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

[mach1.9pants]

umm from what little I have seen of MMOs on youtube and from friends:
In DnD and WoW you can have your character strip down to their underwear and dance (if that is your thing)

 

[RigaMortus2]

And if you think calling a role "healer" started with WOW, you're mistaken. People have been describing a particular role in their party as the party healer for a very long time.

Hmmm. Not sure how you got this. I never once stated the term healer STARTED with WoW, just that it is used by the WoW players to describe someone that heals.

 

[RigaMortus2]

Indeed, we've been calling them the BBG for a long, long time before WOW.

If we are to pick a comparable video game term, then BBEG would not be equivalent to "elite". It would be more equivalent to "end boss". IMX I suppose.

 

[Cam Banks]

Tinker gnome as an identity is highly problematic because of the setting presumptions and the system requirements. If you make that their identity, then the players are going to want the gadgets if they play the race. I don't think they were willing to spare the space for a gadget system, so tinkerers were right out.

Having dealt with Dragonlance gnomes extensively in Races of Ansalon, including a system for creating and using gadgets, I have to say that "gnomes with crazy gadgets" is barely scratching the surface when it comes to exploring the obsessive little engineer archetype. The first gnome in Dragonlance was a fighter, for instance.

I just find the "it's used in WoW so it's covered" argument somewhat odd when you look at everything else in the Wizards Presents preview books.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[ChaosShard]

I'll have to leave that to someone more knowledgeable. You can count the number of hours I have played MMOs on one hand. One finger, even.

I haven't played a game where a healer critting against an enemy would innately heal the party, but a few games (WoW and CoH are the only ones I have experience with in this example) allow healers to crit-heal and ally under the same rules as crit-damage to foes, althought that doesn't seem to be the case here.

There are a few things that you can point to in the small amounts of 4e crunch (and even a bit of fluff) we've gotten and say "WotC got this from <X>!", but often, they're just as easily refuted. For example: In Rich Baker's last "Countdown" article, he mentioned the "Changelands" (SP?) where chunks of earth float through the sky with forests on them, and mountains have crystalline spines jutting out of them. These are both major geographical features in two WoW:TBC zones, Nagrand and Blade's Edge Mountains , respectively.

Now, it looks at first like a blatant rip-off, but my (uneducated) guess is that WoW first got this imagry from surreal sci-fi influences going back as far as the 70's. For some reasons Asimov's Lightyears comes to mind, but I was... less than sober when I saw that film.

I guess what I wasted all this time trying to say is that people can, and will see patterns that aren't there. The wisest course of action is to look at these similarities through a neutral (unaligned?) lens and seriously consider it's origin, as opposed to it's last owner.

 

[RigaMortus2]

Oh no, man. Your initial post read to me like, "I am the final arbitrator of what is and isn't a WoW-ism in 4E, and I will not lower myself to argue over it," instead of, "I'm not going to put anything silly on the list." That apparently wasn't your meaning, so my bad

As for the powers thing, I got the impression you were using WoW-ism as a convenient euphemism for "anything derived from CRPGs and MMOs in particular." Again, I apparently misread, so my bad.

Np... I couldn't think of an eliquent way to put it. I didn't want to use "nothing silly will be added" because it's too vague to describe (What does he mean by silly?). So I just wanted to make the point that, if there were any points I missed (and I know there are) and someone posts them, I'll add them. There are specific ones I am looking for, but I won't know then until I see them

But yeah, like every week there was something knew posted about 4E that I felt was taken from WoW (or MMOs, etc.)

 

[Ashimaar Extorris]

It's so weird to realize that, as far as most people go, WoW is the first MMORPG.

What about the original Neverwinter Nights on AOL, the first MMORPG, arguably, which was also D&D 1st edition?

 

[RigaMortus2]

We only deny it because we're sick to death of these discussions. Continuing to have these discussions will not cause us to capitulate.

Fortunately, that wasn't my intention.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No love for Lord British's Ultima Online, eh?

Not on these boards. At ENWorld, "MMORPG" means "WoW." Most of the "WoWisms," of course, are CRPGisms, or just game-isms, but it's not as fun to complain that D&D is too much like a game.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you don't play WoW, then you wouldn't get it. The Draenei in WoW are a new playable race of "demons"

No, they're not. I don't know how one could actually play WoW and come away with that. Some draenei got brought into a demonic army, but the draenei race are mortals and aren't demonic at all.

It's one thing for someone who doesn't play WoW to say "draenei are demons," but to sniff that people who don't play don't get it, and then get it 100 percent backwards, is pretty amazing.