I've said this before, but I guess it does need it's own post : a game being like World of Warcraft is not a bad thing. Many times, a game is labeled by people as a "wow-clone", and usually as a derogatory term. To me, this does not make much sense. World of Warcraft is a nicely designed game. It has it's faults for sure, but so does every other game. To not look at what made it a huge success would simply be foolish.
Of course, World of Warcraft itself used to be coined as an EQ-clone, and again as an insult. But because of it's resemblance to EQ, people did flock to the new game. It was familiar, intuitive and, most importantly, accessible. While one can argue that the extreme popularity of the Warcraft RTS is what really boosted the MMO, the fact is that the games do not have much in common other than the intellectual property they are based on. There had to be something that went from launch to being the behemoth that it is today, and that's what the competitors are looking at.
RIFT is a fine example of taking another game's ideas and molding it to their own thing. There are many things RIFT has that WoW doesn't, but at the core, they could be considered the same game. And there's nothing wrong with that.
That was the amazing thing about RIFT. On first playing it, it was incredibly familiar and new at the same time. Considering the target of RIFT's advertizing (hint: We're not on Azeroth anymore), they wanted to get veteran MMO gamers in and hooked. I still hold to the theory that their beta tests were a mere marketting ploy to get people to pre-order the game. And it all worked. It is one of the most successful MMO releases in a while and one announcement indicated that RIFT hit the "1 million customers" mark.
It will be interesting to see where the games of 2011/2012 will take us. But one thing is sure, if one or more ends up being called a "WoW clone", that is going to be a great compliment.
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