D&D 4E 4E is like WoW (NOT!)

[Wormwood]

It's not like WoW until you can buy gold pieces from Chinese players.

Send me $20 and I'll write anything you want on your character sheet.

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

Monsters heard you fighting from the next room and came to help their friends? That's less like WoW than you can imagine. If you, and what you're fighting, stay out of another creature's aggro radius, it'll ignore you. It'll ignore your battle. It'll even ignore it's buddies getting cut to ribbons within its LOS, and walk over their corpses without a care in the world. I have never played a PnP RPG where that was the case.

/45+ days played on my Dwarf Warrior alone, working on a hunter with the mrs. and her priest

Exactly. Hearing the sounds of combat and coming to help is copied from, er, reality. WoW takes almost the opposite approach -- if you kill somebody's buddy within sight, unless they're within x number of yards, they ignore you totally. In another room? You might as well be on another planet.

I enjoy WoW. I'm looking forward to 4th edition. However, if I felt that 4th edition was a clone of WoW, I wouldn't play it or have a preorder for it. I can already play as much WoW as I want without buying 3 books as well.

 

[Deep Blue 9000]

The marking system is nothing close to the aggro/taunt mechanic. I can't simply walk up next to the fighter in melee and have the monster ignore me even though I'm doing more damage.

Hell in MMORPGs, you can walk up to many monsters and they'll just sit there and not attack you, even worse, your party can start attacking the monster and it'll ignore you until you attack. Think you can do the same in D&D?

I think this is a legitimate "D&D is turning into WoW complaint." Which is to say, D&D is gaining some aspect of WoW that is disliked.

The Paladin's mark, for example, might as well be an unbreakable taunt. Attacking another party member simply isn't even an option when you take 8 damage for trying. However, they've changed it since the DDXP so it remains to be seen if it'll still be a problem in the release version.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Talent trees are older than WoW. Paragon paths are just new prestige classes.

Which, as I trace it, were borrowed and expanded from BECMI D&D.

 

[SmilingPiePlate]

This is NOTHING like WoW where the aggro is king. DMs have all the luxury in the world of just ignoring the mark and attack whatever they enjoy. I have utilized the idea of intelligent targeting in my games, whereby my monsters will use tactics loosely based on their intelligence. If the foe is a dumb-as-hell ogre he will wail on the first guy he sees expecting to demolish that target - He is too stupid to pick out the true threats. The Lich on the other hand, is crafty enough to know that the healer is the most important target and will make sure he focuses his attention where the true threat lies. In WoW, intelligence targeting doesn't work and isn't possible, and therefore D&D can present truly sinister threats that WoW just cannot.

One of the funniest things I've ever read related to WoW was "A day in the life of Victor Nefarius". The second to last entry was "Must... hit... warrior... so... shiny. Being stabbed to death, but... shiny."

 

[Xorn]

I think there's lots of similarities with WoW mechanics and 4E mechanics; thank GOD. If a person doesn't want to name thier powers, then call it fighter attack 1b, I don't give a . WoW recognized (in the MMO world) than turning on your auto-attack and watching the white damage was BORING. So an RPG looks and says, "Hey, they might be on to something, guys!" Who cares where it came from?

I'm glad that I don't have to beg a druid or wizard to teleport me to another continent or spend an hour traveling there on foot anymore, and I'm glad that my fighter won't get tired of playing because his contribution past 13th level is almost nil, and I'm really, really glad that my fighter doesn't "sit there and watch his white damage" the whole fight.

And marks are a kick-ass mechanic. Take a featherweight boxer, and a guy in a robe with a blackpowder pistol. The boxer is on top of you, and the guy with the pistol is loading it 5 feet past the boxer. Go stop the pistol guy from loading. You're going to be a little distracted. I know that's measuring fantasy realism with real realism (wow my English professor is turning in his grave), but the point stands--AoOs were not enough to keep things fighting the defenders.

To quote Tigole (lead raid designer for WoW)--paraphrased:
Yes, we could make the dragon just attack all the healers first--but that would be a really stupid, un-fun encounter.

So WoW avoids un-fun, and 4E avoids un-fun. This is a parallel I can live with. If Blizzard isn't complaigning, why should I?

 

[king_ghidorah]

The parallels that do exist have been drawn many times before.
Here's a quick recap:
• Class roles like Striker (DPS), Defender (Tank), Leader (Healer/Buffer), and Controller (CC).
• Named powers for all classes.
• Marking foes (hunter's mark, raid marking).
• Abilities that let the tanks hold aggro.
• Paragon Paths = talent builds.

The example you mention isn't a good parallel between D&D and WoW. Having monsters running in to join the fight and aid their compatriots is just what you would expect in a D&D game. What is WoW-like (and unrealistic) is for mobs to stand there not helping their buddies because they are out of aggro range, even if they are in line of sight. They just ignore you slaughtering their 3 friends, but will attack as soon as you get closer to them.

So yes, there are features that both games share, and some valid comparisons to be made, but "pulling aggro" isn't one of those. There are no threat-meters or spells to reduce your threat when you're DPS'ing too hard or get a string of lucky criticals. The bad guys are controlled by a person, not an AI, and the DM will try and have them attack whoever is logical for them to attack, rather than the person with the highest numeric threat.

I have played MMORPGs including WoW for a number of years, and I don't think D&D is in any danger of turning into WoW. Except for the big shoulder armor.

I'm not sure all of your examples are good ones either.

* Roles are about half refined versions of character classes and half the kinds of builds described (with similar names) in Champions supplements c. 1986 for kinds of superhero characters, with similar descriptions. That's the first thing I though of, in fact, when I saw the roles in City of Heroes, and the first thing I thought of when WotC mentioned them.
* The aggro mechanics in MMORPGs work very differently than those mentioned in 4e, so they make poor comparisons. It's clear by looking at them that the designers saw a problem with tactical play -- that the fighters and similar characters who have always been cast as being to protect the softer spellcasters had no such abilities -- considered aggro mechanics, and threw them out and re-engineered something that feels more like it belongs in a skirmish miniatures game. If the defender "aggro" mechanics feel like anything, they feel like a minis game, now WoW-style aggro.
* Paragon paths seem to equal 3e prestige classes/d20 Modern Advanced classes, perhaps with a touch of d20 Modern talent trees more than WoW talent trees. And those elements were in 3e before there was even a beta of WoW.

The truth is, there is some cross-influence between CRPGs/MMORPGs and rpgs -- a lot of back and forth influence between them. This is health and good. An argument that 4e just is ripping off WoW or that there is no influence requires a lot of ignoring previous history and contraindications of influences outside of WoW. 4e instead looks like the designers have played lots of games -- PnP, CRPG, minis, and more -- and stolen what they thought was cool and then implemented some of their own new ideas. Which seems to be the way most people work.

 

[Cactot]

Send me $20 and I'll write anything you want on your character sheet.

but are you chinese? and why arent you spamming it on all the public channels in broken english?

 

[Kishin]

The Paladin's mark, for example, might as well be an unbreakable taunt. Attacking another party member simply isn't even an option when you take 8 damage for trying. However, they've changed it since the DDXP so it remains to be seen if it'll still be a problem in the release version.

Wasn't it stated somewhere in a post here that it was intended to be 1d8 damage (I could be hallucinating). If so, then its more of a calculated risk potentially worth gambling on.

One of the funniest things I've ever read related to WoW was "A day in the life of Victor Nefarius". The second to last entry was "Must... hit... warrior... so... shiny. Being stabbed to death, but... shiny."

He never could take his own advice, apparently.

(For those who haven't played WoW, in another fight, Nefarius shouts to his henchman 'Fools! Kill the one in the dress!")

 

[MaelStorm]

I think it is coming full circle now.

We got WoW MMORPG who borrowed idea from D&D 3E-3.5.
And now we get D&D 4E who borrowed idea from WoW MMORPG.

The next wave will be MMORPG who borrowed from D&D 4E.