I would say Age of Conan and WAR maybe? they came out in 2008, i remember Age of Conan was quiet diffrent in early development of the game back in 2004/5 and they changed up alot of things to "wowify" it when they saw how well WoW did.

Might be wrong though.

Edit: They were released in 2008, not 2007 my mistake, LoTRO came out before they did and was very WoWish.

The developers of SWG were heavily influenced by WoW's success when they completely changed the way the game played in 2005. That was the year after WoW's release in 2004. Unfortunately it broke the game rather than improved it.

SWG was the first to clone WoW with NGE

That was sometime in 2005.

Lord of the Rings Online, released April 24, 2007.

Originally posted by Isasis

SWG was the first to clone WoW with NGE

 

That was sometime in 2005.

 

 

Should have been a sign of things to come in the MMO industry...

Originally posted by GPrestige

Originally posted by Isasis

SWG was the first to clone WoW with NGE

 

That was sometime in 2005.

 

 

Should have been a sign of things to come in the MMO industry...

Seriously, WoW was a clone of the previous games, they just advertised it better and focused more on what people wanted.

Originally posted by Isasis

SWG was the first to clone WoW with NGE

That was sometime in 2005.

They did the same revampp with EQ2 around the same time, but yeah, SOE was first to revamp their games to be similar to Wow. In EQ2s case it was a lot easier since Wow in itself is a EQ clone.

The first AAA Wow clone is easier, it was LOTRO in 2007.

For there to be wow-clones, wow would've needed to be original in some way...it was clone of MMOs that came before it.

Originally posted by kishe

For there to be wow-clones, wow would've needed to be original in some way...it was clone of MMOs that came before it.

Not really. Wow copied EQ but as soon as another game looks on Wow and copy it instead of EQ the cloning moved.

It is kinda w'like when JK Rowling sued some dude for copying Harry Potter even though everything in Harry Potter including the owl is stolen from Tim in Gailmans "Books of magic". Rowling won in court...

WoW and EQ were both levelgrind fantasy MMOs, but gameplay-wise, were they really that similar?  I remember camping dungeons a lot in EQ, and never camped anything in WoW.  WoW had quests, every little town and outpost full of them, and in EQ they were just a novelty.  You couldn't level on them at all.  WoW was extremely soloable, one could pretty much solo to the level cap, doing quest after quest, while in EQ, soloing was almost impossible, and leveling was done by getting a group, and sitting around killing mobs.  Really, very different, gameplay-wise, and that's not even getting into WoW's battlegrounds or anything like that.

If LOTRO were that different from WoW, no one would have called it a clone.  Or AoC, WAR, Rift, TOR, etc, etc, etc, etc...

Originally posted by Vhaln

WoW and EQ were both levelgrind fantasy MMOs, but gameplay-wise, were they really that similar?  I remember camping dungeons a lot in EQ, and never camped anything in WoW.  WoW had quests, every little town and outpost full of them, and in EQ they were just a novelty.  You couldn't level on them at all.  WoW was extremely soloable, one could pretty much solo to the level cap, doing quest after quest, while in EQ, soloing was almost impossible, and leveling was done by getting a group, and sitting around killing mobs.  Really, very different, gameplay-wise, and that's not even getting into WoW's battlegrounds or anything like that.

If LOTRO were that different from WoW, no one would have called it a clone.  Or AoC, WAR, Rift, TOR, etc, etc, etc, etc...

Agree. EQ is very different from WoW, the gameplay is completely uncomparable.

WoW's gameplay is faster, it has no static camps, it has quests everywhere, it has PVP (EQ PVP was a side thought, no one took EQ PVP serious, it's a PVE game), WoW has BQ, raids are much smaller and faster.

EQ is completely different, the gameplay is slower, you have a much higher dependency on pullers and CC, the raids past GoD are completely different from WoWs raids, much higher death penalty, much slower travel, there is no comparison.

Not to mention the engines are so different, EQ had a static bazaar, it had a zoned world, not an open world like WoW, it has mobs that stick on you throughout the zones, the interface is different, etc.

WoW took a lot of hints from EQ, but they're not copies in any way, they're miles apart.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by kishe

For there to be wow-clones, wow would've needed to be original in some way...it was clone of MMOs that came before it.

Not really. Wow copied EQ but as soon as another game looks on Wow and copy it instead of EQ the cloning moved.

It is kinda w'like when JK Rowling sued some dude for copying Harry Potter even though everything in Harry Potter including the owl is stolen from Tim in Gailmans "Books of magic". Rowling won in court...

"Stolen" is a pretty strong word, maybe you should read Neil Gaiman's opinion on that.

There's a good quote in that blog post that I think applies equally well to games:

Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back. The stew bubbles on.

Rob Pardo was the guild master of the Everquest guild Legacy of Steel, which accomplished many world first.  Pardo was known for being very public about the shortcomings he witnessed in EQ and how to improve them.

Blizzard hired him to be the lead designer for World of Warcraft.  He would later bring his friend Jeffrey Kaplan, former guildmate of Legacy of Steel and guildmaster in Pardo's absence, to the design team of Blizzard.

Lets think about this guys: Blizzard saw how awesome and amazing Everquest was and wanted to do something similar.  They hired the most vocal and experienced EQ players at the time.  Those players designed the game with a vision on what THEY wanted, not necessarily what EQ did, but there were of course similarities.

Personally it doesn't get much better then that.  Allow the PLAYERS to dictate how a game should be made and give them free reign.

Bioware/Mythic/EA should take some pointers.  They should have hired top players from WoW and given them free reign on how to make a great game. 

Maybe if that happened, WoW would be in second place now.

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by GPrestige

Originally posted by Isasis

SWG was the first to clone WoW with NGE

 

That was sometime in 2005.

 

 

Should have been a sign of things to come in the MMO industry...

 

I already know what the NGE did, but you mind explaining it to me, how it specifically changed areas of SWG gameplay?

Basically it completely shifted from one type of mmo to another.

SWG certinaly became the frist attempt at a WoW clone.

Originally posted by grapevine

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by GPrestige

Originally posted by Isasis

SWG was the first to clone WoW with NGE

 

That was sometime in 2005.

 

 

Should have been a sign of things to come in the MMO industry...

 

I already know what the NGE did, but you mind explaining it to me, how it specifically changed areas of SWG gameplay?

 

You used to be able to pick'n'mix skills between 32 professions, although you'd usually specialise in 2 and float the rest of the points around.   There were also no levels, and very few quests (i.e. it was a sandbox mmo).

 

When the NGE hit, it went to fixed classes (8 I believe).  It also switched from being a flexible (character) skill based sandbox mmo, to that of theme park questing with fixed classes (with talent trees).   Although the sandbox elements did remain, their use/benefit was extremely dumbed down.  Also levels were introduced.  

 

Basically it completely shifted from one type of mmo to another.

 

SWG certinaly became the frist attempt at a WoW clone.

+1

--------------

Besides OP you don't need to make mmorpg from a scratch to make it WoW-clone. After huge initial WoW-sucess , many devs started to revamp / modify existing games and make HUGE changes to those already  being developed.  So it took much faster than 5 years...

Like others have said.  It was a continuum of development.  The launch of wow took things from existing games. . but then developed and used ideas from other games that came after or even before it (EQ AoC etc).  It was more updates and a combination of a million "borrowings" or "homages" that lead each game to be what it is.  So the first "WoW" clone could have come out a year after WoW even and have been in development for 5 years.

Everyone else then borrowed from WoW and updated their previously existing titles to try to get some of the WoW crowd (ie. SWG).  Now it has boiled down to some basics (hotbar, class trinity etc).  The more people borROW the more things get boRING for people who have  been playing these games forever.

Someone needs to do something pretty radically different to get me interested again.  It has been awhile now since I played though so I might be just about ready when GW2 or Archage comes out.

Originally posted by MMOExposed
Not a discussion about WoW, but I am curious what's the time duration between WoW's release, and the first so called "WoW clone?

from my understandings it usually takes 5 years for a developer team to make a MMO. So it would be interesting if the mmorpg community recieved a WoW clone within the first 5 years post WoW.

From what I've gathered on the Warcraft forums, every MMO is a WoW clone (Even if it came out before WoW) and they all "phail".

So I guess you can take your pick.

Originally posted by Vhaln

WoW and EQ were both levelgrind fantasy MMOs, but gameplay-wise, were they really that similar?

If your gauge includes only level-based class-restricted fantasy MMOs, then they are nothing alike. If your scale includes the full range of MMOs, then they are damn near identical.