Why did Warhammer mmo 'W.A.R.' never become big?

[ayuri]

I honestly love the game. The strong PvP feature and the world well made. I am wondering why it never became popular.

Here is a link: http://www.warhammeronline.com/

a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKOhzfkCdbY&feature=fvwrel

and gameplay vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ-pOAb5pJk

 

[Loop Stricken]

Presumably because they chose the wrong Warhammer franchise to make an MMO out of.
They should've gone with the futuristic one. You know, the good one. The popular one.

The one that's getting all the other games.

 

[ThePirateMan]

The game really didn't live up to the what the developers promised, in my experience at least. I believe it was pretty rushed too.

 

[Tombaugh]

I played it strong at launch, it had a pretty good subscription base and was going pretty good. The problem was that they didn't finish the end-game content. At the highest levels the PvP was pretty much stalemated since you couldn't get to each other's capitals, that and the raiding wasn't there Classes weren't balanced and the staggering amount of bugs and server instability caused them to lose a lot of the player base.

 

[Lt. Vinciti]

1. It seems like WoW...

2. The 3rd video lacked... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO_QntXc-c4

3. (wikipedia) Collision detection
Warhammer Online features collision detection, a feature that is designed to prevent players from moving through other player characters. This feature works on enemy units as well as friendly units that are flagged for RvR combat. Collision detection enhances the role played by heavily armored characters known as "tanks", as it helps them become far more efficient at holding choke points and protecting weaker players in their group such as healers and casters.
Sounds like a massive griefer tool....

 

[Drunkbot]

I tried it out one night, and saw zero about it to make more of an impression than any other MMO that was failing to steal players from WoW at the time.

 

[Souplex]

Because you can't kill WoW by being WoW with a few bells and whistles.
That and making it a two-faction PVP focused game meant that as one faction got bigger than the other, the game would unbalance itself.

 

[ThorUK]

As people have stated, a "fantasy" setting MMORPG is in direct competition with WoW (where the playerbase is), and it simply didnt offer anything significant over WoW for players to move to it. The 40k MMO might have more luck, if they actually put in the work on the shooter aspect of it - so far every FPS/RPG hybrid has failed miserably at both being a RPG and a shooter - one of these always ends up making no difference in gameplay terms - either as with APB, which takes it's shooter gameplay straight out of DOOM for DOS (albeit in 3rd person) or as with Mass Effect, where the putting skill points into weapon specialisation is about as sensible as throwing money down the drain.

 

[Max Overload]

I honestly love the game. The strong PvP feature and the world well made. I am wondering why it never became popular.

The thing that seems to be forgotten now is that the game literally died in development. EA got hold of it once it was dropped by it's original publisher because it was over-budget, over-deadline and was still missing half it's capital cities and numerous classes.

Also, the game was popular on launch. Damn popular. 600,000+ subscribers at one point. Unfortunately, EA knew nothing about MMO's. They assumed a decent IP and essentially a clone of WoW would net them 10 million subscribers and their own billion dollar a year cash cow.

The second WAR failed to deliver WoW numbers, EA slashed it's funding to the bone and left it to bleed out in a ditch while they poured money into TOR.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Presumably because they chose the wrong Warhammer franchise to make an MMO out of.
They should've gone with the futuristic one. You know, the good one. The popular one.

The one that's getting all the other games.

Te be fair, Warhammer Fantasy has been around slightly longer than Warhammer 40,000. I've heard Warhammer Fantasy is more popular in Europe than it is here in the States.

I'm definitely more of a 40k fan, but Fantasy has its place. For instance, I'm a huge fan of the Gotrek and Felix novels.

I've never played W.A.R myself, but based on impressions I've heard it sounds like it just didn't differentiate itself enough from WoW. That, and many people who didn't know any better thought Warhammer's setting was a ripoff of Warcraft instead of the other way around.

 

[Catalyst6]

The problem, at least for when I tried it, was that it just wasn't very good. The classes were meh with some of the features more obviously ripped off of a certain game than others (*cough*Combo points for rogues*cough*) and the abilities just seemed lacking. It didn't look very nice, and the quests were rather blah.

There wasn't a single thing that I can say "yeah, that broke it for me", it was more of an overall quality thing.

 

[BigDeadMushy]

Presumably because they chose the wrong Warhammer franchise to make an MMO out of.
They should've gone with the futuristic one. You know, the good one. The popular one.

The one that's getting all the other games.

can't say I agree totally with the statement i.e WH40K is better than WHFB,but I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment.GW should have gone with 40K as the basis for an MMO,if for no other reason than to avoid overcrowding the fantasy-based marketplace.

if not WH40K, one of the more "obscure" titles in the GW franchise would be brilliant, Necromunda or Inquisitor would both make excellent MMOs

I played and enjoyed World of Warcrack for a bloody long time,but sometimes I need a bit of sci fi in my day,and none of the starwars or star trek titles scratch that itch.

until such a day, I will just have to count the many magnificent gifts of grandfather nurgle,and await the day I can corrupt the galaxy 'neath my mighty plague-scythe

 

[BaronIveagh]

Well, first of all, as a long time WAR player, I blame EA. Fire most of the staff immediately after launch: check. Cut funding to near 0, so that even bug fixes come slow: Check. Constantly reshuffle executives in charge so that there's no clear goals: check.

As far as WoW/WAR goes: WAR couldn't help but be somewhat like WoW. Since the original Warcraft was a re-titled Warhammer game when SSI and not Blizzard got the rights. Blizz was left holding the bag, since they had gone ahead with development before they had actually acquired the rights, and the game was all but finished. Some quick changes and voila! Warcraft.

I might point out that shortly after WAR launched, WoW suddenly sprouted quite a few WAR-like features as well, since Blizz was actually concerned about losing players to WAR. They of course, had not counted on EA shooting the game in the head once they acquired it, instead of running it in a sensible manner. It seems to only recently have occurred to them, now rather after the fact, that the property might be/have been profitable after all, with all the hype surrounding the 40k MMO.