Ok sorry for going into the depths of philosophy on a game forum, but my No. 1 reason I dont feel attached to WAR is the lack of good. There is no good side to play. Now sure, some of you may say, what stupid kind of reason is THAT? Its a matter of taste, of priority and for me, a matter of motivation.

Destro is evil, there is little doubt left. Their idea of ruling of the strongest is pure Sith ideology, thats quite clear. But the Empire is not good. Listen to the bigot Sigmarists and their witch hunts, just visit Altdorf and it is anything but the fair capital of goodness.

One of my most important gaming moments, and tbh almost a lifetime revelation, was when Ultima IV was published. (You see I am an older guy, heh.) Ultima IV was the first game, where the goal was not to kill as many monsters as possible and steal what wasnt nailed down, not about some uber evil or invasion. It was about the player to become a moral compass for a civilization, it was to seek virtue! Ultima was a game series which often made me think, and in that it stands for me to this day way above anything published ever since. Few games have achieved this, to make games more than kill statistics. I am sure to you younger players it must sound absurdly old fashioned.

But ever since Ultima IV I felt like making game characters which also fight the good fight, to want more reason to kill than "they are they and we are we". Its not enough, even in a trivial thing like a game. Usually I played Paladins, and I played them ideally as they should be.

WAR on the other hand represents our modern RL pathway. Its very trendy in its message. "There are only we and they". While there is surely defined evil (like the often cited Terrorism in our world), people no longer have this dream of good. And the clever, sophisticated city-people tells us there is no good, and good is just relative and thus nonexistend. There is no good to seek, to find, to manifest, its just we and they, end of the story. Its this story that is told to us, in games, by so called educated people, everywhere there is just moral relativism. I always passionately disliked this.

Where is the dream in this? Arent "stories told" to humans for thousands of years supposed to be BOTH entertainment AND message? Even if a good moral is not so much an answer but a question, WAR is devoid of questions. It was one of those reasons I could not play WOW longer. Horde wasnt evil, nor was Alliance good. It was quite a pointless war.

Some of you may think, that guy overburdens games. I dont think so. Some games proved they can make you think, they can move you, and still entertain you! But a developer must want that, must be able to transport a message, a question about life, and he must have that inside of him. But everywhere in this era we are told there is only grey, there is no black and white. Why the heck not? Why must good, entertaining games be mere kill statistics? Everywhere in WAR is war. Just war. Is that enough? Well, I hope not.
 

as long as people keep on paying for trash games like warhammer, age of conan, vanguard and so on and so forth, companies will keep on releasing trash...

lord of the rings online is the only "linear cookie cutter mmo" beside world of warcraft, that I "like" and feel something like fun while playing, but thats only because I got no other alternative game to play...

I'd love to play a sandbox mmo where the players are the content and where diversity, beautiness and aestetics mean something (like pre-cu star wars galaxies) but I just got no other alternative..

and it seems like blizzard has to take the next step, so other companies can copy them... if blizzard releases a sandbox mmo, then other companies will propably follow...

until then we have to suffer the current trend of "if blizzard can get 10 million customers, then so can we" (see age of conan, warhammer online, lord of the rings online)

unfortunatley it will take years for the companies to realise that they have to get back to the roots of mmos to be successful with their games again...

tbh I'd take a more realistic, flawed 'good guys' over a simple cookie-cutter good vs evil thing anyday. I think it's a very positive thing that developers are thinking more about character depth and lore than simply saying "ok good guys are elves, dwarves and men and bad guys are orcs, dark elves and trolls end of story."

I don't know and don't play WAR, but your post is more general and i quote it.

As you know, at beginning there are pioneers and dreamers, later there are only multinational companies that wanna make fast money.

Creativity is gone long time ago.

Well the truth is that everything is relative. USA is in a war of good vs evil, and they are killing human beings here and there, men women and little children, they are in fact pure evil while seeing themselves as the good side. I personally liked the fact that there were different shadows of good and evil in WOW, pertty much like we have in the world. But you can still play order and see the other side as evil, I guess.

It's not good VS. evil in WAR it's order VS. chaos which is a very differnt thing.

My only comment to  the OP:

It's an MMO based on a dark, gritty IP that at the center of its franchise is, well, a massive tabletop minitature war game where a bunch of races got together and started beating the ever living pulp out of each other.

The Empire and the Church of Sigmar is the epitome of man's ability for Zeal and the power of The Church (as an organization, icon and political force) and its hand in circumstances of WAR (this isn't a religious jab, this is just a commentary on the setting.) Getting into the pen and paper RPG and the lore, you find that while humanity holds this crusade in the name of their Emperor God against the Heretics and Blasphemies of Chaos, you find weakness in man's strength: Corrupted officials in the church, the masses herded by blind faith in a corrupt system, and man's ability to disregard his life, as well as the lives of others, all for the purpose of the "greater good" that they blindly put their faith in.

So yeah, this isnt a 2 sided story at all. 20 Years ago when Warhammer did this, that was its mass appeal: In a market crowded with D&D campaigns about heroes fighting evil on very Tolkien-ish scales, an industry that was all about pure Good vs Evil, Warhammer brought us a setting that was grisly and in a sense, a tad more real (hell go look up maps of the Old World from the actual games....looks very similar to our own world).

Not trying to persuade anyone on the subject;  but I am saying that yeah, Evil is Evil, and Good has weakness. That's what makes the struggle against evil so hard: Because man can succumb to evil deeds in a time of want. This also lead to some good storytelling....one of the best tabletop RPG campaigns involved the players unrooting corrupted officials and finding an insider to Chaos.

Wow.  That was an epic post, in my opinion, by the OP.

I have to agree, in a way.  I'm also "old," so I definitely relate to the UO comments.  UO was a sandbox game and I loved it.  As a matter of fact, I'm considering going back to it....again.  I've played it off and on, but this time I've been away long enough, that I can't even remember what server I was on. /sigh

But, yes, this is part of why I've called many of today's games "MMOGs" not mmoRPGs.  There are defnitely games out that call themselves mmoRPGs that I have to wonder....so, like....where's the RPG part?  O.o  You've not given me an immersive world that feels alive here.  WAR, specifically to me, felt like playing a game against other people....well...playing a game.  I didn't feel INVOLVED in the world.  I had no "home" in the world, no "craft" (Mythic's idea of crafting is a joke) to "support" myself, no real "ideologies" for my character to "drive" them, etc.  It just didn't feel immersive.  There was no suspension of disbelief for me.

I've always felt the FPS genre is best suited to people who ONLY want to duel, fight, "do war", and kill each other in the game.  When THAT is your ultimate idea of fun....there's really no need for the roleplaying aspects.  A good many of the people who play JUST to PvP, don't even bother READING quests.  They just accept them, then look to see what they have to "do", and do those things just to "level" so they can have more strength, renown, influence, honor, marks, etc. to fight better.   Because of this, WAR sort of felt, to ME, like CS Source dressed up in MMORPG armor, so to speak.  It LOOKS like an MMORPG from the outside....but INSIDE....it PLAYS like an FPS, in a LOT of ways.

All in all....that's just not my "cup of tea."  However...a LOT of people will LIKE it.  These are the people that don't care as MUCH about the roleplaying part of the genre.  And that is why....there will always be lots of different kinds of games.  No ONE game "speaks" to everyone's gaming desires, to be sure.

---

Originally posted by altairzq
Well the truth is that everything is relative. USA is in a war of good vs evil, and they are killing human beings here and there, men women and little children, they are in fact pure evil while seeing themselves as the good side. I personally liked the fact that there were different shadows of good and evil in WOW, pertty much like we have in the world. But you can still play order and see the other side as evil, I guess.

---

WTF?????????
The bleeding heart liberals have made their way to the gaming forums. Great.

Well mate that is exactly what Warhammer IP stands for.

There is no good or evil in Warhammer and if you see someone proclaiming himself as "good" then you can be 100% sure that it is a hypocrite at best or an enemy agent at worst.

For us old school Warhammer fans the greatest gripe with WAR is that it features two factions that are roughly labeled as good vs evil. This is not what Warhammer is all about. It is a gritty world that is yet filled with many wonders and goodness is the rarest and most precious of them all.

There is some true goodness in men's hearts but it has to be found and cherished rather than taken as given just because you belong to "the good guys."

I'd be pissed off as hell if WAR degenerated into fascistic Tolkienesque good guys vs bad guys crap. "They're good guys because... they're good. You know, our guys are the good guys and since they're good they can't do wrong." This kind of logic is so horrifyingly hypocritical and morally craven that it makes me want to vomit. Hitler used it, Stalin used it and I'm sure you'll think of a few modern "statesmen" who are using it right now. WAR is fine. Imho Order should be a a bit more nasty than they are atm to be in line with the IP but it is nothing to be really concerned about.

/add

.. and this crap about "dreams and stories" you got there... The oldest and the best epic story that the Western civilization is built upon is Homer's Illiad. Please tell me where are the good guys and the bad guys in there?! You're a slave of victorian prudishness as exempified by Tolkien and Hollywood popcorn movies.

/and another...

All this talk aside but there is nothing stopping you from roleplaying an Order character convinced of his goodness. Hell, I'm sure even Hitler's SS totenkopf were certain they were doing a distasteful but "right" thing when they massacred the whole regions in Russia.

You can play a "good" dark elf as well - fighting for their ancestral lands against their decadent, cowardly and trecherous cousins.. Or a chaos fanatic convinced that by bringing Chaos to Order you are opening their minds to higher, truer realities of endless change. Or a greenskin who is good because fightin is good fun and you bring good fun to those stunties. Waaagh!

I had posted this originally in the Pub and NOT the WAR forum for a reason. WAR is just an example, the most recent one. It was more a general idea I wanted to exemplify with WAR. Now as it was copied here it looks too much like the WAR-bashing it wasnt meant to be.

I understand the WAR ip is as it is, but there is a reason this grey-ness, this ethical void is so fashionable these days, and thats why they picked WAR. Its just one example for many games, both MMOs and single player, where there is no longer the "ethical dilemma". The idea of the ethical dilemma as Garriots Ultimas and other games had it, was: you have a choice between two different definitions of GOOD. Take for example from real life the debate pro-life VS pro-choice. Thats the classic, ethical dilemma, because its not good VS evil, its two definitions of good. That was the core of the idea of the Eight Britannian Virtues around which the games revolved. Its what made some other games great, like Fallout, where all your actions have consequences.

What we have NOW is only to chose between two version of bad: what is the worse bad, Chaos/Destro or Order? (Note: why is the opposition of Order Destruction? Shouldnt the logical opposition of Order be Chaos? Just a sidenote.) But what motivation is there when there are only bad choices? Where is the "vision", the "dream" in such games?

Fallout is a great example how you can make a gritty world - like WAR - and still make meaningful, ethical dilemmas. Sometimes a boss of a group is an asshole, but if you kill him the community may break apart and many will suffer. You can place that in a gritty world, like Fallout, it doesnt have to be sugar pie worlds.

Thats what I miss in WAR, as in so many other MMos and single player games: meaning, questions asked that make you think, games which are more than mere kill statistics. One of the games of the recent era which really made me "wow" was KOTOR 1. Once you realize the central plot - your identity (no spoilers here ^^), you are really in a dilemma. Will you take revenge or not? Will you return to your old pathway and kick the asses of those who used you, or take the chance of a new beginning? It was a game where I really asked myself "heck, what would I do in that situation for real"? And it was a really, really tough decision for me. Never before was it so hard for me to stay on the good side. THOSE are moments which mean something.

Anything else is just "gathering more kills than the others".

Originally posted by paulscott

It's not good VS. evil in WAR it's order VS. chaos

Aye. Tbh, I wouldn't play a game if they tried to have one side come off as completely good. In reality, especially in warfare, no side is good or right or fair. We're all corrupt. It's just the matter of how we go about business and what side we say we belong to that makes a difference, and other then that we are all people. That's what I like alot in games based on warfare; they make sure no side is right and get somewhat philosophical. WAR is close but really more about the game then the ideology, and the same could be said about WoW. I think the Call of Duty games do it very well.

Originally posted by rev_lazaro

My only comment to  the OP:

It's an MMO based on a dark, gritty IP that at the center of its franchise is, well, a massive tabletop minitature war game where a bunch of races got together and started beating the ever living pulp out of each other.

 

The Empire and the Church of Sigmar is the epitome of man's ability for Zeal and the power of The Church (as an organization, icon and political force) and its hand in circumstances of WAR (this isn't a religious jab, this is just a commentary on the setting.) Getting into the pen and paper RPG and the lore, you find that while humanity holds this crusade in the name of their Emperor God against the Heretics and Blasphemies of Chaos, you find weakness in man's strength: Corrupted officials in the church, the masses herded by blind faith in a corrupt system, and man's ability to disregard his life, as well as the lives of others, all for the purpose of the "greater good" that they blindly put their faith in.

So yeah, this isnt a 2 sided story at all. 20 Years ago when Warhammer did this, that was its mass appeal: In a market crowded with D&D campaigns about heroes fighting evil on very Tolkien-ish scales, an industry that was all about pure Good vs Evil, Warhammer brought us a setting that was grisly and in a sense, a tad more real (hell go look up maps of the Old World from the actual games....looks very similar to our own world).

 

Not trying to persuade anyone on the subject;  but I am saying that yeah, Evil is Evil, and Good has weakness. That's what makes the struggle against evil so hard: Because man can succumb to evil deeds in a time of want. This also lead to some good storytelling....one of the best tabletop RPG campaigns involved the players unrooting corrupted officials and finding an insider to Chaos.

 

 

Just a little bit of dnd history.  When the dnd first came out, it was a law vs chaos. It was based from Michael Moorcock's Elric universe where Law and Chaos battled. Later the alignments we enhanced from the law, neutral, chaos to include good, neutral, evil, giving us the nine alignments rather than the original three.
 

Dnd's original law/chaos is where you see order/chaos.  Just wanted  you to have your facts fixed.

Originally posted by Yunbei

Ok sorry for going into the depths of philosophy on a game forum, but my No. 1 reason I dont feel attached to WAR is the lack of good. There is no good side to play. Now sure, some of you may say, what stupid kind of reason is THAT? Its a matter of taste, of priority and for me, a matter of motivation.

Destro is evil, there is little doubt left. Their idea of ruling of the strongest is pure Sith ideology, thats quite clear. But the Empire is not good. Listen to the bigot Sigmarists and their witch hunts, just visit Altdorf and it is anything but the fair capital of goodness.

One of my most important gaming moments, and tbh almost a lifetime revelation, was when Ultima IV was published. (You see I am an older guy, heh.) Ultima IV was the first game, where the goal was not to kill as many monsters as possible and steal what wasnt nailed down, not about some uber evil or invasion. It was about the player to become a moral compass for a civilization, it was to seek virtue! Ultima was a game series which often made me think, and in that it stands for me to this day way above anything published ever since. Few games have achieved this, to make games more than kill statistics. I am sure to you younger players it must sound absurdly old fashioned.

But ever since Ultima IV I felt like making game characters which also fight the good fight, to want more reason to kill than "they are they and we are we". Its not enough, even in a trivial thing like a game. Usually I played Paladins, and I played them ideally as they should be.

WAR on the other hand represents our modern RL pathway. Its very trendy in its message. "There are only we and they". While there is surely defined evil (like the often cited Terrorism in our world), people no longer have this dream of good. And the clever, sophisticated city-people tells us there is no good, and good is just relative and thus nonexistend. There is no good to seek, to find, to manifest, its just we and they, end of the story. Its this story that is told to us, in games, by so called educated people, everywhere there is just moral relativism. I always passionately disliked this.

Where is the dream in this? Arent "stories told" to humans for thousands of years supposed to be BOTH entertainment AND message? Even if a good moral is not so much an answer but a question, WAR is devoid of questions. It was one of those reasons I could not play WOW longer. Horde wasnt evil, nor was Alliance good. It was quite a pointless war.

Some of you may think, that guy overburdens games. I dont think so. Some games proved they can make you think, they can move you, and still entertain you! But a developer must want that, must be able to transport a message, a question about life, and he must have that inside of him. But everywhere in this era we are told there is only grey, there is no black and white. Why the heck not? Why must good, entertaining games be mere kill statistics? Everywhere in WAR is war. Just war. Is that enough? Well, I hope not.
 

Well, WAR is based on an ip. The fact that you wonder why it is about war, makes me think that you didnt know this. It shouldnt be a surprise to you anyway.

About your philosophy part:

The simplified version of pure good vs pure evil, only works if pure evil realises and agree that they are pure evil. It stops working if they are as convinced as the other side about their pure goodness, or if they dont even think in YOUR terms of good vs evil.

Orcs dont think in terms of good vs evil. So you cant expect them to use the same morale as you do. Good vs Evil is not the same as Right vs Wrong or Order vs Chaos.

If you are disappointed (you passionately dislike how others perceive the real world) with the real world, there is no reason to take it out onto a game. Not every story or game needs to have a message or morale, there is nothing wrong with pure entertainment.

Btw, those stories with morale can be found amongst the ppl from the Empire, Dwarves and High Elves.

Morale is not set in stone. If you look at anthropology and history, you will also learn that its meaning will change in time or from perspective.

(English is not my first language and I find it very difficult to talk about this kind of topic in a foreign language, so my apologies in advance for possible bad sentences)

Originally posted by altairzq

Well the truth is that everything is relative. USA is in a war of good vs evil, and they are killing human beings here and there, men women and little children, they are in fact pure evil while seeing themselves as the good side. I personally liked the fact that there were different shadows of good and evil in WOW, pertty much like we have in the world. But you can still play order and see the other side as evil, I guess.

Oh yawn... everything is not relative.  Only to those to craven to take sides and stand for one.

There IS good and there IS Evil, you just have to have the courage to accept that.

Originally posted by Yunbei
............

Fallout is a great example how you can make a gritty world - like WAR - and still make meaningful, ethical dilemmas. Sometimes a boss of a group is an asshole, but if you kill him the community may break apart and many will suffer. You can place that in a gritty world, like Fallout, it doesnt have to be sugar pie worlds.

Thats what I miss in WAR, as in so many other MMos and single player games: meaning, questions asked that make you think, games which are more than mere kill statistics. One of the games of the recent era which really made me "wow" was KOTOR 1. Once you realize the central plot - your identity (no spoilers here ^^), you are really in a dilemma. Will you take revenge or not? Will you return to your old pathway and kick the asses of those who used you, or take the chance of a new beginning? It was a game where I really asked myself "heck, what would I do in that situation for real"? And it was a really, really tough decision for me. Never before was it so hard for me to stay on the good side. THOSE are moments which mean something.

Anything else is just "gathering more kills than the others".

My comment isn't about WAR, but it does relate to the ingame "dilemma" scenarios that make you remember games LONG after you play them.

I will never forget the Dark Brotherhood quest line in Oblivion.  I, also, don't want to post any spoilers, but let's put it this way......There comes a point in the quest line where you are required to make an EXTREME moral choice.  (Actually, the Dark Brotherhood quest line is loaded with these.)  And I LITERALLY sat outside the city walls on a high, far away cliff and CRIED.  I know...I know...that SOUNDS idiotic.  But I sincerely was moved by this quest.  It caused me to question if I had even chosen the right class to play!  LOL  (Keep in mind that I was already IN The Dark Brotherhood, so that should let you know, that it was a question that having chosen that dark path, STILL caused me pause.)

And while that sounds hilarious, that a game could actually cause you to THINK and shed real tears.....I thought it was brilliant.  I thought about it for DAYS.  If I wasn't already sold on the game before that quest, I certainly was AFTER.  Oblivion has some truly unique and thought-provoking quests that draw you in to the roleplaying aspects of the game.  Granted, Oblivion is a single player rpg.  Nonetheless, the "dilemma" scenarios are still effective in suspension of disbelief and drawing you more in to a game's "world."

I absolutely love that the Order has it's many shades of grey. This is a war torn world and the Order is downright fanantic about extinguishing the life out of those whom they do not understand. The Chaos grow up with hate in their hearts, not for the sake of hate, but because the Order is preaching their ways as the only way and burning their villages, killing their witches and ambushing their camps at every turn. This sort of gritty realistic setting where there is no black and white good and evil is exactly why I love books like George R. R. Martin's for instance. There is a atmopsheric feeling in knowing that everywhere you go, noone is a saint.

Originally posted by Rytif

Originally posted by altairzq

Well the truth is that everything is relative. USA is in a war of good vs evil, and they are killing human beings here and there, men women and little children, they are in fact pure evil while seeing themselves as the good side. I personally liked the fact that there were different shadows of good and evil in WOW, pertty much like we have in the world. But you can still play order and see the other side as evil, I guess.

 

I really hate irrelavent selfish punks like this, bringing real-world conflicts and opinions into a video game. You don't contribute to society, you are nothing but a low-life hobo sitting in his basement that no one gives a slightest clue about. However, when your favorite news broadcast comes on so you can feel atleast a little bit intelligent in your own little sick world, you come here to dispute out into the open like a little pissant punk. Do us all favor and.......

Okay, generally, I'm not much of a "defender" on this forum site, but....

Although "altairzq" comment started out with a mini political diatribe, of sorts, which doesn't BELONG on a gaming forum, your response to him was just as vile and full of assumption and bigotry.  You have NO idea whether or not he/she is selfish, you have NO idea whether or not he contributes to society, you certainly can't say you know he lives in Mommy and Daddy's basement, as you implied, and you managed to spew as much hate back in his direction as he started out with in his post.

So....right a wrong with another wrong?  Nope, it just doesn't work that way.  It would have been far more effective to just ignore the comment.  Sometimes the adults on this site need to function from a place of maturity and that usually doesn't mean responding in kind when someone ELSE does or says something "out of line" or inappropriate.  There are moderators to keep things in check when they go too far, and up to the point of them stepping in, I think it doesn't really help matters for the rest of us to have name-calling contests, etc.

Did it make you feel good to tell this person that no one cares about them and that they're sick, stupid, and a punk?  O.o   Do our gaming forums need to stoop to those levels just because someone said something inappropriate? 

I agree with you that the comment was definitely a political statement (whether intended to be or not) and shouldn't have been posted, probably....but....that doesn't mean that it's therefore okay for us to make equally offensive posts in return.  Sorry...just my view on that.

Originally posted by MrVicchio

Oh yawn... everything is not relative.  Only to those to craven to take sides and stand for one.

 

There IS good and there IS Evil, you just have to have the courage to accept that.

Morals are not absolute.

The idea of good is subjective. I'm sure British colonists and explorers thought they were doing the right thing by trading African tribesmen guns, beads and wool for their own people, thinking they were bringing the advanced, "better" life of Victorian England. However, I have no doubt that the African tribesmen (or at least their elders) viewed them as white devils, destroying their culture for a few baubles.

You're basing all your views around a morally defunct religious faith in which you believe that good is exemplified with helping people and saving the beautiful princess. I'm not even going to GO into the idea that you're doing more bad than good by helping people, as you are weakening them to a level where they rely upon you.

Originally posted by altairzq

Well the truth is that everything is relative. USA is in a war of good vs evil, and they are killing human beings here and there, men women and little children, they are in fact pure evil while seeing themselves as the good side.

Most retarded comment ever made.