Rift's influence on WoW?

[probert]

Was having a long chat with friends in vent the other night, and we got to talking about how the tables have turned a bit in terms of WoW influencing Rift's design -- and now its vice versa.

This isn't a WoW is better than Rift or Rift is better than WoW thread -- this is more about how as an industry, games influence each other. MUDs influenced Ultima Online, which was superceded by Everquest, which was superceded by WoW in an iterative fashion. There's been lots of MMOs in the past few years, and I think as an industry things are maturing greatly. Its more about concurrent development rather than franchise replacement.

Rift inherited a ton of MMO fundamentals introduced by WoW over the years. This doesn't mean that Rift is a copy of WoW; it means that Rift incorporates innovations and mechanics and functionality that have been proven to work in other MMOs. But lately I'm seeing Rift returning the favour to WoW... tons of features and enhancements to WoW were seen first in Rift (or at least Rift popularized them).

Thought I'd start a list here, and if I've missed anything people can volunteer other ideas.

Inherited in WoW currently
- Items in bags are highlighted when newly deposited
- Bag search function
- Guild finder

Coming in WoW Mists of Pandaria
- Challenge mode dungeons
- Scenarios (aka Blizzards' version of instanced Rift invasions/world events)
- Area of Effect looting
- Account wide achievements
- New Valley of Power map is inspired by Black Garden Warfront (e.g. hold the shard to gain points, it delivers increasing damage to the carrier)

I am not so familiar with Rift end game 20 man raiding, but I understand that some boss encounters in Hammerknell have influenced some of the raid designs in Firelands and Dragon Soul. Not sure if anyone can expand upon this?

[Gruffertus]

The first two listed are just Rift and then WoW ripping off WoW mods

[Venziir]

Was having a long chat with friends in vent the other night, and we got to talking about how the tables have turned a bit in terms of WoW influencing Rift's design -- and now its vice versa.

This isn't a WoW is better than Rift or Rift is better than WoW thread -- this is more about how as an industry, games influence each other. MUDs influenced Ultima Online, which was superceded by Everquest, which was superceded by WoW in an iterative fashion. There's been lots of MMOs in the past few years, and I think as an industry things are maturing greatly. Its more about concurrent development rather than franchise replacement.

Rift inherited a ton of MMO fundamentals introduced by WoW over the years. This doesn't mean that Rift is a copy of WoW; it means that Rift incorporates innovations and mechanics and functionality that have been proven to work in other MMOs. But lately I'm seeing Rift returning the favour to WoW... tons of features and enhancements to WoW were seen first in Rift (or at least Rift popularized them).

Thought I'd start a list here, and if I've missed anything people can volunteer other ideas.

Inherited in WoW currently
- Items in bags are highlighted when newly deposited
- Bag search function
- Guild finder

Coming in WoW Mists of Pandaria
- Challenge mode dungeons
- Scenarios (aka Blizzards' version of instanced Rift invasions/world events)
- Area of Effect looting
- Account wide achievements
- New Valley of Power map is inspired by Black Garden Warfront (e.g. hold the shard to gain points, it delivers increasing damage to the carrier)

I am not so familiar with Rift end game 20 man raiding, but I understand that some boss encounters in Hammerknell have influenced some of the raid designs in Firelands and Dragon Soul. Not sure if anyone can expand upon this?

If anything the scenarios are based upon instanced group-quests from LotrO.

[Edge-]

WoW implemented the guild finder before Rift did FYI.

And if I'm not mistaken, there have been plenty of mods for WoW and other games that allowed you to search bags, and I think EQ2 even lets you search your bags through the base UI.

[Deleted]

Inherited in WoW currently
- Items in bags are highlighted when newly deposited Taken from mods
- Bag search function Take from mods
- Guild finder Tons of other games have done this, LotRO for instance

Coming in WoW Mists of Pandaria
- Challenge mode dungeons These are in many games, harder challenges with no real reward, more done for fame/ranking etc. GW1 had ranked dungeons for instance
- Scenarios (aka Blizzards' version of instanced Rift invasions/world events) I'd say these are just the nature evolution of current WoW instances.
- Area of Effect looting Probably originated in private servers having auto loot.
- Account wide achievements Nature evolution of normal achievements. Players have been asking or this for years, ever since achievements were added tbh.
- New Valley of Power map is inspired by Black Garden Warfront (e.g. hold the shard to gain points, it delivers increasing damage to the carrier) I'd bet it came from a FPS game originally

So yeah, I don't think so.

[Lathais]

Yes, games borrow ideas from each other. Happens all the time, in all genres. Nothing new here.

[Lethey Alexandros]

Actually the idea of scenarios comes from warhammer online that used them to much greater effect than rift. wow is useing them in the same design/story telling idea that Warhammer pioneered with them.

[Lathais]

Actually the idea of scenarios comes from warhammer online that used them to much greater effect than rift. wow is useing them in the same design/story telling idea that Warhammer pioneered with them.

Actually, the idea came from MUDs, however instead of being a scripted event, it was a mod controlled event were mods where actively controlling what happened....and before that it came from D&D where DMs would make things happen to make things more fun for their players....and before that it came from......so on and so forth.

[Fencers]

Not sure challenge modes have a 1:1 in Rift. The nearest is the leader board system which is not unique to Rift. I suppose the dungeon achievement system might due... but WoW and Warhammer had that years before Rift.

[Exoblade]

Wow isn't original at all. It takes the best idea's and refines them, its the main reason WoW is still the beast on top.

[darkhelmet]

Things I'd like to see:

* Rift uses teleporters rather than deathly slow taxis. It sure makes getting out-and-about more convenient. It would't hurt to put a porting NPC next to the capital city gryphons who can teleport you directly to a remote FP location for a fee. Hell, I'd pay 10x or maybe even 100x the regular taxi price to not have to sit on a taxi for 5-10 minutes. It'd be a nice gold sink too.

* Wardrobes are so much better than transmog. Instead of the gear taking up bank slots for transmog source items, the wardrobe manager holds them on your character sheet and you have checkboxes to show/unshow them.

[Azuri]

Mentoring has been great too. It's something I typically wouldn't use but I had some friends come to Rift to start new characters so I mentored down to level with them since I didn't want to make an alt and still got rewards equivalent to my max level character to continue planner attunement progression. Not sure if this is planned for wow or might be to much work based on the current wow engine. Dyes are also a nice fluff feature.

[Fencers]

Mentoring is okay but you still are a god compared to the level you mentor down to. Not too bad if you set it low enough. Found I have to sorta "game" the system. Like set my level to 20 for a Scarwood or Moonshade event.

I actually enjoy mentoring the dungeons quite a bit w/ friends. If Warcraft had that option when I resubbed I would have been quite happy to keep a WoW sub. Those Classic->TBC dungeons are among the best in the genre. But you were so massively over geared for them in WOW it totally broke the content. LFD as a low level looking for Hellfire Ramparts or BRD was a pain in the neck.

Admittedly, MOP intrigues me for several reasons. Mostly for pet battles but also the challenge modes.

[Azuri]

Mentoring is okay but you still are a god compared to the level you mentor down to.

No doubt about that. It just made it bearable for the likes of me who wouldn't of made a new character to level but yeah I did lvl at least a couple level lowers then the area we were questing in.


Pet battles have zero appeal to me side games are just that side games I understand some people will enjoy that, challenge modes on the other hand would appeal to me more. I loved the original ZG runs for bears and to think we sold those bear runs for 5k a piece at the time.

[Fencers]

I have a pet project to craft like a blue set of gear for level 30-40s and use that to mentor down. Think that might work out okay for mentoring dungeons and the lower zone events which I enjoy.


Point still stands- mentoring in Warcraft would be great considering the wealth of old content they have already. Not just old, but great content. Those early dungeons... damn.

[Ichy]

If anything the scenarios are based upon instanced group-quests from LotrO.

Deleted- Some one said what I did better way before- I jumped the gun. shoot me plz.

[KCguy]

Games take different stuff from each other and yes that includes WoW, but WoW has basically invented 90% of the stuff out there. haha. Hey, IDC as long as a game is fun.

[greysinsanderson]

this isn't gonna go well, certain people believe blizzard invented electricity and everything that uses it. i read back in 2011 that there were 226 mods that we created (users) that have been implemented into wow in one way or another. if you played vanilla you remember how even auto-looting was a mod first. bare-bones truly vanilla wow had very few features

blizzard is known for creating nothing and throwing the right things together that others have created, and i like it, that's what gamers need, the best ideas all in one place

but yeah, i can see the influence of rift on mop

when gamers complain about something in rift/swtor blizzard would be a fool to not listen to that stuff. they're smart for better or worse though.

[dokilar]

only logical to expect an already successful game to take other successful game's ideas.

aoe looting and the pvp power stat came from swtor i think. well the aoe looting may have come from someone else but you get the picture.

[greysinsanderson]

Games take different stuff from each other and yes that includes WoW, but WoW has basically invented 90% of the stuff out there. haha. Hey, IDC as long as a game is fun.

wow players have as much of an influence on what wow is today as the devs. most of your interface options were addons first. blizzard creates less than most gaming companies. they don't invent the wheel, they just try to make it roll better