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• • Chaos more dominant, why?

  • Chaos will always triumph, because Order is dumb.

  • Posted: 8/13/08 7:48 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • All hype aside...

  • I agree. New MMO titles over TIME will bring down WoW subscribers. However, I would not be surprised that it still has some followers in ten years time.  Just look at Ultima Online etc.

    Next really big things will no doubt be Bioware's MMO and of course what Blizzard puts out for the genre. I would not be surprised if Blizzard announces a new MMO after Diablo III is out.

  • Posted: 8/10/08 4:50 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • Huge example of failcom

  • Sounds to me like your friend is getting what he deserves for his stupidity.

  • Posted: 8/02/08 7:05 AM
    Age of Conan
• • I'm too old for cartoons

  • Graphics and art direction are two very different things.

    WoW did go with cartoony art direction and probably with a very good reason. It does not get old so quickly. Just check old Sam & Max games and they still look nice due to art direction. Graphics of course are crap.

    Then you have games that push for more realistic art direction like Crysis or Call of Duty, both focus heavily also on graphics side. Making sure they use the latest technology available from video cards. Those graphics go old rather quick because technology is pushing forward so quickly. Remember original Doom or Quake? They looked very good at the time.

    I personally would hope game companies would use the latest graphics available, as I try to keep my video card(s) up to date, but as we saw with Age of Conan people still expect the game run with full setting with 3-4 year old machines.  MMO crowd seem rather slow to adopt new technology.

    Art direction is where the game can be made look good. I do not mind whether the direction is towards realism or cartoon as long as it is done right and with care. The end result depend heavily on how talented people you have. Just like with comics, animations or movies. In games I look for immersion, so that the game would not look like it was computer designed. Many MMOs with their terrain and cities, and even with character models look like they were designed by an engineer rather than an artist.

    To be honest, WAR does not amaze me with its graphics engine which seems rather old tech, nor does it impress me with art direction. And you really can't wash the latter off by saying that it based on Game Workshops IP because I sell their products on daily basis and there is tons of material that has very nice art...which actually makes the world come to live. I have not seen this is any of the screenshots or videos. You could probably change the  character models  slightly and remove the references  to Warhammer from in-game lore and after that you could call the game what ever you like, DAoC 2 perhaps since so many comparisons to the original has been made?

    All that said. it is true that even Warhammer has many different art directions that have evolved over the past 25 years. The world, in both gamebooks and novels, is portrayed as very dark and gloomy with dark humor. When they started markting it to North America they actually changed the direction a bit, but thankfully now seem to be back towards original direction.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Posted: 8/01/08 4:10 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • Why Wow's Time will decline and other MMO's will Shine

  • WoW is and will continue be successful because it mostly gathers to casual players and not to kind of players who read and write to forums such as this. WoW does lack depth that games such as EVE online provide for gamers such as me. It also lacks depth in PvP and even its PvE is very one dimentional. It is still a very good game for mass market.

    Instead of thinking that every game must appeal to mass market, you might think about game industry similar to movie makers. You have variety. Hollywood movies sell the most, but are often very shallow and superficial devoid of any meaningful or thoughtful content. Then you have smaller productions that tackle tougher issues and often have very good quality production, but very limited mass market appeal.

    Just because something appeals to mass market does not mean that I like it.  In fact, often I do not. With MMOs I am happy that a game has enough subscribers to keep it financially stable

    Number of posts expecting WAR to became similar mass market success as WoW are in my opinion unrealistic. PvP focused games never have had that kind of appeal. I hope that Mythic can pull something special with PvP to make it appealing as it would be a good thing for the genre in the long run, but I remain doubtful.  I expect WAR to start out as a typical over-hyped game that will be quickly be adopted by a  high number of people, but whether they pay for the additional months remains to be seen.

     

     

     

     

  • Posted: 7/29/08 11:35 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)