RIFT commerical attacks WoW

[Don]

Or something: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... zpnQrUjB14

Apparently this game is still somewhat of a low profile but I guess the advertising will pick up as it gets close to release date, and so far RIFT seems to have done everything right. Now you're going to say attacking your opposition is like taboo in advertising 101? Well it's not a problem when every MMORPG minus FF14 that has been after WoW, including your own, was a WoW clone. There isn't some kind of 'niche' or 'sideways' or 'coexistence' or whatever people like to beat around the bush. If your game is a WoW clone then to grow your game you have to fight WoW head on, because everyone is going to compared your generic fantasy game with ! on top of people's heads to WoW whether you wanted it or not. If you aren't willing to take a stance that your WoW clone was actually better than WoW then why should anyone believe in your game and make the switch?

Now obviously taking on WoW is no guaranteed you'll succeed, but I think most MMORPOGs failed before they even started because they're afraid to attack WoW directly despite being a WoW clone. Now if your game is genuinely different from the generic WoW clone like say Guild Wars 2 or FF14 you can legitmately say we're aiming for something totally different here, as nobody will confuse those two games with your generic WoW clone. I don't know if we'll get any game that truly advances the MMORPG genre anytime soon, but it's good to see some games at least feel confident that they're better WoW clones than WoW, which really isn't saying much since WoW is 6 years old, but it's still saying something.

[Shellie]

Coworker is in the beta for that and says it's really good. However, he has also said every other MMO beta he's been in has been just as awesome..Aion, Warhmmer, etc..

[Don]

In MMORPG there's a reversal of the cause and effect when it comes to quality. Quality is the effect of lot of people play your game, as opposed to the cause. So it is entirely possible for perfectly good games to fail because not enough people are playing it, since MMORPG (at least WoW clones) inherently requires a large number of people.

But I think all the games who start out saying "We come in peace and can coexist with WoW", those games are doomed to fail when they're very clearly WoW clones. If you're a WoW clone you're not going to coexist with WoW because if you can't beat WoW, WoW will beat you down.

[SineSwiper]

WoW is still the AOL of MMOs, so the best way to get some of their market share is to make your game more challenging and complex.

[Don]

Yeah but a more complicated/complex WoW clone is still a WoW clone. There is no such thing as a WoW clone carving some niche that didn't previously belong to WoW. Unless you're a game that is fundamentally different from anything currently on the market (FF14 and EVE are the only major games I can think of that qualify) you're going to be viewed as a WoW clone.

[SineSwiper]

All MMOs are EQ clones.

[Shellie]

All MMOs are EQ clones.

No.

[SineSwiper]

Well, by Don's logic, all MMOs are WoW clones. Just pointing out that EQ was first.

[Don]

You must have missed the fact that most MMORPGs after WoW happens to play exactly like WoW. WoW does not remotely play like EQ. In fact none of the game before WoW plays like WoW which is why WoW was really different from the predecessors. The only recent large MMORPG that doesn't play like WoW is FF14. Quest driven mechanics defines WoW and nobody (yet) has managed to break away from it. Rift seems to be going for half/half as you got your !s but the invasions/rifts are clearly more like events and they're quite lucrative to do too. It remains to be seen if this model will supplement the current one, but variety is good.

[Shrinweck]

I've seen Rift described as the first actual third generation MMORPG but I can't talk to that point until the next beta event. It does appear to think outside of the box more than most other things that have come out lately.

[Don]

It's about half/half. There are obviously the guys with the !s above their head which has been a staple since WoW, but there really is enough other things to do you can do instead of just going from !s to !s. Like GW2, Rift seems to be looking for event-driven playing, i.e. your quest hub got burned down by the bad guys so you have to retake it because otherwise you get no quests, not because someone had a ! above their head that says you should retake this village. When an invasion is attempting to take out your main quest hub you don't get a quest that says you should defend your main quest hub. It's just something you do because it's happening right now.

Now obviously some people in the beta complained about how they never got their quest hub back in 5 hours because people are doing stupid things like never closing any rifts, but at least all the hubs I was in eventually got reclaimed from between 10 mins to several hours. Note that the time it took hours to reclaim the hub, you're still getting XP and it was just that it took that long in fighting to reclaim the hub. You're still getting pretty good XP in the process, so it's not like you're being penalized. This kind of gameplay seems unfriendly to your generic soloing, but I think the assumption is that at some point even your generic soloer has to at least talk to the five guys around him and say let's try to work this together instead of going in one at a time and get owned. I almost never grouped with anyone in the beta, but when you've to retake a hub you at least have to be on the same page as the guys around you.

[Shrinweck]

Let's take a step back and thank the people who made quest givers obvious. Finding some guy whose only description for his location is in ____ district had to have been one of the most mind-numbingly shitty things about EverQuest. That and spending hours trying to reclaim your corpse because you actually lost everything when you died and respawning left you penniless and equipment-less. Not the greatest times. Oh and meditating to regain your mana took AGES and until you hit some fairly ridiculous level all you got to look at whilst meditating was your Goddamn spellbook. UGH.

[Don]

The quest driven interace is really about the same as adding 100% to 200% more XP to the first X mobs you kill, like say each bear gives 100 XP, kill 10 bears for quest = 1000 XP, then it's like the first 10 bears give 200 XP each. After all most people don't actually care about the quest dialogue itself, and you can even make it say the 10th bear you kill will drop the equivalent quest reward. I don't think the quest driven interface improved the game in the sense that it reduced the grind, because that can be accomplished by simply make everything give more XP/drop more loot. The gain from the quest driven system is that now there is some kind of progression in the zone. You start with bears, then greater bears, and wolves, then greater wolves, and then undead, or something. Without such a system in you'll probably be just fighting whatever mob that yielded the best XP the whole time leaving rest of the zone to waste.

But this ends up creating treadmill of going from !s to !s. It sure is better than going mindlessly around the world or camping one spot over and over, but it can definitely be improved. All the so called next gen MMORPGs appear to aim for more dynamic/spontaneous stuff. Whether they succeed in doing that is unclear at this point.

[SineSwiper]

Let's take a step back and thank the people who made quest givers obvious. Finding some guy whose only description for his location is in ____ district had to have been one of the most mind-numbingly shitty things about EverQuest. That and spending hours trying to reclaim your corpse because you actually lost everything when you died and respawning left you penniless and equipment-less. Not the greatest times. Oh and meditating to regain your mana took AGES and until you hit some fairly ridiculous level all you got to look at whilst meditating was your Goddamn spellbook. UGH.

Meh, first generation MMOs had their problems (including Ultima Online), which were quickly fixed in other MMOs. However, I fail to see how WoW is so damned innovative, and how every other MMO that has ever been made after WoW has to get the embarrassingly bullshit nickname of "WoW clone".

[Shrinweck]

Well a lot was EQ-like in the beginning.. it's just a frame of reference.

[Don]

Let's take a step back and thank the people who made quest givers obvious. Finding some guy whose only description for his location is in ____ district had to have been one of the most mind-numbingly shitty things about EverQuest. That and spending hours trying to reclaim your corpse because you actually lost everything when you died and respawning left you penniless and equipment-less. Not the greatest times. Oh and meditating to regain your mana took AGES and until you hit some fairly ridiculous level all you got to look at whilst meditating was your Goddamn spellbook. UGH.

Meh, first generation MMOs had their problems (including Ultima Online), which were quickly fixed in other MMOs. However, I fail to see how WoW is so damned innovative, and how every other MMO that has ever been made after WoW has to get the embarrassingly bullshit nickname of "WoW clone".

I'd say that's probably because WoW's UI and quest driven content is ubiqitious for every game that came after it. The WoW UI had a lot of distinctly recognizable traits, and everyone copies from that since there's no point to reinvent the wheel when it comes to UI. The WoW UI clearly works and if a better one exists, nobody has figured it out yet. Yes it's kind of like saying all FPS are Doom clone because they're played in first person with a lifebar somewhere, but what seems like common sense with UI was not very obvious before WoW came out. The UIs before WoW just weren't very good.

[SineSwiper]

I'd say that's probably because WoW's UI and quest driven content is ubiqitious for every game that came after it. The WoW UI had a lot of distinctly recognizable traits, and everyone copies from that since there's no point to reinvent the wheel when it comes to UI. The WoW UI clearly works and if a better one exists, nobody has figured it out yet. Yes it's kind of like saying all FPS are Doom clone because they're played in first person with a lifebar somewhere, but what seems like common sense with UI was not very obvious before WoW came out. The UIs before WoW just weren't very good.

Bah, it's simply the evolution of MMOs in general. Some push further than others, but it's still just evolution. There have been other MMOs before WoW with pretty good UIs. (DAoC is one that I can think of from memory.) And there have been plenty of good MMOs that are much better than WoW. (Here's a good list and yes, LOTRO deserves to be on top.)

WoW gets all of the popularity because it's Blizzard. Blizzard is the Apple of the PC gaming world: Not inventing a lot, but pretending to invent the fucking wheel for the first time, and they get away with it because of their rock star status.

[Don]

Most of the MMORPG had a workable UI but WoW's UI really had a lot of polish, or maybe they just had a team that actually have UI experience working on it. Before that point MMORPG seems to think the UI is just there to replace the MUD text interface and it's just a bunch of windows that you can move around. They did the job but there was nothing organized or elegant about them. The quest-dirven interface is another big one. I mean sure EQ had like exactly the same thing in LDoN (which came out before WoW) but for some unknown reason SoE decided that wasn't where the future is even though it's probably the most popular expansion in EQ history measured by playability. I'm sure some other game somewhere must have something similar going before WoW, but WoW was the game to really push the system and make it the core of the game as opposed to some random one-off event. It's not enough to have a good idea. You got to be able to push it and that defines you. Let's say Rift takes off, then its key point will probably be event-driven content. Now there are no shortage of games that features event-driven content (WAR comes to mind) but if Rift ends up dethroning WoW and takes over the world, then any future event-driven based game is going to be called a Rift clone. In fact, if GW2 came out (clearly an event-driven game) it'd still be called a Rift clone even though GW2 development appears to be earlier than Rift!

The list reads more like 10 random games that you've never heard of and/or flopped after WoW came out. Some of these game might be better than WoW in a vacuum, but in reality pretty much every MMORPG got crushed by WoW's inertia because they weren't good enough to overcome the network externality of WoW. Starcraft might not be the best RTS but since everyone else plays it you have no choice but to play it. WoW is the same thing. Look at WoW's advertisement campaign: "11 million people can't be wrong". It's not even attempting to compete on gameplay, graphics, or anything that's actually related to the game, and it's probably for a good reason because it clearly cannot compete on any of those. No it's telling you that you should play WoW because everyone else does it too.

It doesn't hurt that EQ and EQ2 both screwed up big when WoW came out, and even if you think LOTRO was better than WoW, it was in no way good enough to overcome WoW's head start advantage. People do have a lot of time vested in a MMORPG so even if a competitor is slightly better, they wouldn't leave behind their investment easily. This is why EQ is still around even though it really doesn't deserve to be still alive. Turbine is a decent MMORPG but they're probably a tier below the best ones, and that's okay when you're second fiddle to EQ sitting at 500K and you got your 100-200K, but when you're second fiddle to WoW's 5 million subs, your 100-200K guys gets crushed by WoW's inertia because unfortunately there are a lot of people who really do believe 11 million people can't be wrong.

Oh for the 'invent the wheel' thing, I think it's funny WoW's story is basically plagarized from 15 different random sources of fiction but because WoW is bigger than any of the guys they steal for, it somehow becomes 'tribute' even though you're just changing 1 letter on the name of the character and putting everything else verbatim. I was reading the other day that there's a newbie quest in Cataclysm that features Commander Nazrin called "A small, wise commander" and the first boss in Touhou 12 is Commander Nazrin, a small and wise commander. Apparently the Touhou fans actually thought this is great because WoW pays tribute to their game, but I see that as wholesale plagarism. My guess is that if WoW adds a character call CosineSwiper that gets his power from cosine waves in the air you're supposed to feel honored your name showed up in WoW, whether you wanted it or not!

[kali o.]

Bah, it's simply the evolution of MMOs in general. Some push further than others, but it's still just evolution. There have been other MMOs before WoW with pretty good UIs. (DAoC is one that I can think of from memory.) And there have been plenty of good MMOs that are much better than WoW. (Here's a good list and yes, LOTRO deserves to be on top.)

If LotRO isn't the definition of "WoW Clone", then what is?

I think I went straight from quitting WoW to LotRO beta...and I remember marvelling how hard Turbine tried to to imitate WoW.

[SineSwiper]

Fine. Name me a NON-WoW clone that exists after WoW. And don't saying Second Life or Sims Online, because those aren't even fucking games.

Every single MMORPG has taken the core elements of previous MMORPGs, implemented them, and added their own elements that may or may not survive to be passed on to new MMORPGs. Every single one! Under your narrow minded definition of "WoW clone", every single one is going to fit that definition. If there's quests, which all of them after WoW have, then apparently it's a "WoW clone". The following games are "WoW clones":

Star Wars: Galaxies
LoTRO
Age of Conan
Rift
Earth and Beyond
FF11
FF14
Guild Wars
Anarchy Online
Phantasy Star Online
etc., etc., etc.

[Don]

WoW clone usually refers to the UI and the quest driven interface. Even if you ignore the UI, there's no question that virtually every MMORPG after WoW was quest-driven, often without a good reason. It's not even clear me to WoW's quest-driven system is that much superior but all (or rather almost) the games after it came out followed the system exactly.

APB and FF14 would definitely not be WoW clones. PSO came out before WoW. If you're thinking of Phantasy Online Universe, those games are more like Diablo type games than WoW. Vanguard, based on what I hear about it, is probably not a WoW clone either since it strived to be the anti-WoW. There are probably more non mainstream games, but there are only 3 remotely major games that aren't WoW clone, and none of them are doing very well.

I think the quest-driven interface of WoW was something it needed to beat EQ because EQ, despite the name, is very weak on quests. But after you dethroned EQ there's really nothing special about the quest-driven interface and the fact that all games needlessly copy this interface without realizing it was created to defeat EQ makes them worthy of the WoW-clone title. For example look at EQ2, it has quests but it's still a grindy game, which totally misses the point that this system was meant to defeat EQ without having to grind.

Compared this to Rift, which obviously has the same quests but these quests are more just there so people have something familiar since you're better off chasing down Rifts and Invasions, as it's better XP and actually more fun despite its grindy nature. So even though practically everyone says Rift is a WoW clone, it's got less in common in WoW compared to say, EQ2, since they really have a different system of advancement that is not tied to questing.

[kali o.]

Fine. Name me a NON-WoW clone that exists after WoW. And don't saying Second Life or Sims Online, because those aren't even fucking games.

Every single MMORPG has taken the core elements of previous MMORPGs, implemented them, and added their own elements that may or may not survive to be passed on to new MMORPGs. Every single one! Under your narrow minded definition of "WoW clone", every single one is going to fit that definition. If there's quests, which all of them after WoW have, then apparently it's a "WoW clone". The following games are "WoW clones":

Star Wars: Galaxies
LoTRO
Age of Conan
Rift
Earth and Beyond
FF11
FF14
Guild Wars
Anarchy Online
Phantasy Star Online
etc., etc., etc.

None of that is particulary true (at least of the ones I played). In fact, I'd question whether you even played some of those games. SWG has literally nothing in common with WoW, at least last I played (also, fairly sure it predates WoW). Age of Conan -- maybe in terms of pulling some aspects, but I wouldn't call it a clone...actually, maybe I would but it was an unfinished mess. Guild Wars and PSO? Are you kidding me? Good thing you didn't include DDO or my head would have literally exploded.

LoTRO not only nearly directly ripped off the WoW UI, it copied all aspects of the gameplay too. What is particularly annoying is Turbine did such a pisspoor job of it and it's not nearly as polished as WoW (if Moria & Mirkwood added some unique stuff, I don't know, but I'd be surprised if that content didn't also emulate WoW). Just look at PvM...it's like WoW pvp, except lazy and there hasn't been any additional content/fixes for god knows how long.

What did LotRO add, besides the lore? Nothing really, and that's why the game was largely floundering. It's the posterboy for WoW clones.

[SineSwiper]

But, specifically, what is clone and what isn't? What make it a clone? Just the UI and questing? WoW didn't invent the UI. What part of the UI?

Let's take Guild Wars. (Yes, I played it for a month.) It has instances (nothing but). WoW invented instances. It has a spell bar at the bottom. Wow has a spell bar at the bottom. it has health bars, magic, a fantasy setting, a radar-like mini map, party forming, etc., etc. And let's not forget quests. Oh, god, it has quests, so it MUST be a WoW clone.

No, I don't actually believe that, but under your definition, you do. At least you're taking that definition from LoTRO, and not applying it to other games. Explain yourself. What makes it a clone?

[Don]

Just like Microsoft doesn't have a copyright on menus related to word processing but there's definitely a way Word menus are put together that's pretty distinct compared to rest of the word processors, there's a rather distinct way UI puts its element together compared to its predecessors. If nobody realized you should put your spell bar on the bottom and WoW was the first to make good use of it (doesn't have to be the first to do it) then it gets its credit for that. I dont' know if there are sugary cabronated beverage before coca-cola but we call most sugary carbonated beverage as 'coke' now since it's the most well-known one.

While the UI seems like a minor element, it's a surprisingly important part of the MMORPG experience. The quest-driven interface is the same way. EQ had instances before WoW was out, but it didn't make much use out of them so if your game makes heavy use of instances then people say you're copying from WoW, not EQ, even though EQ had them first. At any rate what makes one game a WoW clone is probably easier by seeing what games are not WoW clones. FF14 is definitely not a WoW clone. DDO may have a similar interface and there are quests, but the gameplay is driven by dungeon crawling which is not like WoW at all, so sure you can still say DDO is a 'WoW-clone' but here the similarity is just superficial. On the other hand a game like LOTRO clearly runs on a quest-driven interface that is perhaps the defining characteristic of WoW, and no that doesn't mean no one else can do a quest-driven interface but that's just what you're stuck with. If they managed to outdo WoW at their own game, nobody would have a problem with that just because they copied WoW's elements.

[kali o.]

But, specifically, what is clone and what isn't? What make it a clone? Just the UI and questing? WoW didn't invent the UI. What part of the UI?

Let's take Guild Wars. (Yes, I played it for a month.) It has instances (nothing but). WoW invented instances. It has a spell bar at the bottom. Wow has a spell bar at the bottom. it has health bars, magic, a fantasy setting, a radar-like mini map, party forming, etc., etc. And let's not forget quests. Oh, god, it has quests, so it MUST be a WoW clone.

No, I don't actually believe that, but under your definition, you do. At least you're taking that definition from LoTRO, and not applying it to other games. Explain yourself. What makes it a clone?

I am not doing what you say I am. You also don't appear to have any clue what WoW did first/invented (which is mainly nothing, it just polished everything very well and laid it out).

Here's a better question, besides Lore, what did LotRO do differently from WoW...or hell, did it do ANYTHING unique as an MMO? Nothing/no...maybe you will stretch and say PvM, but that would be a laugh.

Bottomline is LotRO looks and plays very much like WoW. Turbine clearly wanted a piece of WoW's market. Like the game all you want, but why delude yourself?

Really, too bad Blizzard didn't have more Hobbies like Fishing fleshed out in WoW...maybe then there would be more in LotRO, lol.

[SineSwiper]

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that every MMORPG is going to be a "WoW clone", anyway, because they copy so much from the other games. Every MMORPG before WoW, including WoW, was an "EQ clone". Hell, it's still accurate to say that every MMORPG AFTER WoW is an "EQ clone". They borrow so much from the original, and EQ in turn patches the game to match the newer ones.

Who clones who? They all clone each other, so the word is meaningless.

[kali o.]

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that every MMORPG is going to be a "WoW clone", anyway, because they copy so much from the other games. Every MMORPG before WoW, including WoW, was an "EQ clone". Hell, it's still accurate to say that every MMORPG AFTER WoW is an "EQ clone". They borrow so much from the original, and EQ in turn patches the game to match the newer ones.

Who clones who? They all clone each other, so the word is meaningless.

That's true in any medium (movies, games, etc).

But at least WoW did those "ideas" better than anyone else -- so it improved the formula. The problem with LotRO is it didn't. Nor did it bring anything new to the table (besides the Lore).

[Don]

The fact that you can get Pepsi when you ask for Coke but never vice versa means Pepsi is considered a 'Coca-cola clone',but it's market share is almost comparable to the original thing. No one will give you 7UP when you ask for Coke though. There are games that's basically WoW with a different skin. There are games that are superficially similar to WoW. And then there are games that are nothing like WoW. However very few games in the latter two category are doing well which is why almost all MMORPGs are just referred to as WoW-clone because the ones that are not don't stick around for very long.

[SineSwiper]

But at least WoW did those "ideas" better than anyone else -- so it improved the formula. The problem with LotRO is it didn't. Nor did it bring anything new to the table (besides the Lore).

How about a lack of millions of 14-year-olds?

[Eric]

But at least WoW did those "ideas" better than anyone else -- so it improved the formula. The problem with LotRO is it didn't. Nor did it bring anything new to the table (besides the Lore).

How about a lack of millions of 14-year-olds?

14 year olds play LotR.

[Don]

It's funny since the average age of a MMORPG player is like in the mid 20s. But studies also show that the high school, college, and unemployed make up the biggest identifiable group of players in MMORPG, so while it's mainstream it's not as mainstream as you'd like to think it is!

[Shrinweck]

As a side note Earth and Beyond was released and canned before WoW was even released making the chance of cloning pretty odd. I get what you're going for but I really liked that game even if it did release with way too little content.

[kali o.]

How about a lack of millions of 14-year-olds?

Have you played LotRO since F2P? lol

[Shrinweck]

Probably not... most of us stopped playing a little after the Moria expansion.

[Don]

The average MMORPG player is immature, so if you've a mature community that usually means almost nobody is playing your game. It's the same way with gold selling spam. If you don't see them, it's probably because this isn't a game worth their time, not because the game is doing a good job stopping them.