Please, tell me, what are the fundamental problems with the game? I'll have to disagree that the fundamentals of this game, on paper, are the best of any MMO to be released, what did fall short was some of the execution and management since then. So can someone please fill me in, what ARE the fundamental problems? Or is this just another example of people using buzz words and phrases popular on this site for no reason other then because they are popular buzz words and phrases?
If I could try to answer your question, for me the fundamental problems that I see that would not be easy to fix would be;
The Engine. Although I prefer gameplay over graphics, it seems like the graphics are not as good as the lag it is producing in open world RvR. One thing that made DAoC very popular was the large scale battles and that is something that Warhammer has yet been able to reproduce.
The Collision. It is improving but slowly. You have to wonder how much work is it to stop players from getting stuck on rocks, walls, posts, etc. It seems like a problem that is deep rooted into the game's physics.
Laggy Animations and inconsistant spell casting. Not sure if this was fixed but combat feels a little bland and unresponsive. I know they keep posting that is has improved but I've been away for a while. It seems when they fix things, other stuff gets broken.
The War Story. It does not make sense to me. There is no pride or drive to sack a city, other than gear and renown. For me personally, the story as a whole lacks immersion.
The Landscape. This is more of a personal preference but I feel that the land masses not being connected is a fundamental problem that is not easy to fix. It does not feel like a world but a bunch of patches of land. Even as you travel through the cloudy little portal to each region, the transition and landscape behind and around the portal does not lead into the next area's design.
Representing IP. Another personal opinion but I feel Warhammer failed to reflect the Warhammer world. I never felt this until I started reading the many novels and race books for the table top game. It's like it was trying to be DAoC and WoW but never Warhammer.
Additional Personal Fodder.
Where are the smaller cities and towns?
Where do resources come into play in the war effort?
Where are the other neutral facitions? It is rare that an entire world is at war...
Who wants to keep a keep, when trading keep is more beneficial to the players?
What is a Battle Objective and what's it used for?
Most of these are personal shots and I understand if you disagree. I usually don't like being so critical but you asked.
Those are my concerns as well. Keeping a keep should always be the important thing and the battlefield objectives should/could have some influence on the keep.
In Lineage 2 each castle had several crystals that contributed to the health of the castle. When a castle had all of them up you could respawn from the castle hold to the battle (in L2 you respawn inside the castle).
Battlefield objectives could be done differently so that they were closer to the castle, inside the walls, etc and had some relation to the battlefield.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
As far as I can see, there are several fatal problems lies in the core of the game, however, I think this game have very low cost to produce as it is of today.
If anyone going to make balance between class, you could produce a new game for the same time.
If you see a game become so buggy after modifications or patches, the game is downgraded to F2P class. In the end, only item mall will rescue the game.
T1 to T3 in this game were great fun. However T4 is not, which is the reason I left. Too much CC makes melee worthless AOE heals and damage were way out of control.
But the biggest problem for me was the imbalance of player numbers. What I mean by this is, if you were on the side with out the numbers it got very boring quick to be always on the losing side, which meant most just gave up and rerolled. However the same thing happens when you are on the side with the numbers, you don't have anything left to do since you control all the keeps and such.
As it hasn't been mentioned yet, I'l tell you what the fundamental problem of the game is Heerobya.
The fundamental problem with WAR is that it is a PvE game at it's heart with PvP elements thrown in. The latest patch with LotD hightlights this perfectly. One side does PvE in LotD, and the other side does PvE ransaking a city and a PvE raid on the king if they get that far. This has always been the case with WAR, and it was designed this way. I dont know how long you have been following the game, but before EA became involved, this was purely a PQ/Scenarios game. There was 0 keeps or anything like that, basically they threw in keeps after seeing heavy dissastisfaction with the game during beta, hence why they are so one dimensional and basic.
That is the fundamental thing that went wrong with WAR. From the very beggining they wanted to create a game, not a world where players could fight at random and have true control of keeps and cities. They advertised as WAR is everywhere, but that can't be further from the truth. PvP happens in controlled environments where they decide the amount of people taking part. It's all too controlled and predictable to be a true PvP game.
@loke666 1. I was never a Warhammer tabletop fan before but I love the world and all the lore and story and how each race and every zone feels so different and unique and the careers really feel iconic... so I guess as a new comer to the Warhammer universe (besides some dabbling in RTS games) I absolutely love the Warhammer world they created for WAR. 2. 3 sides will come, eventually. I would place good money on betting they'll release the first major expansion with 3 new races that all form a 3rd faction. Maybe.. Skaven, Undead... something? Vampire Counts? That'd be popular with the emo kids... lol 3. I don't like the lack of 4 cities either, but choosing to focus the conflict on one racial pairing at a time was a smart move. Problem was they never expanded on it. If they would ahve all 6 cities in and each month switch what pairing you were battling over, to focus the fighting more, it'd be really cool and very well designed. Unfortuantely that hasn't materialized yet. 4. I agree. More needs to be done to encourage open RvR as "the" way to get the best gear and level your renown the fastest, cause that's what most players really care about in the end, read my post above on how to fix this. Setting your sites on WoW is never smart, I agree, you should try to make a good game and if it is good people will come to it. WAR is a good game, just needs a bit of work. I have faith.
Well, you should really try to find Jack yeovils books about Genevieve, they show the lore a lot better than the game. WAR is kinda like making a movie about a great book, they do touch the lore but it is very superficial and they miss so many points.
Still, I only play Blood bowl and the RPG game myself (I cant believe they didn't include a blood bowl or snotball scenario in the game, it would have been so easy and fun).
But you are right, the issues can be fix and maybe now when Bioware will become the heads of Mythic they can fix these issues.
I actually think that a mix between Mythics and Biowares style of making games could be very interesting, Bioware are good on implementing lore and RPG stuff while Mythic do know how to make RvR fun, even though they should go back to basics and let the greenskins fall out with Chaos to start a third side.
If the splitted up the greenskins they could add a load of other kinds there, there are many greenskins from snotlings to trolls, and they could buff Chaos with skavens instead. But then they would actually be forced to finnish that greenskin capital.
These issues are surely fixable, but the question is if EA wants to use manpowers on it, or if they put most of Mythic to work on the PvP aspect of TOR, or even that unannounced MMO Bioware is working on (either a MMO version of Dragon age or Baldurs gate most likey). The fact that EA have cut Mythic down a lot while they did nothing to Bioware do smells bad.
But Warhammer is a great IP, an I hope that Mythic actually hire in some Warhammer fans to help tune the game. Most of my problems with the game is that it is clearly that no one on Mythic ever played the warhammer tabletop and RPG games. It would be almost as bad that if Turbine never read the LOTR books.
That is as I see it the big problem, warhammer have so many fans but they never got them to play the game (well, many did for a week or 2 but WAR just ain't warhammer).
1 - The client was awful, brand new top end PC and I still got CTD's and other client problems.
2 - They took Skill based game(s) with 25 years of succesful play behind it and try to make a level based game with it.
3 - They were very slow in identifying problems and correcting them, the whole game was dead when everybody was grinding scenarios yet it took weeks for anything to be resolved.
I guess the main problem of this game is easy and simple an aweful combat. I said it back to when WAR was just launched and I say it now: WAR combat is boring like a hell. In WoW I had tones of grinding while getting my three 11, 12, and 13 rank warriors. Honor system was all about grinding and I bet it was much worse grinding than in WAR. But WoW combat was great, and it helped me to overcome a grinding boredom (well, helped to the some extend - I left WoW 2 or 3 times back to those days, hehe). WAR combat is all about masshing one or two buttons, there is no any interactivity in it, just hitting and smashing your opponents till death, theirs or yours. Can't say anything more about WAR. Combat boredom was my death sentence to the game. And still is.
For every negative though I have also seen positives.
For instance last night on Iron Rock I spent the majority of my time either in open RvR in Empire/Chaos Tier 1 with pretty good and even numbers on each side, maybe 30-40 each side, or I was doing PQ's with random PUGs and having a really good time, even invited a few to my guild.
I still have faith that Mythic, EA, and now the EA Mythic/Bioware MMO group IS listening and they do have plans in place to help re-vitalize this game.
I'm taking my time, enjoying the lore and story and enjoying the RvR and PQs while I level.
If I get to "end-game" before any major changes/additions are made I'll have to judge for myself, but for me, right now, WAR is about 10,000 times more fun and interesting then grinding Ulduar raids waiting for 3.2 to come out, so I can grind more raids... I wish PvP in WoW wasn't so bad and pointless... I actually enjoy the act of fighting others players in that game.... but I'm a Warrior and the BG's are only really fun to me as Protection so... what a waste.
Originally posted by heerobya Some very good comments thank you all. For every negative though I have also seen positives. For instance last night on Iron Rock I spent the majority of my time either in open RvR in Empire/Chaos Tier 1 with pretty good and even numbers on each side, maybe 30-40 each side, or I was doing PQ's with random PUGs and having a really good time, even invited a few to my guild. I still have faith that Mythic, EA, and now the EA Mythic/Bioware MMO group IS listening and they do have plans in place to help re-vitalize this game. I'm taking my time, enjoying the lore and story and enjoying the RvR and PQs while I level. If I get to "end-game" before any major changes/additions are made I'll have to judge for myself, but for me, right now, WAR is about 10,000 times more fun and interesting then grinding Ulduar raids waiting for 3.2 to come out, so I can grind more raids... I wish PvP in WoW wasn't so bad and pointless... I actually enjoy the act of fighting others players in that game.... but I'm a Warrior and the BG's are only really fun to me as Protection so... what a waste.
Hehe, yeah, i got the same feeling. It was something new after that bullshit WoW turned in. But this feeling passed. And very fast. Actually, the hybreed of WAR RvR and WoW gameplay would be something really great. Alas, it won't happen.
As a long time supporter who played the game for over a year in beta and up until recently these are my "major gripes" with the game:
1) Getting stuck has increasingly become more and more of a problem. The funnest incident has been getting stuck in a rabbit and getting pulled along as it hops. Jumping in this game has become risky business in numerous areas.
2) Too many bottlenecks that reinforce AOE style play and make single target classes next to uselessness in keeps, fortresses, and city sieges. The only epic parts I see constantly are the amount of deaths that get racked up.
3) I know this game is not balanced 1v1, but the GCD bugs have made the game a no brainer on which side to play, especially recently.
4) Renown grind. What should be fun in WAR, the pvp, has been turned into serious grind business for most guilds and players I have met. This in turn has made the game no fun for me, and others, who just want to have fun.
5) Lag.
6) Itemisation is still borked for certain items and classes. Nothing like finding repairable jewelry that has +ballistic for my shaman or +willpower for my squig herder.
7) Capturing a zone and getting no rewards since it was recently captured, but you just logged on and did not know that. Nothing like working hard for nothing. This mainly is a lower tier issue, never ran into at T4, but still bugs the hell out of me that they do not let you see the timer for when you will get rewards for zone locking.
8) Keep swapping. The game feels more like a PvE game, and is reinforced by the game mechanics which make taking a defended keep (2+ warbands), especially an upgraded one, near impossible, encouraging everyone to run to another undefended keep.
9) Lack of people to play with, and constant server swapping. I have migrated from server to server as the ones I have chosen have either been merged and my name gets all borked, or they have shrank too low a pop to even bother. Now that order has the power, destro has become ghost town for my play times since I have a job and cannot stay up till 11pm or later to enjoy playing with the few destro left.
I honestly cannot justify handing money over to a company that has done nothing but drive this game into the ground in my opinion. We still are missing promised content, the other capitols, and yet they add a new zone that I cannot see since order constantly lock it, and yet we suffer from alot of problems that have existed since beta. Forcing out Mark Jacobs and folding Mything under Bioware does not please me, nor give me any hope for this title. Too many better options are on the horizon and War had its chance in my book.
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
Here are my top 5 fundamental structural flaws with the game, most of which can't be fixed.
1) Tiers - It's a horrible idea to break the game up into sections of 10 levels. This is never more evident than during open RvR. The team with the highest amount of levels and numbers typically win. You're forced to wait 8-10 before even attempting the open RvR. Aesthetically the zones feel like maps in a single player game. You never feel like you are in a virtual world.
2) Flipping - There's no real reason to defend a zone. In the long run you'll get more honor and XP taking the zone back than defending it. This causes a complete disconnect between the idea of warfare and the idea of RvR. Nothing is worth fighting for.
3) Gear - The gear has been in the past, poorly balanced and poorly managed. On top of that everyone of a certain class will look the same for the most part, other than coloring. This is good for the idea of team, uniforms give discipline and organization to what would be chaotic. But, it is equally - if not more so - bad for individuality. You can create a story for your character, but you can't create a character for your character. Understand?
4) Scenarios - They just flat out suck. The idea of them, the way they are implemented, and the map designs. They give out way too much xp, and choke out the open world. They should have spent more time developing RvR and less time developing these abominations of gameplay.
5) Code - The coding in this game is horrible. Specifically when it comes to processor usage. WAR will eat up all 4 cores on a dual core 2.0, which is insane. They built too many time based events into skills. All the network communication really bogs down performance as well. Mythic needs to rethink their infrastructure and how they built the engine, it was poorly done.
There are others, such as the boring combat, lifeless world, and horribly deranged artwork(compared to the real Warhammer), but they aren't worthy of the top 5. This would be a great game if the zones had physical connections, levels weren't massively important, and the engine didn't drag all the time.
"They are not something that a new designer can just come in and whisk away with a few content patches. There are just to many fundamental problems with the game to be fixed by anything short of a massive overhaul. "
I keep seeing this a LOT. Please, tell me, what are the fundamental problems with the game? I'll have to disagree that the fundamentals of this game, on paper, are the best of any MMO to be released, what did fall short was some of the execution and management since then. So can someone please fill me in, what ARE the fundamental problems? Or is this just another example of people using buzz words and phrases popular on this site for no reason other then because they are popular buzz words and phrases?
I took a stab at your question in another thread, but your underlined comments sum it up best.
Yes on paper this game looks awesome and the concepts are great. I remember watching this podcast (and several others) and thinking how cool warhammer sounded... on paper. www.youtube.com/watch How much of that turned out to work as intended and how many people point to that as a flawed system and left the game? Even you have posted several times about hopes that mythic/ea will revitalize or re invigorate the game with changes, which is pretty drastic talk for someone who doesn't think there are deep flaws in the game.
Things that sound cool on paper, but don't work out that way in gameplay are fundemental flaws. you are talking about the design concepts of the game that have not materialized into great gameplay. That is almost the perfect definition of a fundamental flaw.
That isn't to say they can't be fixed, but they are pretty deep problems and no, some of them are beyond fixing without a massive overhaul.
I'll try to sum up all the problems with the game into one question.
If keeps/forts/city siege were removed from the game, would you still play?
Comments
If I could try to answer your question, for me the fundamental problems that I see that would not be easy to fix would be;
The Engine. Although I prefer gameplay over graphics, it seems like the graphics are not as good as the lag it is producing in open world RvR. One thing that made DAoC very popular was the large scale battles and that is something that Warhammer has yet been able to reproduce.
The Collision. It is improving but slowly. You have to wonder how much work is it to stop players from getting stuck on rocks, walls, posts, etc. It seems like a problem that is deep rooted into the game's physics.
Laggy Animations and inconsistant spell casting. Not sure if this was fixed but combat feels a little bland and unresponsive. I know they keep posting that is has improved but I've been away for a while. It seems when they fix things, other stuff gets broken.
The War Story. It does not make sense to me. There is no pride or drive to sack a city, other than gear and renown. For me personally, the story as a whole lacks immersion.
The Landscape. This is more of a personal preference but I feel that the land masses not being connected is a fundamental problem that is not easy to fix. It does not feel like a world but a bunch of patches of land. Even as you travel through the cloudy little portal to each region, the transition and landscape behind and around the portal does not lead into the next area's design.
Representing IP. Another personal opinion but I feel Warhammer failed to reflect the Warhammer world. I never felt this until I started reading the many novels and race books for the table top game. It's like it was trying to be DAoC and WoW but never Warhammer.
Additional Personal Fodder.
Where are the smaller cities and towns?
Where do resources come into play in the war effort?
Where are the other neutral facitions? It is rare that an entire world is at war...
Who wants to keep a keep, when trading keep is more beneficial to the players?
What is a Battle Objective and what's it used for?
Most of these are personal shots and I understand if you disagree. I usually don't like being so critical but you asked.
Those are my concerns as well. Keeping a keep should always be the important thing and the battlefield objectives should/could have some influence on the keep.
In Lineage 2 each castle had several crystals that contributed to the health of the castle. When a castle had all of them up you could respawn from the castle hold to the battle (in L2 you respawn inside the castle).
Battlefield objectives could be done differently so that they were closer to the castle, inside the walls, etc and had some relation to the battlefield.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
As far as I can see, there are several fatal problems lies in the core of the game, however, I think this game have very low cost to produce as it is of today.
If anyone going to make balance between class, you could produce a new game for the same time.
If you see a game become so buggy after modifications or patches, the game is downgraded to F2P class. In the end, only item mall will rescue the game.
T1 to T3 in this game were great fun. However T4 is not, which is the reason I left. Too much CC makes melee worthless AOE heals and damage were way out of control.
But the biggest problem for me was the imbalance of player numbers. What I mean by this is, if you were on the side with out the numbers it got very boring quick to be always on the losing side, which meant most just gave up and rerolled. However the same thing happens when you are on the side with the numbers, you don't have anything left to do since you control all the keeps and such.
Fix those things and I would be back in a flash.
As it hasn't been mentioned yet, I'l tell you what the fundamental problem of the game is Heerobya.
The fundamental problem with WAR is that it is a PvE game at it's heart with PvP elements thrown in. The latest patch with LotD hightlights this perfectly. One side does PvE in LotD, and the other side does PvE ransaking a city and a PvE raid on the king if they get that far. This has always been the case with WAR, and it was designed this way. I dont know how long you have been following the game, but before EA became involved, this was purely a PQ/Scenarios game. There was 0 keeps or anything like that, basically they threw in keeps after seeing heavy dissastisfaction with the game during beta, hence why they are so one dimensional and basic.
That is the fundamental thing that went wrong with WAR. From the very beggining they wanted to create a game, not a world where players could fight at random and have true control of keeps and cities. They advertised as WAR is everywhere, but that can't be further from the truth. PvP happens in controlled environments where they decide the amount of people taking part. It's all too controlled and predictable to be a true PvP game.
Well, you should really try to find Jack yeovils books about Genevieve, they show the lore a lot better than the game. WAR is kinda like making a movie about a great book, they do touch the lore but it is very superficial and they miss so many points.
Still, I only play Blood bowl and the RPG game myself (I cant believe they didn't include a blood bowl or snotball scenario in the game, it would have been so easy and fun).
But you are right, the issues can be fix and maybe now when Bioware will become the heads of Mythic they can fix these issues.
I actually think that a mix between Mythics and Biowares style of making games could be very interesting, Bioware are good on implementing lore and RPG stuff while Mythic do know how to make RvR fun, even though they should go back to basics and let the greenskins fall out with Chaos to start a third side.
If the splitted up the greenskins they could add a load of other kinds there, there are many greenskins from snotlings to trolls, and they could buff Chaos with skavens instead. But then they would actually be forced to finnish that greenskin capital.
These issues are surely fixable, but the question is if EA wants to use manpowers on it, or if they put most of Mythic to work on the PvP aspect of TOR, or even that unannounced MMO Bioware is working on (either a MMO version of Dragon age or Baldurs gate most likey). The fact that EA have cut Mythic down a lot while they did nothing to Bioware do smells bad.
But Warhammer is a great IP, an I hope that Mythic actually hire in some Warhammer fans to help tune the game. Most of my problems with the game is that it is clearly that no one on Mythic ever played the warhammer tabletop and RPG games. It would be almost as bad that if Turbine never read the LOTR books.
That is as I see it the big problem, warhammer have so many fans but they never got them to play the game (well, many did for a week or 2 but WAR just ain't warhammer).
1 - The client was awful, brand new top end PC and I still got CTD's and other client problems.
2 - They took Skill based game(s) with 25 years of succesful play behind it and try to make a level based game with it.
3 - They were very slow in identifying problems and correcting them, the whole game was dead when everybody was grinding scenarios yet it took weeks for anything to be resolved.
I guess the main problem of this game is easy and simple an aweful combat. I said it back to when WAR was just launched and I say it now: WAR combat is boring like a hell. In WoW I had tones of grinding while getting my three 11, 12, and 13 rank warriors. Honor system was all about grinding and I bet it was much worse grinding than in WAR. But WoW combat was great, and it helped me to overcome a grinding boredom (well, helped to the some extend - I left WoW 2 or 3 times back to those days, hehe). WAR combat is all about masshing one or two buttons, there is no any interactivity in it, just hitting and smashing your opponents till death, theirs or yours. Can't say anything more about WAR. Combat boredom was my death sentence to the game. And still is.
Some very good comments thank you all.
For every negative though I have also seen positives.
For instance last night on Iron Rock I spent the majority of my time either in open RvR in Empire/Chaos Tier 1 with pretty good and even numbers on each side, maybe 30-40 each side, or I was doing PQ's with random PUGs and having a really good time, even invited a few to my guild.
I still have faith that Mythic, EA, and now the EA Mythic/Bioware MMO group IS listening and they do have plans in place to help re-vitalize this game.
I'm taking my time, enjoying the lore and story and enjoying the RvR and PQs while I level.
If I get to "end-game" before any major changes/additions are made I'll have to judge for myself, but for me, right now, WAR is about 10,000 times more fun and interesting then grinding Ulduar raids waiting for 3.2 to come out, so I can grind more raids... I wish PvP in WoW wasn't so bad and pointless... I actually enjoy the act of fighting others players in that game.... but I'm a Warrior and the BG's are only really fun to me as Protection so... what a waste.
Hehe, yeah, i got the same feeling. It was something new after that bullshit WoW turned in. But this feeling passed. And very fast. Actually, the hybreed of WAR RvR and WoW gameplay would be something really great. Alas, it won't happen.
As a long time supporter who played the game for over a year in beta and up until recently these are my "major gripes" with the game:
1) Getting stuck has increasingly become more and more of a problem. The funnest incident has been getting stuck in a rabbit and getting pulled along as it hops. Jumping in this game has become risky business in numerous areas.
2) Too many bottlenecks that reinforce AOE style play and make single target classes next to uselessness in keeps, fortresses, and city sieges. The only epic parts I see constantly are the amount of deaths that get racked up.
3) I know this game is not balanced 1v1, but the GCD bugs have made the game a no brainer on which side to play, especially recently.
4) Renown grind. What should be fun in WAR, the pvp, has been turned into serious grind business for most guilds and players I have met. This in turn has made the game no fun for me, and others, who just want to have fun.
5) Lag.
6) Itemisation is still borked for certain items and classes. Nothing like finding repairable jewelry that has +ballistic for my shaman or +willpower for my squig herder.
7) Capturing a zone and getting no rewards since it was recently captured, but you just logged on and did not know that. Nothing like working hard for nothing. This mainly is a lower tier issue, never ran into at T4, but still bugs the hell out of me that they do not let you see the timer for when you will get rewards for zone locking.
8) Keep swapping. The game feels more like a PvE game, and is reinforced by the game mechanics which make taking a defended keep (2+ warbands), especially an upgraded one, near impossible, encouraging everyone to run to another undefended keep.
9) Lack of people to play with, and constant server swapping. I have migrated from server to server as the ones I have chosen have either been merged and my name gets all borked, or they have shrank too low a pop to even bother. Now that order has the power, destro has become ghost town for my play times since I have a job and cannot stay up till 11pm or later to enjoy playing with the few destro left.
I honestly cannot justify handing money over to a company that has done nothing but drive this game into the ground in my opinion. We still are missing promised content, the other capitols, and yet they add a new zone that I cannot see since order constantly lock it, and yet we suffer from alot of problems that have existed since beta. Forcing out Mark Jacobs and folding Mything under Bioware does not please me, nor give me any hope for this title. Too many better options are on the horizon and War had its chance in my book.
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
Here are my top 5 fundamental structural flaws with the game, most of which can't be fixed.
1) Tiers - It's a horrible idea to break the game up into sections of 10 levels. This is never more evident than during open RvR. The team with the highest amount of levels and numbers typically win. You're forced to wait 8-10 before even attempting the open RvR. Aesthetically the zones feel like maps in a single player game. You never feel like you are in a virtual world.
2) Flipping - There's no real reason to defend a zone. In the long run you'll get more honor and XP taking the zone back than defending it. This causes a complete disconnect between the idea of warfare and the idea of RvR. Nothing is worth fighting for.
3) Gear - The gear has been in the past, poorly balanced and poorly managed. On top of that everyone of a certain class will look the same for the most part, other than coloring. This is good for the idea of team, uniforms give discipline and organization to what would be chaotic. But, it is equally - if not more so - bad for individuality. You can create a story for your character, but you can't create a character for your character. Understand?
4) Scenarios - They just flat out suck. The idea of them, the way they are implemented, and the map designs. They give out way too much xp, and choke out the open world. They should have spent more time developing RvR and less time developing these abominations of gameplay.
5) Code - The coding in this game is horrible. Specifically when it comes to processor usage. WAR will eat up all 4 cores on a dual core 2.0, which is insane. They built too many time based events into skills. All the network communication really bogs down performance as well. Mythic needs to rethink their infrastructure and how they built the engine, it was poorly done.
There are others, such as the boring combat, lifeless world, and horribly deranged artwork(compared to the real Warhammer), but they aren't worthy of the top 5. This would be a great game if the zones had physical connections, levels weren't massively important, and the engine didn't drag all the time.
I took a stab at your question in another thread, but your underlined comments sum it up best.
Yes on paper this game looks awesome and the concepts are great. I remember watching this podcast (and several others) and thinking how cool warhammer sounded... on paper. www.youtube.com/watch How much of that turned out to work as intended and how many people point to that as a flawed system and left the game? Even you have posted several times about hopes that mythic/ea will revitalize or re invigorate the game with changes, which is pretty drastic talk for someone who doesn't think there are deep flaws in the game.
Things that sound cool on paper, but don't work out that way in gameplay are fundemental flaws. you are talking about the design concepts of the game that have not materialized into great gameplay. That is almost the perfect definition of a fundamental flaw.
That isn't to say they can't be fixed, but they are pretty deep problems and no, some of them are beyond fixing without a massive overhaul.
I'll try to sum up all the problems with the game into one question.
If keeps/forts/city siege were removed from the game, would you still play?
What's your point.
If Blizzard removed all of the Crafting/Quests/Dungeons would it still have 12mil subs?
You took out most of the PvP part out in warhammer, let me take most of the PvE part out of WoW.
nom nom nom