- Image by space_monkey via Flickr
Over at Warhammer Alliance we’ve brought back a thread that I managed to start over a year ago about the future of Warhammer Online. The thread is called the WHA Time Capsule and if you click the link you’ll be taken to it.
It’s interesting to see a lot of people feeling very idealistic about WAR’s prospects – many of the opinions in the thread are ones that frankly would belong in this blog. Three million subscribers? WoW toppled from its perch? Sixty servers? It warms my already sunny heart to the core.
It’s no secret that WAR has missed the mark on these and other goals. But despite that, I’m still feeling fairly decent about the game itself. Personally, I think while the game does have its problems and it has struggled, I still like to play it and log on. The predictions in the thread are quite optimistic, but they are hopes pinned on every single release since World of Warcraft’s came to dominate the market. I like being awesomely positive whenever I can, but hey – don’t try to outdo me with things like a game having five million subs in one year. Let me do that!
An MMO does need to worry about the other competition out there, but people need to stop pinning their hopes and dreams on it toppling other MMOs from its perch. If an MMO is good, and well-designed, and enjoyable, then it will eventually reach those goals on its own merits. This is what WoW did, and it took them a while to do it, too. It basically boils down to the fact that WAR is a decent game, and the issues it has experienced are no worse than any other MMO out there – even WoW. But the playerbase for MMOs has become increasingly fickle, demanding, and tourist-like, and unfair as that is, Mythic needs to adjust their strategy to deal with that – a shift, by the way, that has been apparent in the last two months. Core problems like T4, class balance, and stability bugs are glaring issues they must fix, or suffer for it more than they already have.
A lot of people will declare “too little, too late”, but the mere fact that they stick around shows the game is being paid attention to. But if I had to make a prediction, I would say that while upcoming releases will entertain people for a couple of months, that the huge gap between it and the next shiny (WoW’s new expansion and SWTOR) will bring people coming back to WAR to check it out. It’s Mythic’s job while they are out of the spotlight to clean up what’s fundamentally wrong.
To be honest, some people want to declare WAR dead, but that’s a sort of negative idealism, too. MMO death is rare, with only two recent entries in the genre biting the dust in the last year. Titles like Vanguard, SWG, AoC, and the like stick around, and thus will it be with WAR. Could I be wrong? Sure – but I’ve never been concerned with convincing people that I am “right” on the Internet.
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I'm starting to think WoW's greatest genius, by far, was anticipating the player churn — or at the very least, adapting to it extremely quickly. People come and go from WoW as though it has a revolving door, but when you design with that in mind, it can become a strength instead of (as it is in most other games) a perceived and disastrous weakness.
We're all becoming much more game-hoppy. I have my own theories about that, mostly to do with an ageing (better things to do than play 8 hours a day) and jaded (been there, played that, got the CE) gamer population — but whatever the reason, the fact itself is now pretty well documented. Looks to me like Warhammer is starting to embrace the idea of players who come and go, and I hope it works out. It wasn't the game for me, in the end (I'm far too much of a crafter), but I still want it to do well.
There's a difference between dead and simply not on the map. The Matrix Online is a dead MMO. Dark Age of Camelot is not on the map. I don't think WAR is by any means dead, but it sure is bleeding subs.
"Fixed" is a different thing from almost ever WAR players perspective. I agree that we'll see a bunch of people who try out Aion, Champions, or give WoW another shot over these upcomming months go back to WAR to see what it's status is. But the question now all lies with how good these upcomming titles will be, and what Mythic does in the meantime. I personally just don't see them fixing the game to be able to compete. But, now that Jacobs is gone, maybe they have a new measurement for what success is.
There are a lot of people who believe like Slurms does. But I think Mythic is counting on that in some respects. When you are in the "can't go anywhere but up" place, it is in some ways better than the "can't possibly fail" place that upcoming releases are in.
Sorry to disagree Frank (this is the internet after all), but WAR is far from the position of going nowhere but up. But again, it's up to them and big daddy EA to decide how they measure their success. If it's profitable, that should be enough for EA. At least until TOR gets here. =)
I reupped my WAR sub, just to give Order some of my blade for old times sake, and see how WAR is coming along.
[...] good friend at Overly Positive, (aka the much appreciated Phoenix Red over at Warhammer Alliance), hauled out an old thread that was started a year ago, as a bit of a time capsule. It’s very interesting [...]
Mythic can of course break the game further – but they seem to be finally on the right track. What some people keep whining about is them being too late, but as one of the posters in WHA said, "it's never to late to improve a good game".
I think it's a bit different from single player games of old – those can get a bad launch and get buried in the sands of time forever. A MMORPG has much more of a chance to get back, and even though EA may not like the money WAR is now bringing in, I see the merge with Bioware as essentially a second chance, a chance for WAR to consolidate and improve. And from what we have seen so far, Mythic is steadily improving in their feedback, their plans. People can and will come back if they make progress in the key areas like performance, balance and content.
The one thing that remains to be proven is Mythic putting money into where their mouth is, instead of promising everything and deliver them with a bad implementation or not at all.
I don't think Mythic will ever be on the right track. I see the merger with Bioware as the downward spiral with them. If Mythic was doing good with WAR, there would be no need to merge and Jacobs would still be leading. I have no doubts about it. WAR is going to follow the same path the Matrix did and when SWTOR is released next year, WAR will only have 6 months to a year left before EA shuts that down and Mythic. The employees from Mythic will be assigned to Bioware so they can cater to EA's new golden child, SWTOR. SWTOR is going to be the MMO that takes the crown from WoW and EA is going to do everything it can to make sure that happens.
[...] Frank looks at WAR, one year later [...]
I left WAR at either at the rise or the fall of Warhammer Online, which was the introduction to the Slayers and Choppas being implemented into the game. The recent nerf to Black Orcs healing, was the final straw, for myself, and I felt that it was too much. It was neither a game-breaking skill or "overpowered". It was something I specced into, as my primarily "tank" spec and felt it gave Black Orcs the tanking skill, in both RvR and PvE, to match the other tank classes in the game on both factions. The second reason I finally left was our Core Server was slowly dying, despite our guilds dominance in both PvE and RvR, my guild and others decide to reroll to a more populated and popular server: Open RvR. Not to brag but I was at the time I was the best geared Black Orc in the entire UK and US. I had completed two Sentinal armor sets (a RvR and PvE set), one piece from completing the Dark Promise set (and working on an entire "DPS" set from that as well), I had accumilated every possible drop possible that dropped from Lost Vale every weapon/shield/cloak/jewerly. I had it all, this was the time before many guilds were clearing even one wing in Lost Vale, I even slotted every weapon, armor, and shields with +19 Stamina talismans (in before the nerf to the frequency of successful "crits" that provided the epic talismans that were so sought after.
Now, I am so far behind in Renown Points since I stopped a few months back that it would be a long journey back to my formal glory as the best in slot Black Orc. I just had enough, I wish I stayed around but there are new games on the horizon, none will probably captivate me like WAR has done with the comraderie we shared in my old guild, it was the best experience I shared in a guild, that surpasses the many guilds before in WoW, from the time I reach High Warlord on my server (semi-legit, I account shared with close friends to keep me going) the two characters I leveled from 1-60, one thru Molten Core full gear, until the leadership collapse that left me guildless. I then made it from 1-60 as a Horde Orc, hitting High Warlord, getting invited to the top guild and getting my Tier Two, and ending with one peice from full Tier Six, I left finally after burning out, but not before I thru in all my DKP to earn my second Legendary weapon (first was Thunderfury then the off-hand Warglaive).
WAR one year later…? Well there is nothing that will truely captivate me unless they include more PvE content, that is what truely motivates me. Being the first, and best geared and use that and the gaming experience to destroy the other faction. With that comes with hard work and dedication, and both WAR and WoW has lost focused, free epics doesn't make you better just better geared. Lost Vale at first was hardly easy or free, even after farm status we still had problems thru bugs during encounters but we tried and tried again to do what needed to be done.