Road to WAR Website Launched

Last week Mythic launched their "Road to WAR" website, allowing users to declare their allegiance, recruit friends, gather gold for the fight, and participate in a simple battle for self, state, and realm every week. In addition to the "prestige" of being on the leaderboard, you also have the ability to win in-game items and titles for launch. Looks like they really are hitting the warpath.

Comments

No, not really

[Moraelin]

They cut four character classes and are still shipping with 20 classes. How many character classes does WoW have right now? 20 classes is a lot to ship an MMO with in the beginning. They felt that those four classes that were cut were just not up to par with their expectations, and they may never see the light.

Actually, IMHO 20 classes are entirely too much. I don't know about WAR, but I can compare WoW to EQ2's 24 class bonanza, and actually WoW is the more fun one there.

In WoW, the classes are distinct _and_ have a decent amount of flexibility, allowing them to be more than one-trick ponies. Except in end-game raids, I guess.

By comparison, EQ2's classes are confusing _and_ 1-2 trick ponies all the time. When you spread things that thin, either you have massive overlap, or have to slice abilities too thin to keep them unique. And thus end up with linear, non-interesting classes. Or, if you're bad at it, the worst of both worlds.

E.g., did we need _two_ druid classes in EQ2? One is better at offense, but can put it's talents into becoming a good healer too. The other one starts better at healing, but ends up sucking at both. Well, I guess at least you have a choice ;)

For that matter, why do we even need the druids as yet another healer class too? At least in WoW each druid shape has its unique gamplay, and the class is a unique jack-of-all-trades. In EQ2 they sliced classes too thin, that essentially they have 6 healer classes which differ only in whether they got healing, _or_ healing-over-time, _or_ preventing damage as their primary focus. Or one flavour is actually bad at all 3. The druid's animal shapes are just minor self-buffs. (And in a typical Sony stupidity, you can have two polymorphs, like, say, be a Wolf _and_ a Lion at the same time. But let's not go there.) It just illustrates what I'm talking about. All those classes just mean that each of them gets a small, uninteresting mix of tricks, because they had to slice it too thin.

Or did it need Assassin, Swashbuckler _and_ Brigand as rogues? Wth is wrong with one class and having the Assassin, Combat and Subtlety specs as talent trees, like in WoW? And again, all that slicing classes thin, pegs you into one narrow role from start to finish. Each gets less tricks up your sleeve than a WoW Rogue, which makes for rather less interesting gameplay.

Did the mages really need to be split the hard way into single-target mages and AOE mages? WTF?

Did we really need two Bard classes, where one buffs melee types and one buffs mages? WTF?

Etc.

And worse yet, it makes you choose something from the start, when you don't even know or understand the subtle differences between them all. Which healer class suits your play style better, if you want to be a healer in EQ2? Do you even understand what you forsake by picking Warden instead of Templar, on your very first day when you bought the game? Fuck if I knew, myself.

So, basically, I'm not impressed that it has more classes. More isn't necessarily better, as I've illustrated with EQ2. Now if you were to tell me that WAR has some unique classes that can do things a WoW class never dreamt of, I'd listen and be interested. But just splitting the same abilities among more slices, doesn't make a game better.

The capital city cuts were pretty bad, but it would have been worse had they shipped with six half-assed cities. They did discuss the fact that those cut cities will be reinserted into the game and will not charge for it.

Still sounds like a half arse launch to me, either way.

Speak for yourself - not all people are content with WoW. If you read through some of the Warhammer Online forums, you'll see plenty of people who are getting sick of WoW and cannot stand the daily grind and the static classes. I am quitting WoW as soon as WAR is released. Even if WAR sucks, I'm not going back to WoW.

Ah, yes, that cate