Did Blizz plagiarize Funcom? "Just a bit"

[Mihalik]

So, there is this old MMO out there called Anarchy Online. It was one of the first large third person 3D MMOs, first launched in 2001.

The game is still running, it has a small, but loyal player base.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_Online

Anarchy Online's 2nd and largest expansion launched in 2003. It introduced several large new zones and tons of content.

It's title....Shadowlands.

The Shadowlands was a parallel dimension connected to our own, its different areas were thematically inspired in different areas of the "afterlife", the zones ranging from the paradise like Nascence, moving onto Elysium, Scheol, Adonis, Penumbra, Inferno and finally onto Pandemonium.





The Shadowlands are populated by various factions that you end up aligning yourself with, these include the angelic Redeemed, the demonic Unredeemed and the neutral Guardians all whom oppose the forces of The Beast, an incarnation of entropy itself which is slowly consuming the Shadowlands and gradually reaching into our reality (the game is set in a scifi future on a different planet).

As someone who played Anarchy Online, everything I see from Blizz on their Shadowlands feels...oddly familiar.

I'm not saying it's an outright copycat, but I really do think they might have taken..."inspiration" in Anarchy Online's Shadowlands.

[Yoshimiko]

Shadowlands isn't a unique concept. It's a fairly old concept for a plane of death.

Not saying they didn't rip this from Anarchy; they tend to have a habit of taking..."inspiration" from other successful models.

[Mirishka]

Eh, nothing is original anymore. Plenty of people have lifted ideas from Blizzard and Blizzard has lifted ideas from plenty of people. Hell they usually outright admit it, e.g. "We wanted to make a game like Everquest, but with the Blizzard polish, hence World of Warcraft."

[Justpassing]

Well the entire Warcraft franchise was pretty much a Warhammer lift-off. Two wrongs don't make a right but, ya know.

[Rendark]

Warcraft stole from Warhammer and Warhammer stole from Tolkien. If it's good people will take it and make it their own.

[oland138]

Eh, nothing is original anymore. Plenty of people have lifted ideas from Blizzard and Blizzard has lifted ideas from plenty of people. Hell they usually outright admit it, e.g. "We wanted to make a game like Everquest, but with the Blizzard polish, hence World of Warcraft."

Blizzard has always been like this. They're the David Bowie of gaming.

[Lochton]

So, there is this old MMO out there called Anarchy Online. It was one of the first large third person 3D MMOs, first launched in 2001.

The game is still running, it has a small, but loyal player base.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_Online

Anarchy Online's 2nd and largest expansion launched in 2003. It introduced several large new zones and tons of content.

It's title....Shadowlands.

The Shadowlands was a parallel dimension connected to our own, its different areas were thematically inspired in different areas of the "afterlife", the zones ranging from the paradise like Nascence, moving onto Elysium, Scheol, Adonis, Penumbra, Inferno and finally onto Pandemonium.





The Shadowlands are populated by various factions that you end up aligning yourself with, these include the angelic Redeemed, the demonic Unredeemed and the neutral Guardians all whom oppose the forces of The Beast, an incarnation of entropy itself which is slowly consuming the Shadowlands and gradually reaching into our reality (the game is set in a scifi future on a different planet).

As someone who played Anarchy Online, everything I see from Blizz on their Shadowlands feels...oddly familiar.

I'm not saying it's an outright copycat, but I really do think they might have taken..."inspiration" in Anarchy Online's Shadowlands.

Question would then be, did Anarchy Online plagiarize XYZ book/movie/paper about other worlds.

The theory of having multiple subworlds is not new.

[ercarp]

The concept is vaguely similar, but none of the zones looked even remotely alike.

[JohnyCge]

Actually, there's alot more common in shadowlands with other mmo's in market.

My biggest fear as for right now is that Torghast is just Lineage Tower of Insolence( in it's worst la2 revolution revision(Since la2 revo is ultra succesful with ppl spending 10k+ to be "viable"). Same goal - " make your way thru tower, earning stuff". The other thing that they might pull from la2 is lore. I really hope that Elune is not Einhasad, and the jailor thing is not Shilen( Elune/Einhasad daughter/son).

Another thing, is that as far as you know blizz aquired "most" of Allods online art team somewhere around pandaria, but i mean, current art style is way too similar to allods. Just take a look youtube. com/watch?v=GbolWFvYc2Y.(Cant post videos yet,sorry). Well, allods were just russian rip-off of wow, but it looks way close too close to shadowlands art direction. You can google other images to check more. Funny thing is how that allods expansion looks similar to shadowlands bastion, and the whole narrative in trailer does too.

I mean, look how similar design is (Few shadowlands pics there for reference)
https://imgur.com/a/IRBXKrb

[Justpassing]

Wouldn't have thought of Warhammer first. I mean..dwarves? Elves? Orcs? Thinking of Tolkien and he was heavily inspired by mythology.

Funny it never works the other way round...you know when games like Torchlight or Titan quest imitated Diablo? Also..is every platform game a plagiat of Super Mario Bros? Every FPS stole from Doom? Every tragic love story plagiarized Shakespeare?

Also, let's not forget - when it comes to features that people like (housing for example) some people outright condemn how Blizzard did it with their own spin (Garrisons and Order Halls) and demand it to be "like in other games" (Wildstar)

Blizzard wanted to make a Warhammer game, got rejected and they made Warcraft instead. I'm fuzzy on the specific events but that's the gist.

[Oakshana]

Warcraft stole from Warhammer and Warhammer stole from Tolkien. If it's good people will take it and make it their own.

Every MMO has pulled from existing story settings. I suppose you could say that the concept of Dwarves and Orcs are somewhat pulled from Warhammer, but that's more or less a line in the sand as far as that comparison goes. That's sort of always been the Warcraft universes thing. I mean, the Pantheon and all of the Warcraft "creation" lore is just a massive hodge-podge of various mythologies.

[CrawlFromThePit]

So, there is this old MMO out there called Anarchy Online. It was one of the first large third person 3D MMOs, first launched in 2001.

The game is still running, it has a small, but loyal player base.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_Online

Anarchy Online's 2nd and largest expansion launched in 2003. It introduced several large new zones and tons of content.

It's title....Shadowlands.

The Shadowlands was a parallel dimension connected to our own, its different areas were thematically inspired in different areas of the "afterlife", the zones ranging from the paradise like Nascence, moving onto Elysium, Scheol, Adonis, Penumbra, Inferno and finally onto Pandemonium.





The Shadowlands are populated by various factions that you end up aligning yourself with, these include the angelic Redeemed, the demonic Unredeemed and the neutral Guardians all whom oppose the forces of The Beast, an incarnation of entropy itself which is slowly consuming the Shadowlands and gradually reaching into our reality (the game is set in a scifi future on a different planet).

As someone who played Anarchy Online, everything I see from Blizz on their Shadowlands feels...oddly familiar.

I'm not saying it's an outright copycat, but I really do think they might have taken..."inspiration" in Anarchy Online's Shadowlands.

WoW itself is inspired by Warhammer. Many other aspects of the game and its universe come from various things that already exist, from real life to mythology or other games. I bet if you look deeper into it Anarchy Online took some ideas from somewhere else, I mean they have a zone called Pandemonium like you said, it's not exactly original content either. That's just how things go.

[Justpassing]

Ah okay..well..that would be interesting to read the story behind it. I only know the angle from an old Rob Pardo interview where he as an old EQ player wanted to make that experience of an MMO available to a bigger audience - by making it more accessible (for example through instanced content)

Naw, it's not WoW they lifted, it's the Warcraft franchise with WC1 and such. Then it went on and on.

[Justpassing]

Ah..ok..so far back then...

Yeah. The whole Blizzard "thing" is taking features from other games and polish & refine them. I'm not saying like that's a bad thing - beacuse they do it good - but that's pretty much it.

[Nnyco]

A realm of death, ye no one ever came up with that theme except anarchy online.

[Mihalik]

WoW itself is inspired by Warhammer. Many other aspects of the game and its universe come from various things that already exist, from real life to mythology or other games. I bet if you look deeper into it Anarchy Online took some ideas from somewhere else, I mean they have a zone called Pandemonium like you said, it's not exactly original content either. That's just how things go.

Anarchy Online was quite innovative in many ways. The lore behind it is pretty expansive and very unique.

Essentially it was designed from the get go to have a specific story arc.

Upon release it came with a free novel called Prophet Without Honor that laid the groundwork for the coming story of the game.

It involved "ancient aliens", the rise of massive corporations, the end of the world and humanity rising again etc.

It's blends elements of cyberpunk and ideas drawn somewhat from Dune perhaps.

At least just in the sense of dealing with predestination and having a magical maguffin thing everyone is fighting over, in this case a superconducting material called Notum that allows nanotechnology to function outside bodies or machines allowing things shields and "magic".

It was quite a remarkable game massively ahead of its time in storytelling, world building etc.

While it was quite successful for an MMO at its time (a funny story at the time was that basically everyone at MIT was playing it, using up all the bandwidth of the university) it was technically massively ahead of its time, very few people had the bandwidth and the PCs capable of running it back in 2001-2004 when the game was most popular.

The game also had massive bugs the first year or so.

So it never really became as known as WoW, despite being so innovative.

Funcom never really managed to make anything similar since, they tried with The Secret World, but it's not quite there.

[gcsmith]

Wouldn't have thought of Warhammer first. I mean..dwarves? Elves? Orcs? Thinking of Tolkien and he was heavily inspired by mythology.

Funny it never works the other way round...you know when games like Torchlight or Titan quest imitated Diablo? Also..is every platform game a plagiat of Super Mario Bros? Every FPS stole from Doom? Every tragic love story plagiarized Shakespeare?

Also, let's not forget - when it comes to features that people like (housing for example) some people outright condemn how Blizzard did it with their own spin (Garrisons and Order Halls) and demand it to be "like in other games" (Wildstar)

Warcraft or was it starcraft? started as a warhammer rts, that GW pulled the licence on mid development so they changed it to warcraft, is what i heard.