A great article that someone share from warhammer alliance. Thought i'll share with you guys here.. www.brighthub.com/video-games/mmo/articles/44427.aspx Though i dont think the Dev can ever turn this game around, but hopefully for future games they dont make the same mistake..
Edit: Long read, but nice...
The only time I consider something a true postmortem is when it is written by the devs themselves. And since these devs continue to think their game is awesome I doubt we'll ever see that.
Yeah I agree sadly. While I never played Warhammer the TT game I was excited for this however there was really nothing Warhammer about it... It could have been anything really and the lore was lacking considering how much actual lore there really is. I could have been playing WoW2 or EQ3 for all I knew.
I know this is a bit off topic but what the hell is so wrong with a game that focuses on particular mechanics?
Why do most of you need all these jack of all trade master of none games?
I used to love DAoC and that game early on was all about pvp it was fucking epic.
Games like Lotro, FFXI and Eq2 are all about Pve (mostly) and are fun games to play.
Why must a game be everything in one package?
When did most of you guys start thinking like this?
Is it the money? do you not want to spend a monthly fee if you can't have everything?
Imo that's freaking lame!
how are indy developers going to achieve a game that supports every type of MMO sub genre? sure WoW pulled off the "Everything to everyone" but thats freaking blizzard with their mega bucks. Even with all that money they still delivered a watered down experience compared to more focused games imo.
While even WAR has it's faults the pvp in that game instanced and none instanced is the best since DAoC in the fantasy themepark sub genre imo.
I just don;t understand why most people want every game to be exaclty the same (quests, leveling, classes, raids, instanced pvp) all in one.
Variety is a good thing or atleast I think so.
It's almost like the mmo community is a lost cause, it's frustrating tbh.
my problem with war was that everything felt staged and not real. It felt like a war play wtih actors on a stage so to speak. It didnt feel like anything really was urgent or mattered.
- lack of one, unzoned persistent world like in WoW
- lack of meaningful goals for a group/guild to achieve just stupid keeps that change hands every 15 mins with no consequence whatsoever
- basing the game on Warhammer Fantasy Battlle rather than WFRP; WFB was done to death by WoW which was supposed to be a Warhammer FB computer game in the first place back in the '90s
- huge, fun PvP battles but with no long lasting and world changing consequence (like in EVE for example)
- basically the game feels like bigger WoW's battlegrounds with much better PvP mechanics but with the same grindy, repetitive gameplay
P.S. Class balance? if u want class balance sign up to communist party... altho i still think Orcs are well OPed but its what they are (fantasy tanks/terminators) its the first MMO where ure not playing a Wizard that can take 1 mln DMG like a tank
Originally posted by JGMIII First of all calm yourself before you have a heart attack. -ok I guess Second, You brought up what people may say if WAR ommitted pvp not me. Third, I don't give a shit what MMO you played. I never said WARs pve was just as good as every other games, I said it wasnt bad and i've seen other games with worst (i never said which ones). News flash buddy, WAR is a pvp game if your leaving due to lack of pve stuff then you don't belong in game. I don;t log into FFXI and bitch on the forums because it lacks pvp, same for lotro. Edit: when you actually played UO did you also bitch due to lack of pve? wait maybe you were a pro-Trammel player......
1) Yes heart attack, thanks for the advice doctor. I'll get right on that.
2) You said war is a pvp game and that pve players "didn't" belong. Just to quote you
"Edit: to any posters in this thread complaining about lack of raids or dungeon content you weren't intended to even be playing WAR. This game is a pvp game lol. Pve in WAR equals PQs, crafting, quests and a few minor dungeons."
If you had opened your mind just a little bit you would see that mythic spent a great deal of time on the PVE portion of the game. I would wager that there is more real estate dedicated to pve than there is to pvp in your self proclaimed pvp only game. There are numberous videos of mythic developers talking about how players can player from start to finish without ever joining in pvp. So you would be wrong in your assestment on many levels in a game where pvp was billed as being optional.
Also, the keep seiging was not part of the original game design and only added in the late hours of beta, because players were saying the game was lacking. Before you go off telling people they don't belong somewhere you may want to do just a little research, because warhammer almost was the game without RvR that we both agree no one would have subscribed to.
3) Now you don't care what games I have played, because you directly asked me if, and I quote you, "Are you new to MMOs? was WoW your first game where you need every MMO you play to be a jack of all trades mmo to even be interesting to you?"
So please don't act like you were not trying to paint me into some bad light with that type of comment or whatever other gross generalization you inflate to give yourself some sense of credibility.
Furthermore, it was not my desire or anyone elses desire for warhammer to have a pve aspect to the game. That is how mythic designed it. What is so hard to understand about that? Players are just reacting to what mythic made and how they billed it.
Never said warhammers pve just as good as the rest of the market? Actually you said it was the same as every other game as far as quests, dungeons, etc. Except when you said there were worse games, which we can both agree one.
"I don;t think the Pve content was bad in WAR...The quests were like every other MMO, the PQs were fun, the dungeons were decent and the ToK was a blast."
I think you will be hard pressed to find many people who think warhammers pve was on par with the rest of the market and would be overwhemled with people who found it stale, repetitve and uninspiring to say the least.
What went right for this POS? Not much, I'd say. I can't think of a single aspect of this game that isn't done better somewhere else. Or for that matter, a game I played less before logging off for good. I'm just glad I never bought a client.
I agree on all but one point: Bright Wizard. I played one, and yes a BW did tons of dmg, but on the downside, I was often enough furious because I died like crap. A Wizard class needs CC to stay alive. Without CC, no one will play BW, and when I later tried WAR again, BW wasnt much played. Elven Archers (or whatever they are called in the English version) do almost the same dmg and survive MUCH better, so why play BW when Archer does almost the same?
The other points I fully agree with. Order was terribly uncool, there was no emotional connection to the keeps like in DAOC and lack of 3rd faction made it very stale. PVE was quite boring, and surely not interesting enough for the PVP nuts, at least not in our days when we are used a wee bit more than kill 50 of X, because I say so.
I don't like those overly specialized games which focus on one aspect, on a personal note, and prefer MMOs with many different things to do and spheres to experience.
Also, I never really felt like in a world, more like in a staged theme park course. I never knew where in the world I was, it was all zones not showing on the world map, and I felt like led from entertainment point A to B asf. Not like discovering a world step by step on my own, but rather "now go there, to War-point X next".
Why do most of you need all these jack of all trade master of none games? Why must a game be everything in one package? While even WAR has it's faults the pvp in that game instanced and none instanced is the best since DAoC in the fantasy themepark sub genre imo. I just don;t understand why most people want every game to be exaclty the same (quests, leveling, classes, raids, instanced pvp) all in one.
Way to incorporate multiple strawmen into one post!
Let's see, main complaints people have raised that have nothing to do with anything you mentioned:
WAR is a typical level-driven MMO, you have to level to participate in the PvP you claim is soo great. Well how? WAR PvE sucks balls, with the possible exception of AoC it's the worst out there of the current generation of MMOs. Levelling through PvP either means grinding the same repetitive scenario over and over again or desperately looking for any content/fight in a pvp zone.
It's a horrible interpretation of the Warhammer Universe that many of us knew and loved. Dumbed down, cartoonified and vastly smaller and more limited.
Trying the 3-realm RvR model with only 2 realms doesn't work
Buggy sieges and other technical problems
Poor/nenextistant realm balance and possibly worse class balance
How does a single one of those, let alone all of them, equate to the idea that any of us "want every game to be exaclty the same"??
You wanna know what went wrong with it? this was why.
Rule#1 - MMORPGs are PVE games with PVP elements, not the other way around.
Rule#2 - Any MMO that forces PVP fails.
Rule#3 - Enticing PVEers to PVP is different than forcing them to. NO scenario/idea that forces it has succeeded.
Rule#4 - The same as Rule#3 can be applied to RP - you cannot force it.
Rule#5 - Before you get lippy, remember Rule#1.
It failed rule number 1 and 2 and also 3. Warhammer online has a very poor pve part to it. and the fact it forces pvp to get decent gear that should be availble as mob drops is another reason it failed. Devs need to learn that pvp based mmorpg's just won't get the casual players. I like pvp myself, but I still have a retail warhammer online cd-key I haven't used. Thought the game sucked when I was in the early access part. Even though world of warcraft is a crappy game by most peoples standarts, its a mmorpg setup for the casual mmo player, that and the fact its by blizzard is why its doing so well.
There was some 800k people willing to be "forced" to PvP when this game came out.. It was a well known fact this game was about PvP and/or RvR.
To say MMOs are just about PvE shows just how narrow minded this post is...
If they didn't screw up end game, class balance, server stabilty, etc. this game may have done very well for itself...
The difference between nature and men is: nature learns from mistakes and obsolete systems die out. But no matter how many MMOs fail, they make the same failures over and over and over with the next MMO and NEVER learn.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Why do most of you need all these jack of all trade master of none games? Why must a game be everything in one package? While even WAR has it's faults the pvp in that game instanced and none instanced is the best since DAoC in the fantasy themepark sub genre imo. I just don;t understand why most people want every game to be exaclty the same (quests, leveling, classes, raids, instanced pvp) all in one.
Way to incorporate multiple strawmen into one post!
The post your quoting is a bit off topic and I even said it was. it's mroe a complaint on the gamer community in not wanting diverse games in the genre and more Jack of all trades.
Let's see, main complaints people have raised that have nothing to do with anything you mentioned:
WAR is a typical level-driven MMO, you have to level to participate in the PvP you claim is soo great. Well how? WAR PvE sucks balls, with the possible exception of AoC it's the worst out there of the current generation of MMOs. Levelling through PvP either means grinding the same repetitive scenario over and over again or desperately looking for any content/fight in a pvp zone.
In this thread I actually said the problem with WAR was that it was too dependent on a massive amount of players but once you actually have those players WARs scenarios and Orvr is easily better than any thing we've seen since DAoC. Thats a big But though.
It's a horrible interpretation of the Warhammer Universe that many of us knew and loved. Dumbed down, cartoonified and vastly smaller and more limited.
As a sandbox player myself Im the first to admit the game is limited.
Trying the 3-realm RvR model with only 2 realms doesn't work
Actually I had alot of fun with the FvF pvp in WAR it just needed more people participating in it but yes Like i;ve said DAoC was a better game.
Buggy sieges and other technical problems
I already spoke on the Client stability, it was one of my problems with WAR. Maybe you should check out my first post in the thread?
Poor/nenextistant realm balance and possibly worse class balance
Yes population problems are rampant in WAR , I don;t really have a problem with class balance as I understand that WAR is a large siege pvp game something a ton of you guys seem to miss.
How does a single one of those, let alone all of them, equate to the idea that any of us "want every game to be exaclty the same"??
My post came after an argument with someone bitching about Pve in a pvp game and wanting more of a jack of all trades game. Reread the thread please.
Originally posted by JGMIII First of all calm yourself before you have a heart attack. -ok I guess Second, You brought up what people may say if WAR ommitted pvp not me. Third, I don't give a shit what MMO you played. I never said WARs pve was just as good as every other games, I said it wasnt bad and i've seen other games with worst (i never said which ones). News flash buddy, WAR is a pvp game if your leaving due to lack of pve stuff then you don't belong in game. I don;t log into FFXI and bitch on the forums because it lacks pvp, same for lotro. Edit: when you actually played UO did you also bitch due to lack of pve? wait maybe you were a pro-Trammel player......
1) Yes heart attack, thanks for the advice doctor. I'll get right on that.
No worries wouldn;t want some crazy fanboi getting all dead on us how will we continue these wonderful mmo arguments in the future.
2) You said war is a pvp game and that pve players "didn't" belong. Just to quote you
"Edit: to any posters in this thread complaining about lack of raids or dungeon content you weren't intended to even be playing WAR. This game is a pvp game lol. Pve in WAR equals PQs, crafting, quests and a few minor dungeons."
This is true, if WAR was a pve focused game wouldnt Mythic a developement house certainly capable of a good MMO (DAoC) make more progression dungeons and litter the game world with more pve stuff? Even as limited as it is I still enjoy it that's why I say its "Good".
If you had opened your mind just a little bit you would see that mythic spent a great deal of time on the PVE portion of the game. I would wager that there is more real estate dedicated to pve than there is to pvp in your self proclaimed pvp only game. There are numberous videos of mythic developers talking about how players can player from start to finish without ever joining in pvp. So you would be wrong in your assestment on many levels in a game where pvp was billed as being optional.
Yes pvp and pve as an option for leveling, Quests, Pq;s and ToK help with that but WAR is still far from a Pve focused game.
Also, the keep seiging was not part of the original game design and only added in the late hours of beta, because players were saying the game was lacking. Before you go off telling people they don't belong somewhere you may want to do just a little research, because warhammer almost was the game without RvR that we both agree no one would have subscribed to.
We both know EA forced these bastards to release WAR early if they didnt we would have had more Rvr shit in the game and siegeing wouldnt have shown up late. WAR has always been a pvp focused game just watch the PR campaigns. sure they have Pve as a side game but Orvr and Scenarios make up the meat of the game kind of like WoWs Raids and dungeons do in that game.
3) Now you don't care what games I have played, because you directly asked me if, and I quote you, "Are you new to MMOs? was WoW your first game where you need every MMO you play to be a jack of all trades mmo to even be interesting to you?"
Didn;t need you to answer, was mostly a slam against you in good fun. Didn't matter what game you played the way you push for a Everything to everyone MMO makes you seem like a brand new MMO newb.
So please don't act like you were not trying to paint me into some bad light with that type of comment or whatever other gross generalization you inflate to give yourself some sense of credibility.
I was and I did and it was fun.
Furthermore, it was not my desire or anyone elses desire for warhammer to have a pve aspect to the game. That is how mythic designed it. What is so hard to understand about that? Players are just reacting to what mythic made and how they billed it.
Mythic added in Pve as a side game to RvR what's so hard to understand?
Never said warhammers pve just as good as the rest of the market? Actually you said it was the same as every other game as far as quests, dungeons, etc. Except when you said there were worse games, which we can both agree one.
"I don;t think the Pve content was bad in WAR...The quests were like every other MMO, the PQs were fun, the dungeons were decent and the ToK was a blast." My quoted statement on WARs pve is correct that still doesnt make it a pve focused game and yes WAR's pve is better than a ton of games
I think you will be hard pressed to find many people who think warhammers pve was on par with the rest of the market and would be overwhemled with people who found it stale, repetitve and uninspiring to say the least.
Yes because other MMos don;t have generic Quests, bland dungeons and repetitive grinds... oh wait!
i dont agree to th whole mmo's are PvE games with some pvp added. i play mmo's for PvP and personally i hate PvE and im sure alot of people tried WAR for that exact reason. been a lack of good pvp mmo's out so when one comes out everyone that isnt the raiding type from WoW or whatever wants to try it.
im my opinion WAR failed because of population issues. way to many servers at launch caused the general population of the game to be spread way to thin and you could never get any open world pvp started and it all became scenarios and you can get the same battleground instanced pvp "crap" in WoW.
Why play a PVP game if all it offer is the same kind of boring PvP that more rounded games with more content already has? Im sad it failed though and hoping aion will do better as a more pvp focused mmo
Aion won't its a korean grinder at its core so expect long grinds for levels that is boring as hell even more so than usual, so have fun grinding for days for one level XD. Just to go and get owned by someone a few levels higher. I got into the beta for aion and pretty much cancelled my pre-order after playing it for a day or 2. I wrote it off as generic korean grinder with above average graphics.
well plaync or ncsoft or whatever have said the game is getting tweaked for EU/US release. im sure they know the western markets dont enjoy grinding as much as koreans do and will probably shorten it
They have already stated that there is no change for the NA release that will NOT affect the current game. In other words the grind will stay the same, as that may upset their current base.
Furthermore, it was not my desire or anyone elses desire for warhammer to have a pve aspect to the game. That is how mythic designed it. What is so hard to understand about that? Players are just reacting to what mythic made and how they billed it. Mythic added in Pve as a side game to RvR what's so hard to understand?
I'll just comment on this and ignore the rest of your usual bile filled tripe.
Mythic made a game that attempted to cater to a wide audience which included the pve crowd. Warhammer has more pve content than it does pvp content if that tells you anything. Even the pvp content has a very strong pve focus of dungeons, PQs, raids on npcs, etc. The developers have talked numberous times about the pve focus of the game and the pvp focus while making sure to say that pvp was optional. Did you read that last part again? What sort of pvp only game has optional pvp?
Just because the pve content sucks, doesn't make it a side item, an after thought or justified for being bad, because the pvp is better. It just means it is not up to par and nothing else.
As for mythic being forced to release early... I recall their deadline getting extended twice. Sounds like they had extra time to me and the fact that they didn't add in the rvr combat until near the end says no, they didn't plan on adding it until player feedback said that the game needed something more than it had.
Maybe you are right and mythic just spent years working on the game and forgot to add in the rvr portion of what you think is a pvp only game. Lucky for mythic they got a extra year of development time so they could add in keep sieges in the last 6 months of beta testing right. Rather odd design priorities for a game that you seem to think is pvp or get out. Spending all that time making all that pve content so they can try to attract the pvp crowd.
Yeah I think you have a firm grasp on the situation....
Originally posted by ericbelser How does a single one of those, let alone all of them, equate to the idea that any of us "want every game to be exaclty the same"?? My post came after an argument with someone bitching about Pve in a pvp game and wanting more of a jack of all trades game. Reread the thread please.
Perhaps if you stood on fewer soap-boxes? That didn't come across as a specific response, it read like a generic dismissal of the everyone you disagreed with, given how you repeatedly used terms like "most people" "most of you" and other non-specific, plural terms.
Since you agree with so many of the specific complaints, what exactly is your issue again? Yes, it could have been great, yeah there is plenty of room in the market for a RvR-centric game...but Mythic clearly isn't the one to do it, how badly the flubbed this and the ways they flubbed it clearly show they didn't learn any of the right lessons from DAoC.
Good article. (You guys seem to find some well written ones)
I'd say Mythic's arrogance led to the failure of this game. They assumed there was as many people who wanted to play their PvP game as there was that wanted to play a mostly PvE game like WoW.
The vast majority of people playing Wow and other MMOs are not into heavy pvping as the main thing. It's a side game for most of them and most gamers in general. The majority like to quest with friends, craft, fish, play with dance emotes, adventure around without actually killing stuff at times, group grind mobs in dungeons for loot, and a whole host of other things. As much as the WAR fans try and malign them, WoW fans and PvE fans in general are probably way more diverse than WAR fans and Mythic failed to realize this.
WAR fans just want to PvP pretty much.. they dont' want to craft or fish or do that other stuff; its a pretty one-dimensional crowd. That's why WAR doesn't even have /dance emotes; Mythic doesn't think that it's not "hardcore" enough, lol. Blizzard knows what it's audience whats to do for fun and they give it to them; diversity. Mythic gave little real diversity (other than PvP) or even how to make it all work. The tome was nice, but that's really not much when the PvE is boring. There just isn't enough to do in WAR that's fun when there aren't enough enemies to kill and the PvP is broken, and that was broken since Day 1.
They simply were too arrogant as a company and overestimated the amount of people that would truly stick around after the first couple of months. They tried to go after the WoW pvp base and steal them when they failed to release that they already were kind of a small, casual lot in the first place.
We both know EA forced these bastards to release WAR early if they didnt we would have had more Rvr shit in the game and siegeing wouldnt have shown up late.
Mythic Myth #353: EA forced Mythic into releasing Warhammer too early.
Mythic didn't even put keeps in until the last minute and that was only because the beta testers TOLD them the game would be a disaster.
Mythic had already announced a delay long before EA was even in the picture. I'm not sure why you hadn't heard of this before but it's pretty much common knowledge by now.
I concur this game would have been better. Now lets figure out what can be done to save it
It cant be save. Unless they're willing to shut down this game for maybe a year or 2 and redo the engine, or buy another software engine. And given that all these periods EA is willing to provide what they need. LOL
The software is bug, that's why you cant have huge battles without huge lag. Maybe something to do with their collision detection. So they implement the quick fix by kicking out players once a cap is met...
The selling point of this game is massive battles, yet it cant deliver. Sooner or later players patience will run out, and pop will start to fall further. I can not but see a sad ending for this game...
Edit: Just to add a personal view of minor flaw: The npc talk waaayyyy too much...
If team A wins, and winning gives a bonus to A, causing more players to play on team A - then B is immediately in a death spiral. This was not rocket science.
b) Open warfare is won by "who has the most players", the only counter is a force-multiplier (like AoE CC - which is hated).
In short, players want 8 million people in a zone. If you deliver that - the performance will be terrible, it'll be 5 million vs 3 million, people will complain that it's a "zerg-fest", it crashes/slows, and the population will slowly drain away.
c) Public quests.
They are a great idea.... if you have enough people. If you don't they just make it even more apparent how few people you've got.
d) Repetitive leveling.
You can gain EXP in zones A1, A2, or A3. Yipee! But in practice, you'll usually end up having to do ALL of A1,A2 and A3 - repeat for every character you want to level with, and it gets seriously tiring.
e) Too many servers, far too slow to offer merges.
I seem to remember that a 3rd party misrepresented the number of orders that helped this occur, but it was 'fatal' - certainly my server died as the population never approached a viable level.
f) PvP when there are no opponents.
If you're opponents are PvE'ing/ having a meeting/doing something in RL then a PvP-oriented game gets horribly boring.
g) Arbitrary rewards for 'doing stuff better than other people'.
Your party has a wizard, a thief, cleric and a warrior - and 1 prize. Who gets it? Should the healer get it for conserving mana, or for amount healed? what if the healer has an ability to prevent damage? what if the warrior doesn't take any damage? what if the thief has a DPS of 28-million:1 due to only hitting once?
When you get to 48 people, and 1 prize - practically everyone will feel that a formula is unfair.
h) The 3rd side.
Hard to argue against this, 2 sides was a huge, fundamental mistake.
---
For me, the reason I quit was a mix of 'severe population problems', 'population imbalance' and the insanely repetitive/pointless endgame.
[whilst N months would have helped conan etc., I do not believe that the problems with WAR were ever recognized by the developers - more time in beta would have added more content - something that would have made things much worse]
Really it's quite simple. Mythic didn't follow what went well for DAOC and why people still years later talk about how awesome the original premise of DAOC was.
WAR needed 3 sides. They needed less scenarios, or at a minimum very little to zero exp and realm pts from winning scenarios. Really scenarios should of been a side diversion and a practice area for the real world Open RvR, which this game also didn't deliver on.
If Mythic followed DAOC model, you would of had dedicated zones aka Frontiers to fight in. That would of been the main areas to fight, not the crappy queue up anywhere scenarios where people sat in camps afk until there scenario popped.
Honestly also CC needed to be more in line with DAOC. AOE CC was the strategy behind small groups taking out large zergs in DAOC. It works and could of been balanced even more then it was in DAOC. People would complain, but when do people not complain?
There's more, but really the fact that they didn't follow the good points of DAOC and impliment that, that is what ultimately killed them.
Dark Age of Camelot was a very successful MMO in its era (350,000+ subscribers). As a result, fans of the game (and all the friends they bragged to for years) were excited for a spiritual successor. Furthermore, the tabletop game of Warhammer has an enormous following of millions worldwide. Lastly, after years of raid/gear grinding, many WoW players were desperate for something new (especially WoW PvPers). These three groups of people (of which there was some crossover) anxiously awaited the release of Warhammer. There were millions of potential customers who really wanted Warhammer to succeed. Their disappointment is almost immeasurable.
....from the article.
So true. I really really wanted it to succeed. Mythic had the Realm vs Realm experience and were doing a "version 2", the great Warhammer IP backing it up, and money to boot from EA. Argghhhh, the fools, the fools, how did they screw it up! I quit after the first month, yet I followed it for atleast 6 months afterwards, monitoring the patches, the changes. Even jumped back in when the Slayer dropped on the 10 day freebie.
Its a dead duck.
Great article, I agree with it all. I dont think the game can be salvaged. That would take radical changes and they dont look to be forthcoming. It will likely die a slowly withering death.
its interesting the way mmo gamers dissect and pick over new mmo's these days. I've recently started playing Warhammer onine. I have a 13 runepriest and a lvl 7 disciple of khaine. Done a few scenarios along the way, done a few public quests and its been pretty decent thus far.
Then I remember what WoW was like when it was released:
No PvP. Honor system and battlegrounds didnt come out until well into 2005. THere was some World pvp on PvP servers but if you were on a Normal server thats it. You were stuck with PvE only.
Only endgame 2 raids for 8 months.
Broken classes for almost a year. Warlocks and hunters were broken until their talent reviews in patches 1.6 and 1.7 in the 2nd half of 2005. Until their talent reviews paladins werent even good healers let alone dps or tanks. All a paladin did until their talent review was cleanse and redo 5 minute blessings. Thats it. And even the better classes only had 1 decent talent tree.
Once you got to lvl 60 all you had to do was raid or if you were on a PvP server raid crossroads or join the tarren mill/southshore zergs.
Thats it.
Quite simply if WoW was released today, as it was back in late Nov 2004 it would be receive a savage mauling. But if you look at the subscriber numbers WoW actually increased the rate of new players in the 2nd half of 2005 which, funnily enough, was when Blizzard really started to polish the game with talent reviews and releasing massive amounts of content.
People just have unrealistic expectations. The veteran mmo players have become ultra critical and cynical and the new players blind and stupid.
I re-installed the game a few days ago and was tooling around the starter areas, there was a good amount of people there playing low level toons. I don't expect to see the starter areas filled to the brim as I am sure most players are at the top tiers but there seemed, to me anyway, that the game had a good number of people, at least in the starting zone. I still wish the game was doing much better though...
Simple reason for this. T1-T3 is fun, T4 is a failure of Biblical proportions. You can only roll so many alts with no endgame to look forward to.
Comments
The only time I consider something a true postmortem is when it is written by the devs themselves. And since these devs continue to think their game is awesome I doubt we'll ever see that.
Yeah I agree sadly. While I never played Warhammer the TT game I was excited for this however there was really nothing Warhammer about it... It could have been anything really and the lore was lacking considering how much actual lore there really is. I could have been playing WoW2 or EQ3 for all I knew.
I know this is a bit off topic but what the hell is so wrong with a game that focuses on particular mechanics?
Why do most of you need all these jack of all trade master of none games?
I used to love DAoC and that game early on was all about pvp it was fucking epic.
Games like Lotro, FFXI and Eq2 are all about Pve (mostly) and are fun games to play.
Why must a game be everything in one package?
When did most of you guys start thinking like this?
Is it the money? do you not want to spend a monthly fee if you can't have everything?
Imo that's freaking lame!
how are indy developers going to achieve a game that supports every type of MMO sub genre? sure WoW pulled off the "Everything to everyone" but thats freaking blizzard with their mega bucks. Even with all that money they still delivered a watered down experience compared to more focused games imo.
While even WAR has it's faults the pvp in that game instanced and none instanced is the best since DAoC in the fantasy themepark sub genre imo.
I just don;t understand why most people want every game to be exaclty the same (quests, leveling, classes, raids, instanced pvp) all in one.
Variety is a good thing or atleast I think so.
It's almost like the mmo community is a lost cause, it's frustrating tbh.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
my problem with war was that everything felt staged and not real. It felt like a war play wtih actors on a stage so to speak. It didnt feel like anything really was urgent or mattered.
What went wrong with WAR? Easy.
- lack of one, unzoned persistent world like in WoW
- lack of meaningful goals for a group/guild to achieve just stupid keeps that change hands every 15 mins with no consequence whatsoever
- basing the game on Warhammer Fantasy Battlle rather than WFRP; WFB was done to death by WoW which was supposed to be a Warhammer FB computer game in the first place back in the '90s
- huge, fun PvP battles but with no long lasting and world changing consequence (like in EVE for example)
- basically the game feels like bigger WoW's battlegrounds with much better PvP mechanics but with the same grindy, repetitive gameplay
P.S. Class balance? if u want class balance sign up to communist party... altho i still think Orcs are well OPed but its what they are (fantasy tanks/terminators) its the first MMO where ure not playing a Wizard that can take 1 mln DMG like a tank
1) Yes heart attack, thanks for the advice doctor. I'll get right on that.
2) You said war is a pvp game and that pve players "didn't" belong. Just to quote you
"Edit: to any posters in this thread complaining about lack of raids or dungeon content you weren't intended to even be playing WAR. This game is a pvp game lol. Pve in WAR equals PQs, crafting, quests and a few minor dungeons."
If you had opened your mind just a little bit you would see that mythic spent a great deal of time on the PVE portion of the game. I would wager that there is more real estate dedicated to pve than there is to pvp in your self proclaimed pvp only game. There are numberous videos of mythic developers talking about how players can player from start to finish without ever joining in pvp. So you would be wrong in your assestment on many levels in a game where pvp was billed as being optional.
Also, the keep seiging was not part of the original game design and only added in the late hours of beta, because players were saying the game was lacking. Before you go off telling people they don't belong somewhere you may want to do just a little research, because warhammer almost was the game without RvR that we both agree no one would have subscribed to.
3) Now you don't care what games I have played, because you directly asked me if, and I quote you, "Are you new to MMOs? was WoW your first game where you need every MMO you play to be a jack of all trades mmo to even be interesting to you?"
So please don't act like you were not trying to paint me into some bad light with that type of comment or whatever other gross generalization you inflate to give yourself some sense of credibility.
Furthermore, it was not my desire or anyone elses desire for warhammer to have a pve aspect to the game. That is how mythic designed it. What is so hard to understand about that? Players are just reacting to what mythic made and how they billed it.
Never said warhammers pve just as good as the rest of the market? Actually you said it was the same as every other game as far as quests, dungeons, etc. Except when you said there were worse games, which we can both agree one.
"I don;t think the Pve content was bad in WAR...The quests were like every other MMO, the PQs were fun, the dungeons were decent and the ToK was a blast."
I think you will be hard pressed to find many people who think warhammers pve was on par with the rest of the market and would be overwhemled with people who found it stale, repetitve and uninspiring to say the least.
What went right for this POS? Not much, I'd say. I can't think of a single aspect of this game that isn't done better somewhere else. Or for that matter, a game I played less before logging off for good. I'm just glad I never bought a client.
I agree on all but one point: Bright Wizard. I played one, and yes a BW did tons of dmg, but on the downside, I was often enough furious because I died like crap. A Wizard class needs CC to stay alive. Without CC, no one will play BW, and when I later tried WAR again, BW wasnt much played. Elven Archers (or whatever they are called in the English version) do almost the same dmg and survive MUCH better, so why play BW when Archer does almost the same?
The other points I fully agree with. Order was terribly uncool, there was no emotional connection to the keeps like in DAOC and lack of 3rd faction made it very stale. PVE was quite boring, and surely not interesting enough for the PVP nuts, at least not in our days when we are used a wee bit more than kill 50 of X, because I say so.
I don't like those overly specialized games which focus on one aspect, on a personal note, and prefer MMOs with many different things to do and spheres to experience.
Also, I never really felt like in a world, more like in a staged theme park course. I never knew where in the world I was, it was all zones not showing on the world map, and I felt like led from entertainment point A to B asf. Not like discovering a world step by step on my own, but rather "now go there, to War-point X next".
Way to incorporate multiple strawmen into one post!
Let's see, main complaints people have raised that have nothing to do with anything you mentioned:
WAR is a typical level-driven MMO, you have to level to participate in the PvP you claim is soo great. Well how? WAR PvE sucks balls, with the possible exception of AoC it's the worst out there of the current generation of MMOs. Levelling through PvP either means grinding the same repetitive scenario over and over again or desperately looking for any content/fight in a pvp zone.
It's a horrible interpretation of the Warhammer Universe that many of us knew and loved. Dumbed down, cartoonified and vastly smaller and more limited.
Trying the 3-realm RvR model with only 2 realms doesn't work
Buggy sieges and other technical problems
Poor/nenextistant realm balance and possibly worse class balance
How does a single one of those, let alone all of them, equate to the idea that any of us "want every game to be exaclty the same"??
There was some 800k people willing to be "forced" to PvP when this game came out.. It was a well known fact this game was about PvP and/or RvR.
To say MMOs are just about PvE shows just how narrow minded this post is...
If they didn't screw up end game, class balance, server stabilty, etc. this game may have done very well for itself...
The difference between nature and men is: nature learns from mistakes and obsolete systems die out. But no matter how many MMOs fail, they make the same failures over and over and over with the next MMO and NEVER learn.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I concur this game would have been better.
Now lets figure out what can be done to save it
Finally - Best site for Chuck Norris
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/
Way to incorporate multiple strawmen into one post!
The post your quoting is a bit off topic and I even said it was. it's mroe a complaint on the gamer community in not wanting diverse games in the genre and more Jack of all trades.
Let's see, main complaints people have raised that have nothing to do with anything you mentioned:
WAR is a typical level-driven MMO, you have to level to participate in the PvP you claim is soo great. Well how? WAR PvE sucks balls, with the possible exception of AoC it's the worst out there of the current generation of MMOs. Levelling through PvP either means grinding the same repetitive scenario over and over again or desperately looking for any content/fight in a pvp zone.
In this thread I actually said the problem with WAR was that it was too dependent on a massive amount of players but once you actually have those players WARs scenarios and Orvr is easily better than any thing we've seen since DAoC. Thats a big But though.
It's a horrible interpretation of the Warhammer Universe that many of us knew and loved. Dumbed down, cartoonified and vastly smaller and more limited.
As a sandbox player myself Im the first to admit the game is limited.
Trying the 3-realm RvR model with only 2 realms doesn't work
Actually I had alot of fun with the FvF pvp in WAR it just needed more people participating in it but yes Like i;ve said DAoC was a better game.
Buggy sieges and other technical problems
I already spoke on the Client stability, it was one of my problems with WAR. Maybe you should check out my first post in the thread?
Poor/nenextistant realm balance and possibly worse class balance
Yes population problems are rampant in WAR , I don;t really have a problem with class balance as I understand that WAR is a large siege pvp game something a ton of you guys seem to miss.
How does a single one of those, let alone all of them, equate to the idea that any of us "want every game to be exaclty the same"??
My post came after an argument with someone bitching about Pve in a pvp game and wanting more of a jack of all trades game. Reread the thread please.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
1) Yes heart attack, thanks for the advice doctor. I'll get right on that.
No worries wouldn;t want some crazy fanboi getting all dead on us how will we continue these wonderful mmo arguments in the future.
2) You said war is a pvp game and that pve players "didn't" belong. Just to quote you
"Edit: to any posters in this thread complaining about lack of raids or dungeon content you weren't intended to even be playing WAR. This game is a pvp game lol. Pve in WAR equals PQs, crafting, quests and a few minor dungeons."
This is true, if WAR was a pve focused game wouldnt Mythic a developement house certainly capable of a good MMO (DAoC) make more progression dungeons and litter the game world with more pve stuff? Even as limited as it is I still enjoy it that's why I say its "Good".
If you had opened your mind just a little bit you would see that mythic spent a great deal of time on the PVE portion of the game. I would wager that there is more real estate dedicated to pve than there is to pvp in your self proclaimed pvp only game. There are numberous videos of mythic developers talking about how players can player from start to finish without ever joining in pvp. So you would be wrong in your assestment on many levels in a game where pvp was billed as being optional.
Yes pvp and pve as an option for leveling, Quests, Pq;s and ToK help with that but WAR is still far from a Pve focused game.
Also, the keep seiging was not part of the original game design and only added in the late hours of beta, because players were saying the game was lacking. Before you go off telling people they don't belong somewhere you may want to do just a little research, because warhammer almost was the game without RvR that we both agree no one would have subscribed to.
We both know EA forced these bastards to release WAR early if they didnt we would have had more Rvr shit in the game and siegeing wouldnt have shown up late. WAR has always been a pvp focused game just watch the PR campaigns. sure they have Pve as a side game but Orvr and Scenarios make up the meat of the game kind of like WoWs Raids and dungeons do in that game.
3) Now you don't care what games I have played, because you directly asked me if, and I quote you, "Are you new to MMOs? was WoW your first game where you need every MMO you play to be a jack of all trades mmo to even be interesting to you?"
Didn;t need you to answer, was mostly a slam against you in good fun. Didn't matter what game you played the way you push for a Everything to everyone MMO makes you seem like a brand new MMO newb.
So please don't act like you were not trying to paint me into some bad light with that type of comment or whatever other gross generalization you inflate to give yourself some sense of credibility.
I was and I did and it was fun.
Furthermore, it was not my desire or anyone elses desire for warhammer to have a pve aspect to the game. That is how mythic designed it. What is so hard to understand about that? Players are just reacting to what mythic made and how they billed it.
Mythic added in Pve as a side game to RvR what's so hard to understand?
Never said warhammers pve just as good as the rest of the market? Actually you said it was the same as every other game as far as quests, dungeons, etc. Except when you said there were worse games, which we can both agree one.
"I don;t think the Pve content was bad in WAR...The quests were like every other MMO, the PQs were fun, the dungeons were decent and the ToK was a blast." My quoted statement on WARs pve is correct that still doesnt make it a pve focused game and yes WAR's pve is better than a ton of games
I think you will be hard pressed to find many people who think warhammers pve was on par with the rest of the market and would be overwhemled with people who found it stale, repetitve and uninspiring to say the least.
Yes because other MMos don;t have generic Quests, bland dungeons and repetitive grinds... oh wait!
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
Aion won't its a korean grinder at its core so expect long grinds for levels that is boring as hell even more so than usual, so have fun grinding for days for one level XD. Just to go and get owned by someone a few levels higher. I got into the beta for aion and pretty much cancelled my pre-order after playing it for a day or 2. I wrote it off as generic korean grinder with above average graphics.
well plaync or ncsoft or whatever have said the game is getting tweaked for EU/US release. im sure they know the western markets dont enjoy grinding as much as koreans do and will probably shorten it
They have already stated that there is no change for the NA release that will NOT affect the current game. In other words the grind will stay the same, as that may upset their current base.
I'll just comment on this and ignore the rest of your usual bile filled tripe.
Mythic made a game that attempted to cater to a wide audience which included the pve crowd. Warhammer has more pve content than it does pvp content if that tells you anything. Even the pvp content has a very strong pve focus of dungeons, PQs, raids on npcs, etc. The developers have talked numberous times about the pve focus of the game and the pvp focus while making sure to say that pvp was optional. Did you read that last part again? What sort of pvp only game has optional pvp?
Just because the pve content sucks, doesn't make it a side item, an after thought or justified for being bad, because the pvp is better. It just means it is not up to par and nothing else.
As for mythic being forced to release early... I recall their deadline getting extended twice. Sounds like they had extra time to me and the fact that they didn't add in the rvr combat until near the end says no, they didn't plan on adding it until player feedback said that the game needed something more than it had.
Maybe you are right and mythic just spent years working on the game and forgot to add in the rvr portion of what you think is a pvp only game. Lucky for mythic they got a extra year of development time so they could add in keep sieges in the last 6 months of beta testing right. Rather odd design priorities for a game that you seem to think is pvp or get out. Spending all that time making all that pve content so they can try to attract the pvp crowd.
Yeah I think you have a firm grasp on the situation....
Perhaps if you stood on fewer soap-boxes? That didn't come across as a specific response, it read like a generic dismissal of the everyone you disagreed with, given how you repeatedly used terms like "most people" "most of you" and other non-specific, plural terms.
Since you agree with so many of the specific complaints, what exactly is your issue again? Yes, it could have been great, yeah there is plenty of room in the market for a RvR-centric game...but Mythic clearly isn't the one to do it, how badly the flubbed this and the ways they flubbed it clearly show they didn't learn any of the right lessons from DAoC.
Good article. (You guys seem to find some well written ones)
I'd say Mythic's arrogance led to the failure of this game. They assumed there was as many people who wanted to play their PvP game as there was that wanted to play a mostly PvE game like WoW.
The vast majority of people playing Wow and other MMOs are not into heavy pvping as the main thing. It's a side game for most of them and most gamers in general. The majority like to quest with friends, craft, fish, play with dance emotes, adventure around without actually killing stuff at times, group grind mobs in dungeons for loot, and a whole host of other things. As much as the WAR fans try and malign them, WoW fans and PvE fans in general are probably way more diverse than WAR fans and Mythic failed to realize this.
WAR fans just want to PvP pretty much.. they dont' want to craft or fish or do that other stuff; its a pretty one-dimensional crowd. That's why WAR doesn't even have /dance emotes; Mythic doesn't think that it's not "hardcore" enough, lol. Blizzard knows what it's audience whats to do for fun and they give it to them; diversity. Mythic gave little real diversity (other than PvP) or even how to make it all work. The tome was nice, but that's really not much when the PvE is boring. There just isn't enough to do in WAR that's fun when there aren't enough enemies to kill and the PvP is broken, and that was broken since Day 1.
They simply were too arrogant as a company and overestimated the amount of people that would truly stick around after the first couple of months. They tried to go after the WoW pvp base and steal them when they failed to release that they already were kind of a small, casual lot in the first place.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Mythic Myth #353: EA forced Mythic into releasing Warhammer too early.
Mythic didn't even put keeps in until the last minute and that was only because the beta testers TOLD them the game would be a disaster.
Mythic had already announced a delay long before EA was even in the picture. I'm not sure why you hadn't heard of this before but it's pretty much common knowledge by now.
"TO MICHAEL!"
It cant be save. Unless they're willing to shut down this game for maybe a year or 2 and redo the engine, or buy another software engine. And given that all these periods EA is willing to provide what they need. LOL
The software is bug, that's why you cant have huge battles without huge lag. Maybe something to do with their collision detection. So they implement the quick fix by kicking out players once a cap is met...
The selling point of this game is massive battles, yet it cant deliver. Sooner or later players patience will run out, and pop will start to fall further. I can not but see a sad ending for this game...
Edit: Just to add a personal view of minor flaw: The npc talk waaayyyy too much...
RIP Orc Choppa
What went wrong IMHO?
a) The "war" was a fundamentally stupid idea.
If team A wins, and winning gives a bonus to A, causing more players to play on team A - then B is immediately in a death spiral. This was not rocket science.
b) Open warfare is won by "who has the most players", the only counter is a force-multiplier (like AoE CC - which is hated).
In short, players want 8 million people in a zone. If you deliver that - the performance will be terrible, it'll be 5 million vs 3 million, people will complain that it's a "zerg-fest", it crashes/slows, and the population will slowly drain away.
c) Public quests.
They are a great idea.... if you have enough people. If you don't they just make it even more apparent how few people you've got.
d) Repetitive leveling.
You can gain EXP in zones A1, A2, or A3. Yipee! But in practice, you'll usually end up having to do ALL of A1,A2 and A3 - repeat for every character you want to level with, and it gets seriously tiring.
e) Too many servers, far too slow to offer merges.
I seem to remember that a 3rd party misrepresented the number of orders that helped this occur, but it was 'fatal' - certainly my server died as the population never approached a viable level.
f) PvP when there are no opponents.
If you're opponents are PvE'ing/ having a meeting/doing something in RL then a PvP-oriented game gets horribly boring.
g) Arbitrary rewards for 'doing stuff better than other people'.
Your party has a wizard, a thief, cleric and a warrior - and 1 prize. Who gets it? Should the healer get it for conserving mana, or for amount healed? what if the healer has an ability to prevent damage? what if the warrior doesn't take any damage? what if the thief has a DPS of 28-million:1 due to only hitting once?
When you get to 48 people, and 1 prize - practically everyone will feel that a formula is unfair.
h) The 3rd side.
Hard to argue against this, 2 sides was a huge, fundamental mistake.
---
For me, the reason I quit was a mix of 'severe population problems', 'population imbalance' and the insanely repetitive/pointless endgame.
[whilst N months would have helped conan etc., I do not believe that the problems with WAR were ever recognized by the developers - more time in beta would have added more content - something that would have made things much worse]
Really it's quite simple. Mythic didn't follow what went well for DAOC and why people still years later talk about how awesome the original premise of DAOC was.
WAR needed 3 sides. They needed less scenarios, or at a minimum very little to zero exp and realm pts from winning scenarios. Really scenarios should of been a side diversion and a practice area for the real world Open RvR, which this game also didn't deliver on.
If Mythic followed DAOC model, you would of had dedicated zones aka Frontiers to fight in. That would of been the main areas to fight, not the crappy queue up anywhere scenarios where people sat in camps afk until there scenario popped.
Honestly also CC needed to be more in line with DAOC. AOE CC was the strategy behind small groups taking out large zergs in DAOC. It works and could of been balanced even more then it was in DAOC. People would complain, but when do people not complain?
There's more, but really the fact that they didn't follow the good points of DAOC and impliment that, that is what ultimately killed them.
....from the article.
So true. I really really wanted it to succeed. Mythic had the Realm vs Realm experience and were doing a "version 2", the great Warhammer IP backing it up, and money to boot from EA. Argghhhh, the fools, the fools, how did they screw it up! I quit after the first month, yet I followed it for atleast 6 months afterwards, monitoring the patches, the changes. Even jumped back in when the Slayer dropped on the 10 day freebie.
Its a dead duck.
Great article, I agree with it all. I dont think the game can be salvaged. That would take radical changes and they dont look to be forthcoming. It will likely die a slowly withering death.
its interesting the way mmo gamers dissect and pick over new mmo's these days. I've recently started playing Warhammer onine. I have a 13 runepriest and a lvl 7 disciple of khaine. Done a few scenarios along the way, done a few public quests and its been pretty decent thus far.
Then I remember what WoW was like when it was released:
No PvP. Honor system and battlegrounds didnt come out until well into 2005. THere was some World pvp on PvP servers but if you were on a Normal server thats it. You were stuck with PvE only.
Only endgame 2 raids for 8 months.
Broken classes for almost a year. Warlocks and hunters were broken until their talent reviews in patches 1.6 and 1.7 in the 2nd half of 2005. Until their talent reviews paladins werent even good healers let alone dps or tanks. All a paladin did until their talent review was cleanse and redo 5 minute blessings. Thats it. And even the better classes only had 1 decent talent tree.
Once you got to lvl 60 all you had to do was raid or if you were on a PvP server raid crossroads or join the tarren mill/southshore zergs.
Thats it.
Quite simply if WoW was released today, as it was back in late Nov 2004 it would be receive a savage mauling. But if you look at the subscriber numbers WoW actually increased the rate of new players in the 2nd half of 2005 which, funnily enough, was when Blizzard really started to polish the game with talent reviews and releasing massive amounts of content.
People just have unrealistic expectations. The veteran mmo players have become ultra critical and cynical and the new players blind and stupid.
Simple reason for this. T1-T3 is fun, T4 is a failure of Biblical proportions. You can only roll so many alts with no endgame to look forward to.