To the people above that use this term, the reason you have backlash against it is WOW ripped off every game that came before it.  Most of the race/job combos from WOW were directly lifted from the warhammer IP. Hotbars? How about just about every single MMO before it.  Click on mob click on ability to kill it? Not even close to first on that one. So yes, to the rest of your 12 year old friends I'm sure this is an apt description as they know nothing of what came before it.  The funny part that makes you look really stupid saying things like 'WOW clone' is that many of those games that were 'ripped off' are still being played today.

I don't believe anyone has ripped off anyone else but used that in quoteing the wow fan of nonsensically enthusiastic support(didn't want to use THAT word in the list but it might apply here). To say anyone is ripping off someone else in this genre is to also claim that any car with wheels ripped off Honda's idea for the Civic...

Sadly all this talk by people saying they use the term wow-clone is just as a previous poster said, a term used by people that either were born in the mid 90's or don't know what they're talking about. When Dark Age of Camelot was in beta all anyone could say was EQ-clone!  Look at that guy with the sword attacking that thing! EQ clone!

You completely forgot the #1 misused term of all...

MMORPG

I know I'm necroing this post, but I just had to say the mmo word I had most is GAY. 

Do people know that Gay means fun. What's wrong wtih a game being fun anyways?

Originally posted by xesc

Originally posted by Sarr

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by zidane01970

I don't agree with this, I use "WoW Clone" to describe these hundreds of mmos that use the same "Click to Attack", and watch the fight style combat. That bores me to tears. WoW was the first one to notably do it, as it followed a lot of other generic systems too. "Generic RPG" systems, I personally like WoW, but I would love to see more real-time combat MMORPG. These Psuedo-turn based games so many companies seem to be making are getting extremely old to me.

 

That's the point of the entry. WoW was FAR from the first to do it.

 

Wasn't Everquest first? Hmm, certainly not Ultima. But I have the feeing there was something similar before Everquest and Asheron's Call...

 

All the games you mention are just evolutions of other games before them.

Before everquest there was Ultima Online, and before UO there were MUDs, and before "popular" MUDS there were Moria (CGA Style FTW), and before Moria there was Tabletop, and before Tabletop there was... and so on... and so on... and so on...

Each of the games add something new to the game/genre (They better) - and if you take all these games, and peel one layer of evolution off the GUI, you'll find the previous game. WoW Fanboys who are 16 years old, were practically raised in a wow world, and EQ fanboys who are 20 years old were raised in an EQ world, and so on... but please, don't start taking up your game as the original for anything, because odds are, it wasn't.

 

PS: I've never used the word "fanboy" before, but the article made me want to try it, and since the zidane-person proved exactly one point of the article, with his fanboyism´; another point of the article, I thought it was funny :)

WoW Clone will fade just like Doom Clone faded.  BTW Doom wasn't the first first-person shooter either but they did it better and bigger than Wolfenstein (if I remember right that was the first). 

Eventually WoW and WoW Clones will be known by whatever moniker the gaming world decides to group them in.  Whether it be MMORPG, MMO, Fantasy MMO, or one to yet be coined.  It took over 10 years for Doom Clone to fade.  You can figure WoW Clone will stick around at least that long. 

EDIT:  Great list BTW.  Must read for all the forum elitists.  Afterall they are the ones that generally overuse these phrases.