Oh Warhammer...how I WANT to love you

shylock1079

 This is not another "I canceled my subscription because _____" page.  MMO players tend to be a quite emotional bunch, and I'd hate to add to instigate.  Instead, I'm going to simply and hopefully conduce a rant into a things that could be changed for the better.  Mythic EA probably flees from forums these days, as Warhammer has become almost a metaphor for worst case scenario.  But with all the strange choices Mythic makes and all the bad press, I have to say I’m still a fan.  Why?  Because they are capable of some really good stuff as they have personally proven to me in the past.  So as a loyal fan of Mythic…these are 5 things that could remove Warhammer as a punch line. 

 

1.  “Get away from Wow!”  -Did you really need SC’s?  Come on, give us an instanced keep that people can just mingle in and out of instead of waiting for all the sides to get enough people.  Imbalances are nearly a problem on every server and waiting is awful.  What logical design can a quick CTF have on the overall power of a realm battle?  Nothing..aside from trying to appeal directly to a WoW audience who are familiar with the scheme.

 

2.  “If you want pve, go to Warcraft”  -This is a logical fallacy.  Warhammer is indeed rvr (not pvp).  Yet for rvr to exist there has to be at least some pve to balance it out. Mythic has pushed far too deep into the rvr aspect and has neglected pve.  One of many issues with this is that rvr is highly reliant on realm population.  If you are simply developing rvr without the pve aspect you are, in essence, making this a numbers game.  The team with the lower population will see great opposition and generally turn to pve to level up or gather resources in hopes that their role in rvr will be greatly enhanced next go round.  Because of an almost nonexistent pve and crafting system, they simply log off.  For example we were discussing PQ’s in tier 3 not long ago and someone actually commented that they had never done one.  That is a serious problem when 70% of the graphical landscapes are not even being used.  It’s a waste, because some of the zones are really well designed.

 

3.  “What is a PQ.  Are you serious?”  Greater PQ’s.  These were a great idea.  In fact, every reviewer that gave Warhammer an above average review remarked on how wonderfully unique they were.  Not the originality of the rvr…but the PQ’s.  Again, no one is using them.  Give us fewer, but greater in scope.  When you have the number of random pq’s spread meaninglessly throughout a zone, they get overlooked.  We just need an easy, moderate and hard.  Make the hard one a city battle too of some sort..and give great rewards that at least somewhat rival those in PvP.

 

4.  “Where is the Animist? There are shrooms everywhere!”  Get away from the mirror type classes.  I understand it helps a bit with consistency and realm balance..but seriously…It dumbs down the tactics a bit when you are facing opponents that you see over and over.  Cookie cutter classes are easy, but later it gets monotonous.  When someone goes from one realm to the other to experience the strange and new, they are disappointed to find the same (albeit with slightly different abilities) but almost the same strategy. 

 

5. “Look at the game of the year and learn from it.  It’s okay to be different”  Now I think this may be EA’s influence on trying to do mass appeal.  With that mentality you take fewer chances, and thus fit into previous molds.  EvE has been amazing in that they know they are a niche game and could care less.  Mythic used to take chances.  They used to not care what the loud minority shouts angrily into their monitors late at night.  But with Warhammer, they seem to be well aware that they don’t want to provoke a small group that wants everything done fast and easy. So with each update they comply.  Difficulty is okay.  After all, getting there is what makes these games fun.  Warhammer seems to be caught in this quagmire of appealing to the pvp only group who tend to get upset with rvr quite quickly.  And so they’ve tried to make this game slant towards this group.  But Darkfall has arrived, hasn’t it?  And AoC.  Stop trying to appeal to everyone and realize that maybe being niche isn’t so bad.  In fact….Eve makes it look pretty freaking good.  

Pheace

This game was originally based around scenario's.

 

It's the ORvR that this game wasn't supposed to have, yet their initial design was left wanting by the beta crowd and they were essentially forced to push back the release date, drop back into beta and focus on ORvR.

 

Imo, the game never recovered from *that* decision, which is painfully clear because hardly *any* of the ORvR aspects seem to have any worked out thought behind it, nor the technical prowess to back up the thought they *did* put into it. .

Ethian

My g/f and I were just saying the other day how we wished WAR had been better. It has the potential but unfortionately it never took off. We tried it twice and lasted no more then a month each time around....

Kyleran

Originally posted by Pheace


This game was originally based around scenario's.
 
It's the ORvR that this game wasn't supposed to have, yet their initial design was left wanting by the beta crowd and they were essentially forced to push back the release date, drop back into beta and focus on ORvR.
 
Imo, the game never recovered from *that* decision, which is painfully clear because hardly *any* of the ORvR aspects seem to have any worked out thought behind it, nor the technical prowess to back up the thought they *did* put into it. .

Agreed, they based too much of the game's design trying to emulate what made WOW successful, and not enough focus on what made DAOC great.

I'm just not sure its possible to fall back and regroup anymore, the game's pretty much in maintenance mode now and won't be seeing any huge design changes going forward.

 

Sovrath

I actually loved the scenarios. More balanced sides, definite goals, was some of the most fun I've had in this game.

The RVR wasn't so great. Essentially the keeps were a bit meh and the sieges weren't that great. The RvR devolved down to the same old group against a few.

It was essentially a few players running around a map trying to find each other.

I recall one time when we took a keep we then found out that the opposition was coming to us. So a huge fun fight ensued. However, finally some people started getting restless and one person asked "so what are we doing here, just skirmishing"? he wanted to move on to the next keep.

So no pride in ownership.

Though, if there were instanced keeps with both sides fighting for it and therefore a definite goal and time period I could get into that.

Ultimately I want sieges. Either attacking or defending. I don't want to just flip objectives.

Alienovrlord

 As a former WAR player, I disagree with several of your points.

The zones in WAR were horrible.   Perhaps you meant they are artistically appealing, and some of the zones did look nice. But they were terrible for gameplay purposes. Annoying to navigate, poorly laid out,  and content too spread out in no rational manner at all.  You say yourself state that PQs were spread meaninglessly throughout the zones, and that is NOT good zone design.

That Tier 3 player had never done a PQ because PQs are stuck out in the middle of nowhere in zones that are a royal pain to traverse.   There are roads that actually run right into the middle of large NPC camps, delaying anyone just trying to navigate the zone so they can get to an active PQ or meet up at the RvR warcamp.

I do agree that the number of PQs should have been cut. Instead they made large numbers and just threw them out into the zones. PQs should have always been near the gathering points of players, like the warcamps.

Also Scenarios were the most entertinaing part of PvP.    I agree with other posters pointing out how open world RVR suffered from a lack of time and testing probably caused by the mid-development switch of emphasis. Not to mention the awful idea of forcing a combination of PvE  and PvP gameplay (PvP objectives give the best loot by killing NPC bosses, end-game PvP city attacks just lead to PvE raids)

There were other issues that you didn't mention. Like the very poor PvE design. The PvE quest storylines were awful. I have played other MMORPGs which had compelling quest storylines, but WAR did not have any.  At all.  Then there was the lack of RP options.   I'm not a big RP-er but it can be fun. WAR did not offer much to them when one couldn't even make a character /walk or /sit.

It's a shame because I did truly enjoy playing a tank in WAR.   It was the only MMORPG where I have ever enjoyed playing that class and the PvP mechanics themselves were very enjoyable. Perhaps the problem is that people have come to expect so much out of MMORPGs that trying to target a niche market is much more difficult.    A MMORPG is expected to appeal to PvP-ers, PvE-ers, RP-ers and people who are a mix of all of those.     That is a tough thing to do.  

shylock1079

Originally posted by Alienovrlord


 As a former WAR player, I disagree with several of your points.
The zones in WAR were horrible.   Perhaps you meant they are artistically appealing, and some of the zones did look nice. But they were terrible for gameplay purposes. Annoying to navigate, poorly laid out,  and content too spread out in no rational manner at all.  You say yourself state that PQs were spread meaninglessly throughout the zones, and that is NOT good zone design.
That Tier 3 player had never done a PQ because PQs are stuck out in the middle of nowhere in zones that are a royal pain to traverse.   There are roads that actually run right into the middle of large NPC camps, delaying anyone just trying to navigate the zone so they can get to an active PQ or meet up at the RvR warcamp.
I do agree that the number of PQs should have been cut. Instead they made large numbers and just threw them out into the zones. PQs should have always been near the gathering points of players, like the warcamps.
Also Scenarios were the most entertinaing part of PvP.    I agree with other posters pointing out how open world RVR suffered from a lack of time and testing probably caused by the mid-development switch of emphasis. Not to mention the awful idea of forcing a combination of PvE  and PvP gameplay (PvP objectives give the best loot by killing NPC bosses, end-game PvP city attacks just lead to PvE raids)
There were other issues that you didn't mention. Like the very poor PvE design. The PvE quest storylines were awful. I have played other MMORPGs which had compelling quest storylines, but WAR did not have any.  At all.  Then there was the lack of RP options.   I'm not a big RP-er but it can be fun. WAR did not offer much to them when one couldn't even make a character /walk or /sit.
It's a shame because I did truly enjoy playing a tank in WAR.   It was the only MMORPG where I have ever enjoyed playing that class and the PvP mechanics themselves were very enjoyable. Perhaps the problem is that people have come to expect so much out of MMORPGs that trying to target a niche market is much more difficult.    A MMORPG is expected to appeal to PvP-ers, PvE-ers, RP-ers and people who are a mix of all of those.     That is a tough thing to do.  

I was indeed speaking in terms of aesthetic value when mentioned the zones.  There is quite a bit to see, and the models aren't half bad.  But ya, the zone layout is horrible..just look at the Marshes...absolutely awful.  

In terms of instanced pvp I honestly wonder about how much WoW had to do with their initial construction.  Was that the original concept, and at which point go in that direction.  For me, coming from Dark Age, I did expect a massive role for keeps.  I also came in with a hatred for arcade-like pvp I had seen in WoW and GW.  That is just me.  So when we did get to beta phase, I was shocked.  Where were the nicely designed keeps with amazing detail and walls that crumbled?  Those were the images I got from rvr judging by their previous rvr centric game.  You couldn't /sit you couldn't /cards nor any of the other nice little additions. But WAR is hollow.  It was like a beautiful word that had no purpose at all, caught between dark age and WOW with no elements of RPG at all.  It was shocking to me...as it was to most people.

But one thing that was mentioned by the poster above me..and I have to concur..is some of the good things are wasted. One thing Mythic did very was in their design of tanks.  Few times have I ever seen a tank as much fun to play as in War.  Whereas with most games we look for tanks nonstop due to shortages...in War there are generally quite a few to be found. For me, they are just as much fun in pve as rvr.  

It's really sad also..but you are right.  I don't see anything new coming because for the next year or so they will be fixing their mess..and it is a mess.  The success of endless trial is debatable..but I can tell you there has been a large influx of the WoW crowd who tend to be more for instanced pvp than any form of rvr.  There is nothing wrong with that, but as you said..their time is generally limited because Mythic decided at the last minute to limit instanced pvp in favor of ORvR.  Those new subs are generally fleeing by T3.

Unlike any game before I wished that War could have been a success.  I had more fun in DAOC then I've ever had playing an MMO, and I've played them all.  So I guess I just hope that perhaps there will be something good come of this.  Who knows, maybe EA will sell them off to someone who doesn't just see them as an instant cash grab.