World of Warcraft Could Have Been World of Warhammer

Skeleon

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Hm. The picture of the news story features WH40k. I would've played WoWH40k, I think. Not regular WH, though. I prefer the dark scifi setting.
 

Zulnam

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Worgen said:
How is this a news story? Its pretty much old news that originally warcraft wanted to be a warhammer game and that starcraft started out a 40k game.
I was just about to point this out. This has been out there for years. It's not new(s). And this is not based on speculation, I remember reading articles on this.
 

Clearing the Eye

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Devoneaux said:
Clearing the Eye said:
The Warhammer universe is an order of magnitude more interesting and well developed than the rip-off. Not to mention 40,000K. A shame how it all turned out.
Nope.

See, there's a lot more lore with the Warhammer universe(Both 40k and not). But the problem is that there's almost a complete lack of a connecting story line; all that there is is just a series of stories of the various factions at play fighting one another with no real context to just how important one planet or sector or whatever really is. The fact is Warcraft simply wins out not by having better characters. (Though it's not hard to have a deeper character than space marine number 251027b) or having a more complex lore to base it all on. It's the fact that there's actually a consistent set of characters playing out their roles in an established plot, making it easier to feel invested in their goings on.

One battle between space marines and orks is completely interchangeable with another, but anyone who remembers Warcraft three fondly can probably tell you every critical moment in the story and the order in which they happened.
You're looking at it the wrong way, sorry. Warcraft (largely) takes place on one planet. Warhammer 40000 takes place in an entire universe and there's thousands of histories for each planet. Wanna know why a large portion of Space Marines went rogue and tried to kill the Emperor of Man? There's thousands of years of detailed lore leading up to it, from the birth of the Eldar species, their migrations, their rise and their fall, ultimately creating various gods at different times through a mixture of telepathy and reckless emotion. A dozen books and about thirty thousand years later, the Eldar fucked themselves up and the Gods they made convinced a few Marines to convert their brothers.

Pick any planet and it'll have years of history that directly relate to those around it and the universe on a whole. They've all seen campaigns from Orks and Tyranids, to Necron and Dark Eldar. Each battle pushes a faction in different directions and has massive fallout. If, for example, the Blood Angels hand't been the first to respond during the Horus Heresy battle, Sanguinius wouldn't have died and they'd not suffer the blood curse that causes them to hunt Cypher like a dog and he'd be able to return to Terra, give the sword back and possibly restore some of humanity's strength. All those events are covered in the books and they all take place over entire galaxies, with every race intertwined.

Oh and the Space Marines are 99% faceless war machines because they are all clones of The Emperor of Mankind. They aren't joking when they say "In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war." Terra (Earth) is basically the last holdout of the human species and every person left alive is a warrior. They don't stop to procreate :p The more notable Marines are usually the direct clones, while the rest are copies of them, etc.
 

Xan Krieger

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Feb 11, 2009
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Blizzard, you failed. You could've made one of the greatest games of all time and instead you made Warcraft.

Well at least I can still dream of a W40K MMO
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Zulnam said:
Worgen said:
How is this a news story? Its pretty much old news that originally warcraft wanted to be a warhammer game and that starcraft started out a 40k game.
I was just about to point this out. This has been out there for years. It's not new(s). And this is not based on speculation, I remember reading articles on this.
I'm actually pretty sure we already had some stories on this site that said as much too.
 

Amnestic

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Aug 22, 2008
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Evil Alpaca said:
irishda said:
A World of Warhammer title definitely wouldn't have seen the number of content expansions WoW has because no one would be able to get past the greatest raid boss of all: GW's reluctance to move the plot forward
What version of WoW have you been playing?

Blizzard refuses to let their world be changed in any substantial way, recycling characters and bosses in lieu of creating new content.
What version of WoW have YOU been playing? They completely redid Azeroth with Cataclysm.

Clearing the Eye said:
Oh and the Space Marines are 99% faceless war machines because they are all clones of The Emperor of Mankind.
What. I admit I haven't really read much of the War40K lore, but I did read the Space Wolf books and played the Dawn of War games. Unless something changed since those, they acquired their Space Marines from homeworlds. The Space Wolves recruited warriors from what amounted to Viking-era villages, longboats and all.

How are they clones if they recruit from that? :|
 

Kragg

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WhiteTigerShiro said:
Cognimancer said:
"It's highly unlikely Blizzard would be such a dominant player in the game industry today."

Could a simple change of setting really have crippled a company that would later become a titan of the industry?
There's a lot more degrees of success than "dominant player" and "crippled". I think he was more saying that if they had gone with Warhammer, that Blizzard would be one of those off-shoot developers that does well for itself, but that no one really pays attention to.

tkioz said:
This is news?

I was pretty sure this was common knowledge going back to the early days of Warcraft II...

Oh and Warhammer is much much deeper then Warcraft... and a hell of a lot funnier (it and 40k are parodies of their genres, no matter how seriously some fans take it)
Worgen said:
How is this a news story? Its pretty much old news that originally warcraft wanted to be a warhammer game and that starcraft started out a 40k game.
I don't know about your guys' web browsers, but mine has this handy little "Back" button for news stories I don't really give a fuck about. If you don't care, just move the fuck on. We don't need to hear from the "Is this news" brigade on EVERY FUCKING NEWS POST because every news post isn't news-worthy to someone.

Shut up. Move on. No one is obligating you to read about and post on every article.
but snippy arent you, i agree up to some point when they come out with a newsstory from earlier in the week, but this isnt news, this is widely known stuff from 10 years ago
 

Weaver

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Apr 28, 2008
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Ranorak said:
I thought this was pretty much common knowledge.
I mean the 2008 Warcraft Retrospective video already mentioned this.

Don't get me wrong, nice read, but what's next, Super Mario Bros. 2 started out as a different game?
My thoughts as well. I thought almost everyone knew this. It's like gaming folklore. I mean there's slow on the draw, and there's "Warcraft 2 released in 1995 and people were talking about this back then".
 

vallorn

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Nov 18, 2009
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This has been old news in Warhammer circles for a LONG time. however the more people that know blizzard borrowed a lot from Warhammer and 40K the better.

Amnestic said:
Evil Alpaca said:
irishda said:
A World of Warhammer title definitely wouldn't have seen the number of content expansions WoW has because no one would be able to get past the greatest raid boss of all: GW's reluctance to move the plot forward
What version of WoW have you been playing?

Blizzard refuses to let their world be changed in any substantial way, recycling characters and bosses in lieu of creating new content.
What version of WoW have YOU been playing? They completely redid Azeroth with Cataclysm.

Clearing the Eye said:
Oh and the Space Marines are 99% faceless war machines because they are all clones of The Emperor of Mankind.
What. I admit I haven't really read much of the War40K lore, but I did read the Space Wolf books and played the Dawn of War games. Unless something changed since those, they acquired their Space Marines from homeworlds. The Space Wolves recruited warriors from what amounted to Viking-era villages, longboats and all.

How are they clones if they recruit from that? :|
Space Marines aren't actually clones. They are pre pubescent males who are then put through a rigorous series of training and implanted with superior organs. The reason they look so similar is due to the Gene Seed organ which changes the body's genetic code slightly to allow it to cope with the third lung and the extra heart and so on and so forth.

Clearing the Eye said:
All the Snip.
If they don't procreate then how do you explain the Imperial Guard? Hoards of unaugmented humans armed with what amounts to a laser pointed and a cardboard jacket?
 

Jaeke

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DVS BSTrD said:
Aeshi said:
Somewhere out there the head of GW is probably facepalming and going "What was I thinking?!" to himself...
I guess you could say it was really... Tauren him apart?

There you go!

OT: Well... I wouldn't call it a ripoff, as basicly any fantasy now adays is just colateral from Lord of the Rings.

But... good to know?
 

seule

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yeah this has been known for ages. And anyway, if warcraft had bought in lizardmen or skaven instead of pandas... might have been tempted to go back.
 

Evil Alpaca

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Amnestic said:
Evil Alpaca said:
irishda said:
A World of Warhammer title definitely wouldn't have seen the number of content expansions WoW has because no one would be able to get past the greatest raid boss of all: GW's reluctance to move the plot forward
What version of WoW have you been playing?

Blizzard refuses to let their world be changed in any substantial way, recycling characters and bosses in lieu of creating new content.
What version of WoW have YOU been playing? They completely redid Azeroth with Cataclysm.
Azeroth may have been redone but not that many of the end game bosses. You still fight Raganaros and Nefarian, Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman.

Cataclysm did revamp many of the leveling zones, but the end game content felt recycled. Same with the new PvP. The new battlegrounds were just Arathi basin and Warsong Gulch with 10 and 15 player caps. Shadowfang Keep seemed like a decent job of reusing previous source material. You weren't fighting the same bosses nor were the boss fights similar to the replaced one.


As for Space Marines; You're right, they're not clones. They are selected youths who are implanted with the gene seed which is derived from primarchs which are themselves derived from the Emperor. Hence why certain space Marine chapters like the Space Wolves have different senses than the Blood Angels.
 

irishda

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Evil Alpaca said:
irishda said:
A World of Warhammer title definitely wouldn't have seen the number of content expansions WoW has because no one would be able to get past the greatest raid boss of all: GW's reluctance to move the plot forward
What version of WoW have you been playing?

Blizzard refuses to let their world be changed in any substantial way, recycling characters and bosses in lieu of creating new content.
Except for Burning Crusade putting in a whole new world, Wrath of the Lich King adding a new continent, and Cataclysm radically changing everything from zone quests to cities to faction leaders. And all of those expansions first adding to talent trees then being major revamps.

For better or worse, Blizzard has continuously changed WoW. Hell that's one of the biggest complaints so many people have against it. Every time a new expansion is released there's hordes of "Game sucks now. Leaving." and/or "Thank god they changed this."
 

tkioz

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May 7, 2009
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Karadalis said:
tkioz said:
This is news?

I was pretty sure this was common knowledge going back to the early days of Warcraft II...

Oh and Warhammer is much much deeper then Warcraft... and a hell of a lot funnier (it and 40k are parodies of their genres, no matter how seriously some fans take it)
I wouldnt necesary say Parodies.... theres to much grim and "serious" stuff in it. Sure theres alot of humor also, (skaven or orcs) but then you have races like dark elfs or high elfs or the undead where there is little to no humor involved. (Actually all the elfs are pretty humor resistant.. go figure)

Warhammer and 40k also have alot of tragic stories in it... something that doesnt go well with a parody... atleast i have never heard about a tragic parody....

Also for a complete parody the warhammer lore makes to much sense... unlike the WoW universe where aparantly you have high magic concepts thrown together with steampunk and space traveling blue goat hoofed aliens and aparantly walking talking kung fu pandas... I mean they can have space ships and aparantly guns but are still fighting with melee weapons? Huh?

I would rather say that WoW is the one being the parody here and not Warhammer and 40k.

Warhammer is fantasy with humor...

And WoW seems to be headed Humor with fantasy... i mean.. kung fu pandas? Really?
There are a lot of different forms of parody and satire. I personally blame mainstream entertainment for starting the myth that the only form of parody is the absurdist parody (see your own thinking with the pandas as parody).

Parody/Satire and seriousness are not mutually exclusive, if anything they are complementary. The best examples I could give are two UK shows, Yes (Prime) Minister which is a satirical comedy that is still serious and deeply insightful 30 years after it's airing, and House of Cards another political show, a drama, that is a dark parody, and also very insightful and serious.

Warhammer 40k for example is partly absurdist satire of the space opera genre, and partly dark comedy satire of the bright future trope. If you look at a lot of what they've got in the backstory you see a lot of references to our own history, only twisted and distorted to the worst possible outcome.

Warhammer (and 40k) are much deeper then they are given credit for, but they are also parodies of existing genres, you just have to look at them beyond the skindeep "holy crap it's a chainsaw sword" stuff.
 

Canadamus Prime

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Jun 17, 2009
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Cognimancer said:
It's no secret that Blizzard's colossal Warcraft franchise was heavily inspired by Warhammer, the tabletop wargame created by Games Workshop. A number of ideas from Warhammer have spread to other fantasy settings (green-skinned orcs, anyone?) but the number of similarities between it and Blizzard's fantasy universe borders on the uncanny. As it turns out, this is no coincidence - Blizzard very nearly made a licensed Warhammer game instead of starting its own IP.
Yes we are all very much aware of that. Warhammer fans make a point of reminding us ever f*ing chance they get, to the point that I want to smack them every single goddamned time.
 

Clearing the Eye

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Amnestic said:
Evil Alpaca said:
irishda said:
A World of Warhammer title definitely wouldn't have seen the number of content expansions WoW has because no one would be able to get past the greatest raid boss of all: GW's reluctance to move the plot forward
What version of WoW have you been playing?

Blizzard refuses to let their world be changed in any substantial way, recycling characters and bosses in lieu of creating new content.
What version of WoW have YOU been playing? They completely redid Azeroth with Cataclysm.

Clearing the Eye said:
Oh and the Space Marines are 99% faceless war machines because they are all clones of The Emperor of Mankind.
What. I admit I haven't really read much of the War40K lore, but I did read the Space Wolf books and played the Dawn of War games. Unless something changed since those, they acquired their Space Marines from homeworlds. The Space Wolves recruited warriors from what amounted to Viking-era villages, longboats and all.

How are they clones if they recruit from that? :|
Some chapters of the Space Marines recruit, but the recruits undergo gene therapy that more or less alters their DNA to the point of clone. Other chapters are just flat out clones that are created and trained from infancy to be soldiers. The primarch (leaders) of all the major chapters (there's thousands of smaller chapters) are all direct clones of The Emperor, though.
 

Giftmacher

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Worgen said:
How is this a news story? Its pretty much old news that originally warcraft wanted to be a warhammer game and that starcraft started out a 40k game.
This. Old, old, old news.

In other news, the Earth actually orbits the sun and not the other way around!

Coming up next a story on the black death, should you be worried?!