

There are more "similarities" but honestly I think this gets the point across.

 

There are very few talents or abilities in swtor that you could not put one from wow right next to and see that it was either inspired from it, very similar, or an exact copy. Now when you scramble them all up and rearrange them among all the classes it can make for some interesting gameplay and combinations. I don't have a problem with that. But when you take all those mechanics, abilities, and talents and basically go "lets take that exact spec and put it here" and play them almost the same. Ok, ok, obviously shaman use totems and get stunlocked upon login so thats different. I mean, if you played an elemental shaman extensively, all you would have to do is look at the talent tree and you would probably start laughing.

 

Anyways, next time you(trolls) find yourself angry at someone because they don't share your opinion on something, it doesn't help to scream STAR WARZ HAD LIGHTNING BFORE WOW WAS INVENTED and ignore literal facts. You can say that the games are completely in every way different and wow is the worst game of all time/stole everything ect. But can you honestly say now that they didn't borrow too heavily in this instance?

[Chaostie]

Or they are still borrowing from every game that came before it as well. -_- Even everything you just posted.

[DariuszPol]

Simple. It's like with FPS. You take one that selling good and try to copy it to get peace of the cake.

 

People expected some mile stone in MMO genre but they received half baked clone of stuff they already know with few elements missing, not working as they imagine or just bugged.

 

When WoW is most $$ MMO on the market it's natural that new MMO will be compare to that one.

 

It's up to developers if they have good idea about MMO so they can create something unique like CPP with their EVE. Best space MMO out there. If they don't have idea then they just clone something they already saw and hope that with enough advertisement and PR talk it will sell.

 

TOR is just another clone of well known formula. Right now we expecting Guild Wars 2 to be same thing as Bioshock was for single player FPS games. People was telling that era of single player shooters is over and SP is just addon for MP and then Bioshock change people thinking about this genre. We will see if Guild Wars 2 will show new quality because right now - TOR failed to do so.

 

Simple.

[MackumDog]

Cheese is Cheese

[SickSwag]

You clearly are in denial if you cannot see that this game is blatantly copied from wow.

 

I think it was hilarious that they called WoW's raid fights boring because you only fight against a solo raid boss; then, they go out and make the same exact same thing lol.

[Gungan]

SWTOR shouldn't have used the talent tree setup at all. 6 years of WoW has made me tired of talent trees. Should have done something novel.

[Biscuity]

You clearly are in denial if you cannot see that this game is blatantly copied from wow.

 

I think it was hilarious that they called WoW's raid fights boring because you only fight against a solo raid boss; then, they go out and make the same exact same thing lol.

 

Well statements like that can get people confused and angry. SWTOR admits to being inspired by wow. All mmo's are "inspired" by wow. Noone has to be in denial.. they may just not have played enough wow or were bad at it. There are plenty of people who didn't know how to play their class very well or how to spec. But to anyone who was a hardcore min/maxer or raid leader, who knows all the specs for every class and what every role is supposed to do, I would agree that it is pretty blatant.

 

Personally I was hoping for more "inspiration" from star wars galaxies.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Biscuity

[Gun-ho-Gun]

Simple. It's like with FPS. You take one that selling good and try to copy it to get peace of the cake.

 

People expected some mile stone in MMO genre but they received half baked clone of stuff they already know with few elements missing, not working as they imagine or just bugged.

 

When WoW is most $$ MMO on the market it's natural that new MMO will be compare to that one.

 

It's up to developers if they have good idea about MMO so they can create something unique like CPP with their EVE. Best space MMO out there. If they don't have idea then they just clone something they already saw and hope that with enough advertisement and PR talk it will sell.

 

TOR is just another clone of well known formula. Right now we expecting Guild Wars 2 to be same thing as Bioshock was for single player FPS games. People was telling that era of single player shooters is over and SP is just addon for MP and then Bioshock change people thinking about this genre. We will see if Guild Wars 2 will show new quality because right now - TOR failed to do so.

 

Simple.

 

This is why indie mmo company rock. They still have dream and ambition that haven't worn out by greedy share holder or some dictator publisher like EA. BW may had make some good game in the past but they're merely money-grubber these days.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Gun-ho-Gun

[Aegyss]

SWTOR shouldn't have used the talent tree setup at all. 6 years of WoW has made me tired of talent trees. Should have done something novel.

 

Even WoW is tired of talent trees. I agree.

[Philophobic]

it's funny how many people won't admit this game copied a lot of stuff from WoW, or they try to defend it by saying there wasn't any other way, when it actually was.

The fact is SWTOR feels like a WoW clone, not a SWG clone, not a GW clone, not a Rift clone, not an Age of Conan clone, not a Darkfall clone, or so many other games that tried to do things differently.

[SomeDudeIsanub]

This game is heavily inspired by WoW, and there's a reason.

[Balrizangor]

You clearly are in denial if you cannot see that this game is blatantly copied from wow.

 

I think it was hilarious that they called WoW's raid fights boring because you only fight against a solo raid boss; then, they go out and make the same exact same thing lol.

 

 

 

You clearly are in denial if you cannot see that WoW is blatantly copied from EQ.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a fun game, ok, now you post something about how SWTOR copied it from WoW and I will change WoW for EQ and SWTOR for WoW in your sentence, this is like a MadLib ....

[warmark]

Of course SWTOR has been influenced by WOW, even if they developers didnt intend it to does anyone believe the creators of ToR had not played WoW and likely for years. You can't help but be influenced by that. This along with the business end i.e. you have a model of a very successful, money making juggernut of course you copy some of the things you feel will make you money. What suprises me is the number of people who get upset about this or act like WoW is the Alpha and the Omega of these ideas.

 

There is almost nothing original in WoW. They took much from earlier games, heck I remember the long threads on EQ boards and on guild boards about how WoW was just a EQ copy, not to mention Warcraft in general was a blatant ripoff of the Warhammer tabletop game. Nothing under the sun is original folks, the question for each individual is do you like what SWTOR did with those pre-existing concepts, are you having fun, is it worth your hard earned dime. I do, at least for now, but you may not. There is nothing wrong with that, if you don't like the game simply move back to something you enjoy, the continual hate posts seem the actions of annoying, look at me, children and I just don't understand it.

[Hotte]

I'll just say this much:

 

WoW is WoW (which I don't like)

 

SW:Tor is Star Wars (which I love)

 

I don't give a rats behind if they copied WoW to the letter. It's Star Wars, which is why I like this game.

 

/thread

[Biscuity]

Of course SWTOR has been influenced by WOW, even if they developers didnt intend it to does anyone believe the creators of ToR had not played WoW and likely for years. You can't help but be influenced by that. This along with the business end i.e. you have a model of a very successful, money making juggernut of course you copy some of the things you feel will make you money. What suprises me is the number of people who get upset about this or act like WoW is the Alpha and the Omega of these ideas.

 

There is almost nothing original in WoW. They took much from earlier games, heck I remember the long threads on EQ boards and on guild boards about how WoW was just a EQ copy, not to mention Warcraft in general was a blatant ripoff of the Warhammer tabletop game. Nothing under the sun is original folks, the question for each individual is do you like what SWTOR did with those pre-existing concepts, are you having fun, is it worth your hard earned dime. I do, at least for now, but you may not. There is nothing wrong with that, if you don't like the game simply move back to something you enjoy, the continual hate posts seem the actions of annoying, look at me, children and I just don't understand it.

 

Yes, but too many things are no longer "inspired". They are blatantly copy and pasted. I could have made a better and more original talent tree in the time it took me to make my original post with inspiring factors from star wars, lightning, ranged dps ect instead of just copying 95% of it from an elemental shaman. Nothing is fun about doing the exact same thing. You use the word influenced when it comes to SWTOR, and "copy, blatant ripoff" for wow.

 

Its fine if you want to feel like wow is the biggest stolen joke of all time but it added milestones to the genre in a million ways. It created much much more then it could ever have blatantly stolen. However, I feel in the case of swtor, they should have waited to release it until they could provide some more unique things to the game besides basically a pet, and the storyline that lasts a few hours.

 

The game is years old. Why do people still say its stolen from EQ? Can you really log in today and think, god this is just EQ reskinned and these tooltips are the same and these mechanics are exactly the same, blah blah. Or can you play it and think man this is just like a tabletop game. Its an outdated argument.

 

SWTOR plays like wow, but with very few players. Its leveling sytem, pvp warzones, pve content, talent trees, crafting system, traveling, mail, gtm, questing, whatever, FEELS reskinned and forced. It all felt similar in rift and warhammer but there was so much stuff going on it didn't matter. Theres a reason i'm not playing wow.. i'm sick of it, its boring, and I want something different and exciting.

 

I think the problem is they are charging 15 bucks a month, and for serious players they want their moneys worth. I just hope they have the manpower and resources to deliver any original, new, or different anything in the game to distract from the obvious.

[Magrious]

Yes they copied WoW which I played for 6 years as well and got tired of it.

 

So what? Everyone is familiar with this setup (UI, Tree's, etc) and even if they are tired of WoW and want something new, its easier to get into something new with your feet hitting the ground running, not crawling. Makes it easier to get into the game if its familiar.

 

I will have to point out FFXIV out to you guys, it is a vastly different game and a bunch of people tried it, some liked it and staid others ran for the hills after trying it. I played XI and then WoW and then tried XIV, while I liked the game they made too many mistakes with it. XI was a special game by itself vastly different than all the other games out there, SE tried to make a different game with XIV and it failed miserably, instead of taking the best of XI and dropping the crappy stuff they tried to reinvent the wheel.

 

Dont reinvent the wheel that's just dumb, improve the wheel make it better but underneath it should still be a wheel. That's how you can see TOR it did not try to reinvent the MMO it used what was out there and added its own flair its own touch to it all. If you go to the store and buy a round wheel but decide next time to buy a square wheel and find out ti sucks then you will go back to the round wheel. Ok maybe the analogy is not that great but you know what I mean.

[Biscuity]

Yes they copied WoW which I played for 6 years as well and got tired of it.

 

So what? Everyone is familiar with this setup (UI, Tree's, etc) and even if they are tired of WoW and want something new, its easier to get into something new with your feet hitting the ground running, not crawling. Makes it easier to get into the game if its familiar.

 

I will have to point out FFXIV out to you guys, it is a vastly different game and a bunch of people tried it, some liked it and staid others ran for the hills after trying it. I played XI and then WoW and then tried XIV, while I liked the game they made too many mistakes with it. XI was a special game by itself vastly different than all the other games out there, SE tried to make a different game with XIV and it failed miserably, instead of taking the best of XI and dropping the crappy stuff they tried to reinvent the wheel.

 

Dont reinvent the wheel that's just dumb, improve the wheel make it better but underneath it should still be a wheel. That's how you can see TOR it did not try to reinvent the MMO it used what was out there and added its own flair its own touch to it all. If you go to the store and buy a round wheel but decide next time to buy a square wheel and find out ti sucks then you will go back to the round wheel. Ok maybe the analogy is not that great but you know what I mean.

 

 

Is there a name for people who are terrible at analogies? I am the worst at analogies.

 

My analogy I just had in my kitchen was

WoW= water+cherry flavoring

Rift=coke+cherry flavoring

warhammer=sprite+cherry flavoring ect

 

SWTOR= water+grape flavoring

 

god, I really am terrible with them.

 

Anyways like I said people are not comparing the UI and things that have become standard in any mmo. That alone will not upset anyone. Its the blatant, word for word mechanics and abilities ect like the examples I made in my original post that make people go hey wait a second...

 

I dont think anyone really cares MORALLY if something is borrowed or stolen. They just don't want to get ripped off by a game that's eating 15 bucks a month.