Clone or Stepping Stone?
style="font-style: italic;">By Cody "Micajah" Bye
“If I
have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of
giants.” – Sir Isaac Newton
Throughout the course of history, men and women have worked
from the advancements of their forebears, using the concepts,
motivations, and accomplishments that the past generations developed to
bring about a more advanced civilization in which they could live.
Whether it was math or cooking, architecture or the written word; our
culture and lifestyles have been influenced the people that existed
before us. Today, we still strive to improve upon what we were given
previously – even Internet gaming hubs like Ten Ton Hammer
work from examples we’ve seen in other successful and failed
online community attempts.
Many online games were compared to EQLive before WoW
rose to the height of its popularity.
Yet in the gaming communities there is a very prevalent
undercurrent seeping into our collective mindsets; one that argues
against the use of previous knowledge to our advantage and tries to
persuade us to rid ourselves of it all-together. The term is referred
to as “cloning” – or being an
“X clone” where X is the most popular game at the
time – and it crops up almost everywhere you gaze in the MMOG
marketplace. It’s a term fraught with problems and generally
is used only when a gamer does not want to take the time to compare or
contrast a game to another. They take a look at the game and believe it
to be so like another game that they give it the
“clone” title.
Being dubbed an MMOG “clone” originally
occurred when the popularity of Everquest was at its pinnacle. There
was a core group of die hard MMORPG fans that loved Everquest, and they
were quick to compare anything that was released with their favorite
game. At first, being dubbed a “clone” simply
occurred because Everquest fans saw several games on the horizon
– namely Dark Age of Camelot and Anarchy Online –
that were each implementing some of the basic gameplay elements of
Everquest (timer-based combat, dungeons, character classes,
fantasy-based setting, etc.). It was a term used to gauge the
competition and judge whether they brought anything new to the table.
People didn’t want to play a copycat – or
“cloned” – game.
alt="FFXI character" title="FFXI character"
name="photo_j" border="0" height="112" width="150">
The World of Warcraft also borrowed features from FFXI,
including the Auction House.
However, as gamers fell out of favor with Everquest, growing
tired of the endless grind of mobs and hectic tempo of raids, the
“clone” term eventually began to metamorphose into
a derogatory term. “Oh, that’s just an EQ clone.
I’ve played EQ, and I don’t need to play another EQ
clone,” players would say as they tried out other MMORPGs.
Clones began to be known as games that simply copied the look, feel,
and gameplay of other games, thus making them a clone.
When World of Warcraft initially hit the market, it was
christened an Everquest clone. Prestigious game sites like Gamespy were
quick to compare
elements of WoW to EQ, the
href="http://vnboards.ign.com/mmorpg_player_reviews/b22600/79664609/p5/">Vault
Network readers ranted about WoW being similar to EQ, and
href="http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/23/051220&from=rss">Slashdot
users had similar responses. While some
href="http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraft/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;review">users
looked past the “clone” label,
href="http://www.anyuzer.com/archives/192.php">still
href="http://forums.ubccvc.com/index.php?showtopic=928&mode=linear">others
href="http://afkgamer.com/archives/2007/04/23/a-long-expected-party/#more-1448">talked
about
href="http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraft/player_review.html?id=154460&tag=readerreviews;continue;16">it.
It was a common response to a new game.
In fact, WoW really could have been named a
“clone-of-everything”. World of Warcraft, at its
very core, is a collection of gameplay elements from the titles that
came before it. It pulled instancing from Anarchy Online, battleground
combat from Dark Age of Camelot, the auction house from FFXI, and a
whole slew of features from Everquest. Really, the only thing WoW made
innovative was how well the entire assortment was put together. Pile on
top of that the most player friendly introductory experience, and WoW
climbed quickly to the top of the MMOG mountain.
