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Nerfbat says Please Don’t Clone WoW

December 11th, 2006 (Visited 3269 times) Tags:

Except that, as I read it, he’s actually saying “when you clone WoW, please fix these interface annoyances.” And no offense, Ryan, but that’s not a very deep change (as important as interface is — and it’s incredibly important — basing clone-ness on how autoloot works seems a little bit superficial to me).

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19 Responses to “Nerfbat says Please Don’t Clone WoW”

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Broken Toys :: This Is Monday And This Is Your Hit and Run wrote on December 11th, 2006 at 12:37 pm:

[...] With Enough Generations Of Cloning The DNA Breaks Down: Nerfbat says “Stop cloning World of Warcraft“, then defines not cloning World of Warcraft as “cloning World of Warcraft, minus a few annoyances in the interface”. HRose and Raph both call him on it within minutes of each other. Transcontinental blogosphere GO! [...]

Please Clone WoW. at What Would Matt Do wrote on May 29th, 2007 at 6:54 am:

[...] probably shouldn't get involved in this discussion, as others, some of them better informed than I, have already weighed in… but since when has that stopped [...]

Reader Comments

Scott Jennings said on December 11th, 2006 at 12:26 pm:
HRose agrees with you:

http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1562

I think it’s a good commentary on how we’re locked on World of Warcraft as The One True MUD.
Mnemon said on December 11th, 2006 at 12:48 pm:
… especially when Blizzard added an auto-loot option with the last patch. All you need to do is turn it on in the options and right click to grab everything on the corpse (it even auto grabs everything you harvest, mine or skin).

For the most part this was a pretty weak sauce article. I think he had a good overall point, he just didn’t do a good job of backing it up. If Blizzard thought they were smarter than us, would they be letting folks create mods in the first place? Most MMOs i’ve played would have called all the mods available for download “Terms of Service violations.”
David (Tal) said on December 11th, 2006 at 12:53 pm:
I’m sort of hopeful to see where Brad & Co. go with Vanguard, because from my very limited point of view, it seems to be basically a combination of features from EverQuest and SWG. If it works, and if they can overcome the “hardcore” stigma, I think it will go a long way towards pointing out that a game doesn’t have to be WoW to compete well with WoW.

A lot of the players I tend to play with see WoW as the bunny slope of MMORPGs. Sure, it’s accessible and fun. But the general consensus seems to be that it’s gameplay is not really very challenging, doesn’t have a whole lot of depth, and really lacks motivators to encourage community growth and keep you logging into the virtual world unless you are just really into the whole phat lewt thing.

If I were creating an MMORPG right now, the last thing I would want to do would be to clone WoW – in fact, I probably wouldn’t make a fantasy MMO at all, but would go with sci-fi or some other genre. The reason being, that getting players to switch from one fantasy game to another when they’re having fun in the first one seems like it would be mega-difficult to accomplish. Getting them to try something new and different is easier.
Ryan Shwayder said on December 11th, 2006 at 1:23 pm:
Note that the point of this article isn’t actually saying not to clone WoW, it’s to point out that World of Warcraft, even in all its splendor, is far from perfect. In addition to it being imperfect, please don’t just make a WoW clone. The title was intentionally misleading.
grant said on December 11th, 2006 at 1:36 pm:
What’s so hard about shift+right-click?
Ryan Shwayder said on December 11th, 2006 at 1:41 pm:
To my knowledge, Shift+Right Click is a new feature. At the very least, it was a hidden feature prior to the latest patch, which I hadn’t played with until I wrote that rant (which was during my 25 minute queue time).

I explained why I feel it’s inferior to “Loot All” type buttons in a comment on my own post
Gunman21 said on December 11th, 2006 at 4:15 pm:
More and more people are realizing the let-down from wow.

Number 1 issue: Lack of purpose.

You grind and grind through dungeons to get your gear to grind through more dungeons. There’s very little payoff, no way to make any type of mark on the world, and nothing but bragging rights for aquiring that new equipment.

1-60 was a fun experience. But that’s all wow has to offer.
Informis said on December 11th, 2006 at 4:29 pm:
I played WoW from January 2006 to October 2006. The Shift-Right-Click mechanic was there from the beginning. I definitely agree, though, that seeing what you’re looting before you loot-all would be an excellent feature.
Solok said on December 11th, 2006 at 6:22 pm:
Wow (pun intended), poor article. It seems like the author was just trying to jump on the anti-WoW bandwagon. Wow has flaws just like everything else, but the author should have done some research to discover them, not just provide window dressing.
Xeddicus said on December 12th, 2006 at 9:09 am:
The author didn’t/doesn’t play the game enough to know about it simple things like shift+right click looting…come on… Plenty of things to call WoW on, this is not one of them.
Kressilac said on December 12th, 2006 at 11:59 am:
I readily admit I underestimated WoW’s coming success when they announced the project along side EQ2 and SWG. I mean Blizzard had never done anything in the MMO space before and the Diablo online experience was wrought with bugs, dups and hacks of all kinds. What I didn’t get wrong is that I expected WoW to bring in additional MMO gamers that were not in the established market. We’re now seeing that same market yearn for more in an MMO. It’s a natural progression towards becoming a jaded online game player.

The problem I have with this pattern that is now emerging in WoW is that the progression from fascination with MMOs to becoming jaded doesn’t have to point towards being jaded. What these WoW refugees really want is more meaning to their online existence like Gunman21 suggests. Problem is that these things cost so damn much to make that no one can stop staring at the cash cow that is EQ and now WoW with a yearning to clone that revenue model.

Vanguard isn’t going to solve any problems. It’s EQ + SWG and is about to go through a huge content cut because the suits want it out the door 1Q2007. Even after you boil VG down, its still a level based treadmill in a static world where you kill monsters and repeat quests. It years from becoming a primarily player run world with cities, merchants, armies and navies like it wants to be.

LotRO isn’t going to solve anything either, aside from bringing more newbies to the genre who will eventually find their way down the Jaded Path(tm). The IP license won’t allow a player to ever have any reasonable impact on the world. It will suffer the same fate as SWG in that eventually you’ll realize you’re still living in someone else’s world.

Its no wonder churn rates are accelerating and the lifespan of an account is shrinking in size. Players all over the world are telling us what they want and not a single game company with the financial resources to do something about it is listening.
dan said on December 12th, 2006 at 12:00 pm:
wow sucks.
Mnemon said on December 12th, 2006 at 12:06 pm:
I started playing WoW for the second time in January. Shift-Right Clicking was a feature at that point. The new feature is auto-loot.

On its basis I think the argument is a good one. I just think you picked some poor points to argue. IMO anybody who cares enough to read the article is going to be disappointed.
Tomas said on December 13th, 2006 at 4:21 am:
Yes. Shift-Right click has existed forever.

Blizz should have put it in the tool-tips or something. So many people don’t know about that feature, and considering the tongue-in-cheek gameplay WoW delivers (get quest-kill-loot-kill-loot-kill-loot-ding-buy spells-kill-loot etc…) that feature might be the most important one!

I wish someone would have the balls to create a real player-driven world where players have REAL impact on it.

Is it too impossible?
David (Tal) said on December 13th, 2006 at 10:21 am:
Vanguard isn’t going to solve any problems. It’s EQ + SWG and is about to go through a huge content cut because the suits want it out the door 1Q2007. Even after you boil VG down, its still a level based treadmill in a static world where you kill monsters and repeat quests. It years from becoming a primarily player run world with cities, merchants, armies and navies like it wants to be.

Yeah, there’s the rub. I’m part of communities in both EQ2 and SWG, and while there’s a little interest in Vanguard, enough that some of us will check it out and report back to the others, the game’s really going to have to be a “player run world with cities, merchants, armies, and navies” to get people to move in any numbers. It has a better chance at pulling people disaffected players from other games, but there won’t be any real permanence to their subscriptions unless the community-building features are all in the game at launch or very quickly after launch.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say the only reason SWG still survives at all is because of the community and player-ownership features that went into the original design (or were patched in very quickly after launch). At least, everyone I talk to who still plays cites that as the primary reason for staying after the NGE (or taking a break and coming back after a few months). Kudos to Raph and the rest of the original team for that.

Vanguard’s design is headed in the right direction I think, but it remains to be seen if it will fulfill its potential.
Kressilac said on December 18th, 2006 at 9:45 am:
I wish someone would have the balls to create a real player-driven world where players have REAL impact on it.

Is it too impossible?

Technically it is very possible.
Leagally it is possible but there’s some grey areas where it becomes more risky, especially with the IRS and politicians now “aware” of virtual property.
Financially it is not possible because of things like the legal risk and the perception of success being the “EQ/WoW Way(tm)”.

It’s very difficult to convince someone to take on additional legal risk when there is an at least twice proven business model staring them in the face. Why deviate? Financial people have no interest in innovation unless it can be shown to make them lots more money which additional legal risk has a hard time accomplishing.

Derek Licciardi
ps If there’s big letters in this post, I apologize. I could not get the preview during posting to remove them.
Mnemon said on December 20th, 2006 at 9:33 am:
Here’s my version of what this article should have looked like …

http://www.relicsofcorbantis.com/community/index.php?showtopic=3636

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