I played WAR for a bit and gave it up quickly, many of my reasons were similar to the complaints of the OP.
But I had a few things to add....
1. Installing under Vista was too problematic, in the end I installed the game on a friend's XP setup and my own second tier XP setup, as my main gaming rig runs Vista that was a pain, and yes I tried the 10 million possible fixes without any success whatsoever. Not caching the patch was a disaster for me, everytime I reinstalled I had to redownload the ****ing patches, it doesn't make you feel like trying that many solutions before giving up. This is also why I don't play DDO much, running under Vista is almost impossible - but DDO has the excuse of being older and free to play, WAR has neither.
2. Public Quests - great concept, but there was never anyone around to do them with, I think I managed to get two of these finished. It would be nice for MMO makers to consider that we don't all play in the same time zone and give us some easy means of meeting other groups for this kind of thing.
3. Solo PvE - excrable, these were the most boring and mainly irrelevant quests I have ever played in any game.
4. Graphics, ugly. Really ugly, compared to the polished look of WoW this was like going back to the Pools of Radiance style RPG's of yesteryear. This was a major turn off for me, I like games that look nice they don't have to be the top end of top end graphically but they need to be more appealing than the dogs dinner that was WAR.
5. PvP - lots of fun, though not much variety, the balancing of low level characters in PvP battles was a good thing, the 5 levels different and you have no hope of survival part of WoW is annoying. If WAR ever becomes F2P, I would return for the PvP but not much else.
It's a shame because underneath it all WAR isn't an awful game, but it suffers in comparison to WoW (which it is clearly designed to be a competitor to), and with a bit of polish it would have been a good game (though I suspect never a great game).
I only played for 2 months back in the latter half of 2009, so any updates etc. since then I would have missed. For the 1st month I played WAR pretty much exclusively, for the 2nd I found myself returning to WoW again and again.
Have to say I agree with the OP. "War is Everywere" was the tag line. Sadly it was mainly in senarios, thats what killed it for me, when everyone moved from open world RVR to grinding senarios. Not only that they tended to grind the quickest (so most boring) whilst the queues for the others at that tier remained empty.
I disagree that they marketed it as something it wasn't, I think they just screwed up with realm point rewards for senarios and PQ's. Way to high. What I don't understand is how an experienced team could get it so wrong?
Edit: Europe had one other issue to contend with and that was Goa running the game. A company with an ingrained culture of inadequacy.
The following is my OPINION it should not be taken as hard stone cold fact. However Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, going from over a million players at launch to around 300,00 is a stone cold fact. .....
You sir should be given position at Mythic because you pinpointed the problems EXACTLY to 100% accuracy
Still... "Open world RVR" (while not really booming) is still better than anything that WoW has to offer. I realize it takes place in 'pvp lakes' but it's still closer to 'open world' than what WoW has in place.
The only open world PvP that I see in WoW:
1) Single player v player gank.
2) Hillsbrad Foothills... max level characters camp each others lowbie quest zones.
3) Crossroads... max level Alliance camp lowbie quest zone.
4) Sentinel Hill... max level Horde camp lowbie quest zone.
5) Wintergrasp doesn't count... it's timed event, governed by an additional set of rules outside of normal game play (raid, restricted flight/travel, etc.,..)
6) The 'every once in a while' Cap City crusade by the opposing factions. Which are a joke and mean nothing to the game world.
7) STV... Again, sometimes there are some 'lowbie v lowbie' skirmishes here, but more often than not... it's max level vs lowbies again.
...
WoW attempts to be a 'sport' with the Arena. Great. But don't do it at the cost and integrity of the rest of the game. Don't keep the great PvP contained and restricted to 'arenas' and 'bg's'. Let the game world itself be the source of the great/fun PvP.
I'd love to be running an MMO failure with 300k subs.
PQ's boring and repetitive! with that in mind why not explore the possibility that every quest your going to complete in every MMO out there is "Boring and repetitive", for me PQ's added another element to the game that 99% of MMO's don't have, why would you want to diminish something that gives it's player base another avenue of exploration/rewards and experience once completed, rather than just offering up mobs to grind on or normal quests to complete, it just strikes me as being rather counter-productive to announce that PQ's "Suck" just because they are there.
Don't shoot down innovative advances in MMO gaming, and PQ's are certainly a step in the right direction to add more diversity to a steadily growing genre.
oh and we have another "why WAR failed" thread. i have seen so many of them
my OPINION is 300k subscribers is very good number. to me this game is failure but generally, its not
Playing: Rohan Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos
oh and we have another "why WAR failed" thread. i have seen so many of them my OPINION is 300k subscribers is very good number. to me this game is failure but generally, its not
WAR doesn't have anywhere close to 300k subs. That was back over a year, 3 and 6 months after launch. Since then nothing has been said and countless more servers have died.
I'd love to be running an MMO failure with 300k subs. PQ's boring and repetitive! with that in mind why not explore the possibility that every quest your going to complete in every MMO out there is "Boring and repetitive", for me PQ's added another element to the game that 99% of MMO's don't have, why would you want to diminish something that gives it's player base another avenue of exploration/rewards and experience once completed, rather than just offering up mobs to grind on or normal quests to complete, it just strikes me as being rather counter-productive to announce that PQ's "Suck" just because they are there. Don't shoot down innovative advances in MMO gaming, and PQ's are certainly a step in the right direction to add more diversity to a steadily growing genre.
Actually not every quest in every mmo is a boring grind and not every PQ sucks. Just most of them are and most of them do. If you looked closely you would see WHY I criticise PQs and WAR in general.
Comments
I played WAR for a bit and gave it up quickly, many of my reasons were similar to the complaints of the OP.
But I had a few things to add....
1. Installing under Vista was too problematic, in the end I installed the game on a friend's XP setup and my own second tier XP setup, as my main gaming rig runs Vista that was a pain, and yes I tried the 10 million possible fixes without any success whatsoever. Not caching the patch was a disaster for me, everytime I reinstalled I had to redownload the ****ing patches, it doesn't make you feel like trying that many solutions before giving up. This is also why I don't play DDO much, running under Vista is almost impossible - but DDO has the excuse of being older and free to play, WAR has neither.
2. Public Quests - great concept, but there was never anyone around to do them with, I think I managed to get two of these finished. It would be nice for MMO makers to consider that we don't all play in the same time zone and give us some easy means of meeting other groups for this kind of thing.
3. Solo PvE - excrable, these were the most boring and mainly irrelevant quests I have ever played in any game.
4. Graphics, ugly. Really ugly, compared to the polished look of WoW this was like going back to the Pools of Radiance style RPG's of yesteryear. This was a major turn off for me, I like games that look nice they don't have to be the top end of top end graphically but they need to be more appealing than the dogs dinner that was WAR.
5. PvP - lots of fun, though not much variety, the balancing of low level characters in PvP battles was a good thing, the 5 levels different and you have no hope of survival part of WoW is annoying. If WAR ever becomes F2P, I would return for the PvP but not much else.
It's a shame because underneath it all WAR isn't an awful game, but it suffers in comparison to WoW (which it is clearly designed to be a competitor to), and with a bit of polish it would have been a good game (though I suspect never a great game).
I only played for 2 months back in the latter half of 2009, so any updates etc. since then I would have missed. For the 1st month I played WAR pretty much exclusively, for the 2nd I found myself returning to WoW again and again.
Have to say I agree with the OP. "War is Everywere" was the tag line. Sadly it was mainly in senarios, thats what killed it for me, when everyone moved from open world RVR to grinding senarios. Not only that they tended to grind the quickest (so most boring) whilst the queues for the others at that tier remained empty.
I disagree that they marketed it as something it wasn't, I think they just screwed up with realm point rewards for senarios and PQ's. Way to high. What I don't understand is how an experienced team could get it so wrong?
Edit: Europe had one other issue to contend with and that was Goa running the game. A company with an ingrained culture of inadequacy.
You sir should be given position at Mythic because you pinpointed the problems EXACTLY to 100% accuracy
Still... "Open world RVR" (while not really booming) is still better than anything that WoW has to offer. I realize it takes place in 'pvp lakes' but it's still closer to 'open world' than what WoW has in place.
The only open world PvP that I see in WoW:
1) Single player v player gank.
2) Hillsbrad Foothills... max level characters camp each others lowbie quest zones.
3) Crossroads... max level Alliance camp lowbie quest zone.
4) Sentinel Hill... max level Horde camp lowbie quest zone.
5) Wintergrasp doesn't count... it's timed event, governed by an additional set of rules outside of normal game play (raid, restricted flight/travel, etc.,..)
6) The 'every once in a while' Cap City crusade by the opposing factions. Which are a joke and mean nothing to the game world.
7) STV... Again, sometimes there are some 'lowbie v lowbie' skirmishes here, but more often than not... it's max level vs lowbies again.
...
WoW attempts to be a 'sport' with the Arena. Great. But don't do it at the cost and integrity of the rest of the game. Don't keep the great PvP contained and restricted to 'arenas' and 'bg's'. Let the game world itself be the source of the great/fun PvP.
I'd love to be running an MMO failure with 300k subs.
PQ's boring and repetitive! with that in mind why not explore the possibility that every quest your going to complete in every MMO out there is "Boring and repetitive", for me PQ's added another element to the game that 99% of MMO's don't have, why would you want to diminish something that gives it's player base another avenue of exploration/rewards and experience once completed, rather than just offering up mobs to grind on or normal quests to complete, it just strikes me as being rather counter-productive to announce that PQ's "Suck" just because they are there.
Don't shoot down innovative advances in MMO gaming, and PQ's are certainly a step in the right direction to add more diversity to a steadily growing genre.
oh and we have another "why WAR failed" thread. i have seen so many of them
my OPINION is 300k subscribers is very good number. to me this game is failure but generally, its not
Playing: Rohan
Played (from best to worst): Shadowbane, Guild Wars, Shayia, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Runes of Magic, Rappelz, Archlord, Knight online, King of Kings, Kal online, Last chaos
No doubt so would Mythic
WAR doesn't have anywhere close to 300k subs. That was back over a year, 3 and 6 months after launch. Since then nothing has been said and countless more servers have died.
Actually not every quest in every mmo is a boring grind and not every PQ sucks. Just most of them are and most of them do. If you looked closely you would see WHY I criticise PQs and WAR in general.
Dem hibbies! Dey be wrong!