Realm of Magic: Hogwarts?

"DaWaterRat;c-17215956" wrote:
. . . Maybe because I also think of the Bazaar on Daeva as a Goblin Market, even though that's technically a Demon (short for Dimension Hopper) market. (Real old fiction reference there... )

Sweet! Someone else who read the old "Myth" books by Robert Aspirin. Those were a lot of fun! :) I still pull some of them out now and then when I'm in the mood for a light read.

I think that the 'resemblance' to the Harry Potter series is kind of relative. Myself, I do indeed get a 'Harry Potter' feel from the RoM trailer. (As I did with the witches/wizards in TS3 as well.) It depends on your point of reference. I see some people looking at it in a way that I consider to be very literal -- does the magic world have a boarding school that looks like a huge castle, etc. I don't need specific set pieces to match up to feel that it draws from that series/setting myself.

Did Rowling create the various elements that made up Harry Potter? No, as many have said, she mostly drew upon existing lore. But putting all of those elements together into one setting and making it all work in a particular way -- that was definitely Rowling's creativity and unique take on things. When I was a kid (this may be somewhat an age thing too -- I grew up with "pre-Potter" imaginings of what magic was), wands were used as props by stage magicians and waved around by fairy godmothers to leave artful trails of glitter, but they weren't really a major element of spellcasting in most mainstream storytelling. Likewise, brooms were fanciful things ridden by the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz and used in Halloween decorations, but weren't really a thing in most fantasy/magic stories until the Potter series brought them into the mainstream.

My earlier concepts of fantasy magic came from book series like the Xanth series by Piers Anthony, the aforementioned Myth books by Robert Aspirin, the Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist, the Belgariad by David Eddings as well as D&D style role-playing settings - those are of few of the ones I remember more clearly. (Yes, I'm an older Simmer, and I read a lot of books.) More recently I'd probably cite urban fantasy like The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher as a modern example of fantasy magic.

So when I look at the RoM trailer, I see the overall similarity to the "Potter-inspired" modern magic style. There's a literal 'hidden world' accessed via a magic portal (IE platform 9 3/4 and/or the entrance to Diagon Alley), there's a school of sorts where magic is taught (nevermind it not being a fully-fleshed-out boarding school -- a detail, IMO), looks like wands (maybe?) and brooms, a 'magic market' similar to Diagon Alley, etc. That's all a very recent sort of modern-take on magic in my thinking. Again -- the elements have all been around for ages, but putting them all together in this way, not so much. (For those of us born pre-Potter, anyway.)

So that's why I would definitely say it seems inspired by Harry Potter and similar modern themes. I see it pretty strongly, but I have a point-of-reference rooted in things a bit more like the "Mythic Europe" setting of Ars Magica. (An RPG from a little ways back.)