Mythic Launches Warhammer Online

After four days of "head-start" players getting the run of the servers, Warhammer Online launched today to the rest of the public. Mythic took the opportunity to explain why they think World of Warcraft players should give them a chance, highlighting their focus on PvP (or Realm-vs-Realm in this case), and their desire to keep time-intensive activities to a minimum. Creative director Paul Barnett says it's "a bit like Batman." 1.5 million copies of the game have already been sent to retailers, so they're clearly expecting a solid launch. The folks over at Massively have developed an excellent series of guides for players looking to get into the game. They explain and contrast general career choices and look at individual classes as well. They also have a variety of interviews and descriptions of gameplay.

Comments

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another /. advertorial attempt. Who cares?

Re:So?

[Ihmhi]

I'm as much against slashvertisements as the next guy, but considering how much of a behemoth the WoW machine is anything that has the potential to challenge it is newsworthy. Warhammer might equal WoW. They may even beat them eventually.

Re:So?

[Fourier404]

Bit of mixed message though.

Re:So?

[immcintosh]

I've seen Warcraft advertisements peppering a number of Warhammer message boards as well. Blizzard is definitely scared enough that they've launched an ad campaign apparently in direct response to the release of Warhammer.

Lots o Fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Been playing for a few days now thanks to CE. Love the game! If your looking for someting new or deciding to try the whole MMORPG thing you will be impressed!

Re:Lots o Fun

[Detaer]

I have been playing in different phases of beta for a little over a month now. I like warhammer so much I suspended my warcraft subscription. I am really excited about all of the new content in warhammer, and the pvp focus mythic promises is what I was hoping to get out of blizzard for a long time. Should be a healthy thing for the MMO industry to have more than a single AAA mmo title in the marketplace.

Re:Lots o Fun

[Endo13]

I just got the SE preorder, so I got my head-start Tuesday morning. That was after playing in open beta for a week.

And I have to say, after playing 3500+ hours in WoW and 2000+ in Guild Wars, this game is awesome. One of the big suits at EA Mythic predicted they'd have 1 million subs within a year, and hit 3 mil in the lifetime of the game. Personally, I think he's being way too conservative. My prediction is 1 mil by the end of this year and 5+ eventually. It really is that good. This is the first game that will provide anything close to serious competition for WoW.

They're already having to clone servers to cut population and remove queue times (that's YESTERDAY, before the game even released). Which btw, is IMO a much better solution than free server transfers.

So anyhow, I got my Disciple of Khaine to rank 12 already and it's a blast. One thing I really like is how every class is designed to require strategy beyond just working with cooldowns. For example, my Disciple of Khaine uses 'Soul Essence' as a resource for healing, however this 'Soul Essence' can only be generated by doing attacks which require the basic Attack Points resource.

Re:Lots o Fun

[KDR_11k]

One of the big suits at EA Mythic predicted they'd have 1 million subs within a year, and hit 3 mil in the lifetime of the game. Personally, I think he's being way too conservative. My prediction is 1 mil by the end of this year and 5+ eventually. It really is that good.

I don't think pure quality alone is what made WoW popular, it was designed to be very beginner friendly and had a big brand and all that (Warcraft is a bigger brand than Warhammer Fantasy to me, I and probably many others didn't even know there was a Warhammer besides 40k for the longest time and I still don't care). To beat it you have to do more than just make a good game.

Re:Lots o Fun

[Endo13]

I don't think pure quality alone is what made WoW popular, it was designed to be very beginner friendly

Same with Warhammer. If anything, it's even more beginner-friendly than WoW.

and had a big brand and all that (Warcraft is a bigger brand than Warhammer Fantasy to me, I and probably many others didn't even know there was a Warhammer besides 40k for the longest time and I still don't care).

Yes, now Warcraft is a bigger brand. But when WoW was released, Warcraft wasn't a bigger brand than Warhammer is now. And any long-time Warhammer fan can tell you that Warcraft IP is basically copy&paste from Warhammer. They just created their own lore for what's basically the exact same universe. (Obviously this is not infringement because Orcs and Goblins and Dwarves etc. in this form have been around longer than either company.)

To beat it you have to do more than just make a good game.

No one is saying Warhammer is going to 'beat' WoW. But it will be a wildly successful game in its own right.

Re:Lots o Fun

[toolie]

They're already having to clone servers to cut population and remove queue times (that's YESTERDAY, before the game even released). Which btw, is IMO a much better solution than free server transfers.

They had queues on most servers on Sunday when just the CE pre-orders hit. I think Mark (maybe somebody else) said they had over 21,000 people log in in the first hour. Again, that was just the CE pre-orders.

The load is causing some problems. I'm getting worse lag and more CTDs now than I have the entire time I was in Beta (Dec I think?).

Re:Lots o Fun

[Toridas]

I'd say Warcraft became the bigger brand sometime around 1996. The original Warcraft II (released late 1995) sold over 4 million copies.

Re:Lots o Fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Were we playing the same game? My brother got in on the closed beta and I played around some on that. The gameplay was about as interesting as playing with cardboard cut-outs.

I don't give much hope for this mmo, and it's a shame because the Warhammer universe is a LOT more interesting than WoW could ever be. I've been a fan of WH40k for years and everything they've been doing with the game has sounded incredible, but playing it... I just don't see how they could have improved the gameplay enough to compete with the WoW addiction.

Re:Lots o Fun

[Endo13]

Yes, and no one is arguing that. But that is completely beside the point. The point is, at the time of the release of the Warhammer MMO (now), Warhammer is probably a bigger brand than Warcraft was a little over 3 years ago when the Warcraft MMO was released. And for what it's worth, Warcraft brand value did slide downward a bit with WC3. While it did have a lot of fans, there were also a lot of WC2 fans who didn't like the direction they took with it.

Not that any of it really matters though. You don't have to have a well-known brand to release a game that sells millions of copies, Guild Wars being a prime example.

Re:Lots o Fun

[Threemoons]

I agree with AC above. I bought a beta and early launch code, and I'm letting it lapse. BORING gameplay, klutzy targeting, etc.

I'm sticking with Age of Conan.

Re:Lots o Fun

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with AC above. I bought a beta and early launch code, and I'm letting it lapse. BORING gameplay, klutzy targeting, etc.

I'm sticking with Age of Conan.

You had people until your last statement, then you blew it. Anybody sticking with AOC over anything can't be taken seriously.

Re:Lots o Fun

[MeanderingMind]

I'm afraid I have to disagree.

The first issue in your argument is WarCraft III. For the expert RTS players it certainly was flawed and imperfect. However, the game had reach far beyond veterans of the genre. Overall the game increased the brand's worth.

The second is Warhammer itself. Warhammer might be well known amongst avid gamers, but the moment you step outside that market it's an unknown.

That's ultimately the crux of the matter. WoW launched on the heels of one of the most successful RTSs in the history of the genre, from a company with one of the most if not the most solid reputations in the business at a time when the competition was lethargic. By no stretch of the imagination is Warhammer releasing in the same conditions.

I'm not saying that Warhammer won't be successful, or that it won't potentially outdo WoW. What I am saying is that neither scenario is as assured as you seem to think it is.

PvP/RvR

[sohp]

My least-favorite part of WoW. I guess I won't be spending my money on Warhammer.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Ogive17]

Blizzard had to do it, there were so many unbalanced realms that one faction would have instant queues and the other faction would have 4-5+ hour waits. When I was still playing I would log in as soon as I got home from work, queue up every BG then wait 2-3 hours to get in one.. some evenings I would never get in AV after waiting for 5 hours.

If I hadn't lost my motivation to play games I would probably try it out. I guess sometimes getting older does that to a person..

Re:PvP/RvR

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize it is not WoW right? PvP in WoW sucked since it was a majorly overlooked portion of the game where WAR is built around the combination of PvE and PvP. You wont have to kill another player if you don't want to. However you can also level by only doing PvP. Warhammer will not just fade away like many other games have in the past.

Re:PvP/RvR

[AuMatar]

Because Blizzard screwed it up with instanced PvP, lack of balance, and items defining who wins. In the old days before raids were big, it was the best part of WoW. The fuckups on PvP is why I no longer play WoW.

Re:PvP/RvR

[megamerican]

My least-favorite part of WoW. I guess I won't be spending my money on Warhammer.

Is that because the PvP aspect in WoW isn't fun or just because you prefer the PvE aspect of MMO's?

I never enjoyed WoW's PvP once they implemented the BG system. Tarren Mill v. Southshore fights were quite fun for awhile.

The only time I had much fun PvPing in the Burning Crusade was following around a well geared friend as a healer.

Don't assume that because PVP is bad in one game that it will be in another.

Re:PvP/RvR

[RingDev]

To WoW's fault, WoW PvP was as after thought crammed into a PvE game.

To War's defense, War RvR was the fundamental of the game, PvE seems more like it is there to give you a story and 'down time' progression and another option of game play.

War is NOT a WoW PvP server. On the core servers, you can voluntarily flag for PvP at any time. You are only involuntarily flagged if you enter a RvR area. When you enter an RvR area, if you are below rank ?8 you will be bolstered to rank ?8 (for instance, a rank 12 person in the T2 content will get stats like a rank 18 person) to even the playing field. If you enter an RvR area that is a tier of content lower then you (say a rank 15 person, should be in T2, heads to T1 thinking they'll gank some newbies), you are immediately turned into a chicken. You have 0 armor and 1 hit point. All you can do it run around squawking at people until they kill you, or you leave the RvR area.

So you can still level in peace, and it goes pretty fast. I think at 4 hours played I was rank 8. And the faction grinds are a breeze. Gone are the 4 week grind fests of WoW where you had to grind instances and the same 2 camps of mobs for butt feathers or toad nards to get to exalted. For the most part, if you complete 2 public quests in a chapter, you'll be exalted. And since there is great gear to be had doing PQ's, it's totally worth it to run 'em once or twice, and there are usually 1-4 PQs per chapter.

The game still needs some polish. Crafting is a bit of a pita, talismans are so-so, the mail box functionality needs improvement, no loot linking over chat... but its all just polish stuff. RvR and PvE are both solid in performance and entertainment.

-Rick

Re:PvP/RvR

[DeadManCoding]

It's not about how badly PvP sucks in Wow, which admittedly it does. But the selling point behind WAR is PvP, and I'm just not a fan of PvP in general.

Re:PvP/RvR

[idontgno]

I'm with you. In WoW, PvP is not something I do; it's something that gets done to me while I'm trying to do something enjoyable (like questing, or farming materials for crafting). My bad for rolling on a PvP server, but that's where my friends were rolling. /sigh

So WOL won't be for me.

OTOH, my kid (who's a PvP fanatic) is already planning out his WOL character's career path.

I think I need more computers in the house capable of running these games, because there's already too much competition with just WoW.

Re:PvP/RvR

[oogoliegoogolie]

Tarren Mill v. Southshore fights were quite fun for awhile. Oh those were a hoot in the good ol' days of WOW.

Re:PvP/RvR

[lgw]

I'm just very tired of PvP in MMORPGs - it's basically an admission that "we coudln't come up with an endgame, so please amuse yourselves". I still enjoy the occasional game of CounerStrike, but I'm not paying anyone a monthly fee for the priviledge of being entertained my the antics of other players.

Here's a hint guys: make it easy to advance the storyline. Let your adventure areas and even cities get created automatically as you make strategic decisions about the plot of the game. Then run it as a *real* RPG, letting the actions of the players directly effect the world, but continuously providing new and interesting (or at least humorous) challenges.

You're no longer blocked by the technology from having a shared world that constantly evolves and changes. Get out of that mindset!

Re:PvP/RvR

[Chris Burke]

If you enter an RvR area that is a tier of content lower then you (say a rank 15 person, should be in T2, heads to T1 thinking they'll gank some newbies), you are immediately turned into a chicken. You have 0 armor and 1 hit point. All you can do it run around squawking at people until they kill you, or you leave the RvR area.

Holy crap! Do you get experience for getting killed while a chicken?

I only ask because I can't see myself leveling very fast otherwise... Bawk!

Re:PvP/RvR

[DeadChobi]

The whole point of PvP isn't to serve as an endgame. Warhammer is all about fighting other players. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. And while we're on the subject of endgames, at least you don't have the massive imbalance caused by level 60s who have a 40-man raiding guild obsessed and backing them up every night to get better equipment going up against a team of 60s who have blues from 15-man raids because they aren't as fanatically obsessed. Basically the whole point of WoW was to get you onto the upgrade treadmill so that they could squeeze as much money out of you as possible before you got fed up with that one guild that plays the game like it's a full-time job.

Re:PvP/RvR

[lgw]

So what, exactly, is Mythic going to bring to the game in an ongoing basis to justify their monthly fee? If it's all PvP, Mythic is providing what - an engine and maps? My experience with DAoC tells me that Mythic has *zero* clue about class balance, and will ad very little in the way of content as time goes by. On online game of Warhammmer might be fun and all, but how does it make sense as an MMORPG?

These days in WoW the PvP gear is better in PvP than raid gear, so while it's still an upgrade treadmill, it's not the one you describe. But I think it's pretty widely understood that WoW has a very weak, repetitive endgame - still they're the best of the "EQ-like" games.

Evenutally someone will write an MMO that playes like a real RPG - and I for one can't wait.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Anonymous Coward]

My least-favorite part of WoW. I guess I won't be spending my money on Warhammer.

I haven't been a PvP type in most fantasy MMO's. I'm not a statistically / math minded person .. so Dark Age of Camelot I stuck to the PvE content. I tried and enjoy the large scale PvP and RvR however wasn't great at it. I didn't study and perfect my characters build (skills, armor, etc) ...

I however love PvP in Warhammer and I would encourage everyone even the most dedicated PvE players.

Mythic has made PvP accessible to everyone. The Mini-game feel to the scenarios is just fun. You don't have to prepare so much ... just jump and beat on anything red (target name color) :)

The key I think is the bolstering of a lower level character to that of one fairly evenly matched. You jump in at level one, you contribute like a level 8. You have the health points of a level 8. You don't have the skills of a level 8 .. but you don't get hit once and respawn over and over.

The open field RvR is much more skirmish like at this point ... as the population advances, group tactics will become much more prevalent and necessary. As will coordinated attacks on well defended / upgraded keeps.

It's worth investigating the system ... even if you just watch the production pod-cast videos on the main site... here's the link.

Watch:
WAR Production Video Podcast #21
WAR Production Video Podcast #17 - Jeff on Cities
WAR Production Video Podcast #14 - RvR Keeps and Siege
WAR Production Video Podcast #11
all: http://warhammeronline.com/podcast/index.php

Re:PvP/RvR

[Shivetya]

With the current population imbalance, like 3 to 1, its not much fun being order anyway.

and don't fret over the quotes about it not being like wow, or being better. It is just different. The biggest problem seems to be that Chaos got the better of it.

Re:PvP/RvR

[kazamx]

There are a bunch of time unlocks including XP and titles for fighting as a chicken. You get titles for being killed XX number of times and titles for killing other players and other chickens. The more you kill/die the better the titles. There are a bunch of other pointless but fun things you can do. If you get certain unlocks in the time you get items you can hang off your armour. For example if you kill the king of the other faction you get his head that you can put on your belt.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Dan667]

Don't count your chickens just yet about it not fading away. It is published by EA so either it will die a slow painful death or there will be 40 expansions with the only change being different useless trees.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Chris Burke]

I gotta admit, this game sounds better and better. Chicken achievements!

Re:PvP/RvR

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of graphical bugs too, like instacast spells still getting cast animations, or spell animations finishing WAY before the cast.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Overly Critical Guy]

WoW's PvP is terrible because it's so cheesy. Heavily CC-dependent with little design for group PvP. For instance, tanks have no role. Warhammer feels more fluid and less frustrating. The trade-off is that if you're a squishy class, you will go down very quickly if you don't have the support of your allies. At the same time, if you're a Bright Wizard, you'll OBLITERATE people if left alone. There's no resilience stat in this game to reduce crits...

Re:PvP/RvR

[Deadfyre_Deadsoul]

"There's no resilience stat in this game to reduce crits..."

check the initiative stat again on hover over... played since closed beta, war is just better then wow on so many things that isnt the same pve raid every night. 80 levels of pvp, 40 levels of char, 40 levels for your guild, equipment for rvr or pve, public quests (a soon to be new addition to all mmo's).
if you can stand the queue times on the servers (rolled phoenix throne), 250 que's on a high/high server; its an absolute blast.

Re:PvP/RvR

[24-bit Voxel]

Sure, the classes in DaoC weren't balanced... ever. But should perfect balance be the point in any RPG? I've been playing them since Pool of Radiance (the first one) and I've always had a terrible time keeping my mages and healers alive. I'd have to arrange formations to keep bugbears from hitting my mage, but oh man when it was his turn there was fireworks and blood for the poor bugbears. It was fun to have heavy hitters in the back and have to protect them. These days everyone wants to be the hero in the front, and that is why PVP sucks in WoW. I never thought I'd see the day that a healer runs around killing people in plate armor with ease. I hope I never see that day again. (Actually I did in Age of Conan *shudders*)

Balance is boring. MMO PVP should have nothing to do with single class vs. class balance, it should have to do with teamwork and utilizing the strengths of each class. If you play something like Team Fortress 2, a medic vs. a soldier or demoman has 0% chance of survival, but man that game is fun and as a team, well balanced. One on one, not so much but it doesn't matter because the teamwork is there. I see no reason why an MMO shouldn't do the same. In Final Fantasy 11 you had to buddy up or you just couldnt level. They really exploited needing others to progress. It wasnt possible solo after 30. It made for a good dynamic, but a boring game because they made it take TOO long. PVE was all there was, and gear made all the difference in that game.

One thing to mention in Mythics favor though is that while the classes were imbalanced Mythic absolutely nailed the faction vs. faction vs. faction dynamic of the game. THere was nothing more fun than raiding for another factions relics and getting a racewide bonus for having them. THAT is pvp, and it benefits the pvers as well. No matter which way you slice it, it was awesome.

I've played just about every MMO out there. Wow is really good until the mid to end game. Then it is nothing but a chore with very little rewards. One on one PVP is either a complete blowout or takes 10 minutes to fight and then some 2nd person runs by, hurls a fireball and ends it in 3 seconds. Age of Conan has this same problem, and about 1000 others. Group PVP is decent, but there are a lot of problems with the team dynamics. EQs endgame is the best currently in my opinion.

If warhammer is making PVP factions like DaoC, but with seige weapons and cities, sign me up. Balance be damned I want to stalwartly protect my mage or hide behind my tank in fear and anticipation.

As far as Wow being the "best" EQ-like game, I disagree. It's damn good but you even used another game to describe it. Wow is a great game, I'm not putting it down as far as fun. However it seems to cater to the lowest common denominator, and that likely explains its success. I made it to the endgame and quit without looking back. I don't care if the peon is crying.

Wow makes it easy for gamers with little people skills to level all the way to endgame by themselves. Then all of a sudden there is nothing to do but raid with others and frankly they don't know how. Raid chats are filled with comments and nonsense that no sane intelligent rational person would type. Political discussions occur over world chat. It's like the myspace of the MMO world, and I for one am glad that is where they will stay. There is no immersion in that sense of the word. I'll grant that some of the jokes and easter eggs are hilarious, and Blizzard deserves a nod for them, but Wow lacks the feeling of adventure for adventures sake.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Moraelin]

Is that because the PvP aspect in WoW isn't fun or just because you prefer the PvE aspect of MMO's?

I don't know about him, but in my case it's because I consider any kind of MMO PVP to be a rigged contest, and thus f-ing stupid.

When I play UT or whatever, then it's my skill against the opponent's. Period. We both have the same hp, access to the same weapons, access to the same armour pieces, etc. Whether I end up winning or losing, it's because I had more skill, or the opponent had more skill. I can respect that.

Enter the world of PVP with stats and gear. WTF is that supposed to prove? That someone has 5 more levels, a rare dagger bought for 300 gold, and enchants worth thousands? Yeah, that so proves skill. Bonus points if the retard paid RL cash to feel like less of a worthless loser.

It also doesn't help that it seems to attract a certain kind of loser, like shit attracts flies. I've seen level 70's in epic gear who apparently have nothing better to do than camp some spot in, say, Dustwallow marsh where a level 35 quest turns one PvP. I've seen level 70 hordies hanging around just to ruin some newbie's escort quest in Westfall, or conversely Alliance retards camping just to ruin some newbie hordie's escort quest in the Barrens. I've seen them clucking like fucking retards, trying to provoke a level 6-7 newbie fresh out of the newbie zones. I've seen level 60's, back when that was the maximum, _farm_ the level 40+ areas on PvP realms because a level 60 in epics still got honour out of ganking a level 48. There were level 60 rogues pretty much queueing around waiting for some warlock to come get ganked when they try to do a certain quest. Etc.

And the nasty realization gradually sunk in that _some_ people, especially the more vocal about how it takes balls to PvP, don't actually have those balls. They actually _need_ those purple crutches to finally muster the courage to gank some newbie. Yay, they're so 1337 now.

It has nothing to do with WoW. I've seen the same in UO, where idiots were camping the town exits to gank some freshly created newbie. Or were camping the mines because they weren't even secure enough to attack anyone but miners overloaded with ore so they can't run away. I've seen them on MUDs, where high level idiots would camp near some monster boss, so they can gank a newbie who comes to fight said monster. 'Cause, you know, even with 5 times the HP and 10 times the DPS, they weren't quite secure enough to attack that newbie without said newbie being at half HP. I've seen idiots whine on COV that their Stalker (think: Rogue) should be 100% undetectable when stealthed _and_ their backstab should instantly kill even a tank with no exception. Anything else is unbalanced against them, goddammit. Etc.

And, well, let's just say: I could sink further into misanthropy, or I can ignore the whole lot of idiots and stick to PvE. I chose the latter.

_Maybe_ WAR will manage not to attract the retarded and insecure gang there. Who knows. Stranger things have been known to happen occasionally. Am I going to be the one who dives into the cesspit of PvP to find that out? Nope.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Anonymous Coward]

I see where you coming from, but if you had to grind in WoW you certainly did something wrong. If you only do quests you can easily hit 70 in 4 weeks there; I did it three times.

Re:PvP/RvR

[AP31R0N]

If WoW had an endgame, wouldn't people just unsub until the next expansion(which would have to have another endgame)?

Maybe someone needs to make a MRPG (one of the Ms and the O are redundant) that is all hero good guys doing quests and allows player generated content. Like NWN, but stitching together all the player created stuff.

You might have liked Guild Wars. PvP takes place somewhere else with different characters. It's all PvE otherwise.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Schadrach]

You have to consider the way War is structured.

The zones are divided into "tiers" that cover roughly 10 level ranges, the races are paired up territorially into opposed groups. For each tier, there's areas for each race and a contested area between them, allowing open world PvP at any level, while simultaneously being places you never actually need to go (you can go the entire scale without setting foot in the contested regions). There are also BG-like scenarios, which follow the City of Heroes style model of bumping you to an appropriate level for the event, so you don't get destroyed, per se.

Essentially, so long as you don't cross the "griefers be here" line, you never have to deal with them, and there's no reason you strictly need to do so. Ever. Class balance seems pretty close too, though it does hold a rock-paper-scissors kind of structure to it. They solved the problem of having classes focused on CC and strong debuffs by simply not having theme. There are no fears, no polys, no long duration slows, roots, or stuns. CC renders you immune to it for a period of time. I used to hate open PvP in WoW. I'd be willing to try it again in War, once server pops stabilize some and I can get on the server my friends are on on the correct side.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Admiral Ag]

Yeah, they've obviously done the sane thing and made PvP zonal.

WoW could do this very easily, by using the upper level limit of a zone as a PvP flag. You would only be flagged to those on your side of the line, so for example, Ashenvale would flag all under 30s to the other under 30s and all over 30s to the other over 30s.

This would immediately return the game to what it is in the first days of a new server - an awesome bloodbath where people of all levels actually go looking for a fight.

But Blizzard are either too stupid to do this, or have deliberately made the PvP servers as "tard self-segregation servers" to keep the real idiots away from the grown ups so that the latter don't cancel.

I suspect the latter.

I liked WoW as a game, but Blizzard are clueless when it comes to anticipating how low some people will go to ruin a game.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Dragoness Eclectic]

But Blizzard are either too stupid to do this, or have deliberately made the PvP servers as "tard self-segregation servers" to keep the real idiots away from the grown ups so that the latter don't cancel.

Funny, that's what Mythic apparently did with Mordred, the DAOC PvP server. Unfortunately, with the collapsing game population, Mordred became unviable, and the Mordred griefers rejoined the general population--until they flocked off to AOC. 12-year-old gankers can't resist full-color gore plus T&A...

Re:PvP/RvR

[networkconsultant]

Damn, there goes my masters :/

Re:PvP/RvR

[Moraelin]

Well, I'm not saying WAR will suck, or anything. In fact, I'll probably give it a try one of these days, just for curiosity sake. I'm just saying why I hate PvP in any setting where levels, stats and loot are 10 times more important than skill. Doesn't mean I'll avoid WAR merely because it has it, if I can avoid taking part in it. Same as I didn't avoid WoW just because far away some other people are PvP-ing, and I didn't cancel my COH account when they introduced the PvP zones.

The only thing that makes me think twice about WAR isn't that it has RvR, but rather that they don't seem to have much else. Or at least their marketing and interviews didn't really tell me much else so far. Everywhere I turn, I'm told "join us because we have PvP". Well, fuck off, I'm not interested in that. Anything else? Well, they're not exactly in a rush to tell me.

That's not to say that there's something wrong with the game itself, but rather just that they ought to give a clue to whoever decided that the whole PR focus should be on something that most of the population doesn't need or want.

Skimming the game's web site, also leaves me a little unconvinced. I can think of whole class descriptions that really told me nothing beyond "hits people with a sword". Well, yes, but what makes it unique? What will be my role in a group there? They really ought to get a better writer there, IMHO.

From what I can gather on my own, from that site, I'm left a little underwhelmed:

- The classes seem to be actually the bare minimum, and certainly lacking the number of possibilities of WoW's class/race combinations. Honestly, I'm left with the impression that they took the 4 basic classes of old D&D (fighter, thief, magic-user, priest) and did those time 6 races (3 for each side). With some of the combinations missing. So yeah, you can say they have 20 classes, but each seems actually a minor variation of what WoW would have called a class/race combo.

- complexity and depth seem to be missing too. I see no hybrids, yes, no CC, no pet classes, etc. I certainly understand why you'd hate CC in PvP, but in PvE I actually liked doing that shit to monsters. So, if anything, it seems to confirm my long time conjecture that too much focus on PvP is detrimental to PvE.

- for that matter, some of the complexity and depth of the roughly equivalent classes seems to be... lost in all the consecutive feature cuts. E.g., from what I gather from the web site, if you want to be a mage, the choices are, umm, fire spec, fire spec or fire spec. Ok, ok, direct-damage fire, DOT fire, and, umm, direct-damage fire again. WTF is with that? That's like a third of WoW mage. Were there no other colleges of magic available there?

Now it's possible (and even probable) that I missed or misunderstood some stuff from that web site there, but it kind of makes the point I was trying to make: maybe they should have explained those things more, instead of all the "but it has RvR!!!111oneeleventeen" hype? Or, in case I didn't mis-understand all that, well, see that conjecture again: maybe if they hadn't been so obsessed with PvP, they could have afforded to code more other stuff.

Re:PvP/RvR

[RingDev]

The Tome of Knowledge really rocks. You get tome unlocks for encountering new things, and as mentioned above, killing, killing multiples, and getting killed by different PCs and NPCs.

For instance, a few nights back I was killed by a Squig Herder. I unlocked two new tomb entries, one for encountering a Squig Herder, and another for being killed by a Squig Herder. Being killed by a Squig Herder unlocked a new title too! So now I am running around as "Ebenthorin ".

You can get titles for lots of different tome unlocks. For looting 10 things, 100 things, etc... For dieing to each of the PC classes in RvR. For killing 25 of each PC class in RvR. For doing 10, 100, ... quests. For getting your crafting skills up. For gaining rep with the factions in different chapters. All sorts of fun titles to unlock.

-Rick

Re:PvP/RvR

[Chris Burke]

Is "Ebenthorin" elven or whatever for "Squig Herder's Bitch"? I'm not sure I'd want to carry the title earned by getting my ass whuped by something heh.

Anyway, yeah, the game is in fact sounding better and better. I had heard lots of good things about DaoC, and this one is sound real good too. I may have to give it a try if I'm not hearing anything calamitous about instability or what not in the next couple weeks.

Re:PvP/RvR

[RingDev]

Thus far it has been probably the most solid MMO launch ever as for stability.

They are still running patches every other day, but I haven't heard of any zone or server crashes (there was 1 server crash in open beta when a CSR sent a badly formed command to a server and it choked.

Client side is pretty darn stable too. In the head start my wife and I both crashed to desktop once, and the next morning they had a patch out that has all but eliminated that CTD in scenarios issue.

The population problems they managed to come up with a cool way around too. Instead of forcing people into long queues or server transfers, the cloned all of the characters on over populated servers onto lower population servers. So that guilds could choose to relocate to the other server to avoid the queues. All guild info, titles, gold, items, everything was copied, not moved, copied. So they could pick which server to keep playing on, heck, you can even keep playing on both server.

I usually give MMO's a 3 month window. But with Mythic's track record and my growing boredom with WoW, I figured it was worth a risk. And thus far I have been quite pleased with the outcome.

-Rick

Re:PvP/RvR

[Dog-Cow]

If I thought WAR PvP would have been anything like WoW's, I'd have lost interest ages ago. However, I have played DAoC for 7 years. I knew WAR PvP would be more like RvR, and it is. Scenarious are a bit too much like BGs for my tastes, but I consider those an aid to leveling and not the purpose of the game at level 70 (and soon 80). At rank 40, I will be sacking cities. Try that in WoW.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Phrogman]

Long time vet of DAOC here. Warhammer is making PvP factions like DAOC (only with 2 sides, Order and Destruction), and there are forts and sieges, RvR zones as well as instanced RvR. You can level up doing RvR right from level 1, and if your side wins the overall strategic battle, you get the chance to sack the other side's capital city.

Combat is slower than DAOC so there is time to figure out your next move, oh and there is Collision Detection so your tanks can actually physically block a gateway etc.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Chris Burke]

Hmm that only leaves the million dollar question: Does it work in Wine?

And a quick trip to wine's appdb says... yes, except for player/npc models don't render. :(

Well that's not bad, seems they're close and I don't mind waiting for it to get fixed before I try the game.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Dog-Cow]

The classes are based directly on the WH lore. I'm sure there's plenty of material out there for that.

As for no hybrids? Archmage, DoK, Shaman, Warpriest. All of those are healing/DPS hybdrids. You even have a split between melee/healing and caster/healing.

Pet classes? Engineer and Magus have non-moving pets. White Lions and Squiq Herders have moving pets.

No CC? Almost every single class has CC. The only thing that doesn't exist is mezz/sleep. All melee have snares. Most casters have roots, those that don't have snares. There's knockback and disabling (stuns). What else do you want?

As for complaining that a BW uses fire... again the classes are based on WH lore. You are upset that the graphics aren't different colors depending on spec? Casters can focus on different types of damage in WAR, just as they can in DAoC or WoW. You can go ranged AE, PBAE, CC focus, better pets, etc, depending on the class.

As for the game being focused on RvR, well yeah, look at the game it is based on. The ONLY thing to do in Warhammer, the table top game, is war. That's kind of the point. You don't have to like RvR, and that's fine, but to decry that a game based on total war is all about war is just being an ass.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Moraelin]

The classes are based directly on the WH lore. I'm sure there's plenty of material out there for that.

Yes, but the point they keep trying to make is "why should you give our game a try if you're a WoW player", not "why should you give our game a try if you're a tabletop Warhammer Fantasy geek." If they wanted their game to be only for people who've already memorized the source books and lore of the tabletop game, well, we could have ended this talk a lot earlier, because then I'd just know they don't want my money in the first place ;)

But if they want a Joe Sixpack like me to even give their game a second look, it would be _nice_ to tell me what I can expect there. So far they've only told me to expect lots of RvR, and not much else. That's the whole point. Since RvR is squarely outside my interest domain, they don't give me much else to go by. I shouldn't have to undertake a whole research project just to see if I'm interested in playing their game. It seems a bad marketing move, that's all I'm saying.

(Plus, that plenty of other material might be misleading. I understand that, for example, the tabletop game doesn't allow male sorceresses, but WAR does.)

As for no hybrids? Archmage, DoK, Shaman, Warpriest. All of those are healing/DPS hybdrids. You even have a split between melee/healing and caster/healing.

Pet classes? Engineer and Magus have non-moving pets. White Lions and Squiq Herders have moving pets.

No CC? Almost every single class has CC. The only thing that doesn't exist is mezz/sleep. All melee have snares. Most casters have roots, those that don't have snares. There's knockback and disabling (stuns). What else do you want?

Kinda makes my point that they haven't been good at getting that info across, doesn't it? Would it have hurt that much to repeat some of that more, even if it cuts into the time they spent repeating the "but it has more PvP" hype?

Essentially, you just told me that I might like the game, after all. Thanks. Why couldn't they? That's my whole point, really.

As for complaining that a BW uses fire... again the classes are based on WH lore. You are upset that the graphics aren't different colors depending on spec? Casters can focus on different types of damage in WAR, just as they can in DAoC or WoW. You can go ranged AE, PBAE, CC focus, better pets, etc, depending on the class.

A quick googling says there are 8 colleges of magic in Altdorf alone. Are they _all_ fire-based?

You don't have to like RvR, and that's fine, but to decry that a game based on total war is all about war is just being an ass.

Dude, I'm talking about what _my_ doubts are about it. You know, as in, whether _I_ want to buy it or not.

I'm the consumer there. I don't give a flying fuck about what their excuse is. Either they convince me that it's worth my money, or they don't. So far they have focused on keeping repeating the same stuff to me that falls squarely outside my interests. I don't really care why, or on what it's based. It could be based on Pokemon or a parody like The Tick, for all I care.

At any rate, nobody's decrying the game as a whole. I'm just saying they haven't convinced _me_. Which, tastes being a subjective thing, is really the only claim that I can make and the only thing that matters. To me.

If you can't wrap your head around that, or think it makes me an ass to think about my tastes instead of what's Mythic's excuse... well, speaking of asses, you can jolly well kiss mine ;)

Re:PvP/RvR

[BitterAndDrunk]

If you play something like Team Fortress 2, a medic vs. a soldier or demoman has 0% chance of survival,

You've obviously never seen me play a soldier.

Re:PvP/RvR

[immcintosh]

You'll probably like that in WAR, tanks can actually tank. In PvP. Nothing like watching a shield tank take a beating from five people at once and still go down slowly.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Owenblix]

- complexity and depth seem to be missing too. I see no hybrids, yes, no CC, no pet classes, etc. I certainly understand why you'd hate CC in PvP, but in PvE I actually liked doing that shit to monsters. So, if anything, it seems to confirm my long time conjecture that too much focus on PvP is detrimental to PvE.

And that points towards the problem with WoW that a lot of people have: Blizzard took a PvE-centered game and slowly made it into a PvP hybrid.

From what I've noticed, the RPG crowd and PvP crowd doesn't overlap very well. In WoW, people who are fans of one genre are compelled to frequently join in on the other genre. For instance, a level 70 raiding healer has to PvP in order to get a good healing mace for a raid. Or a new 70's best path to begin raiding is to PvP and get the S2 epic set just so that they can have a "starter set" of raiding gear. This type of indecisiveness over PvE vs PvP that Blizzard has programmed into the game over the years has sapped a lot of fun out of both sides. Blizzard/WoW has become a Jack of all trades, and master of none.

Warhammer addresses this by focussing on PvP. Yeah, you can do plenty of PvE, but end game is currently set to be focussed on PvP. How the game changes over the next couple of years is anyone's guess.

I think that whatever "WoW killer" that pops up over the next couple of years will actually be 2 seperate games -- a PvP game, and a game that sticks mostly to RPG elements.

Re:PvP/RvR

[lgw]

That would be tue only if Wow had a limited endgame. The endgame in n RPG begins when your character stops becoming (significantly) more powerful, and you use your skills to make a difference in the world. In WoW, the whole game is becoming more powerfu, first leveling up and then gear, but there's nothing to actually *do* with all that might once you've topped out.

Here's a good endgame: the world is so big you'll never explore it all. Your actions affect the growth of, and control of, nations as they slowly stake their claim to new areas. There are so many interesting side-skills to develop (the crafting system in WoW would count as "1", they need 25) that an expansion bringing more arrives before you've exhausted them. In exploring the world players constantly discover *new* challanges - once you've slain the dragon, he stays dead.

That is all technologically possible, and would let you play/run a MMORPG like a real RPG, not like a computer game.

Re:PvP/RvR

[AP31R0N]

Ah. i was thinking you meant endgame in the sense that the game has ended. Like killing Baal in Diablo... credits roll.

Such a game as you describe would be pretty awesome.

Re:PvP/RvR

[Alfer23]

You can change servers to one with better que times if that's an issue..

Re:PvP/RvR

[Schadrach]

There really are four broad types of classes and they do roughly correspond to the four D&D archetypes -- you have the Fighter (tank), Priest (healer), Mage (ranged DPS), and Thief (melee DPS). All the classes are typed into one of those holes, telling you what your primary function is. There are really only 10 classes de facto, as each class has effectively a mirror on the other side (for example a Dwarf Engineer is a Chaos Magus with different graphics). Some of the classes are not quite so close, for example Order doesn't have a ranged DPSer with a moving pet, and Destruction doesn't have a melee DPSer with a moving pet. Different classes on the same side that fill a role play completely differently, but more similar to their other side counterparts than to each other (Sorcerer and Bright Wizard are closer than Bright Wizard and Archmage). Marauder is a Fury Warrior done right, and Witch Elf is closer to a Rogue with a sort of combat stealth. Both are listed as "melee DPS".

CC is limited, but I don't see that as necessarily bad -- things like long stuns/fear/poly not being in the game means they aren't turned against you either. And you don't get into the long arguments about which is greater than which, and/or how a given classes mechanics utterly fail if you nerf this or that CC yet again.

As for Fire vs Fire vs Fire, you were looking at Bright Wizard, that's for sure. They throw fire. They are called "Bright Wizards" for a reason. My Marauder can basically specialize between an offhand claw which favors special effects, and offhand axe/sword that favors direct single target damage, and an offhand club that favors AoE attacks. Those are also my "stances", in WoW terms. Basically I polymorph my arm into an appropriate shape (chosen randomly from a set for each type) when I switch stances.

Its better than wow

[ashlon]

I like how you don't have to grind for several hours to get stuff.

Support for Mac?

[Shishak]

As soon as the release a Mac version of the game I'll join up! For now, WoW is getting my money

And, no. Bootcamp is NOT an option

Re:Support for Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

why is bootcamp not an option
im a linux user but im a realist as well
just because you stick your apple colored nose up in the air doesnt mean it will be ported
at least we have wine to work on ;P

Re:Support for Mac?

[chrome]

Agreed. WoW has lost me though; its just a tired game and we need something radically different to entice me back to an MMO.

Re:Support for Mac?

[Yvan256]

Bootcamp requires:
- buying Windows
- re-partitioning the main hard drive
- losing hard drive space to yet another OS + extra room for things like swap space, etc
- time to do all that

Re:Support for Mac?

[Kamokazi]

Mac....Gaming..... ...sorry I can't stop laughing....I mean even Linux has better gaming options.....

Re:Support for Mac?

[Detaer]

No bootcamp means: -Being stuck with blizzard games as your only gaming option -Lacking Ventrilo codec support -Not being able to play warhamer After playing warhammer and warcraft I have to say that bootcamp should be an option.

Re:Support for Mac?

[Moleverine]

- time to do all that

If you don't have time to do all that, how do you have time to play an MMO?

Re:Support for Mac?

[ZachPruckowski]

More annoying than any of the setup work is the fact that in order to reboot into Windows, you have to close all your open applications and restart your computer. That's 5-10 minutes added on to launching the program and 5-10 minutes added on to shutting it down. In a 2-hour gaming session, that's like 1/8th your time, and it also makes impossible the "I really want to play now" aspect. If I want to start WOW right now, I hit Cmd+Space and type WOW and hit enter. Adding ten minutes to that cuts down on the number of times I'm gonna pop onto a game when I have an hour to kill.

Re:Support for Mac?

[harlows_monkeys]

EA does do Mac games. Spore and several of the sports games, for example. Furthermore, while they have declined to comment on whether or not they are going to do a Mac version of Warhammer, Mark Jacob's has strongly hinted. E.g., he's said no comment, and then added that the other computer next to him is not a PC.

Re:Support for Mac?

[usfGPM]

Mark Jacobs, Lead Designer for Warhammer Online, said the following on his blog: "Any plans for Mac support?" Nothing to announce yet but the computer in the bag next to my desk isn't a PC.

Re:Support for Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet...they're porting it to the Commodore 64!?

Re:Support for Mac?

[Kalriath]

So what is it then? A mobile phone? (Hint: PC stands for "Personal Computer", which by definition includes Macs)

Re:Support for Mac?

[Detaer]

The video support for spore on mac does not include the intel gma 950 chipset, which is in a a great deal of macbooks sadly including the one I own. However it is supported in windows, go figure. To be honest, I use my windows pc at home as my gaming system, and my mac laptop as my day to day work machine. When the new line of macbook pros hits the street some time in oct/nov I will be getting one of those and using boot camp. I hope eamythic does port a version of warhammer to osx, but I am not holding my breath. I know for me boot camp will be the best option for a while and for others it might not be. As of right now, if I wanted to play spore on my macbook my only option would be bootcamp.

Re:Support for Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

No bootcamp means:
-Lacking Ventrilo codec support

Speex codec is superior to GSM. Only nubs use GSM as their codec for vent.

Mac > PC even though I have both. I have a Vista desktop rig and a macbook pro. People always comment how for some reason the game looks better on my mac..

Re:Support for Mac?

[yenne]

just because you stick your apple colored nose up in the air doesnt mean it will be ported

I use a Mac because I like it better than Windows or Linux. It's a personal preference, and I'm blessed with a job where I get a choice in the matter. If they want my business, they'll port it to Mac. If not, I'll continue to send my $15/month to Blizzard. It doesn't always have to be about snobs.

Re:Support for Mac?

[BlackSnake112]

He could have a Sun machine....

Re:Support for Mac?

[moderatorrater]

PC stands for "Personal Computer", which by definition includes Macs

That's a common myth. In actuality, Macs long ago left the realm of personal computing and evolved into a status symbol and fashion accessory. Most powerbooks sold these days don't even have a processor in them, just an etch-a-sketch, since they just look good with patched jeans, a 5 o'clock shadow and carefully mussed-up hair while letting the owner feel artistic.

Re:Support for Mac?

[TLLOTS]

Actually the worse part of bootcamp is just having to restart my computer everytime I want to play a game. It seems like a small issue but it does get very annoying after awhile.

Re:Support for Mac?

[aliquis]

Because switching between oses suck? And if you don't mind you could just run linux/freebsd and Windows instead of getting a mac in the first place.

I wanted a mac because it would be a different os but still run commercial software. I thought I'd like the OS more though, as it's now I'm not sure I like it better than FreeBSD + KDE.

Re:Support for Mac?

[aliquis]

Most EA "mac games" are probably transgaming cider ports, so not actually mac games but more Windows games emulated on a mac.

Re:Support for Mac?

[aliquis]

See my response to the grand parent post as well, if 950 GMA is not supported it's even more of a hint that also spore is just a cider emulation of the Windows game and not an actual mac game. Cider don't run games on 950 GMA.

Re:Support for Mac?

[aliquis]

... though it's not EAs or anyone else fault except Apples that Apple don't try to make macs and os x good for games.. Well, maybe all the stupid mac fanboys which yells "omg i'm so fucking pro I don't need games, in fact I hate games, I have penis, macs is not for games, buy a PC if you like games!!"... like it would somehow magically hurt them if macs could run games as well. Mac fanboys are a weird species.

Re:Support for Mac?

[GaryPatterson]

As a Mac user, I'm looking forward to installing this on my Vista partition. Bootcamp is an option for me!

(Amazon sent my copy last night...)

Re:Support for Mac?

[GaryPatterson]

You should be modded up for that post.

Non-portable Macs have terrible GPU options. I'm okay that my MBP has a fixed GPU, but iMacs need some means to upgrade GPUs.

Re:Support for Mac?

[kipman725]

What Warhammer online: supported OS; Windows, mac, SOLARIS.

Re:Support for Mac?

[CapnOats.com]

Trooollllll...

Guess I imagined playing Warhammer last night, on release day with my iMac straight from Apple, where I turned the resolution up to 1920x1200 and pushed every visual slider to max?

Re:Support for Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amiga?

Re:Support for Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

L2troll, noob.

Re:Support for Mac?

[Princeofcups]

EA does do Mac games. Spore and several of the sports games, for example. Furthermore, while they have declined to comment on whether or not they are going to do a Mac version of Warhammer, Mark Jacob's has strongly hinted. E.g., he's said no comment, and then added that the other computer next to him is not a PC.

I'm running Spore on a Mac right now. It is just the PC game running under Wine/Cider, which is why it does not work on PPC machines, only x86. And it is VERY graphics intensive. I see no reason to stop other PC games from doing the same thing.

Re:Support for Mac?

[aliquis]

I longed for a mac for years after the Amiga seemed dead and Windows 95/98 sucked as soon as OS X was released and I read about it. But I couldn't afford one.

And when I finally could I was so upset about the crappy graphics and displays on the iMacs. Finally I "had" to buy this MBP because I had already paid for ADC student membership and it would be my last chance to get 20% off but I was so fucking upset when they only had 128 MB vram at that release of it as well.

So fucking retarded, and I would have had to pay comparable to 700 dollar more to get 256 MB, which would probably be worth like 60 dollar if anything. But no, this is Apple so they have to force you to get a much more premium/even more ridiculously expensive model to get a decent machine.

I didn't wanted to fall for that trick, so here I am with my 128 MB vram MBP, which indeed SUCK FOR GAMES. And the people behind halflife2 said in an interview that APPLE DON'T CARE ABOUT THEIR REQUESTS. THEY HAVE A MEETING EVERY NOW AND THEN WHERE APPLE TALK TO THEM BUT THEN THEY DON'T GIVE A SHIT ANYWAY BECAUSE APPLE DON'T CARE ABOUT GAMING.

But I always get modded down for telling the truth, mac fanatics suck because they are so fucking busy licking Steves ass that they can't think for themself. However that won't stop me from telling things as they are, I've got karma to burn, and it's not my fault Apple users can't accept anything negative.

Apple needs more competition, as it is now they kind of have the best OS around anyway so they don't need to care, at least that's how they seem to think.

If Vista wouldn't had become such a huge disappointment I guess it would had put some more speed on Apple. Though if there comes a really superior version of Windows (and XP isn't that bad ..) I'm not sure how Apple are supposed to catch up again. Taking another OS as part for their next one won't work so well, because, well, there kind of isn't any other good and complete to take.

And yes, all the 950 GMA bullshit is more or less an insult, acceptable I guess but anything even very low end like a radeon 9200 or such would had been better.

MBP should never had 128 MB vram, 8600m GT with 128 MB vram? Hello? Can someone imagine how a game which the GPU would be capable to run but which would need more ram for textures than 128 MB? I can.
20" low-end iMac shouldn't had 128 MB vram.

iMacs should have one step better gfx or some kind of slot for them yes with options to upgrade.

Just throwing the machine away to upgrade to a new one more capable of playing games gets even more absurd when your machine also contain your 24" display ...

(And there is a lot of retarded mac people which just say how macs isn't for games and how people who want to play games shouldn't buy one... but well, one can't want a mac even if one also play games? They wouldn't play games every now and then if they actually had the possibility? They don't believe more people would buy macs if they could really play games?
I don't see the problem, but obviously there is one.)

Fuck Apple users, and Apple, and moderators on Slashdot.

Re:Support for Mac?

[aliquis]

Retard, this part of the thread talks about how Warhammer isn't available for macs.

So then if you played warhammer on your iMac did you do it in OS X? No, obviously not, you did it in Windows. Did I say Windows/Microsoft don't care about games? No, I did not.

OS X isn't very good for games, macs isn't very good for games.

Windows and the coders behind the game made that possible, not Apple.

And you can get a ATI HD4670 for around $100 and it would play the game better than your iMac did.

(Also I really doubt the game would run as a decent frame rate with lots of action with those settings, but what do I know.
I do however know that I have to play Warcraft III on my MBP with 8600m GT 128MB IN OS X at like 1024x768 all medium to not get to much lag in big fights, and it's a very old game.)

So case in point:
* OS X isn't good for games. You played in Windows.
* Macs isn't good for games. You could play the game in Windows but with a PC for a similar amount with a much better graphic card the game would had run much better.

Simple as that. But don't be sad, you're just yet another mac guy who don't understand shit.

Re:Support for Mac?

[ivan256]

Playing games under bootcamp is not the same.

Your other apps aren't quickly available in the background; you have to reboot to get to them. You don't have access to the dashboard. Windows still doesn't handle multiple displays properly while gaming. (Can't have work/e-mail/IM/ventrilo visible and *clickable* on the second monitor)

Wine works almost as well on MacOS too though. So there's more available than you'd think.

Re:Support for Mac?

[CapnOats.com]

Wow, touched a nerve there, good thing I had my flame suit on!

Sorry, I thought when you said "macs and os x for games" you meant Macs and OS X as two separate items, not as a single platform.

I'll agree wholeheartedly with the OS X is a shitty platform for games, and it hacks me off that the industry sees the Transgaming/Cedega/Cider thing as "supporting" mac as a platform, because it really, really isn't. There's no legitimate reason for it not to be, it's all the same hardware and there is OpenGL support, it's just a shame that the game developers like DirectX more.

The reason that I can probably ramp up the settings is because the 24" iMac comes with what is supposed to be an 8800 GS, but is really an 8800M GTS with 512MB VRAM and I spec'd the RAM up to 4GB. I've done the willy-waggling thing with custom PCs before and have had nothing but headaches throughout the process, so I can't be bothered any more. I have a life outside of computers, so the time I do spend with them I like them to be working, rather than be working on them.

When I buy from Apple they warranty the whole system rather than just the components so if something does go wrong I just package up the lot and ship it off, rather than tearing the rig down and eliminating the dodgy components myself. I used to be an IT guy, but I've moved to software development specifically to get away from that.

Re:Support for Mac?

[aliquis]

A "mac" is something Apple-branded which run OS X, an x86 running OS X or a Apple-branded machine running Windows isn't really "macs" in my view.

A Macintosh running Windows is just like any other PC, except more expensive and with stupid specs in most cases.

No, but Cider doesn't require any work from them, one can even "make ones own mac games" with it if one want to .. But yeah, it suck, better than nothing I guess, but together with worse OpenGL performance and shitty graphics cards it probably don't ends up very nice ...

I've heard OpenGL in OS X isn't as fast and up to date as it is in Windows, may have changed with Leopard but I wouldn't be amazed if it was still the truth. Also I think OpenGL don't support all things DirectX do. And there is probably a reason developers choose to code for DirectX.

But as I said Apple meets the people at Valve (and probably other companies to) every now and then but then they don't bring anything they take home and fix it. Because, as I said, Apple don't care about games, it seems. The lame WWDC announcement which was all about "oh EA will use Cider" don't change that, they still suck.

Ok, I thought the iMacs still had the HD 2600s, must have missed one iMac upgrade, or not cared =P.

Yeah, decent card, but you had to pay plenty for the machine, I would be happy with my 8600m GT as well if it had 256MB vram, but 128 MB is just retarded. I almost use all my vram not doing a shit in my desktop ffs, Aperture runs like shit, and so on. (I use Lightroom instead ..)
Of course one could say "well then why did you buy it?", because I had wanted a mac for so fucking long and I didn't bought the revision before because I decided 128MB vram was to shitty back then. But then I couldn't decide if I should really pay 700 dollar more for more vram (I don't care about 10% faster cpu and 40GB HDD thank you..) or way yet another revision, just in case 256MB vram would be the default, and lose my 99 $ for ADC student and pay 25% more for the mac ...

So in the end I decided to buy it anyway... knewing it suck, but I would get my ass raped by Apple no matter what I choosed, which is why they suck and it's so much smarter to run a hack, though I'd prefer to support Apple for giving us an alternative, but there is a limit for how bad they can play with my support =P

I've had no problem with custom PCs, and run lots of OSes, I do have had problems with things not working in them of course. But for instance I hate all the memory leaks in Safari and how fucking slow my MBP feels and how hot it gets, how shitty the audio out is, how it don't have a regular optical out, how the viewing angles suck, how the resolution is low and crappy, how the keys scratch against the LCD when it's closed, how bad the keys feels without the iSkin...

And probably a couple of other things ;) (for instance how iTunes is more or less the only audio choice you have except things like VLC, and it suck because you can't seem to get mod/xm/s3m/.. plugins for it, how iPhoto suck, how iPhoto and Aperture can't use the same image database, how iTunes except to keep track on your songs (adding them to the play list and then have them remain there even if you remove or move them..) even if you don't use it's library thingy, how you don't get Quicktime Pro for free, .. =P

Well, I had issues with this one and wanted to return it, got it the 30 or 31st august but had waited all the time but at the 27th I decided to contact them, couldn't find there and so on so time went on to the 28th and then I finally found it it said I was out of warranty (probably because it was one year from their shipping and not from when I received it.)
I don't know if it should be one year form when I received it but I haven't bothered contacting them again yet.

The reason I wait is obviously for a couple of reasons of which having to get an external disk for backup, cleaning out this

Sorry but....

[TheNecromancer]

I may not be your "typical" MMORPG gamer, but I actually "like" PvE-style play. I find it tedious and frustrating to play in a PvP realm, where every snot-nosed 12 year old is hiding behind a tree, waiting to gank my level 2 warrior.

Therefore, no need to move off of WoW for WHOnline. There's enough for me there today.

Re:Sorry but....

[Anonymous Coward]

actually there is almost no ganking in WARHAMMER. You can't go back into a lower tier's pvp zone after you lvl out of it.

Also the PVE is lots of fun. Quests are well done and interesting. World is really well put togther, tons and tons of lore.

Re:Sorry but....

[harlows_monkeys]

WAR has no ganking, and an extensive PvE game.

Re:Sorry but....

[megamerican]

WoW PVP != WHOnline PVP.

Higher level characters are forbidden to go into lower level zones.

Although if you like PvE better you would probably be better off waiting for the Wrath of the Lich King.

WHOnline may have some good PvE, eventually. It is hard to tell.

Re:Sorry but....

[hypergreatthing]

Actually some of the pve portions are really neat with warhammer. There's the concept of PQ or public quests, where anyone in the area basically participates in the event (scripted events even, sometimes with voiceacting of sorts). So far the event comes in 3 parts. Usually 2 kill goals and a boss or two. For example the first one in the chaos area is
part 1 - kill 50 guards
part 2 - release souls (open graves, kill the guards surrounding the graves)
part 3 - kill the demon (after collecting the souls from the graves, a unstable demon is summoned)

At the end, everyone who participated gets a score based upon participation (who helped complete the PQ). That is combined with a random roll, and the top X get certain bags of loot, which you choose what you want from it (1 item). The higer the total score, the better bags you get. You get exp for completing the pq as well as killing the mobs. You also get influence points by doing quests like these that you can spend on eq.

From experience this system is kinda fun and different than wow, where doing a low level 5 man instance is really annoying to get the people to do it.

There's still the standard quests and instances. However if you do like pvping whether it's casual or hardcore, you get rewarded through experience and renound ranks.

Very interesting game to say the least, I'll be playing it for a while.

Re:Sorry but....

[Anonymous Coward]

where every snot-nosed 12 year old is hiding behind a tree, waiting to gank my level 2 warrior.

Then again, some snot-nosed 12 year-olds might have better things to do...

Re:Sorry but....

[ODiV]

Have you even played in a PVP realm? In normal circumstances, your level 2 warrior cannot even be attacked by the opposing faction, let alone 'ganked'. The only way this could conceivably happen is if you went out of your way looking for it.

Re:Sorry but....

[Clandestine_Blaze]

Very true, but they just changed that to two tiers lower. So a tier 2 player can go back into a tier 1 zone now. The reasoning was that many people complained that they didn't have enough time to explore the zones.

I know this holds true for the Open RvR server ruleset. I'm not sure if this affects the core server ruleset.

Server List Update

Open RvR Ruleset

The Open RvR servers feature RvR flagging everywhere except for the Tier 1 Chapter area and the surrounding PvE content. Once players leave this area, they will be flagged for RvR anywhere in the game. Open RvR servers are perfect for those who want to add an extra challenge to their gaming experience. Players must constantly watch their backs or risk attack by enemies everywhere they go! Only members of opposing realms may attack each other; the Open RvR server still focuses on Order versus Destruction.

Rules:

  - Players are always RvR flagged from the moment they log in
  - Chapter 1 hubs and capital cities are safe
  - There is no bolster buff in RvR lakes
  - Players will be chickened when entering an area that is two tiers below their level (ex. A Tier 3 player entering a Tier 1 area.)

Re:Sorry but....

[toolie]

I find it tedious and frustrating to play in a PvP realm, where every snot-nosed 12 year old is hiding behind a tree, waiting to gank my level 2 warrior.

Congrats on just letting everybody know how little you know about the game.

Re:Sorry but....

[don depresor]

That only aplies to the Open servers where you can fight everywhere without previous flagging

On the normal servers you can't go to a lower tier and fight.

Re:Sorry but....

[Nefarious Wheel]

actually there is almost no ganking in WARHAMMER. You can't go back into a lower tier's pvp zone after you lvl out of it.

Ok kid, this bow I'm holding is a 44DPS Magnum Epic. Trouble is, I don't know just how much mana I have left. Was it five or was it six casts? Well kid, what do you say -- do you feel Blucky?

Re:Sorry but....

[crawling_chaos]

Ah, because he overstated a tiny bit for effect, he "knows nothing." Sure you aren't going to get ganked at level 2, but STV (to name but one example) is going be a very unpleasant place to solo with bored 12 year olds with their 70s griefing left and right.

That's not even taking into account the "I suck at PvP so I'll go gank quest givers 30 levels lower than me so the lowbs can't advance via PvE while all of the PvPers are busy honor farming and won't come defend" problems.

Re:Sorry but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you know very little about the game also. First, the max rank is 40. Second, if you go to a zone that is more than two lower than you on a PVP server, you turn into a chicken, have no action points, and one health. You can't gank people 30 levels lower, it is impossible unless they are wandering around were they shouldn't.

Re:Sorry but....

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Higher level characters are forbidden to go into lower level zones.

WoW has this. It's called playing on a normal realm, and doing PVP in battlegrounds where you can only fight people near your character level.

Re:Sorry but....

[seheart]

no ganking!??! WTF SALLY?!?! i'm glad all you punk ass little fairy boys will leave for wh. cry cry about getting ganked in pvp. ITS A PVP SERVER, YOU'RE GOING TO GET GANKED!!! i'm actually glad. less people clogging up server space for WOTLK. ALL CAPS SNITCHES!!!!!

Re:Sorry but....

[Dog-Cow]

Unless you play an Open server, there is no PvP in WAR. It's RvR. If you haven't played, say, WoW and DAoC, you may not understand the difference.

Re:Sorry but....

[afastrunner]

Yes please stay with WoW. Let us play our warhammer without the "1337" kids

Re:Sorry but....

[CodeBuster]

The Realm vs Realm concept, which was used previously and pioneered by Mythic in Dark Age of Camelot, is not like the PVP that you may have experienced in World of Warcraft or any other MMO game. The Realm vs Realm concept allows players to engage in PvP in a meaningful way that effects the balance of power in the game (by effecting Realm bonuses which are like continuous buffs that everyone in a realm gets) without suffering the same death consequences as in PVE (since deaths are more common in PvP play this feature encourages more players who wouldn't normally PvP to give it a try). If you haven't played in a Realm vs Realm type MMO game then I would encourage you to at least give Warhammer a try (unfortunately, Mythic owns a patent on the RvR concept so you will have to play an EA\Mythic game to see what I am talking about).

Re:Sorry but....

[ukyoCE]

Lol, you're one of those cowards that can't kill anyone same level, so you have to run around griefing people 30+ levels below you? Do you also torture squirrels in your backyard?

Re:Sorry but....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he ganks them.

While it looks good and all....

[Drakin020]

I'm still waiting to see some actual innovation and change go into these games. To me this is just a WoW Version 2. I'll give it a shot once the "Cool" factor wears off, but I'm holding out for Darkfall online.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Bieeanda]

Think more 'Dark Ages of Camelot' v2.0 than WoW, given that it's Mythic. From my experience in the beta, the PVE game exists only to teach you how to fight, and to lead you around to collect loot and XPs. The public quests in particular are very much 'Repeat these until you max your local faction out, collect a few greens, and hop in the local RvR queue.'

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Drakin020]

See that's the thing, I hate instanced PVP. I don't want to "Hop into a queue"

I want real territory control and player owned areas.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[faloi]

Good news! It's got that too. There's plenty of open world PvP content, complete with siege weapons and the like.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Kentamanos]

I think the "Public Quests" are a pretty neat innovation. It's kind of like a 20 minute raid (which has a story) that you automatically join once you walk up. At the end everyone rolls for rewards, and you get bonuses to your rolls depending on how much you contributed and you also get a bonus if you didn't win anything the last time you tried. During these quests, you're also making progress on your "area influence", which allows you to get some nice rewards as well pretty quickly. It might seem like a "small" innovation, but I keep wondering why I haven't seen it in any other game (and I've played quite a few).

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

I was expecting a DAOC-type game (played it and loved it for years), but WAR does look and feel a lot like WOW. DAOC was more gritty and realistic, whereas this has a very cartoony artistic style. I'm still on the fence with the art.

That said, the gameplay is awesome, and in my mind that's all that matters...

To the original poster - there is a lot of innovation in this game, and taking the WOW concept to a much higher level isn't necessarily a bad thing. I bet that the folks at Mythic would be very happy with 1/3 of WOW's market.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is how do you take territory from those who play almost 24/7? You don't. So those who don't play 24/7 don't even get a shot at playing that stuff.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

warhammer has that too. your guild can capture keeps and you must defend them from the opposing faction. The higher up you level the more of the world is dedicated to "open world RvR" and the keeps get bigger and bigger.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the keep control that WAR has?

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Overly Critical Guy]

That's what the whole game is based on. They call it RvR. The fact you call it "WoW version 2.0" in an earlier post makes me think you haven't even read up on the game...

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

WAR has open world PvP as well, actually as you get toward the end game the open world stuff draws more of the focus. Having your faction win scenarios makes objective takes faster in the open world so everyone contributes.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

@Drakin020

To expand on what Mythic has done ...

On and Core rule set server you have 2 opportunities to encounter enemy players.

A) Scenario RvR are instanced but are short duration (~10min) mini games with up to 24 people. Tier 1 scenarios are a domination style. Control 3 BO's and earn points. First to 500. Tier 2, a player grabs and artifact and either runs to 3 BOs or simiply must survive with it is their possession.

These queues are entirely optional, and typically short. At the end you get a contribution summary screen.

B) Open field RvR, which are focus portions of the zone/map that include large fortresses, keeps and other battlefield objectives. The large keeps can be claimed by a guild, which then display a guild heraldry and earn the guild points. This is your territory control.

On Open RvR rule set server you add the entirety of the map. You are permanently flagged for PvP and gank away.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

They have that too, every zone has maybe 1/4 its area dedicated to a RvR (Realm versus Realm) zone.

They've also got keeps in the highest level areas that are capturable by guilds, who then run the keep until they lose it.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[laura20]

This is why I'm so totally uninterested in it. I have no interest whatsoever in PVP, so a game where PVE is just to give you something in the downtime between PVP is right out. I find WoW's "Quest PVE is merely training for 25-man raids, which have all of the end game content" thing *quite* annoying enough as it is.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

Tonight, the pvp instance never "popped" for me. This is probably because I had the CE head start and there's only a handful of players my level. HOWEVER, I met those handful of players on the battlefield. Every zone is a sandwich with pve on the edges, and a mashup of "conflict" areas that you both get quests to do, often with competing goals.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

Territory control and player-owned areas (keeps) are all in WAR already. Along with siege weapons, huge open-world battles and objective control, and so on and so forth.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you can. There is open RvR also where you can control keeps.

Scenarios are just a 'queue up and get dirty' thing that is also an option.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[doomicon]

I found it sad that "I want real territory control and player owned areas." is modded +5 Insightful...
When the game in fact DOES HAVE real territory you control.

Not the posters fault, but why Mod something up, that you know nothing about?

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem. To actually train up in PvP (known as renown levels) you need to take over a keep (after level 12) and that will let you train and use vendors. No Queue, you just need to do it.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

See that's the thing, I hate instanced PVP. I don't want to "Hop into a queue"

I want real territory control and player owned areas.

That's the major draw of this game. RvR areas, keep sieges, city sieges. You're definitely not confined to just one small aspect of PvP.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

See that's the thing, I hate instanced PVP. I don't want to "Hop into a queue"

I want real territory control and player owned areas.

In WAR, each zone has an open PVP area with control points (in addition to the instanced pvp). You do not queue for these. If you walk into this zone, you are flagged for pvp. There are also quests to perform in these areas.

There also controllable Keeps, which can be defended by guilds. I haven't experienced this yet, so I can't provide further information.

Although I have not fully experienced it yet, overall, I believe the PVP scheme is meant to be like a large tug o' war between the two faction's capital cities. The more PVP battles one side wins over another, the more control they gain over a zone, eventually leading to a confrontation at one of the capital cities. The if one faction "sacks" the city, they get to plunder it. Eventually this does reset, however.

Another thing players might find interesting is the use of collisions in PVP. You can't "run through" another character. If you want to get past them, you actually have to run around them. This means that you can't just run physically through the tanks to get at the healers.

One last thing... There are stuns in the pvp, but some stuns rather knock back instead of stun enemy players when in pvp combat. I have a skill that will send an enemy player flying 100ft back when I use it. It's quite entertaining to throw an enemy player off the top of a castle.

Re:While it looks good and all....

[joranbelar]

Then you'll like Lake Wintergrasp in the upcoming WoW expansion. An entire area dedicated to non-instanced PvP, territory control, and with siege weapons to boot :-)

Re:While it looks good and all....

[Anonymous Coward]

They have both. There are instanced "capture the flag" type scenarios and perpetual battlefields with capturable objectives. There is no player owned areas per se as of yet.

Re:having "war" in the name probably isn't the...

[megamerican]

...best idea if they're trying to dethrone WoW.

Someone should have told them that 20 years ago when they came up with the name!

Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[chrome]

Warhammer looks like it might have some better features than WoW, but the "generic fantasy MMORPG" has been well done now and I think WH will just fail because while its different from WoW, most people won't find it significantly enough to switch or be enticed by it. I would have preferred to see a WH40K setting as its got a much more exciting story backing it than WoW and the richness of the source material would keep you locked into expansions for years.

Re:Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[moderatorrater]

I would have preferred to see a WH40K setting

Amen to that. Instead of trying to compete with WoW in yet another fantasy setting, why not compete in a sci-fi setting? 40K has a lot of background material, they're constantly updating it with new races and new storylines, and it's just overall a lot more fun as a setting. It feels like they went with the fantasy setting because that's what every other game has done, and that's just dumb.

Re:Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[faloi]

For what it's worth, THQ has rights to make a MMOG based on Warhammer 40k. The cynical side makes me believe it'll end up being Planetside with 40k skins, but I'm sure it'll be better than that. It almost has to be.

Re:Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[Chris Burke]

Before any Fear Engines get unleashed, he didn't say Warhammer is biting off WoW, he's saying it's a similar enough "generic fantasy world with knights and orcs" that a lot of people won't see enough difference in it to find it unique. And that's probably true.

Re:Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[DamnRogue]

Because THQ owns the license to WH40K and not Mythic. =/

Re:Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly would you do a 40K universe? 10k+ worlds, space fleet battles, willing turning to Chaos. To be truly representative of the material you'd have to be able to start as a lowly grunt, train/fight your way up to General in command of an entire sector, lead a space fleet to exterminate an entire planet inhabited by other players. How would you link together a million players into a single universe?

Re:Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[KDR_11k]

Hell, if it wasn't for WoW why would anyone makean MMO out of Warhammer Fantasy? Few people even know that setting exists.

Re:Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[Chris Burke]

Because they thought that the pre-WoW MMO market, which was stuffed full of generic Tolkien-esque fantasy worlds, made sense to enter with a Warmhammer MMO? I mean, back when all you had to do was beat Everquest it seems like it would have been an even better idea. Though I doubt they're expecting to replace WoW, and would be happy with a small slice of the now much larger MMO pie.

Re:Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[ODiV]

Amen to that. Instead of trying to compete with WoW in yet another fantasy setting, why not compete in a sci-fi setting?

Because investors respond more favourably to what is currently successful?

I'd rather see a 40k MMO as well, though.

Re:Warhammer 40k more interesting.

[OutLawSuit]

How exactly would you do a 40K universe? 10k+ worlds, space fleet battles, willing turning to Chaos. To be truly representative of the material you'd have to be able to start as a lowly grunt, train/fight your way up to General in command of an entire sector, lead a space fleet to exterminate an entire planet inhabited by other players. How would you link together a million players into a single universe?

The easy way to do it is just have the battles on a planet or two and say they've been cut off by a warp storm. They could gradually introduce new planets (expansions) as the warp storm moves or subsides. For instance, Terra (Earth) was cut off from the rest of the universe for centuries due to a warp storm.

Playing Since Tuesday

[AioKits]

I got in early due to pre-order and I must say that I am enjoying the game thus far. Only up to rank 10 (they say rank instead of level, but whatever) but I have had experience with both the controlled RvR (these you click a button for on the compass and it puts you in a queue for them, the only one I've experienced is very capture and hold, but fun) or the open quest areas which you can roam around in. Detaunt actually serves a purpose in this game when you go against other players, which makes playing a mage class a little easier as I'm no turned into beef jerky the instant a tank rolls up on me.

The other thing I particularly enjoyed were the PQs (Public Quests) that anyone can participate in. You come across these areas and there are objectives (kill 100 things, then smash 15 of these, defend this, etc) and anyone can assist in completing the objectives and the tallied points for them are persistant (save for the timed ones which if not completed autofail then reset the encounter). The loot is done in such a way in that if you took part in some way you are rewarded.

Not saying it's perfect, but so far I am enjoying myself.

Re:Playing Since Tuesday

[NiceGeek]

I agree, Public Quests are a hoot, you don't have to group if you don't want to and still have a fair shot at the loot.

Re:Playing Since Tuesday

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a huge fan of DAOC but lost interest after the Atlantis expansion made it difficult for casual players to compete.

As a professional and a father of 3, it's hard to find 8 hours to sit down and run through high-end content, so I was really excited to see that War was addressing that issue.

The public quests are challenging, but they don't require a group to reach / participate in. You can level in RVR or PVE (or some combination of the two), and you can jump in / jump out very easily. Outside of the PQ epic quests, everything else is soloable although it's easier in a group.

I'm still learning how to use my player in RVR, but I did get a few kills so it's not too hard to pick up and have fun with. The siege engines are a blast as well - I almost wiped out an Order group that got too close last night, and I don't think they even knew how I got them...

This game is built to please hardcore RVR players and casual gamers alike, and it resolves a lot of the problems that you find in other popular MMOs - I've played them all, and so far they have me hooked. We'll see how it goes after a few months, but right now I love it!

Re:Playing Since Tuesday

[oogoliegoogolie]

Hey, you're a poet!
(in case you didn't know it)

Re:Playing Since Tuesday

[agrounds]

I played WoW from initial release until a month ago. The game has fundamentally changed, and not for the better. PVP servers were great back in the day, and there were some really fun evenings spent raiding Orgrimmar and just open warfare in Southshore or Stranglethorn. Then came the instanced PVP and the constant losses on the side of the Alliance. Sure we had instant queues, but we lost pretty much every single match. To be fun, it has to have some semblance of balance. Blizzard failed on this front in every possible way. Arenas included.

The PVE aspect was an endless treadmill of gear rewards that, while imbalanced and a bit of a pain pre-TBC (but still mostly fun), went completely out of control at level 70 when the lucky few people started sporting Sunwell and Hyjal/BT gear. Those of us who didn't raid every night were quickly left in the dust and watching our res timers while trying to farm the 2890478213784290478829 primals needed for that next (less-impressive) tailored item.

Realistically though, it was the decline in the player-base age/maturity that led myself and many of my former guild-mates to throw in the towel finally. Simply, the game became vastly overpopulated with young kids and the world chat channels became their sandbox of inappropriate chat. Once again, Blizzard did nothing to stop the blatant racism, sexism, and rampant spamming.

--

I've been playing Open Beta and Headstart in Warhammer a good bit. It's been a blast. I love my Chosen for both PVE and PVP, and the Disciple of Khain I made just for PVP is a fun break from the normal healer role. Seriously.. a dual-sword-wielding healer that smacks the piss out of people just to heal better. If only Warcraft had made priests this awesome.

Warhammer has, so far, been vastly preferable in terms of player age and conversation. It has a similar feel to WoW when it first came out. People just help you out just for the sake of doing it. Public Quests are fantastic and I love that you just walk up and participate without having to "LFG!". Even if you don't get loot from it, if you stick around and do it again (3 minutes to reset!) you get a roll bonus that stacks each time you play, so just by hanging around you are guaranteed to get something from the chest plus your rep bonus loot from the village.

PVP is fairly straightforward and fun. None of the scenarios are terribly difficult and the balance of winning/losing seems to sway back and forth just like it should. I absolutely love that you gain XP while PVPing, as well as cash and loot drops. This has got to be the most awesome thing ever. I've seen some nice drops during my PVP matches.

Warhammer has done PVP right, and I hope the 'end-game' PVE turns out just as good.

Re:Playing Since Tuesday

[Anonymous Coward]

"If only Warcraft had made priests this awesome."

Priest was the funniest most active class i played there (classes i didn't play: paladin, druid, hunter.) I played as a holynuker, and the capacity to be a damage dealer and keeping teammates alive without changing gear (which was oriented toward damage, but a priest is a good BG healer even without extremely specific gear) was great. This character was an asset in any bg, and a fun one at that.

Now I have to concentrate on thinking a few minutes of all the music I've created this year without WoW, and of endgame grinding, or I'd almost want to play again :o

Re:Playing Since Tuesday

[MutantEnemy]

Warhammer has, so far, been vastly preferable in terms of player age and conversation.

Adults with jobs can buy a game on its release day, but 12 year olds need to pester their parents, save up pocket money, or wait till Christmas.

But just wait. They're coming. They're coming.

Re:Playing Since Tuesday

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Unless Mystic is promoting contraception, I think the kids will just follow you to Warhammer. Unfortunately the spamming and inappropriate chat comes is a byproduct of WoW being popular.

You can always "/leave 1" and "/leave 2" to get rid of most of the noise.

Re:Playing Since Tuesday

[brkello]

Amazing...you played a game for 4 years and got tired of it? I am really surprised!

Only in death does duty end.

[joeman3429]

Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean.

Re:Only in death does duty end.

[icegreentea]

Wrong warhammer man. No dreadnoughts, chaplains, commissars, or Inquisitors decked out with skull bling here.

Re:Only in death does duty end.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even in death, they still serve...

In the year 2000...

[isd.bz]

I can offer nothing about the game itself, but I was pretty amazed at the difference between the trailer (in "HD") and the gameplay footage. I am not sure if I'm more amazed at the trailer footage itself or how silly the gigantic valley between advertising and product expands.

I would play the hell out of the "trailer" game regardless of how bugged and grind-y it is.

Re:In the year 2000...

[afastrunner]

that video is form "Added: December 17, 2006" come on now don't be a troll

Re:In the year 2000...

[isd.bz]

I was trying to be funny. Here is some more up-to-date gameplay footage, and it's still worlds apart from the trailer. I guess to some extent that's to be expected, but the trailer is downright beautiful and the game is still typical.

Re:In the year 2000...

[Chyeld]

I'm guessing you've never seen the cinematics for WoW and it's expansions then (or it's ancestors, WarI-III). Cause DAMN, I'd love to play that game too.

I don't hold too much against them for the trailer. Just kinda wish that there were more.

Re:In the year 2000...

[skam240]

The trailer is obviously a pre-rendered movie which is a very common means of depicting in between game play events in games (especially in Blizzard games) and the use of these movies in trailers to give the viewer a sense of the games background is not an uncommon practice at all.

I prefer PvsE which is why I play LoTRO

[Anonymous Coward]

It has a controlled PvP area and that is fun, but the rest of the time it is versus the environment, which suits the world

Oh Noes! The 'Mac Gamers' Are Boycotting!

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF were you thinking Mythic???

Re:Oh Noes! The 'Mac Gamers' Are Boycotting!

[Moleverine]

WTF were you thinking Mythic???

I'm a Mac user and I have to agree with this. At this point, Mac gamers are a lot fewer than PC gamers. As/if Apple gains market share, the games will come. Until then, people with x86 Macs will have to be more realistic.

chriskovo

[chriskovo]

Seems like you guys are bitching about the game and not even looking at it really. PVP is a hell of alot better in this game and the classes are well intergrated and balance each other on each side. The PVE side also has very intersting quests and story lines. Also the tome of Knowledge is awesome. You can just be exploring around and you just get a blurb added to it about the skeleton you just found or the creature you just killed. It gives you xp, titles that can be displayed and even some cool items to use. Check out the game before you just shrug your shoulders and roll your eyes. The game is not WOW.

Re:chriskovo

[Huntr]

I just watched this video where a Mythic dev explains WAR RvR, since I didn't quite understand it, as I'm a relative newb to online gaming despite playing WoW for about 3.5 years. Nothing in that video made me think I'd like that form of PvP any more than I like WoW's, which is to say I'd hate it. As the game goes on, you can't reasonably just play only PvE, like you can in WoW. I won't be buying it.

Re:chriskovo

[Overly Critical Guy]

No, it is not a game for PvE carebears who want to slay internet dragons at 3 in the morning.

Re:chriskovo

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's a game for douchebag keyboard jockeys who think being able to click faster in a videogame translate over to personal worth? Got it, thanks.

Re:chriskovo

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on man. I've been playing for a few days. I normally HATE PvP, but I am loving it in WAR. It is very satisfying to get into RvR and have your team work together and just hit that 500 point threshold before the uncoordinated enemy has made it to 90.

In short, there are 3 main ways to level (PvE, RvR, PQ) so that you should be able to break up the grinding treadmill.

There have been some server issues (full servers) and I have noticed some inappropriate talk/character names on the RP servers - nothing too serious.

Re:chriskovo

[Huntr]

Well, I don't think should have been modded down for saying that because that's fine. It evidently isn't a game for PvE carebears like me who just want to play that kind of game. But, the op in this thread and those in many of the others are saying everyone should give it a chance because the PvP's different and that we're jumping to conclusions without playing the game. Thus my response.

Re:chriskovo

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I left Dark Ages of Camelot to play WoW during WoW's first season.

Is Warhammer different enough from Dark Ages to warrant another try?

What I found irritating is that people could out dps you during a mob kill and receive the majority of the loot and experience points. It may have made questing easier, but farming was a pain and benefited those with the better gear. I like WoW's use of first one who damages mob has exclusive right to that mob.

Re:chriskovo

[Dog-Cow]

WAR is not DAoC. It's DAoC done right.

As for tagging mobs, it's a hybrid. The first to tag is guaranteed loot rights, but xp is split amongst those who contribute to killing it. Unlike both DAoC and WoW, healing counts. Also, for quest kill credit, first tag wins.

Re:chriskovo

[chriskovo]

In the pve area if you hit it first its yours. However if you are doing Public quests the influence points(points used to get special chapter rewards) you get are dolled out accordng to how much damage you have done to your target. You also though have a chance to get a blue or green item by how much damage or healing you do at the end of the PQ. This is the first game that acutally goes out of its way to reward healling classes.

Re:chriskovo

[Overly Critical Guy]

Yep, just like the carebears who think the color of their armor name translates to personal worth. The difference being I don't have to grind the same dungeon 20 times a week hoping something will drop to complete my "set." I just go out and smash faces.

Have fun.

Awesome game

[Token_Internet_Girl]

I'll have to disagree with the general sentiment that Warhammer won't succeed. I've noticed many, many, many former WoW players in love with this game, including myself and my boyfriend. The RvR is amazing, the classes are well balanced, and there's no cheesy stun-based PvP system. Will it "replace WoW?" God I hope not. WoW has become to AOL of MMORPGs, where any retard can get a 1700 arena score and be shining in purples. It's utterly ridiculous and so far, Warhammer has been the breath of fresh air serious PvP'ers have been waiting for, and it will be a success in its own right. If you're a carebear and you want to raid instead of melt faces, that's fine, but don't come to Warhammer. We don't want you.

Re:Awesome game

[DeadManCoding]

Is WoW PvP horrible? Yes, I will always admit that. However, just because I raid doesn't mean I'm a carebear. Just wanted to make that distinction.

Re:Awesome game

[AioKits]

Is WoW PvP horrible? Yes, I will always admit that. However, just because I raid doesn't mean I'm a carebear. Just wanted to make that distinction.

I have a large symbol on my belly in the shape of a Jolt Cola can that I can use to do some form of...stare... Does this make ME a carebear?

Re:Awesome game

[LordLucless]

WoW has become to AOL of MMORPGs, where any retard can get a 1700 arena score and be shining in purples.

Yeah. Heaven forbid that just *anyone* could get the most out of the game they pay to play. That should be saved for the elite, and everyone else should just be grateful little peons.

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes - remember that WoW for many was simply something to do after Mythic killed Dark Age of Camelot with Trials of Atlantis.

Assuming Mythic has learned from their mistakes, WHO will take a nice chunk out of WoW. Mind you, WoW isn't in danger of suddenly going away - people who want hardcore, epic battles against other players are seemingly far more rare than people who want to mindlessly grind against unintelligent NPCs.

But the only thing that I've seen come close to the beauty of DAoC's player vs. player combat has been EVE Online - and that's a far cry from it. (It's wonderful, but the six hours of flying around before a fight is not.) WoW cannot and will not hold on to the PvP segment of the market; WHO will be sucking those players away like mad.

Still, I would've preferred 40K. I've had enough swords and sorcery, I want assault cannons and sorcery.

Re:Awesome game

[glassware]

So the best players will have by far the best gear, and the slightly less-good players will have less-good gear, and the not-good players will have awful gear no matter how hard they try?

Re:Awesome game

[Chris Burke]

I have a large symbol on my belly in the shape of a Jolt Cola can that I can use to do some form of...stare... Does this make ME a carebear?

No, it means you had a crazy Jolt bender one night and ended up with a tattoo, and that you are prone to navel-gazing.

Re:Awesome game

[Mushukyou]

It will not compete with Darkfall Online at all.

Re:Awesome game

[m50d]

Some of us like a game that actually involves skill in play, rather than just rolling the dice enough times. I'm sorry if that's too elitist for you.

Re:Awesome game

[moderatorrater]

Heaven forbid that just *anyone* could get the most out of the game they pay to play

That's just the point, isn't it? Competitive gameplay usually means that someone wins and they get rewarded for it. In WoW, anyone can "win" regardless of how good they are, which can make the game less appealing for competitive people. How appealing would football or basketball be to play or to watch if, at the end, everyone was declared a winner and they hugged it out?

I'm not saying one or the other is better, just that some people will prefer a game that's more accessible to everyone and some people will prefer a more competitive atmosphere.

Re:Awesome game

[RightSaidFred99]

You're confusing "how good" someone is with "how much time they play". WoW is all about spending time in the game. It's blatantly (laughably) transparent the steps Blizzard has taken to make people have to spend time in the game to do things. Travel is tedious. Most of the grinding quests are tedious. If it takes you lots and lots of time to get to end-game you will be subscribed longer. Great for them, tedious for us.

Re:Awesome game

[moderatorrater]

The same could be said of anything, though. The more time you spend at it, the better you get. I would be a lot better at painting, I just don't take the time to grind the paint. I would be a lot better at trivia, I just don't read wikipedia all day. WoW just happens to model this with an experience and item system; arguably this levels the playing field more effectively than not having it, since it rewards everyone who plays it rather than just those who mash buttons.

Say what you want about it, in the end it comes down to personal taste. Millions of people love WoW, so obviously they're doing something right.

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious PVPers play EVE. www.eve-online.com

Re:Awesome game

[LMariachi]

You're conflating two very different things. Of course the longer one practices an activity the better one gets at it, but practice time is far from the sole determining factor. No matter how long you shoot baskets in your driveway, you're not going to be able to dunk on Kevin Garnett. Rolling white paint onto apartment ceilings is not going to make you Michelangelo. On the other hand, the WoW model, like a punch clock, directly rewards time spent. The unemployed guy who has 80 hours a week to play WoW isn't rewarded more handsomely because his experience has honed his pointing and clicking skills to a razor's edge, he's rewarded simply because 80 hours > 15 hours.

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

Please show me someone who plays WoW no more than 1-2 hours on a given day and has completed Sunwell.

Re:Awesome game

[Exitar]

"In WoW, anyone can "win" regardless of how good they are, which can make the game less appealing for competitive people."

C'mon, not every WoW player is in SWP/Brutal gear.
Or in your opinion people in T4/S2 (me for example) "won" the game?

Re:Awesome game

[moderatorrater]

No matter how long you shoot baskets in your driveway, you're not going to be able to dunk on Kevin Garnett

That's mighty presumptuous of you. Kobe said that if I worked at it, I could someday.

The unemployed guy who has 80 hours a week to play WoW isn't rewarded more handsomely because his experience has honed his pointing and clicking skills to a razor's edge, he's rewarded simply because 80 hours > 15 hours.

Like I said, there's a game mechanic involved. However, the unemployed guy who plays 80 hours a week is going to be more or less effective than another guy who plays 80 hours a week depending on his social skills, his math skills, and his understanding of the game. If you can manipulate the auctions well, you can make a lot of gold, which translates directly into better gear. If you're able to work together with a group, you get into better guilds and get better equipment out of it. If you're a good leader and planner, then you are more likely to be able to lead a guild, which brings a lot of benefits with it.

I don't like the game myself. I prefer solitary play that more directly rewards skill; I don't want to have to rely on other people, almost all of whom are worse than me, and I don't want to have to raid every night to get with a group where that's not true. But arguing that rewarding people for playing more is a bad mechanic is dumb, imho. This greatly reduces the learning curve, it makes it so that housewives can compete more directly with the hardcore gamers, and most importantly, it makes all the content more readily available to anyone who wants it badly enough. These are all good and valid things. These are all things that have helped WoW gain the dominance that it has.

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me, that despite most of your coherent opinions, that you're just another bitter nerd as evidenced by the use of the "nerd-rage" favourite word .... "retard".

Re:Awesome game

[LordLucless]

Firstly, the vast majority of MMORPGs revolve around a time-grind, and not skill. And even then, much of the skill tested isn't yours - building a good build, crunching the skill numbers - these are all done by online guides. Throw in latency as a rogue factor, and I don't believe skill is any particularly large factor in most MMORPGs. Secondly, I wonder how much people would like football if the winning team was rewarded with extra gear that made their victory next season even more likely?

Re:Awesome game

[Driador]

That's just the point, isn't it? Competitive gameplay usually means that someone wins and they get rewarded for it. In WoW, anyone can "win" regardless of how good they are, which can make the game less appealing for competitive people. How appealing would football or basketball be to play or to watch if, at the end, everyone was declared a winner and they hugged it out? I'm not saying one or the other is better, just that some people will prefer a game that's more accessible to everyone and some people will prefer a more competitive atmosphere.

Huh... that statement sounds uncannily like the logic of the No Child Left Behind Act. But yet, we support that. Off topic, I know, but if we support behavior like that in one system (ie, everyday life), why should any of the snotlings (er, sorry, younger kids and/or teens) expect any less elsewhere? Go figure..

Re:Awesome game

[moderatorrater]

I wonder how much people would like football if the winning team was rewarded with extra gear that made their victory next season even more likely?

I'm into college football, so between the extra money for bowl games and the prestige-based recruiting, that's sort of what happens.

Re:Awesome game

[joranbelar]

It's not about that. It's about allowing people to compete on a level playing field - in other words, if you want to do arenas, you can work your way up to the same level of gear as the "elites", but unless you have the skill, you won't "win".

Getting gear isn't "winning". Winning is winning. To appropriate your analogy, how fun would football or basketball be if you constantly had to play teams that were twice your size, speed, and strength?

Re:Awesome game

[dwpro]

1700 isn't that great of a rating, and hell, it took me months to get that, and I consider myself to be a decent player (might have been my feral druid spec :S). Besides, if you have to have some ungodly rating just to use gear that is pretty much a requisite to being competitive it will be impossible for those of us joining in late in the game to ever get to compete. Is your gladiator tag not enough shinies for you?

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like the fourth time you've posted references to darkfall. Go spam something else

Re:Awesome game

[brkello]

I never understood people like you. Some people don't like certain games. Why be judgmental? The second you start calling people "carebears" is the second people think you are going to think you are a complete moron and not listen to any points (valid or invalid) that you are going to make.

And if Warhammer is filled with jerks like you...I think it will fail. MMOs are all about community. When the community is a bunch of venom spewing idiots crying about carebears changing their game...well, it isn't going to be a community that many people want to touch.

Re:Awesome game

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I can't wait to see Darkfall fail miserably just so we don't have to hear about it from this slack jawed yokel any more.

World of Warhammercraft - Online!

[Brian Boitano]

So who else sees the World of Warcraft flash ad underneath this story?

Re:World of Warhammercraft - Online!

[SBacks]

Oh, great, now we're going to get 1000 replies of "Not me, I use Adblock"

Re:World of Warhammercraft - Online!

[theskunkmonkey]

What's AdBlock? *zing!*

Re:World of Warhammercraft - Online!

[Carewolf]

I thought it was the War of Worldhammer-craft?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abriael/

[afastrunner]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abriael/ for nice screenshots of the game. avoid going to youtube and seeing videos that are 2+ years old.

Re:http://www.flickr.com/photos/abriael/

[l0cust]

Nice pics. Some of them look a bit bland but I am impressed with the overall quality, specially the screeshots of wooded areas and some other tastefully done ones. I might give it a shot once I get a connection upgrade.

Re:having "war" in the name probably isn't the...

[Red Flayer]

Someone should have told them that 20 years ago when they came up with the name!

25 years. Warhammer Fantasy Battle was originally published in 1983. (Yes, I still have miniatures I bought in '84).

More PVP?

[Rorgg]

Good, I won't have to bother. It's not WoW's PVP, I've seen it in a dozen games, each of which has claimed to "do it right." Despite what some people say, not "everyone really, really likes PVP down underneath it all, you know... if it's done RIGHT."

Re:More PVP?

[RoboRay]

The only MMOG that did PvP right was PlanetSide.

No Mac version - no money from me

[fadir]

Sorry to say, but this is the only reason why I don't buy it. I'm just tired of booting into Windows to play a game, that's why I stick to WoW for now - not because it's better than anything else but because it runs fine on my MacBook.

Re:No Mac version - no money from me

[Anonymous Coward]

we don't give a fuck, rump roaster.

sincerely

the warhammer people.

Re:No Mac version - no money from me

[TheNetAvenger]

Sorry to say, but this is the only reason why I don't buy it. I'm just tired of booting into Windows to play a game, that's why I stick to WoW for now - not because it's better than anything else but because it runs fine on my MacBook.

With the state of the desktop application level of performance and the OpenGL reliance Apple is tied to, you might just be waiting a lifetime before gaming ever becomes prominent on OS X.

1) OS X is slow for gaming. OpenGL, same game, virtually same code, Boot OS X Native, Vista Native, Windows wins everytime by a large number.

2) State of OpenGL is bad at the moment, and Apple has put all their fruit in the basket. OpenGL isn't even trying to catch up to DirectX 10, let alone 11, which will be the next big thing. (Go read Tom's Hardware on OpenGL/DirectX11).

3) Apple's graphics stategy is OpenGL and and SSE Intel optimizations. Trying to bank between the two to achieve respectible performance. SSE is not what Apple thought it would be, and even dropping to OpenGL 'AQUA/QUARTZ' concepts are failing.

Apple never was able to accelerate the original Quartz or Quickdraw, let alone the new lipstick pig they are trying this year.

Software rendering only goes so far in today computing environments, when you have rich web UI and WPF smacking your developers over the head with performance and simplicity Apple could only dream to offer.

Game developer know the OS X score, and bootcamp helps them make this an easier decision. Why should they even try to get a game to run, when they know it is going to run a lot slower than the Windows version, because you can't fight the Apple and OS X overhead to get the raw performance you can on the NT Architecture.

Re:No Mac version - no money from me

[immcintosh]

1) OS X is slow for gaming. OpenGL, same game, virtually same code, Boot OS X Native, Vista Native, Windows wins everytime by a large number.

If a game engined is designed from the ground up around OpenGL, and designed from the ground up around DirectX, there's no reason one should be slower than the other. Contrary to what you seem to believe, OpenGL is NOT inherently slower. There are two things that could cause this kind of effect, (1) faulty drivers (which are often a problem, but that's a problem with ATI/nVidia, not OpenGL), and (2) not optimizing for OpenGL like you would optimize for DirectX.

2) State of OpenGL is bad at the moment, and Apple has put all their fruit in the basket. OpenGL isn't even trying to catch up to DirectX 10, let alone 11, which will be the next big thing. (Go read Tom's Hardware on OpenGL/DirectX11).

I have no idea what you mean by "trying to catch up with" here. OpenGL and DirectX are very different in how they add new features. With DirectX, everything is centrally controlled by Microsoft. Only a new version of DirectX will allow new features to enter the API. OpenGL, on the other hand, allows for vendors to include whatever extensions they like, and has a method of "standardizing" on vendor extensions that haven't yet made it into the core API. To wit, OpenGL is, in a strict technical sense, just as capable as DirectX.

I'm not interested in looking up this Tom's Hardware article, but as a hobby game programmer myself this is something I follow. The complaint currently being leveled against OpenGL is very specific. The OpenGL review board had been promising a vastly reworked and much more streamlined version of OpenGL in the upcoming revision 3.0. Essentially, they had been promising a very elegant, more object oriented approach. Recently they essentially did a complete turnaround and decided to release 3.0 in a state that would more appropriately be called 2.2 or something. It got a lot of developers up in arms, but it's made out to be a lot worse a deal than it really is.

Really, the problem is that DirectX has become easier to program with while OpenGL gets more bloated, which is funny considering it's Microsoft and how absolutely HORRIBLE its very first versions were.

Re:No Mac version - no money from me

[Anonymous Coward]

Software rendering will return within the next 2-3 years. It's the natural conclusion to what we're already seeing.

Back in the late 90ies people realized if they'd all use the same rendering method they could do lots of the repetitive computations in hardware since the CPUs simply were too slow.

But from GPU generation to generation they are turning more and more from fixed operation systems to freely programmable processors.

And on the CPU side you know have extremely powerful multi-purpose chips that are increasingly becoming stronger in highly parallel tasks (the core strength of current GPUs).

So, before long, the reign of GPUs will be over and programmers will ditch OpenGL/DirectX for plain old C++. They won't be bound anymore by a 25 rear old API and completely outdated rendering models.

More of the same

[Drakin020]

I'm sorry but games need to be more challenging. I'm tired of MMO's where you have no penalty of death. It's like....Run around get killed, come back to life and do it all over again.

Games that have a price for death generally have more strategy involved. I'm just sick of the overly simple games, that offer no real consequences.

Re:More of the same

[mapsjanhere]

You mean like old fashioned EQ, where one death even with a good rez wiped your experience gain of a 4 h session? Not to mentioning the 2 h corpse run without gear.

Re:More of the same

[Spasemunki]

MMOs don't typically do that anymore because they've discovered that having serious consequences for death are very unpopular with the majority of players. It also creates additional support issues for the company: in WoW if you get disconnected and beaten to death as a result, it's a bummer but not a huge issue. If you have major consequences for death, every time a glitch results in death you have hundreds of players wining to a GM.

Re:More of the same

[Overly Critical Guy]

When you die, you get a stat debuff that stacks up to five times unless you go and claim your corpse or pay off a healer NPC to remove the debuff.

The penalty of death in an MMO is time.

Re:More of the same

[Drakin020]

But just as you said...pay off an NPC healer...Well that takes care of that right?

Re:More of the same

[Skuld-Chan]

So you could do this - every time you die in WoW go to the character selection screen, delete your character and start over.

Re:More of the same

[TheNetAvenger]

MMOs don't typically do that anymore

And sadly this is why new MMOs keep going in the toilet...

Report after report and expert after expert and model after model shows that a game with no risk fails.

1) No Risk, No accomplishment, No Reward
2) Loses reality, as it feels just like a 'game' as there is nothing to protect, defend, covet, etc.
3) Destroys social aspect of the MMO experience, as there is no true interdependance if there is no risk and 'need' for help from other players.

SWG taught the industry these lessons years ago, and sadly, people making the games are in the same mindset as the idiots that CU & NGE'd SWG.

No Decay, No Death penalty, no sense of loss, no sense of accomplishment.

Prior to the CU/NGE, SWG was one of the first MMOs that presented such a cohesive mix of social and gaming aspects that people 'felt' like they had a 'piece' of the world they lived in, and they had ownership in that reality.

Another game with no decay, no death is not a 'social' game. It is a Halo Online wanna be with Trolls. Die, Respawn, find weapon shot, kill, die, respawn..

(This is 10yr old 'me want everything now and free' mentality, and is why it will catch the attention of these people for 15mins, then the game will disappear into the darkness of all the other MMOs that went down the same road.)

Seriously, go look up the studies about player 'investement' in games and how risk and death and decay and social necessity are the CRUX of a successful MMO experience.

There was a major report on this just a month or so ago, apparently the WARHAMMER jokers didn't listen or give a shit and catered to the 'me want now' beta testers. Feel sorry for them when the game can't hold people.

(I'm not even a big fan of WoW, but it has enough risk, death, decay, and reward to make it successful.)

Re:More of the same

[Sun Chi]

Want that kind of challenge? Play Eve Online: http://eve-online.com/

You "die"? You lose your ship and have to return to the wreck if you want to get back about half of the items you had on you (rest are destroyed). Didn't have an up-to-date clone? (this costs money): you lose skill points for good and will have to wait real-world time to retrain them.

Full time, all the time PvP and one world for all players. Usually more than 20,000 accounts logged in, peeks much higher on weekends. Leave the "safer" zones protected by NPC cops and anyone can and will kill you, sometimes just for the LOLZ.

Sound harsh? It is. I play it and love it but sometimes you need something a little softer - like Warhammer Online, which I also play.

Re:More of the same

[damiangerous]

There's no significant penalty to death in WoW. None whatsoever. Especially in PvP as all you lose is a bit of time to run back.

You can't be ganked like that

[moller]

Mythic has extensive experience with PvP and has put controls in to remove the griefing of lower level players as much as possible.

The game is divided up into four "tiers." The level ranges for the tiers are (roughly, I'm not positive) 1 through 11, 12 through 21, 22 through 31, and 32 to 40. If a Level 12 players enters a Tier 1 zone and goes looking for some Level 2 warrior to gank, he won't succeed. The level 12 player will be "chickened." He will literally be transformed into a chicken with 1 hit point and an attack that does 1 damage.

Even on the open PvP servers where you are always "flagged" for RvR (there are no safe PvE zones like on the Core ruleset servers) they have kept a reduced form of the "chickening" mechanic. It's just been extended down a tier, so a level 15 character can go into the tier 1 zone without being chickened, but a level 23 character WILL be turned into a chicken in the tier 1 zone (but not in tier 2).

There is also the "starter" area, which is a subset of the tier 1 area, where anyone from a higher tier will be turned into a chicken regardless, to allow the newest players time to level up to 2 or 3 before going out and fighting.

Re:You can't be ganked like that

[mapsjanhere]

How does that get around the WoW typical uber-twink phenomenon, where players intentionally stay at the top level of the tier, accumulating outrageous gear at fantasy prices with their mains, and gank every normal player in the area?

Re:You can't be ganked like that

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you xp of off PVP , kill me when I'm 2(bolstered to 8) and you're 11 enough times and you will be leveled to 12....and chickened. You just can't stop leveling unless you do nothing.

Re:You can't be ganked like that

[Overly Critical Guy]

PvP XP.

Re:You can't be ganked like that

[Spasemunki]

Since you get XP for PvP, I'm guessing you would eventually level out of the tier just by beating on similar or lower level players in your tier.

Re:You can't be ganked like that

[snorb]

You get exp from engaging in RvR, so you can't stay at a particular level indefinitely. Not sure about T2 or T3, but at least for T1 there isn't much disparity from the best gear available and the gear an "average" player will get. It's pretty easy to get decent gear without really excessive grinding or spending lots of money. Also there don't seem to be anything like crusader enchants, which significantly increase a lower level character's power.

Re:You can't be ganked like that

[mqduck]

I could not make sense of anything you just said.

Re:You can't be ganked like that

[AP31R0N]

PlanetSide has a solution for this sort of thing as well: almost no power curve. Meaning that high and low level characters have access to roughly the same stuff (and without the Gygaxian straight jacket of classes). So if you signed up today, you could get a tank. i, after 5 years, would have access to the same tank. Being higher level allows me to have a tank, and a jet, and a sniper rifle and so on. Advancement gives you flexibility rather than godlike power.

The chickening idea is awesome. When i played WoW and the 70s would come a ganking, i'd either sit or do the chicken emote over and over.

Re:having "war" in the name probably isn't the...

[OldMiner]

As always, Penny Arcade has already made fun of you.

Re:having "war" in the name probably isn't the...

[megamerican]

I wasn't sure of the actual year, but I knew it was in the 80's and approximated. :)

Re:having "war" in the name probably isn't the...

[clamatius]

Someone has to do it.

Don't say another Goddamn word.

Perhaps you should try EVE Online

[moller]

They offer a free 14-day trial, the game has a very well done "Tutorial" which will get any new player comfortable with the game, and there are very real and brutal consequences for death and loss.

EVE is the most complex MMO that I have played, and the sheer breadth of available options is staggering.

Re:Perhaps you should try EVE Online

[Drakin020]

Played it for a few years infact. :-D

Excellent so far

[Carbon016]

I played WoW for about a month and got tired of the endless do-nothing quests, the generic storyline, and the shallow play.

WAR has its share of the same issues, but it has plenty of ways to ameliorate PvE grind - if you're sent to kill a certain amount of something, you don't have to loot the corpse and you won't randomly run into a "something" that doesn't have the item you're looking for, the "chapter" system makes quests feel like you're actually in a storyline rather than doing a bunch of odd jobs, and the classes feel significantly different. There are some leveling troughs but those are most likely because there were few players during the Head Start phase.

But I think the most important thing it's done is the Public Quests, which allow people to jump into events in groups and play as a team without joining guilds or queueing up. They're easy to enter and leave, they're fun, they're innately cooperative, and the random generator for loot as well as the influence rewards mean that if you spend a half hour playing them you're bound to get a ton of stuff.

For me, the PQs feel more like a typical online team-play game and much less like a MMO, especially with the fast hitting attack classes like Witch Elves. If I can have a bit of Counter-Strike in my MMORPG, that's always a nice change of pace. They have some issues, primarily with scaling (few players typically means really hard boss characters that are impossible to defeat in small groups, wasting a lot of time and effort), but so far I've had a great time.

Windows?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

The only thing I want to know: is this game worth installing Windows for? Because I can play WoW right now, on my Mac, without having to.

That's a much higher hurdle than purchasing the game itself. If I'm going to the effort to do that, I need some reasonable assurance that it'd be worthwhile to do so.

Re:Windows?

[afastrunner]

my roomate has installed windows twice on his mac to play this game ( he got a larger hard drive for the mac and wanted to reinstall everything )

Re:Windows?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Yes, it is worth it.

Re:Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Short answer: NO.

Longer answer: Hell no. War is like playing in the shallow end of the pool all the time. WoW has a lot more character and gameplay depth, which is unfortunate really. So, if you consider WoW somewhat shallow, you'd be very disappointed with Warhammer Online.

Re:Windows?

[immcintosh]

I'd say wait a couple months, then try it if you haven't heard anything that really turns you off. I think it's fantastic, and honestly even the though of going back to play WoW depresses me, but it has a few kinks that still need to be worked out.

On the other hand, if you think a lack of complete polish won't bother you so much, I'd recommend it over to anyone except the crazies who actually like end-game WoW style raiding (sorry if you're one of them, but I calls it like I sees it). You're really going to want 2 gigs of ram to play it though, so if you're at 1 gig or less, I'd spend the $30 for the upgrade there.

Add it to the Age of Conan pile

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray its another fantasy MMO where you get to kill Orcs and wolves. I'll give it four months, its looks shitacular.

Re:Add it to the Age of Conan pile

[Wakk013]

Nah it will survive. Its got very good potential. Just didn't strike the right cord for me.

Not a game I will pick up

[Wakk013]

Played during the open beta through FilePlanet. Very much WOW like. Reskinned and touched up a bit. Ran into a ton of bugs, which I did submit. Hope they fix them for people that will be playing this.

The only thing I saw in this game that was outstandingly unique were the open public quests. Those were actually quite a bit of fun, IF you could get enough people to do them with you, or IF there were enough people in the general area. I also found it extremely humorous that higher level toons couldn't gank lower levels. If the higher level to was too high, they ran around as an easy to kill chicken! I just about died laughing the first time I saw this.

Re:Not a game I will pick up

[beluv]

I also found it extremely humorous that higher level toons couldn't gank lower levels. If the higher level to was too high, they ran around as an easy to kill chicken!

People defending Warhammer talk about WoW being "carebear" then somehow fail to mention this. Also, seems to me that there will still be ganking as long as higher levels are stupid enough to venture where they shouldn't.

Re:having "war" in the name probably isn't the...

[Kemanorel]

Missed it by three minutes and exactly 50 comments. Bummers.

Cake or death?

Re:having "war" in the name probably isn't the...

[Anonymous Coward]

/clap

WAR = WOW + BF2

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why, but when I've been playing WAR in the pre-launch I felt like it was a little WOW-ish and a little BF2-ish. You can grind on some NPCs but there is always something attacking. Add interaction with cannons, hellblaster volley guns and other things and you have an Online RPGFPS feel. I'm digging it so far...really want to experience a siege of one of the capital cities. Talk about all-out mayhem!

I suggest a few production videos

[Anonymous Coward]

I have not been a PvP style player ... I don't have the statistical / math mind for building the perfect build (skills, armors, etc). I love games for the production values, the spell affects and raid content.

However in WAR I greatly enjoy and do much more PvP!

To add to the conversation about the PvP system in War, I'd like to suggest a view videos:

Warhammer Online video production podcasts

http://warhammeronline.com/podcast/index.php

WAR Production Video Podcast #21
WAR Production Video Podcast #17 - Jeff on Cities
WAR Production Video Podcast #14 - RvR Keeps and Siege
WAR Production Video Podcast #11

Also great for other content lovers

WAR Production Video Podcast #19 - Crafting
WAR Production Video Podcast #18 - Introduction to the Guild System

Challenge != Punishment

[Chris Burke]

I'm sorry but games need to be more challenging. I'm tired of MMO's where you have no penalty of death. It's like....Run around get killed, come back to life and do it all over again.

Hey, I'm all for having more challenge in games. A lot of games, and WoW stands out here, are quite easy in the main (WoW has a few moments, but generally the "challenge" comes from party members who are "challenged").

But I'm bloody sick and tired of people who say "I want more challenge... there should be a penalty for death!" Because you know what? Being penalized for death isn't challenge, it's punishment. MMOs are already "punishing" enough as timesinks, they do not need additional punishment for what is supposed to be FUN!

And the punishment doesn't make the game harder, it just makes people who don't succeed the first time (regardless of how easy or hard the game is) realize how retarded taking punishment from a game is and quit. I guess maybe that's the point, drive away the noobs, but it's nothing to do with whether the game is actually hard or not. You could have an extremely hard game with no penalty for death, and hey, it'd be hard! Using punishment as a substitute for challenge just means you can't figure out a real way to make the game hard without also making it cheap.

And cheapness is the biggest reason I'm against punishment in games, because most of them are cheap. UO had a huge penalty for death -- you lost all the gear on you. And if you were a mage/archer and that's the skill that got nerfed into oblivion that patch while the other got buffed to ridiculous levels, then you'd get whacked in two seconds. Or you would get lagged entering a dungeon so you're frozen in place while the gankers on the inside stabbed you to death and took your stuff. How is that "challenge"? Diablo II had a big penalty for death in Nightmare and Hell, in the form of perhaps hours worth of experience lost if you died. It also had retardedly imbalanced mini-bosses who could kill you in one shot before you realized they were there. How is having to spend those extra hours regaining your gear or regaining the exp "challenging", as opposed to "annoying and cheap"?

I don't get what the big deal of "Run around get killed, come back to life and do it all over again" is. If you make the game actually challenging instead of cheaply punishing, and it takes someone 147 deaths before they figure out what they were doing wrong and beat the encounter, why is the extra 10 hours it took them not punishment enough?

Re:Challenge != Punishment

[Draek]

It's challenging because you're encouraged to think how to beat the enemies, instead of simply grinding a huge mob one enemy at a time, dying, respawning, and repeating everything all over again. Now, I don't like the idea of losing your gear either (though it seems EVE managed to implement that quite well), but I don't see the problem with Diablo 2's EXP loss, or Guild Wars' Death Penalty in which you get lowered max HP and Energy until you either return to a town or kill enough enemies without dying to compensate.

MMOs are already "punishing" enough as timesinks, they do not need additional punishment for what is supposed to be FUN!

Then maybe what you need to fix is MMOs being punishing timesinks, instead of worrying that some people want the game to actually need some skill? beats me why people simply accept weekend-long grinds as a way of life in MMOs, yet cry foul against anything resembling challenge.

Re:Challenge != Punishment

[Chris Burke]

It's challenging because you're encouraged to think how to beat the enemies, instead of simply grinding a huge mob one enemy at a time, dying, respawning, and repeating everything all over again.

It either requires strategy to beat the enemies, or it doesn't. Having a penalty for death doesn't change that. If your problem is that it's possible to kill one enemy, die, then return to one less enemy than before, well take heart, because even in care-bear WoW the hardest mob packs and all boss encounters will fully respawn after you die and most mobs respawn after a period of time. That's not a penalty, that's reseting the encounter, and clearly not all you're asking for.

Now, I don't like the idea of losing your gear either (though it seems EVE managed to implement that quite well), but I don't see the problem with Diablo 2's EXP loss, or Guild Wars' Death Penalty in which you get lowered max HP and Energy until you either return to a town or kill enough enemies without dying to compensate.

You see a big problem with timesinks, but don't see a problem with forcing players to re-play many hours of gameplay to return to the exact same point they were? Isn't that the definition of a treadmill, running to stay in place? And especially in the context of Diablo II, where the game was ridiculously easy 99% of the time, and then you'd get a cheap insta-death that would result in the exp penalty. This is your idea of a good system?

See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You aren't trying to make the game an actual challenge. You're trying to make it punishing. The actual difficulty of the game isn't the issue, it's that if you fail for whatever reason (lag, cheap insta-deaths, oh and hey maybe actual challenge) that you are penalized.

That's not challenge, that's just stupid.

Then maybe what you need to fix is MMOs being punishing timesinks, instead of worrying that some people want the game to actually need some skill? beats me why people simply accept weekend-long grinds as a way of life in MMOs, yet cry foul against anything resembling challenge.

I agree completely that MMOs need to reduce the timesinks and find another way to keep players paying monthly fees, however I disagree entirely with your concept that "need some skill" means "are punished if you screw up". Because they are not and never will be the same. If you can't make a game challenging without making it punishing, then you suffer from a greater lack of imagination than the game designers who can't get rid of timesinks. Since the only thing I've heard from you regarding the concept of "challenge" is "penalty", I feel confident that this is the case.

Besides, if you think death penalties make for greater "challenge", then as far as I'm concerned nothing less than perma-death is acceptable. Nethack, or gtfo. What, scared of the challenge?

Re:Challenge != Punishment

[joranbelar]

Where's the "+6 Took the words out of my mouth" mod?

Re:Challenge != Punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I don't like the idea of losing your gear either (though it seems EVE managed to implement that quite well), but I don't see the problem with Diablo 2's EXP loss, or Guild Wars' Death Penalty in which you get lowered max HP and Energy until you either return to a town or kill enough enemies without dying to compensate.

In WAR, if you die in PVE you get a debuff that lasts for 15 minutes that reduces your maximum health and action points. If you die again, the debuff stacks (up to five times I think?). No amount of killing with fix it, only way to get rid of it besides waiting is to return to an outpost (town, warcamp, etc) and pay a healer.

In RVR, there is no penalty. The challenge isn't in dying hurting you, the challenge is in conflict with another player. Depending on what you are doing, such as scenarios or storming a keep or other objective, if you don't get a rez and have to respawn at the nearest healer, the realm that killed you has the advantage in that it takes you some amount of time to run back and get into the fray. This means people won't be afraid of trying RVR stuff.

All in all, they did a good job. Like somebody said before, a penalty is not the same as a challenge. A penalty effectively prevents people from even attempting something challenging.

Re:Challenge != Punishment

[Dog-Cow]

I have to disagree with Diablo II. I played Hardcore exclusively, and you really don't get much more of a death penalty than losing your character. And there were plenty of times I didn't have anyone set to be able to loot me, either. I still never stopped playing because of that.

Of course, in a game where you can get to level 40ish in a single night and be able to solo Baal on Nightmare in an 8 player game, it didn't really matter all that much.

Re:Challenge != Punishment

[Chris Burke]

I still never stopped playing because of that.

So you're just disagreeing with the "drives people away" part. Sure, fine, I was saying it only did that to some people, wasn't really my point. My point was that it's a stupid way to create "challenge", and I think D2 especially exemplifies this because the game was so frickin easy (until you stood to close to a corpse in the Halls of Vaught or whatever it was called you know what I mean). I guess it kept you from completely falling asleep, which I suppose is "challenging" sometimes when grinding out level 98?

Anyway, yeah, I thought the exp penalties in nightmare and hell were stupid, and if you really wanted a penalty for death, you should play Hardcore.

I of course would never do that because of what a cheap game it was. But I love playing hardcore (the only option) in Nethack. :)

Re:Challenge != Punishment

[Draek]

It either requires strategy to beat the enemies, or it doesn't. Having a penalty for death doesn't change that. If your problem is that it's possible to kill one enemy, die, then return to one less enemy than before, well take heart, because even in care-bear WoW the hardest mob packs and all boss encounters will fully respawn after you die and most mobs respawn after a period of time. That's not a penalty, that's reseting the encounter, and clearly not all you're asking for.

Having not played WoW, I can't speak from experience there, but that does sound like a reasonable "reason to avoid dying". As is having a death penalty. Though it must be noted that with reseting the encounter you're forced not to die *ever* during a battle, whereas with DP you can die during a large battle, it's just that the rewards will be lower.

You see a big problem with timesinks, but don't see a problem with forcing players to re-play many hours of gameplay to return to the exact same point they were? Isn't that the definition of a treadmill, running to stay in place? And especially in the context of Diablo II, where the game was ridiculously easy 99% of the time, and then you'd get a cheap insta-death that would result in the exp penalty. This is your idea of a good system?

Yup. Because in Diablo 2, IIRC, you could never lose a level due to DP so all you needed to permanently advance was to avoid dying long enough to gain a level. The true problem with that system is that it becomes useless after the character reaches his max level, though, which is why I prefer Guild Wars' method.

See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You aren't trying to make the game an actual challenge. You're trying to make it punishing. The actual difficulty of the game isn't the issue, it's that if you fail for whatever reason (lag, cheap insta-deaths, oh and hey maybe actual challenge) that you are penalized.

I'm trying to make it punishing for those who fail, hence giving an incentive not to, hence giving an actual, tangible reason for people to improve their skills at the game instead of having a situation where whoever spends the most time in the game wins.

I agree completely that MMOs need to reduce the timesinks and find another way to keep players paying monthly fees, however I disagree entirely with your concept that "need some skill" means "are punished if you screw up". Because they are not and never will be the same.

True, but a small form of "punishment" can help turn a game from "can be played skillfully and succeed" to "has to be played skillfully to succeed", and many of us prefer the latter category of games. Plus, I've yet to play a RPG without some sort of DP that can't be won through mindless grinding.

If you can't make a game challenging without making it punishing, then you suffer from a greater lack of imagination than the game designers who can't get rid of timesinks.

But why would you want to? as above, it changes the feel of the game, and IMO, for the better.

Besides, if you think death penalties make for greater "challenge", then as far as I'm concerned nothing less than perma-death is acceptable. Nethack, or gtfo. What, scared of the challenge?

I like Nethack a lot, thankyouverymuch, but lag and such can be a bitch, which is why I generally don't like any sort of non-reversible DP and perma-death is the best example of that.

I predict...

[Daswolfen]

this well be an Epic Fail. It only appeals to the same crowd as Conan did.. and you saw how THAT went.

Sure, WoW may lose a few, but at over 10 million, we can afford to.

Re:I predict...

[DigitalSorceress]

With any luck, it will take some griefers/gankers with it... good riddance.

Re:I predict...

[Dog-Cow]

I predict that you will find yourself ostracized for being a complete and total idiot.

Darkfall Online

[Mushukyou]

www.darkfallonline.com That will be tearing up all of these lame games. It hasn't been widely publicized, but it has everything we've wanted for a long time. Full loot. Full PVP. No levels, skill-based. Build houses, cities.

Re:Darkfall Online

[Anonymous Coward]

All of which adds up to "Ultima Online ten years ago". Your bland, derivative little attempt at an MMO won't even register on WOW's radar.

Re:Darkfall Online

[toolie]

No levels, skill-based.

It failed before it even started. You can't have skill based systems in PVP games, it doesn't work. The players who want to do PVP are shoehorned into a few builds to even have a chance in PVP which then completely ruins the game for anybody not in those builds. See SWG CM/R or the Fencer/Dodge build for references.

Re:Darkfall Online

[Mushukyou]

Oh no way! You CAN have skill-based in PVP! In fact, it's MUCH better than lvl! With lvl you have COMPLETE inequality. With skill-based and a mixture of FPS, you have a LOT more fairness. I don't think you read much about it before you commented. You have to realize that this will be the first game of its kind out. You really can't base it by referring to other games. It'll be out this year, so you shall see!

Time-intensive activities?

[goodmanj]

their desire to keep time-intensive activities to a minimum.

Interesting business model, Mythic. After the players blow through your content in the first four weeks, where do you expect your *second* month of subscriptions to come from?

That's the thing about WoW. Most of it is fun to play. The parts that aren't so fun are there to guarantee money hats for Blizzard's stockholders.

Re:Time-intensive activities?

[Dog-Cow]

RvR. It has been keeping DAoC alive, even though DAoC has severe flaws that can't be fixed in-place. WAR fixes those flaws.

It really is a cool game, no really

[zipherx]

I played wow for way to long, and also dark age of Camelot for way to long. This game is by far nothing to do with wow, except for the general mmopg terms that is derived. But that is hard not to like, as it makes it easier. Also many of the trivial things, is solved very elegantly.

Good it is really cool to do some real pvp again, i missed it for all the time in wow... no bonus for anyone but yourself, is just lame, now you can fight for something more than yourself.
very refreshing game style, and the game is the most polished release i have seen to date, hands down.

Intresting stuff!

[yoshi_mon]

I actually just got off the WoW treadmill after nearly 4 years. Had nothing to do with WAR but I just finally was like I'm done with this.

And an interesting reason why is because off...PvP! You see I actually played WoW for mostly it's PvE aspect. I mean the PvP in WoW was OK but having been someone who PvPed in RTS games mostly it's balance was always so laughable I never took it seriously. I mean at the end of 1.x I was in a Naxx level guild and could go PvP with my geared to the 9's Shaman, and all my geared up buddys, and just destroy other people. Let's not get into class balance.

So enter 2.0 and the Arenas and what it did to the PvP, and eventual PvE, part of the game. Now a whole new level of gear imbalance was introduced with class balance being put under a huge microscope. Because no matter how you slice it the classes were never originally designed to be balanced for dueling in a box. So on such a small scale, like the 2v2 bracket, it was just a joke. I was rolling with now a Feral Druid main and it was a freaking daily thing to watch the "amg damn OP Druids" crap start up. Rare was it that they would qualify that it was not my spec that was the problem.

But even worse was the sense of entitlement that 'our new PvPing overlords' felt about class balance. Because they were PvPing it was 'game breaking slaps to the face' when their ideas about balance were not addressed. Never mind how what they might propose would do to the PvE aspect of the game. "This game is not about PvE anymore," was an oft quoted phrase.

I could go on here but I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think it's cool that WAR has been designed from the ground up with PvP (sounds more like RvR to me but what do I know) in mind. But I don't think they understand part of the appeal of WoW's PvP system. That it currently is imbalanced and people like that. Want to pwn? Level up the latest FOTM and faceroll to victory. It's not really as easy as all that but close enough that it's been working pretty good to keep those who think WoW has always had some sort of PvP background happy just because it had the word war in it's title.

It's about time...

[ZackZero]

... that another mainstream fantasy setting entered the play, and even moreso because it's a generally darker setting than nearly all other fantasy RPG settings. This'll be good.

Also, obligatory comment: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" (Translation: "We be comin' fer ye, ye insensitive clods!")

No Native OS X client

[Zuato]

So I'm passing for the time being.

Yes, I know I can boot camp it or use Parallels, but I just don't feel like messing with Windows on my Mac when other MMOs have native OS X Clients (WoW and Eve Online are two big ones).

Hope it does well

[V50]

I have no intention of buying or even really trying it, but as a big WoW fan, I hope it does well. Competition, or at least, the fear of competition from this and AoC appear to have made Blizzard make some really nice changes to the game. I'd love for Blizzard to have an active and large competitor.

So, while I'm sticking with WoW, because I love my pally and have been playing Warcraft series games since around 94 or 95, I hope it does well, people have fun playing it, and the WAR team comes up with some good ideas for Blizzard to copy. :)

Re:Hope it does well

[Exitar]

Nerf retradin!

Re:Hope it does well

[Mushukyou]

Well buddy, darkfallonline.com will be coming out this year. I'd like to tell you that it's competition so you can get your hopes up about WoW changes, but to tell you the truth, WoW won't be able to touch it. And let me tell you this, that there are so many changes WoW would have to undergo to even TOUCH what Darkfall will be doing, that you might as well change over to Darkfall once it comes out later this year. So let me tell you this, that WoW is just an AOL for the people that don't know any better. But once Darkfall hits, only the carebears will be left on WoW. Just wanted to give you a heads up before you realize that you have no idea what just hit the gaming community.

Re:Hope it does well

[Anonymous Coward]

What will be your rationale, I wonder, when Darkfall's release has come and gone and failed to affect WOW in the slightest?

Some minor change to the game that you don't approve of that suddenly "doomed" it, like a nerf to your favorite character type?

The ever-popular cry of "fanbois" being somehow responsible (the term, after all, has never actually meant anything but "someone who likes that thing that I don't")?

Or perhaps some big shadowy conspiracy on Blizzard's part?

It will surely be anything other than the truth - that you were completely wrong about Darkfall being the "WOW-killer" that you fantasized about.

"A bit like batman"

[justinlee37]

Whoever wrote the article summary is a fucking idiot. That quote is entirely out of context, and without the context it makes absolutely NO fucking sense.

For the benefit of Warhammer's PR campaign, here is the question from the interview that the quote was taken from:

Eurogamer: How are the Games Workshop fans responding to the game?

Paul Barnett: Pretty good actually. Warhammer's a bit like Batman. As long as you stay true to the spirit of Batman, then Batman fans don't mind if it's Lego or if it's a cartoon or if it's a film. If you go off-canon, if you show disrespect to the idea, they get a bit funny. We actually went out of our way to try and capture Warhammer as it should be in an MMO.

They didn't

[Snaller]

The chose the name only a few years ago, they could have picked any other name - regardless of what it is based on - like movies do a lot of the time.

Re:They didn't

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they really couldn't. When you make a game based on a popular franchise, you damn well name it after the franchise if you want to take advantage of its popularity.

Re:They didn't

[MistrBlank]

Except they called it Warhammer Age of R....whatever. They purposely pushed the shortname to be W.A.R. WAR. They're banking on the shortname like World of Warcraft is to WoW. That alone made me laugh.

Lost revenue?

[oDDmON oUT]

It's been in development "for years" and there's no Apple version?

Blizzard had that from the get-go, so does Spore.

Looks like EA needs to catch a clue, since some estimates of planned purchases of name brand computers now have Mac approaching 30%.

That looks like a potentially large chunk of revenue to be losing out on.

Re:Lost revenue?

[AndrewStephens]

It's not so much the lost revenues from sales to Apple users (which will be low compared to Windows) that they should be worried about. MMOG are by nature group games, I want to play with my friends. Even if 10 of us are using Windows, if one of my friends can't play because of the lack of a Mac version then we will find another game.

This is one thing that Blizzard understands, and it has made them a lot of money. I would be surprised if Mac users make 10% of their revenue for WoW, but the addition to their total revenue due having multiple versions will be huge.

server locations

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the fact that they have an AU server is the biggest thing.

PvP in wow sucks for anyone not in the sub 250 latency. It's hard to hit any target that moved half a second before you even got a chance to react.

PvP can never be done right as long as there is a disparity in latency. Having said that WoW is not very good at PvP once you understand how its won and lost.....

IE if you get stunned or snared as melee its all over.... If you get in melee range as a caster its all over...If you do not find this to be the case then someone didn't do something right or theres a latency issue.

Add it to the stack?

[Clockwinder]

Should I buy this game..and add it to my fucking $200.00 stack of failed or failing MMORPGS that I didn't play longer than 30 days.

DDO (Dungeons and dragons online) - Much Hype, no fun, only group play to do anything..boring.

LOTRO (Lord of the rings online)- Much Hype Great graphics..stutter play..no one around..Bored again.

VANGUARD - Talk about hype..holy shit this was THE one, Nice graphics, ok game play,very buggy, not many people stayed.. got bored again.

AOC( Age of Connan) - Again Much Hype, Ok graphics, again got bored, everyone bailed.

WARHAMMER - MUCH HYPE AGAIN? - whats gonna happen? great graphics, great PvP, but will people get bored again and bail?

I played all the above games, I tried to like them, I spent considerable time playing, grouped with people etc. The problem is these games are trying to compete with games like WOW and EQ2 that have had years to fix bugs and make things work smoothly, these new games have lots of things wrong and most people don't want to sit thorough the bug fix process of a year or two as they refine the games. I might be spoiled by the finish and graphics of EQ2..I still play that and Eve Online. I am still looking for a replacement, but I'm not going to be so fast to jump aboard the HYPE MACHINE. Ill keep my eye on Warhammer, but Im not buying in YET!!

Re:Add it to the stack?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Failed or failing" does not mean "I quit playing it". You do not represent anyone.

I will never play a Mythic Game again.

[Varchild]

I (unfortunately) have first hand experience with this gaming 'company'. This is the same company that discriminates against different religions in their games. Mythic should stick to what they were pathetic at, Dark Age of Camelot.

Anybody tried running it in Wine?

[ZarathustraDK]

Does it look like it'll have any feasable chance of running in Wine on linux?

Re:Anybody tried running it in Wine?

[FrozenFOXX]

At the moment, no. Also trying CrossOver Games, no such luck.

Problem appears to be in the winhttp.dll functionality. Not fully implemented and doing an override doesn't help.

CodeWeavers say they'll "hopefully" be looking into it as right now they're working on LOTRO. I have to say, from what I've been playing on a windows box I have lying around they could not get it functional fast enough.

Why I like it better than WoW

[DetpackJump]

I've played both the beta and head start for a little bit. Here are my thoughts

-I've completed all my quests without ever once having to go through the pain of getting a group together. The public quests are GREAT. Just jump right in and start fighting. They also have a concept of open groups, where you enter a new area and it tells you about any player groups you can immediately join.
-I have yet to worry about grinding for mats. To craft a talisman, I don't need to mine ore for an hour, then buy mats on the AH. Instead stuff comes naturally while doing the quests.
-It actually feels like a world.... at war. There is destruction everywhere, fighting everywhere. Invading enemy cities is encourged. WoW got to the point where it felt like a couple of Humans would get bored and call on some Orcs for a game of flag football.
-The races aren't wimped down. The bad guys really feel like bad guys. The orcs aren't struggling to find their place in the world, they just want to kill things.
-The races and classes are all very different. This game can't cop out and make both major sides mirror images of each other.
-It feels like a game, not a job.

Still not playing

[nikanj]

The EU site is utter crap, I'm still not playing because I was unable to activate either the beta or the headstart. Don't think I'll be picking up the CE, although I did pre-order it.

It lets gankers feel better

[Moraelin]

Well, as far as I can tell after more than a decade and a half of MUDs and MMOs: the argument isn't about what it would do for you. The "I want penalties for death" argument really boils down to "I want to be even more annoying when I gank you."

So, yes, it didn't do anything for _you_ when you got ganked in lag in UO. It did make some troll with no other achievement in life feel great about himself, though. Yay, that's another player annoyed. For some people that's the only attention they'll ever get.

XP for PvP - bots

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get XP for PvPing, isn't it like saying "everyone please use bots to level" ?

Re:XP for PvP - bots

[Dog-Cow]

No.

If they focus on PVP...

[aapold]

I'm not interested. Heck, if there is any PVP considerations that have any impact upon the PVE game, I'm not interested. No, I don't want a game with "PVP done right". The only way I wouldn't mind PVP is if somehow it excluded the PVP crowd, or at least the ones who complain on forums to the point where they make changes and ruin the rest of the game. I have played over ten MMORPGs, I can only think of one that wasn't poisoned by PVP (ATITD).

Re:If they focus on PVP...

[immcintosh]

Most previous MMOs have been PvE games, balanced around PvE, with PvP tacked on as an afterthought. I can only think of just a couple exceptions, which judging by your statement aren't games you're coming from.

Warhammer, on the other hand, is a PvP game with PvE balanced around the PvP. That's not to say PvE feels tacked on in this game like PvP does in others (they did some really cool things with PvE I think), although it is clear that the greatest effort went into the PvP core.

All of that is by way of saying, if you just absolutely detest PvP, Warhammer may not be for you. Then again, I know a lot of people who hated PvP and were strict PvE'ers, but after trying it in Warhammer thought, "Wow, this is actually FUN!" If, on the other hand, you're worried about PvP breaking the PvE, then don't, because the PvE is balanced around the game's PvP core to begin with.

Re:If they focus on PVP...

[aapold]

You misunderstand. Its not the PVP ruleset I despise. Its the PVP playerbase.

Re:If they focus on PVP...

[immcintosh]

My point was partly there is no PvP playerbase in WAR, since the entire game is PvP. Really, having a game that is built around PvP at its core affects a lot more than just the mechanics. I'm going to guess that what you object to the most is the ganker type--people who seem to PvP just in order to make other people miserable. Those people are probably going to steer clear, because that kind of behavior is actually disallowed by game mechanic (you get turned into a 1 health chicken if you try to kill people in a lower level bracket than yourself). Again, a lot changes when a game is built around PvP from the outset.

in other news

[matrixownsyou]

In other news, Mythic "massivly" rips off WoW, WoW players don't have time to play Warhammer due to Kara raids ...

Not WoW

[doomicon]

Comparing WoW to WAR is difficult to say the least. Fundamentally at their core, they are completely different games. WoW is a PVE game, endgame content is focused on PVE Raids. WAR is a PVP/RVR game, focus is on Realm vs. Realm combat.

If you are a PVE endgame raiding junky, and NEVER PVP, then WAR isn't the game for you. Questing in WAR is no different than any other MMO.

If you like PVP, whereas you grind out Uber Gear to give yourself a distinct advantage over opponents, and you want to be a solo superstar ganking machine.. WAR is NOT FOR YOU!

If you like GROUP BASED PVP, PVP That matters to the overall goal, and battles won/lost effect the world, where you have to rely on the group and group tactics (forming lines, choke points, for one because this game contains collision dectection), WAR will be for you.

Just mah $0.02, ya I'm oldsk001

Amen

[Moraelin]

This is the same company that discriminates against different religions in their games.

Amen, I was pissed off too when I heard they won't let me worship Khorne ;)

Re:Amen

[An ominous Cow art]

That's because they don't want the chat channels to be filled with vicious arguments between the Cob sect and the Popped sect.

Re:I already played WARHAMMER

[Dog-Cow]

When you appear intelligent on an online forum, it doesn't really mean much, as anyone can Google or visit Wikipedia. However, looking like an idiot online generally indicates that you're really an idiot.

Old School Warhammer

[UberHoser]

I remember playing Warhammer back in the 80's. I still have all of the figurines for my Chaos Dwarf Army. If you look at my book collection, a LOT of it is from the Black Library (Warhammer Fantasy and 40k).

I am so going to go out tonight and pick this up. I am pretty burned out on Warcraft, because of the innane amount of grinding, daily quest and wipefests in BT. I play an alliance pally in WOW, and even thought I like the class, I HATE the omg I could be a healer/dps/tank, and therefore I need gear for all three specs, because my guild needs me as a healer/tank/dps. And oh boy, Wrath of the Lich King does not look that appealing to me, because it is more of the same "rush to max lvl so you don't get left behind for raids etc..."

So yeah, going to buy it tonight and play it this weekend. And yes I am going to play Destruction !

Oh and read Years of Yarncraft over at Sluggy.com Pete nailed WOW.

Quick update on game buying overhead

[dwpro]

Just bought the game based on positive /. feedback. Brought it home, rippped dvd to file ( no problem) and installed. After installation, was redirected to their website to sign up for an account.

Tried to create an account without giving up my credit card 3 times and finally gave up and went to the store to buy a $32 two month pass to play this game. Right now I'm 52% into a patch, have spent nearly 3 hours and out ~$100. Hope it is worth it.

Re:having "war" in the name probably isn't the...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because WOW is a tabletop game ripping off Warhammer, which *totally* invented the entire fantasy genre and everything in it.

Just because PA makes a joke doesn't make it true. They also had some boilerplate "lol shaman OP" WOW comic, because they were alliance, and like all alliance, QQ non-stop about the grass on the other side. Now alliance get shaman too, and it's universally considered the weakest class in the game, with the fewest people playing it.

Even the PA comic itself shows both sides...Gabe thinks, rightly so, that Warhammer is a direct ripoff of the WOW mmo. If Blizzard made a tabletop game (i think they even did?) and it was a direct knockoff of Warhammer, then you'd have a point. In this case you absolutely don't.

Re:having "war" in the name probably isn't the...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because WOW is a tabletop game ripping off Warhammer, which *totally* invented the entire fantasy genre and everything in it.

Yes, because anybody ever said anything even remotely resembling that.

Newsflash, jackass: The "ripoff" claim comes from the exceedingly similar art direction and character design, not from some "hey Warhammer totally invented fantasy" bullshit that you chose to invent out of thin air. By resorting to that strawman, and also by trotting out the lie that "it's not a tabletop game" makes any sort of difference, you're screaming at the top of your lungs your acknowledgment that your parent poster is 100% correct.

They didn't...

[Snaller]

They chose the name only a few years ago, they could have picked any other name - regardless of what it is based on - like movies do a lot of the time.

And they did make up the name, Warhammer Age of Rubbish (or something, don't get hysterical kids) - hoping for a shortening of the name like Wow