I was going to do this as a video, but I decided nobody wants to watch me play WoW to illustrate a point about why this game won't be like it, plus I don't have a sixy he-man voice like the rest of you awesome people.

I hear the word "WoW Clone" thrown about like confetti here, so I want to hopefully clear the air and kind of bring up some points that make this game DIFFERENT aside from the obvious setting.


What is a WoW Clone? For those not in the know, it's any game that uses a more or less copy-paste interface and mechanics similar to World of Warcraft to play it "safe" when developing a new MMO which eases transition for people familiar with them into learning the new game.

Why is it bad? Because World of Warcraft doesn't look, feel, play, or in any other way resemble The Elder Scrolls.


So let's tick off the major points I've been seeing about why people say it's a WoW Clone:


1: Hotbars

Yes, we already know from the GI article we will have a hotbar, what does this mean? nothing! TES games already have a hotbar, it's just not on an always up HUD. When you change your weapons, or choose a spell, or quaff a potion by pressing a number on your keyboard? That's a hotbar at work in the background. So until we know more about game mechanics and how the combat will work, saying that TES:O is a WoW Clone because it has a hotbar is like saying it's a WoW Clone because they both have horse mounts.


2: Combat

We know very little about the combat mechanics in the game, however we can deduce a lot of from what little we know. WoW uses a auto-target system built around skill rotations, while we don't know whether or not TES:O will use free aim or auto-target, I can pretty much bet on the skills being reactionary based, not rotation based. The GI article mentioned that pretty much you have the same type of things as you did before in TES, you have normal attacks, power attacks, and blocking, except now instead of a mouse button they are just tied to a hotkey. Sure there will be more skills, but the other thing to consider is that they mentioned that they are going away from the standard Tank/DPS/Healer role system and making it where conceivably any group can be successful, and class balancing becomes less of an issue. Entire rooms are not encounters, not just small groups within them. So I forsee you still moving around rooms, using the environment to your advantage, and it will feel fast paced and kinetic, where-as WoW is pretty much just stand in a corner, and only move if there's fire.


3: Classes

So yeah we're now stuck with classes instead of the free form skill-based gameplay we're used to, but I think we can deal with that. As I already mentioned, they aren't using the standard Tank/DPS/Healer set-up of most MMOs, so how exactly does that work? Well to put simply, AI isn't going to be based so much on aggro and threat, and will be more about situational awareness, enemies reacting to the greatest actual threat, not the one who spams the most attention grabbing skills. So with that in mind, I think to an extent every class will have the ability to tank, do damage, and have some chance at healing themselves at least. So let's say an enemy comes at you, if you're a warrior, you raise a shield and block, if you're a mage, you cast your ward spell to create a magical barrier, if you're a rogue, you just parry. If you're feeling weak and need more health, well the mage has his magic, and the rogue and warrior of course have potions and ingredients they can use. Plus I see classes falling more into TES lore categories, not confined to simple roles, so we will have the core rogue/mage/warrior type, but also a wide variance in hybrids as well for different styles.


4: Faction based PvP

WoW has deplorable awful PvP, why? Because it's instanced battlegrounds that have zero lasting implications. If you get teleported to a battleground, you win, you get a little bit of currency to buy gear, nothing changes, same battleground, same objective, same place. In TES:O the battlegrounds are dynamic and natural, they occur at actual WORLD locations like mines, farms, camps, etc. that your faction can control, and it makes an impact, it's not about just buying new gear, it's about pushing forward to put your faction on the throne, which despite the Emperor title being more of a leaderboard bragging right, I am sure will have some major implications (like perhaps faction-wide buffs for the one in control). The other element of factions is that with three, you create actual player-driven politics, so it's not just about which side is bigger or stronger, it's also about who is working in tandem with who, and actually being able to tip the scales when push comes to shove.


5: Art Style

Graphics is a BIG BIG deal to TES players, there are countless beautification mods out there that add high-res textures, new hairstyles, etc. to the games, so I can understand the bit of shock when people saw the screenshots were of Oblivion quality or less. Well part of this is from a performance standpoint I think, Most graphical elements in an MMO are handled locally yes, but any dynamic elements such as say a player or an NPC has to constantly be updated and sent to every person in the near vicinity live, which isn't a big deal if it's you and a friend fighting a few enemies, but have any of you ever loaded up a mod and then packed in a huge number of NPCs into a tight space? Now imagine if you have 100+ players all in one plaza in a city, if they all had Skyrim's depth of detail, holy lag Batman! You'd see one beautiful slideshow for sure, but it's not making the best use of resources. The OTHER thing to consider is this is still heavily in development, there are various changes, and post processing effects that may or may not still be applied to the models.


6: Itemization

Again something we know little about, but one very important difference that was told about, there will NOT be separate gear for PvP and PvE, which is great, because the whole concept is stupid, why should your armor defend you from a NPC Orc Berserker, but not a Player Controlled one?


7: Questing

People heard them say Hubless questing but I don't think it's fully registered with them yet. TES actually has quest hubs in the SP games, every guild house is a quest hub, you pick up a quest, you go do it, you turn it in. The problem with Quest hubs is it takes you from Point A to Point B to Point A again, there's no exploration, and as fans know, that's only a small element of TES games. So while there is still not any real detail on the concept, a hubless quest design means that you are rewarded for exploration based gameplay, which means you have a reason to leave hubs, and get out in the world, and you actually feel like your exploration has a purpose beyond the eye-candy visuals.


8: Heroic Dungeons

This does sound lifted right out of WoW doesn't it? Probably is (not sure which MMO did it first, but who cares), the thing that sets this apart is how they mentioned a continuing of the story, so I imagine that a heroic dungeon isn't a gamey mechanic like it is in WoW where you do the same fights with the same enemies only with more health and higher rewards, but you actually get to see your events from before evolve. An example I guess would be say you have a basic Bandit Cave, you go through it at lower levels and kill all the bandits and slay their leader. Well now you're a higher level, and you do it again on heroic mode, maybe now since the bandits are dead a group of Vampires moved in, so you're re-using the same space, but telling a new or continuing story, and seeing how your previous actions affected the world.


9: Third Person View

Yes we've seen third person view, but there's been no mention that first-person view is out, and really I don't see the big deal. Why do we have FP in TES games? Well because we need to aim at our targets, and we need to be able to pick up and interact with some precision which first person allows. Well for the latter issue, since unlike SP:TES games we can't just pick up everything nailed down, we don't need that pixel-perfect precision for grabbing that one septim on the ground. For the former, well until we know what the combat mechanics are like, we can't predict how this will play out. If we indeed do have true aim (which I will admit skepticism about) then I am sure first person will be an option. The last thing to consider is, that despite it being completely unruly and very difficult to play-in, WoW actually DOES have first-person view, so I don't see why it would be difficult to implement it in TES:O, however keep in mind that type of FPV does not use a targetting recticle TES style, it still alows free-look but you have to click to interact, but again we will see how it goes.




So I hope you all enjoyed my wall of text, I look forward to your arguments, criticisms, complaints about things I missed, etc.

....oh and I'll accept compliments too, if you must.


Above all I hope we can get past our fear of change and the new, and embrace this new MMO for what it is, and not constantly daydream about the game that could have been when there's still so much we don't know about the game that is, and for the love of the fishy stick stop calling it a clone!

I think the main reason why so many peoples think the game is a wow clone is the use of the hero engine, since every bigger game made with this engine is at it's core a wow clone. There are some tech demos with other approaches, but no real game that is completly different. A wow clone is defined - in my eyes - by the follow core-gameplay-problems:

1. Quest-grind based leveling with theme park world design.
2. Tube Leveling. You have to follow a special route through the world. If you don't do this the quests or monsters are either too high(unbeatable) or too low(no xp gain) in level.
3. Pseudo-Turn-Based-Combat.
4. Some kind of talent trees or similar character development.
5. Click&Go crafting. Crafting in wow is just a lame excuse and nothing but cheap content generation. Instead of writing a story and tell you "collect 5 murloc heads" they just give you a recipe which says: "needs 5 iron ore to be build".
6. PvP, raid and heroic grind to death in the endgame.

All other details are irrelevant in my oppinion. Special blocking system? Conquerable objects in the game world(open world pvp), and so on... These are nice features and ideas. But they are not fun at all when the core of the gameplay is infected by the WoW-Clone-Virus.

It seems more like you're explaining why it is OK for TESO to be a WoW-clone, rather than explaining why it won't be a WoW-clone...

Not saying it will be a WoW-clone btw, can't reallt tell yet from the available info. But if I had to place a bet, I'd bet on it being to similar to WoW for it's own good.

While I fully understand your point and agree with most of it, the only real answer we have at this point is simply we don't have enough information, we will learn more soon I am sure, but we're entering new territory on many fronts. PvP isn't the only thing TES has never had, it's also never had a built-in endgame, I mean if you think about it, when have there ever been bosses that were an actual challenge to kill without doing something cheap like turning up the difficulty, I mean actual encounter difficulty? Sure we have dungeons and some very basic puzzles in them, as well as traps, but we don't see any bosses that present a much greater tiered challenge over the normal trash mobs.

Some of those standbys I don't see as an issue, I can fully see the Perks system of Skyrim being worked into a talents type system, which isn't a bad thing, anything that actually allows you to be unique or hybridize is a good thing in my opinion, the more in-depth character control we have the better, we want to be able to stand out in terms of our character development, and talents is a great method for achieving that I think

The Click&Go Crafting has always been a pet peeve of mine, I don't care much for it, but the alternative I would like to see (a modular system where you design pieces of a whole item and then fuse them together, that lets you choose the raw materials of each piece which affects it's base stats) is kind of unlikely I think. We'll probably have something similar to WoW's gathering with the herbalism, mining of nodes, and skinning, and it's up in the air how the actual crafting will be, this game was in heavy development alongside Skyrim but I doubt it's going to borrow too much from it in terms of crafting.




It's more to illustrate the key differences, which there are several. I can't foresee myself playing TES:O and thinking "oh this is just like WoW', because I don't see the character role system, PvE encounters, or PvP objectives being anything like that.

Good post, OP - I'll edit soem specific comments later (omw to work atm), but overall I agree with what you've said.

very good post, i didn't like it right off after reading only the title, but after reading the post i agree with a lot of it.


The main thing i would like to point out is that TES games have ALWAYS had class's, Skyrim dropped class's and that choice wasn't met with good reviews by many fans, in fact one of the most requests mods for Skyrim is to add class's and attributes back into TES. Whats a mod one might say ? Its what TES games have LIVED on since MW.

Also there hasn't been a First person Only TES game in over 15 years, they have ALL been 3rd person and first person games since MW and both views have worked just fine, many even say Skyrim is better in 3rd person than 1st.

@Kulin - Number 4 and 5 are both features of Skyrim so we can't say much about that either.

Also on the point of xp based leveling, xp based leveling was one of the most popular Oblivion leveling mods ever and is one of the most asked for mods to be ported over to Skyrim.


The ONLY real thing we can say about it is the graphics, and i don't mean the art because it still looks like TES, no doubt about it, ( the art in TES games have never carried over to the next one and also this is 1000 years in the past, its gonna look different no matter what) all we can say is the color scheme is too colorfull and too bright, if it was a bit more gritty and dark there would be no problem.

Nice job OP. I doubt you will stop the Wow-clone claimants but it is nice to see a change from it.

Hooray, at least somebody tried to define what a WoW-clone actually is! The consensus has been somewhat "you know it when you see it", and that hasn't been very helpful for discussions.

1. We already know that TESO is different in this aspect, with the focus being on explorative content and public dungeons
2. Somewhat similar to the first point, and equally different in TESO
3. Difficult to define. People might say that TESO's combat isn't very TES-like, which is true, but for an MMO I find it very intriguing.
4. I'm not too sure how WoW does this, but doesn't Skyrim have "talent trees" as well?
5. I haven't seen crafting done any other way in any MMO I played - even Skyrim for that matter. What would be the alternative?
6. This is the endgame in any MMO I ever played. Some just did the PvP part better than others.

Yes, even Skyrim uses hot-keys (a la Diablo and so forth) for binding and skills, but clearly when the GI article referred to that style they meant in the fashion of conventional MMOs - hence they say it's not "real time." Anything real-time means attacks are triggered on click and based on proximity, which allows them to use free-aim/reticule aiming. There's no Western AAA MMO on the market that offers this; if TESO were doing it, there's no doubt they'd have been bending over backwards to point it out, rather than specifically emphasizing the fact that it's not real-time.

And frankly I don't give a hoot who came up with the idea, or who's stealing it from whom, which is why all of this WoW-clone crap is just a straw man argument. If TESO were the first to come up with a bad idea it wouldn't be any less a bad idea than if Blizzard or the boogieman came up with it - a tired mechanic is a tired mechanic regardless of its creator.

Let me clarify where i see the problem in 4 and 5 in wow
The Problem with this, that this isn't any character development anymore. In WoW classic this may be somewhat interesting(in a rudimentary way). But today when you play for example a Death Knight. You have to choose one of three directions(Tank, PVP-Damage, PVE-Damage)and have to skill it until the top tier. There are nearly no choices until this top tier. There is no way to completly change your gameplay. There are only choices like "2% more Damage dealt or 2% less damage taken". Its so unbelievably boring and paranoia balanced, that its not fun anymore at all. You can just scrap this talent trees and replace them with three button: "Do you want to play your Death Knight as (Tank), (PVE-DD) or (PVP-DD)?". Yes you have skills and talents in skyrim too. But you have much more interesting choices to develop your character. Its also skill-use-based, not xp-based leveling. Nice character development is one of the most important things for a good mmo, i think.

You are right when you say in skyrim there is click&go crafting, too. Its not the best crafting system, but since the resource gathering is closely connected to exploration gameplay, i think its much more fun. The creation of a nice weapon is the reward for your exploration progress. In WoW you are clicking on your flying mount, enable for example "Herb Gathering" and fly in circles over the known spawn points of the herbs you want to collect. It feels different, too artifical and just not right.

WoW ripped off the GUI from EQ, other games are now ripping it off from WoW.

And again, there have been plenty of complaints about Skyrim's subdued palette, and we've not seen enough screenshots to know how much the different areas vary in brightness.

yea... people are just saying this game looks more like world of warcraft more than it looks like elderscrolls thats all we are saying... i personally can't understand what zenimax whats us to think right now... based on what i have seen i'm not going to by it.

Yes exactly my point.


Slightly off topic but i have seen all the screens and think it looks fantastic.

How does anything in the screenshots look even remotely like http://cdn.ubergizmo.com/photos/2007/9/wow-twin-blades.jpg? The Artstyle only remotely resembles WoW in so much as it is slightly stylized with a cartoonish vibe that honestly does not feel all that pronounced to me. The ridiculous armors and weapons are not included...

http://cdn4.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Elder-Scrolls-Online1.jpg looks much less ridiculous...

Well you can call it an EQ Clone if you like, WoW didn't really invent their system I know, they just capitalized the most off it and therefore are the de-facto comparison, hence why I say WoW, but really ANY MMO with that gameplay style could work, It's less about the name and more about what it implies.

I believe it when i see it. The problem is that i've heard this marketing bushwah from too many mmo developers. They all want to seperate their game from wow. All of them want to tell you why it's so much better. For example: when they talk about "explorative" content in SW:ToR they really talk about (20?) small clickable boxes that are hidden in the tube-design-gameworld. You can reach them by jump&run. Exploration in my eyes is something absolutly different. When i wander aroud in skyrim and find a little hut, with a book that tells you the story of the owner and about a few dungeons in the surrounding area i call this "exploration". When i find a dungeon in the wilderness full of monsters, a body with a little journal and a boss with a nice sword at the end of the dungeon i call this "exploration". When i enter a dark cavern and get my ass kicked by a troll because i was too nosey i call this exploration. Collecting stuff on the defined path up to max level or entering dungeons everywhere designed solely for a pleasent leveling experience this is not what i want from exploration.

The same thing. Nothing they say is so clear that anyone can be sure that this tube-level-design will not happen in this game.

My personal favorite is a simplified crafting version of Star Wars Galaxies. At first you have to find resources. They don't always spawn at the same spot. You have to use your skill, to find for example good ore veins(or for example to get better hides from skinning) When you've found your resources this resource could be for example metal. Copper. Iron. Gold. Silver. Whatever. This metals are also not the same everytime. Some iron you find is for example of bad quality. It is not 100% pure. So the iron ingots you create from the ore are not 100% quality(also depending on your skill, not just on the quality), too. This iron ingot can then be used to forge a sword or to create alloys to create even better swords. But remember. The quality of the ore defines the quality of the ingot. And the ingot defines the quality of the alloy. And the alloy defines the quality of the swords. You can go so far that some material is better for axes and another one is better for swords. So a alloy that is bendable and inherently stable is better for a sword but a alloy who is very heavy and hard is better for a axe. I think you get the idea. The main thing is that you have to spend some time and thinking and experimentation in your crafting. You actually have to LEARN something to produce the best result. And you'll have hugely different and better outcome if you but more work(search for the best materials) and thinking into your sword. It actually feels like you accomplished something. Not just click and go. And it isn't really hard to learn too. I don't think that someone is confused when he collects ore with "quality 20%" and builds a sword with only 20% quality.

Previous to wow there existed some games where some players did NOTHING else but crafting. Could you imagine this in WoW?

You are right. Most games use this endgame. But these are strangely not the games i played the longest period of time. I played UO for example for about 6 years. The interesting things were the player generated content, not any kind of grind. The diplomacy with other factions. The wars. The housing. The roleplay. Nothing of it was really created by the makers of the game. They just build a sandbox which was good enough to attract me to play with it for 6 years. However, i also played WoW for about 1-2 Years. So i don't say: dont include raiding and heroics, since this gameplay can be fun, too. There must be just a little bit more than this. Diversification. Whats the problem of giving us GOOD raid content AND a Sandbox for player generated content? Why is nobody able to offer this?

yes it looks more refined, and in my opinion little better than wow, however... i wasn't talking graphics wise more game play wise, it didnt look like elder scrolls it looked like world of warcraft, and i wonder why zenimax wanted those to be the first images we see.

any way "wow cone" in my opinion(in this case) is any game that is made into a mmo but does not keep the gameplay the same, maybe i am wrong but it doesnt look like TESO is going to keep true to the way tes games usually play.

(example is tor: doesnt play any thing like KTOR)

Yeah we knew this since the GI article. Its not a WoW clone at all, but it is using general MMO things which don't really fit in TES.

Actually, that was the best (and I must admit, only ) wall of text I've read so far. I agree with everything wholeheartedly. We haven't seen enough footage to make any calls yet.

This is what I hope as well. If they take the http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Classes (people seem to forget that that game had classes as well), then we're golden. You have your Warriors, your Mages and your Rogues, but you also have Spellswords, Nightblades, Bards, Monks etc. - something for every flavor.

1. TES games have classes, in name only. Functionally they are classless as you are basically unrestricted once you get pass the class creation.

2. TES games support first and third person. TESO does not support first person.

3. All TES games are skill-usage-based. We base our opinions on the vanilla game. Naked Mods are the most downloaded mods anyway.

I am not here to say if TESO's approach is right or wrong, although most of us have already formed an opinion on it, but stop making TESO out to be something it is not; following the mechanics and approach used by TES games.

Agreed with OP, ESO is not a direct clone of WoW. it would be better to say that it is an evolutionary step from WoW and other MMOs of that nature (from what we currently know). However, it is MUCH closer to WoW and other "typical MMOs" than it is to the mechanics of TES.

I honestly don't care that much about the interface, so long as it is usable. I don't really care about the combat system so long as it is at least a bit interesting. I think asking for TES:O to play like a single-player title is asking too much. There's a reason gamesas develops only single player titles: you can do things on a single machine that simply cannot be done over a network.

What I care about is the sandbox. In terms of how the world is set up, I'd like to see far more Eve, Shadowbane, and pre-Trammel Ultima Online in the basic inspiration, and far less Everquest and WOW. I'd like ZOS to aim more for the niche market that wants to genuinely battle over territory, rather than the theme-park crowd WOW and its clones aim for. As much as possible, I'd like those territorial battles to be fluid, rather than centered around fixed points. As much as possible, I'd like the economy to be player-run than NPC-run (though players should be able to use NPCs to sell their goods). Oh, and no universal auction house, no insta-teleporting goods around by "mail" (except insofar as you insta-teleport yourself... can we have teleportation back, please?)

1. It matters not, they are class's none the less and you only advance in level by using skills from your class, having a more strict class setup will not change this, it will only restrict the 'jack of all trades' character type, the basic funtion will still be the same, use your class skills to "level", and it don't matter if the exp goes to your skill level or exp bar, in the end its all the same.

2. We don't not know if TESO will have first person ( like tons of 3rd person mmorpgs do) or not, we DO know it will have 3rd, we could also see 1st easily.

3. We do not use the vanilla game to base our opinion, mods are a much better point of reference. Vanilla game is what the developers believe the fans won't loosely based on feedback but mainly based on what they feel is right for their game. Mods are a direct showing of exactly what players actually wan't in their game. if a mod gets 100,000 hits ( nothing to do with nvde mods as i do not count them at all) within the first month of its making, that's a pretty clear indication as to what the players want in their game.

What COULD make this a WoW clone, is the idea that this game is going to try to sneak into the casual-friendly market, and take WoW's market share.

I don't want to see it plagued with silly little ideas like LFR/LFG tools, badge loot system, daily quests to help players earn their gold,

I want to see Zeni/Beth take a stance and say "THIS IS THE GAME,...take it or leave it." you are in a virtual world of fantasy with real life situations and concequences.

....but not to say "ZOMFG!, if we don't get that "casual 1 hour a week" player on the doorstep of the endgame dungeon we will lose subs! Let's change the entire dynmaic of the game so it's easy for "EVERYONE" to see the endgame without any trying (or two weeks of straight grinding just to 'say' they did their dues)..

if ANYTHING like that gets said in that GI article (that I haven't read yet) or any future interviews with the devs......oh yeah,...this will get branded a "WoW-clone"...done deal, that is that, no excuses.