I have no clue what the person above me is talking about but you can count me among the few 100 thousand that are playing Warhammer and love it to death We learned that PvP needs to be part fo the very core of a successful mmorpg ( imho ).
The mentioned 300k subscribers in the latest EA report are highly highly questionable!
As if they do, then more then 250k of them must reside on the US servers. And I somehow highly doubt that.
Because when it comes to EU. WAR pretty much has failed misserably here. It already had back in January when me and many friends threw the towel in the ring and quit.
Back then there were already only a mere handful decent populated servers left.
So my guess is, and EA is notorious for it. These 300k figures is not only active subs, but all counted created trial accounts all together to make it look better and come up with these numbers.
Cheers
I wouldn't go that far. You have to remember they started their RaF campaign shortly before this period so that will have gotten them some extra subs. They also released in Russia in the meantime so that will have gotten them some more subs as well.
The previous areas will probably still have declined somewhat by the numbers Russia brought them.
Hard to say really. I still don't think they're growing, if only by the reports that even the populated servers mostly hit medium now and hardly ever high anymore. Considering WAR has been in a MMO "Dead space" as far as new MMO releases are concerned for the last 6 months (discounting Wotlk) it could look really bad for WAR when new MMO's start coming out.
Yeah Russia might have given them some extra subs (it's a pretty big country afterall).
But Europe is pretty much finished.
I just read the shocking news on Warhammer Alliance that the EU RP Server Burlok is going to be closed down!
It was one of the handfull servers left back in January when I quit that actually still had a decent population.
Just adding even more insult to injury really. Pretty sad.
I got a few good months out of WAR, but I think I'm done with it.
So, what were some specific flaws in WAR that finally led me to quit?
1. Poor game world design.
This is number one. At first blush, it's not too bad. Enjoyable enough for a while. However, the flaws became more evident the longer I played.
Zone design is inconsistent. Some zones are nice and some a horrid.
The non-congruous map layout is just a fail, for this and any MMO. WoW's visual zone transitions can be a bit jarring, but even given that, the ability to explore and travel a patchwork world with few breaks ends up being more immersive. In WAR, the linear, race paired, load screen connected map design ruins any illusion that you are playing in an immersive virtual world.
Then you get to the individual zones themselves. Each zone is split between the races in the pairings and highly segregated. Terrain barriers limit the ability to cross from one side to the other. With the exception of a few competitive Public Quest areas and the RvR lakes content is exclusive to one faction or another.
I much prefer games where you run across players from the other faction fairly often while questing and may even have quests with similar goals. I hate to keep going back to WoW, but I loved the competitiveness between factions in places like STV, Desolace, etc... The starter zones aren't shared, but the further along you get, the more the content balance for each zone edges toward even. That's the model I definitely prefer.
BTW, even though the Mythic world designers had a much more impressive collection of assets and technical capabilities to work with than we saw in DaoC, they somehow managed to make a game that pales in comparison on many fronts. DaoC made the most of it's limitations. WAR left mountains of potential untapped. The lack of creativity and visual appeal is just dumbfounding.
2. Poor variation in itemization.
Little variation in appearance with in any given level range for your career. Little variation in item stats. Overly restrictive in weapon types each class can yield and absolute class restrictions on armor that can be worn.
I hate it all. I just don't like games that force you to wear a specific class costume and wield a specific class weapon.
3. Poor variation with in each class.
On paper, you have options. Three (though highly linear) skill trees. Renown traits. Tactics. However, in the end, it just doesn't feel like you are any different than everyone else in your class. I know it's the current trend in MMOs, give the illusion of options, while in reality making variations minimal to ease class balancing. However, as a player, it's just plain frustrating.
4. Unimaginative class design.
At the concept stage, I shouldn't be able to say this about WAR. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of cool concepts gave way to mediocre implementation. They all play just like generic MMO classes. Also, what happened to the hype about having some truly unique and entertaining skills for each class? Things that would continue to give you a chuckle or have you saying "Well, you don't see that in other MMOs". All that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Compounding the overall design issues is the inability to change weapons and tactics during combat. Combat might actually have been dynamic and fun with out those restrictions.
5. "The game has no soul".
How else can I put it. The game has little sense of humor. Little sense of drama. Little sense of struggle. Little sense of immersion. Few memorable vistas. Few memorable enemies. Few memorable monsters. Few memorable treasures. It's just cola with out the fizz. A flat, lifeless experience.
6. Poor approach to Live and Holiday events.
Now, this may seem nit picky to some, but I have a lot of pleasant memories from other MMORPGs related to holiday and other special live events. Cool atmospherics, fun little tasks and simple little rewards. Fun.
WAR's holidays are horrible and the live event designers seem to be sadists at heart. I want events where I can run my alts through the content, collect my fun rewards and enjoy the experience. Not events that require a full time commitment to complete with just one character in a process that is more frustration than fun.
The recent live events have taken the cake, continually creating bottlenecks in RvR zones that quickly were dominated by camping and ganking.
That was my final straw.
They had the money, the tools and the manpower. However, it seems that creativity was squashed at every step of development and managable mediocrity was the ultimate design goal.
Less creative and dynamic MMORPGs are easier to manage and balance, but it's the lack of creativity and dynamic game play that is killing the genre.
I played WAR for about 3 weeks and quickly became bored.
Basically for me, a game like WAR which is focused on PVP and has very bland / boring world pve content isnt enough to keep me interested. Most MMOs I've played have much more depth then WAR has.
Thankfully I got out when I did and returned to WoW, which in my opition makes most other MMOs look bad.
I just unsubbed myself. The latest fiasco which is the Land of the Dead, shows how little Mythic has learned in one year of release. No balancing for classes, no other capital cities being opened (4 were closed after beta), no distinct zones for each race (they share zones).
The game is more focused on PvP and the grind than it first appears. Pairing a "renown" rank system with a level system just intensifies the grind scenario. You must literally grind up to level 35 (at which point you can then go over the level cap for renown), and do all this in non-stop scenarios that don't come (unless you play on a populated and popular server), participate heavily in the various tier lakes (rvr areas for 10 lvl incriments), and of course the PvE content is mostly only there to aid in the PvP. Most of the end game Raid content can only be done with some sort of renown or RvR influence gear.
The totally generic attitude towards class selection and race choice for the Warhammer Universe is such a poor choice. To choose the Orc/dwarf, human/chaos and elf/dark elf pairings is completely generic and is repeated in most MMOs today. They could not even afford a third realm, or even a monster race (skaven, lizardmen, etc).
The game choices in leveling are limited as the only path is the AOE path for most classes. Everyone ends up with the same skills, same abilities and same equipment in the end. One side is completely OP'd over the other, and while that fact is hotly debated, the sheer amount of disarms, knockdowns, stuns; that one side has in true abilities (not moral) is ridiculous.
For a company that produced a wonderful RvR game with plenty of options and unique class choices in Dark Age of Camelot to go to this poor choice of a game, is unbelievably stupid. To add in more content w/o fixing what is currently wrong is ignorant. To ignore the community and just go ahead with a set plan irregardless is pure idiocy. Exploits galore (cough *outer door keep bypass* cogh), GCD bug (blaming it on lag), No real distinguishing features, and to release a Darkness Falls esque zone after 1 year, and to stifle balance changes in favor of that zone, I'll take my money elsewhere.
I can't say I learned anything. It was a mediocre game that kept me entertained for about a month, and a paying customer for two. It did a lot to fuel my hatred of the new generation of MMO gamers, though. Noone wants to do anything just for fun anymore. It's all a race to advance your character, and anything that doesn't serve that purpose is a waste of time.
That's not the game's fault, and not unique to Warhammer Online, but I'm not playing another MMO that doesn't have a solid framework for social interaction, and overall goals that encourage community building rather than individualism. WAR looked good in this regard on paper, but somehow manages to feel more dead and deserted than older games with an average of 300 people online at a time.
Trying Free Realms now, strangely addicting. Seems to offer more than just standard MMO fare with mini games like chess, kart racing and my current fave, demolition derby.
Well, I know something that I reaffirmed since played my "month" of this game. Whatever EA touches turns to crap. It's true. Which is why I hold no hope of SWTOR to actually be any good (EA + Lucas Arts = <shudders at the thought of how much EPIC FAIL that combo could come up with>).
1. You can knock out a pretty decent game and you get forum trolls telling every one how really bad it is even when they haven't played it all.
2. I love the game, and have played it from launch, but parts of it are souless I am forced to agree.
3. Two enemies are not as good as three (DAoC three realms was better).
4. Three "pairing" sounds like a good idea rather than the normal "linear" zones, but it diluted content too much I fear.
5. You can balance you classes as much as you like (and they have done a pretty good job) but player number imbalance with always results in zergs; for God's sake spawn some NCP to balance the number a bit.
6. Again they have done a good job and not getting players stunning and killed in two seconds but again AOE is going to cause you lag lag lag lag -hopefully the new patch will sort that one out.
7. You can listen to your players and try really hard to please them - oh and they are still going to be pissed off
8. You can come up with a host of brilliant ideas that are implemented well (PQs, open groups, Tomb of Knowledge), excellent homour, good art work) but people are going to forget all that when a instance goes toes up and the players don't get the loot.
9. Players are getting bored far quicker and want much higher standards than they did before.
10. Finally, you have player population number two in the genre (open to debate I know) and still be class a failure because WoW has more subscribers. Sad isn't it?
1. You can knock out a pretty decent game and you get forum trolls telling every one how really bad it is even when they haven't played it all. 2. I love the game, and have played it from launch, but parts of it are souless I am forced to agree. 3. Two enemies are not as good as three (DAoC three realms was better). 4. Three "pairing" sounds like a good idea rather than the normal "linear" zones, but it diluted content too much I fear. 5. You can balance you classes as much as you like (and they have done a pretty good job) but player number imbalance with always results in zergs; for God's sake spawn some NCP to balance the number a bit. 6. Again they have done a good job and not getting players stunning and killed in two seconds but again AOE is going to cause you lag lag lag lag -hopefully the new patch will sort that one out. 7. You can listen to your players and try really hard to please them - oh and they are still going to be pissed off 8. You can come up with a host of brilliant ideas that are implemented well (PQs, open groups, Tomb of Knowledge), excellent homour, good art work) but people are going to forget all that when a instance goes toes up and the players don't get the loot. 9. Players are getting bored far quicker and want much higher standards than they did before. 10. Finally, you have player population number two in the genre (open to debate I know) and still be class a failure because WoW has more subscribers. Sad isn't it?
I really have to disagree on #6. You die way faster in WAR to focus fire than in any other MMO out. You are right however in a sense you aren't stunned as much but replace the word stuns with knock downs, and then theres the fact the both sides have a class the can fetch your ass withs is pretty much dead in 2 seconds and also STUNS!!!. The funny thing about WAR is its the only MMO that the higher in level I got the worse the game got. Every class in WAR either has a knock down, stun, fetch or I even forgot LOCK DOWN. I will agree the yes its not one rogue stun locking you but it is worse because every class in the game has one or the other and it is usually what gets you killed the most in T4.
There are a couple things I learned. While I agree that it didn't end up being as great as it could. Two things stand out.
PvP in open areas can be more fun that I thought. Having quests that go into PvP areas and stuff was an interesting turn. For someone like me that enjoys PvE to have certain areas for PvP and quests that take you there makes things interesting. I liked that.
Public Quests. Could they have been done better? Probably.. but you can't deny it's one of the first real inovations to come to MMOs in a long time. I had a lot of fun with them, it brought people together to achieve a certain task. It was just fun, I think and hope it will be included in my MMOs to come.
the game had some much potential...but it was lost at RvR the article written here put it best...I beleive it was titled "The MMO litmus test" where it explained why RvR is still going stong in DAoC and how it is lacking in WAR...Renown is different from Realm points....and by god they screwed them selves over...because (as the article states) it is no longer Realm VS Realm..its Realm VS envrioment....the renown is bad.....I don't want to play Keep Tag online....all I wanted (and i think many others too) was an updated Version of DAoC with better PvE (public quests) and the same RvR....but no dice my friends...
This is coming from someone who got caught up in hype and now admits that War has failed in my eyes....
The mistake with WAR is they made a world that doesn't feel very connected shoving you off in to Tiers. WAR should have been a seamless world or at least made up of a few huge instance free zones for open world PVP over territorial control so the front line is always changing. Tier territorial control feels disconnected and gets repetitive fast. In other words WAR should have been developed like DarkFall, but of course with a much bigger budget and far more talented artiest and programmers. How Darkfall works would have been perfect for WAR. Just a case of go with skill system or level.
The mistake with WAR is they made a world that doesn't feel very connected shoving you off in to Tiers. WAR should have been a seamless world or at least made up of a few huge instance free zones for open world PVP over territorial control so the front line is always changing. Tier territorial control feels disconnected and gets repetitive fast. In other words WAR should have been developed like DarkFall, but of course with a much bigger budget and far more talented artiest and programmers. How Darkfall works would have been perfect for WAR. Just a case of go with skill system or level.
When i first played darkfall, the "look" of the world was very similar to mythic's creations. That somewhat dark medieval setting. I laughed to myself thinking that i bet the guys at mythic woulda wished that they came up with darkfall. With the art style and all and, oh noes, a responsive game engine! Darkfall's engine with a warhammer designed world and mythic's orvr concept with an open world??
the game had some much potential...but it was lost at RvR the article written here put it best...I beleive it was titled "The MMO litmus test" where it explained why RvR is still going stong in DAoC and how it is lacking in WAR...Renown is different from Realm points....and by god they screwed them selves over...because (as the article states) it is no longer Realm VS Realm..its Realm VS envrioment....the renown is bad.....I don't want to play Keep Tag online....all I wanted (and i think many others too) was an updated Version of DAoC with better PvE (public quests) and the same RvR....but no dice my friends...
This is coming from someone who got caught up in hype and now admits that War has failed in my eyes....
...Sooooo much potential.....so much
Your record is outdated and broken :P
"Keep Tag online" you're describing here belongs to the first 6 months of the game, when people were learning out of a bad habit called scenarios.
The only occasion of Realm vs environment is virtually when a realm wants to capture the enemy capital city. Then you have to populate some instances with players to fight against defending players and manage to create few without defenders to gain VP by winning PQs inside the city.
In my eyes, your chant doesn't sound like coming form someone that has participated into a coordinated 6-8 warband conquest (those are quite common in our server these days, Order side. Destro had theirs for about 2 months, their reign stopped about a month ago)
All my observation is from Eltharion (EU) only, can't tell how it's on other servers.
the game had some much potential...but it was lost at RvR the article written here put it best...I beleive it was titled "The MMO litmus test" where it explained why RvR is still going stong in DAoC and how it is lacking in WAR...Renown is different from Realm points....and by god they screwed them selves over...because (as the article states) it is no longer Realm VS Realm..its Realm VS envrioment....the renown is bad.....I don't want to play Keep Tag online....all I wanted (and i think many others too) was an updated Version of DAoC with better PvE (public quests) and the same RvR....but no dice my friends...
This is coming from someone who got caught up in hype and now admits that War has failed in my eyes....
...Sooooo much potential.....so much
Your record is outdated and broken :P
"Keep Tag online" you're describing here belongs to the first 6 months of the game, when people were learning out of a bad habit called scenarios.
The only occasion of Realm vs environment is virtually when a realm wants to capture the enemy capital city. Then you have to populate some instances with players to fight against defending players and manage to create few without defenders to gain VP by winning PQs inside the city.
In my eyes, your chant doesn't sound like coming form someone that has participated into a coordinated 6-8 warband conquest (those are quite common in our server these days, Order side. Destro had theirs for about 2 months, their reign stopped about a month ago)
All my observation is from Eltharion (EU) only, can't tell how it's on other servers.
That's funny, because for me, on a US server, RvR has been nothing but "keep tag" the past few months.
At first, it seemed recent changes would make zone control a higher priority, but when people saw how much work and then time waiting around was often needed to flip a zone, they mostly stopped bothering with BOs entirely and returned Keep Swaps to the top priority.
The only time people will attempt to flip the zone is if the other contributing factors are already overwhelmingly in your side's favor. Good luck trying to get people to organize into strong groups for scenarios and side groups to push PQs.
Also, denial tactics are becoming more common. If your side controls everything, but needs scenario wins to flip, very often the other side will just boycott scenarios for that pairing. Since Domination Points from keeps require you to hold the keep for a good length of time, it just reinforces keep swaps. Too few people have the patience to sit and defend all the keeps for an hour or two, but it's easy to recruit a WB to snag a lightly defended keep.
I don't know what they can do different. Changes that seemed constructive on paper have either had little impact or made things worse. I think the two faction model was just a fatal flaw.
I don't know how they could have arranged the races into three factions, It might have required some different race choices.
I never played the table top game, but I saw it played a number of times while playing MTG at local hobby shops. I seem to remember one of the players telling me that you could have matches between say Empire and Dwarves, even though both were considered "Good" races. Three factions may have made the difference for WAR.
I don't know what folks are whinig about I'm having a fricking blast.....and I'm not alone PT has been packed lately.
can you imagine what it would be like if it was actually Full/High packed instead of the Med/Med you seem to feel is "packed" ?
You mean like Darkfall packed? ROTFLMFAO!
Yeah and having Jeri Ryan serve me Guinness topless would be awesome too, but honestly you can cry about anything not being good enough there is a crap load of people on PT right now playing their asses off, last night I was up till 3:00 am and RVR was kicking how much better does it need to be?
Whats really funny is with LotD out now, there are no zone flips. Nobody is taking the time to try and flip a zone, it seems its much easier to just do the blue quests and kill people as you see them. I'm strongly debating uninstalling it as I'm already unsubbed as of the 22nd.
Until the gameplay changes dramatically (other capital cities, races, classes....something), I see no reason to resub. The game has become a level/renown grind with the same button mashing as you face the same enemies time and again. The same strategies always work, people take the game WAY too seriously, and after going to 40 twice and exploring every facet of all the lands, I see little reason to keep going.
The new changes are excessive, its like they have made the game so that once you hit t3, they hold your hand to ease you into t4 as quickly as possible (gunbad changes, epic quest line, LotD access).
Even the gold spammers are realizing there is little market in the game. Its really sad when you can't even get gold spammers to play your game.
I learned not to get so hyped over a new MMO. You just end up back in wow anyway, so why bother.
The mmo damned. Cursed to walk the virtual earth in their eternal quest for fulfullment that would never come. New content is sucked dry and scattered across the barren landscape, the withered husks of hopeful developers testement to the appetite that would never be slaked.
Scenarios ruined the game. Take out the scenarios, and you will have functioning game. And make PVE quests in contested areas
Remember when they shutdown beta for a few months because too many people were playing scenarios instead of the world? Good thing they fixed that problem...Oh wait.....
What do we want? Warhammer is a beautiful game with many original features..but by general consensus it is still lacking something..or else the population would not be decreasing. I have not played the game for 2 months and although I had some great times, I did not feel that 'addictive' quality that I have felt in other games. Is it the community that is lacking? Is it the lack of end game content? Is it poorly balanced?
Is it too easy? I am only bothering to post this because I have seen what they can do. The best gaming moments of my life have been courtesy of Mythic, but I feel they could have done better with WAR. I think they tried too hard to cater for everyone, but if I put it like the kid in the fairy tale..The Emporer isn't wearing any clothes. It's just not that great. So what DO we want? Maybe if we told the powers that be, they wouldn't think we wanted fucken WOW clones..
It's poorly balanced + lack of end game content and it's poorly thought out and executed + the server engine or server version is very poor for RVR/PVP ESP mass RVR/PVP
Comments
The mentioned 300k subscribers in the latest EA report are highly highly questionable!
As if they do, then more then 250k of them must reside on the US servers. And I somehow highly doubt that.
Because when it comes to EU. WAR pretty much has failed misserably here. It already had back in January when me and many friends threw the towel in the ring and quit.
Back then there were already only a mere handful decent populated servers left.
So my guess is, and EA is notorious for it. These 300k figures is not only active subs, but all counted created trial accounts all together to make it look better and come up with these numbers.
Cheers
I wouldn't go that far. You have to remember they started their RaF campaign shortly before this period so that will have gotten them some extra subs. They also released in Russia in the meantime so that will have gotten them some more subs as well.
The previous areas will probably still have declined somewhat by the numbers Russia brought them.
Hard to say really. I still don't think they're growing, if only by the reports that even the populated servers mostly hit medium now and hardly ever high anymore. Considering WAR has been in a MMO "Dead space" as far as new MMO releases are concerned for the last 6 months (discounting Wotlk) it could look really bad for WAR when new MMO's start coming out.
Yeah Russia might have given them some extra subs (it's a pretty big country afterall).
But Europe is pretty much finished.
I just read the shocking news on Warhammer Alliance that the EU RP Server Burlok is going to be closed down!
It was one of the handfull servers left back in January when I quit that actually still had a decent population.
Just adding even more insult to injury really. Pretty sad.
War flop big time in Russia there's only 3 servers and only one of those really has a decent pop.
I got a few good months out of WAR, but I think I'm done with it.
So, what were some specific flaws in WAR that finally led me to quit?
1. Poor game world design.
This is number one. At first blush, it's not too bad. Enjoyable enough for a while. However, the flaws became more evident the longer I played.
Zone design is inconsistent. Some zones are nice and some a horrid.
The non-congruous map layout is just a fail, for this and any MMO. WoW's visual zone transitions can be a bit jarring, but even given that, the ability to explore and travel a patchwork world with few breaks ends up being more immersive. In WAR, the linear, race paired, load screen connected map design ruins any illusion that you are playing in an immersive virtual world.
Then you get to the individual zones themselves. Each zone is split between the races in the pairings and highly segregated. Terrain barriers limit the ability to cross from one side to the other. With the exception of a few competitive Public Quest areas and the RvR lakes content is exclusive to one faction or another.
I much prefer games where you run across players from the other faction fairly often while questing and may even have quests with similar goals. I hate to keep going back to WoW, but I loved the competitiveness between factions in places like STV, Desolace, etc... The starter zones aren't shared, but the further along you get, the more the content balance for each zone edges toward even. That's the model I definitely prefer.
BTW, even though the Mythic world designers had a much more impressive collection of assets and technical capabilities to work with than we saw in DaoC, they somehow managed to make a game that pales in comparison on many fronts. DaoC made the most of it's limitations. WAR left mountains of potential untapped. The lack of creativity and visual appeal is just dumbfounding.
2. Poor variation in itemization.
Little variation in appearance with in any given level range for your career. Little variation in item stats. Overly restrictive in weapon types each class can yield and absolute class restrictions on armor that can be worn.
I hate it all. I just don't like games that force you to wear a specific class costume and wield a specific class weapon.
3. Poor variation with in each class.
On paper, you have options. Three (though highly linear) skill trees. Renown traits. Tactics. However, in the end, it just doesn't feel like you are any different than everyone else in your class. I know it's the current trend in MMOs, give the illusion of options, while in reality making variations minimal to ease class balancing. However, as a player, it's just plain frustrating.
4. Unimaginative class design.
At the concept stage, I shouldn't be able to say this about WAR. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of cool concepts gave way to mediocre implementation. They all play just like generic MMO classes. Also, what happened to the hype about having some truly unique and entertaining skills for each class? Things that would continue to give you a chuckle or have you saying "Well, you don't see that in other MMOs". All that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Compounding the overall design issues is the inability to change weapons and tactics during combat. Combat might actually have been dynamic and fun with out those restrictions.
5. "The game has no soul".
How else can I put it. The game has little sense of humor. Little sense of drama. Little sense of struggle. Little sense of immersion. Few memorable vistas. Few memorable enemies. Few memorable monsters. Few memorable treasures. It's just cola with out the fizz. A flat, lifeless experience.
6. Poor approach to Live and Holiday events.
Now, this may seem nit picky to some, but I have a lot of pleasant memories from other MMORPGs related to holiday and other special live events. Cool atmospherics, fun little tasks and simple little rewards. Fun.
WAR's holidays are horrible and the live event designers seem to be sadists at heart. I want events where I can run my alts through the content, collect my fun rewards and enjoy the experience. Not events that require a full time commitment to complete with just one character in a process that is more frustration than fun.
The recent live events have taken the cake, continually creating bottlenecks in RvR zones that quickly were dominated by camping and ganking.
That was my final straw.
They had the money, the tools and the manpower. However, it seems that creativity was squashed at every step of development and managable mediocrity was the ultimate design goal.
Less creative and dynamic MMORPGs are easier to manage and balance, but it's the lack of creativity and dynamic game play that is killing the genre.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I played WAR for about 3 weeks and quickly became bored.
Basically for me, a game like WAR which is focused on PVP and has very bland / boring world pve content isnt enough to keep me interested. Most MMOs I've played have much more depth then WAR has.
Thankfully I got out when I did and returned to WoW, which in my opition makes most other MMOs look bad.
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
I just unsubbed myself. The latest fiasco which is the Land of the Dead, shows how little Mythic has learned in one year of release. No balancing for classes, no other capital cities being opened (4 were closed after beta), no distinct zones for each race (they share zones).
The game is more focused on PvP and the grind than it first appears. Pairing a "renown" rank system with a level system just intensifies the grind scenario. You must literally grind up to level 35 (at which point you can then go over the level cap for renown), and do all this in non-stop scenarios that don't come (unless you play on a populated and popular server), participate heavily in the various tier lakes (rvr areas for 10 lvl incriments), and of course the PvE content is mostly only there to aid in the PvP. Most of the end game Raid content can only be done with some sort of renown or RvR influence gear.
The totally generic attitude towards class selection and race choice for the Warhammer Universe is such a poor choice. To choose the Orc/dwarf, human/chaos and elf/dark elf pairings is completely generic and is repeated in most MMOs today. They could not even afford a third realm, or even a monster race (skaven, lizardmen, etc).
The game choices in leveling are limited as the only path is the AOE path for most classes. Everyone ends up with the same skills, same abilities and same equipment in the end. One side is completely OP'd over the other, and while that fact is hotly debated, the sheer amount of disarms, knockdowns, stuns; that one side has in true abilities (not moral) is ridiculous.
For a company that produced a wonderful RvR game with plenty of options and unique class choices in Dark Age of Camelot to go to this poor choice of a game, is unbelievably stupid. To add in more content w/o fixing what is currently wrong is ignorant. To ignore the community and just go ahead with a set plan irregardless is pure idiocy. Exploits galore (cough *outer door keep bypass* cogh), GCD bug (blaming it on lag), No real distinguishing features, and to release a Darkness Falls esque zone after 1 year, and to stifle balance changes in favor of that zone, I'll take my money elsewhere.
I can't say I learned anything. It was a mediocre game that kept me entertained for about a month, and a paying customer for two. It did a lot to fuel my hatred of the new generation of MMO gamers, though. Noone wants to do anything just for fun anymore. It's all a race to advance your character, and anything that doesn't serve that purpose is a waste of time.
That's not the game's fault, and not unique to Warhammer Online, but I'm not playing another MMO that doesn't have a solid framework for social interaction, and overall goals that encourage community building rather than individualism. WAR looked good in this regard on paper, but somehow manages to feel more dead and deserted than older games with an average of 300 people online at a time.
Trying Free Realms now, strangely addicting. Seems to offer more than just standard MMO fare with mini games like chess, kart racing and my current fave, demolition derby.
Well, I know something that I reaffirmed since played my "month" of this game. Whatever EA touches turns to crap. It's true. Which is why I hold no hope of SWTOR to actually be any good (EA + Lucas Arts = <shudders at the thought of how much EPIC FAIL that combo could come up with>).
1. You can knock out a pretty decent game and you get forum trolls telling every one how really bad it is even when they haven't played it all.
2. I love the game, and have played it from launch, but parts of it are souless I am forced to agree.
3. Two enemies are not as good as three (DAoC three realms was better).
4. Three "pairing" sounds like a good idea rather than the normal "linear" zones, but it diluted content too much I fear.
5. You can balance you classes as much as you like (and they have done a pretty good job) but player number imbalance with always results in zergs; for God's sake spawn some NCP to balance the number a bit.
6. Again they have done a good job and not getting players stunning and killed in two seconds but again AOE is going to cause you lag lag lag lag -hopefully the new patch will sort that one out.
7. You can listen to your players and try really hard to please them - oh and they are still going to be pissed off
8. You can come up with a host of brilliant ideas that are implemented well (PQs, open groups, Tomb of Knowledge), excellent homour, good art work) but people are going to forget all that when a instance goes toes up and the players don't get the loot.
9. Players are getting bored far quicker and want much higher standards than they did before.
10. Finally, you have player population number two in the genre (open to debate I know) and still be class a failure because WoW has more subscribers. Sad isn't it?
I really have to disagree on #6. You die way faster in WAR to focus fire than in any other MMO out. You are right however in a sense you aren't stunned as much but replace the word stuns with knock downs, and then theres the fact the both sides have a class the can fetch your ass withs is pretty much dead in 2 seconds and also STUNS!!!. The funny thing about WAR is its the only MMO that the higher in level I got the worse the game got. Every class in WAR either has a knock down, stun, fetch or I even forgot LOCK DOWN. I will agree the yes its not one rogue stun locking you but it is worse because every class in the game has one or the other and it is usually what gets you killed the most in T4.
There are a couple things I learned. While I agree that it didn't end up being as great as it could. Two things stand out.
PvP in open areas can be more fun that I thought. Having quests that go into PvP areas and stuff was an interesting turn. For someone like me that enjoys PvE to have certain areas for PvP and quests that take you there makes things interesting. I liked that.
Public Quests. Could they have been done better? Probably.. but you can't deny it's one of the first real inovations to come to MMOs in a long time. I had a lot of fun with them, it brought people together to achieve a certain task. It was just fun, I think and hope it will be included in my MMOs to come.
the game had some much potential...but it was lost at RvR the article written here put it best...I beleive it was titled "The MMO litmus test" where it explained why RvR is still going stong in DAoC and how it is lacking in WAR...Renown is different from Realm points....and by god they screwed them selves over...because (as the article states) it is no longer Realm VS Realm..its Realm VS envrioment....the renown is bad.....I don't want to play Keep Tag online....all I wanted (and i think many others too) was an updated Version of DAoC with better PvE (public quests) and the same RvR....but no dice my friends...
This is coming from someone who got caught up in hype and now admits that War has failed in my eyes....
...Sooooo much potential.....so much
The mistake with WAR is they made a world that doesn't feel very connected shoving you off in to Tiers. WAR should have been a seamless world or at least made up of a few huge instance free zones for open world PVP over territorial control so the front line is always changing. Tier territorial control feels disconnected and gets repetitive fast. In other words WAR should have been developed like DarkFall, but of course with a much bigger budget and far more talented artiest and programmers. How Darkfall works would have been perfect for WAR. Just a case of go with skill system or level.
When i first played darkfall, the "look" of the world was very similar to mythic's creations. That somewhat dark medieval setting. I laughed to myself thinking that i bet the guys at mythic woulda wished that they came up with darkfall. With the art style and all and, oh noes, a responsive game engine! Darkfall's engine with a warhammer designed world and mythic's orvr concept with an open world??
Your record is outdated and broken :P
"Keep Tag online" you're describing here belongs to the first 6 months of the game, when people were learning out of a bad habit called scenarios.
The only occasion of Realm vs environment is virtually when a realm wants to capture the enemy capital city. Then you have to populate some instances with players to fight against defending players and manage to create few without defenders to gain VP by winning PQs inside the city.
In my eyes, your chant doesn't sound like coming form someone that has participated into a coordinated 6-8 warband conquest (those are quite common in our server these days, Order side. Destro had theirs for about 2 months, their reign stopped about a month ago)
All my observation is from Eltharion (EU) only, can't tell how it's on other servers.
Your record is outdated and broken :P
"Keep Tag online" you're describing here belongs to the first 6 months of the game, when people were learning out of a bad habit called scenarios.
The only occasion of Realm vs environment is virtually when a realm wants to capture the enemy capital city. Then you have to populate some instances with players to fight against defending players and manage to create few without defenders to gain VP by winning PQs inside the city.
In my eyes, your chant doesn't sound like coming form someone that has participated into a coordinated 6-8 warband conquest (those are quite common in our server these days, Order side. Destro had theirs for about 2 months, their reign stopped about a month ago)
All my observation is from Eltharion (EU) only, can't tell how it's on other servers.
That's funny, because for me, on a US server, RvR has been nothing but "keep tag" the past few months.
At first, it seemed recent changes would make zone control a higher priority, but when people saw how much work and then time waiting around was often needed to flip a zone, they mostly stopped bothering with BOs entirely and returned Keep Swaps to the top priority.
The only time people will attempt to flip the zone is if the other contributing factors are already overwhelmingly in your side's favor. Good luck trying to get people to organize into strong groups for scenarios and side groups to push PQs.
Also, denial tactics are becoming more common. If your side controls everything, but needs scenario wins to flip, very often the other side will just boycott scenarios for that pairing. Since Domination Points from keeps require you to hold the keep for a good length of time, it just reinforces keep swaps. Too few people have the patience to sit and defend all the keeps for an hour or two, but it's easy to recruit a WB to snag a lightly defended keep.
I don't know what they can do different. Changes that seemed constructive on paper have either had little impact or made things worse. I think the two faction model was just a fatal flaw.
I don't know how they could have arranged the races into three factions, It might have required some different race choices.
I never played the table top game, but I saw it played a number of times while playing MTG at local hobby shops. I seem to remember one of the players telling me that you could have matches between say Empire and Dwarves, even though both were considered "Good" races. Three factions may have made the difference for WAR.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I don't know what folks are whinig about I'm having a fricking blast.....and I'm not alone PT has been packed lately.
can you imagine what it would be like if it was actually Full/High packed instead of the Med/Med you seem to feel is "packed" ?
can you imagine what it would be like if it was actually Full/High packed instead of the Med/Med you seem to feel is "packed" ?
You mean like Darkfall packed? ROTFLMFAO!
Yeah and having Jeri Ryan serve me Guinness topless would be awesome too, but honestly you can cry about anything not being good enough there is a crap load of people on PT right now playing their asses off, last night I was up till 3:00 am and RVR was kicking how much better does it need to be?
I learned not to get so hyped over a new MMO. You just end up back in wow anyway, so why bother.
Whats really funny is with LotD out now, there are no zone flips. Nobody is taking the time to try and flip a zone, it seems its much easier to just do the blue quests and kill people as you see them. I'm strongly debating uninstalling it as I'm already unsubbed as of the 22nd.
Until the gameplay changes dramatically (other capital cities, races, classes....something), I see no reason to resub. The game has become a level/renown grind with the same button mashing as you face the same enemies time and again. The same strategies always work, people take the game WAY too seriously, and after going to 40 twice and exploring every facet of all the lands, I see little reason to keep going.
The new changes are excessive, its like they have made the game so that once you hit t3, they hold your hand to ease you into t4 as quickly as possible (gunbad changes, epic quest line, LotD access).
Even the gold spammers are realizing there is little market in the game. Its really sad when you can't even get gold spammers to play your game.
The mmo damned. Cursed to walk the virtual earth in their eternal quest for fulfullment that would never come. New content is sucked dry and scattered across the barren landscape, the withered husks of hopeful developers testement to the appetite that would never be slaked.
Remember when they shutdown beta for a few months because too many people were playing scenarios instead of the world? Good thing they fixed that problem...Oh wait.....
I learned to check for false advertising before buying a product
It's poorly balanced + lack of end game content and it's poorly thought out and executed + the server engine or server version is very poor for RVR/PVP ESP mass RVR/PVP
and this=a lacking community
PIRATE LORDS