The Role of MMORPGs

First off, this might come across as a rant, but it's not. Not really. But for some reason, I feel the need to explain my fantasy stories thus far. The action. The adventure. The monsters. The wands.

This is all coming about from the common feedback I get from my stories. Described as fast-paced, immersive, and adventure-filled, yet again and again references are made to one famous middle-grade/YA fantasy series. "It owes a lot to such-and-such series," reviewers say.

I'm here to say I don't owe anything to such-and-such series. Did I read it? Sure. Did I model my world off it? Absolutely not. Want to know what I did model my world off of? World of Warcraft. Global warming. And the power of the ancient sources of language.

So I'm here to say, once and finally:

• Wands have been used by magic users for centuries and are used by magic-using classes in every MMORPG I've played. Same for swords. They play a minor role in my story, and I placed them there because druids today use wands and because spell casters in almost every game you'll play carry a wand. Not because wands were discussed at length in such-and-such series.
• Kids go to school. They go to school in almost every contemporary children's fiction book I've read, fantasy or not. Big difference between my book and such-and-such book? The school in my books is not the major setting. It is a very minor setting, unlike many middle-grade and YA books.

So what's gonna happen now? Who knows. Maybe I'll pull the wands, maybe I won't. But it's just a shame that for some readers, the fact that every wizard in the UK had a wand makes that series somehow the source of wand lore, even though it isn't. It taints every world since that has even mentioned the object in passing.