Overly Positive

 Lately there’s been a bit of a spat of the negative around the WAR community. You’ve got 3 different bloggers all putting down the pen or looking to other endeavors, a slew of articles met with constant skepticism, and a lot of pain and frustration from a patch that seemed to cause more problems than it fixed.

Over at Bootae’s Bloody Blog, an attempt to look at the brighter spots of WAR has been made. Of course, this is something that is right up this blog’s alley, because sure, the game has its problems, but there is plenty that works, despite its current issues.

So without further ado, here are 5 things that are right about WAR:

• Casually Playable - of all the MMOs currently on the market, WAR is the one which provides the best mix of an overall goal to strive for and the lack of pressure to get there. There are MMO titles out there that compel you to login and sometimes spend more time than you have. WAR is no such title. It is, truly, a title where you can login, play for an hour, and log out, and still feel like you were able to get in some progress. People who have trouble managing their time will love WAR for its “come play for however long you want” attitude.
• Mid-range PvP Concepts - Making a PvP title always brings with it an issue of having mechanics that are too intimidating to new players or put off people who can’t keep up with the hardcore. With experience as part of the RvR system in WAR, a gear-to-skill ratio that doesn’t make the best geared player the immediate victor, and a way for players across all levels to contribute in PvP situations, WAR has good, basic PvP concepts that make PvP natural to even the most anti-PvP player.
• Developer Distance - The developers for WAR are among some of the most personable and social people. They have a passion for their product and work hard, but know that jokes, humor, and other such casual behaviors are all a part of the process. WAR’s developers have been knee-deep in the community, supporting blogs, fansites, and interacting with the community on a level no other developer can match. So while they have their work cut out for them, you’ll never feel like the developers are aloof or hostile towards player feedback – and you might even catch them on places like Twitter and Facebook, promoting their game.
• Overall Popularity – Despite perceptions to the contrary, of all the recently released MMOs, WAR is in a really good place. Initial shrinkage of servers aside, WAR has healthy populations across most servers, and compared to other titles such as Age of Conan and Darkfall, WAR is doing quite well. While no one knows subscription numbers, look for WAR to either have a slight decrease or increase, and stabalize itself in the next couple months as new content arrives. Outside of the WAR community, WAR is considered second or third in terms of perceived subscriptions, so one can only hope it gets better. And with deep-pocketed EA in its corner (WAR having made up a lion’s share of EA revenue last quarter), you can count it having the support to continue.
• Meaningful Progress - For a game that was perhaps released a bit too early for its britches, WAR has made immense progress. Re-introducing classes that were to be in at release, creating major tweaks to the RvR system, generating new content, and fixing bugs – all of these areas, WAR is at least doing decently in. The small minutiae of WAR may have many frustrating, and no doubt important, flaws, but the overall big picture shows WAR running the MMO marathon at a good pace. If the upcoming Land of the Dead does even decently well, WAR will have a foundation upon which to build on and can then divert resources into fixing existing gameplay issues into the next cycle.

So that’s that – 5 things that are good about WAR. Are there problems? Absolutely, and anyone who has put down the subscription has their own reasons and they are certainly legitimate on some level. But, in the overall scheme of things, WAR is doing as well as it can be in the current climate, and while we can’t really predict its future, I can say that it isn’t all doom and gloom out in WAR-land.