World Of Lordcraft ?!?

Well there's a new game out called World of Lordcraft (I use the term new loosely). It is currently in its open beta, which began on March 12th. It appears to be a slightly changed version of Evony, and it appears to be run by the same people. I first noticed the game after seeing an advertisement with the distinct style of an Evony ad that said "Come Play My Lord". My first question after trying it out was "Why haven't these people been sued by Blizzard yet?". My next question was "How much longer until these people are sued by Blizzard?". I'll quickly go over some things that I noticed.

First, the registration page is the same as Evony's registration page, which was ripped off from Runescape's registration page. The next thing I noticed is that on the login screen for World of Lordcraft, we see humans on horses carrying flags with the alliance symbol from WoW, and orcs carrying flags with the horde symbol from WoW.

When you create a character you have two factions to choose from, Alliance and Horde. The alliance consists of  humans, elfs and dwarfs. If you want to be on the horde side then you can create an orc, troll or tauren. The character creation screen also looks rather familiar.

Once you create your character you get to choose where you want to start. Some of the places you get to choose from are: The Barrens, Stranglethorn Vale, Dragonblight, Blasted Lands, Moonglade and Swamp of Sorrows. When looking at the world map in World of Lordcraft you occasionally see these images spread around in between players kingdoms.

There's an interesting post in the World of Lordcraft forums made by an admin that reads:

"Players have been discussing about the source of World of Lordcraft recently. We consider that a statement should be made here to clarify the issue.

    World of Lordcraft should be regarded as a fan game of WoW. All the creators and staff members of this game love WoW and we thank Blizzard for such a brilliant work. WoL is not a replica of WOW. WoW is a MMORPG while World of Lordcraft is only a browser game of building, strategy and simulation. They are totally not the same kind. All the artworks in World of Lordcraft are the original creations of our art team. However, some elements were similar to WoW and some other games. Likewise, WoW also borrowed some elements from Tolkien's novel. We hope that WoL can provide an interesting alternative for those players lacking time for WoW raids and arenas. Or you may also insert a few clicks between raids or wipes in WoW.

    We'd appreciate your support if you like World of Lordcraft and wish you have fun in the game."

 I'm sure Blizzard wouldn't mind having a "fan game of WoW" that used their copyrighted material if there was no money involved, but just like in Evony you can buy in-game currency for real cash. Another interesting thing to note is that World of Lordcrafts terms of service are almost 100% identical to Blizzards. The only things changed is World of Lordcraft replaced the word Blizzard with Thunderstorm Entertainment, Inc and added one section to the bottom which says there are no refunds for the digital items you purchase from them. If you want to compare the two ToS here are the links.

http://www.worldoflordcraft.com/cs/Terms.html

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html

My review of World of Lordcraft would be that it is Evony, except it decided to copy some of the artwork and lore from Blizzard Entertainment. It then decided to claim that everything it copied is owned by Thunderstorm Entertainment (notice the similarity between Blizzard Entertainment and Thunderstorm Entertainment).

In conclusion, /facepalm