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Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning General Article: Taking Another Look - Post 1.3.2
MMORPG.com's Jon wood has re-entered the world of Warhammer Online to bring us his initial thoughts on the changes that have been made since he last left the game, with special focus on the recent 1.3.2 update.
By Jon Wood on November 02, 2009
When Warhammer Online first launched, I was excited. When MMOs aren't the focus of my time in front of the computer, highly competitive PvP FPS games are. So, in watching the development of WAR, I was excited about the prospect of a PvP MMO in such a familiar and iconic setting.
When the game launched, I wasn't one of the people who railed against it from the beginning. I actually quite enjoyed my time in the game, levelling a shocking number of characters through to the middle of Tier 2 while my primary character worked his way through T3.
Then, over time, something happened and I just lost interest in the game. I think it had a lot to do at the time with a less than stellar experience with my primary in T3, performance problems, an increasingly predictable open RvR experience and dwindling scenario play that resulted in my eventual abandoning of the game. At no point did I get "fed up" or angry, and leave. Instead, my play time just dwindled until it faded out all together.
Now, with all of that said, a while back, I was reading the patch notes for update 1.3.2 and the changes and improvements that were being made. So, being the easily swayed individual that I am, I decided to pop back into the game to check it out and see how it had changed, at least in its early stages, since I left.
My time back in the game has consisted primarily of T1 and T2 play, and what I've seen in terms of changes so far, I've liked. Below, I'm going to talk about some of the more glaring things that have jumped out at me:
Servers
There are fewer of them. Way fewer. Seven for North America at the moment. Servers have been a point of contention with this game since launch. People have made a big deal out of the closing of servers, but I for one feel like this is the only way to make the game feel vibrant again. As the game's overall population dwindles, so too should server numbers. It's only a good thing if players who get into the game do so with large populations. WAR thrives on quantity of players and it doesn't do anyone any good to spread those players thin across servers.
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Performance
The difference in performance is like night and day between when I stopped playing and today. When I stopped playing, I would have performance issues in any number of annoying instances: Any time my camera was aimed directly behind my character, in war camps, between cinematics, every time I entered an RvR combat situation, in scenarios, and more.
Those issues, at least for me, simply don't exist anymore. I can play at full resolution, wiggle the camera around in any which way I bloody well please, run into RvR and do pretty much anything else without worrying about stutter.
The Map
The map, one of the most useful tools in any MMO, has actually become more useful than it was before. First, it seems to be more accurate in telling you when and where RvR is happening and second (and possibly more importantly for the flow of the game), the map actually highlights active Public Quests. This means that players no longer have to bob in and out of PQ areas to find out if anyone is in them. Now, the PQs light up gold when they're active and scrolling over the icon will tell you how many players are currently engaged. It's a great tool that draws players toward the PQ areas instead of discouraging them.
Tutorial
I'm actually digging the new way that the tutorial is laid out in terms of popup screens. They're well designed, well executed and don't look too out of place within the world while you're playing. The developers actually managed to pack a decent bit of starting info both into the tutorial and onto the loading screen.
Overall, it's just a more inviting way to enter the world of Warhammer and with this whole new "play tier 1 for free" thing they've got going on, I suspect they will be seeing at least a small influx of new players.
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City Sieges
The developers promised that city sieges would happen more often, and by golly they weren't kidding. Over all of the time that I played Warhammer Online in my first go-round, I think I may have seen an alert that a city was open for invasion, maybe once. I was back in the game only an hour when one of the cities opened up, and then it just kept happening so that it became more or less a regular occurrence.
New Player Guild
Part of the new player experience is placing new players all into a guild. Presumably this is being done to encourage guild play and to introduce players to it, but the whole time I was playing, I think the only guild interaction that happened revolved around a notification that my guild was now Rank Two. Other than that, I just really didn't see any real purpose to it. Well, I suppose it also opens up to a new player guild chat along with an ever-preset staff member to help answer questions and such. That's handy, but there must be other ways of accomplishing that without going to the trouble of sticking everyone into a guild.
Advice Chat Channel
There is now a chat channel called "Advice." Presumably, this is what it's supposed to be used for... soliciting and getting advice. However, I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever seen a more useless tool in an MMO. My entire time playing was plagued with spam from this channel with such intelligent advice as "My advice - GTFO."
Basically, those people who join MMOs just to be a pain in the virtual butt to as many other people as humanly possible without having the guts to do it to someone face to face, have found a new home. That's about as useful as the new advice chat has been for me.
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UI
The UI didn't show any really glaring differences this time around other than to say that when you're in a party of a Warband, the UI will now tell you when another player is too far away to target. It's a very useful little change, especially for healers.
All players starting in Empire / Chaos starting areas
I've questioned this move, but starting a new character makes the benefits of this change pretty obvious. Centralizing all of the early players in one area makes it easy to start a game with a friend of another race, makes it easier to find groups, makes the world feel more populated right out of the gate and more. It's a good change, even if the other former starting zones now feel a bit desolate.
Other things I noticed
- The Lost Lagoon, the battlefield objective in the Empire / Chaos T1 RvR lake seems to have been removed. Probably because it was always a bit out of place, so far removed from the other BOs.
- The servers still feel a bit under populated. At the risk of being unpopular, I think cutting the number of servers down even a bit further might be in order.
- Scenario statistics are now much easier to read.
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Overall
Overall, the effects of 1.3.2 are apparent right out of the gate for any new or returning player. It would be hard to argue that Warhammer Online isn't improving over time, with all of the changes that have been made since launch, and 1.3.2 is a great example of that improvement. That being said, I don't know if the second time is going to be a charm for me. I mean, the new bells and whistles are holding my interest for now, but will they keep my in the long run? Only time will tell.
New leadership can make miracles.
If only Bioware people took a more "direct" interfearence in the game...
Third! (just kidding).
WAR was one of the biggest disappointments in my personal gaming history. No. I take that back. It was THE biggest.
It would take some free play time to have a prayer at winning me back. 14-day retrial for previous members? Might be just what they need to get the numbers up a bit.
If you login to your Mythic master account and click reactivate you should be given 10 days for free
i did the ten day welcome back they deleted my squig herder which i enjoyed playing . i tried to get back into my rune priest but i met one person in the game world in 3 days and i got fed up with waiting for scenarios to start . which took about 20 to 30 mins each time . warhammer just does nt feel like an mmo its more like team forttess with a game world tacked onto it these days but at least with team fortress theres not half an hour waits or monthly fees .
do what ddo did change it to a free to play model with an item shop or close down the game because theres no way most people are going to pay to play this .
The bg queues in wow were hideous back in vanilla, 30 minutes is around the time it took to get into Arathi Basin only to get obliterated by a fuckiing pre-made horde team.
This game should have been released in 2004 tbh, it has missed the boat!
The bg queues in wow were hideous back in vanilla, 30 minutes is around the time it took to get into Arathi Basin only to get obliterated by a fuckiing pre-made horde team.
This game should have been released in 2004 tbh, it has missed the boat!
But at least in wow theres somethings interesting to do while we waited for the g's to start. The same cant be said about WAR =P
^ This.
W/ potions that increase token drops, XP, Talismans, and a variable other plethora of items they could make a cash shop for, this game could thrive. But, like the above poster said – the shallow PvE experience, repetitive RvR and the requirement for large active populations, it's just not worth a monthly fee.
I wonder how many subscirbers there are in Warhammer, and if they really turn f2p with item shop or they just close this game
(remember Tabula Rasa? It never went f2p they just have closed servers)
Mostly polish and measures to focus the server population then ...
In Holland we have a saying "Even when a monkey wears a golden ring, it is and will remain an ugly thing."
The reasons why WAR disappointed so many don't have much to do with the problems they have been addressing now, I'm afraid. They are much deeper; repetitive rvr, shallowness in crafting, handholding and restrictions around every corner, a world with an artificial, rather than a natural lay-out and death meaning nothing at all.
You can't fix games with too many deeper issues like that. It has been the exact same for me with AOC and luckily I managed to refrain from touching Aion with a 10 foot pole.
I am playing EVE and Fallen Earth now; much more challenge, freedom and opportunity for your own talents and intelligence to shine.
I'm just at the moment thinking of going back to WAR so your veiws are certainly very interesting to be thinking about ... thanks !
They can improve the game all they want but the game is fundamentally flawed. Fighting over cities that can never really be lost or won will quickly get boring and the only reason to do them is to get drops.
Also the world is tiny and doesnt leave much room for exploration. The game can be best described as shallow. Once you got bored of the PvP in scenarios and done a couple of city sieges there isnt really much reason to stay.
I came back with 4 friends and it was a great choice.
I started doing things other than the RvR when it starts to get repetitive. There are tons of tome unlocks and rewards for unlocking certain ones I've been rolling around doing.
The new LOTD stuff is all pretty cool and in depth.
Had some of the best times in War and will never go back. The game is basically a objective and keep swap. Mythic took out the forts as they could never fix the lag and crash issues. So there went a part of the game that was fun when it worked.
Actively managing the server populations has not and is not happening. The biggest flaw with the game. Tough to play the game when you start winning or for that matter losing and everyone rerolls on the winning side or just rolls on another server. Server poopulations must be managed when you have two factions going at each other.
Another game stopper for me was having to play end game and lower level players get to participate in it. Boggled my mind you have to have certain wards to kill the bosses. Oh wait you have to be level 40 to get them after mindless farming for months. Hit the city only to have players that cannot do squat in the end game instance. Even better is having lvl 20 players roll on level 65 tokens. Great game design.
The world is small and after 6 months of fighting in three zones I could not take it anymore and will not go back. T1 - T3 was a blast T4 was all about who could get off their CC first, your rooted in place while they burn thru 11,500 HP. Stupidest game design I have ever seen. Casters were gods and could walk into a pack of players and basically drop every player there with two healers to back them up. Not to mention they also had all the CC for the most part in the game.
Instead of fixing the glaring issues with the game they introduce 4 new classes, and LOTD. Great time being lvl 40 RR 66 and doing level 25 bosses. The best thing about that zone was watching the lower level players get owned.
The pvp areas are basically deserted areas and could have used some NPC's in it to help with the zergs or hmm to help with anything.
War had its chance and blew it more then any IP I played in years.
Wait, they got rid of Keeps? So all they have are underpopulated RvR lakes and underpop scenarios? Lamesauce.
I think the reviewer's points are pretty accurate. I too went back over the past couple of weeks to see how WAR has changed. Despite all the things listed I think what is the most disappointing is that population is still unbalanced. Destruction still outnumbers Order handly on all but one server and there its just somewhat equal. I also was disappointed to see that they adopted the WoW melee combat system that allows you to be hit with melee attacks even if they are 10 yards away. The game is definitely improving, but the core problems of population imbalance, class imbalance, and meaningless pvp unfortunately will continue to prevent this game from being anything close to what it should have been.
Thank you John for posting this. It finally got me to spend some time to write abit about my 1 month back at WAR. I play on European servers - that just like in US - are alot fewer than before. That included my server for the main - server that once was highly populated and had a first kill of Altdorf king.
Much like you - I kinda lost intrest in WAR over time based on technical issues and population imbalance. Some things have changed in WAR - but others have not. You mentioned few but since you started after 1.3.2 launched - Its abit harder for you to see it how it was before. I started 2 weeks before patch and I saw the diffrence. Some was good - some not so good. In the last month I played my main (lvl 40 WP and a copy lvl 21 WP) plus few others from start to tier 3. All in all - 5 characters were played on 3 diffrent servers.
Population and faction balance.
This has always been a major factor in WAR. And sadly - after 1.3.2 nothing has changed. The dominating faction is still dominating. And if something - its even worse than ever. It got so bad at 1 point that destro did 3 city invations in less than 24 hours. You can imagine the effect this has on players over long time - including those that are just trying to get into the city to trade and upgrade their character. But this is not all.
What I found out playing on this many servers - is that if one faction is dominating higher tiers - the weaker faction is usually dominating the lower tiers. You might think thats fine and should balance to game - but when you think about it a little more - you realise that the players playing in lower tiers are most likely players that ALREADY have character in higher tiers and are beeing overrun there. Every night that there was a city invation - the lower tiers filled up with the defending faction. You would have thought they would defend. But when defending for 7 days in a row... even 2 times per day... it just gets pointless.
So.. what can be done ? OFC what should have been done right away when it became glarinly obvious that the game was gonna be controled by domination of one faction - instead of actual RVR. You try to create balance - instead of creating unbalance. Giving out extra experience and renown points to one faction does not call for balance. If something it creates more unbalance in the lower tiers - that is ALSO part of the game and is highly effected. It doesn't solve issues to have Order dominating tier 2 and 3 getting destro to roll on another server or just quit when in those tiers. You should Encourage balance - and that is not what Mythic is doing.
So how to create balance in each tier ? One way would be to give the underdogs some rewards - and this is something Mythic is working on. My fear is that the underdog system is going to effect only highest tier. Meaning that the journey through the earlier tiers becomes pointless and totally diffrent. It also calls out for alot of "nubs" showing up in tier 4 - not knowing how to play RVR and giving up when on the loosing site for the 10th time in one week.
I would like to see Mythic use Influence and Renown to control the game flow alot more. Not only in diffrent tiers - but even in diffrent maps. That way they can create controlled flow of balanced content. For example. If one faction is beeing dominated 5 against 1 in tier 3 (like is happening alot) then the underdogs should get alot more renown points and influence rewards for fighting back. Overall they should get the same amount of Renown and Influence as the 5 times bigger number of the other faction. It sounds like alot.... but then.... this also calls out for balance - meaning that the underdogs will be played more than before and bringing more fun to the entire tier.
Alot of talk about balance - but then it is the most important part about RVR game like WAR. Its the biggest issue the game has and it has to be tackled.
Other things that you did not mention here is the Action point changes that seems to be kind of a hidden part of the patch. Basicly Mythic changed the game back to the action point system - where every class is restricted to using talents based on action points. This means that players can no longer spam spells - cause ususally you run out of AP after hiting 2-4 buttons, depending on the cost of the spell. Before 1.3.2 this action point system had been deactivated - imo beccause it slowes the gameplay down alot. But acording to Mythic it was a bug. I dont buy it tho.
I could go on and on. But I will stop here. My last comments will be around the quality control at Mythic. Or in this case - the lack of it. It is just not acceptable to see some of the issues that this patch brought up. Coming from WOW I simply can't understand how a gaming developer like Mythic can still be in buisness with such glaring issues that I noticed. Since I played chosen it ofc became very obvious because the entire Aura system was buggy and it took week to fix it. Another one was that an entire scenario froze when players dropped flags at dropping points. BUt the most shocking one that I noticed (maybe it was also there before) is that my white lion pet actually runs through the sky with me when I fly off to diffrent maps.... I mean... where is the quality control ?
Finally - about starting guild and advice. Both of these will probably be removed cause they are defently not doing what the devs wanted to see.
And the very very last. You totally forgot to talk about the apprenticheship system. Something that I consider to be a good sign of how way off the developers are in the actual issues this game has. The only effect that I have seen of this system tho - is when a player turned into chicken in PQ cause one of the ppl joining was flagged for RVR. And since the chicken was more than 100 feets from the other person he was playing with.. well - he gave up and flew off in chicken form....
I dont know if that system is actually implemented tho. I hope they drop it cause it is the last thing that the game needs. Having chickens running around because the go 100 feet away from the other player in RVR is something this game can defently do without. And in terms of balancing... adding higher lvl characters into lower tiers with some restricion on spells and lvls... OMG.. why not first start fixing the big balance issues....
Personally -Im right now waiting for my Dragon Age copy and I will not sub for WAR again any time soon. That doesnt mean I wont be playing it tho. I regularly create a new trial account and play out one class for 10 days - just to enjoy the best part of the game - and the most rewarding one. TIER 1 !!! And heck - who cares if it runs out in 10 days. I will stop playing the game one day -even when I have 50 rank 40 and RP 80. Knowing that it has time limit actually makes it more fun for me. Cause even devloping a player 10 lvls can still be rewarding - while developing 40 can be a nightmare. And... if you get bored of the trial account character.. you just log off and dont play it again. No obligation. And this is why WAR should be free to play... It simply isn't worth long term sub for me.
Cheers - Off to play Dragon Age.
One post here to point out that almost all posters have mention one issue. Issue that Mythic has not done anything about - even tho everyone knows it.
Population balance - faction balance.
Why is this game now down to couple of servers in US and EU? Cause the biggest issue of it all was not fixed.
There are still keeps all over.
A t3 keep siege a few days ago.
One thing that I didn't see mentioned was the aprentice system, which is one of the most useful parts of this patch. now if you have alts or new friends you want to play with and even level up a little bit more you can take them into the warband and temp boost their level to something within the other player's range.
Mythic had their chance to get me. WAR was my dream MMO on paper and complete fail when i got my hands on it. They need to make something extraordinary for me to return, not just add some polish and free t1 battles
I'm presuming you're on the EU servers? I'm in the UK and got fed up with those too. I've just moved over to the US servers and they're pretty busy.
"Other things that you did not mention here is the Action point changes that seems to be kind of a hidden part of the patch. Basicly Mythic changed the game back to the action point system - where every class is restricted to using talents based on action points. This means that players can no longer spam spells - cause ususally you run out of AP after hiting 2-4 buttons, depending on the cost of the spell. Before 1.3.2 this action point system had been deactivated - imo beccause it slowes the gameplay down alot. But acording to Mythic it was a bug. I dont buy it tho. "
This is what I like to call "The Mythic Special." They did the same thing in DAoC: have a system, ability, etc. in the game for 1-2 years then come back and take it out saying its a "correction" or an "adjustment", certianly not a nerf. Sorry, but anything that becomes so engrained into a game that persists for 1 or 2 years becomes part of that game by default. Any reversal has to be a nerf by default.
My initial experience of warhammer was simliar, Me and my friend were looking forward to the release so much and quickly jumped into it followed by 2 more of my friends and we played it through and talked on ventrilo at the same time sharing our experience which was great fun, we lvled our characters to about T3 and got bored of the game as it was getting a bit repetitive and was a drag, so we started trying different classes, it didnt take us long at all to come to the conclusion that all of the skills and classes were pretty much the same and the experience gains at the start of each area seemed somewhat unbalanced. Most of my friends got sick and tired of the games careless nature and decided to stop playing, i payed for my second month and played on taking 2 or 3 more characters through to T2/3 and then also gave up on the game, i was deeply disapointed. Several times i have tryed coming back to the game and although there is many noticeable changes (Particularly to UI) the game had seems to have died out and the servers were half empty(at best). Recently i have been watching people talking about how the game is becoming a little run down and looking at the changes theyve made such as free T1 (I believe) and reduced the monthly sub price which to me is attempts my the company to revive the games life but also unfortunately shows the games poor performance. Personally im just waiting for the game to go F2P which would be great for F2P people but a major blow to the developers, i feel for them really.
I like most of the new changes, but I hate that they removed Forts.
This game killing baby crying community.
I still enjoining playing with mature players after main work time.
They should back forts!!!
I disagree with the Advice channel being useless remark. I find it livened up the game a lot.
WAR was anti social from the very begining, and the improvements in the map interface did not help, to the contrary, where people would earlier use /1 for info about the current RvR and PQ situation, the map now tells them everything. No need to use chat. You can go a whole day and not hear anyone speak outside your guild chat. Not to mention how much this is accentuated with the lowered population across the middle tiers.
To see so many people complaining about Advice chat is astonishing. I cannot understand it, for the first time since launch, you actually see people chatting about stuff , and it bothers so many people... But it does not matter, all of you pricks have turned it off by now (and get this, most of you even had to use advice chat to learn how to turn the thing off, the irony), and a nice community has now formed, that uses it as a general chat AND as an actual advice channel that is helpful to many, and it really brings a whole new level to this half dead game.
So it does have a use.
Unfortunetly still not enough to bring me back. Good start though.
(AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH engages Gotrex and Felix in combat)
First off I don't find a channel filled with nonsensical humor and run of the mill leet speak to be anything that would liven up any game. Second when I see someone actually use the channel for its purpose, to only be replied to with such banter, I can not see anything else to do but turn it off.
It has a use sure, for the kiddies to annoy people.
Everyone is really nice on EU Karak Norn. I have only once seen a guy spam the chat with caps, and a moderator notified a CSR and he was gone within minutes. No kiddies and immature behavior since. Well, maybe a little. :)
i prey, i prey during months that gods give me a reason to return to WAR.
i tried 1.3.2, i wanted to see something divine.... but really, badly disappointed (again) :(((
i can't believe my dream mmo is failed.
How is it that a company that did so many things right with DAoC could do so many things wrong with WAR?
I had a very similar experience as most of you. The game simply was not fun. Not to mention that obvious bias on the Devs part towards Destro.
I just recently (like a week ago) went to their website as I am in between games. I saw the same glaring issues that we TOLD THEM ABOUT during BETA! Come on Mythic...I had so much faith in you from DAoC and it has been shot up and thrown to the wayside. Man, all you have to do is look at the WP compared to the DoK to see it. No friggin wonder most are playing Destro.
And the absolute icing on the cake...how in the world did the company that penned true RvR not understand that THREE realms works waayyyyy better than two. Most of time, when the Middies were really strong, us (Albs) and Hibbies would gang up on em. It worked because no one realm could get too strong without the other two balancing it out a bit. What happened???? Did EA strip the gamers out of Mythic's dev team with loads of cash?
My collector's edition will be collecting dust bunnies on the shelf behind me until they (or IF they) ever learn to listen to their fanbase and not a bunch of tightwad suits that have no idea what casual gamers (the MAJORITY of players today) enjoy!
I put a post up in there forums.
To fix this game they need to keep track of how many players from each side is in a pvp lake at any given time and reward
the underdog with pvp xp & RP bonus for any kills they manage to get.
if your outnumbered 5 to 1 you should get 5 time the xp for one kill.
It was 5 times the challange.
But they cant do it.
If they could, it would have been done already.
So you are playing or you are not playing...You posted third for what? To beg for free gaming time...
If they gave it to you, the result would be the same. You would claim 3rd to every post with a lighter in your hand and gas in your mouth. If a game it the "biggest disappointments in my personal gaming history" then I hate to tell you, it always will be. The game has launched, the classes are clear as is the game perspective...At this point, if this is the biggest disappointment of your gaming career, then allow other game's history's set the example for launch and evolution, the do not change so much.
In other words...stop asking for free time. Find another game. Move the fuck on...
Actually, if they wanted to they would have done so already. Like my response to the last post. Just quit. If you are asking for 5x just for being a minority, perhaps (1) you should try to network amongst your r, or (2) just rage quit.
WAR failed imo for two major reasons:
1. They tried to stay to true to the IP by only creating a two sided war. Huge mistake from the company that created the 3 sided perfection. Unreal how they allowed this.
2. City Sieges - Numerous boring, confusing and ridiculous stages, PVE at the end of a PVP/RVR game, completely boring mechanics. This one really is the icing on the cake. Any reason why no one really cares to get to t4? Because its the worst tier by far. Who wants nothing to fight over or capture? No relic or king take. No trophy for the other side to want to get. No, just pve for gear. Yeeeeeeeah. Mind boggling how the makers of DAOC went from near perfection to complete nonsense. Worst end game decision I can think of in MMO history.
Sad that a game with such great potential couldnt deliver/finish. Can someone please make a good three sided pvp game...I dont even care if the graphics are horrible.
Dunno, I played WAR from March to Oct of this year and I think its a pretty good game.
I left mainly because it just doesn't have enough "bang" at T4. But then most MMO's don't. I also didn't care for the world design but that's me.
IMHO, it's just a popular game to pick on and it's going to die because of that. Could it be better? Sure, but then name me an MMO that couldn't?
I was going to type a bunch of stuff, but this summarizes nicely...
This is the future of failed P2P games.
Actually, the IP is everyone against everyone. The dwarves sometimes work with humans and chaos often works with orcs. But the elves on both sides pretty much hate all other races and only cooperate in dire circumstances. Heck, orc armies have rules that units can randomly attack each other in the tabletop game.
Maybe in the expansion they'll introduce a third faction - Decay - that focuses on the undead or skaven.
At any rate, I'm playing Warhammer again. Not the MMO mind you - the tabletop game. With the new Skaven models and figs coming out, I'm really excited about the IP again. I'm just chalking my WAR Online experiences up to the fact that there has never been a really GOOD Warhammer fantasy game made. Oh well, here's hoping the 40K MMO will be a lot better.
I'm presuming you're on the EU servers? I'm in the UK and got fed up with those too. I've just moved over to the US servers and they're pretty busy.
Eventho WAR is pretty much done for and not to be saved.
At least Mythic could help the remaining loyal EU players and ditch GOA and move those poor bastards over to the US servers.
Then the US playerbase gets some extra players and the EU players have actually some populated servers to play on.
Win-Win situation in my book.
Against popular belief the EU servers are mostly well populated and people taking PvE approach is why they never see anyone - go to the RvR lake and or scenario, PvE is done only when it's quiet - naturally if your playing times are inside normal working hours in Europe then you should probably go to play on US servers or join the destro zerg (they play 24/7) on Karak-Azgal :P
Population balance is the only thing mythic and GOA can't do anything about, that's up to the players to do imho.
I'v played alot of WAR, and I still enjoy it alot.
The latest patch improved preformance something incredible, Last night there must have been atleast 500 people in Chaos Wastes on Karak Norn, and the server managed to stay up anyway...
In normal situations 4-5 Warbands I have no lagg at all anymore.
WAR was great fun to me, as was AoC. I will return to either of them if only there is some significant death penalty. I dont like meaningless pvp
A fairly spot on review.
I recently returned to WAR as well, and was pleasurably surprised at the small changes that made the early levels a lot more flowing. The main one being different races in a like starting area. Being able to return to the game with a coworker and casually partake in these new changes together was nice.
The advice channel... ya. Yet another reason why MMO's need to do away with general chats entirely. Their purpose always gets defeated via the 13yo nutjobs who spread their disease like warpstone =P. And the forced guild thing took me by surprise too. That part was spot on as well. Left me scratching my head as to what had just happened.
Semi-niche gameplay with a lot of enjoyable combat mechanics. The community is small and have had the pleasure of not meeting any bad apples this go-round. PQ areas are full of life, and social-mixer-esque.
"All players starting in Empire / Chaos starting areas"
For real? This is dumb. Might as well do away with ever race in the game besides Empire and Chaos while they are at it.
Which is how the game should have started off. Adding the two other pairings later on, when they were ready.
It IS dumb, but it's working. PQs are actually being run. Players can port to their racial starting area as well, if they choose.
Now queues for bg are usually under minute or max few minutes ... and what is now even better as in war you can join any bg from anywhere and you are returned to same place. This is great. Im now back to wow. BG are much better to me then scenarios (which enjoyed anyway pretty a lot), but not only. There is no lag. No lag. There can be 20 people in diameter of 10m and everything runs completely smooth on my computer. On the other side, scenarios were nightmare with few to 10 people in small space. Inplayable. Despite last patch that improved prerformance, is still 100 times behind bg.
I am not going to give mythic another chance with WAR, they really screwed up the class balance, the stupid stun system and horrible and game design. I am not even going to talk about all the performance issues i had, i returned to WOW after WAR, and had great fun for few more months. Right now i am playing DDO, and i must say they did a good job with the game and i like the free to play pay as you wish model, I refuse to pay a single cent to WAR unless it goes free to play, even then i wont touch it with a 10 foot stick, its just not fun after Tier2
Its still says Mythic, but the huge turn around is because Bioware is in control of mythic now. They got rid of the idiot decision makers who thought the answer to population balance was to mess with how powerful the classes are.
Its still says Mythic, but the huge turn around is because Bioware is in control of mythic now. They got rid of the idiot decision makers who thought the answer to population balance was to mess with how powerful the classes are.
And live events! Don't forget all the freaking live events! That solves the problem! Yesssir!
I won't be convinced BioWare knows any better until I see balanced login caps.
Wait, they got rid of Keeps? So all they have are underpopulated RvR lakes and underpop scenarios? Lamesauce
Actually they have manage to rid of the 'lakes' aswell I've been back for a couple days now and it seems much more lively, its definitely worth playing again for the first three tiers anyways.
War is the best MMO I' ve played, but with the unbalancement of servers, it got boring for me. All that i could sa about this last patch is, Destyro wipe Order. I´m playing Aion while the next patch, but i have to admit, Aion sucks. Much more boring than War. I just dont back to War cuz i dont like to fight alone against lots of Destro.
All that i sa now is: wati for patch 1.3.3. Btw there are rumours about a new expansion but....
Seems to me, as many others have said, adding a Third Faction in an Expansion would be the only way to truly "relaunch" WAR and get back big numbers. Otherwise, I think its just going to dwindle away to nothing over the next year/s.
I too played aion through all betas and first month after launch and quit for lack of interest [not to mention bot problem]. The game just doesn't make you wanna play all night like WAR did for me. I played WAR for about the first 9 months and lvl'd 3 to 40, and loved most of it. I have recently gone back to WAR, and only thing i see wrong is lack of population and a bit imbalanced servers. If they could fix these two problems, i think they can make a comeback.
The major problem with WAR is they fix little stuff but they don't fix the game breakers. Basically if there is no PVP going on you can't get renown which creates a wall to leveling a character they have never fixed this, so I won't be going back. I just quit and so did my wife nice game just the character progression isn't steady. When you have level 40 characters with 80 renown beating on a level 31 with 27 renown it takes one or two hits to kill you, imbalances like this have never been fixed. WAR is still being beta tested they never got it right unfortunately because I am a huge fan of the IP they make little fixes but there are some major stuff wrong.
WAR was one of those rare MMOs that no matter what good things someone says about it, I will never step foot in that world again.
Simply put everything about the game was done wrong, every approach to fix issues was wrong. It pissed off the player base that did exist and didn't make new players want to come try it out.
WAR should just accept they are destined to have a small player base after their screw-ups and just keep the game running to try and get their money back. Putting any extra money into the game at this point just seems like wasted money.
I noticed people say make it free to play with item mall. I really don't think that would help this game at all, but rather hurt it. You would piss off the remaining players and the only people to come back would just play for free and do scenarios all day never giving WAR a cent of their money.
One of the bigger concerns for Mythic fans is, will Mythic be making anymore mmos ? That is really a scarey thought when you think about it. It's almost as bad as giving Funcom more money to make another mmo, oh wait that already happened. I tell ya the mmo business is a scarey place these days even before Halloween.
Warhammer just has so many basic design flaws, I just don't see them changing it enough to make it successful.
Mythic needs to look at what made them successful in the first place and put an upgraded DAoC out again. The basic design of DAoC was fine until they started adding all the overpowering items and spells.
I played WAR throughout closed beta and into release. What shocked me the most was how the game seemed to get progressively more imbalanced with each subsequent patch. A few patches in, I recall our 6-man AoE group had no trouble rolling entire (or multiple warbands). Once the novelty of that wore off, the game felt dull. I likewise would have major difficulties playing the game again. For WAR, more patches just signal more trouble.
I cannot see how this is not blatantly obvious to any one who has experience of MMOs.
WAR needs numbers to play properly, and without a decent PvE experience and with its current competition it will never attract the players it needs to fully realise the RvR experience by charging a full monthly fee. Either use an in game shop or cut the sub substantially.
There is no use flogging a dead horse, act now Mythic and save this beautiful game once and for all!