WAR: Devolving
One of the amusing and perhaps unsettling aspects of Warhammer Online’s development is that it seems to be taking as many steps backwards — in time — as it does forward. When the game came out, everyone including Mythic was toting WAR to be Dark Age of Camelot 2.0. It was the “next generation” of Realm vs. Realm conflict, where they would take valuable lessons learned from DAoC and use them in new and interesting ways.
Interesting, perhaps, but hardly new. When millions of development dollars are on the table, you simply can’t veer into completely new territory — you take what worked in the past, try for a new twist and a few innovative systems, and hope for the best. Like it or not, WAR is bound in matrimony to DAoC (among other contemporary MMOs).
In beta, WAR didn’t originally have keeps, as the thought was that players would just as happily battle over objectives as a fortified castle. That didn’t last long, and a bit before launch, DAoC-style keeps were put in. Months later, as oRvR didn’t progress as intended and people have grown disillusioned with the much-touted capital city capture, Mythic announced that “Darkness Falls 2.0″ would be coming to the game as a new RvR dungeon for end gamers to focus their aggression.
So if it was less broke in DAoC and Mythic isn’t ashamed to crib their own ideas to make them work in WAR, the next logical step is one that many players have been asking — when are we going to see a third faction in the game? This isn’t a new question; last August on WAAAGH! I even speculated that the first expansion could feature a third faction, perhaps Dogs of War or the Tomb Kings or whatnot. A three-sided warfront was much loved in DAoC, and the two-sided tug o’ war in WAR seems a bit paler in comparison (which brings to mind: maybe along that line of thinking, they should’ve done FOUR factions in WAR, not two or three?).
I’m of the mind now that it isn’t necessary — Mythic needs to stop mining old ideas and trying to shoehorn them into their game, and instead focusing on new and better ideas. Here’s a thought: make city sieges 100% PvP, like so many of us thought they’d be in the first place. Do more with scenarios instead of treating them like the ugly stepson. Let players do a one-time switch to the other side — dwarfs becoming Chaos dwarfs, dark elves rejoining their high elf family, etc. Like it or not, WAR is a two-faction title, and even with the calls for another one, it’s hard to see how it could work without a complete overhaul of the entire game.
I’m saddened that even with the current Beyond the Sands live event and the upcoming RvR dungeon patch, there’s little to nothing to draw me back right now. A few WAR blogs have shut down, while some others are in a murky state of mind. Yet there’s always hope, and what gets me juiced about WAR is that it’s finally settling down from the hype and growing as a solid game. People seem pretty willing to return to give it another shot, either now or in the future, and it’s certainly not going to die in the next couple months. I don’t know what it would take to get me back into it, hardcore — perhaps it’ll be in a couple years, such as people are experiencing now with older titles that have grown leaps and bounds better. Perhaps not. It wasn’t even the game I expected it to be, but it was a fun run I don’t regret.
- Posted in: Warhammer Online
The lack of a third faction was disappointing even prior to WAR’s release. Even not touching DAoC too much, there’s just been too much of the this-side versus that, or maybe I’m just still deflated on how Blizzard has not done much with their two factions in WoW.
It’s not too late IMHO for Mythic to split off Chaos from Destruction and make it a self-balancing game. If anything would bring me back to WAR, that would be the biggest temptation.
“I’m saddened that even with the current Beyond the Sands live event and the upcoming RvR dungeon patch, there’s little to nothing to draw me back right now”
From what I’ve seen, the Beyond the Sands live event is garbage. Perhaps it was the developers intent to have almost all the live event T2 quests overlapping at one ridiculous focus point in MoM, but that makes it very difficult for a casual player to get those quests done at prime-time hours if one faction is zerging the other.
Also, running ALLLLLL the way from the war quarters in Altdorf to the flight master, into the lake in MoM, back to Altdorf war quarters, back to MoM, back to…
Yeah, it’s lame.
I have also noticed a lot of blogs talking doom and gloom when it comes to WAR, and that can only mean one of two things to me:
1) All bloggers are pessimistic / negative jerks (unlikely); or
2) Mythic = epic fail (likely?)
A real shame too. I love the Warhammer IP so much that I worry it’s Warhammer itself that keeps on bringing me back, not the poorly designed game by Mythic which keeps flip-flopping in its direction. The result? A button-spamming grind-fest of confusion with some harassment by upset players thrown in that only leaves me either bored, or with a headache the size of a Black Orc’s choppa…
I agree, Syp, and I’ve read a couple of “Yay!” posts on other blogs lately that make me wonder if those people are playing the same WAR game I’m playing.
This last patch was so buggy that my character has been rolled back four times, losing xp, renown, medallions and gear. I’m not even bothering with the live event stuff, because I could just as easily lose it all next time I zone or crash to character select. When the last city siege crashed, my character’s appearance was changed! I’ve had a CSR appeal for a week now with no response.
WAR has so much potential, but it does seem like they’re going backwards not forwards. The only thing keeping me playing right now is my guildies.
I got back to WAR a day after the new patch hit the live servers and so far, it is very buggy. I also lost progress and my FIRST gold bag win in a Keep, which gave me an Annihilator Chest, got rolled back an hour later in Dragonwake when the zone crashed. I sent a tick to CSR and haven’t heard back from them yet.
I also went to the defense of Altdorf for the first time and everything was so laggy! Not only that, but the mix of PVE and PVP in that zone is just not going to work. You have to fight bosses which can 1 shot people in greater ward sets and defend themselves against other players. It’s just insane and only the most coordinated guild would be able to pull that off I guess. This will not happen for the regular pick up warband that is very common in T4.
I don’t know. The whole idea is neat on paper. It is just too apparent that Mythic did not finish designing their game before launching it. It is changing directions too fast, too often. I wonder how long it will take them to have a compelling end game RvR game done. I just hope they don’t get it too late.
I can understand the frustrations with character rollbacks/ctd’s city sieges crashing, I really do. But for me, the game runs good/great, and I have experienced less than 6 CTD’s since launch!
I hear about the bugs, and I empathize with those having problems, but very few of them affect me for some reason. I hit a few quest bugs, and some minor annoyances, but for me, the game plays like it should.
Which probably amounts to my blog having a general feeling of optimism overall. I am playing the same game, believe it or not, Sharon. But it just seems so much better/stable for me. Maybe I picked a good server, perhaps it is because I built my gaming rig with WAR in mind. But overall I’m having a great time.
@BVD:
It’s an RvR based game. I have the same problems with everyone attacking the same area, but it doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm. I expect there to be fighting. Maybe I just look at it from a different perspective. I love the event, and I’m just taking my time with it.
WAR is what it is, and I have no problem with the directions the game is going. My guild is looking forward to the new zone/dungeon, mainly because we specialize in smaller, special-ops types of tactics, and LotD sounds like it will have a lot of nooks and crannies for us to fight for and defend from.
@KillTrash:
On the recent Atdorf defense on my server, in at least one instance a pug was able to down 3 minions and almost finish the PQ before the timer ran out. This was a more organized pug, to be sure, but still a pug. In my experience, most people simply have no idea how the fight is supposed to work. Endgame is pretty new to most players, and unorganized zergs definitely have no chance.
It’s been done on the EU servers, at least twice, so I feel it’s just a matter of time before US players figure out the kinks and we start seeing more progression through the City sieges.
Hiryu:
Haven’t experienced any performance / crash issues either (other than lag before I upped the RAM on my pretty-decent gaming rig), so I always feel bad for people going through those issues too but can’t really relate.
For me the biggest failure has been Mythic’s lack of vision. I’ve played since October and since then I’ve felt like most of the patches aren’t accomplishing what they were intended to do (sometimes causing additional problems!), or aren’t getting to the root of the problem so many players seem to be raising in the forums / blogs.
It could also very well be that my expectations as a customer are too high – but if that is the case, I’m sorry, but I still lay the blame at Mythic’s feet for creating a hype-monster of epic proportions. I expected “WAR to be everywhere”, but what I found was “WAR in playpens” with little (if any) impact on the rest of the world. I expected some balance between realms (which I actually thought the game had before all these patches started rolling out), but instead I witnessed a whole class become the “black sheeps” of the game who apparently all have an “I win” button because they were smart enough to stack AOE (yet now I see people getting burned down by Choppa AOE left-right-and-centre and yet that AOE is allowed to stack?). I expected Mythic to work with GW and hold firm to the lore of the Warhammer world, but I found many liberties were taken that made the game feel more like WoW (or what I would expect WoW to feel like, as I must admit I never played and only have a rough idea of the WoW lore). I expected to feel immersed in the world of Warhammer, but instead I felt as if the developers “painted” Warhammer-like images over a lifeless husk of a game. I expected a working end-game where everyone could particiapte, not standing around the gates of the enemy capital or gimmicks out of an old bag (i.e. Darkness Falls 2.0) to keep a badly designed game afloat.
As far as the live event goes, I really had no intention of doing it during prime-time hours after realizing the way it was set up (most of the quests being smack-dab in the middle of the Order and Destro zergball). But so many people were trying to do the live event in MoM the past two nights, yet when most of the Order folk jumped zones leaving only a few players to do the live event they would get stomped by Destro to the point they gave up on the game and logged off (and I’m guessing Destro players felt the same way when they were left by the zerg to fend for themselves against the Order zerg and still try to accomplish the live event). It’s hard not to feel bad for those people, and in turn start feeling badly towards the game when you hear their frustration through the chat.
If anything, my personal frustration came from the fact that I couldn’t get any BO / keep takes done because everyone was focused on the live event. This was particulary annoying in MoM when you’re trying to run a WB that’s capping things, only to have half your WB running off to do the live event and being unresponsive to your “hey, where are you?” questions. I’ve also found my Renown bar (INF & XP seem fine) is crawling now compared to pre-patch… not sure if it’s because they reduced the amount of renown awarded with kills / defenses / takes, or if it’s because it’s so hard to get people together to grind out the renown now. Still, I see my level starting to outstrip my RR because I can’t stem the tide of XP I’m getting compared to the tiny amount of renown I receive.
Syp’s closer line in his post kind of sums up how I feel – WAR wasn’t what I wanted it to be, but I don’t regret the time I’ve spent playing it. I met some hilarious people online who were a blast to defend and do cappin’ runs with, and I even met a fun rival in the past few days (Sharpteef the Choppa! The bane to the existance of my alts Valnya & Gelmir… but had a blast every time I fought him, zerg or no). The sad thing is I just don’t think I can spend anymore time playing this game I had such high hopes for or I may come to regret it. I can’t help but wonder how many other WAR players are in that same boat….
Sorry Syp; my comments on your blog always seem to be far too long and drawn out
Fall… 2009… Aion. ‘Nuff said.
Until then, I guess I’m stuck with WAR given the alternatives I have even less interest in playing.
It truly is funny to read this…especially when Age of Conan is EVOLVING..
Who woulda thunk it..
(Oh wait…I did)
It’s not a bad idea to take what you have done before and improve upon it. That’s what Blizzard have done so successfully. You take a good idea and polish it.
Re: Warhammer lore. You can’t stick to the lore exactly and make a balanced game. You have to take certain liberties. You cannot make an ommlette without breaking eggs.
The 3rd faction is doable, just take it under the preexisting realms and lets be honest, as the core of a 1st paid addon, it would smash what others have released as addons into the ground.
Imagine the blurb… We will give you a 3rd realm to give the game such a change in dynamic, as to put over addons in the shade.
I think such an aggressive step is needed. It needs a hammer punch.
I know I moan about warhammer, but I still enjoy nearly 90% of it. It’s just the bloody city seige/tier 4 zerging whose spine I would happily rip out and mount over the alien spine in my predator spaceship.
I deffinately agree with the factions idea. 2 is boring and has been done to death. 3 or 4 would have been alot better.
Heck with the amount of lore and richness of the Warhammer world they could have padded out the current races to be their own factions with their own cities!
Greenskin
Chaos
Dwarf
Human
Sure the ranks would have needed alittle padding with extra classes to fill the missing architype slots but it would make alot more sense for Greenskins to be waging their own WAAAAGH for example. Would have deffinately spiced things up anyway.
Two sided pvp is binary. You are either winning or losing, there is no in between. I think it is that static nature which is just not working like they planned. More factions make things much more dynamic.
I play WAR. When I stop having fun, I stop playing WAR. So I’m having a blast with it. I don’t think it is a game to be hardcore about. Get on, pvp until its a bit too much, log out. Played that way its quite fun. It seems like the guys who expect an MMO to be their lifestyle tend to be disappointed by it. And the leveling experience is vastly better in WAR than in WoW (at least if you aren’t using the recruit a friend cheat), at least for me (Just LOVE pvping to level).
It has its upsides, its downsides.