I had a fun time in WAR doing outdoor PvP (or RvR as they want to call it), in all tiers, during the early months of the game.
I enjoyed leading a 200 man zerg fighting another 200 man zerg in the endless battles that took place in tier 4 (I played on the most populated EU PvP server at the time though, I forgot the name... something with karak?). The lower tiers were fun aswell but on a smaller scale.
Then all of a sudden I got bored and realised the gameplay is the same everytime, and when the game got to a period (a long period where Mythic did jack all to fix things or even listen to the players) where losing outdoor 'RvR' so your city get's sieged became more profitable (easy gear) than attacking, the game kinda died. I took a break for about 2-3 weeks and then they released that desert content thing... It was horrible, the ultimate failure that, after many lessons, they still did not learn. You should not reward PvP with PvE content, it is beyond silly. PvP and PvE players are 2 completely different styles and most PvPers did not like the city sieges (which were 90% PvE), but for some reason Mythic decided to do the same mistake over again. I pretty much quit for good the day they released that content patch.
In the end, though, I have some fun memories of running around in a group in the RvR lakes, it was a fun experience till Mythic fucked around too much and the game sort of killed itself.
On a side note, I read they removed several scenarios. I can't find any logical reason for this... more playfields, more variation, more fun... right? It's not like your spreading population by having more scenario's as the scenario picked per match was random. I even noticed they removed several which I personally liked in both gameplay and design. I guess it just pretty much cancels out the smallest possibility of me ever returning - I hate the idea of content removal, especially if it's something I enjoyed.
I'm sorry WAR is just a a joke, and god help the people who are working under ihe latest producer Dujour. In the last news leter she pretty much bragged about how they were going to kill what was left of the already dead PvE game because that what the core gamer wanted.
Core Gamer?
You mean those three counterstrike tards you have been listening to since the game launched? Yeah 64 to 4, and top on EA's list to be "Earthed and Beyonded" that is what listening to the so called core gamer got you.
Mythic has like 5k PVPers playing the game. Thats it.. and the dream of these PVPers is to shut down the PVE content all together. And they are doing a good job of it.
So much potential gone to waste. Just because of few ppl that desided that its "RVR or NOTHING"
One would think that Mythic is deliberately trying to kill their own game. That's the only explanation that makes any sense.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II "People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
One would think that Mythic is deliberately trying to kill their own game. That's the only explanation that makes any sense.
Despite the fact that it would be an irrational explanation...
That's my point. Mythic is not known for making rational decisions. The latest wrinkle apparently is that trial players will be able to simply start paying the $15 sub rate without actually buying a code. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept that severely gutting content will somehow increase subscriptions. One of WAR's biggest problems at launch was an unfinished game with a lack of content. They seem to be flailing about, trying one harebrained idea after another to try to make the game viable.
The development team appears to be clueless. I guess it's time to try to sell that 60-Day time card I have before it becomes worthless.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II "People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
I love this game, after the new patch it being better than before. I haven´t got any other game that makes me leave War. I'mreally enjoying this game and dont see a day to leave it.
To be very honest DAoC had very boring PvE . Mythic does very poor PvE and I always hated that aspect of DAoC but their RvR was fun.The scenarios in Warhammer was fun but how long are you going to stay in there redoing the same content over and over. The outside world of Warhammer was bland and uninteresting ,the PQs were a horrid grind especially doing them alone (shudder). Nothing really made me miss the game when I left. In fact if I never play the game again it would be too soon.
There are games that we miss when you leave but the only thing I missed in Warhammer was Nordenwatch most fun I had was there and Khaine's Embrace.Pity really I don't understand although many theories have been advanced about what made this game fail like this but I think it was just a series of horrible decisions and perhaps arrogance from having succeeded in DAoC that made them think they could make anything they do work.
I kinda think this MMO would do wonders if EA would pull their head outa their ass and convert it to a F2P model like DDO, but this iS EA and they're as stubborn as SOE when it comes to being smart or reasonable. Far too arrogant to admit defeat, but they could easily make so much from this title but they never will.
Quite a few MMOs in the shitter could benefit from switching to a F2P model, but ah well...dun really care about devs that just don't get it anymore and obviously don't care!
I really like the art and the animation of the orks. I think that WAR is the only game that got the savagery of the orks right. The other races look ugly, though.
With that being said, the rest of the game is highly uninspiring. I recently tried one of their returning player trials and couldn't play for more then an hour. This game needs a complete redesign, which will obviously never happen. Which is a real shame because Warhammer is such a powerful IP.
That's my point. Mythic is not known for making rational decisions. (...)
The development team appears to be clueless.
Well, these two points are really connected, imo. "Rational" decisions can be made only on the basis of a long (or medium, at least)-term plan, and honestly, frequent changes since last year in the lead designer position is not the best way to make a game looks to be "planned" for the future. Lay-offs, Jacobs' and Barnett's gone, etc. are parts of this process. These were financialy rational of course, but made the game less "planned" than ever.
But the 1.3.2+ etc. patchline seems to be rather rational in my book, it's almost look like if they have "a plan" behind it. Even sceptics say (well, as I don't care about haters and trolls' so-called "oppinion"... these forum have plenty of them, anyway) that the game is far from perfect (well...), but it is way better than it was a year ago. Newish designer since 1.3.4 seems to be rather reliable to me. So, to tell the truth, I would have waited till 1.3.5 (or even 1.3.6) comes out to write a re-review about WAR.
Those of us who play the game know that it is in a "maintenance mode" now (though it's really enjoyable despite any doomsaying and existing flaws), so this was not the best choice of time for a re-review (well, a huge part of the re-review talks about upcoming patches, and not just the current state, anyway...). IF these upcoming patches made a change in this "mode" (or even we got some hints about "the long(er)-term plan" (an expansion, anyone?) –if it really exists, as I hope it does), then a re-re-review would be welcome again.
EA/Mythic is gonna milk this as much as possible without really treating it like a sub game. It is NOT a sub material when there is absolutly ZERO effort put into adding anything to the game.
Noone will fall for this offer tho. PPL are not stupid.
WAR's problems were many fold. They obviously did a lot of things right like (pq's) but their biggest mistake were having developers that were clouded by the success of their previous game DAOC and not listening to player feedback. They had this egocentric and arrogant attitude that since DAOC was a success, WAR would be a success too. You could see this in their early podcasts and their aggressive launch campaign. Why else would they launch 63 servers at launch as opposed to companies like ncsoft that only launched 12 servers for aion?
The developers took little information from beta testing feedback and worse they did not listen to players after launch. Throughout the first 2 years of WAR, there was a 'developer knows best attitude' which just caused Mythic to hemorrhage. Players got more and more frustrated with the devs not listening that they just left.
One example is the bright wizards (and by association sorcerer) mechanic was too powerful, and these classes with a healer and tank bodyguard were singlely handed wiping 2-3 times there numbers. These problem were compounded when more of these golden trio were grouped where 1 group was wiping 1 warband and 1 warband was wiping 3 warbands. Sure it's fun when your 6 men group were killing 24 people, but it can't be fun for those 24 people. (For the record: I'm guilty of abusing the mechanic as I was a healer in this golden trio and my record was 42 kills with 6 people. It was stupidly unfair. My killing ratio was an impressive 40:1 with this stupidly overpowered group)
Paul Barnett's video responding to this problem was condescending which lines stating something to the effect 'all players that beat me cheat'. If I played an FPS and my opponent had a rocket launcher to my pistol, I would not call him a cheater, just that the mechanics were unbalanced. But again this showed the developer knows best attitude which ultimately killed the game and which has then since been rectified. Mythic is much more interested in player feedback than ever before.
Another video which i found annoying and condescending was Paul Barnet's response to why crafting was almost non-existent in warhammer. With a condescending line like "this isn't make-your-pants hammer, it's WAR hammer" or something to that extent. Well I'm sure the crafters out there didn't like this too much. Again this is Mythic telling their players how they should play the game instead of them listening. Mythic alienates the percentage of mmorg players that play mmo's for the economy and makes fun of them to boot .
I'll just keep playing my LOTRO where I am lifer and been playing for 2.5 years almost and never got to the point of being bored so much that I'd want to quit it. Not playing it every day also helps to keep interest. WAR.... no thanks.
I tried WAR when it first released and played a couple months until the bugs and exploits and lack of faction balance drove me away. I came back some months later and saw some improvement in the keep system and removal of some exploits and much needed bug fixes. The game still has terrain exploits, BO bugs and pet pathing problems that should have been fixed before release as well as the ever present class balance issues. The endless trial keeps T1 busy in Nordland most of the time, T2 is still pretty fun and semi-populated, T3 is a ghost town (on Gorfang anyway). T4 is tough once you get there. I have 5 L32/32 characters and have had problems getting RvR groups because no one wants a "lowbie" in thier group. When I have had groups I would get my azz handed to me on a regular basis by L40/50+. Having pretty good gear from T3 (the purple RvR reward gear) makes no difference, I would still get 2-3 shotted,sometimes by WH that were invisible the whole time and only became visible after I was dead.
The Land of the Dead affords you the ability to grind up to 40 but then you have to get your RP up before you can get the really good gear to help you compete. So you can do that in RvR or you can move your character from zone to zone getting free RP on zone flips. I saw L40 characters standing around in Nordland all day just for the free RP, how boring that must be. Right now there seems to be a population imbalance, Order usually has huge numbers as well as game mechanics that give them a huge advantage to the point that Destruction players are just moving on to other games. All of my game experiences have been based on playing on Gorfang, other servers may afford a different gameplay experience. Paying 15.00 a month to not have fun anymore has made me let my Sub expire untils they can do something to make me want to spend my money on WAR again.
I'll just keep playing my LOTRO where I am lifer and been playing for 2.5 years almost and never got to the point of being bored so much that I'd want to quit it. Not playing it every day also helps to keep interest. WAR.... no thanks.
The lotro im playing is extremly boring with the crap content we have been given lately, but thats another topic.
Originally posted by Honeymoon69
worst part was beta testers were banned for pointing out the bad part of the game, no wonder it tanked big time.
Yea i was one of them. I was a loyal DaoC player since day 1 and loved the game and was lookign forward to Warhammer like most others.
First pictures i saw was images of a game that had the same graphics as wow, not Daoc, which made me kinda confused, and while every wow fanboy told me so i refused to beleive that was how it would be in the end.
Then came beta, and since i was a daoc veteran i got in early. I was immediatly set back by the lack of DaoC feeling and the starting area really gave me nothing.
Went to my first warcamp and fought some opsing faction players and immediatly noticed that camping would be a problem i this game, with either side just waiting for someone to stay outside the red line for to long so the counter would go out..
as a supporter of open world pvp and hater of instances i felt the skirmishes got kinda boring after a while where some classes owned seriously with their knockbacks out into lava, aoe nuking into cramped areas etc.
tried some PQ;s but most were empty and impossible to do on your own, another flaw i saw directly.
but the biggest flaw i knew would be a problem was..ONLY 2 REALMS
the biggest plus for daoc, and a big part of what made it so fun, was not in warhammer.
from the start it felt to me like EAMythic had checked WoW and tried to add as much as possible of it into WAR, completly forgeting about what made DAoC so great.
Ipointed out the flaws in posts after posts but none of us betatesters got an answer, marc jacobs even said he didnt like PvP and tried to make warhammer more his way. kinda bad thing to say in a PvP oriented game.
I even got so frustrated i broke the NDA and went to the official forum and posted my experiance and my conserns and gave the players warning, in my meaning they needed to make the game from start with 3 factions.
but that did nada since they released the game with all the flaws i saw from start. and ofcourse i got banned almost immediatly, think thats the only time they reacted to any of my posts.
I played WAR right after launch and had a pretty good time at the beginning, but soon some serious downsides started to surface.
It was just too much cramped into too little space, too much dependant on other players PQs that one could not do solo even if there were no other players around.
RvR was definately not the kind of epic battles that I knew from DAoC. These were just quick fights with little at stake. Too much running from one fight to another, etc.
Then the fact that there were only 2 realms. BIG mistake in my mind. What made DAoC so great was the fact that there were 3 realms which added a different dimension to the whole deal.
All in all, I felt that it was too much WoW squeezed into some bits of DAoC. It was shallow compared to DAoC (another element that was lacking and most of the old DAoC players were hoping for: depth), and PvE was nearly absent.
See, the beaty (aside from its downsides) of DAoC was that one could technically do the whole game without ever engaging into PvP. There really was no 'need' to do that. So for those that shunned away from that element of the game, could just play as they wanted. In WAR that is really almost impossible. Not much is left after you take RvR out of the mix.
Also, for my taste, the zones were way too chaotic. I felt like I had to go criscross all over the place all the time, without a clue as to where I was going. It was all very confusing and lacked a lot of 'fun'.
One can also debate the type of races picked. I thought the majority was downright horrendously ugly and unappealing to even consider playing, but I recon that is just a personal opinion.
Anyway, I'm still hoping for a DAoC 2, but I guess that will never happen either.
WAR made me so sad. I loved the idea of WAR because I absolutely love the Warhammer universe. Admittedly Im more of a 40k fan but Warhammer anything and Ill generally take a look. That is actually what drove me to this game as I had never played DAoC. I came for that and in all honesty for a while at least I was not disappointed.
They played very well into their setting, it gave me a good feel for the world and I for one liked reading all the litle entires I got from the Quests and updates on the areas and peoples. But unfortunately those small bonuses couldn't stop me from noticing the flaws. Its been said before but Ill go ahead and restate the obvious, the PvE was just... not good enough. And no one seems to feel like fixing it might make some sense. Which is such a shame, because PvP really did have some fun aspects when you weren't being raped by bright wizards. Also PQ's? Amazing idea that worked out sometimes and other times... didn't. With a well populated server I imagine it was easier but as some of the servers died off or grew unbalanced it could be really hard for me to get a decent PQ group going and without one, well, forget that. So yeah, it had potential and a few points it could have turned around but didn't. I have no re-entered the game since the latest updates though so maybe Ill check back in. Roll myself a likely still underpowered Squig Hunter and see if the game has improved enough for me to play it a while.
I'm mostly holding out for some of the newer games coming out and waiting for news on Warhammer 40k Online. Lets hope Vigil doesn't bugger things up as much as Mythic has.
I"m sorry but I've tried WAR for 90 days in the past and it still sucked. The only thing I enjoyed was the PvP and it got tiresome after awhile. There's nothing else that really happens in this game. I enjoy PvP but there's got to be more to a game than just PvP. The PvE is truly miserable, even WoW and Aion have better quests.
The reviewer says the technical issues seem to have subsided, but my 2.4GHz Intel Dual Core, 8700M GT, and 4 gigs of RAM laptop (not uber by any means but solid) still cries when I go into Ostland or really anywhere with a large amount of trees. Drops from 30-40 in Inevitable City to about 5 or 6 upon zoning into Ostland. Coincidently, Ostland is the more popular tier 2 PvP area, which makes it a serious pain.
Outside of areas with heavy foliage my FPS in Warhammer is actually better than what I get on average in WoW, which leads me to believe this game is still a technical mess. I love this game's art style but the performance issues and the fact that in certain areas I have to position my camera a certain way to get anything close to a playable framerate drive me away from the game every time I come back.
The WAR beta testers were treated like dirt. Many times a post from Jacobs would be plastered on the forums saying 'We'll ban you for X'.
Half the time there were threads where testers brought up issues and the devs blatantly said 'we like it like this so we're going to ignore you. Not sure how many people remember the original version of he White Lion Pounce, but it could be exploited in tons of locations, but testers brought that up and the dev response was 'We want it to be a fun ability. Players should be able to pounce, pounce, pounce. The AP cost will balance it.'... Suddenly they had to change it when ever player in the world saw the same things testers saw.
As to the topic at hand...
WAR would be better served by going offline and revamping it to be a DDO model. Revamp LotD, Lost Vale, Gunbad, Sigmar Cyrpt, and all the other dungeons/optional areas into purchasable items (free if you have a P2P account) with smart loot/non-BoP gear drops. Multiple other things can be done to make the F2P model work. The 'New User Experience' is a step already in that direction.
Even then the game would have to be better balanced, which means Mythic would have to stay on top of keeping patches rolling out regularly and not once every 6 months+.
Stop counting pure PvE and Scenarios towards zone flips, add more PvE in the forms of quests and PQs to the RvR lakes instead of making them devoid of life, mirror the classes better instead of trying to be original, more graphical options for equipment, and so much more.
Another video which i found annoying and condescending was Paul Barnet's response to why crafting was almost non-existent in warhammer. With a condescending line like "this isn't make-your-pants hammer, it's WAR hammer" or something to that extent. Well I'm sure the crafters out there didn't like this too much. Again this is Mythic telling their players how they should play the game instead of them listening. Mythic alienates the percentage of mmorg players that play mmo's for the economy and makes fun of them to boot .
Remember Barnett saying that crafting would all be about the war effort "no namby pamby flower-picking" with such a derisive tone. And what did we get? Sure no flowerpicking, instead we got flower-growing!
In my opinion WAR would have benefited so massively from having flower-picking or mining at persistent world nodes all located in RvR lakes so PvP would have occurred around these resources. This lack of understanding on how to get people into combat is really quite astounding from people who are supposedly knowledgable in MMO design.
I'll just keep playing my LOTRO where I am lifer and been playing for 2.5 years almost and never got to the point of being bored so much that I'd want to quit it. Not playing it every day also helps to keep interest. WAR.... no thanks.
The lotro im playing is extremly boring with the crap content we have been given lately, but thats another topic.
Originally posted by Honeymoon69
worst part was beta testers were banned for pointing out the bad part of the game, no wonder it tanked big time.
Yea i was one of them. I was a loyal DaoC player since day 1 and loved the game and was lookign forward to Warhammer like most others.
First pictures i saw was images of a game that had the same graphics as wow, not Daoc, which made me kinda confused, and while every wow fanboy told me so i refused to beleive that was how it would be in the end.
Then came beta, and since i was a daoc veteran i got in early. I was immediatly set back by the lack of DaoC feeling and the starting area really gave me nothing.
Went to my first warcamp and fought some opsing faction players and immediatly noticed that camping would be a problem i this game, with either side just waiting for someone to stay outside the red line for to long so the counter would go out..
as a supporter of open world pvp and hater of instances i felt the skirmishes got kinda boring after a while where some classes owned seriously with their knockbacks out into lava, aoe nuking into cramped areas etc.
tried some PQ;s but most were empty and impossible to do on your own, another flaw i saw directly.
but the biggest flaw i knew would be a problem was..ONLY 2 REALMS
the biggest plus for daoc, and a big part of what made it so fun, was not in warhammer.
from the start it felt to me like EAMythic had checked WoW and tried to add as much as possible of it into WAR, completly forgeting about what made DAoC so great.
Ipointed out the flaws in posts after posts but none of us betatesters got an answer, marc jacobs even said he didnt like PvP and tried to make warhammer more his way. kinda bad thing to say in a PvP oriented game.
I even got so frustrated i broke the NDA and went to the official forum and posted my experiance and my conserns and gave the players warning, in my meaning they needed to make the game from start with 3 factions.
but that did nada since they released the game with all the flaws i saw from start. and ofcourse i got banned almost immediatly, think thats the only time they reacted to any of my posts.
Definately a lack of forethought and organisation on the part of the Devs. I think it was more of a power struggle to see who was in charge at Mythic more than wanting to make a great game.
The only things I miss is the gameworld. Pity they wouldn't listen to us BT's
I've not played any other MMO apart from WAR. (oh i did play DDO for free for a few days, and also the Fallen Earth tutorial.)
I played War for maybe about 4 months. - and I have an honest question..
people slate the PvE and I don't realy understand this: - its seemd ok - some people slate the lack of stopry line, but I found the story line well and truly there in all the quest info, and the way the ques wre strgin together to explain the story of the Age or Reckoning and the war.
so is my pacl of experience in other MMOs makign me a noob? - the PvE seemed fine to me in this game - plenty of it - I hardly know of anyone who would do all the PvE, beacue tey woudl quickly level up through RvR and 'outgrow' a tier's PvE. I actually tried to pace myself so I could enjoy the PvE at the right rank so it would be a challenging as designed to be.
the biggedst problem I found was finding people to do PvE WITH! - perhaps if i had some real life freinds who played the game etc I woudl have enjoyed it more. I joined a small gild online - and my level was lower than the other members.
so - can anyone explain to me why the PvE 'sucks bug time' in this game?
I've not played any other MMO apart from WAR. (oh i did play DDO for free for a few days, and also the Fallen Earth tutorial.)
I played War for maybe about 4 months. - and I have an honest question..
people slate the PvE and I don't realy understand this: - its seemd ok - some people slate the lack of stopry line, but I found the story line well and truly there in all the quest info, and the way the ques wre strgin together to explain the story of the Age or Reckoning and the war.
so is my pacl of experience in other MMOs makign me a noob? - the PvE seemed fine to me in this game - plenty of it - I hardly know of anyone who would do all the PvE, beacue tey woudl quickly level up through RvR and 'outgrow' a tier's PvE. I actually tried to pace myself so I could enjoy the PvE at the right rank so it would be a challenging as designed to be.
the biggedst problem I found was finding people to do PvE WITH! - perhaps if i had some real life freinds who played the game etc I woudl have enjoyed it more. I joined a small gild online - and my level was lower than the other members.
so - can anyone explain to me why the PvE 'sucks bug time' in this game?
Most people I think are refering to the PvE end game which does suck and is tied into the whole end game like it or not.I liekd the levelling content in War to be honest.I liekd that every zone told a story and that every mission in that zone revolved around that story and that all the zones stories revolved around a larger broader story and tied into to that.You also have multiple choices of zones to explore whilst levelling int he lower tiers though in higher tiers you end up doing most of the content in every zone especially if no scenario queues are popping and the RR lakes are empty.
This part of War pretty much speaks for most of the rest of the game...good start,some nifty ideas...poor end and some bad execution of some ideas wih technical issues through out.
Well, after reading the review and some of the comments I see I was correct, this game is just too broken in its core design for Mythic to do much to salvage it.
So their solution is to cut out PVE content and focus entirely on the RVR aspect of the game. (except by having only 2 factions, that's pretty much screwed up as well)
I agree with Paragus, this game deserves no more than a 6 from an overall perspective, and nothing I read makes me want to come back again.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Comments
I had a fun time in WAR doing outdoor PvP (or RvR as they want to call it), in all tiers, during the early months of the game.
I enjoyed leading a 200 man zerg fighting another 200 man zerg in the endless battles that took place in tier 4 (I played on the most populated EU PvP server at the time though, I forgot the name... something with karak?). The lower tiers were fun aswell but on a smaller scale.
Then all of a sudden I got bored and realised the gameplay is the same everytime, and when the game got to a period (a long period where Mythic did jack all to fix things or even listen to the players) where losing outdoor 'RvR' so your city get's sieged became more profitable (easy gear) than attacking, the game kinda died. I took a break for about 2-3 weeks and then they released that desert content thing... It was horrible, the ultimate failure that, after many lessons, they still did not learn. You should not reward PvP with PvE content, it is beyond silly. PvP and PvE players are 2 completely different styles and most PvPers did not like the city sieges (which were 90% PvE), but for some reason Mythic decided to do the same mistake over again. I pretty much quit for good the day they released that content patch.
In the end, though, I have some fun memories of running around in a group in the RvR lakes, it was a fun experience till Mythic fucked around too much and the game sort of killed itself.
On a side note, I read they removed several scenarios. I can't find any logical reason for this... more playfields, more variation, more fun... right? It's not like your spreading population by having more scenario's as the scenario picked per match was random. I even noticed they removed several which I personally liked in both gameplay and design. I guess it just pretty much cancels out the smallest possibility of me ever returning - I hate the idea of content removal, especially if it's something I enjoyed.
One would think that Mythic is deliberately trying to kill their own game. That's the only explanation that makes any sense.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
Despite the fact that it would be an irrational explanation...
That's my point. Mythic is not known for making rational decisions. The latest wrinkle apparently is that trial players will be able to simply start paying the $15 sub rate without actually buying a code. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept that severely gutting content will somehow increase subscriptions. One of WAR's biggest problems at launch was an unfinished game with a lack of content. They seem to be flailing about, trying one harebrained idea after another to try to make the game viable.
The development team appears to be clueless. I guess it's time to try to sell that 60-Day time card I have before it becomes worthless.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
I love this game, after the new patch it being better than before. I haven´t got any other game that makes me leave War. I'mreally enjoying this game and dont see a day to leave it.
Go to hell!
To be very honest DAoC had very boring PvE . Mythic does very poor PvE and I always hated that aspect of DAoC but their RvR was fun.The scenarios in Warhammer was fun but how long are you going to stay in there redoing the same content over and over. The outside world of Warhammer was bland and uninteresting ,the PQs were a horrid grind especially doing them alone (shudder). Nothing really made me miss the game when I left. In fact if I never play the game again it would be too soon.
There are games that we miss when you leave but the only thing I missed in Warhammer was Nordenwatch most fun I had was there and Khaine's Embrace.Pity really I don't understand although many theories have been advanced about what made this game fail like this but I think it was just a series of horrible decisions and perhaps arrogance from having succeeded in DAoC that made them think they could make anything they do work.
I kinda think this MMO would do wonders if EA would pull their head outa their ass and convert it to a F2P model like DDO, but this iS EA and they're as stubborn as SOE when it comes to being smart or reasonable. Far too arrogant to admit defeat, but they could easily make so much from this title but they never will.
Quite a few MMOs in the shitter could benefit from switching to a F2P model, but ah well...dun really care about devs that just don't get it anymore and obviously don't care!
I really like the art and the animation of the orks. I think that WAR is the only game that got the savagery of the orks right. The other races look ugly, though.
With that being said, the rest of the game is highly uninspiring. I recently tried one of their returning player trials and couldn't play for more then an hour. This game needs a complete redesign, which will obviously never happen. Which is a real shame because Warhammer is such a powerful IP.
Oh well, hopefully Bioware will deliver with TOR.
Well, these two points are really connected, imo. "Rational" decisions can be made only on the basis of a long (or medium, at least)-term plan, and honestly, frequent changes since last year in the lead designer position is not the best way to make a game looks to be "planned" for the future. Lay-offs, Jacobs' and Barnett's gone, etc. are parts of this process. These were financialy rational of course, but made the game less "planned" than ever.
But the 1.3.2+ etc. patchline seems to be rather rational in my book, it's almost look like if they have "a plan" behind it. Even sceptics say (well, as I don't care about haters and trolls' so-called "oppinion"... these forum have plenty of them, anyway) that the game is far from perfect (well...), but it is way better than it was a year ago. Newish designer since 1.3.4 seems to be rather reliable to me. So, to tell the truth, I would have waited till 1.3.5 (or even 1.3.6) comes out to write a re-review about WAR.
Those of us who play the game know that it is in a "maintenance mode" now (though it's really enjoyable despite any doomsaying and existing flaws), so this was not the best choice of time for a re-review (well, a huge part of the re-review talks about upcoming patches, and not just the current state, anyway...). IF these upcoming patches made a change in this "mode" (or even we got some hints about "the long(er)-term plan" (an expansion, anyone?) –if it really exists, as I hope it does), then a re-re-review would be welcome again.
The next step into making the game free to play has already been taken.
http://www.massively.com/2010/03/26/warhammer-online-streamlines-trial-transition/#comments
EA/Mythic is gonna milk this as much as possible without really treating it like a sub game. It is NOT a sub material when there is absolutly ZERO effort put into adding anything to the game.
Noone will fall for this offer tho. PPL are not stupid.
WAR's problems were many fold. They obviously did a lot of things right like (pq's) but their biggest mistake were having developers that were clouded by the success of their previous game DAOC and not listening to player feedback. They had this egocentric and arrogant attitude that since DAOC was a success, WAR would be a success too. You could see this in their early podcasts and their aggressive launch campaign. Why else would they launch 63 servers at launch as opposed to companies like ncsoft that only launched 12 servers for aion?
The developers took little information from beta testing feedback and worse they did not listen to players after launch. Throughout the first 2 years of WAR, there was a 'developer knows best attitude' which just caused Mythic to hemorrhage. Players got more and more frustrated with the devs not listening that they just left.
One example is the bright wizards (and by association sorcerer) mechanic was too powerful, and these classes with a healer and tank bodyguard were singlely handed wiping 2-3 times there numbers. These problem were compounded when more of these golden trio were grouped where 1 group was wiping 1 warband and 1 warband was wiping 3 warbands. Sure it's fun when your 6 men group were killing 24 people, but it can't be fun for those 24 people. (For the record: I'm guilty of abusing the mechanic as I was a healer in this golden trio and my record was 42 kills with 6 people. It was stupidly unfair. My killing ratio was an impressive 40:1 with this stupidly overpowered group)
Paul Barnett's video responding to this problem was condescending which lines stating something to the effect 'all players that beat me cheat'. If I played an FPS and my opponent had a rocket launcher to my pistol, I would not call him a cheater, just that the mechanics were unbalanced. But again this showed the developer knows best attitude which ultimately killed the game and which has then since been rectified. Mythic is much more interested in player feedback than ever before.
Another video which i found annoying and condescending was Paul Barnet's response to why crafting was almost non-existent in warhammer. With a condescending line like "this isn't make-your-pants hammer, it's WAR hammer" or something to that extent. Well I'm sure the crafters out there didn't like this too much. Again this is Mythic telling their players how they should play the game instead of them listening. Mythic alienates the percentage of mmorg players that play mmo's for the economy and makes fun of them to boot .
I'll just keep playing my LOTRO where I am lifer and been playing for 2.5 years almost and never got to the point of being bored so much that I'd want to quit it. Not playing it every day also helps to keep interest. WAR.... no thanks.
worst part was beta testers were banned for pointing out the bad part of the game, no wonder it tanked big time.
I tried WAR when it first released and played a couple months until the bugs and exploits and lack of faction balance drove me away.
I came back some months later and saw some improvement in the keep system and removal of some exploits and much needed bug fixes. The game still has terrain exploits, BO bugs and pet pathing problems that should have been fixed before release as well as the ever present class balance issues.
The endless trial keeps T1 busy in Nordland most of the time, T2 is still pretty fun and semi-populated, T3 is a ghost town (on Gorfang anyway). T4 is tough once you get there. I have 5 L32/32 characters and have had problems getting RvR groups because no one wants a "lowbie" in thier group. When I have had groups I would get my azz handed to me on a regular basis by L40/50+. Having pretty good gear from T3 (the purple RvR reward gear) makes no difference, I would still get 2-3 shotted,sometimes by WH that were invisible the whole time and only became visible after I was dead.
The Land of the Dead affords you the ability to grind up to 40 but then you have to get your RP up before you can get the really good gear to help you compete. So you can do that in RvR or you can move your character from zone to zone getting free RP on zone flips. I saw L40 characters standing around in Nordland all day just for the free RP, how boring that must be.
Right now there seems to be a population imbalance, Order usually has huge numbers as well as game mechanics that give them a huge advantage to the point that Destruction players are just moving on to other games.
All of my game experiences have been based on playing on Gorfang, other servers may afford a different gameplay experience. Paying 15.00 a month to not have fun anymore has made me let my Sub expire untils they can do something to make me want to spend my money on WAR again.
Originally posted by reanor
I'll just keep playing my LOTRO where I am lifer and been playing for 2.5 years almost and never got to the point of being bored so much that I'd want to quit it. Not playing it every day also helps to keep interest. WAR.... no thanks.
The lotro im playing is extremly boring with the crap content we have been given lately, but thats another topic.
Yea i was one of them. I was a loyal DaoC player since day 1 and loved the game and was lookign forward to Warhammer like most others.
First pictures i saw was images of a game that had the same graphics as wow, not Daoc, which made me kinda confused, and while every wow fanboy told me so i refused to beleive that was how it would be in the end.
Then came beta, and since i was a daoc veteran i got in early. I was immediatly set back by the lack of DaoC feeling and the starting area really gave me nothing.
Went to my first warcamp and fought some opsing faction players and immediatly noticed that camping would be a problem i this game, with either side just waiting for someone to stay outside the red line for to long so the counter would go out..
as a supporter of open world pvp and hater of instances i felt the skirmishes got kinda boring after a while where some classes owned seriously with their knockbacks out into lava, aoe nuking into cramped areas etc.
tried some PQ;s but most were empty and impossible to do on your own, another flaw i saw directly.
but the biggest flaw i knew would be a problem was..ONLY 2 REALMS
the biggest plus for daoc, and a big part of what made it so fun, was not in warhammer.
from the start it felt to me like EAMythic had checked WoW and tried to add as much as possible of it into WAR, completly forgeting about what made DAoC so great.
Ipointed out the flaws in posts after posts but none of us betatesters got an answer, marc jacobs even said he didnt like PvP and tried to make warhammer more his way. kinda bad thing to say in a PvP oriented game.
I even got so frustrated i broke the NDA and went to the official forum and posted my experiance and my conserns and gave the players warning, in my meaning they needed to make the game from start with 3 factions.
but that did nada since they released the game with all the flaws i saw from start. and ofcourse i got banned almost immediatly, think thats the only time they reacted to any of my posts.
I played WAR right after launch and had a pretty good time at the beginning, but soon some serious downsides started to surface.
It was just too much cramped into too little space, too much dependant on other players PQs that one could not do solo even if there were no other players around.
RvR was definately not the kind of epic battles that I knew from DAoC. These were just quick fights with little at stake. Too much running from one fight to another, etc.
Then the fact that there were only 2 realms. BIG mistake in my mind. What made DAoC so great was the fact that there were 3 realms which added a different dimension to the whole deal.
All in all, I felt that it was too much WoW squeezed into some bits of DAoC. It was shallow compared to DAoC (another element that was lacking and most of the old DAoC players were hoping for: depth), and PvE was nearly absent.
See, the beaty (aside from its downsides) of DAoC was that one could technically do the whole game without ever engaging into PvP. There really was no 'need' to do that. So for those that shunned away from that element of the game, could just play as they wanted. In WAR that is really almost impossible. Not much is left after you take RvR out of the mix.
Also, for my taste, the zones were way too chaotic. I felt like I had to go criscross all over the place all the time, without a clue as to where I was going. It was all very confusing and lacked a lot of 'fun'.
One can also debate the type of races picked. I thought the majority was downright horrendously ugly and unappealing to even consider playing, but I recon that is just a personal opinion.
Anyway, I'm still hoping for a DAoC 2, but I guess that will never happen either.
WAR made me so sad. I loved the idea of WAR because I absolutely love the Warhammer universe. Admittedly Im more of a 40k fan but Warhammer anything and Ill generally take a look. That is actually what drove me to this game as I had never played DAoC. I came for that and in all honesty for a while at least I was not disappointed.
They played very well into their setting, it gave me a good feel for the world and I for one liked reading all the litle entires I got from the Quests and updates on the areas and peoples. But unfortunately those small bonuses couldn't stop me from noticing the flaws. Its been said before but Ill go ahead and restate the obvious, the PvE was just... not good enough. And no one seems to feel like fixing it might make some sense. Which is such a shame, because PvP really did have some fun aspects when you weren't being raped by bright wizards. Also PQ's? Amazing idea that worked out sometimes and other times... didn't. With a well populated server I imagine it was easier but as some of the servers died off or grew unbalanced it could be really hard for me to get a decent PQ group going and without one, well, forget that. So yeah, it had potential and a few points it could have turned around but didn't. I have no re-entered the game since the latest updates though so maybe Ill check back in. Roll myself a likely still underpowered Squig Hunter and see if the game has improved enough for me to play it a while.
I'm mostly holding out for some of the newer games coming out and waiting for news on Warhammer 40k Online. Lets hope Vigil doesn't bugger things up as much as Mythic has.
I"m sorry but I've tried WAR for 90 days in the past and it still sucked. The only thing I enjoyed was the PvP and it got tiresome after awhile. There's nothing else that really happens in this game. I enjoy PvP but there's got to be more to a game than just PvP. The PvE is truly miserable, even WoW and Aion have better quests.
The reviewer says the technical issues seem to have subsided, but my 2.4GHz Intel Dual Core, 8700M GT, and 4 gigs of RAM laptop (not uber by any means but solid) still cries when I go into Ostland or really anywhere with a large amount of trees. Drops from 30-40 in Inevitable City to about 5 or 6 upon zoning into Ostland. Coincidently, Ostland is the more popular tier 2 PvP area, which makes it a serious pain.
Outside of areas with heavy foliage my FPS in Warhammer is actually better than what I get on average in WoW, which leads me to believe this game is still a technical mess. I love this game's art style but the performance issues and the fact that in certain areas I have to position my camera a certain way to get anything close to a playable framerate drive me away from the game every time I come back.
The WAR beta testers were treated like dirt. Many times a post from Jacobs would be plastered on the forums saying 'We'll ban you for X'.
Half the time there were threads where testers brought up issues and the devs blatantly said 'we like it like this so we're going to ignore you. Not sure how many people remember the original version of he White Lion Pounce, but it could be exploited in tons of locations, but testers brought that up and the dev response was 'We want it to be a fun ability. Players should be able to pounce, pounce, pounce. The AP cost will balance it.'... Suddenly they had to change it when ever player in the world saw the same things testers saw.
As to the topic at hand...
WAR would be better served by going offline and revamping it to be a DDO model. Revamp LotD, Lost Vale, Gunbad, Sigmar Cyrpt, and all the other dungeons/optional areas into purchasable items (free if you have a P2P account) with smart loot/non-BoP gear drops. Multiple other things can be done to make the F2P model work. The 'New User Experience' is a step already in that direction.
Even then the game would have to be better balanced, which means Mythic would have to stay on top of keeping patches rolling out regularly and not once every 6 months+.
Stop counting pure PvE and Scenarios towards zone flips, add more PvE in the forms of quests and PQs to the RvR lakes instead of making them devoid of life, mirror the classes better instead of trying to be original, more graphical options for equipment, and so much more.
Remember Barnett saying that crafting would all be about the war effort "no namby pamby flower-picking" with such a derisive tone. And what did we get? Sure no flowerpicking, instead we got flower-growing!
In my opinion WAR would have benefited so massively from having flower-picking or mining at persistent world nodes all located in RvR lakes so PvP would have occurred around these resources. This lack of understanding on how to get people into combat is really quite astounding from people who are supposedly knowledgable in MMO design.
Definately a lack of forethought and organisation on the part of the Devs. I think it was more of a power struggle to see who was in charge at Mythic more than wanting to make a great game.
The only things I miss is the gameworld. Pity they wouldn't listen to us BT's
I've not played any other MMO apart from WAR. (oh i did play DDO for free for a few days, and also the Fallen Earth tutorial.)
I played War for maybe about 4 months. - and I have an honest question..
people slate the PvE and I don't realy understand this: - its seemd ok - some people slate the lack of stopry line, but I found the story line well and truly there in all the quest info, and the way the ques wre strgin together to explain the story of the Age or Reckoning and the war.
so is my pacl of experience in other MMOs makign me a noob? - the PvE seemed fine to me in this game - plenty of it - I hardly know of anyone who would do all the PvE, beacue tey woudl quickly level up through RvR and 'outgrow' a tier's PvE. I actually tried to pace myself so I could enjoy the PvE at the right rank so it would be a challenging as designed to be.
the biggedst problem I found was finding people to do PvE WITH! - perhaps if i had some real life freinds who played the game etc I woudl have enjoyed it more. I joined a small gild online - and my level was lower than the other members.
so - can anyone explain to me why the PvE 'sucks bug time' in this game?
Most people I think are refering to the PvE end game which does suck and is tied into the whole end game like it or not.I liekd the levelling content in War to be honest.I liekd that every zone told a story and that every mission in that zone revolved around that story and that all the zones stories revolved around a larger broader story and tied into to that.You also have multiple choices of zones to explore whilst levelling int he lower tiers though in higher tiers you end up doing most of the content in every zone especially if no scenario queues are popping and the RR lakes are empty.
This part of War pretty much speaks for most of the rest of the game...good start,some nifty ideas...poor end and some bad execution of some ideas wih technical issues through out.
Well, after reading the review and some of the comments I see I was correct, this game is just too broken in its core design for Mythic to do much to salvage it.
So their solution is to cut out PVE content and focus entirely on the RVR aspect of the game. (except by having only 2 factions, that's pretty much screwed up as well)
I agree with Paragus, this game deserves no more than a 6 from an overall perspective, and nothing I read makes me want to come back again.
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