Originally posted by LynxJSA

I think what you guys are missing is that people realize that. They use the term WOW-clone because it makes sense to use a subject that your audience is familiar with when making a comparison or drawing an analogy.  If someone wrote/said "DikuMUD clone" far fewer readers/listeners would know what the person was talking about. Heck, with the influx of millions of new gamers with WOW, even "EQ clone" is too obscure or unclear a reference in some circles. 

That's exactly it. As another poster mentioned, Dolly was not the original sheep. Nor was WoW the original MMOG. So cloning Dolly means cloning a sheep, but the clone is still a clone of Dolly, not a clone of Protobaa The First Sheep. Likewise, a game that comes out with most of the features that WoW has and precious little actual innovation (uh oh, did I use that word right? ;) ) is a WoW clone. When forumgoers worry it'll be 'just another WoW clone', they worry that it won't really bring anything new to the table, that it's yet another attempt at playing it safe - which incidentally seems to me to have a high failure rate. Is that misusing the word? I don't think it is.

The most misused and abused word in MMOG history is "lag." Nothing else even comes close.

Good and funny article. I especially found the images hilarious.

Off topic: Someone should do a similar piece on the community. This weeks misused fashion word: "Shill".

Uncommon sense,

great article!

Originally posted by neschria

This article was pretty good. I am glad that it didn't include "carebear", since that seems to dying out, at least around here, compared to the way it used to be. I guess all the carebears are fanbois and haters now. 

Re: WoW clone: When I first played WoW during a stress test, I told my husband it was going to be huge... but that didn't stop me from summarizing it as "EQ for Dummies" (not saying that you're a dummy if you play it; it's a reference to the "for Dummies" series of books that simplify things for the layman). I'd say that WoW was an EQ clone, and everything since WoW has been a WoW clone. It's as if someone handed out a roadmap to the end of the rainbow, and everyone is looking for the same pot of gold-- the one that Blizzard already has.

Only person in this thread who really understands what defines a WOW clone, it has nothing to do with its point and click combat system, interfaces or even whether or not it has orcs and elves in it.

Its about the trend to ever easier gameplay.  And yes, LoTRO and AOC are WOW clones of a sort.  They take even try to out do WOW by making it easier and easier for players to find quest objectives (their linear, quest driven gameplay is a clone of WOW).

You would have had to play games like DAOC, Lineage 1/2, Shadowbane and even EQ to see that while they had similariities, they all felt like very different games.  That is not true with most of the games released since WOW, and as we know, some games actually changed in mid-stream to become easier (SWG, EQ2) a la WOW. 

Doesn't make them identical to WOW, but they definitely tried to emulate the WOW forumula for success.

Maybe the term is overused these days, but it is appropriate in many ways.

Great article! I just wish we could force everyone to read it now

Originally posted by Auton

Originally posted by LynxJSA

I think what you guys are missing is that people realize that. They use the term WOW-clone because it makes sense to use a subject that your audience is familiar with when making a comparison or drawing an analogy.  If someone wrote/said "DikuMUD clone" far fewer readers/listeners would know what the person was talking about. Heck, with the influx of millions of new gamers with WOW, even "EQ clone" is too obscure or unclear a reference in some circles. 

 

That's exactly it. As another poster mentioned, Dolly was not the original sheep. Nor was WoW the original MMOG. So cloning Dolly means cloning a sheep, but the clone is still a clone of Dolly, not a clone of Protobaa The First Sheep. Likewise, a game that comes out with most of the features that WoW has and precious little actual innovation (uh oh, did I use that word right? ;) ) is a WoW clone. When forumgoers worry it'll be 'just another WoW clone', they worry that it won't really bring anything new to the table, that it's yet another attempt at playing it safe - which incidentally seems to me to have a high failure rate. Is that misusing the word? I don't think it is.

But thats not whats going on.  Someone else breeds a sheep (not from Dolly), and everyone STILL walks around saying its  DOLLY clone.  Its not, its a sheep.  Of which Dolly just happens to be a famous example of.

All the features that people tend to point out as being WoW clone material are just generic elements of the RPG genre.  If someone is worried that some other developer is going to make a RPG game, well heck, they better get a life.  RPGs have been around for quite a while, they are here to stay.  Other people will make RPGs.  And the ignorant people of the crowd will still mislabel it as a WoW clone. Its not a wow clone, its an RPG.

We could do this in reverse.  Label any FPS game as a Quake Clone.  All the L4D or Unreal or Half Lifes are all Quake Clones, no innovation, they all stay with the formulaic action, guns, and work with a first person view.    Don't bother mentioning they are all FPS, just say Quake Clone, its so much easier.

Originally posted by rscott6666

But thats not whats going on.  Someone else breeds a sheep (not from Dolly), and everyone STILL walks around saying its  DOLLY clone.  Its not, its a sheep.  Of which Dolly just happens to be a famous example of.

All the features that people tend to point out as being WoW clone material are just generic elements of the RPG genre.  If someone is worried that some other developer is going to make a RPG game, well heck, they better get a life.  RPGs have been around for quite a while, they are here to stay.  Other people will make RPGs.  And the ignorant people of the crowd will still mislabel it as a WoW clone. Its not a wow clone, its an RPG.

We could do this in reverse.  Label any FPS game as a Quake Clone.  All the L4D or Unreal or Half Lifes are all Quake Clones, no innovation, they all stay with the formulaic action, guns, and work with a first person view.    Don't bother mentioning they are all FPS, just say Quake Clone, its so much easier.

Generic elements of the RPG genre, huh? I've played singleplayer RPGs aplenty - precious few of them featured the constant slew of wall-of-meaningless-filler-text missions, moving aimlessly from place to place, extremely easy but tedious gameplay, etc. that make up WoW, and damn near all other MMORPGs around. So they're not simply 'features of an RPG', they're specifically features of an MMORPG in the vein of World of Warcraft. A term for which 'WoW clone' is shorthand.

Originally posted by Auton

Generic elements of the RPG genre, huh? I've played singleplayer RPGs aplenty - precious few of them featured the constant slew of wall-of-meaningless-filler-text missions, moving aimlessly from place to place, extremely easy but tedious gameplay, etc. that make up WoW, and damn near all other MMORPGs around. So they're not simply 'features of an RPG', they're specifically features of an MMORPG in the vein of World of Warcraft. A term for which 'WoW clone' is shorthand.

Really? Ever played any of the Final Fantasy games? What about Zelda?

**** Overall a very good article. The only term I really had an issue with was "Polish". Though I think the author got it right on, in saying that companies overuse the term and since WoW, MMOs have been released with proportionally less polish inversly to their use of the word.

Polish, quite simply, is when you take something that is 'finished' and tweak it to make it better, hiding the seams if you will. I just found it interested that the definition wasn't mentioned for this.

Originally posted by Auton

Originally posted by rscott6666

But thats not whats going on.  Someone else breeds a sheep (not from Dolly), and everyone STILL walks around saying its  DOLLY clone.  Its not, its a sheep.  Of which Dolly just happens to be a famous example of.

All the features that people tend to point out as being WoW clone material are just generic elements of the RPG genre.  If someone is worried that some other developer is going to make a RPG game, well heck, they better get a life.  RPGs have been around for quite a while, they are here to stay.  Other people will make RPGs.  And the ignorant people of the crowd will still mislabel it as a WoW clone. Its not a wow clone, its an RPG.

We could do this in reverse.  Label any FPS game as a Quake Clone.  All the L4D or Unreal or Half Lifes are all Quake Clones, no innovation, they all stay with the formulaic action, guns, and work with a first person view.    Don't bother mentioning they are all FPS, just say Quake Clone, its so much easier.

Generic elements of the RPG genre, huh? I've played singleplayer RPGs aplenty - precious few of them featured the constant slew of wall-of-meaningless-filler-text missions, moving aimlessly from place to place, extremely easy but tedious gameplay, etc. that make up WoW, and damn near all other MMORPGs around. So they're not simply 'features of an RPG', they're specifically features of an MMORPG in the vein of World of Warcraft. A term for which 'WoW clone' is shorthand.

No the quests ware always there. Hell they had them in he D&D paper game. They just haven't always been that easy unless you turned the difficulty down. Baldur's Gate for example was full of them. The first quests in EQ were kill ten whatevers and they were easy. The real problem with calling everything, and I do mean everything, I've heard EVE called a WoW clone which is ludicrous, is that it breeds sloppy thinking. MMOs can only be distinguished by their differences not their similarities because they all have many similarities. They always will.

Not sure if anyone between pages 4 and this one mentioned this:

Another pair that is missing is MMO/MMORPG.

They are fundamentally different and many games nowadays that are considered MMORPG are actually MMOs. The fact that you have lvls and classes does not yet constitute a RPG, since those are not necessary ingredients to play a role (as in Role Playing). A multitude of alternative ways to play, however, are in favor or MMORPGs. In this context AoC and WAR are rather MMOs than MMORPGs.

Good read, I agree with the list :)

One things for sure , if you want to see all these misused words in action , Mmorpg.com is the best place too look ....

Originally posted by mrw0lf

'tis a good list, think I would have had 'NextGen' in there. Every game I've played for the last 5 years has advertised itself as nextgen, but I'm fked if I can see how they're any different from the last.

Yea, I was looking forward to seeing "Next-gen" in there as well, definitely worthy of a top 10 at least.

Good list though.

I couldn't agree more with #1. I am soooo sick of hearing the term "WoW Clone".

The same people probably stand in the cookie aisle of the supermarket and call every other cookie an "Oreo Clone".

WoW brought in so many new people to the genre (which is for the most part a good thing!), that they ignorantly assume there were no other MMOs before WoW.

It's comparable to saying that every sneaker is just a "Nike clone" because Nikes are popular and are recognized more or less globally as a premier sneaker; other shoes are "clones" because they have the same features, laces, soles, tongues, etc etc.

I once heard someone call the original Everquest "just a bad WoW clone".

Good article, thanks!

(PS. To the comment about "walls of meaningless filler text"; WoW most certainly did not "invent" that concept and that "meaningless" text is the story of the game/mission/quest that you are doing, it is designed to immerse you into the game world and give you a reason for doing the action they are requesting of you. Don't assume that the way you play the game is the way everyone does! Some people actually enjoy the RPG part of the MMORPG.)

Very well written article.  Languages evolve over time and meanings do change.  So one must be circumspect at times being critical on how meanings change, but I think the author pretty much nailed it in his article.

I think the one that irks me the most on this board is those the fling the "hater" and "fanboi" terms around at anyone who disagrees with them.  Pretty much clues you in that their arguments are highly colored with a built in bias.  If you want to get your point across, avoiding these terms can go a long way to doing that.

so, after reading every comment, as well as the entire article, the ones missing are (in no particular order)

carebear
innovative
next-gen
Massive World
lag

defidently should have made it "top 15"

Pretty good post.... the sandbox part I think you nailed right.  There have to be some toys in a sandbox otherwise its just a big box of sand lol.  You cant even make a sandcastle without a bucket and plenty of water hehe.

As far as launch dates go... well I think you may have been a bit too forgiving.  As a programmer myself we have deadlines that must be met and it is the project manager's job to make sure that those dates are set realistically and that they are met.  If the dev team is unable to make their deadlines they need to be replaced with people far more competent.  Either that or a real project manager that knows what the hell he/she is doing.

This was a breath of fresh air to read.  My husband and I were having this exact conversation last week and how much it bothered us that these terms were so absurdly tossed around.  Thank you for writing this, I hope some people will think before they label :)  I know, dream the impossible dream.

There has really only been 1 "WoWClone" ever made if you want to be technical. That would be "Runes of Magic".

It is the only game that pops into my head you can directly compare all facets of it's game play to World of Warcraft.

Over the years I have seen many people say many different things.

EQ2 is a WoW Clone.... EQ2 is nothing more than an upgraded attempt of EQ1 to capture the attention of the present EQ1 players to try and keep them playing for the same company by offering better graphics and smoother gameplay.

If anything EQ2 "borrowed" its UI setup from DAoC, which is what it more closely resembles to me.

There have been strides in gameplay that many people ignore or refuse to see, due to thier blind hatred for Blizard.

We could almost make a timeline for these and list innovations.

Ultima - Noone needs to list Ultima's innovations. If you do not know them by now, you are just to young to remember it.

EQ1 - First mainstream 3D mmo that I can recall. The list of EQ1'ss innovations are phone book in length as it pretty much did everything we have come to consider a standard today.

DAoC - Before DAoC people had no idea that player vs player could be so profitable. It mainstreamed pvp combat on a scale that as far as I can tell has not been matched since.

Anarchy Online - First true sci-fi action MMO. It brought a new way of thinking into the genre in regards to things like equipment through enhancements. When I first played Anarchy Online, I could remember thinking to myself, this is pretty innovative design.

Planetside - This MMO took the concept of such games as counterstrike, unreal, and quake then put it on a scale that couldn't be matched at the time in FPS format. It may not have invented the FPS genre, but it improved on the model and took it another direction.

EvE Online - First true sci-fi inspired sandbox MMO. EvE built it's gaming model from the ground up. There hasn't been a game to date to emulate it's style. Everything about EvE is innovation, and although I really dislike the game, what it has done for the genre commands respect.

Guild Wars - Guild Wars was the first MMO to perfectly merge single player console design and MMORPG design. I think it is innovative enough just in this respect. It was also the first game to perfect arena based PvP combat and take teamwork to a new extreme height.

Horizons (Istaria) - Was the first game to show you that you could play the entire game as an animal or in this case a "Mythic Creature". you can argue that EQ shaman had bear form or whatever you want, however these were merely spells. Horizons let you play as a friggin DRAGON! for gods sake. It was innovation for that time.

You know every game tries to make strides, some fall short and some pull it off.

WoW is a clone, of everything before it, and every game after it has some of it's elements, just remember where wow got those elements.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by neschria

This article was pretty good. I am glad that it didn't include "carebear", since that seems to dying out, at least around here, compared to the way it used to be. I guess all the carebears are fanbois and haters now. 

Re: WoW clone: When I first played WoW during a stress test, I told my husband it was going to be huge... but that didn't stop me from summarizing it as "EQ for Dummies" (not saying that you're a dummy if you play it; it's a reference to the "for Dummies" series of books that simplify things for the layman). I'd say that WoW was an EQ clone, and everything since WoW has been a WoW clone. It's as if someone handed out a roadmap to the end of the rainbow, and everyone is looking for the same pot of gold-- the one that Blizzard already has.

Only person in this thread who really understands what defines a WOW clone, it has nothing to do with its point and click combat system, interfaces or even whether or not it has orcs and elves in it.

Its about the trend to ever easier gameplay.  And yes, LoTRO and AOC are WOW clones of a sort.  They take even try to out do WOW by making it easier and easier for players to find quest objectives (their linear, quest driven gameplay is a clone of WOW).

You would have had to play games like DAOC, Lineage 1/2, Shadowbane and even EQ to see that while they had similariities, they all felt like very different games.  That is not true with most of the games released since WOW, and as we know, some games actually changed in mid-stream to become easier (SWG, EQ2) a la WOW. 

Doesn't make them identical to WOW, but they definitely tried to emulate the WOW forumula for success.

Maybe the term is overused these days, but it is appropriate in many ways.

 

Here's the thing about the quest system emulated by others after WoW:

Remember how quests worked in EQ?

In theory, you would hail an npc and receive text, you'd then have to think about how to best respond to elicit a continuation. There was precious little direction if any at all. The rationale was the result of this would be an active, talkative community; constantly needing to share the 'clues' they picked up about a particular quest.

In reality, people created write-ups and posted them, shooting allakhazam's to stardom. I met very few people who did not use these write ups, as it was nearly impossible to figure out where to go next based on the quest text alone. If you asked for advice in chat (guild included) the answer was more likely than not to be "allakhazam.com".

Blizzard realized while developing WoW, that quest research had simply become a time sink rather than a community  builder. Did they make mmorpg's easier with this addition? Yes. But not by 'dumbing' it down, by removing a time sink.

And perhaps you should take a look at some WotLK questlines. If anyone can get exalted faction with the Sons of Hodir and still say the quest lines are 'the same ol' same ol'" I want some of what they are smoking. Simply put, WoW is gently moving away from their standard quest system, and absolutely no other mmo is creating quest arcs that are as varied as what Blizzard has done most recently.

I have a pet theory. Some who quit WoW and/or may have never played WotLK too deeply or at all will soon find what you are looking for. A game will be released with amazingly complex and varied quest arcs that will blow you away. It will become the rage on the forums, meanwhile, some who knew better will be saying "you see they did want a WoW clone all along, they just had no idea what had been happening in WoW".

But hey, if you want a return to the time where you'd ask for quest help and people would tell you to look it up, if you long for the days of scratching your head for months waiting for someone to figure the quest out and do a write up, if you are still yearning for the days when you'd pour through volumes of posts trying to sort out why each one is saying you have to do something different....if you think any of that crap was fun, be ready for a long wait, because I doubt any company will take that direction ever again.

But then again, one man's challenge is another man's time sink...

 You 'feel' that WoW is less of a challenge; I 'feel' they eliminated a time sink - these are both opinions, not facts. I understand your perception, I just don't agree with it. But I do ask you this, if you were to ask a blizzard developer if their intent was to make the game 'easier' in the sense of challenge or 'easier in the sense of time sink eliminations" which do you think they would choose as their objective?

And lastly......

While I agree that games such as LoTRO and AoC have a quest system more similar to WoW's than EQ's; you cannot convince me that the challenge was diminished in any way shape or form. Killing 10 boars, then collecting 10 hides, then killing a minor boss mob is absolutely NO less challenging then sitting in the Overthere for 4 solid hours killing 10000 cockatrices. And if it is, explain how. And in addition I find Halls of Lightning about 10X more fun then camping the magus in lower guk in 1 room for multiple hours. And good god, do you remember the 3 hour prep for raid, the 7 hour raid, and god help you if you wipe or it'd be a 10 to 12 hour raid?  I don't remember any of these things to be a challenge, other than to my sense of composure.

Sure, Tallon and Vallon Zek were both challenging targets. But no more challenging than completing Ulduar, and I defy you to go on a namer by namer basis and show how each was more of a challenge than boss mobs in WoW.

So are AoC and LoTRO WoW clone's? By your definition yes. But should that be a negative? In my opinion, I am thankful that modern mmo's have eliminated the useless time sinks that kept me from killing monsters with my friends. I never have once played an mmo because of how much I like using allakhazam.com and hopefully I will never have to again.

You simply will not convince me games prior to WoW had more challenging gameplay. You can only convince me they had more time sinks. And if that's what you consider the 'fun' and 'challenge' of an mmorpg; I have to respectfully disagree with your opinion.

This has been one of this sites best articles yet and one of the reasons I just have to come back and post on this site though often times the venom us players spew at each other makes me wish I didn't.  The only thing I would probably adjust myself is the fact that hardcore can just as easily be included in the sandbox/theme park category specifically how "hardcore" has become what is listed as inthe article and truly is "sandbox" or atleast lack there of.  People will quickly call faulty games with absolutely no content "hardcore" by most peoples definition of hardcore I can consider myself a hardcore reader if I read the entire dicitonary sure it's thousands of pages long and full of words but there is no story involved if you get my meaning.

Another word that is sorely missing and should have probably been number one is "trolling" now it seems anyone who disagrees is a troll no matter that they may be spot on about everything they say the first insult thrown out when some game we enjoy is trashed is to call someone a troll or accuse them of trolling for simply stating their opinion.

It's so much easier to type "WoW clone" than it is to type "quest-based level-grinder with generic fantasy classes and races." And since most MMO players are familiar with WoW, there's little chance of me being misunderstood.

I may call someone a "bitch," but i don't literally mean she's a female dog.

How did "gank" not make this list at all? I don't think ten people could even agree on it's actual meaning now it's been so misused for so long.

Originally posted by Broodwich

How did "gank" not make this list at all? I don't think ten people could even agree on it's actual meaning now it's been so misused for so long.

That one is easy. When you kill me it's a gank, When I kill you it's skill. Or vice versa depending on who's point of view we're using.

/snicker