Bioware is on the verge of announcing the release date for its first true MMO, Star Wars the Old Republic. If you’re a gamer and not in the loop, you should be as this game is predicted to have nearly 4 million subscribers at launch. The game is currently being shown at Gamescon and will also be at PAX West in Seattle this year.

Forums, blogs, and news articles as of late have really been lighting the internet up with talks of Star Wars the Old Republic being a World of Warcraft clone. I’ve seen many comments related to combat such as “the combat is just like WoW”. Let me shine a little light on this debate.

Currently there are many MMO’s in production that are near release. In general, most of these are going in two different directions as far as combat is concerned. First, you have the new hack and slash or aiming style of Guild Wars 2 and Tera. Secondly, you have games moving away from auto attack completely and depending on the use of abilities. These are essentially the core things when it comes to combat itself. There are other topics related to combat, but don’t actually tie into the combat system itself, such as combat animations and the UI used to select abilities. People get confused between the two quite often, which results in the WoW combat comments.

In some ways combat is similar to WoW. That being that you must select a target, and use an ability to do damage the selected enemy. The one major difference is there are no auto attacks. If any of you raided in WoW like me, I’m sure you were aware that most of the raid damage comes from auto attacks. Star Wars the Old Republic has taken auto attacks out of their game completely. Combat damage will be dependent on abilities only. This isn’t like WoW at all and in reality is different from their combat entirely.

Also, the cover system implemented by SWTOR is night and day compared to the combat in WoW. We get to roll into cover; pop out and attack, then roll back into cover? This is nothing like WoW combat at all. Where are people are seeing this is like WoW combat?

Sure, I get it… you must target something and select an ability. RIFT, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars the Old Republic, and many more MMO’s upcoming all use this portion of combat. That in itself doesn’t mean that combat is a clone of any other game.