Of all the annoying hip Internet terms that I have come across, "WoW Clone" is probably the one that I dislike the most. After all, it is not only inaccurate, but shines light on the fact that many gamers are slowly becoming nothing but parrots when it comes to their opinions about a game.

If you want to call a game a "WoW Clone," you need to look at what you are implying. You are trying to say that a game is an exact copy, or at the least a very close copy, to the very popular MMORGP called "World of Warcraft." Why are many gamers saying this about many new games that are out/coming out soon/in testing?

1) The UI is similar: The UI is simply the layout of the controls for the game. If you have a game with a hot-bar, a mini-map (radar) and a health bar, you are accused of being aWoW Clone. Funny, though, how many games share this UI, albeit in a slightly different arrangement. Also, most games with a standard UI allow the player to adjust the UI into whatever form he or she wants it to be in.

2) The advancement is similar: You get a quest, complete that quest and turn it in for experience. Later on in levels you might group with friends and go to a dungeon. Funny how many games have this very similar path of advancement, and very similar activities, without being called a clone.

3) The setting is the same: Orcs and Elves? WoW didn't invent that. In fact, most of the items being "cloned" from WoW were already in existence, in some form, well before WoW had been released.

4) The Cloned game uses the same yellow question marks and exclamation points as WoW does: This development was simply a finer construction of something that did exist in a few games already. Even if WoW was the first to popularize it, it is simply a tool or a better communication from the game to the player. By this logic, you should get upset at any game when they use any newly discovered quicker route (or smoother, or shinier) to anything. The next time your MMO takes on some new network code to make the game more lag-free, call it a Clone.

Actually, by all this logic, all western novels, science fiction movies and Hip Hop songs are clones of each other. After all, they use the same method of delivery for their content, communicate their ideas in the same ways, and are based in the same universes.

The problem with using "clone" as a quick way of describing a game is that it simply ignores all the nuances and subtleties that make the game unique. You would never treat two people that happened to look similar as the same person, so why do it with games?

A recent victim of this horrible shorthand is Allods Online, a Russian import that is currently in closed beta. Luckily for me (and others) the community managers and developers have been very open to criticisms and other communications from the very beginning. I asked for some beta keys to give away, and they gave me beta keys. I asked them a question on Twitter, and they gave me an answer. They are doing something right with the community, for sure.

But, to break it down, Allods is no WoW Clone. It's art-style is actually closer to Warhammer Online meets EVE meets The Chronicles of Spellborn , but that doesn't stop some people from saying "They have ORCS! Just like WoW!"

Yes, the game is a F2P game, completely. And yes, this might mean (actually, it does mean it about 80 percent of the time) that you will be performing plenty "kill ten rats" quests. And yes, it does have certain classes that arefamilar.

But within those parameters are fantastic details that will only be noticed by those that are not distracted by it's few similarities to other games.

For example, my Orc Shaman has a little goblin pet that acts more like a hunter's pets, and many of my hits are based off of how hard I can swing something, rather that how good I know my magic.

The architecture is very Russian which is a very nice change of pace, and even the music echoes this.

Then, you get into the weirdness of the Astral space, something that my little level 7 has not yet experienced. From what I gather (I never just read forum posts or websites in preparation for a review..I simply gain information from inside the game and report what I find) the planets or areas that we adventure on are a lot likeSpellborns' floating rock-areas, chunks of civilization floating around in a murky muck of space-magic.

And within that space sail the Astral Ships, great big beautiful and well-rendered (yet remarkably easy on the processor) space boats that groups of 5 players literally control, each member of the team with their own job. In this way, the game reminds me of Puzzle Pirates, an amazingly low-flying and surprisingly under-credited little game that is the only game to ever come close to actual multi-player ship controls andPvP.

The whole game is beautiful, actually, although I can admittedly see how a well-worn MMO'ers set of eye's could mistake it for something they have seen before.

And maybe that's the problem? Maybe what we have here is a case of a beautiful game that is just similar enough in less ways than more to other games that is fires off an inaccurate, yet completely deceiving, feeling of familiarity?

In other words, the players that are calling Allods a "WoW Clone" have played way, way too many games. There are subtleties at work here, beautiful little nooks and crannies that should be explored and enjoyed without the influence of the noise of the MMO universe. Give this game a chance, without worrying about the few things in it that remind you of something else. There is more to it than that.

But, how does it fare when it comes to accessibility?

Well, I once asked Stephen (head writer for Able Gamers) to help me figure out what I should look for in a game to see if it might be disabled-friendly. His answer was not what I expected. He told me that the controls are not so important as how the game communicates with the player. A player with one hand can control almost any standard MMO, especially if it has adjustable key-bindings, but if the game cannot be seen because of color blind issues, or if all the voice acting is done without sub-titles, then thousand of players are left out.

So, yes, the game has decent key-bindings that can re-mapped and re-configured. I would say that it is not as adjustable as D and D online (everything is re-mappable in that one!) but is about as adjustable as World ofWarcraft, EQ2 or LotRO . You can run by holding down right and left click, can click to move or can use standard WASD or arrow movements. Or, you can remap movement keys to any almost anything.

Chatting within the game is standard and worked with a standard Windows Virtual Keyboard, but you will more than likely turn off the chat within minutes of logging in, being that the chat topics are usually a clone-copy of WoW's.

Targeting will be an issue for colorblind players. Quests show up on the map as green check marks, and targets glow bright red. Health meters are in red, without any solid lines around them. I am still shocked when I see these basic color blind issues in modern dayMMO's, being that I have never met a developer team without at least one color blind member. At least make a toggle, developers!

All quests are in text, with hardly any voice acting besides the standard greetings.

The greatest thing about this review is how complete this game is, how shiny it is at this stage in the game. Granted, it is well established in Russia, but there are hardly any translation issues and everything works as it should.

Overall, it is a fun game. Will there be some typical F2P grinding and repetitiveness in higher levels? I imagine so. But the setting, Lore and character design are unique enough to give you something to gawk at and to want to immerse yourself in. I am also glad to see yet another F2P title that shows how the F2P market is going to be the main NA market very soon.

Go get Allods, it is in closed beta but keys are easy enough to find. Pretty quickly I will bet that you see that Allods is by far not a WoW clone.