Originally posted by Proson

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.

LOTRO came out first and is more wowish than both WAR and AOC

Originally posted by Odysses

Wow ripped off Asheron's Call 2 more so then EQ imo.   If you look at everything from talent trees to ui to combat to questing and crafting, Wow took everything AC2 did and polished it up.  Thats what cracks me up when people say Lotro copied wow.  They were basically finishing AC2 and making it a complete game with a Middle Earth skin.

AC2 and COX imo

WOW is basically fantasy COX, with dumbed down character development  and less group more solo orientated, and with added raiding (WOW wasn't really a raiding game at launch though)

simmilar UI, simmilar target audience of casual players.

of course wow changed later when they hired all those EQ guys and made it  a raiding end game.

Heh , to anwser your question , what year did LoTRO got out? LoTRO was the first almost perfect clone of WoW , kind of scary when you think about it , still got the collector's edition of lotro in my closet ... :P

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by RefMinor
How long did it take for the second Everquest clone to be released after the first.

 

Doesn't DAOC & SWG have Everquest elements like every other Everquest close does?

not really SWG is a sandbox, if it borrows from anything its UO

DACO and EQ were at roughly the same time.  But where as EQ is the definitive PVE driven game, DAOC is all about the PVP, back then you played one or the other, there wasn't much crossover, i love DAOC, couldn't stand EQ (rather play wow than EQ!)

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.

What's a WoW clone? Since WoW is a clone of EQ, I'm not sure how to answer this question.

http://timelines.com/topics/mmorpg

This is a time line of all the major players since Meridian 59, although there were MUDs before this, 59 gets the credit for first MMO, on and this is correct EQ2 did come out before WoW, few days but still.

Originally posted by ShakyMo

Originally posted by Proson

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.

LOTRO came out first and is more wowish than both WAR and AOC

My point from previous post applies here.  LoTRO is a AC2 clone/evolution.  WoW copied greatly from AC2.

Originally posted by SuprGamerX

Heh , to anwser your question , what year did LoTRO got out? LoTRO was the first almost perfect clone of WoW , kind of scary when you think about it , still got the collector's edition of lotro in my closet ... :P

see above post.   Alot of the posters here never played MMO's before WoW so that is all they know. 

Originally posted by reaperuk

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.

Which makes no sense considering A lot of WoW was moddled off of Everquest which SoE made (who also made SWG). Seems to me like your just making stuff up. 

 Heh , it's funny that you people talk about WoW is a clone of this or a clone of that , the fact of the matter is that no other MMO released before WoW had anywhere NEAR the numbers WoW generated on release.

 Bascially your saying that let's say a EverQuest 3 gets released by the end of the year ,half the subs of WoW will go to EQ3? Non sense.  You'd be lucky to find at least 5% of WoW's population that ever played EQ 1 or 2 , and when I mean play , I mean having played for a year or more.

 WoW is WoW , wether we like it or not , and it will remain WoW for years to come even after the so called "Titan" project releases.

Originally posted by ShakyMo

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by RefMinor
How long did it take for the second Everquest clone to be released after the first.

 

Doesn't DAOC & SWG have Everquest elements like every other Everquest close does?

not really SWG is a sandbox, if it borrows from anything its UO

DACO and EQ were at roughly the same time.  But where as EQ is the definitive PVE driven game, DAOC is all about the PVP, back then you played one or the other, there wasn't much crossover, i love DAOC, couldn't stand EQ (rather play wow than EQ!)

 

DAOC came out a full 2 years after Everquest, might want to readjust your "at the same time " comment.  Oh and PvP on Rallos Zek>DAOC ALL DAY. 

Originally posted by strykr619

Originally posted by reaperuk

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.

Which makes no sense considering A lot of WoW was moddled off of Everquest which SoE made (who also made SWG). Seems to me like your just making stuff up. 

nope thats pretty much the way it went. There is no need to make up anything concerning SWG. It is all out there with a bit of research you too can relive the wonders of the NGE.

ups, wasnt WoW a clone from Everquest , oh yes it is.

probally most guys are right 5-6 years its needed like WoWto be Everquest clone :)

The first WoW clone actually released 2 weeks prior to WoW releasing.  It was EQ2 which completely redesigned its game in beta to copy WoW's quest directed gameplay. 

Originally posted by SuprGamerX

 Heh , it's funny that you people talk about WoW is a clone of this or a clone of that , the fact of the matter is that no other MMO released before WoW had anywhere NEAR the numbers WoW generated on release.

 Bascially your saying that let's say a EverQuest 3 gets released by the end of the year ,half the subs of WoW will go to EQ3? Non sense.  You'd be lucky to find at least 5% of WoW's population that ever played EQ 1 or 2 , and when I mean play , I mean having played for a year or more.

 WoW is WoW , wether we like it or not , and it will remain WoW for years to come even after the so called "Titan" project releases.

Not sure what your talking about.  EQ had over 500k subs when computer gaming wasn't even in the normal lexicon of language.  In fact I would say it was more successful than WoW.  WoW is now  played by tons of 12-15 years olds with the parents and such.  EQ never had that because the entry (a computer with a 3D video card) was such a high entry.  Here we are 13 years after EQ launched and still there are over 3000 items that STILL have not been discovered in the game.   The WoW designers have publicly admitted their inspiration for WoW....its EQ.  And you are right, 5% would not have played EQ because there is no one left over 15 in that game.  WoW is already not WoW.  The game is in serious decline no matter how you spin it.  I don't know anyone left that plays it anymore in the guilds I know.  But I am sure you will spout off about chinese subs creating an inflated 50 million subs it has statement...

I would agree when you look at WoW's engame, that is all EQ.  When you look at every other aspect, WoW borrows heavily from AC2.

A very interesting article about why AC2 is not longer around. 

http://www.eldergame.com/2009/02/whats-a-qa-team-without-a-spec/

Originally posted by Odysses

I would agree when you look at WoW's engame, that is all EQ. 

Endgame EQ is different from WoW too. WoW relies heavily on scripted raids, EQ relies a lot more on balance and control.

EQ's raids (well all the ones that are PoP+ and no longer tank & spank) rely much more on heal rotations, tank rotations, add management, CC, the raids are much bigger than WoW and it's much more a team effort than WoW's raids where it's more an individual scripted effort.

There is also a pretty big difference how people do raids, EQ's guilds really don't put any guides out or help other guilds, if anything we do everything possible to hide our strategy, there are usually multiple ways to win a raid and guilds can be very tank or DPS centric and use completely different strategies. In WoW it's a lot more clear cut, guilds often go in with preconcieved notions about the raid and because raids are so much smaller, there is a lot less room for different strategies, not to mention when you give people a guide or help, they will copy-cat, which results in every guild doing the same raid the same way in WoW.

EQ raids also get changed a lot of times after release, because the EQ staff is so small and beta is not nearly enough to get a raid tuned correctly, they tend to overshoot the difficulty and lately raids go through a few different retunes and changes on live, some get changed completely or changed on a weekly basis, that's less so in WoW.

of course WoW took the best of EQ. Blizzard said that, not me. but they totally changed the design paradigms of a MMO. so WoW is far away from something like an EQ-Clone.

as i wrote already above, some of the most important new design patterns of the modern theme-park are: linearity, refining, accessability and fast-paced-action oriented combat. THIS and a few other paradigms make the feel of the modern theme-park some of us hate with passion. no lets look at EQ1:

linearity: EQ had just a few bigger questlines. mostly single quests and you had to search for them and sometimes first grind faction to talk to this NPC. no questhubs and no way to make your way to 50 with questing only. no chance! also zones were mixed. in one corner you had newbs in the other midlevel and then a L50 mob was spawned by some old guys and every other char was running to zone.

refining: the worst invention ever. when i came to EQ2, which is very similar and i tried to pull a mob, i saw they are linked and attack all together. no chance to split them up as usual in EQ. EQ was a pulling game. and you had lots of different pull tactics (at least a necromancer had them all). this opens a lot of different tactics to aproach a mob encounter. actually the EQ-devs said: usually we dont think about how you guys will kill that stuff, we just thought it looks nice here and it fits to level x-z. thats it, no micromangement by the devs. of course some boss fights were scripted and micromanaged, but not every damn trash-mob. in wow and all following theme-parks every damn mob encounter is carefully planned including the tactics you are allowed to kill them.

accessability: EQ had no tutorial in the early days, no map no questmarker no nothing. 

fast paced-action-oriented combat: EQ was slow paced. you pulled a mob with loads of HP, then as a nec i started my dot rotation, dots lasted about minutes not seconds. and my crowd control for adds was repeatable, that means i could hold a few mobs controlled all the time. nevertheless, if you did just one mistake you have been dead because red mobs did hit very hard. fights lasted much longer and have been more tactical than action oriented.

so NO guys. WoW was no EQ-clone. just on a very low level these 2 games look similar. if you look to the real important design patterns, they are totally different.

The slow paced combat you mention is I believe one of the reasons why EQ had such a good community, setting up a camp and having a puller made it possible for everyone to chat, mobs took a long time to kill.

WoW is really not an EQ clone, you can say they took hints from EQ, but the games themselves play very differently a clone would imply that there is a big likeness between the two, that's just not the case, EQ is very different.

This question is flawed from the beginning. Because there is no such thing as a "WoW clone".

There is no game that is exactly the same. (No this isn't just semantics, even games considered "clones" have hundreds of small differences, what people call a "WoW" clone is the skeleton of whatever game.)

Each new game that has come out has always brought something different to the table. Some of it sticks, some of it gets dropped shortly after release.

WoW was essentially a carbon copy of EQ2 which came out 1 month before it, the major differences were marketing and accessibillity. 

If a WoW clone = Quest based, easy, small raids, linear progression...

Well then WoW was the first WoW clone, because EQ2 was exactly that and was released slightly before.

(The whole point of this post is to point out how incredibly arbitrary it all is, every new incarnation of an MMO has copied it's predecessor in some major way, dating all the way back to MUDs)