Abalieno, at his Cesspit, points out a leaked PC Gamer article about the forthcoming revised Warhammer Online MMO currently under development by Mythic. He also hosts a scan of one of the pages of the article, with lots of pictures showing in-game screenshots. Yet again, the Cesspit comes through with the news.
He also points out that it looks awfully like World of Warcraft. To be honest, he goes rather over the top on this one, and goes point-by-point through the review, showing how each aspect of gameplay, from look to PvP, is supposedly derivative of its World of Warcraft equivalent. I have to say that I disagree with him on almost every point he makes here, but the whole "Second Life already does that!" argument is only behind "we discussed that on MUDdev in 1996" in terms of cliche. There is, as the Guid Buik says, nothing new under the sun. Although padding out the battlefields with bots sounds a very useful addition.
But he is right that you could have shown me the screenshots, told me they were from the WoW Burning Crusade expansion, and I would have fallen for it: massively oversized weapons, spiky armour, virtually identical palletes for character models and landscapes. Closer attention shows waist-high grass and better mountains, but the point, basically, stands.
Hasn't he played Warhammer? I am a geek, as I have often proudly stated, and have my original, first edition boxed set. I am playing the current version on Mondays. Where does he think that WoW got the look? I always thought that everyone took it for granted that WoW was basically a Warhammer tribute world, from the steampunk war engines, through character designs to the goblin engineers.
He has obviously had this pointed out a few times in the time since, as he has posted saying "what does it matter who was first? There's no need for more." he seems to suggest it should be dark and gritty.
Well, I admit that dark and gritty would be fun. But that was the way the first attempt on a Warhammer Online MMO was going, and it folded, big time. no doubt the cost of those hyper-realistic graphical models didn't help. Maybe not a good idea to follow it in all aspects. And anyway, you don't discard a graphical design, look and feel after 20 years, with hundreds of sourcebooks and models and thousands of figures put out, just because someone else ripped you off a bit. You stick to what you are good at, you press home the advantage of your well-known brand.
More unforgivable is his suggestion that the class system is cribbed from Everquest 2, via Imperator. Warhammer has always, since it moved from Warhammer Fantasy Battles to Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing, had the character system that you get a starting profession, you learn all it has to offer, skill by skill, then you choose another class from that profession's possible "exits". That's Warhammer. It predates Imperator by, oooh, decades.
It's a pity I hate Mythic's games.