Did WoW get inspired by Lord of the Rings?

Baalzharon

Is it only me or were World of Warcraft kinda inspired by The Lord of the Rings?

Back in the golden age of World of Warcraft (yes, Vanilla!); does anyone of you agree with me that it was kinda inspired by LotR? Orcs, Elves, Humans, Trolls, TREES, Hobbits (dwarfs?), the environment. Burning steppes (Mordor?) - Nâzgul (Nefarian, kind of, no?).

The mounts - Orcs with wolves, Humans with horses - I think this was inspired by LoTR though.
The weapons was like the Vanilla ones too. HAWT ONES.
The armor is nice from LoTR, so was the ones in Vanilla; are they the almost same?

I thought about it a long time; the humans actually had a '/silly'-joke about the movie LoTR (or related):

Do you disagree or do you agree?

SaunZ

Classic was inspired by LOTR... nobody knows about Retail

Sz 

Vrika

Warcraft took much more inspiration from Warhammer than from Lord of the Rings.

Warhammer took a lot from the Lord of the Rings, so in that sense Warcraft is influenced by Lord of the Rings. When you get down to it, all the western fantasy writings influence each other a lot. Writers and storytellers don't operate in a vacuum, they always loan a lot of the existing stuff and just put a new spin on it.

Rusque

LOTR created the modern fantasy genre. 

Albatroes

Lol you really believe Tolkien created the concept of elves/dwarves and everything else synonymous with 'modern' fantasy? Think again.  These concepts date way back to various religious mythos like Norse/Greek/Celtic etc.

Wow takes from everything though tbh. Hell even in legion they took from megaman calling npcs Bass and Treble.

Iselin

The clue about its inspiration is in the 2nd W and that W was inspired by Warhammer which they tried to license but couldn't so they did a clone instead.

Arglebargle

Albatroes said:

Lol you really believe Tolkien created the concept of elves/dwarves and everything else synonymous with 'modern' fantasy? Think again.  These concepts date way back to various religious mythos like Norse/Greek/Celtic etc.

Wow takes from everything though tbh. Hell even in legion they took from megaman calling npcs Bass and Treble.

Well yeah.  The modern template for slim sylvan and high elves, the doughty underground dwarf, etc, was pretty much pulled from LOTR.  Norse elves and dwarves are far different.  Svartalf aren't even always differentiated.   Of course, Tolkien, a scholar of ancient folklore, adapted the concepts to his own needs.  It became the main popularizer for tons of ongoing adaptions in modern fantasy.  So yeah.   

Relampago

Vrika said:

Warcraft took much more inspiration from Warhammer than from Lord of the Rings.

Warhammer took a lot from the Lord of the Rings, so in that sense Warcraft is influenced by Lord of the Rings. When you get down to it, all the western fantasy writings influence each other a lot. Writers and storytellers don't operate in a vacuum, they always loan a lot of the existing stuff and just put a new spin on it.

This.

Kyleran

Albatroes said:

Lol you really believe Tolkien created the concept of elves/dwarves and everything else synonymous with 'modern' fantasy? Think again.  These concepts date way back to various religious mythos like Norse/Greek/Celtic etc.

Wow takes from everything though tbh. Hell even in legion they took from megaman calling npcs Bass and Treble.

Just as Blizzard/WOW did not create the MMORPG genre, but did make it popular among the masses and set many standards for the genre (some we're still trying to recover from), Tolken/LOTRO set the standard for the modern fantasy genre and inspired much of what we have today.

To state otherwise is being contrarian just for the sake of it.

Thane

Vrika said:

Warcraft took much more inspiration from Warhammer than from Lord of the Rings.

Warhammer took a lot from the Lord of the Rings, so in that sense Warcraft is influenced by Lord of the Rings. When you get down to it, all the western fantasy writings influence each other a lot. Writers and storytellers don't operate in a vacuum, they always loan a lot of the existing stuff and just put a new spin on it.

you don't invend a 2nd wheel. you roll with what you know, pretty accurate.
and for games, especially if dealing with investors, you actually have a bloody hard time doing something new ^^

a) it actually has to be good
b) you have to convince your money givers that it actually IS good.
and c) quite frankly, how can you know what the masses concider good. the masses are a bunch of a... "individuals"

uh and for the record, tolkien had inspirations too usualy those go into folklore tho

ChicagoCub

This reminds me of the Ali G episode where he travels to all the major publishing houses and tries to sell them on a book version of the Lord of the Rings movies.