What are the fundamental flaws with Warhammer online?

MMOExposed · November 2012

Tamanous · November 2012

Simple point list:

Instanced, blocked zones. This ruins immersion for many including me. The world is only a bunch of regions with no connection in my mind.
pvp lake system is nothing more than WWI no mans land. The only one that was fun was the level 1-10 zone due to being a completely different layout. They should have learned from this.
choppy game and horrible performance in cities.
terrible animations, character flow and z axis physics.
Pubs nothing more than grind houses and most ignored.
Mirroed classes with minor differences does two things: it diminishes originality within each faction and the subtle differences seems to enhance the class envy, not solve balance issues.
Tiered pvp seperates the populace too much. Real war is accessable for a reason ... everyone can go to war. Soldiers in rl war don't go off to "lower level, easier wars" to level up before the "end game war". The war is also pre-defined with it's stepped progression system. Players must be the ones deciding what is worth fighting over. The game decided it for you.
Too much of a themepark clone with pretty much NOTHING to do with the original game. This is it's greatest failing.

MMOExposed · November 2012

What you mean by blocked zones?

Roxtarr · November 2012

While I'm not good at pointing out well reasoned lists of flaws, I do see something that the game could have benefited greatly from: downleveling (like in GW2). That way players could PvP in any zone, participate in any quest/event without punishment or making the content trivial. The game funnelled into a very mundate endgame, and frankly limited and unrewarding PvP. If they would have left the entire world accessible to max level players, the game might have faired much better.

BruceYee · November 2012

For me they were...

1. The difference in RR and EXP you earn by level 40 meant you have about 2 weeks-1 month of getting spanked in rvr until you reach RR100.

2. You have to buy RR equipment with drops from players. You've already suffered through the brutal agony of RVRing for weeks/months to earn your rank but on top of that you have to hope to win rolls for medals(which I hardly ever did).

3. PVE was completely useless in this game as was the economy except for dyes and low level twink gear.

To me the game was poorly thought out and executed. It's like they were motivated til about 50% in and then someone said "That's good enough" and they didn't improve on anything after that.

Matticus75 · November 2012

For me it was not rated "M" if your going to make a warhammer MMO, then I want to see and hear "ill rip the flesh from your bones, destroy the weak" peoples head getting ripped off and demon spawn drinking their blood with lustful laughter....

If not then make a My little pony MMO or gtfo

Really, if you never expierence the warhammer universe, then as a new person playing it, you should think to yourself "Whoa, this game is wrong" then its done right.....but the game play was done with a budget dated game engine, its just poor quality all around

RavingRabbid · November 2012

Bad PVE.

Takes Themeparks games to whole new lvl.

Musical keep RvR

No open world content.

Just Orc and Empire Keeps in RVR.

Bad character creation

Every class has 4 looks as you lvl...equipment-wise

Worst crafting in an MMO.....EVER!!!

A few things off top of my head.

Bakkoda24 · November 2012

2 Faction system.

They oversimplified the relationships between each of the races. It would have been awesome if they did a three or four faction system.

sibs4455 · November 2012

I still sub to this game, i still enjoy the pvp.

There's still people that use hacks in the game, reporting the issue normally sorts this out though.

Khebeln · November 2012

I dont even know where to start.

Whenever i think about the WO made by Mythic instead of the original project that was going on before they took over i get a strong urge to hack and slash someone for this.

For starters worst performance ever. It was one of the prime examples of mmo games limited by cpu making new gpu obsolete, or even more of a problem than helping the situation. I remember when i played the game when it was released my 9800gx2 was running 2x slower than some old card i found back then to check things out i think it was 8600 gtx.

What really pissed me back then is they ignored the issue completly, i had best pc money could buy and it was worth shit as some old crap was runing the game better.

I think i tried the game later on on 280 then on 480, didint try on 680 yet. Not much of a diference.

Another example of a game bottlenecked by cpu due to bad programing is Rift. Anytime you get a little crowd you get down to 25-40~ frames with 5ghz water cooled i7 cpu ssd 16gb ram and 680 asus dcu2 (fastest single slot card)

Funy thing is i can lower every setting to low or ultra and it makes no diference in FPS. If thats not bad engine i dont know what is.

Example of good coding is TSW. Dx11 engine using teslation and every firework available this days, game runs solid 60 fps during almost 200 ppl 3 faction pvp or in big hubs w/o droping fps (using vsync)

In any case i got a little off topic, point is if the engine is baddly coded no mater how good the game is you cant truly enjoy the mmo and its doomed to fail eventualy. Im suprised some companies still fail to realise it. I dont want to point more fingers but there are more titles like than other than Warhammer online or Rift, but those two are probably the most known examples.

jmcdermottuk · November 2012

Bright Wizards! I used to count how many the Order team had at the start of each scenario and you could tell right away how badly you'd get your arse handed to you. 1-2, not a problem. 3 of them, probably gonna lose. 4+, gonna get raped.

Apart from that the 2 main problems were, 2 factions. Always causes problems due to population imbalance. Especially when the classes on one side are so OP (fucking bright wizards). Also, the Scenarios (BG's) caused the RvR lakes to be ignored. It was easier to just queue up a BG.

Now that I think about it, putting loot on NPC's in keeps was a bad idea. It lead to each side trading off the keeps instead of trying to hold them. People would just let the keep fall into the enemies hands and wait for them to leave before taking it back.

I honestly think that of they'd taken the Scenarios out and had no loot on keep lords the RvR lakes would have seen much better use.

ShakyMo · November 2012

Khebeln

That's because gamebryo used by warhammer, rift, oblivion and fallout3 is AMD optimised

Tsws engine in nvidia optimised.

Players with AMD cards get the opposite experience with those games.

ShakyMo · November 2012

Tamanous
Warhammer doesn't have instanced zones like swtor or Aoc.

It Is a zoned world like wow, not an instanced world. (yeah wow zones are much bigger, they're continents)

versulas · November 2012

They tried to copy WoW instead of trying to make DAoC 2...

Acidon · November 2012

Originally posted by versulas
They tried to copy WoW instead of trying to make DAoC 2...

Exactly.

I don't even think the 3rd faction would have made much of a difference in WAR, if they had been given the time to put it in. It's just a bad game. I freaking loved DAoC and I tried really hard to like WAR. It just wasn't in the cards.

DavisFlight · November 2012

Only two factions.

Any instancing at all.

Chopped together PvE zones that have no flow or sense to them.

Khebeln · November 2012

Originally posted by ShakyMo
Khebeln

That's because gamebryo used by warhammer, rift, oblivion and fallout3 is AMD optimised

Tsws engine in nvidia optimised.

Players with AMD cards get the opposite experience with those games.

I tried it on intel and AMD, i agree its slightly better for warhammer on AMD, rift actualy runs better on intel.

TheHavok · November 2012

Originally posted by MMOExposed
What are the fundamental flaws with Warhammer online?

It was made by Mythic.

ForumPvP · November 2012

When that giant comes from the woods first time in the starting area,i felt like hey this might be something but when he pops second time i felt like WTF sorcery is this?

There was no spoon and there is no giant.

tom_gore · November 2012

Originally posted by Gorwe
YANK THE IP FROM DAMNED HANDS OF EVIL ARTS HERETICS!!!!!!!!!! THEY HAVE MADE ENOUGH MISTAKES n SLANDERS AGAINST OUR(YOUR) BELOVED IP!!!!

You only need to look at the current development of the tabletop game and the latest installation of their "role playing" game, made by FFG and you will realize GW no longers gives a flying f... about the IP as long as they get money from someone using it.

morbuskabis · November 2012

I said to myself over and over again "This game has so much potential!" for two years. Then I got tired of repeating it and stoped playing.

A s**ty game with lots of potential is still a s**ty game.

ShakyMo · November 2012

It's not like the warhammer ips are that original anyway. They massively rip off Michael moorcock and frank Herbert for a start.

Loke666 · November 2012

Originally posted by MMOExposed
What are the fundamental flaws with Warhammer online?

Well, Mythic could have remade DaoC instead, ot they could have made their own Wow (which also would have been a bad idea) but instead they licensed Warhammer and slapped Wows mechanics and a watered downed version of DaoCs RvR on it.

Big misstake. They should have translated Warhammer fantasy RPGs mechanics from scratch to a computer game instead. Because the IP have millions of fans, but those fans want a real Warhammer game.

The Wow fans they tried to steal (as a certain Brit said they would the week before release) already had Wow and loved that, no similar game will take them.

The DaoC fans wanted DaoC 2 and also got dissapointed.

So as I see it the game was dead in the water since they started to make it. The solution to make a big MMO is to find your playerbase (Warhammer fans or DaoC fans) and give them what they want instead of just doing the same as everyone else and hope you get a piece of the cake.

I dont think anyone on Mythic even bothered to play the P&P RPG or even the tabletop, the only place in the game that feels right is Altdorf and just because Games workshop forced them to remake it right. Even with Wows mechanics they at minimum should not have taken away the feel of the world to make it more suitable for kids (or possibly Wow fans).

Loke666 · November 2012

Originally posted by ShakyMo
It's not like the warhammer ips are that original anyway. They massively rip off Michael moorcock and frank Herbert for a start.

Not to mention Mary Shelley, Robert Howard and Fritz Leitner but that is really beside the point here. Warhammers world might be a mix of stuff stolen from different authors but it still have a very distinct feeling to it.

Anyone who played "The enemy within" know what I am talking about, it is about corruption, horror and really dark humor. A great world for RPGs actually.

At best Mythic got the feeling from the boardgame "Bloodbowl" right and that just aint enough for a MMORPG.

Clawzon · December 2012

Originally posted by Gorwe
Oh boy! Where do I start?

-misuse of IP has got to be their biggest sin. I mean you set your MMO in Warhammer, I repeat IN WARHAMMER and you fail??? WTF??? That brings me to next few points

-fail advertising. I only remember animated Slayer/Sorceress banner ads(and that only Like in a week of launch). I mean there are still Warhammer Fantasy Role Play(WHFRP) fans that do not know WAR even exists. LOL DOUBLE WTF??? Why in the nine blazes didn't they advertise WAR in White Dwarf/Hammer n Bolter??? Strange shit.

-several teams working on the same project. It went from team A to team B to team C and all had different design philosophies. That had big impact on quality of game.

-bickering within the studio. Just google EA Louse for insight.

-false propaganda. Aka Paul Barnett at his finest(LoL)

-Bad design. Like REALLY Bad. They actually thought that they could just shoehorn RvR in and it backfired(RvR wasn't part of the original game)

-deafness. Fans say we want A nerfed. They either: Buff A or blanket nerf A,B and E. Mythic at it's finest.

-stupidity. They actually thought that they could have a MMO without meaningful PvE. Kidding right??? Even EvE has got meaningful PvE(if that's what you are after)...

-fail animations/bugfest. Anyone that even tried EFT knows what I am talking about.

-fail launch. Let's be Real tho. WoW had WAAAY more worse launch and look where it ended. That brings me to my final point:

-they gave up on the damned game. It is visible left and right. This could have been easily the biggest MMO EVER if Mythic did not gave up on their MMO.

-1.40 catastrophe. Nuff said. The patch that inteoduced holier than thou sets(that you MUST BUY from the SHOP!!!!!) and made 80% content meaningless. They just needed to sort out lock ticks/timers and zone cntrl percentages and they used Scorched Earth tactic when they needed the Surgical Strike tactic. Typical of Mythic...

Only good things that have come out of WAR are(everything else is broken/bugged):

-Tome of Knowledge

-Public Quests

-Art

-Writing(I sincerely think that most are unavare of this last hidden gem)

My proposed sollution to Games Workshop:

YANK THE IP FROM DAMNED HANDS OF EVIL ARTS HERETICS!!!!!!!!!! THEY HAVE MADE ENOUGH MISTAKES n SLANDERS AGAINST OUR(YOUR) BELOVED IP!!!!

Very good post, agree with everything! The highlighted from me: Don't forget about Jeff Hickman!!! Jeff was in SWTOR aswell...

Tuktz · March 2013

Two things for me...

2 factions instead of 3

endless gear grind

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What are the fundamental flaws with Warhammer online?

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