Istaria is like WoW? no wai

[meepsa]

ok, just a random post, not sure wether I should post it in here, but oh wellz.

I was playing FH (FeralHeart) today (ok, I wasn't playing, I was looking for a friend, sorta...) and saw the word "Istaria" pop-up in the general chat, and so, the lovely pink dragoness starts answering questions, then this dude starts popping up, and says: "istaria is a WoW ripoff".

there I was, staring at my screen for quite a while, till I finally replied with "what?! are you crazy or something??? istaria is NOTHING like WoW" then we got into this discussion about WoW and "all other games", in the end, I simply replied with "all games are ripoffs from pong, since it was the first game ever made" and left FH.

now, it might just be me, but in my eyes the ONLY things that WoW and Istaria share, is that you have to pay for it, and that they are MMORPGs.

so, my confuzzled little mind asks YOU what YOU think about "istaria=WoW rip off"

[Frith-Rae]

Eh you could have ended it by just saying "How is that possible Istaria was released first?" LOL

But no they have many other things in common, but most of those fall under the "general MMORPG" and "fantasy" category really. Something 95% of all "Mmorpgs" right now have in common. (I.e. things like gain through levels, fantasy races, quests, crafting, etc.)

Just his real mistake was getting the timeline wrong - seems to me you could have bonked him just for that and let the rest drop. =D Don't feed a troll!

[Kesqui]

As previously pointed out, seeing as Istaria (or at least Horizons) is OLDER than World of Warcraft.... wouldn't that make WoW the rip-off if either of them was one?

[meepsa]

haha, but there is something "I" didn't know lol, well ok, I kinda guessed it was, but can't keep up a normal discussion with just guesses

[Akrion]

This is exactly the point I was trying to make in this thread http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=23935 xD

WoW just has that stigma, unfortunately. People just, for some reason, like comparing MMO's to WoW and dictating if a game is worth playing or not through that.

"I really think the WoW comparisons just need to go away." x3

And yeah, like previously said, simply mentioning that Istaria has at least a year on WoW would put a person like that in their place real quick. (Or saying that WoW, or any MMORPG for that matter, are technically an Ultima Online ripoff, since that's where the term came from.)

[Darkwing_Duck]

omg NUUUUUU!
*noms the guy who said that about Istaria* :P

[Dracana]

I don't play too often anymore but this was obviously said by someone who seems to have the MMORPG = WoW train of thought going and have never seen much less played the game.

[Dhalin]

All MMORPGs have a few things in common, at least the fantasy-based ones.

You run around, hack up stuff, get XP, gain levels. You equip stuff on your character, you try to get money to buy things from an AH/Consignment, and you can craft stuff.

But to compare Istaria to WoW? That's pure lunacy...

WoW makes you pick a class and never allows you to deviate from that class (though you have 3 different talent point specializations you can choose, which does modify how the class is played so basically WoW has 30 classes; you pick a group of 3 when you make your character).

With crafting, Istaria's crafting is way different. It is based upon a grindy XP system, whereas WoW involves running around hunting nodes to gather from (which are fairly rare and spread out).

There's just.... so many differences to even start pointing out, that it boggles the mind that people would try to compare the two. lol.

[Darkwing_Duck]

WoW`s very limited when it comes to schools. Istaria you can take them all!
and the crafting system, though grindy, has much more possibilites then WoW.
I mean where else can you build your own personalized plot or dragons lair?

[Veruliyam]

On the floor of your living room with Legos?

[Thicklesip]

On the floor of your living room with Legos?

That never works from me, eventually people start yelling at me to take it apart so they can walk through the room again.


/rerail: Congratulations! You either ran into a moment of stupid that would have been fixed by 1-2 polite sentences (yes WoW came out after, WAY after, my dragon was an 81 crafter before I was lured away by WoW's prettyshiny) or else you just tried to reason a troll into submission. Given that apparently it spiraled into an "argh! /walkaway" moment, I suspect a troll.

The "most fantasy MMOs share many, many features" thing has been covered, as well as "Istaria is not WoW, and vice versa."* In case it ever comes up again, if a few politely-worded volleys of facts doesn't achieve the desired result, they're either an idiot or a troll and you should probably cut your losses.



*Since you made the mistake of asking, I have to say the games are utterly different. WoW's lore/story is so bad I think my 9 year old brother could write a better, more coherent one; Istaria suffers from a lore so interesting I have occasionally found myself talking to NPCs just so I could read their stories. WoW's combat system is flawed but so good even I enjoy it; Istaria's combat system makes me cry tears of blood. Istaria has playable dragons; WoW has... bipedal cows. WoW has colorful, stylized graphics that trick the eye into seeing a lot without one's computer expiring under the workload; Istaria has graphics that hit every branch on their fall out of the Old tree. WoW has, hands down, the worst, most annoying, least fun crafting system of any game I have tried, ever; Istaria has crafting that remains champion all these years later. WoW has the mind-blowing eyecandy minigame of hunter pets; Istaria has housing and gear dyes.

Leaving aside mind-numbing dissections of whether the games are similar in flavor and genre, it seems to me like calling them the same is approximately like calling Minesweeper and Freecell the same game. They're both GAMES, you can play either of them on the computer... but what you'd get out of them just seems too different to get a good comparison. (Of course, anyone with two brain cells to rub together would instantly understand this, so if someone brings it up they're likely a dunce or a troll.)