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WAR's biggest failure (something to learn)
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
I can remember being really excited about WAR when it first came out. In fact, I still think that many of the features they had such as PQs and scenarios were awesome, and I did have a lot of fun with them. However, I found myself just losing interest in the game as time went one, as did the majority of other players.
After thinking about what could have caused this, I eventually came to the conclusion that the biggest reason WAR failed was not the poor open-RvR or the monotonous questing, it was just the fact that everything felt disconnected and extremely linear. At no time playing WAR did I feel like I was in a virtual world.
I really think this is due to how they set up the world. There were 3 "regions" and then four tiers in each region. The ONLY way to travel between regions was hokey instant travel, and then each region had an extremely linear progression. In addition, the scenarios are just joined by putting yourself in a queue so they really didn't feel like they were part of the world. This all added up to the "illusion" of a virtual world being shattered. WAR wound up being like a bunch of mini-games games that you could play with the same character rather than a virtual world.
I think that other developers should try to learn something from this. There is still value in making a "virtual world." When MMORPGs first came out, an excellent virtual world seemed to be the main goal. As the genre has progressed, developers seem to have neglected this ideal. In my opinion, WAR failed so spectacularly in creating a cohesive virtual world that it caused the game to fail.
What do you all think? Do you agree that the "disconnectedness" of the world caused WAR's failure? Or do you think it was another factor?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Comments
2 factions and non scaling Pq's is it imo, i dont mind insta travels etc as i hate waisting 10 minutes on a stupid bird going from A to B
It's not really the instant travel itself that bothered me. I loved UO and that had the most pervasive instant travel of any MMORPG to ever exist. What bothered me was the fact that you couldn't walk to most places in the world without using instant travel. For example, in WoW, you can walk to just about everyplace in Azeroth unless there is a legitimate reason you cannot like an ocean being in the way. It makes the world feel much more cohesive.
I think it was also how obvious they made the "rail" you were on in WAR. They even name the zones "Tier 1," "Tier 2."
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
LEARN NOT GET OVERHYPED!!!!
IMO the reason Warhammer failed was because of the Over Hype that went into it.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I don't really think the hype would have mattered in my case. I think that "over-hype" is only applicable when you play the game and then are so disgusted by it not meeting your expectations that you quit almost immediately. I played the game for a decent period of time and I did enjoy it. It just didn't have staying power.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
It wasnt perfect.
but imo, the main killer of Warhammer, was the over hyped WoW haters!
The Developers them self also fit into this title.
Thye were too ego driven, to try to make an Anti-WoW.
That trick never works!!! LoTRO's developers figured that out before they released Middle Earth. Anit-WoW never Works!! Developers continue to do this.
A successful MMO builds off its past genre kings.
just look at EvE to UO.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
WAR failed for many different reasons, but the main ones are:
1) It advertised to be a cross between WoW & DAOC, WoW PvE & DAOC RvR. But what it ended up being, was a so-so PvE, and so-so RvR game. RvR endgame content & itemization were so bad, I truly believe it was one of the main reasons it lost the RvR/PvP crowd. As for PvE, while public quests were cool, I really enjoyed it, they over used it. They tried to use PQ for everything, and it didn't scale properly and they became a chore later on. They also lacked endgame PvE content. PvE folks want to raid at endgame, and it severely lacked it.
2) Itemization for both PvE and PvP were horrible. It started out ok, but about halfway through you started to see either they didn't finish itemizing the game, or the team that handeld the second half of the game did a really poor job. Gear upgrades are an essential carrot to MMO gamers. They really messed up bad with this one. Using PQ random chance drop for RvR chests were a horrible idea, because some people simply had very bad luck.
3) Limiting race & gender to classes were a bad idea. Certain class could only be certain race, and certain race only had the male versions to them. Are we living in the 90's where game developers couldn't produce enough art work or something? Contrary to some beliefs, most females don't like to play male characters.
4) RvR RvR RvR...this is the same Mythic & Mark Jacobs that gave us DAOC, one of the best classics out there, one of the games many feel had....and still have, the best realm vs realm combat out there. How could Mythic mess up RvR so badly? From realm abilities, to RvR itemization, to RvR combat, to siege placement on the ground, to the actual castle sieges, to relic raids and their effect on the realms. How could they forget what made DAOC work? It was as if they totally forgot what made DAOC successful and wiped their memories of past experiences. Seriously, we all were looking forward to an UPGRADED DAOC RvR gameplay. What we got was actually a really stripped down version of DAOC RvR that made no sense. This really boggled a lot of ex-DAOC & RvR fans.
I know some would say technical issues were a problem. Yes, servers did crash during the initial fortress raids, yes it did lag when you had massive battles. But I believe if the gameplay was fun enough, people wouldn't mind waiting a bit for them to fix these technical issues. I mean really, vanilla WoW's TM/SS zerg crashed continents. WoW's wintergrasp is still ever so laggy when both sides are fighting in front of the final door, with that dreaded 6 second spell casting lag. Lag & technical issues are somewhat tolerable if the gameplay is fun enough to make people keep coming back for it.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
I remember a comment a user submitted to a WAR review... it went something like:
"If you think WAR will get anything less than 3 million subs, you're smoking some serious WoW-crack."
Funny stuff... Overhype it was, IMO, over the genre more than the games themselves. At the time, WoW made people think those sub numbers should be the rule, not the exception, and they couldn't have been more wrong. Most folks are a good bit wiser on the subject now, methinx. I haven't yet seen a "SWToR - WoWkiller?" post, whereas every other WAR board post was exactly that.
Good iea but it certainly was a poorly designed game not to mention they had a billion servers at launch which caused a huge faction imbalance for rvr gameplay.
Yah that's exactly the point I was trying to make in my OP. It was so linear, there was nothing there to hide the treadmill that it really was. I realize that nearly all MMORPGs are going to boil down to killing monsters to gain exp/skill, but we need the ILLUSION that we're doing something more/better.
It's kind of like the difference between walking in a beautiful forest in the spring for an hour and walking on a treadmill for an hour. In both cases you are walking for an hour, but one is clearly more enjoyable.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
To be honest, I think that even with balanced factions, open-RvR was pretty poor. It was the same boring old beat on a door for 15 minutes and then steamroll the 10 guys inside. To be fair, some keep sieges could be more interesting when you defend the ramp and such, but keep sieges were the sum of open-RvR in WAR, there was nothing else.
After you do one or two keep sieges, it just turns into a grind. Scenarios were better because they were balanced by design and had more interesting goals. If they could have somehow translated the more interesting goals of scenarios into open-RvR I think it would have been more interesting.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I don't think the 3 areas or the tiers had much to do with it, and as far as linear prgression goes... well what game doesn't do that? you're killing rats before your killing dragons in almost every MMO that I know of. You can walk or swim or ride a horse to everywhere in a racial pairing, and fly to the other pairings. Which I guess is the same as other older games.
What killed it for me originally was "WAR is everywhere" slogan. Well it wasn't really, WAR only happened in a very small portion of a zone in a pairing, like 1/15 of a zone was dedicated for RvR. For what was supposed to be an RvR/PvP based game, that aspect of it wasn't very immersive. In my opinion all the PQ's should have been included in the RvR lake, the forts should have been further spread out and the BO's too in a zone.
The good news though is that is changing. The dev's that worked on the new city endgames, the rvr bonuses, gear, etc. have a done a wonderfull job. The city is a blast to play in now, and the against all odds bonus encourages people to stay in a zone and fight, which is awesome beacuse they get more renown and exp.
I just hope as WAR continues they spread these changes all over the game. They really have breathed new life into a game that I quit for a long time and came back to, to test, then stayed becasue it was fun for me.
1) to fast developement. Even being proud of dishing it out so fast, while lacking polish
2) PvE as an afterthought, with really bad items and rewards aswell
3) Absolute no understanding of what makes immersion (no don't give me a ladder to climb, and empty rvr zones)
4) really really bad use of warhammer IP (disney version)
5) totally unable to either grasp or react to what betatesters gave as feedback ( i was there)
6) naive idea of what makes RvR working and interesting.
7) wrong ideas about serverpride.
8) bad class balance. (Lack of understanding of the trinity)
9) lying about the games features, hyping ideas instead of features in the game
10) very buggy release, and slow fixing of bugs
11) overuse and bad implementation of a few god ideas (pq and tok)
12) wanting to beat wow, by making a copy with RvR.
etc.
TO OP, with all these failures how can anyone say whats the worst.
But i would think that the worst mistake might be the first one, simply because so much vent wrong after that.
and that one i think was either
4)really really bad use of warhammer IP, or
12) wanting to beat wow, by making a copy with RvR.
And somehow i think that behind it there simply must have been a bad development culture or really bad management.
Well, their biggest failure were that they never got the old world to come alive, but that is partly because they cut out many important parts of it, like the horror theme that is so important in Warhammer fantasy RPG.
But the crappy endgame and using PvE mechanics for a PvP game doesn't help either.
2 instead of 3 factions isn't one of the big ones, but it does imbalance the game even more. And releasing the game too early were bad too, that meant that they cut out 4 of 6 cities and that is the reason the endgame sucked.
There are many things, WAR never had a chance after Mythic did so many wrong decisions.
1. The World of warhammer was not done right.
2. Disconnected from the community.
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
World was cut up. Instead of regrouping the players, they spread them in dozens of little isles of play.
From PQ's, to scenario's, little meaningless RvR isles and different Tiers.
You only can get decent PvP if you regroup the players. On server at one or two key points and by creating scenarios wich would run across servers.
No (grouping of) players, no game.
Can't believe no one mentioned the fat british clown known as Paul Barnett yet. I've always said this guy is acting like a monkey not like a LEAD developer. As a gamer I want to know facts instead of PR hype.Anyway heres my list:
selling their heart to EA -> road to destruction
pissing of the DAOC crowd a RvR focused Wow
pissing of the PvE crowd with the worst PvE I've ever experienced in an MMORPG
bugs, bugs and bugs I mean the game is "ready" but I can't link items wtf?!
instant travel there was absolutely no form what so ever of exploring: tier 1 - load - tier 2 - load ...
poor itemization don't know but think I had the same skin (just different color) for my dagger from 10 - 40
unwilling to accept well thought out feedback instead they were focusing on all the hype boys by screaming "WAR"
not allowing group PvP in scenarios this thing really killed it for me. You always had to do it with random people and as a healer this turned out to be a pain in the ass.
bad performance: first "raid" first crash "ok the game is new..." so second raid second crash or 10s delays
to easy
not enough development time plain and simple: 3 years isn't enough for realising a quality product never understood why Mythic felt proud of that.
no third faction
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
The Engine it's on is bad
War didn't do good because
1.It didn't have good pve to keep the Wow heads
2.Change enough thing in their gaming formula that DAoc guys didn't like it
3. Water down IP enough that a lot of Warhammer fans did like it.
So none of the people who where suppose to reallly like the game like it Mostly it was disrepecting the IP to fit in WoW mold that hurt the game more than anything else,Warhammer is brutal IP it was suppose to given the same treatment of IP like AoC did and while AoC strayed from REH works a bit you have to admit the world feels like suppose too.
The Game could have played like crap but if Mythic/EA made it feel like Warhammer stupid warhammers fans would still be supporting it now.
"Over Hype" only makes bad games fail.
This is true,Halo Reach,Call of Duty,Mass effect 2,Star craft 2,etc A good game is good game.Hype is only bad when players realize that game they are playing not good
These are my reasons why I think WAR failed...
And these are in any order .....
1. When WAR first launched the DEV team made crappy looking Order toons...bland and unfinished I still remember
seeing high elves with a huge hole through them when using certain armor it was horrendous....on the Other hand CHAOS
was awesome looking you can tell where the artist spent most of there time designing the characters. Hence A LOT of people flocked to CHAOS and the game was very unbalanced with CHAOS owning alot of the PVP and RVR.
2. HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE C&C during PVP you couldn't walk more than 3 steps without being snared, thrown,crippled,snared,thrown, grabbed..etc etc you get the picture...it was just awful and frustrating.
3. OVERPOWERED TOONS hence the BRight Wizard ...it took the DEVS forever to tone down some damage on some toons and TOTALLY ignore others for whatever reasons...the ShadowWarrior was emmensly popular for its looks but was squishy as hell with horrible skills.
4. And finally LAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGG
WAR!! WAGHH!!! yah whatever I remember storming one of the main strongholds with 100 characters and literally you would
click on a skill and it would go off literally a minute later....crashing the server many many times.....
RVR wow, I could write a lot about RVR but I won't because it's so lengthy but I'll summarize it with one word "repetetive"
and SHut up developers blaming WOTK BS.....
I strongly disagree that linearity was WAR's reason for failing.
Players will still play a linear game if it's fun. WAR simply wasn't fun enough, due in large part to three key failings:
Shallow class/combat design.
Terrible CC design.
Terrible PVE.
Shallow Class/Combat Design. "Faceroll" is a term gamers apply to games where they feel that to play a given class optimally all you're doing is pressing your abilities in a preordained sequence (1,2,3,4,5) -- hence you could roll your face across the buttons to play it. WAR is probably the largest example of facerolling I've witnessed in a MMORPG so far.
This becomes a cardinal sin in a game about PVP. PVP needs to be fun, interesting combat -- if players' only choice in PVP is "now who do I turn my DPS hose on?" while they faceroll, they will quickly become bored.
The biggest disappointment here being that WAR has amazing classes. It really does. Both lore-wise, art-wise, and even animation-wise they're pretty awesome. It's just that gameplay-wise the game turns out to be quite shallow.
Terrible CC design. I calculated that in a 20-second period my Ironbreaker could land 24 separate CC effects if surrounded by 5 opponents. That's more than 1 CC effect a second! So failure #1 was too much CC output.
Mythic's solution was to give 30 secs of immunity if you're CCed. And that certainly tones down the overall value of CC, but at the same time it's such a horrible way of addressing the issue because now I won't know whether or not my CC ability will actually work unless I'm specifically looking through the enemy's debuffs.
Just seems stupid to create your own problem (too much CC) and then solve it in a bad way.
Terrible PVE. PVE mobs were utterly uninteresting to fight against, due having three ability sets:
No Abilities. Uninteresting for obvious reasons.
A DoT. Barely more interesting than having no ability at all.
A Stun. So now it's a little more interesting, but substantially more obnoxious to fight against.
Seriously, 99% of the PVE mobs in the game fit one of those three categories, which results in every combat playing out the exact same way, which results in zero player immersion because you don't really have to think or adapt to different types of mobs.
--
Now this all sounds pretty harsh on WAR, but some of the elements (like PQs, the game world, keeps, scenarios, and the reward structures) were pretty damn fun. That's what makes WAR such a tragic case and prompts long-winded posts (like this one) instead of simply ignoring it as an inherently bad game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Wars biggest problem is the endgame design was terrible.
Very few people ever even witnessed a city siege, it was poorly designed and full of bugs.
The game was obviously not finished and was rushed to publication by EA
MY opinion :
Warhammer was a well built game.
Fact :
Mystic blind sided everyone ( yes screwed them ) by giving too much exp to Scenarios ( battle grounds ) and close to nothing to RvR or open world quest. EVERYONE WAS BITCHING about battle grounds getting all the exp but they did nothing about it. It's kind of like giving us WoW and only giving exp to battle grounds, they may be fun, but for most it's just something for people to do when they only have 20 min to play.
Opinion about the fact :
Mystic, could not code the game to handle mass RvR with hundreds of people so they ignored the mass argument about giving exp to Scenarios. This is what made the game suck !
Not to mention they built Warhammer on a bad engine, i know they started using that engine before EA got involved so probably didint have the money.
But alot of Wars problems could have been solved if they used say the Hero Egine.