Discworld may have been copied..

[impo]

The new expansion for World of Warcraft is called Mists of Pandaria.

Within the new expansion new races will start within a city that's on top of a giant sea turtle that's been travelling for 10,000 years.

I loved my Discworld growing up and seeing this shocked me!
Are they breaking some type of copyright?

My apologise if this is thread is repeated or in the wrong index.

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[Tonyblack]

Hi impo and welcome to the site.

Actually, the idea of a flat world carried on the back of a turtle is not Terry's invention. It appears in several cultures. World Turtle.

It's even appeared on an album cover for the goup, Santana:



So I don't think there's any breach of copyright involved.

[Bouncy Castle]

I don't know why, but the USS Enterprise suddenly sprang to mind.

[LilMaibe]

Hello, welcome and please resize the pictures.

As Tony said, the idea is far, far, far older than the whole Warcraft-franchise and Discworld-universe combined.

But in the case of Pandaria, you can actually bet that it is a shout-out TO Discworld. (Hey, ever been to Theramore PRE-Cataclysm? Who was one of the quest-NPC there?)

[BaldFriede]

There are many nods towards Pratchett in WoW, not only Samaul Vimes on Theramore Island. I can't remember any specific ones right now, but I do remember that while playing WoW I often had déjà vu experiences regarding Pratchett.

[Who's Wee Dug]

Jason if you have the time do you think you could resize the photo's as they are really stretching the screen.

[Homeless Hublander]

well, even if so, the way to look at it is that discworld (and the idea behind it) is so good that people struggle so much to think up a better universe that they are inexorably drawn towards it (I know that happens to me everytime I try -and fail- to start writing ;D).
cheers,
Hublander.

[raptornx01]

If you remember, even the DW books themselves mention giant turtles that people mistook for islands. "ofcourse, you don't get giant turtles that small"

and lets not forget Morla from The Neverending story.

[rockershovel]

the WoW one seems to have the usual deficiency of "worlds" in such contexts, that they are only a few days' walk across at most.

Tolkien avoids this one by not even pretending that Middle Earth is the whole world or anything near it, and it is also quite large. I've never really been clear of the timescale of Lord of the Rings, but the main action of the book ( as opposed to various events such as Bilbo's party, and Frodo's departure, which are specifically described as being several years either side, I've always had the feeling that the formation of the Fellowship, the Quest itself and the return to the Shire cover a period of about 5 or 6 months.

A lot of fantasy and SF worlds have this problem. Discworld avoids it by being world-sized, in the sense that there are parts of it ( such as the Agatean Empire, Howandaland or Muntab ) which exist as fully-fledged cultures so remote that they have little contact with the main narrative area around the Circle Sea.

[Cool Middle Name]

My god, this looks like the closest thing to a discworld game I have ever seen.
And you say there was a Vimes in Burning Crusades?

[LilMaibe]

The shoutout to Vimes has been there since the original World Of Warcraft (no expansions). He's been a quest-NPC in the city of Theramore. (But looked nothing like Vimes actually)

[SilentAssassin]

Well, at least i aint doing that