General Discussion

Warhammer facts

• Founding company: Games Workshop - 1975
• Official distribution rights to Dungeons and Dragons in UK - 1976
• White Dwarf - 1977
• Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 - December 1991
• Management buyout - 1991
• 1994 - company went public on London Stock exchange

Word of Warcraft facts

• Founding company:  Silicon & Synapse in February 1991
• Changed name to Chaos Studio's then to Blizzard Entertainment - 1994
• Company purchased by Davidson & Associates - 1994
• Warcraft: Orcs and Humans released - December 1994
• Since the Warcraft release, the company has changed financial hands many times.
• Diablo - 1997

So Warhammer was released 3 years earlier than Warcraft.  Games Workshop has never changed their name, and has been in operation for 33 years.  Blizzard; 14 years with its current name.

As we have seen with many games, and many mmorpg's, people borrow ideas from each other all the time.  There is no way that the "Warhammer" series borrowed from "Warcraft" because they were first.  It is highly possibly that the opposite happened, Blizzard borrowed ideas from Games Workshop and ran with it.

Actually the Warhammer table top game first came out in 1983. But I dont know if you were talking about a Warhammer video game or not.

When people refers to WAR copying WOW, they are talking about MMO concepts, not Lore.  They are wrong, or course, but I can forgive the error as not many people actually played DAOC. There are similarities of course, (scenarios) but honestly taking the best ideas and trashing the bad part is how game genre grows.

I really wish WAR had ripped the WOW auction house though, because the one they have now is just non-functional.

Note: I have seen twice as many posts complaining about people calling WAR a WOW clone then actual posts calling WAR a WOW clone.

Nice. Betcha still gonna hear the WoW-clone cries.

Warcraft was made into an mmo first so thats what people are talking about, but it doesn't matter because all mmo's take each other's ideas, so its a fail arguement anways on who did what first.

Warcraft certainly coppied Warhammer, but WAR has done the same. Sure the orcs look the same, and the dwarves.. but they also look pretty much like classic 'dwarves and orcs.' I think when folks are talking about WAR being a clone of WoW, they are talking in terms of gameplay. Just about everything about WAR is very obviously taken strait out of WoW and it's predecessors.

I have a 1st edition hardback of "Warhammer fantasy roleplaying game" :) (Edit: from 1984)

But really, orcs was invented by Tolkien so by your logic LOTRO is the one everyone stole from? The Elves and dwarfs are from Norse mythology so everyone stole them.

The inventor of Sword and sorcery was a dude named Fritz Leitner who wrote over 100 years ago but fantasy did exist earlier, the oddysé comes to mind, the first fantasy was probably the Gilgamesh epós which is the oldest littrature we have left.

The guys that formed modern fantasy was Howard and Tolkien (together with Leitner) but even them stole a lot, Conan might have existed (probably not but you never know with old legends, sometimes there is some truth in them), Howard took him from "the book of Conquest", really old irish stuff where a dude named Conan is suppose to have slayed the Fomori king balor of the evil eye.

LOTR are based on norse mythology with some welsh stuff in it too. Orcs however was his own invention.

Everyone who makes fantasy steal stuff from others just like in pop music. What I have problems with WAR is that they stole the F&D level system instead of using GWs brilliant own system which truly (together with Warpstone) was the invention of GW and made WHFRPG so great. Now most regular and computer games are back to the first D&D system again which really sucks, we seen much better.

Is WoW derivative?

Yes.

Very much so.

The thing is, they took a look at what was out there, took what they thought the best currently in play was, and combined those elements together along with Blizzard's dedication to good gaming, and you've got WoW.

The results seem to have had some success, which is the envy of others, and the bane of some MMO fans.

I believe everyone knows by now that the Warhammer IP was around first and Blizzard modeled their game after Wahammer.  When people say Warhammer took ideas from Blizzard is in terms of their MMO which came out a number of years before Warhammer Online did.  Basically they are talking about game mechanics and overall feel to the game.  Of course Warhammer has implemented some new ideas like Public quests and has a lot more open PvP, but it took the overall feel of gameplay from WoW.

Originally posted by Flyte27

When people say Warhammer took ideas from Blizzard is in terms of their MMO which came out a number of years before Warhammer Online did.  Basically they are talking about game mechanics and overall feel to the game.

Unfortunately, while there are certainly threads about WAR and WoW game-play, that isn't what those "WAR looks like WoW" posts people hate so much were saying. People actually said WAR was copying WoW's graphical style, which naturally ticked off everyone who knows this has been the Warhammer style for a very long time. And now people just can't let it drop. ;-)

But that's all water under the bridge by now, in my opinion. Those who still believe WAR "stole" the graphical style from WoW ought to do some research, and those who get pissed at the ones who don't know better ought to just let it go, take a walk to get some fresh air, and enjoy WAR (or WoW).