Did WoW's WotLK borrow from FfH?

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xilr

Warlord
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The Vykul are a race of large humanoids that live in the frozen north. The scourge are using them to fuel some sort of unholy ritual (The Draw?) and one of the quests involve you stopping Halfdan the Ice-Hearted from ascending (Auric Ascended?).

Source: http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=11249


Then there is a boss in the dungeon Azjol-Nerub called Herald Volazj. The interesting mechanic in his fight is "Insanity" at a certain point you'll have to kill all your friends (Not really them, they are NPC copies). And he looks a bit like an Octopus Overlord to me....

Source: http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=29311#abilities
 
It would probably be more accurate to say that Kael and Blizzard have both taken ideas from similar sources.
 
xilr said:
The Vykul are a race of large humanoids that live in the frozen north. The scourge are using them to fuel some sort of unholy ritual (The Draw?) and one of the quests involve you stopping Halfdan the Ice-Hearted from ascending (Auric Ascended?).

Source: http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=11249


Then there is a boss in the dungeon Azjol-Nerub called Herald Volazj. The interesting mechanic in his fight is "Insanity" at a certain point you'll have to kill all your friends (Not really them, they are NPC copies). And he looks a bit like an Octopus Overlord to me....

Source: http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=29311#abilities
Click to expand...

Short answer: No.
The only similarity between the Scourge and the Illians is the terrain.
The "ascension" Halfdan seeks is to join the ranks of the Ymirjar, powerful vrykul that have received the Lich King's gift. They're not gods.

And regarding the Faceless boss in Ahn'kahet (not the instance Azjol-nerub, though they're just 2 different areas of Azjol-nerub). They're not a new thing in warcraft (they first appeared in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne), though the similarity is there.
This is because both draw their inspiration from the Cthulhu mythos: the boss C'thun in Ahn'qiraj is one of "The Old Gods" and an obvious reference to Cthulhu (the old gods that have been described at all in warcraft all seem to be "tentacly", and their primary weapon, due to them being imprisoned under the earth, is to drive people insane to have them do their bidding).
Under Northrend is another Old God, Yogg-Saron (also based on the Cthulhu mythos), and the faceless ones in Azjol-Nerub are his servants.

As Fenboy said, they share some of their sources, so the similarities cannot be avoided, especially since Blizzard sometimes intentionally are... less than subtle when borrowing from others.
 
Its the law of large numbers. In games that cover as much back story and deal with as many characters as FfH and WoW there is always going to be some elements that seem surprisingly similar. Its not influence from one to the other as much as just sharing a genre.

There are influences of course, but they often aren't as direct as people suspect. For example my biggest for the D&D campaigns was a series of novels by Margret Weis and Tracy Hickman called the Death Gate cycle. In their novels the world was broken into multiple worlds based on the elements, so there was an air world, a water world, etc. The books had footnotes at the bottom of the pages with little details about the worlds or culture of the people they were discussing. For me it was a guide to world building as the physical and social elements of the world interacted in a really cool way.

I never used the specific idea, but that did excite me to create a world where the physical and social elements were laid out based on the 21 elements of the mana chart. there were some things borrowed more directly from that series. The main character used rune magic, and Tebryn was very similar to him in his player character life. And the story revolved around a people that escaped the torments of the labyrinth, which was where the story of the Bannor escaping from hell came from. There was even a leader that went back into the labyrinth to rescue more people who became the model for Sabathiel.

Its the themes that are most likely to be shared. As with the Bannor story I loved the thought of a people escaping from this hostile world that tested them. The details weren't important. Switching it from the labyrinth to Hell, changing the reason they were in there and who their rescuer was makes the story hard to recognize as borrowed from the Death Gate.

So the theme of Auric is ascension. There isn't much actual story around it in 0.34 (thats all coming in 0.40), just the theme and game mechanics. But that would be all they could really borrow. Auric is based in winter with all that comes with it. But a writer isnt going to see that as a part of the Auric story, thats just the setting, and someone who truly did want to borrow that from FfH likely wouldnt carry those aspect over. Which makes it just an Ascension theme, which of course was around long before FfH.
 
Death Gate Cycle rules. That is all. You may return to your thread.








(Call me Zifnab!)
 
I played the game version of Death Gate! I didn't even know it was from a book. Granted, I was about 13 when I played it. Great story, game or book.
 
Darn law of numbers. Gets annoying when I am running a Darkmatter game and one of the players starts coughing "IT", "IT" all cos I have a homeless bum serial killer who comes out of the woodwork every coupla centuries...
 
Death Gate is entertaining but pretty average if you ask me. I seriously am sick of this whole saving the world. Too cliche. And all too often the characters do it for just because they are heroes. If only they had a reason. Like: "I will not let you destroy the world, demon. I will bring it under my iron fisted rule." The point is: a person's own personal interest and survival are believable motivations. "It is a right thing to do" is not when mortal danger is involved.

Sidenote: Somebody please undo the word filter brainfart.
 
zup said:
Death Gate is entertaining but pretty average if you ask me. I seriously am sick of this whole saving the world. Too cliche. And all too often the characters do it for just because they are heroes. If only they had a reason. Like: "I will not let you destroy the world, demon. I will bring it under my iron fisted rule." The point is: a person's own personal interest and survival are believable motivations. "It is a right thing to do" is not when mortal danger is involved.

Sidenote: Somebody please undo the word filter brainfart.
Click to expand...

The thing I really loved about it was the detail in world creation. Just amazing stuff and a cool mix of traditional fantasy with an interesting new twist. As a guy designing a world for D&D games it really opened my eyes. The laws that controlled magic and the way things work caused me to consider what magic was in my world, how it worked and why.

The Calabim take on what vampirism is, magic as a finite resource that grows less powerful as more people learn to use it, the compact and how it binds the gods. All from questions I had to consider after reading those novels. I wasnt willing to accept the default D&D reasons for magic (it just is) and gods (they just are).
 
zup said:
Death Gate is entertaining but pretty average if you ask me. I seriously am sick of this whole saving the world. Too cliche. And all too often the characters do it for just because they are heroes. If only they had a reason. Like: "I will not let you destroy the world, demon. I will bring it under my iron fisted rule." The point is: a person's own personal interest and survival are believable motivations. "It is a right thing to do" is not when mortal danger is involved.

Sidenote: Somebody please undo the word filter brainfart.
Click to expand...

There is one trilogy I consider to be slightly better than the Deathgate Cycle for story/character work. Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman. Anyway, the earth was old and ragged, so people sealed themselves up in a spaceship under stasis and the computer was supposed to find a nice new planet. Wound up millenia later finally dumping them on a planet near to the core of the galaxy where belief affects reality.

Through the story, there are 2 characters working together to their own purposes. One as the antagonist and the other is the protagonist for the trilogy, but together they are dual protagonists within each book. Was very well done and some of the most wonderful character/world development I have ever seen.
 
yeah the Coldfire trilogy is a good one, especially the part about how magic affects tech. Basically no one uses guns not because they don't know how but because they are such fear inspiring weapons their wielders' fears cause the guns to misfire. Good stuff.
 
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