Originally Posted by Jorp

For those of you hating on derivatives - don't ever take any kind of medication or use any of the technology you take for granted. Ignorant mother uckers.

Originally Posted by Hoss

Here's some cliff's notes for ya.

Shadowknights are mathemticians

Tolkein is the father of of the mathematical derivative

If Tolkein were alive today, he'd be a deathknight playing WOW.

There is nothing new under the sun, and there never has been. Even the first time a word was spoken, it was stolen from an earlier thought.

Conjurers suck.

Did I miss anything?

Originally Posted by Uilamin

tolkien was derived from from primarily norse mythology

at least the elves, dwarves, the diety structuring (including the good/evil interaction with worldly creatures), orcs and goblins parallel with black elves, heck even wizards almost mirror the minor gods who walked amongst men (Odin). So while Tolkien created the fantasy genre he had strong roots from Norse Mythology in the creation of a lot of his world

Originally Posted by Elitherea

All fantasy material is essentially derived from Tolkien's work, whether anyone would want to admit that or not. There's an almost-exact archetype for every race and class in every STRICT fantasy MMO (so yes, excluding Warhammer, it's equally derivative on a large scale but does include some original classes like witch hunter) somewhere in the Ring trilogy, The Hobbit, or The Silmarillion.

And Tolkien was derivative of no one, so as far as originality, I'd say EQ1 was definitely the first MMO to steal every single one of its ideas from Tolkien. Personally I don't mind, beats the hell out of whatever crazy shit they might have come up with on their own. I mean, at least we're not chasing around mechanical creatures built by gnomes or anything.