I'm sure the gamedev forums have been littered with MMO related threads since WoW brought it to the masses. I was wondering what people thought about a game that shamelessly copied World of Warcraft in all but its content? For example it's emotes. People love the emotes so surely these should be copied in, atleast the command and the way they work. The same for chatting, looking up someone's name via shift, grouping, placement of portraits. What is wrong with copying all of this into a MMO? I'm asking partly as I've been playing Age of Conan for the past two weeks and have noticed some aspects from WoW, but a lot of ones not there that hundreds of people keep asking about. It's been toughted around as being the biggest competition for WoW but seems to fall over from the developers not understanding that people like consistency, the same way a lot of FPS are laid out in a similar fashion. The opposite I suppose is you end up with just a clone, which is what Warhammer sadly is like (I'm on the beta for it). So in my opinion copying most aspects of WoW (atleast the UI) into your own MMO is not a bad thing - it's the equivalent of using the Microsoft standards for UI design. Consistency is King!

I don't think plagiarism is the correct word for this, but why would it not be ok? WoW itself copied those ideas from many earlier games. That said though I hate it, WoW IMHO has the worst MMO interface of any that I've played, and it's popularity has even gone so far as to get EA to revamp Ultima Online's interface for the new client to look exactly like it....

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Original post by kangaroocow I'm sure the gamedev forums have been littered with MMO related threads since WoW brought it to the masses. I was wondering what people thought about a game that shamelessly copied World of Warcraft in all but its content? For example it's emotes. People love the emotes so surely these should be copied in, atleast the command and the way they work. The same for chatting, looking up someone's name via shift, grouping, placement of portraits. What is wrong with copying all of this into a MMO? I'm asking partly as I've been playing Age of Conan for the past two weeks and have noticed some aspects from WoW, but a lot of ones not there that hundreds of people keep asking about. It's been toughted around as being the biggest competition for WoW but seems to fall over from the developers not understanding that people like consistency, the same way a lot of FPS are laid out in a similar fashion.

I think there are three problems associated with 'copying' WoW. Two of which are common across the industry, one of which to independent development. The first is simply that it's boring to compare MMO's and find them all the same. We have an over-abundance of Tolkein-esque role playing games, many of which are 'MMO'. People may like consistency, but they don't like mediocrity and consistently monotonous.

The second problem is a business one. It's just not reasonable to believe you have a snowball's chance of hell of successfully competing with World of Warcraft. It's just not going to happen. Warhammer may experience some success due to a pre-existing fanbase, but offers little over WoW to the average player.

Thirdly, a problem associated with independent game development. We just don't have and will not get the budget to run a WoW-clone server, let alone develop the darn thing. With low budgets at best, the impetus is on us to produce something new, creative and fresh in order to compete or, at least, draw some attention.

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The opposite I suppose is you end up with just a clone, which is what Warhammer sadly is like (I'm on the beta for it). So in my opinion copying most aspects of WoW (atleast the UI) into your own MMO is not a bad thing - it's the equivalent of using the Microsoft standards for UI design. Consistency is King!

User Interface may be one small area where WoW may be worthy of copying. To copy the gameplay, however, is nothing similar to a UI standard. It's more similar to to cheap imitation watches you find on the street corners in backstreet neighbourhoods.

On a side note, it's probably in the beta sign-up agreement that you won't talk about the game prior to its release without express written permission.

I definitely wouldn't advocate copying WoW for its gameplay, as there is very little of it that isn't repetitive and tedious after the 10th level. Perhaps if you're new to MMORPGs it's novel.

It's not just the UI though, the macros, modding engine via LUA, character animation interaction which I think is important to emulate as they're equally important to its success. Look at all those WoW fan movies out there, they're reminiscent of the Half Life engine ones (or HL2 and Garry's Mod).

As far as the Warhammer beta I'm on, it's been well known it's cloned a lot of WoW - that's not some ground breaking news I'm releasing and breaking the NDA. There's quite a few videos out there.

In some ways Dofus and Gaia Online have better emotes than WoW.

I have no beef with adopting effective UI or even widely desired design mechanics (buffs, for instance, or status effect based combat strategy). As you note, these become expectations and then conventions.

I think that you'd have to be careful that a game that felt and looked the same didn't play the same, though. NathanRunge makes some great points in terms of competing with a behemoth, especially because without the resources a game that pretty much is the same in all but content will have less of everything because it's indie. How would it distinguish itself? Why wouldn't players just go play WoW?

My favorite motto here would be the African proverb "Stay out from underfoot of elephants."

The problem with cloning WoW is that while it's a great commercial success, it really isn't a good MMORPG. So copying WoW will leave you destined to fail.

There are some strong elements to take from WoW, but most of them WoW took from previous games anyway.

As has been said, WoW has copied many features from other games, and that hasn't hurt its sales.

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The opposite I suppose is you end up with just a clone, which is what Warhammer sadly is like

It probably seems more like a clone because WoW ripped off a lot of Warhammer's character/creature design.

WoW has a terrific UI and a company with an incredible reputation behind it. The fact that the game mechanics are shoddy doesn't really matter much.

There is nothing wrong with "copying" user interface and interaction, what you want to work towards is getting the user/player comfortable and familiar with the layout as much as possible.

A good example where this has failed terribly is Microsoft Word.
Word have had the same design for years since it's release, not because it's the best, but because the users are familiar with it.
But in the latest version of Word they redesigned and moved almost everything, which made it more alien to the users who have been using the product for years, and a lot of confusion arises.

This is why every FPS on the market have the WASD controls today, because every other FPS uses it.


It would be fun to see if you create a FPS where you move the controls from WASD to ESDF (one step to the right), and get feedback from the players and see what they think about it.

Emotes start long ago. UO had emotes.