Beware, there be spoilers beyond this point!
 
Today, while playing through the dwarven part of the Dragon Age: Origins storyline, I came across something interesting. Besides the obvious things like spells* that work more or less exactly like their World of Warcraft counterparts (Cone of Cold like it's namesake, Living Bomb = Seed of Corruption, for example), there were three encounters that either looked or even played rather similar to existing boss fights in Blizzard's MMO.  
 
* EDIT: Ok, these spells are actually quite generic. I don't play many RPG games anymore, my bad. It wasn't my point anyway.
 
The first one was a room with 4 golems standing in a semi-circle. Approaching them activated them one after the other died. This is very similar to the last chamber before the final boss in Uldaman, although there's no gas to turn off, and the channeling altar is missing.
 
The second one was closer to the original. A long corridor with a line of golems standing along each wall. Stepping past a certain point would activate two of them, so it was required to proceed with care without activating them all by accident. This is almost exactly like the room after the second boss in the Halls of Lightning dungeon introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, where iron vrykul (think vikings) are lined up along the walls, and several of them randomly break lose to attack the group once stepping over certain points.
 
The last one was only by looks, but still quite apparent. A big room with blueish lighting and a pillar in the middle. On that pillar were four faces, one to each side. Approaching them would spawn ghosts, after a while, an anvil would glow. Touching it would inflict damage to the face opposite to the anvil, and the pillar would turn, showing a different face. The actual raid boss works different and only has three faces, but visually, this is similar to the Reliquary of Souls encounter in Black Temple, a high-end raid instance in the older expansion "The Burning Crusade".
 
I thought this was kind of a neat approach to give this roleplaying behemoth some kudos, even more because it's not totally obvious to someone who's not playing WoW a lot.

Beware, there be spoilers beyond this point!
 
Today, while playing through the dwarven part of the Dragon Age: Origins storyline, I came across something interesting. Besides the obvious things like spells* that work more or less exactly like their World of Warcraft counterparts (Cone of Cold like it's namesake, Living Bomb = Seed of Corruption, for example), there were three encounters that either looked or even played rather similar to existing boss fights in Blizzard's MMO.  
 
* EDIT: Ok, these spells are actually quite generic. I don't play many RPG games anymore, my bad. It wasn't my point anyway.
 
The first one was a room with 4 golems standing in a semi-circle. Approaching them activated them one after the other died. This is very similar to the last chamber before the final boss in Uldaman, although there's no gas to turn off, and the channeling altar is missing.
 
The second one was closer to the original. A long corridor with a line of golems standing along each wall. Stepping past a certain point would activate two of them, so it was required to proceed with care without activating them all by accident. This is almost exactly like the room after the second boss in the Halls of Lightning dungeon introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, where iron vrykul (think vikings) are lined up along the walls, and several of them randomly break lose to attack the group once stepping over certain points.
 
The last one was only by looks, but still quite apparent. A big room with blueish lighting and a pillar in the middle. On that pillar were four faces, one to each side. Approaching them would spawn ghosts, after a while, an anvil would glow. Touching it would inflict damage to the face opposite to the anvil, and the pillar would turn, showing a different face. The actual raid boss works different and only has three faces, but visually, this is similar to the Reliquary of Souls encounter in Black Temple, a high-end raid instance in the older expansion "The Burning Crusade".
 
I thought this was kind of a neat approach to give this roleplaying behemoth some kudos, even more because it's not totally obvious to someone who's not playing WoW a lot.

One of the reasons I never bought this is because I see the similarities to WoW too. The UI layout is strikingly similar to the default WoW UI, even their game logos look like a ripoff of the WoW logo designs. WoW DAO
 
Theres so many similarities for it to be coincidence...

" One of the reasons I never bought this is because I see the similarities to WoW too. The UI layout is strikingly similar to the default WoW UI, even their game logos look like a ripoff of the WoW logo designs. WoW DAO  Theres so many similarities for it to be coincidence... "

I disagree. I've been gaming for nearly 20 years and I don't think that just because Dragon Age shares some tired mechanics with WOW (that weren't new by any stretch when WOW did them either btw) is a wink or a nod to Blizzards behemoth. Dragon Age has much more in common with FFXII, KOTOR, and Never Winter Nights than it does with WOW.

The FF12 comparisons don't come often enough. Any game that continues building on the gambit mechanic is good by me, even if the game is literally and brazenly a composite of half a dozen other games.

" I disagree. I've been gaming for nearly 20 years and I don't think that just because Dragon Age shares some tired mechanics with WOW (that weren't new by any stretch when WOW did them either btw) is a wink or a nod to Blizzards behemoth. Dragon Age has much more in common with FFXII, KOTOR, and Never Winter Nights than it does with WOW. "

I also disagree and I think it may have some elements from WoW, but the UI and the names of spells are just DnD or alternative words that still mean the same thing so older players know what they are getting when they jump into it, and the UI has is similar to their older games, it's just alot more streamlined.

Lets all be clear here. Blizzard by and large are not a company full of innovators when it comes to game development.  The one thing that they do excel at, above and beyond their peers is to take pre existing genres and games, look at their design, pull out whats best, scrap what sucks to the point where they have a polished game that you might feel like you have seen before. Mostly because you have. 
 
Blizzard is great at presenting you with what is awesome across similar genres, and leaving you with nothing that sucks.
 
So by extension, DAO isn't really ripping Blizzard off. They're just taking what works in Blizzard games, and making their own twist. 
 
If anything the gameplay in DAO has a more striking resemblance to WOW than individual encounters.

WoW certainly wasn't the first game to have statues that come to life when you walk by them. Alot of people think WoW has done everything first, it's quite the opposite in that WoW has done so well because its copied so heavily from other places.
 
Cone of Cold for example has been used in so many games/films/novels. D&D is where everything seems to originates from.
 
And lets be fair, no ones used the default WoW UI for years anyway!

Oh man, what have I started. I never stated DA:O is "ripping WoW off". It isn't, that's not what my message was. It's also not about "statues coming to life when walking past them", that's nothing new either. Blizzard being an "innovator" would be quite a claim indeed. Maybe I should have left out the stuff about spells, agreed, but I really don't play many other RPG games anymore.
 
However, the three very specific encounters I mentioned feel much like they were inspired by three very specific WoW encounters. When I encountered these three rooms, the first thought I had was "damn, this looks like Uldaman/Halls of Lightning/Reliquary of Souls". Is that a bad thing? No, to me it was pretty clear Bioware had some inspiration in WoW - and why not, since the WoW team was inspired by many great other sources themselves, including D&D.

I think when it comes to the spell names, at least, we should be fair. Most of them are actually from D&D. Cone of Cold, Entangle, all that good stuff. I've got my D&D 3.5 PHB on my laptop, actually, but I don't feel like booting it up. :B

" I think when it comes to the spell names, at least, we should be fair. Most of them are actually from D&D. Cone of Cold, Entangle, all that good stuff. "

I can't read your post because of spoilers but I would have to say that this game on the PC has the WoW action bar but it plays Nothing like WoW in that its actually a tactical experience instead of stand in one place press button 1 2 rinse repeat you have four people to hop back and forth to and getting a working team is vital the game on Normal is no cakewalk but it has an actually story a pretty damn good one at that and MY God the graphics on the PC just look stunning.

" However, the three very specific encounters I mentioned feel much like they were inspired by three very specific WoW encounters. When I encountered these three rooms, the first thought I had was "damn, this looks like Uldaman/Halls of Lightning/Reliquary of Souls". Is that a bad thing? No, to me it was pretty clear Bioware had some inspiration in WoW - and why not, since the WoW team was inspired by many great other sources themselves, including D&D. "

" @mindphlux said:

" However, the three very specific encounters I mentioned feel much like they were inspired by three very specific WoW encounters. When I encountered these three rooms, the first thought I had was "damn, this looks like Uldaman/Halls of Lightning/Reliquary of Souls". Is that a bad thing? No, to me it was pretty clear Bioware had some inspiration in WoW - and why not, since the WoW team was inspired by many great other sources themselves, including D&D. "

I agree with both points here. "

" @ajamafalous said:

" @mindphlux said:

" However, the three very specific encounters I mentioned feel much like they were inspired by three very specific WoW encounters. When I encountered these three rooms, the first thought I had was "damn, this looks like Uldaman/Halls of Lightning/Reliquary of Souls". Is that a bad thing? No, to me it was pretty clear Bioware had some inspiration in WoW - and why not, since the WoW team was inspired by many great other sources themselves, including D&D. "

I agree with both points here. "

I don't think they were necessarily inspired by WoW at all, particularly not artistically; let's face it, DAO and WoW have two very different art styles. I think the only reason you may be thinking that is because most games (DAO and WoW included) rely on Tolkien-esque archetypes for their fantasy settings.
 
So if it seems like they're drawing on the same sources for their material, it's because they probably are. But they aren't drawing from each other. "

" @Cerza said:

" I disagree. I've been gaming for nearly 20 years and I don't think that just because Dragon Age shares some tired mechanics with WOW (that weren't new by any stretch when WOW did them either btw) is a wink or a nod to Blizzards behemoth. Dragon Age has much more in common with FFXII, KOTOR, and Never Winter Nights than it does with WOW. "

I'm not sure what you're trying to say there. "

I'd be more surprised if none of the encounters in DAO were similar to WoW, how many boss encounters does WoW have? 200? 300? No matter how creative one might be, odds are Blizzard has already done it.

In terms of game length, it's nowhere near World of Warcraft. This game is designed with an ending, despite incoming DLCS while WOW is designed to never end because they don't want to stop that monthly income pooling in.