I'm sadly disappointed

Koltrane

Mythic has always held my respect as one of the finest development houses in any gaming genre, so when they announced that they were taking over the Warhammer MMO I was thrilled.  Here's a little historical perspective that I think gets lost in the discussion of the current game:

• In 2004, a highly anticipated Warhammer MMO that was being developed by Climax and was to be published by Sega was unceremoniously canceled, leaving many disappointed
• Mythic had just rolled out the popular Catacombs expansion for Dark Age of Camelot and was announcing the Darkness Rising expansion
• Mythic's next big product was an exciting Roman-themed game called Imperator that had generated a huge buzz.
• Mythic was an independent software house at the time

At E3 2005, Mythic announced that they were picking up the mantle of the Warhammer franchise and everyone thought they would have three hits on their hands.  I was among them.  I was a DAoC player and loved the endgame RVR.  Like many, the allure of WOW drew me away, but it never had (and still doesn't have) the pure RVR experience that DAoC offered.

In the year following the announcement, Mythic announced that Imperator was no longer under development.  Valid reasons were given, but for the most part it seems that the company shifted its resources to focus on the WAR franchise offering as its next marquee product.  Then came the EA purchase, which I thought did not portend good things.  EA has an ABYSMAL track record with MMOs, starting all the way back with Motor City Online.  They failed with MCO, Majestic and the Sims Online and killed Earth & Beyond and at least two UO sequels.  When they purchased Mythic, EA effectively doubled their number of MMO titles by adding DAoC to UO, both of which are showing their age and are holding subscribers largely out of nostalgia.  Despite their past successes, neither title is an upwardly bound MMO.  DAoC, for example, has had one expansion since the acquisition.

Still, I was hopeful for the game because the Mythic staff was still the Mythic staff and nobody has better experience with providing a compelling player vs player experience that isn't merely an all out gankfest.  I was certain that Mythic could do with WAR what they had done with DAoC.

Still, I was cautious.  I waited about two weeks to check the buzz and what I heard was largely positive, so I dropped $50 and started playing.  My experience is so much like others on this board that it almost doesn't bear repeating, but I will.

For the first 10-15 levels I was having a ball.  T1 RVR was fun, PVE was progressive and the PQs were amazingly enjoyable when others joined in.  Scenarios were less so for me because of long wait times and what seemed to be stacked opponents, but I still understood the aim.  However, even early on I noticed some troubling trends.  Some PQs were remote and finding public groups was hard if not impossible.  The PQ rewards were nice, but really weren't worth the effort.  When I ventured to the city I found a lot of inactive vendors who could do nothing but dye.  The mail system was atrociously slow ("just a lot of users" I optimistically told myself) and the auction house was flat out broken.  Not that it mattered, because the economy was barely realized.  Few lower level items sold and gold was plentiful, even if there was little to spend it upon.

Gold whisperers were EVERYWHERE.  I diligently reported every last one of them, but continued to get tells because the /ignore didn't work.  A simple fix like barring newly rolled characters from whispering was not implemented although Mythic did seem to do a good job of banning those accounts.  I started crafting and found it to be almost useless.  Crafting was in beta stage at best and even the top level crafted items were not in any real demand.  Travel between world areas felt tacked on...a cut screen rather than an immersive trip a la WOW's flight system or even DAoC's horse routes where the rider actually traveled through the world and saw what was really going on around him.

The worst part was the RVR.  Class balance was far out of whack and battles often became exercises in futility.  Healing classes were woefully underrepresented, at least on my server, and everyone seemed to be going for maximum DPS.  In the few big battles I joined, lag was evident.  Not crippling, but definitely hampering.  I could continue, but I think you all have heard this before.

In my opinion, WAR has EA's fingerprints all over it.  I can see exactly where they were headed but the final product has all the feel of slashed budgets and aggressive deadlines.  Suits at EA who seem to consider the tweaks that differentiate Madden 2008 from Madden 2007 exactly the same as the effort to develop a massive online virtual world certainly decended upon Reston and told Jacobs and his team to cut this class or delay this feature or just give us a product by this date.  I'm no game developer, but I know an unfinished product when I play it.

The game is not compelling to me and I am not going to pay $15/month in the hopes that it will get better.  I still have confidence in the team and Mythic (EA not so much), so I hope the game can be rescued.  Jacobs' recent post makes me think they are doing everything they can, but I'll have to be from Missouri on this one.  Show me the improvement and I'll be back.

Until then I'm just disappointed, and I'm upset that Imperator got the axe to clear the way for this.