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Why Wow is well WoW and war is in decline
humwha
Member Posts: 38
I was thinking about it and i played both for awile not as long as daoc but for a bit, and i was thinking about why one has so many and the other is failing.
It's not like there content is that diffrent wow's content was never that diffrent from the other mmo's on the market maby even less so than others.
war has some problems with rvr they have been listed time n again it wasen't Lotd either wrong choice by mythic. But the fundementals are there it's everything wow is and more so why so bad?
Its user experiance, we play mmo's to be around people and have persistance world so we want content that caters to that and what developers do. wow developed there game in such a way that there content was good it was what we want, but had the luck of a fan base to get the amount of players nessesary to enjoy there content to the level they intended and then some. Eventually word of a great experiance spread and went to bring more players and keep the experiance high.
It became a cycle and thats how there numbers got so high. I mean its not like just casual people play wow it takes all kinds hardcore and casual to reach there numbers.
War had the hype it had some flaws, it got the strong player base but unlike wow they didn't structure there game properly the content never got the right amount of players to enjoy the experiance properly, the only part that got the right amount of players to play properly the battle ground senario's automated system accessability was right. and no suprise it was most peoples favorite but they burned out doing it to much cause the other content wasen't structured to get the right experiance.
War didn't fail due to lack of content, It was there pve wise and pvp wise they just didn't structure it properly.
At least in my opinion ;p
Comments
War's Teir 4 is repetitive. Its same basic thing that the previous tiers were. The keep lords and castle sieges were all the sames. The only innovative thing they really did was the pq's and the Tome. Both which were excedingly cool but brought no real content. PQ's were used as a crutch in place of actual content. And leveling its fine. Personally I feel like they put their eggs all in the basket of tome and pq's and didn't spend enough time developing the rest.
The senario's lack meaning and the keeps lack substance, wonder what would have happened if they made the senarios in the same area as the keeps and had them effect what siege engine is up.
im sure objective guards are better.
They did put all there effort into player quests and thats the big problem with it.
There are a good amount PQ's in each area, but normal only 1 you can actually do. You can do the easy one only needing a group but the 2 other ones that need 2 full groups or more.... there just there to look pretty wasted content cause of lack of players and further enhance the problem by having 3 areas that the limited amount players can be.
if you did feel like doing them over and over prob more interesting than strait grinding mobs the way aion went.
On top of the previously mentioned reasons, you forgot the abyssmal performance of the WAR engine. No matter what computer you have, it plays and looks horrid. The client isn't even capable of running for more than an hour on my computer without crashing to desktop.
It isn't 'structuring of content' which makes WAR much less of a great mmo than WOW to me, it is diversity of content.
WAR is too much a one trick pony and based the most of it's gameplay and shaped the world itself around one pillar; RVR.
WAR is much more of an RVR focussed game than WOW a grouped PVE focussed game.
And RVR happens to end up repetitive and not exciting; lack of a significant death penalty and the same mechanics in every zone. I had more fun and excitement doing world pvp in WOW than in WAR and that is back in the time when there weren't any incentives to do so.
My brand new bloggity blog.
WAR's problem is in no way shape nor form the structure of the content.
His performance is abyssmal
there are plenty of games that look twice better than WAR and perform 20x better than WAR. WAR is founded over an 8 years old engine that simply can not support the epic battles marketed, and that was what the playerbase demanded
The RvR mechanics
in WAR represent several backsteps from DAOC. any of the things that made DAOC a great game made into WAR
Mythic made their own bed and now they have to sleep in it.
They have been marketing WAR like the second coming of Jesus to the MMO world, and it didnt deliver anything other than misery and frustration
While failure cannot ever be excused, they wouldnt get this HUGE community backlash had they been more humble in the very beginning,or when the shit started hitting the fan
Pretty much all the problems that are killing WAR now were pointed by the beta testers hundreds of times, and the reaction was a cascade of bans and threats. All they wanted to hear were the yay-sayers that told them how amazing the game was, and how hard it would crush WoW
The balance between classes is atrocious
You cannot have one realm completly ruling over the other thanks to 3 classes out of 24.
also, we all can understand that some skills can work in a different way than intended, that balance is the most tricky feature to pull,and that everybody should deal with a certain margin of nerfs/buffs.
But WAR career balance so far has been a total rollercoaster of classes going from GODS to GIMPS (never in between) patch after patch, and now in 1.3 balance is even more out of hand than it ever was at release.
WAR is a gear grind / Failed to meet its audience
Mythic as usual, tried to steal players from the top MMO (back then EQ, now WoW) by giving them more of what they are used to, and failing at it, while showing the middle finger to the same loyal playerbase that supported them before
WAR is 90% about bland, uninteresting and repetitive PvE, 10% about PvP. With this, all Mythic got was pissing off both types of players, PvE players that can see WoW is billions of times ahead of WAR, and RvR players that see the RvR in WAR is like a really really bad joke
in a nutshell, WAR is like a Marx Brothers movie. Everything that could go wrong went HORRIBLY wrong, and in 99% of the cases it was due to blatant negligence.
Copy-past is your friend (wink)
For the record I preferred archdevil's respond better.
You should add some more w's to your title.
It's fun to say.
I would hardly call myself a hopper. I always search for games to spend at least a year subscribed. Which regularly happens, unless a better game comes along the way.
I just commented because I felt that archdevil's reply was more appropriate than the copy-paste answer you keep on reproducing. As somebody else posted on another thread, it feels like "we are the WoW, you will be assimilated" type of answer, which does not do justice to the game.
WAR had the potential to be a much better game, but unfortunately the open world PvP and castle sieges were implemented in a way that did not promote conflict (aka PvP). Unfortunately, the same issue seem to plague the lands of the dead addition. WoW has the same problem, lack of incentive for world PvP as opposed to plenty of rewards for arena and battlegrounds PvP (I consider wintergrasp a battleground, by the way. It's not instanced, but it's of the exact same design phylosophy as AV). Thing is, WoW PvP is not about open world PvP, hence the game is doing great what is meant to be doing. In WAR however, people were expecting open RvR, which hasn't yet materialised.
dont bother with zondorf, hes just trying his best to link Aion's release with WAR's fate, when anyone with 1 inch of forehead can see they are night and day in every single aspect.
a lie repeated one thousand times becomes truth. thats what zondorf aims at.
What his hidden agenda is, i still dont know, but its obvious that he feels really threatened and Aion terrifies him to no extent
Well, this is not the most appropriate thread, but it's hard to argue that WoW has at this point in time a decently implemented open world PvP, because there isn't one. Which is fine, because what PvP options are offered are very strong. Aion appears to cater towards that weakness, which is also shared by WAR. How much it will satisfy still remains to be seen.
For the record, I also expect Blizzard to try and improve the open world PvP implementation, but from my point of view they can either have arenas or open world PvP, not both; and they have already made their choise.
IS that really so?
with China down now i think NCsoft games are more played atm then WoW
This however is an artificial set back. Not due to the game quality or appeal but due to outside forces.
i know but i always having fun replying on his copy pasted posts
Mind you it was a mistake from Blizzard to swap companies there in the 1st place, without knowing the new company needed licence
I would expect a good portion of those players to return to WoW, if the only reason they play Aion is as a replacement due to necessity MMO. I say a good portion, because it is highly probably that a good portion may decide to stay in Aion and not return. Who knows ...
Regardless, this hardly affect us in this part of the world.
To keep it simple. I played WOW for about 18 months total, and eventually decided I had enough of that game style and moved on.
I gave WAR, AOC , ROM, and others a try, and in most cases I came to the same conclusion. This is too similar to WOW, there's no reason for me to play it.
For the past 2 years I've been playing EVE and keep coming back to it, because it does not feel like WOW.
But I do miss swinging a broadsword sometimes.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
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
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"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
Love him or hate him Zondorf speaks the truth, anyone who has played more than a few of these games can see that. The problem is, for all we know, the current market leader could well be the the ultimate formula, it could contain all of the things we like.
If you look at the games that offer as different experience from wow as you can get, whilst still remaining an MMORPG, you will see none of them are greatly succesful;
Neocron
Darkfall
EvE -- yes i know, but still, compared with the WoW and even some of the biggest flops in the last 2 years ( AoC's/WAR starting figures ) it has a small market. For the record I do rate it a good game.
PotBS - although this game still utilizes the familiar questing structure heavily, but is more PvP focused.
Seed
Tale desert
So, any development that tries to break into a new direction is in danger of failing very quickly. Coca-Cola is a leading brand of soft drink, there are many copies on the market. All try to emulate the taste and all fail at reproducing that taste, but there is enough room in the market for them, just. Who in their right mind would try to launch a cola and expect to muscle up to Coca-Cola? It looks the same, costs the same, sounds the same, pours the same but tastes not as good.
As I said, and you seem to agree, is that the arena implementation is very good. I also expect it to be further enchanced with the upcoming changes in battle.net.
What is lacking, and what I'm referring to as open world PvP, is something else. Something that wintergrasp or similar battleground like implementations can't provide.
Btw, I don't consider gangers a form of meaningful open world PvP.
So imagine a game where the above characteristics are inversed:
Doesn't this sound like a different game to you?
WAR tried to stand somewhere in the middle, which didn't work out that well (I don't dismiss the unresponsiveness of the combat as an added problem).
Aion on the other hand seems to keep the best elements of Lineage 2 (conflict everywhere and territorial control that mattered) and lose some of the problems (insane level grinding), while it remains to be seen if it will lose all problems (botting, hacking etc). We already know that it has a very solid and responsive game engine, even when a lot of people are present. What remains to be seen is how they implemented open world PvP, if territory control is actually meaningful (for now it looks good on paper) and if they take a more aggressive stance against cheaters (botting, hacking, gold farming etc).
My hopes are high for Aion, but if it fails to impress me, I won't care much. The same way I didn't care when AoC and WAR didn't meet my expectations.
so that means NCSoft is the new market leader, and everything that comes after Aion will just reinforce its position, and Aion is simply bound to become the king
funny how life just keeps turning around
I only played the trial but I thought WAR was pretty cool
- visuals, good
- classes, brilliant
- PVE, no worse than most other games now + public quests were fun
- RvR, great fun, after the first char I mostly gave up PvE and levelled through RvR
BUT...
Even after a week i was getting a bit bored fighting over the same Tier 1 scenarios and battlegrounds. Now in the full game you'd move on to the next tier but I was thinking eventually you'd hit tier 4 and then you'd just eventually get bored fighting the same unchanging war over the same terriotory. Since trying the trial I'm a new convert to RvR and I think there's a strong niche for it (not as big as the WoW niche but pretty big) *but* I think the whole game has to revolve around RvR and personally I think the war has to be winnable. Then, if one side won there'd be a server wipe and you'd start again from the beginning.
To many instances suck. At some point it feels like you're in a lobby game or playing Diablo, not an MMORPG if you have to many instances. The Scenarios were instanced, so it felt like a big game of Diablo, not an open world.
Adding Scenarios kept people from RvR, which made the RvR suck.
Quest grinding sucks, and WAR PvE was all about quest grinding.
PQ's sucked. They were just a way to add more solo content, since you don't have to group to do a PQ.
Solo games suck, and WAR PvE wasn't as good a grouping game as DAoC.
The next logical step forward should have been territory you could take over and control, instead of fixed Realms that never changed. That's really all you had to ad to DAoC to move it forward.
I agree with Xasapis to a degree on WoWs open PVP.
In the first few months of wow, well before the start of battle grounds there would be epic battles between xcross and ashenvale and in southshore, there was no reason for 100+ players to fight, it was just fun, battlegrounds came along and althought it wasn't the death of world PvP it deminished it, it was flying mounts that finaly killed world PvP in wow.
Blizzard has tried to get players fighting, we had the sand in silithus, the towers in the east, the spirit towers in TBC and halaa, and we have wintergrasp and PvP daily quests in Wotlk. So its not like blizzard have not tried.
But they also have not realy tried, they want to add world PvP but make it 100% optional even on PvP servers, and thats not good enough.
I could make 1 change over night to ignite world PvP and that is player loot, not cash or weapons but hooves, ears, tusks, bones etc. Put venders in the world who will give you gear, potions, vanity items etc for x number of tauran hooves or x number of Nightelf ears you turn in. now watch as raids form and camp outside horde villages and alliance towns. Have weekly bounties on key NPC... EPIC is back!
Well I don't think those things suck in themselves in a MMORPG, I thought the scenarios and PQs were a lot of fun in themselves, but I agree in an RvR game like WAR everything needs to be geared towards channeling people into gigantic RvR fights and yes I think you need to be able to take over whole regions, actually push the other side back etc and not just endlessly fight over the same ground.
The real reason is simply that humans cannot actually adapt that easily with something new. If it was the case, everyone would be walking around with GSM, smartphones. However, you'll still see a huge majority of the population using the old school CDMA phones.
WOW was there first and therefore, most players that are happy in WOW, won't really feel the need to try something that might be "slightly" better. Instead they will stay on WOW until their forced to change.
As for the people that don't like WOW, well chances are, they won't like WAR or Lord of the Ring.
The OP is mostly correct.
Another problem with WAR is that it is too much like WoW and not enough like DAoC.
Mainly in the area of RvR freedom. WAR has a guided/theme park like RvR experience, while DAoC had a free, do I dare to say, sandboxy type of RvR.
In DAoC you could roam around in small gangs or you could follow the zerg or you could run in medium sized guild groups.
You could try to cap all the keeps and go for the relic or you could cap a few keeps and defend or you could cap enough keeps and go to Darkness Falls or you could cap no keeps and go straight for the Relic ( which was harder but possible ).
There were 3 realms which is alot more dynamic than the 2 realm RvR from WAR, you can see this especially now in the LoTD, with 3 realms you always have some 2 way struggle while a third may be inside the RvR dungeon.
The RvR area was alot bigger, and dying meant something, either you get rezzed, or you have a long walk back ( plus a portal in the old days ).
The seperation of the homeworlds ( PvE ) and the RvR area was also a nice thing, this is also done in WAR to some extent.
WAR also did not feel like a big world, but had this arcade like map. WoW made it's map pretty good, even tho it was not one big world, but 3 continents, the map made it look like one big world.
The areas in themselves in WAR also felt too restricted, more restricted than for example WoW, and ALOT more restricted than in DAoC, where running on foot from snowdonia to cornwall took a long time, and it felt like a big world.
Good memories from DAoC during the SI era ...
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I thought War was entertaining for the 5 months I played. But thats the thing, I did everything there was to do in 5 months. I had a great time, the PvP was better than most, but at the end of the day it wasn't persistant enough for me. And for the record, 5 months of War was more exciting than a year of WoW.
PvP games need to pit players against players in a more maluable world. War was too static. The goals were driven by the Dev's not the players.
I didn't read this whole thread so if that's been said....Hat's off
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