Overly Positive

As I talked about before on this blog, the new hotness of MMOs this past September has predictably pushed other titles that have been out a while out of the spotlight in order to deal with issues in-house. Warhammer Online is one of these, and the upcoming 1.3.2 patch is set to, more than ever, deal with some of the fundamental issues that players have provided feedback on for the past few months or so.

The highlights include the removal of fortresses as a requirement to initiate a city siege, a new user package that better prepares players with tutorials, an all-newbie guild, and the concentration of all starting players in one pairing, chat channel additions, and the ability to sidekick a newer player so that they can play with someone of higher rank. This is also combined with a variety of combat and careers changes, the biggest of which is the removal of stun and further reduction of CC skills for certain classes, as well as surgical changes for several key Destruction careers.

The changes, while not necessarily “marketing sexy”, are internally focused and speak to a “do-over” philosophy to some of the core mechanics that needed addressing. Shifting the Tier 4 campaign and removing a key part of the original design was one of these, as is the DAoC-like inclusion of channels and guilds specifically designed to bolster new players. I can’t really complain about these kinds of “reset button” changes, even though some people might point to it as a sign of flawed core design. The reason is that traditionally, MMO developers don’t like changing fundamentals, as it is A)an inherent admission of failure or B)the changes are so major they require too much testing to properly release them. Mythic, however, has proven in the past year that they are anything but traditional, and this latest batch of changes that touch the center of their WAR game experience prove it.

Combine this “reset” philosophy, this idea that almost nothing is sacred in terms of  creating a better player experience, with the more plain-spoken interviews/language, and you have, in a quiet and subtle way, Mythic’s apparent strategy for the next few months. That would be the following: to fix the fundamental issues as a high priority, tinker with the existing game mechanics, and let actions, not words, dictate whether or not the game will have a chance at re-upping its subscriber count anytime soon. I find this to be a far better long-term strategy for WAR than desperately trying to attract attention through big, game-changing announcements or making knee-jerk changes to stop further subscriber loss. Because for as many people who have declared “too little, too late”, there are just as many if not more people looking to check in on the game in a couple months, when new shiny has given way to typical MMO, and old products will get another try. With changes like the 1.3.2 patch notes in the works, Mythic plans to be ready for those.

I fully plan on re-rolling from scratch and blogging a bit about my experiences once the patch hits live, and, like WAR itself, dropping a reset on my character advancement. It sounds intriguing and interesting, and I look forward to how Mythic will deal with the increasingly competitive and close-to-saturated MMO market.

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.