213: Casualty of Warhammer

[Muckbeast]

Sorry to say, but I find it amusing that WARs "woes" seem to be due completely to outside sources, rather than to inherent shortcomings of the game and service itself (including the sub-par CSR service from EAMythic that always plagued the game long before layoffs even occurred), according to this author.

No kidding. Putting the blame on external sources is a joke. Gold farmers? ROFL. That's hilarious. I don't think I ever encountered a single gold farmer in WAR. If I did, they were so out of the way they never impacted gameplay at all.

At least I now know why CSR would sometimes take literal months to get back to me on a problem whenever my petition was escalated. Too busy playing "Rock Band". <_<

Customer service was absolutely worthless on WAR. I remember numerous times submitting bugs for disappearing gear and other severe bugs and it would sit PENDING for weeks. And if you had an active petition on ANY character, you could not open another one. So basically, while they dicked around playing Rock Band instead of answering petitions, if another bug hit you you then had to decide if it was worth deleting the old one to submit a new petition. What kind of stupid design is that?

And that's basically a microcosm for Warhammer in general. At almost every opportunity, when they had a chance to make a bad decision they screwed it up almost every time.

Pathetic.

 

[Nurb]

I feel for the author, but c'mon, its EA. They're the anti-christ of gaming and one of the roving cannibal companies that eats the talent of other companies and tries to pretend the games made after that are as good as the original, and that endless microtransactions are totally worth it.

as for WAR, it was focused, repetitive PvP and forced, linear PvE, I didn't even make it to the end of my free first month before I canceled and uninstalled it and swore I would never pay for an MMO again unless I get to beta, open beta, or play a trial of one first. I'm suprised companies think they're above trials for their MMO's.

 

[theultimateend]

WoW, is the digital version Hercules, the Legendary journeys.
Sure, Kevin Sorbo's cool, but he's working within a horribly sterilized environment.

I couldn't have put it better myself. I just don't see the appeal of WoW. I can understand the idea behind a MMO, it's a great way to get players together in one place(so to speak). The problem lies with the games. WoW is just grinding and leveling up and dealing with idiots dancing in the middle of towns for no damned reason, which leaves one to wonder how this could be considered fun.

Because in a week you can get (with modest playing) from 1 to 80. With each content patch they add lots of (gasp) content and they change various things to speed up gameplay and reduce grinding. They have tons of things you can do on the side and once you turn off trade chat the only people you end up talking with aren't idiots.

WoW is not the best thing that could ever be made but if you are looking for a solid experience where you can play something like 10 different classes, each with a somewhat unique feel, across an absolutely massive world you can manage it there. Plus raiding with a group of friends is a great experience.

My problem with WAR was that it felt like WoW but with an even stronger emphasis on PVP and an even weaker balancing system.

PVP is as I've seen the weakest aspect of ALL MMO's (maybe not EVE...maybe) and it is the most pushed. That's the problem to me. 100% of the time companies are trying to shove PVP in your ass when 110% of the time they haven't even gotten it to function properly.

It's like playing various card games that just make more extreme cards each release. People act like strategy is involved but really its just about having the biggest gun and the quickest trigger finger. I hear that it isn't the case but everytime I've ever PVP'd or watched PVP it has been the case.

Sort of like how folks used to say the world was flat, they could say it all they wanted but it never made it true .

When you are playing on a server with tens to hundreds of thousands of people and only 6 are dancing naked in town that's pretty damn good. My college campus had a higher amount of nudists and a far smaller population.

I think my biggest kudos to wow is that even when I do find myself grinding I don't notice. As opposed to most games where it is PAINFULLY obvious. Shit you bring a friend and you can do 3x exp and get an entire server full of 60's or higher before it even ends.

 

[Fearzone]

Honestly, my interactions with WAR CSMs were pretty worthless. Most tickets were about losing gold bags from a PQ or keep because of crashes or some other glitch. CSMs kept telling me it was part of the game to get to the treasure chest on time, even if I died at the end of a keep fight and released more than 2 minutes away. So I made a stink on the IGN board one time that if we don't pick up a bag they should just mail it to us. I'm pleased to see that when I resubbed, when I missed a bag one time they did mail it.

Kind of a sad read, but just as well for the author to move on. My experiences as a WAR player parallel his as a GM--increasing gloom and pessimism month after month. But WAR was never a bright shining star of a game crushed by the impossible competition of Lich King (and goldfarmers or whatever). It was buggy, laggy, crashy, with graphical glitches and strange leaden animations, a bizarre combat system, monotonous RvR, okay but unstrategic scenarios where everybody just gathers and fights in the middle, and broken contibution points for some classes in the public quests. And its DaoC engine was just not powerful enough to handle the expections of a post-WoW MMO. Seeing the emptiness of Tier 4 content I quit last January.

I resubbed last month. Land of the Dead was meh. It was a huge error to produce that instead of fixing the game. Okay some things were fixed--I almost never crashed. But lag and slide show stuttering was still common despite having a better computer now that could easily handle the graphics. And though there were improvements in RvR (mainly better gear as a reward), it was still too monotonous and empty, and the whole combat system remains frought with crowd control that left me silenced and immobile half the time, and lag such that I was barely able to cast an ability the other half.

After my first cancellation I was hoping things would get better and I'd be playing again. I canceled two days ago and won't be looking back. WAR is a sinking ship. WoW is a sinking ship too but it at least it had days of glory whereas WAR has only seen defeat.

 

[Don't taze me bro]

I don't think I ever encountered a single gold farmer in WAR. If I did, they were so out of the way they never impacted gameplay at all.

Really? I was often and regularly spammed by gold farmers for the first few weeks after release. I was another that played for the first 30 days then returned to WoW. I did quit WoW a few months back, and returned to War to see what had changed. They have made alot of changes, and while I did enjoy running around, the server I played was seemed devoid of other players in my level range, and queuing for a scenario often proved futile. If there had been more RvR and more people around, I may have stuck with it longer.

 

[nmaster64]

I would write an article about my time as a GM for Age of Conan...

...but here it is, already written for me. Like, nail on the head. :/

 

[freebiewitz]

Aww maaan thats too bad kinda depressing too.

 

[headshotcatcher]

I absolutely loved the game but it lacked horribly as well. Most notably in the amount of players, under level 30 it was impossible to find people to play the equivalent of battlegrounds and I dont think I've found any instances below 25 either..

It was definately a wow killer in theory, but the horrible execution killed it sadly..

 

[The Random One]

This was a great article, but I'm even more interested in the comments, which (especially the first ones) have a tone of "you deserved it, WAR sucked!" I don't care at all for MMOs, but I find it quite interesting how people seem to be unable or unwilling to tell a game from its makers, as if one guy who was brought in late in development for a small debugging job was as much to blame for each failure of the game as a whole as every other person involved, from the company's executives to the studio's janitor. I guess it's because video games require so much personnel to come through that the end result is largely unpersonal, so we end up thinking of all employees as this series of clones, each of which with an identical vision of the game, which corresponds to the final product.

I feel for the author, but c'mon, its EA. They're the anti-christ of gaming and one of the roving cannibal companies that eats the talent of other companies and tries to pretend the games made after that are as good as the original, and that endless microtransactions are totally worth it.

I used to think like that. Then I learned about Activision.

 

[Nurb]

I feel for the author, but c'mon, its EA. They're the anti-christ of gaming and one of the roving cannibal companies that eats the talent of other companies and tries to pretend the games made after that are as good as the original, and that endless microtransactions are totally worth it.

I used to think like that. Then I learned about Activision.

they suck too, and so does blizzard for joining them

 

[Arkengetorix]

Because as fans of 40k usually tend to forget, a 40K game would need to be beyond immense in scale, like.. 20x EvE big, with all races represented at launch, and all the other crap that would cause fans to ***** if they couldn't do them immediately.

"What? I can't play a Titan commander? /fail, i'm going back to WoW."

An interesting point, I can understand the inherent difficulty of making a 40k MMO in relation to its size. But obviously it would not all be available straight away. Even WAR doesn't cover the whole Warhammer world. But most fans don't seem to mention that in their complaint, or that its missing races like lizardmen and vampire counts or whatever. The main complaint of WAR seems to be the game mechanics.

So in making a 40k MMO that's what you'd need to concentrate on. But obviously you'd have to make an early decision in terms of just how large of a game your willing to make. And then perhaps flesh out the rest with future expansions.

 

[funksobeefy]

Its so sad to see my favorite game world fall apart, but there are just some things that developers are just gonna have to learn. Graphics are no the way to beat WoW. I would have of signed up for Age of Conan immediately if my computer could handle it, I would have joined the armies in Warhammer conquering across my favorite fantasy world since my childhood if I just bought a better graphics card. Lets face it, not every one can run those games, there are just too demanding in their specs, sure you can better PvP then any game ever created, but if im just gonna lag then I'm not gonna play it.

People play WoW because they can, a $500 laptop with minimal specs can play WoW. Thats why 11 million people play that game, and really no other reason.

 

[ldwater]

Maybe EA / Mythic should have done some research about the average MMO player.

90% play for the loot / rewards - simple as that.

Are you really surprised that when defending players wont band together? When an offence is so great and steamrolling its way through generally MMO players will move out of the way and go for whatever they can to make the most out of the situation.

Its like AFK players in battlegrounds - they know they are going to loose so they'll go AFK, grab a cup of tea, take whatever honour is coming and try again.

Players don't want to co-operate if they can avoid it, because they can't be assured that the other people will contribute as much as them (if they are randoms), and heading into occupied zones is just a death sentance so why bother when all you'll get is dead and nothing to show for it.

WoW tries to balance this out by giving the 'tenacity' buff when one side is outnumbered.

Its one thing that bugs me about games developers these days - they try to make games that they THINK people will enjoy, when really they have no idea what they are doing.

WoW does well because its well balanced and the devs understand the motivations of players - the reward.

 

[hlc]

I started War last Christmas, and I am still playing. In some ways it has been the most fun MMO I have played, and in others it has been the most aggravating.

I've been lucky enough to be on a well populated server (one of their mistakes was making so many servers at first, thinning out the populations that are required for oRvR to thrive) with some smart players and good oRvR leaders. If your server lacks that, then I would imagine the game is horrid, and there isn't any option besides zerging. And I just feel sorry for those players who came in search of PvE. PvE in general is already so boring to me, but Warhammer's is pretty awful.

I find it funny (though, not that surprising really) that the author of this article blamed WotLK for the unsubbing, and believes that "new content" will help War. it just shows how ot of touch the devs are if that is the general sentiment around the office.

Honestly, at this point, any new content is a complete slap in the face to subscribers. Crashes to desktop and terrible lag are an every day occurrence. I don't think I have ever gone an entire play session without saying or hearing "it's bugged" in regards to this or that. The latest nerf to AoE and CC has helped, but it was a blanket nerf, and left the already underpowered classes even MORE underpowered. There are trees and rocks and NPCs that are floating in the air (and not due to Chaos! heh). Even the mail is broken. It's like we're paying for a beta.

War has these glaring issues that would greatly improve the state of the game if they were fixed, and instead of fixing them, they release Land of the Dead, and this new temporary Hunt dungeon live event thing. Not only are they ignoring the more pressing issues with this new content, it's PvE content. The people left who play War are people who like to PvP! Everybody loves tiers 1-3. You can pvp the entire time and get all the best gear and level by doing so. Then tier 4 comes along and all of a sudden you have to PvE for half your gear sets? The city instances are PvE as well! We don't understand.

I would love to see Warhammer get fixed- I love pvping from level one, I've enjoyed all the classes I've played, and the lore and art direction is great. But I don't know if it will make it past the end of the year. There is going to be a mass exodus from War to Aion, myself included. I would love the option of coming back to War, but I fear Aion might deal a fatal blow.

 

[Azhrarn-101]

Having played WAR a good bit during Beta, I knew back then that I wasn't going to purchase the game. Why, you ask? 3 letters will suffice for the answer to that: G.O.A.
For the American readers, GOA is the company that runs Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot in Europe, and they were also contracted to run Warhammer Online in Europe.
Don't ask me why they did that, those DAoC players I've spoken to could recount endless horror stories about the lack of GOA customer support, so it couldn't be because of quality.

And EA itself could easily have managed the EU side of the game, they certainly have the resources for it.

Even during the beta it was becoming apparent that GOA was doing something wrong somewhere. We were on average 6 weeks behind in Beta-stages/patches, they claimed that this was all due to localisation, but that shouldn't be taking 6 weeks or so per patch, most were just database and balance changes, not that much on the text content of the game.

The treatment of EU beta players alone was enough for many to not purchase the game, when you knew support was this lousy, you didn't trust the product itself either. The massive delays between patches for the US and EU, and aweful performance have since proven those sceptics right.
Don't think that we didn't express our concerns, but those concerns were pretty much always ignored. And if you really struck a nerve with an issue you got banned for it.

My guess is that by now the evidence against GOA must be pretty damning, but for some reason I wouldn't be surprised if GOA somehow finds itself in control of the KOTOR servers too when that is released. I certainly hope they won't be, since that will mean I won't play the game, regardless of how good the opinions of it are.

 

[Jaebird]

If anything, they made a good game while ripping off WoW. Maybe if they made it based in the 40k universe, it might have lasted longer. Oh well.

Speaking of, and not to go too far off-topic, was anyone excited when they saw that Space Marine game trailer?

 

[DRADIS C0ntact]

Why try and create ANOTHER fantasy mmo on top of the already existing million of them? Why not go with War40k? I still personally want to try the game. Though I'm at least 4 months away from being able to, time will tell.

Because THQ and Vigil Games are already in the process of making a Warhammer 40k MMO.

http://www.massively.com/2009/04/03/warhammer-40k-mmo-gets-a-release-date/

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6166560.html

Don't get too excited just yet though. It isn't scheduled to be released until 2012.

 

[SirSchmoopy]

This game was good. I was in the first ever round of the beta over a year before it was released. Why did the game fail?

Because it still felt like a beta test on release. You can't expect people to pay to play a game you haven't tested and release early. Mythic needed another 6 months and instead released and flopped over early.

 

[skeanthu]

I played WAR, found it entertaining, but I just never passed that point of "I want to play it" for me.

What was written in this article goes on all day in every other job market on the planet. There are winners, hanger-ons, and losers, so the cycle continues.

Being truly passionate about a game is the really hard part for most companies, and why a lot of MMOs fail. WoW continues to deliver, albeit not everyones' cup of tea. So in the end, a lot of you devs/producers/execs out there will hopefully learn this lesson, real passion is the key.

Mind you, go into the bowels of Blizzard and you may already see the cycle beginning there, a merger with Activision is a harbinger of doom, for passion has taken a back seat to greed. Soon we may see a tale of woe from an insider there.