This past weekend I finally decided to start reading Robert E. Howard’s sword & sorcery classic Conan the Barbarian. At one point the author felt the need to write a history of the world that Conan inhabited in order to give him a greater sense of “realness”. It’s remarkable how both Howard and Tolkien both supplemented their fantasy worlds with such detailed historical backdrops in order to fully immerse the reader.
In many ways it was those authors who laid the foundations for the idea that worlds beyond our own could be imagined and created. Today’s virtual worlds and MMORPGs owe both of them a debt of gratitude.
However, it was during my reading of this history in the book entitled “The Hyborian Age” that something caught my eye that gave me pause and may be of interest to MMO enthusiasts.
Here’s the passage in question from Conan the Barbarian:
Then the Cataclysm rocked the world. Atlantis and Lemuria sank, and the Pictish Islands were heaved up to form the mountain peaks of a new continent. Sections of the Thurian Continent vanished under the waves, or sinking, formed great inland lakes and seas. Volcanoes broke forth and terrific earthquakes shook down the shining cities of the empires. Whole nations were blotted out.
Sound familiar? Notice that Cataclysm is capitalized. Substitute Atlantis and Lemuris for the Barrens and the Badlands and suddenly you get what sounds like the promotional description for Blizzard’s upcoming World of Warcraft expansion: Cataclysm. As many of us know by now after witnessing the 2009 BlizzCon promotional barrage, Azeroth will be besieged by volcanoes, earthquakes and floods — all eerily similar to the catastrophic events described in Howard’s Conan the Barbarian — except that in Conan’s history the cataclysm is not apparently caused by a dragon.
On a side note, even the WoW: Cataclysm trailer which seems to be narrated by a male Asian voice actor sounds strikingly similar in style and cadence to the opening narration of the Conan the Barbarian movie by veteran Asian character actor and Conan cast member Mako. Coincidence?
Now if there wasn’t an Age of Conan MMO out there, it might not pose a problem. Still, you have to wonder what the developers and publishers of the Conan MMO think about this revelation.
Imagine if the roles were reversed and another MMO company borrowed the title of a major historical event from Warcraft lore and named their expansion after it? Given the protective nature of Activision’s legal department that recently shut down a volunteer project and had an iPhone app pulled it’s safe to assume they might do something about it.
-Wolfshead
I am shocked, shocked to see Blizzard borrowing concepts from other sources.
Well the story of The Flood appears in almost every religion. It’s actually kind of freaky, or if we take ancient religious texts as mythological dressings up of real events a reference to some ancient disaster.
Howard borrowed heavily from ancient mythology, the stories of Atlantis being submerged are first known from the ancient Greeks, specifically Plato.
Maybe they were influenced by Howard, maybe not, but I think that a Cataclysm is simply a generic mythological concept like Ragnarok/Armageddon or The Creation.
The trailer is clearly inspired by the world-changing nature of the cataclysm in Robert E. Howard’s hyborian world. I also noticed the similarity of the voice acting between the intro of the Conan movie and the Cataclysm trailer. But this does not necessarily mean the idea to change the world came someone because he knew Conan lore. Cataclysms are a quite generic fantasy theme.
Legal action against this is would be interesting. I do not think it would have any chance of success.
There are too many cataclysms in fantasy literature and games. There is even a cataclysm in the Bible, it is just less volcanoes but more water, and called “Deluge”. Which might be the name of the follow-up patch to Catacylsm? 😉
Part of Blizzards ingenuity was always always being a good copycat and making more out of the original. They always polished the gems that others found, and one can hardly blame them for that. Check Westwood’s “Command & Conquer” series. Warcraft was so inspired by this game that it hurts! Starcraft then was basically just shifting the setting to science fiction.
There is nothing that can be done against this. Cultural references or inspirations cannot be protected that much. Blizzard are also great at walking this fine line. There is also the question if there is really any reason except trying to piss into Blizzard’s coffee pot to accuse them of permanent borderline intellectual property theft. They are not doing that, they are always adapting enough to make it their own story.
I think if Blizzard had run the many private Lord of the Rings shards based on Ultima Online, they would have changed the world enough that it is Lord of the Rings with their own twist, different enough that no lawyer could have closed them down, as it happened to many lore-oriented un-official LOTR servers.
Take Arthas. Partly King Arthur, partly Darth Vader. But not really a copy. Blizzard are really good at finding out what works and making these things shine.
The worlds of Tyria (Guild Wars) or Norrath (Everquest 1/2) have more original and genuine qualities than the whole World of Warcraft, and there is indeed a part of me that wants to call Blizzard “damn Copycats” very often.
But they have created their very own universe, it is just more pop culture oriented and inspired than others. The inventors of World of Warcraft were not genuine creators per se.
Asking “who created World of Warcraft?” yields this result:
“World of Warcraft was pitched by Bill Petras and Kevin Beardslee to Jeff Strain (Nomad project lead). Strain then pitched the idea to management who within 3 days approved the project. Project “Nomad” was cancelled and the original 7 developers from that team lead by Allen Adham (Blizzard founder) and Shane Dabiri (Proucer) began work on the World of Warcraft.
The idea came about after multiple team members had begun playing Everquest and the idea to make a better version was conceived.
Rob Pardo and Bob Fitch among other Warcarft III developers contributed to the design as well.
Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) joined the WoW team roughly a third to halfway through development as a quest designer and contributed heavily to the raiding experience as well as Alex Afriasabi (Furor).”
Warcraft’s lore was created largely by Chris Metzen, who also created the typical Warcraft look and style. Metzen himself cites Dungeons & Dragons, the Dragonlance series of novels and Star Wars as the primary inspirations for his fantasy and science fiction creations. No wonder that there are so many prototypical dragons causing all kind of fuss and a Cataclysm in WoW, eh? 🙂
Still, he is a creator “He defines his artistic style as having been heavily influenced by Walt Simonson’s and Jim Lee’s pencilling styles for form while preferring the costuming, themes and general feel of Larry Elmore and Keith Parkinson’s fantasy paintings” (from Wikipedia). As I am a huge fan of Parkinson and know Simonson as well, I cannot really say he copied them at all.
I think it is time that Blizzard finally shows their genuine creator qualities in their upcoming next generation MMO. 😉
They have already shown that they are an inspired bunch, not so much stealing or copying in a shallow way, but expanding upon ideas and indeed polishing the gem till it shines like a proper diamond. Diablo was probably their most innovative product so far, and even then we could argue they just took Dungeon Hack to the next level.
But they did it, and nobody else. It is a bit like blaming Columbus for the trick with the notorious “Egg of Columbus”.
So Warhammer wasn’t in anyway an inspiration for Warcraft you say…….. ?
Tolkien created a complete new world out of old myths and so on. Tolkien described a painting.
Games Workshop actually made that painting in 3d models / minatures / artwork and created a far bigger larger world and lore on top of it. Games Workshop borrowed 10% from tolkien created 90% of their own and put an extra 100 % on top of it (largest lore ever).
Blizzard took like 90 % from Games Workshop (Mainly) and Tolkien and just created 10 % or even less of their own.
I did not say anything like that. You just wanted to point out that Warhammer was a source of inspiration as well.
You are probably right, Warcraft was probably more and better inspired by Warhammer than was the Warhammer Online game!
Yes that was the point exactly.
Allot of things inspired Blizzard to make their creations and Warhammer is most certainly one of those things.
Warhammer in turn got allot from Tolkien and D&D no doubt about it still they did allot to extend their world.
There are no new ideas in fiction, just different ways of telling the same stories.
Stories of cataclysms are prevalent in fantasy novels – this isn’t a story of idea theft, unless you consider all creators of fictional stories to be thieves.
Agreed. There are perhaps some fine lines that get skirted with clear mimicry *coughAlganoncough*, but I’ve never looked at Cataclysm as anything really original. It’s necessary to revitalize WoW, but it’s something that I expected long before they bothered to announce it. I’m not too fussed about the predictable, unoriginal notion of “rocking the world”, I’m interested in the execution.
If there is clear plagiarism involved, the lawyers will sort it out. They love that sort of thing. If there is, may plagues of locusts eat the underwear of the people responsible. If not, let’s just see if Blizzard handles the execution well. Either way, no skin off my nose. *shrug*
Absolutely. I’m sure it’s been said that there are only 7 types of story out there and that everything is variation on a core theme.
Still, regardless of whether Blizzard ripped off REH or not, does it really matter?
If there is copyright law to tangle with, yes. That’s a game for the lawyers, though.
It does look like Howard’s Great Cataclysm was something of an influence on WoW Cataclysm, but I don’t think it encroaches any further than previous elements. Look at Arthas, one of the primary characters in the story. He draws inspiration from tons of fantasy heroes: Elric, Turin Turambar, even Darth Vader.
It’s more a case of inspiration than direct plagiarism. After all, Howard’s Cataclysm was itself inspired by the many examples of mythological and Blavatsky’s theories on lost continents: just another in a long line of apocalyptic events in fiction.
From a U.S. legal point of view, neither trademark nor copyright protect an “idea”. Someone could create a game about a kingdom sending out explorers to investigate magical meridians and then the explorers losing contact (the backstory of M59) without any repercussions. (Standard disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.)
But, really, this is what Blizzard is brilliant at. They take other concepts and synthesize them into a game. Almost every Blizzard game in the past decade has been a variation of an existing game (or a sequel to their own games). As I mentioned on my blog post about innovation vs. polish, Blizzard can apply so much polish because they work with established ideas. They know a particular form of gameplay is going to do well or that a certain story is going to resonate because they’ve seen it work well or resonate in some other form before. I firmly believe that’s Blizzard’s “secret” to their success.
Totally agree. Blizzard make great games but they are not innovative or risk takers. There’s nothing wrong with that though because the product still gives a lot of entertainment.
The interesting question is if Starcraft II and Diablo III manage to suck me in again.
Torchlight, while really good, did not. It is quite similar to Diablo.
I am feeling old, I cannot shake off the feeling that Blizzard is serving the same dish to the next generation. 😛
Hmm, I’d like to agree that they have copied conan here (they have copied about everything else, EQ1, C&C etc), but to me it doesn’t seem to be inspired as much, its closer to the EQ1 to EQ2 change in my mind at least.
The voicer over was the usual cheesy deep throated person from the movies, no where near as good as Akiro with his added eastern mystique.
One thing for certain was that this video was aimed at existing players, things like before and after shots, identifying which race goes with which faction etc all are of interest only to people already familiar with the game, and irrelevant to new players.
I wonder if this heralds a new focus for Blizzard who have up until now aimed the game at new players only since WotLK to the exclusion of all else? If so its an odd way to do so, the expansion doesn’t offer a lot for experienced players since most new content is a new 1-60 alt path and some quite beautiful looking water.
Overall the trailer left me cold, it was too comic book in style and graphics and lacked emotion, I know I’m not a fan of WoW these days, but I can admit when something is good, that was a slickly produced video, but not good.
For something good I’d go for something like this fan made trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQvULPbDG0k its rough at parts, but it somehow tells a story, has beauty and leaves me wanting to be part of it.
On the conan stories though, they are excellent, I’ve read all of Robert E Howards stories, he not only describes a credible world but he describes credible characters too, Conan himself is certainly no knight in shining armour, yet living true as a barbarian he seems sometimes to be so much more.
Robert Jordan wrote some excellent ones too although his are less gritty and more hollywood/heroic fantasy, still very enjoyable. Other then that its a mixed bag, a couple of the authors I remember were plain awful, but many have added some good storylines in.
Just playing the odds but any question that begins with “Did Blizzard borrow…?” can safely be answered “yes.”
As much as I’d like to pin this one Blizz as well, personally I think it’s too broad and well-worn of a topic. As Stabs commented already, the apocalypse is pretty much covered in any religion. Generally just an attention-getter for any followers. “What’s scary? DEATH! Who’ll die? YOU! …If you don’t follow our beliefs that is…”
As for the voice over guy, that’s Chris Metzen. He’s done extensive voice work for Blizzard. He’s Thrall, Nefarious, now he’s King Wrynn, and a handful of voices on at least Starcraft (but I don’t recall him being in either Diablo.) Ironically the only asian voice actor Blizzard used was for Illidan in WC3 and it’s expansion, who they dumped in BC. Might be others, but that’s the only one I know of.
Google Blizzcast 9. His voice is the first you hear saying “Blizzcast. You’re official Blizzard Podcast.” in the same style as the Cata promo. Then you can hear his normal voice as he reads the intro of the Arthas novel. You’ll recognize his voice right away.
You know. I really never thought much about that. But now that you’ve pointed it out. There is a lot of different aspects of WoW Lore that is heavily borrowed from many different Fantasy sources.
I guess the question that will need to be asked is just “How much?”
Great post. Lot’s to think about.
Wow, why do I always get to these great threads about a month late? Apologies. Enjoyed all the discussions above, especially about the “catclysm” events in history. Did other authors borrow from their predecessors? Sure! But what the post talked about mainly was the term “Cataclysm” and the voice-acting being similar. But I agree with the commenter that it seems the same style, even the same voice(s) in voice-acting dominate. It takes an awful lot of “borrowing” to get into court, and even more to prevail. Myself, I’m looking forward to a future decision on the “God of War” case as it goes to these elements. Otherwise, I’ve nothing to add, all the commentators made great points.
Thanks for stopping by Jay!
I just did a search on God of War and I found a case where a couple of designers were suing Sony. It seems they lost the case:
http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/03/judge-declares-peace-over-sonys-god-of-war.html
I’m not sure if this is the case you were referring to.
This is a poor comparison. Not only did Howard envision a cataclysm that changed the world, Tolkien as well had a world shattering cataclysm when Sauron and the island of the Numenorians sank. In fact, most all major fantasy stories, the Wheel of Time, Shannarah, etc etc, ALL OF THEM have a history or theme of the world being broken and rebuilt. A great majority of human myth and legend as well, here in the real world. Atlantis, the biblical flood and the Sumerian flood that the old testament was based on. The fact that the lore of Warcraft is one gigantic genre nod, a celebration of the love for myth and legend, and a gathering place of those ideas, where they are presented in a new way with the great eye only Blizzard has for slickness, it’s silly to think you found some secret connection with Conan the Barbarian.
You’re grasping at arbitrary straws, especially when you think Chris Metzen doing Thrall’s voice in the narration for the Cataclysm trailer in any way is meant to echo that of Mako in Conan the Barbarian.
Wow, from the beginning, has been about gathering all the best parts of myth and legend and reimagining them, with all the best parts of video gaming. Unabashedly so.
How convenient for Irvine, CA and how nice of you to make excuses for them. In other words, let me paraphrase: “We are unashamedly stealing and borrowing everything and anything from all fantasy genre’s and repackaging it for our unsuspecting players — who probably are too lazy to read the classics in the first place — so please don’t call us on any of our theft because we are so bold and blatant about it. But if anyone dares to borrow any of our re-purposed, re-hashed, regurgitated “IP” than we’ll sick the lawyers on you…”
Another glaring oversight in this comparison would be that in the Wacraft Lore, there was already an event similar to this. Over 10,000 years ago in the War of the Ancients, the world of Kalimdor was one massive super continent, like Pangea. In the War, between the Night Elves and the Burning Legion, the land was shattered and scattered apart across the entire planet, leaving the gaping Maelstrom you see on the map of Azeroth in the middle of the ocean.
While this article is a bit old, I think it would be the responsible thing to do to actually point this out and announce your original hypothesis as unlikely. A fantasy story having a second cataclysm hitting a world 10,000 years later if anything is novel, rather than a rehash. It’s unfair for you to judge this based on Howard’s Conan, and wrong to criticize it as plagiarism.
I would suggest that Blizzard/Activision are well inspired by Disney … not so much for content, but rather in rampant borrowing of public domain cultural heritage, high polish, and subsequent stingy legal protectiveness.