D&D 4E My compiled list of 4E's WoWisms

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

4th edition will be just like WoW because they are gimping druids!

(Blizzard, make ferals viable in the arena and fix the damn feral range bug already!)

You mean the arena where druids are seen as vital to any successful team? That arena with those gimped druids?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, what else would you call it? It appears in WoW, it is an 'ism' of WoW, for lack of a better suffix.

Again, no, that's not how it works in English.

Investigating a new crime each week isn't a Law & Order-ism, it's a cop show-ism. A Law & Order-ism would be splitting the narrative between the investigating and the prosecution.

If you want to have a substantive and satisfying discussion with other people, you can't start using common terminology in a unique way and insist that everyone else is wrong when they object to it.

The stuff you're listing are MMO-isms or CRPG-isms. And the one arguable WoW-ism (demonic player races) is factually untrue.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Talent Trees: These easily can be traced back to Diablo 2. There could easily be something earlier than that but I don't know what it would be off the top of my head.

Blizzard said they were inspired by tech trees in RTS games.

 

[Corinth]

You mean the arena where druids are seen as vital to any successful team? That arena with those gimped druids?

Resto druids are vital, and only in 2v2 or 3v3. They're optional, though welcome, in 5v5; other specs need not apply- and that means both Balance and Feral.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Warcraft is clearly based off of Warhammer. Frankly, I am surprised Games Workshop never fully realized a case of plagarism against the creators of Warcraft.

Green orcs and the presence of dwarves do not a clear case of plagiarism make. Thematically, Warhammer and Warcraft are wildly different, as well as what the world looks like. Azeroth is not a crumbling corrupt super-state; it's much closer to traditional D&D worlds with disparate allied civilized kingdoms and various non-human states and "savage" races.

 

[Zarithar]

Warcraft is clearly based off of Warhammer. Frankly, I am surprised Games Workshop never fully realized a case of plagarism against the creators of Warcraft.

Of course they realize it. Blizzard does as well... and it's more of an "homage" than a "rip off". In WC3 for example, the dwarven griffon rider says as one of his phrases "I bought my Warhammer for 40k" or words to that effect.

 

[Corinth]

Of course they realize it. Blizzard does as well... and it's more of an "homage" than a "rip off". In WC3 for example, the dwarven griffon rider says as one of his phrases "I bought my Warhammer for 40k" or words to that effect.

That's what's bound to occur when a failed attempt at getting a Warhammer license turns into the spark that became one of the biggest gaming franchises in the history of the world.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Warhammer comes out of the British fantasy gaming scene, which was for the most part D&D and RuneQuest for a good long while. White Dwarf used to be a general gaming magazine, and many of the "chaos spikey bits" present in Warhammer were once part of Citadel Miniatures, D&D adventures written by TSR UK, etc. It's entirely believable that Metzen's own D&D game shares many things in common with Warhammer, given the gaming culture at the time.

White Dwarf was such a cool magazine when it was a general interest one. Their D&D adventures were such a divergent vision of D&D, with characters poor, faced with brutal conditions and likely to die at any moment. Hmmm, come to think of it, most of the adventures in Imagine (Dragon's British counterpart) had a lot of the same flavor. Must be a British fantasy trope.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Likewise it's clear that 'kaboom gnomes' have become a WoW-ism even though tinker gnomes predate WoW.

With who? D&D players know them from Dragonlance, and MMO players know them from EQ1.

 

[Xyl]

Saying that D&D shouldn't borrow ideas from World of Warcraft is the same as saying that D&D shouldn't incorporate any new ideas in game design. Every game borrows mechanics previous games, often in a chain stretching back all the way to OD&D, but they are refined and improved with every borrowing. Taking the best ideas from previous games, and adding fun new ones, has made MMOs wildly successful. So when the D&D game designers go looking for new and fun mechanical elements, almost all of the good ones have already been used in MMOs! Should they pass up on making the game more fun and streamlined just because someone might say it's too like WoW?