A Look At the Warhammer Community

Gamasutra is running a story examining the development of the Warhammer Online community since its recent launch. The author explains how the gameplay and rules tend to affect social interaction. GamerDNA has a related piece looking at numbers for actual players involved with Warhammer's launch, and how it's affecting populations in other MMOs. "Getting on the computer to play WAR apparently reminded the WAR fanatics that they had a computer, because overall, their gameplay went up as a whole. They logged in more often to titles like COD4, Oblivion, and even AOC. But the MMO bug bit hard, and logins to LOTRO and EVE more than doubled after the launch of WAR."

Comments

ok, its not wow

[Gewalt]

Ok, its not wow. So is it better or worse than wow? 'cause one is going to cannibalize the other.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think it's better than WoW. Some think it's not as good as WoW.
I can almost guarantee you that no matter how good it is, WoW won't go down the drain. I can also almost guarantee that WAR won't go down, either.
WoW has a big enough player base to lose some members to WAR and not suffer. WAR has a solid player base already, and as more people get to try it, more people will come over.
People are too comfortable in WoW for this to be a WoW killer, and WAR is far too good of a game to flounder. I doubt WAR will have the player base that WoW has, but it will live on.

Re:ok, its not wow

[SL Baur]

It does not sound like it. WoW did not take a hit and WAR appears to be off to a nice start. More like two different games for two different kinds of people.

There's speculation in one of TFAs that WAR grew the market for MMOs by drawing people back in who were bored with everything.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Dutch Gun]

It does not sound like it. WoW did not take a hit and WAR appears to be off to a nice start. More like two different games for two different kinds of people.

Maybe yes, maybe no. If you think about it, it would probably take several months before you'd see any sort of decline in WoW (if that were to happen). WoW players would not be so quick to turn off their accounts - it could be they want to give WAR a few months to see if they want to permanently move over.

The safe bet is that WAR ends up being a relatively niche (albeit successful) also-ran, while WoW continues it's reign as online juggernaut, but who knows? I remember back when Everquest was king. It's not like the title can't change hand. But I just don't see WAR having the mass appeal that WoW has. No, I think it will be a different game that eventually dethrones WoW - probably one that no one is predicting.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Kingrames]

In an ironic twist of events, WAR became sentient, logged on to world of warcraft, created a forsaken rogue, killed a player named "wow", and then used cannibalism on its corpse.

The resulting paradox crashed the server.

Re:ok, its not wow

[bonch]

I'll throw my opinion on the table--it's better than WoW. The game is full of "why didn't someone think of this before" ideas, which was the same impression WoW used to give. There's always something to do, which is really nice. However, if you are really into the EverQuest formula of raiding for gear, it is not for you. It's a large-scale PvP game.

More importantly, there's no Arena. This makes class balancing easier because the PvP is designed for group play, and you rarely come across people alone. There's also no downtime as you wait in a queue. Scenarios have queues, but you can enter those queues anywhere, so you just quest and do other things until a queue pops up. All of these things are giving you experience and renown, so you don't feel like you're wasting your time.

The Arena is Blizzard's attempt to turn WoW into Starcraft and get on Korean television. It's really affected the game in drastic ways. The criticisms have been listed countless times before, and there's no need for me to recite them. This thread on the official forums, which reached its post limit, sums it up well: Goblin In The Tuxedo (and here is a second thread that continued the discussion).

Keen and Graev have been describing their Warhammer experience as their guild hits the tier 4 content.

Re:ok, its not wow

[bonch]

One hit that WoW took was a drop in Arena players. Whether due to leaving for other games or due to increased ratings requirements on gear, the bottom dropped out in Arena's ranked system as people decided to just grind for the available battleground honor gear. Blizzard is now going to put Arena requirements on that gear, too, so you will be forced to do the Arena even if you don't like it just to fill out the ranks of the Arena, which depends on those lower-ranked players.

It should be noted that Blizzard stated earlier this year that they did lose players to Age of Conan. Those players, however, returned when they found out Age of Conan wasn't finished. Thankfully, Warhammer's endgame content is in the game.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Alexandra Erenhart]

You're forgetting that in a month WoW is releasing their next xpac. People *will* go back to WoW even if it's only to check out what's new. So I don't think anything said will be definitive till the WoW population stabilizes after the release of wrath of the lich king

Re:ok, its not wow

[secolactico]

The game is full of "why didn't someone think of this before" ideas

Indeed. The public quests and open parties, for example (at least they are new to me) make *very* easy to jump onto a group and start playing (not that you can't play solo, mind you).

Of course it also has a couple of "who the heck came up with this crap?" ideas. The cultivation profession, for example. Whoever thought of that one needs to be taken out back and flogged. In fact, the whole crafting system seems underdone. They could have left it out and brought in when complete in a future patch or expansion.
 

Re:ok, its not wow

[SL Baur]

People *will* go back to WoW even if it's only to check out what's new.

Yup.

Another thing to consider is that most of us who make up the rank and file of paying customers are NOT looking for another game. Blizzard has gone a long ways to cater to folks like me who have somewhat limited entertainment time in a week AND they have the consideration to give top support for Mac so I can play games on a Unix-based computer.

I got my wife involved recently (level 29 Fury spec Warrior, the last 9 levels without my help w00t!) and she loves it, including the battlegrounds.

Warhammer looks like it has impressed a number of people, but does it really need to be a WoW killer to be a success? I don't think so. Years of an Intel/Microsoft monopoly in the consumer computer market I think have dulled people's memories to what it was like when there was true competition. By the way, it's fascinating reading how Roger Bannister first broke a 4-minute mile. He used two "rabbits" as competition to keep him on pace. Competition is a Good Thing.

MMOs are fascinating. I hope they keep improving.

Re:ok, its not wow

[SL Baur]

No, I think it will be a different game that eventually dethrones WoW - probably one that no one is predicting.

Given how much the hardcore gamers on Slashdot hate WoW, I would also predict that it is a game that is loathed here.

<sarcasm>Do you see this Ornate Khorium Rifle in my hands? Well, do you punk? Back away from the keyboard, cancel your subscription to any other MMO online game besides World of Warcraft and join the online sensation that more people enjoy than any other game. DO IT NOW!</sarcasm>

This whole discussion with regards to Warhammer being a WoW killer is kind of silly. IMO. I am a loyal Blizzard customer and WoW player, but I have no wish for WoW to destroy every new game that comes to market.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. The public quests and open parties, for example (at least they are new to me) make *very* easy to jump onto a group and start playing (not that you can't play solo, mind you).

Of course it also has a couple of "who the heck came up with this crap?" ideas. The cultivation profession, for example. Whoever thought of that one needs to be taken out back and flogged. In fact, the whole crafting system seems underdone. They could have left it out and brought in when complete in a future patch or expansion.

Yes. Cultivation is somewhat tedious.

Other stuff that is annoying is the Chat system and Mail system. Whoever did these needs to go play WoW for oh say, I don't know, 15 minutes, and then come back and write a paper titled "Things I could do to improve the Chat and Mail systems that would have been bloody obvious in the first place if I wasn't an oblivious prat."

Re:ok, its not wow

[Eskarel]

The thing is that realistically it does need to be a WoW killer, or at least a serious WoW competitor.

There's only so many entertainment dollars available, even in the best of times, and WoW is currently getting a relatively large chunk of that money.

Every time a new MMO fails to take even a small chunk of that market share investors are going to be more reluctant to fund a new one(having an MMO which will survive launch is expensive cause you need a lot of server resources).

Personally I'm thinking of switching from WoW to WAR because I'm getting a little sick of WoW and I don't see WotLK fixing what's wrong with WoW.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Bieeanda]

There's only so many entertainment dollars available, even in the best of times, and WoW is currently getting a relatively large chunk of that money.

I haven't seen this argument since 2001, and it's just as wrong now as it was then. First, the market is not saturated by any means.

Second, looking at WoW's numbers as a benchmark is lunacy. The average subscription-based MMO has between 100,000 and 300,000 subscribers, not the flat millions that WoW does. An MMO can survive with a player base in the tens of thousands, handily.

Third, MMO subscriptions are not utilities-- there is nothing stopping anyone from subscribing to multiple games simultaneously, and many players do so. Even with the economy tanking, two $15 subscriptions is a better deal than going to the movies a few times a month, and it's discretionary expenses like movies (or going out to dinner, or what have you) that usually get cut before quietly repeating ones like cable bills or MMO subs get canceled.

WoW is a prodigy. Treating it as competition is foolish-- it's too big to notice the smaller games, and its sheer popularity has secured the whole goddamn industry a space in the pop culture landscape. It hasn't cannibalized other games, it's singlehandedly expanded the whole damn hobby by orders of magnitude, and continues to draw in people who wouldn't have touched Asheron's Call, WAR, City of Heroes or anything else.

Re:ok, its not wow

[notamisfit]

Truer than you think. I remember a while back, someone took a look at NCSoft's numbers, and figured out that they make nearly as much money off of City of Heroes (~150,000 subs) as they do off of the sub-free Guild Wars (~5 million copies sold). EQ and Ultima Online are still operating and still at a profit despite a massive drop-off in populations (EQ for UO, and EQ2/WoW for EQ).

Money aside, though, the real issue at hand is that with Blizzard, like many other very successful entertainment ventures, the inmates are effectively running the asylum. It's not enough for WoW to be the biggest MMO ever, if the dev's aren't convinced that it's not the *best* MMO, they'll start rolling out the changes. Wintergrasp and the achievement system come to mind, especially considering that both were announced before WAR even went live.

Re:ok, its not wow

[SL Baur]

All excellent points. I'll only comment on one.

Third, MMO subscriptions are not utilities-- there is nothing stopping anyone from subscribing to multiple games simultaneously, and many players do so. Even with the economy tanking, two $15 subscriptions is a better deal than going to the movies a few times a month, and it's discretionary expenses like movies (or going out to dinner, or what have you) that usually get cut before quietly repeating ones like cable bills or MMO subs get canceled.

With the 6 month perpetual renewable plan, it's under US$12/month per player. Probably the best entertainment deal I've ever gotten in my life, given how much we've loved the game. And even better, since we're on a server that covers the Pacific Rim, we can do in game chats for free which beats the living daylights out of international long distance telephone calls or Yahoo! messenger which crashes constantly.

Re:ok, its not wow

[KDR_11k]

I'm not really sure, it looks to me like WoW has expanded into markets outside the basement dwellers that MMOs served before. WAR seems to me like it's aimed at the geeks and such so it'll be loved by the people who frequent Slashdot but most of the WoW userbase simply won't care.

Re:ok, its not wow

[RichiH]

Having no idea what that limit is, I clicked the magic blue text.

836 messages 'sum it up well'? I think I will pass on knowing what this is all about, thanks ;)

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

if the dev's aren't convinced that it's not the *best* MMO, they'll start rolling out the changes.

That's silly. No game, especially not a massively multiplayer game, can be all things to all people. WoW is about the bestest mass-market EQ clone you can make, and I doubt that anything but WoW2 will surpass it as that. But that's hardly the only route that MMORPGs can take. Just look back to UO circa 1997-2000. Love it or hate it, it was *very* different than any of the EQ/WoW-alikes on the market today. Or more recently Pirates of the Burning Sea, which is certainly flawed but also exciting and fresh in many ways.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Eskarel]

Well I disagree with this assessment.

For one, MMO's take time as well as money, and there's only so much of that too.

Secondly, personally, I'm much more likely to cancel a second MMO than I am to skip going out to the movies because going out to the movies is a different form of entertainment.

I only have the room in my time/money budget for one MMO, and I don't think I'm alone.

True, this probably isn't the case for single folks with no lives, or whose entire social network plays the game with them, but those people aren't the bread and butter of what makes WoW what it is. Most of the difference between WoW and everyone else is that WoW works for the people who wouldn't play anything else.

Those are the people that the company that's going to finance/publish your MMO want, because they want that gigantic pot of money. Creating a new MMO that'll appeal to a couple of hundred thousand people world wide and pay for itself is fairly easy, even Sony can do it, but that's not what the publishers want.

If nothing competes with WoW the MMO industry will languish because why bother, there are plenty of ways to make money with less risk, and less up-front cost. Everyone will play WoW(or WoW 2) and nothing will ever change.

The industry needs a WoW killer, because the industry needs to feel that they have a chance at some of that money.

Based on what they charge folks in the western world, Blizzard has got to be pulling in over 150 million dollars a month in subscription fees, that's more than a billion dollars a year, most of which, realistically, is pure profit. Everyone wants a piece of that, and despite your "$15 isn't an awful lot of money to pay twice" almost no one is getting it. There's some folks out there who will subscribe to multiple MMO's, and there's another 9-10 million who won't.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to read only the two first posts on the thread. The other 834 messages are saying how much they agree with what is said there.

And I also agree with it. I won't stop playing Wow right now because there are some things that I like a lot, but in a not so far future I may be changing my mind and trying War.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Moraelin]

Well, before I start, "better" or "worse" are a matter of taste, so no telling if mine matches yours. You can't proclaim that a game is, in absolute terms and for everyone, better than another, any more than you could proclaim Pepsi to be better than Coke.

That said, and to start with the punchline: I'm not particularly impressed with WAR. I don't find it "bad" as such either. It even had some good ideas and a nicely different setting, but it obviously wasn't even finished before shoving it out the door, and nobody even tried to give it a good polish first.

Yes, it has some good ideas, like the public quests. But even then it doesn't take long to realize that that mechanic could have been better polished and tuned. Especially in the early stages there are zones where you just won't have the people to finish them with, especially in the ones where it being underfunded resulted in, say, not having a freaking tank in the area or having been blessed with an enemy which two-shots a tank and a lack of healers.

What nailed the PQs collective coffin for me, though, was the realization that you don't even need to actually do them. You can farm the reputation for the rewards by just killing the thrash mobs for stage one, waiting for it to reset, then doing it again. It's not exactly a heroic feeling, it's more like a new take on farming mobs. It gets old fast.

Even if you did go through the extra effort to actually finish it, well, let's just say a lot of times it goes like this:

Rolling for loot...
You have ranked 1st for contribution, got a gold medal and 500 bonus for the loot roll...
Rolling for loot...
You have ranked 10th and get no loot.

Well, gee, it makes me feel so special.

But basically it's not even about loot, it's about "why do I bother?" You could be the guy who stayed on the edge and watched the others fight, and get a prize, while the guy who tanked the boss gets no prize. And the points-based rewards could be done just the same by finding a less popular PQ and grinding the thrash mobs in stage 1. Even if I go through the extra effort, there's not much reason to feel proud about it: someone else got the same rewards with a lot less trouble.

The same applies to other aspects too. E.g., PvP. I create my first char and within 5 seconds I get a message on the screen in big letters that I got PvP renown ("honour" in WoW lingo) rank 2. At that point I didn't even know where I am and what am I doing, so I'm like, "Huh? What did I _do_? Did I step in a dwarf or something?"

What happened is that if someone captures an objective in the PvP sub-zone of a bigger map, everyone on the map gets the PvP points just the same.

Again, then why would I bother with PvP? The best way to get PvP renown is to simply park your character behind an inn or something in the PvE zone and go AFK. In fact, leave it there while you see a movie or over night. Eventually someone will go capture the flag or something, and you'll get the points just as well.

It's just hard to take a reward seriously when it can be obtained by just randomly being logged in at the right time, even when AFK.

I'll take a wild guess and say that the root of the problem is a schizophrenic design, which can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a PvP game or PvE too. If you're serious about equally suitable for PvE-only players, then let me freaking buy _some_ stuff without PvP points. (I've found no vendors where you can even get a basic sword without the equivalent of "honour". And, oh, they even have the equivalent of talents bought with PvP renown.) If it's only for PvP-ers, then say that already and let the rest of us know we don't have to bother. But the "solution" of giving PvP points to everyone, whether they PvP or not, is neither here not there. It cheapens the whole thing for both.

For PvP, it becomes a meaningless reward that everyone else gets just as well. Why would you bother? What are your bragging rights, if everyone else runs around in the same PvP gear and has th

Re:ok, its not wow

[Tridus]

That had more to do with arenas no longer having any reward for lower ranked players then it did Warhammer. There was simply no point in playing anymore, so they stopped.

Re:ok, its not wow

[vilgefortz]

Sou you are saying that people stop playing a MMORPG when there is no point anymore? That would be new, heh heh

Re:ok, its not wow

[stjobe]

Yeah, A for effort on the rant ;) F for facts, though :(

I'll just correct one of your misapprehensions for you: Yes, you get Renown points for free when your faction takes control of an RvR area. However, unless your RR (Renown Rank) is really low (say, below 2) it won't get you very far. Your plan of parking your character behind the inn won't work for several reasons, one being that it'd take forever to level your RR that way, the other that you'd be logged out after 15 minutes of idling. "The best way to get PvP renown" is to do RvR scenarios and open RvR, there's simply no other way to do it.

There's problems with the game ("Ability not yet ready" anyone?), but getting a very small amount of Renown points free isn't one of them.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Your stance on the PQs is incorrect. You can influence farm if you really want to but it rewards you better if you put the effort into completing all of the stages. The benefit of the PQ's is that it usually takes very little time to complete and each stage earns you more and more xp and influence. I have never had someone make a kill or two then run off actually win or beat out people for gear unless there were less people then loot bags. It sounds more like you watched ZP, decided to emulate him and ended up at Fail Train station. You come off as if you have played very little of the game. Also, complaining about unfairness towards PvE in an extremely PvP/RvR focused MMO is a little stupid, no?

And mentioning WoW, I guess you haven't heard of rage starvation or had to deal with combo points.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Eskarel]

Didn't say I don't have the money, said I won't spend it on a second MMO, I have other bills, and better things to do than spend money on yet another monthly fee for a game I won't have time to play.

I also pay to rent movies(don't get out to the movies very often admittedly, but it's expensive here).

I didn't say I needed it to be a WoW killer, I said that if MMO's as a genre are going to survive as anything more than an expensive to build/run niche product that one of them is going to have to steal some market share from WoW.

Fanbois don't matter, because as we've already established, the fanbois aren't what's important. What's important is those millions of people who signed up for WoW that no one ever thought would play an MMO. That's the market that every single one of the people paying for these things is trying to capture, even if their developers aren't.

World of Warcraft is the biggest entertainment money pot in the world. Hardware costs virtually nothing, on that scale software licenses are fairly cheap(for the few things they actually need licenses for), the kind of staffing they'd realistically need to keep it going is fairly low, bandwidth isn't even really all that expensive.

Realistically it can't be costing them much more than 200 million a year to keep the thing running and patched, and even if I'm wrong and it's costing them three times that they're still taking those costs out of 1.8 billion dollars in revenue.

That's why we have more MMO's than ever, because folks are willing to take a gamble to get that kind of money.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Mushukyou]

Darkfall will bring down WoW quite a bit.

Re:ok, its not wow

[An ominous Cow art]

> Given how much the hardcore gamers on Slashdot hate WoW, I would also predict that it is a game that is loathed here.

I don't know about that. The loathers can be vocal, but I don't think they constitute a majority among the people who care either way.

I enjoy(ed) WoW. I have 4 level 70s, and characters of every other class in the 61-65 range. I'm giving it a rest for a while and playing Warhammer. I'm enjoying Warhammer a lot, even the RvR aspect, which I didn't like very much in WoW.

Part of my enjoyment of Warhammer might be related to having chosen a 'Roleplay' server (Avelorn). I did that in an attempt to escape the d00dz and kiddiez and other annoyances of a normal WoW server. So far, so good. The spammers are annoying though, and despite EA/Mythic's banning efforts, I still get #$%^ing spams every few minutes.

I haven't canceled my WoW account. I have friends that still play it, and I plan to play it again once the new expansion comes out. But, for the moment at least, I'm really liking Warhammer.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Avatar8]

Read the third article linked.

No, War is not WoW; they have very different approaches. War is PvP centric, while WoW is PvE/co-op centric. They are attracting very different crowds. I like how the article points out that War is KEAS while WoW is EASK.

Looking at the charts in that third article, War is not affecting WoW and vice versa (at this early stage). I think the people tired of WoW already left, but I'll wager they come back for the expansion and we'll see WoW top 12 million in 6 months.

There's plenty of room for numerous MMO's catering to millions of players. It's not the same pool of one million that UO, EQ, DAoC and SWG fought over. Actually, it may be that same one million who are never satisfied and hop from game to game, but about 9 million players are WoW players, not MMO players.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Phrogman]

Well to post a counterpoint:

My wife and I both have subscriptions to WAR (or will when the free month is up) and both have active subscriptions to City of Heroes at the moment. My wife has a lifetime subscription to Lord of the Rings Online. I admit I will be likely cancelling my COH subscription - at least until issue 14 comes out at any rate, but there have been many times in the past when I had 2 active subscriptions going at any time, sometimes 3. The cost of doing so is far less than the cost of any other kind of entertainment, and about comparable with paying for cable.

Recently my wife and I decided to cut off our cable completely because we spend very little time watching TV shows that are live (due to the ads) and while we do PVR a lot of shows (so we can skip the ads etc), we aren't watching enough to justify it.

Certainly I would drop going to movies first before I did without my MMO gaming. Not that I play a lot, about an hour a night, perhaps 2. Certainly not more than what most people watch TV for.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Cultivation is fine. You plant a seed, give it soil, water, and nutrients while it grows, then harvest. Just like growing ma^H^Htomatoes. But of course they shorten the process to 1 to a few minutes depending on your skill and the type of plant.

So cultivation works just fine, in fact it's one of the few professions that is self-contained and does not require you to know players or have alts of 5 other crafting professions to supply you with mats (can you say TALISMAN MAKING).

Re:ok, its not wow

[brkello]

WAR has many flaws and I am interested to see how much it will be polished. But I think your criticism isn't correct. It has a lot more polish and a lot less bugs than most MMOs released. Some people even say it is more bug free than WoW. So unless you have been in a lot of MMO's early releases, you can't really compare and say that it was rushed out (EA or not).

A large part of your complaint deals with the Swordmaster type class. I don't really understand why you would complain. If you could use all your abilities, then it could be considered over-powered. So they make it so that you move from one tier to the next by chaining together moves. It would be just like having abilities in WoW be on the same cooldown timer. If you had access to 100% of your abilities all the time, then the class would be unbalanced.

I am sure I will get bored with it at some point. But right now I find the game to be fun. Bugs, lack of polish, etc doesn't really matter since I am enjoying playing the game. Every time I log in there is a new patch fixing bugs. It is an interesting time to be playing the game and I am interested to see how it will evolve.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Whorhay]

I'll see if I can't address some of your issues.

PQ's:
A. The way rewards are handed out does kind of suck in a way. The bonus for contributing can easily be nullified with a bad or average roll with a slacker just getting a really good roll at the same time. If you do a PQ a few times though you are likely to get a reward it's just a numbers issue. Maybe a higher modifier for contribution is warranted but the system still works.
B. So far on the destruction side, I have characters in each area, I haven't really noticed a problem with not being able to finish a PQ if there are enough people around. There not being enough people is directly relateable to WoW when you get a group quest that you can't manage to solo or requires more people than you seem to be able to round up. The closest I have come to not being able to finish a PQ when there was an appropriate number of players was in the Dark Elf area, no tank classes. But we still managed because there were enough healers that we could all stack our heals on whomever was tanking at the moment.
C. Influence rewards are earned from the influence for doing PQ's. So yes if all you want is the influence reward then go ahead and farm the influence however you wish.

Renown gain:
A. The points you recieved are a bonus to everyone in the zone when your faction gains control of all the zone's RvR Objectives. This happens pretty infrequently most of the time so relying on it as a strategy to level your renown is silly. Doing a single 15 minute scenario can net you far more renown than an event that might happen every few hours.
B. The amount of renown for the zone bonus makes less and less of a difference as you level. I of course am too lazy to do the numbers but you could possibly make the first 20 renown ranks in a year of AFK'ing 24/7 as you suggest. Hardly worthwhile as both of my rank 16 characters have had no trouble keeping their renown levels close to their rank levels.

Equipment without Renown rank:
A. The marketing for this game was all about the RvR aspects. I think they said they would have PvE but it was a sideline to the RvR.
B. I am pretty sure most PvE dropped equipment doesn't have a renown requirement. So if you want equipment that doesn't require RvR go check the Auction house in your capital city or farm mobs to your hearts content. Quest equipment might also not require renown, I don't really know because I've never had a problem with not having enough renown.
C. WoW never had worth while equipment purchaseable from vendors that didn't require end game raiding or PvP. You are playing an MMO, if you want to advance learn to network and take advantage of the fact you can play with others and trade stuff around. Try playing the game as it's designed and not how you wish it was designed before you complain about it not being well done.

Talents and Character customization:
A. There are two seperate ways in which you can earn "talents" of a sort. There are core mastery points that you earn every few levels starting at rank 11. These can be used for improving your classes core abilities and even purchasing a few extras in some cases. The other "talents" are from earning renown ranks and these can be spent to earn more stat points and such.
B. Even if you never earned renown rank 1 you could level to 40 and distribute all your core mastery points. The renown points you only get if you earn renown.
C. You didn't mention it but WAR has the ability for you to dye most of your visible equipment. Depending on your tastes this is or isn't well implemented. Some item slots have multiple areas you can dye. There is a smallish selection of dye's available from vendors and more from crafters though I haven't seen if they are actually different from vendor dye's yet. My biggest complain is that I can't dye my Chosen's huge shield at all.

Class Mechanics:
A. All classes use Action points, not mana, I realize this might seem like semantics to you but it's important. Most people reading that will view it from a W

Re:ok, its not wow

[Fozzyuw]

That had more to do with arenas no longer having any reward for lower ranked players then it did Warhammer. There was simply no point in playing anymore, so they stopped.

That and they're resetting Arena points for everyone to 0 before the expansion and I think right before patch 3.0.x This makes Arena completely pointless until after the xpac, which will be arriving in about 1-month.

Once that's released, a wave of players will return to WoW and they'll get back into doing the Arena. Bliz. will put a lot of candy out there to attract them. It's only Honor Points that Bliz. is massively increasing for *new* rewards, because they're not wiping Honor Points (and people are stock piling them for the Xpac).

Re:ok, its not wow

[brkello]

I have subscribed to 2-3 MMOs at a time. Though recently just got that down to one (WAR). But I don't think it is too strange to play a few.

WAR in some ways is more casual than WoW. You can log in, queue up for a BG anywhere, and start playing. Flight paths are a short cut scene rather than a 10 minute flight. You can be a low level and still participate in BG or RvR objectives because your level gets buffed to something reasonable when you enter those areas. All improvements over WoW in terms of playability.

I don't think this will be a WoW killer...but I do think it will take some people away. Enough that it will be highly profitable.

The key here is how well they support it and how they can generate content. The game currently has many bugs and lacks a bit of polish (some of the animal running animations are horrible...never thought I would complain about something like that). In any case, I think it is a strong contender for 2nd place. It is hard to imagine anything that can dethrone WoW. At this point it is so polished it is nearly blinding. Going to any other MMO that is new will leave most people with the impression that they have no idea how to code since there are so many bugs when these things start out.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Knara]

Speaking for myself, but I get the impression I'm not alone, the reason I left WoW was the horrible PvP implementation. WotLK does really nothing to make that aspect of the game more fun.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Moraelin]

A. The way rewards are handed out does kind of suck in a way. The bonus for contributing can easily be nullified with a bad or average roll with a slacker just getting a really good roll at the same time. If you do a PQ a few times though you are likely to get a reward it's just a numbers issue. Maybe a higher modifier for contribution is warranted but the system still works.

If I have to do it several times to get the prize, it's not a quest, it's a grind. I have very little interest in that, sadly.

B. So far on the destruction side, I have characters in each area, I haven't really noticed a problem with not being able to finish a PQ if there are enough people around. There not being enough people is directly relateable to WoW when you get a group quest that you can't manage to solo or requires more people than you seem to be able to round up. The closest I have come to not being able to finish a PQ when there was an appropriate number of players was in the Dark Elf area, no tank classes. But we still managed because there were enough healers that we could all stack our heals on whomever was tanking at the moment.

The Destruction side, and especially the Greenskin zones, have the advantage of sheer numbers and a solid mix of damage, tanks and healers. Try it on the Order side, and you might discover that you'll often have 2-3 players total for the PQ, because Order populations really are that low. And in almost each area, there'll be some class that's way unrepresented anyway. E.g., I think I once saw an Archmage in the HE area. That's it. Try doing their PQs with two tanks and a damage dealer, then you'll know what I'm talking about.

A. The marketing for this game was all about the RvR aspects. I think they said they would have PvE but it was a sideline to the RvR.

I had the exact opposite impression. Both Mythic and EA have been in a hurry to tell me all over the place that it's perfectly viable as a PvE game, and, really, PvP is going to be purely optional. That's why they got my money at all.

But, yes, I do get the impression that PvE is just a side-line. The words that come to mind are "bait and switch", but, oh well. I can afford to blow 50 euros on a game.

I am pretty sure most PvE dropped equipment doesn't have a renown requirement. So if you want equipment that doesn't require RvR go check the Auction house in your capital city or farm mobs to your hearts content. Quest equipment might also not require renown, I don't really know because I've never had a problem with not having enough renown.

Sure. Did they tell me in game how to go to an AH or whatever equivalent there is? Because otherwise I'm taking the fact that I start in one corner of the world, and the nearest place to auction being in the opposite corner, as having designed the game on the assumption that it can be played without that. They _did_ put that much thought into it before shoving it out the door, right? ;)

C. WoW never had worth while equipment purchaseable from vendors that didn't require end game raiding or PvP. You are playing an MMO, if you want to advance learn to network and take advantage of the fact you can play with others and trade stuff around. Try playing the game as it's designed and not how you wish it was designed before you complain about it not being well done.

1. You'd be surprised. I actually used, say, the one-handed blade from Loch Modan on more than one newbie character, and there are a few others too.

2. Again, if they actually wanted to encourage trading around, well, they could have made it more obvious how to get to an auction house early. Otherwise, I will assume that the game must be designed to be perfectly playable without one. Lack of providing either on their part, doesn't constitute a failure on mine.

Again, take a hint from WoW: the first ci

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not setting you to zero anymore. However I imagine the new items meant for lvl 80 with be a order of magnitude more costly. I also imagine lvl 80 arena will give a lot more points. It will almost be like setting you to zero in regards to getting the new lvl 80 gear.

Re:ok, its not wow

[SL Baur]

Part of my enjoyment of Warhammer might be related to having chosen a 'Roleplay' server (Avelorn).

I've thought about trying one of those as it sounds like fun. I've also been told that I would not enjoy it as it is very strict and one OOC mistake gets you booted.

I did that in an attempt to escape the d00dz and kiddiez and other annoyances of a normal WoW server. So far, so good.

Ah, that would be a benefit. The /ignore list is way too small to clean up /trade.

The spammers are annoying though, and despite EA/Mythic's banning efforts, I still get #$%^ing spams every few minutes.

Ouch. How they end up dealing with that will be instructive as to how far the game goes. You cannot ignore the problem. Barring network problems, nothing makes a game unfun faster than endless screenfuls of spam.

I'm kind of surprised they did not have something in place already, or maybe I'm misunderestimating the amount of work that was required to end WoW spam. Sadly, I think it's a requirement now for any MMO to have strict anti-spam policies and procedures in place from day 1.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

it's singlehandedly expanded the whole damn hobby by orders of magnitude, and continues to draw in people who wouldn't have touched Asheron's Call, WAR, City of Heroes or anything else.

Amen. Anecdotally, I was pretty much uninterested in any of the MMO's (or computer games, in general - other than the occasional solitaire, minesweeper, or tetris time-waster) until I decided to give WoW a try after listening to one of my friends rhapsodize about how much fun it was. I find the game itself to be enjoyable, and I find I actually enjoy the social / interactive aspects of the game - working with a guild & learning new raids and that sort of thing. Having relocated recently for a job, it's actually been a fun way to keep in touch with a few "real life" friends who I don't see as much in person any more, as well - fire up vent and chat while doing some dailies and pvp together. I know there are a few other people in my guild with similar stories, and I'm sure we're not an isolated occurrence out of all the millions of subscribers WoW has.

Re:ok, its not wow

[An ominous Cow art]

I don't know how strict they are about OOC stuff. I haven't seen any channel problems and I've only seen a couple of questionable character names ("Thralll", and some variant of "Legolas" I think)

Yeah, I wound up leaving the Trade channel on WoW because of the crap filling it. In EQ, I began adding all 'chatsp33k' people to my /ignore list, but it got very large and wasn't worth the effort after a while.

I do wish that they'd add a feature to WH similar to WoW's, where you can report a spammer with a right-click and menu choice.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Fozzyuw]

They are not setting you to zero anymore. However I imagine the new items meant for lvl 80 with be a order of magnitude more costly. I also imagine lvl 80 arena will give a lot more points. It will almost be like setting you to zero in regards to getting the new lvl 80 gear.

Hmmm... I'm still a bit confused about this. Last update I heard is that they're not wiping honor, but they are going to reset Arena points at the launch of WotLK. Here they state honor will not be reset and here they state arena points will not be reset until the release of the xpac. I read somewere else (wowhead?) that stated arena points will be wiped, but not honor points. Though, I don't really know if that's normal for arena points because I've yet to do the arena, but will probably try it out at level 80 (since doing it now is kind of pointless)

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

And why should anyone take that claim seriously?

Re:ok, its not wow

[Krojack]

Blizzard chose not to reset honor and marks but will be resetting arena the night before 3.0 comes out.

They stated that they will be taking a snapshot of the current arena standings and awarding S4 prizes at that time (Oct. 14th) then the arena season will continue on till the xpack comes out. Any gain in arena standings once 3.0 is out will not get you the end of season prize. I DO NOT recall if they will set arena points to zero after the snapshot is taken or leave them. If they are allowing people to continue up till the xpack then I would think they wouldn't zero out the points. Blizzard has been changing things on a daily bases lately so it's hard to tell.

Now blizzard didn't say when patch 3.0 was going live but they did say the end of S4 snapshot would be takin on Oct. 14th so people are guessing thats when the patch will be out.

On another note. I have 4 people in the same WoW guild that are also playing WAR and log into both games on a daily bases. 2 of those people already stated they will stick with WoW and the other 2 are still undecided and are waiting for the WoW xpack. I myself don't know much about the WAR lore thus I'm not really that interested in the game and will be sticking with WoW.

Re:ok, its not wow

[stjobe]

I've also been told that I would not enjoy it as it is very strict and one OOC mistake gets you booted.

Hardly. I play on a RP server for much the reasons the OP stated (if I see one more "Lolswerougeisop" character name I might barf), and I can safely say that not all of us are roleplaying all the time.

They're strict on character names mostly, but in-game RP? Not so much. You could probably play OOC all the time without problems. No-one is forcing you to RP (but if you don't want to RP occasionally, why roll on a RP server? There's bound to be RP there...)

Re:ok, its not wow

[Fozzyuw]

Thanks. That's basically how I understand it as well.

As for WAR, I played it on release as a White Lion. I found it too hard to play. To many bugs and user feedback issues. However, I played it again last weekend, this time rolling a Witch Hunter. I found the experiance much, much better. A lot of the bugs I had weren't an issue because I no longer had a pet and I didn't have to try all kind of crazy positional attacks. I think they patched a good amount as well.

I still enjoy WoW and plan on continuing it (I'm excited about 3.0 changes and the xpac) but having tried a different (non pet and positional) class, I've also found more enjoyment in WAR. Though, I'm probably not going to keep that subscription. I'm only willing to pay 1 subscription at a time.

I'm looking for the MMO company to create a graduated membership rate based on how much you actually play. If you haven't logged in for 1 month, you pay nothing. If you only logged in a few hours, you pay X rate, if you logged in an decent amount of time you pay Y, if you played heavily, you pay the maximum amount of $15.

That would be nice and it'd allow me to freely play the games I feel like playing. As long as the rates and values are reasonable. Something like $0/0 hours, $5/30 hours, $10/60 hours, $15/unlimited would be cool. I would definitely have 3 subscriptions going. Sure, Bliz. wouldn't benefit, but I could see competitors trying to draw subscribers away from Bliz. doing it. I'd have another account for $5/month and once I got hooked on the game, I wouldn't care much to cancel my WoW account and up my subscription to the $15 unlimited. I'd be a nice way to get players to invest in your game, and less likely to give it up. Though, that's just a consumer pipe-dream.

Re:ok, its not wow

[SL Baur]

I do wish that they'd add a feature to WH similar to WoW's, where you can report a spammer with a right-click and menu choice.

I do not know what else they did when they did that, and I was skeptical that it would work, but spam pretty much vanished.

I know it wasn't an instaban, because I do remember later seeing a /trade or zone spammer at the fountain in SW City outside the bank. A group of us stood around his character and /spit on him. :-)

Re:ok, its not wow

[stjobe]

Reporting a spammer in WoW has the same effect as /ignore in addition to making the actual report. That's why it seems so effective to the individual player. It's not an insta-ban by a long shot, but the player reporting the spammer might experience it as such. Pretty smart move on Blizzard's part.

Re:ok, its not wow

[GaryPatterson]

No, the first two messages sum it up well. The rest discuss and generally agree.

If you're at all curious, it's worth reading those two. As far as I can tell, they're absolutely spot on.

Re:ok, its not wow

[SL Baur]

Reporting a spammer in WoW has the same effect as /ignore in addition to making the actual report. ... the player reporting the spammer might experience it as such. Pretty smart move on Blizzard's part.

Yup, I wondered why the spammer had gone silent.

It got boring to /spit on him and I eventually went back to doing something more fun.

Very clever on Blizzard's part.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, now, don't be shy. Answer the question. If you can.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Crazy positional attacks? Hard to control pet?

Go back to WoW please and spam anytime style more noob. How hard is to click attack on the pet window and attack something from behind or on the side? Learn how to circle strafe maybe? FYI, I have a level 25 White Lion. Best DPS tank on Order side. Witch Hunters put out nice damage, but are little bi___es, and die when they get breathed on.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Moraelin,

Go back to WoW where you can PvE to your hearts content. JFC, nit picky little fuckers like you do nothing but annoy the majority of people.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Stray7Xi]

I'll take a wild guess and say that the root of the problem is a schizophrenic design, which can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a PvP game or PvE too. If you're serious about equally suitable for PvE-only players, then let me freaking buy _some_ stuff without PvP points. (I've found no vendors where you can even get a basic sword without the equivalent of "honour". And, oh, they even have the equivalent of talents bought with PvP renown.) If it's only for PvP-ers, then say that already and let the rest of us know we don't have to bother. But the "solution" of giving PvP points to everyone, whether they PvP or not, is neither here not there. It cheapens the whole thing for both.

You can buy stuff without PvP points, every chapter has a Rally master, which has rewards given for influence. Thats the PvE unlockable equipment. As soon as you realize that reknown gear is pvp gear you'll understand. In warcraft you can't buy arena gear with gold alone either.

Parking for reknown won't make significant progress based on the way it scales. When people capture objectives you don't get the same reknown as them. You get reknown when the zone is captured. Guess what, you don't need to pvp to capture zones. Nearly every action contributes to capturing zones (doing public quests for example). It's been a while since I've played wow, so excuse me if my analogy is wrong. In Alterac Valley if you collect supplies away from fight you don't get honor from it, so to encourage a focus on winning, they reward the winning team with extra honor points. Unfortunately this means the person afk at the entrance also gets those points.

There are a lot of things lacking in Warhammer (Chat system, mail system). The networking code sucks. But one thing I think they got near perfect was integrating pvp as a core part of game while still making it completely optional. There is a fullfledged PvE game that never needs to see PvP. There is a PvP game that can stand nearly on it's own with relatively minimal PvE. But they're not strictly seperate, there is a near seamless transition.

Warcraft was designed for PvE. Typically you level in PvE then PvP as you feel inclined. A level 5, just can't go do real pvp if they want to. The PvP scales horribly, and a lot of the pvp that happens at lower levels is trying to interfere with others PvE. I've never been flagged pvp unintentionally in Warhammer, that happens often enough in Warcraft.

In warcraft, after low levels, nearly all zones are contested and a larger portion of quests flag you pvp. In warhammer only small parts of zones are PvP, for the most part only quests that require going into RvR are the scout quests (which aren't a part of chains)
In Warcraft if you die you're still flagged pvp, there's zone-camping and corpse-camping. In warhammer, you die you're safe again.
In warcraft a level 70 can go to newbie zones and decimate them. In warhammer a level 30 is protected from level 40's as long as they don't wander into the level 40 zones.

But I understand, change scares some people. Warhammer PvE isn't the sole option. I think the real thing that has people saying that Warhammer isn't PvE friendly is that the players aren't PvE friendly. There's players out there shouting "Warhammer is a PvP game, go play wow" and then there's friends that will pressure you to play PvP. But the only thing it's lacking as a PvE game is the content every game is lacking at release (and it's lacking in the pvp front too). Wow was just as bad. Warhammer shows great potential, but if you try to compare it to the WoW of today, it loses hands down. But worse then that is when people write off things without even trying to understand them. So I'll end with one point, your PQ rant.

PQ's are there for casual players. Many of which don't understand loot courtesy (will roll need on items to vendor them, this is common to both warhammer and warcraft). Since you can't control them joining, a fair loot system has to be

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all let me start by saying I have played way to many of these games up to thier end content DAOC, SWG, WOW, COH, EVE and with every one there are growing pains. Speaking as a wow end game player both PVP and Raids and a WAR player 2 lvl 20's ATM you are completely retarded! I'm not saying that WAR is the best or that wow sucks cuase let men tell you I like em both. The ingorance that your spouting is what got me to post.

Let me start by letting everyone how hasnt played war what your fabricating.

If you dont get PQ loot the first time you get a bonus for the next time to increase your loot roll and guess what all the loot that you win IS MEANT FOR YOU! you dont raid a dungeon for 10 hours only to have crap drop for a class that aint even in the group.

Yes you get pvp points if your on the same map but nowehere near as much.

Yes there is pvp gear and abilities there is also a ton of gear and abilities that are not linked to pvp at all

If you go afk it logs you out so good luck grinding the pvp points that way. Wow is like the reigning king of afk BG's thanks to those stupid tokens so shut you word hole

Public quests are doable and if you don't suck They can be comleted by as few as 2 people and I dont mean going and running old ones I mean ood PQ's at your lvl.

Yes WAR is geared more towards PVP but that is becuase WOW has done everything in their power to competely ruin the pvp experience.

Personally I do enjoy the pvp side more then the pve side so call me a pvp fanboy or whatever but It doesnt make a whole lot of sense to be involved in a game with 2 competeing sides and have no ineraction or competition whatsoever ie pve only players.

The last good thing wow did for pvp was AV...and when it came out yeah it was a blast there was competitive questing inside and giant monsters to unlock all kinds of cool stuff till people figured out how to suck all the damn fun out of it and run an 11 min AV. AB and WG get boring after the 20 30th time and then they tell us New BG'S and everyone gets all worked up and what do they give us....oh yeah the inovative pile of S known as eye of storms which may be the least original idea a very brilliant company has ever come up with. Its smaller then AV and it's like the 2 other ones your bored with mashed together.....YAy!
shut up you know I'm right!

War is directed more towards PVP but thats becuase its a logical step to drain all the wow pvpers who have been pissed ever since EOS.

Sure WAR has the same type of capture the flag and control points style bgs but when you add collision and decent choke points it makes a huge difference and the tactical aspect of battle really comes into play which is what ALL OTHERS HAVE BEEN LACKING.

Warhammer does have problems and bugs that all mmos suffer from at the beginning if you are happy with what wow has offered great play wow if you want more detail and more complexity you should try WAR its that simple. Theres plenty of wow people who play WAR and decide that the warm comfort of knowing how all the simple stuff works and where everything is located is more fulfilling then picking up the new stuff but make no mistake WAR is the new stuff it looks better sounds better and has way better pvp.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Fozzyuw]

*yawn* I know there's not much point to replying to an AC, but oh well.

Crazy positional attacks?

Yup. And do you know whyI thought it was "crazy"? No, because the rest of your comment was pure n00bness.

Hard to control pet?

Really? Where did I say it was hard to control the pet? Reading comprehension FTW!

Go back to WoW please and spam anytime style more noob.

Says the n00b. Pot, kettle, black.

How hard is to click attack on the pet window and attack something from behind or on the side?

Again, Reading Comprehension FTW! I never said that's what I found hard to play about WAR. It was actually the crazy insane positional attacks that were bugged as hell. You know, like being able to "back" and "side" positional attacks from the front. Yup, I found that bug. But getting an error when trying to do them from their respected "back" and "side" positions, saying I couldn't do it. It's crazy to release a game with a positional mechanic but have it massively bugged.

Learn how to circle strafe maybe?

Again, learn to comprehend, maybe? Learn to n00b and troll better.

FYI, I have a level 25 White Lion.

FYI, I don't care.

Re:ok, its not wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you can't, then. That's okay, though. Everyone already knew your silly little Darkfall thing wasn't even going to get noticed.

Release Coordination

[TarrVetus]

I wonder how much research has been done by the gaming media into synchronized product releases and how they may stimulate the gaming market.

Big game companies may line up their releases to 'cross-pollinate' the different titles' sales. Perhaps when a player is playing one game, they wish for the features of another, and find themselves playing both in the same period, or such.

Re:Release Coordination

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, holiday release cycle? Companies holding off releasing games because of competition?

Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right?

[neokushan]

I remember walking past the Games Workshop once and a (very geeky) friend of mine said "You know what, no matter how ashamedly geeky I am at times, at least I've never been in there". He has a point, a bit like D&D, warhammer is one of those things ubergeeks love to do. World of Warcraft and MMOs in general are another. Who's bright idea was it to combine the two? Can you imagine how greasy the hair of the game's top players is going to be? Can you imagine the amount of Acne that will consume their faces if they sign up to this? Think of the Children!

Re:Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right

[darkhitman]

It will resemble Slashdot's userbase, then?

Re:fp

[CheshireFerk-o]

you need to burn a nice spherical hole in your shower =D

Community?

[Puffy Director Pants]

In what, 2 or 3 weeks? Isn't that a bit premature?

Re:Community?

[workbench]

It absolutely is. The third comment below TFA is actually more insightful than the article itself, I quoth (emphasis mine):

Jack Crow
6 Oct 2008 at 6:46 pm PST

"Still, a lot of people are playing it, both out of curiosity and because it has quite a few converts. Why are so many excited? Because it's new? That can't completely account for it; there are plenty of new games, and if they're bad, the novelty wears off quickly."

Most players are on their 3rd or more MMO. Do people just ignore failures as if they were never part of gaming history? Shadowbane persists YEARS later and didn't see a player exodus until the the bonus characters were unlocked, 6 months later. You can't sit atop a tower 20 days later and declare a game has a special draw because it's no longer "new". It's following the standard MMO pattern, in that, the release sees a subscriber datapoint larger than the beta-testing pool. Way to break the mold. The draw is that it is the newest and still has not shown whether or not it will be supported in a way that retains customers. EVERY person I know (3+me) has decided NOT to renew, or not bothered to purchase it at all after witnessing the gameplay, how's that for anecdotal data? It's not worth arguing many of the ideas presented in this article, as they are essentially excerpts from that say "it's unknown so it's good", which is the newest failure of online reviewing.

Zing, end of debate. Next article please!

Re:Community?

[Kingrames]

Getting information in the first few weeks regarding the subscriber base sounds rather intelligent to me, though I wouldn't draw any conclusions based on it.

Perhaps someone made mistakes while summarizing the article.

Re:Community?

[Fluffeh]

These are nerds we are talking about. I think the word PREMATURE likely is quite fitting.

WAAAAUUUGH!

Re:Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right

[Red Flayer]

FWIW, WoW was in exactly the same boat a few years ago. MMOs were something only ubergeeks did. D&D was something only ubergeeks did[1]. Who would ever think to combine the two? Was Blizzard trying to create the Sum of All Geeks?

Besides, with Blizzard running ads with Mr T and other pop culture icons, MMOs are definitely hitting the mainstream.

[1]I may have tucked an onion into my belt, as was the fashion of the time, but in my day lots of people played D&D... even football players and members of the Homecoming Court and the FFA and the gearheads. The only population in my HS that didn't have quite a few D&D players was the girls. Which is why eventually D&D got relegated to geekdom, IMO.

No way!

[charlesbakerharris]

A Look At the Warhammer Community Ooh, do we get to meet both of them?

Re:How they look...

[NuclearError]

I see....Cheetos! And closed blinds.

Prediction

[duckInferno]

I predict the community will spike then level off to a small but stable size, as every other post-WoW MMO has done.
Most recently observed in Age of Conan.

Re:Prediction

[daninspokane]

To be quite honest, I am hoping for this. Small and stable usually means the under 18 and complete moron population stays at manageable levels. WoW may have 10 million subscribers, but my experience (5 years in the game, multiple 70's) has shown there are more trolls and cry babies than I care for. I've picked up WAR and it is a decent game with alot of perks WoW doesn't have. There are it's downsides, but I imagine they will be fixed with time. The RvR harkens back to the good ol'e days of DAoC and running gank squads through DF... good times. Anyone who loved DAoC will love WAR.

Re:Prediction

[MindlessAutomata]

Do you have any idea how silly it is to use Age of Conan as a comparison? I mean seriously, are you informed -at all-?

Age of Conan is a bigger flop than Star Wars Galaxies. It was a buggy, incomplete pile of rubbish. And still is.

WAR however is a quality game.

Re:Prediction

[duckInferno]

A nice theory on paper, but give a few of the smaller pvp-oriented MMO's a go. Most of them have an established asshole culture that attracts only other assholes. A couple of small examples would be Tibia or TDZK.

Of course as Warhammer is already an established community so this could offset it. But I'm going to go on a limb and assume that it'll be left with the usual diverse mix of players.

Re:Prediction

[duckInferno]

In your opinion, perhaps. According to metacritic, roughly 80% of folks who have played it, enjoyed it. People were falling over themselves to play it when it was first released and it was touted as the WoW killer. Fast forward four months and the player base knows better, my point being that they didn't back when it was three weeks old.

Warhammer's reception is a bit warmer but it's too early to say what direction it's heading in. My prediction stands and is yet to be tested.

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." -- Niels Bohr

Re:Prediction

[CrimsonAvenger]

Age of Conan is a bigger flop than Star Wars Galaxies. It was a buggy, incomplete pile of rubbish. And still is.

WAR however is a quality game.

Interesting that you'd use "imcomplete" as a contrast between AoC and WAR, given that WAR had to drop four (of six) capital cities and four (including two of six heavy tanks) classes from the game at the last minute.

Mind you, I've not played either. AoC looked to be interesting till the reports from the beta testers reached the public, then it looked to suck big time. WAR seems to be well adapted to the current market, but I like to solo in PvP from time to time, so my interest in it is limited, at best.

Re:Prediction

[IndustrialComplex]

I've played all three.

AoC felt empty. I wasn't able to interact with players much at all during the early levels, and that resulted in the feeling that this was effectively Oblivion Online, the online being that there was some chat room element included. The game just felt cold. I enjoyed it, and likely would have continued to enjoy it, if it didn't feel like a 1 player mmorpg.

WoW: I still play this, and I'm loading a copy on this laptop as I type. It's a good game, but it needs a kick in the pants to keep its innovation going, and to end the feeling of treading water that it has had since BC.

War: I like it. I would like to continue to play it, and it may be the PvP half that may force WoW to refocus on PvE. I'd have no problem playing a PvP and a PvE game. WoW seems to have focused too much on Arenas and PvP as a method to showcase your gear.

I like a lot of what goes into Warhammer, and I'm willing to overlook its faults for now.

Perhaps the best praise I can give it is this:

I'm considering not purchasing WoTLK for several days so I can see the reaction from the WoW players and decide if I want to continue on with Warhammer. So far, at best (for WoW), I plan to play both.

Re:Prediction

[MindlessAutomata]

I've played WAR, WoW (for a long time!), and AoC, so I think I'm somewhat qualified to make judgments here. Your comparison is wrong. Way, way wrong.

For one, AoC was a bait-and-switch scheme. Two, WAR with the classes and cities still pending is far, far more complete than AoC is even now. AoC was more complete in its BETA than AoC was as a 'finished' product.

AoC is a joke amongst all the people that used to play. People quit playing because Funcom never delivered on the many broken promises they made. Their GMs were retarded idiots. So on and so forth.

You need to have played both to get a sense of how wrong the comparison is. WAR is leagues beyond AoC, AND Mythic has shown themselves to be quite competent and excellent at communicating their plans. They are doing everything right.

Re:Prediction

[MindlessAutomata]

The comparison again falls flat, because AoC is two separate games: Age of Conan: Escape from Tortage and Age of Conan: The Rest of the Game (yes, I am exaggerating here, but the point stands).

The first part, Escape from Tortage, was rather fun and had a lot to do quest-wise. The rest of the game did not deliver on its promises, particularly in sieging and, well, just about everything that would have mattered.

WAR now has more to do than AoC's endgame NOW. Perhaps this is by design, but that's what matters, right?

"In my opinion"? DO you have any ideas of how many people fled that game, and why? My guild (which was probably one of the largest guild if not the largest guild in the entire game at one point, and probably the largest guild on the Deathwhisper server) quickly vanished because of the same issues. Everyone who left that game--which is the vast majority of the people who played--left ANGRY. Very angry. Servers became ghost towns because of how bad the game is. WAR, on the other hand, has so much to offer and comparing the two side-by-side, well, it's pretty obvious which one is better.

You haven't played both, I gather, so you are in no standing to make any predictions whatsoever. Perhaps WAR will level off. Perhaps it will continue to grow. But to use Age of Conan as evidence of some sort of trend is ridiculous. Age of Conan shrunk because the people couldn't take the shit anymore.

By WAR's pvp design it's rather obvious that it's going to keep people around a lot longer than AoC did, and not only that, but Mythic has shown themselves to be far, far more competent than Funcom, to boot.

(by the way, nobody really gives a shit about what metacritic says. Quit talking out of your ass.)

Re:Prediction

[NonSequor]

Dark Age of Camelot was pretty friendly. There was bitching about realm balance, but almost everyone was gracious after a good fight.

Re:Prediction

[notamisfit]

As far as the capitals, it's just extraneous crap, seeing as how everyone seems to run for Empire/Chaos territories anyways as soon as they can find a flight master.

I played WAR for a little while after launch (and I'll probably play more, but it's *very* tough on my laptop, occasionally to the point of being damn near unplayable). The PVE stuff is really there to show you this isn't a PVE game, the crafting stuff has me scratching my head in confusion, and getting around some of the places can be a total nightmare compared to WoW. There's some bugs too (fell off the world a time or two in Altdorf). I think the positives outweigh the negatives though. It's actually the first MMO I've played where I *like* to PvP (oops RvR).

Re:Prediction

[JaredOfEuropa]

The rest of the game did not deliver on its promises, particularly in sieging and, well, just about everything that would have mattered.

I think that's exactly right. AoC is not a crappy game as a concept, it just wasn't a finished game. It was plagued by rather intrusive bugs up till a few weeks ago, which delayed some of the additional content that was to follow the game's release. Which is sad... of all the MMORPGs out there, I still think AoC by design has the most potential of turning into my game of choice. Whether it can still be that game in practice, remains to be seen. As for WAR, some people are already getting a bit bored of it, or so I hear. Good PvP alone is not enough for them.

Re:Prediction

[MindlessAutomata]

Yeah, don't get me wrong, AoC had a great engine, great graphics (although I hear what sieging can be done is very laggy with the full amount of people) and had a lot of potential which is why people stayed around for a few months; they'd thought it'd be fixed. Instead, few things that mattered were fixed; Funcom would make irrelevant, stupid changes that nobody cared about and would introduce more bugs into the game in the process.

WAR is a PVP game. If you go in expecting otherwise you'll be disappointed; PVE is WoW's niche (although I hear they'd slacked on that in TBC; I do know that Naxxramas and AQ40 were some of the most fun I had in a video game ever, though).

Quest-wise though, WAR does have a lot, although I think they're rather bland.

Re:Prediction

[CrimsonAvenger]

AND Mythic has shown themselves to be quite competent and excellent at communicating their plans.

Having played DAoC, the previous Mythic MMO for some years, I can tell you that Mythic will cease be competent at communicating their plans just as soon as people start being unhappy during the beta period of an expansion.

At that point, they will clam up to the greatest extent possible, and provide misleading or outright incorrect answers whenever they are forced to provide something.

As an example, I point to the Origins Server. Mythic proposed an idea for a new server. DAoC players, in general, thought it was a great idea. Mythic began implementing something that didn't match their original description (which the players liked). The people playtesting the new stuff started complaining that what they were playtesting didn't match the Mythic proposal. Mythic postponed Origins indefinitely, and have ceased providing any information of any kind about the plan/design of Origins.

Re:Prediction

[Knara]

Quest-wise though, WAR does have a lot, although I think they're rather bland.

So far I've had two problems with WAR quests. 1) Some of them have clearly wrong directions to find the object of your questing, and 2) The lore is sometimes very dense, and I get tired of reading it XD

Re:Prediction

[Knara]

WAR (like DaoC) is a shining beacon of how fun PvP can be if it is done *correctly*. For some reason MMO creators rarely get it right, though.

Re:Prediction

[stjobe]

2) The lore is sometimes very dense, and I get tired of reading it XD

What's this world coming to? </getoffmylawn> :)

Re:Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what, no matter how ashamedly geeky I am at times, at least I've never registered a Slashdot user account.

Re:Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right

[Anonymous Coward]

Flamebait, yes.

But really, I went to an invite only Warhammer tournament in July with 85 or so participants. Most of the people there were 25-45 years of age, and pretty much all held down normal jobs (including many computer jobs). More highly educated than the general populace as well.

I see Warhammer online as having a detrimental affect on the Warhammer scene, actually, as it will bring out all the power gamers. Instead of the people who are into the whole hobby: gaming and modeling/painting.

poorly researched Article

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it amusing that the article associates the rise in those other games as being a byproduct of the Warhammer community. Perhaps if they had bothered to do their research they may have just discovered many of those games had significant updates or changes in the last month or so. Can't speak for all of them but I know the 2 I play did and it massively boosted the people logging on, nothing to do with warhammer.

Re:poorly researched Article

[daninspokane]

Do you think the "significant" updates might have something to do with wanting to maintain their player base and combat people from leaving their game for WAR? They have to keep their content fresh to keep up with newly released MMO's. Just a thought.

40000

[GenP]

Needs more bolters and powerarmor.

Re:40000

[L4t3r4lu5]

No, needs more Shokk Attack Gun.

Snotling teleport explosion ftw!

AOC much better than before

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, AOC's community chief got sacked and replaced. Since then it went uphill again. Of course many had quit their subscription by then, but actually it somehow adds to the atmosphere in many places.
 
  The cities are emptier than they should be, but some places outdoors just simply look gorgeous, realistic and you really get the feeling that YOU are th hero doing the quests. That, for me, definitely beats fighting your wait through the wilderness and a bandit's camp just to be suddenly standing in a crowd of other more or less hostile "heros" waiting for the boss to spawn.

That's when the immersion breaks for me, how can I play a questing epic hero when there is so many others around doing exactly the same stuff *in front of my eyes*..
 
After playing AOC, when I looks at other MMOs they simply look hideous and it takes some "acclimatizing" to fell a bit of immerion seep in from those moving polygons ;)

Re:Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right

[notamisfit]

Warhammer geeks: More disposable income than D&D geeks since 1983.

Lotro numbers going up because of free weekend...

[A beautiful mind]

LOTRO just had a free weekend (If you ever had an account you can play for free even if you're not subscribed atm, plus there was a +25% xp gain for the weekend).

It's also possible that LOTRO numbers went up because people realised warhammer online is a buggy POS, like I did.

It's the poor interface

[Achoi77]

Even on various messageboards, there have been threads popping up regularly stating the fact that this may be the most antisocial MMO ever. People have been complaining left and right about the fact that nobody speaks. I think it's actaully due to a simple factor:

The chat interface is archaic, and terrible.

One of the major problems is that a zone is series of subzones, and each subzone has it's own channel. These subzones are TINY. You can walk 20 feet and you'll be in a new chat channel. Every single time. A lot of people have been crying for a zone-wide chat channel on the threads.

The lack of global channels was such a problem, that on my server (Volkmar) people have designated a common custom channel ("Order Warfront") and have been touting it to facilitate better rvr by alerting everybody in the channel where the fights are taking place. While this is a popular solution, one MAJOR problem is that the game client does NOT save the channel settings when you log off. Yeap. Everytime you log on you gotta remember to "/joinchannel Order Warfront." Some people have even set this as a macro. There are even addons that have a workaround for this, but for everybody else that's not about to install mods for the game, they either forget, or just are not aware. Very not friendly.

Another thing is that the chat input text field does not remember your last input settings for which channel - a recent patch they've updated the client to remember who you've last sent a /tell to, but it doesn't remember any of the channel messages. This is really annoying too, and is not conducive to a steady conversation.

Considering that they have created a series of new social mechanics which work to great effect, particularly the Public Quests and the Open Party, if there was an easier mechanic to ease the player into it further, that would really give a nice boost to the community.

One of my gripes with the UI is that the open party notification system time is extremely short - when you enter a new zone, you have a 3 second window to look at the list of open parties, how many people are in the party, and to remember the name of the party leader in order to /join the party (if people are even aware of that command). A better interface would be a simple button interface that pops up somewhere, maybe even have one of the existing chat tabs to start blinking to notify the user that open parties are availabe. This would be very handy and help promote participation - although regarding open parties there really hasn't been an issue, it could be tweaked a bit more.

Re:It's the poor interface

[stjobe]

One of my gripes with the UI is that the open party notification system time is extremely short

Or, you could just click the button and peruse the list at your leisure? Not as fun as griping, I know, but then you'd even get a big ol' "join" button for every party, and you could sort them by what they're doing, PQ, RVR or PVE.

But what do I know.

Re:It's the poor interface

[Synjyn]

Zone channels are missing indeed. But the open party notificaton can be opened by clicking on the little icon below your avatar (where the notification shows), you don't have to catch it during the 3 sec popup time ;)

Re:It's the poor interface

[MistrBlank]

The stance they've taken is likely due to "Barrens" or "Trade" chat that has occurred to WoW. It's flooded with people that prattling on with useless chat and chuck norris jokes. And when you have a "General" option and a "Trade" channel option, with one being more wide audience than the others, it becomes abundantly clear that you're not going to restrict your chat to either and just talk in one all the time.

Re:It's the poor interface

[paitre]

It's an MMO.
Shit like that is going to happen, and it seems that WAR has gone to the extreme in the other direction.

Throwing the bath out with the bathwater...

Re:It's the poor interface

[stjobe]

Throwing the bath out with the bathwater...

Baby. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

On topic, I don't miss Barrens chat one bit.

Re:It's the poor interface

[Achoi77]

You can click on the names when they pop up, and a button appears? As a 31 year old casual player, how would I have known that? It's not like there is even a visual notification when I mouseover the list, if I manage to mouseover it on time.

This is what I'm talking about. While the client has some great features, if it was presented differently, it could be put to better use. As of right now when I zone into a lake I glance at the top right corner when the list pops up and hope I remember to spell the party leader's name correctly. For all the features WAR has, the default UI involving social interaction needs a better front-end interface and design. It was built by an engineer, not a designer (not to diminish the merits of either engineer or designer - both have their place).

Re:It's the poor interface

[stjobe]

Err, no.

There's a button in the lower left corner of your character portrait. It has an icon that's supposed to represent two (or is it three?) people, coloured lightbrown on black. It's right above where the "Open parties in your area" frame appears. I think it even has a mouse-over helptext.

That's the "Open parties" button. Click that to get the list. It's all in the game manual if you're afraid to click around in the UI. The game manual came with your box and is also available as a PDF in the game installation folder.

I'm trying hard not to flame you here, but it's really hard to give any weight to your critcism when you obviously haven't even tried to find out how it's supposed to work.

Re:It's the poor interface

[Achoi77]

You're missing the whole point of my arguement.

There's a button in the lower left corner of your character portrait. It has an icon that's supposed to represent two (or is it three?) people, coloured lightbrown on black. It's right above where the "Open parties in your area" frame appears. I think it even has a mouse-over helptext.

Are you referring to that brown graphic with the 2 (or 3) heads tied to the chat text display window? Don't you think that's kind of... wierd? Why is it not near the top left corner closer - generally reserved for the default character portrait position, along with party portraits and warband frames underneath, don't you think that would be a better place to have it?

So again don't feel bad if you really want to let go and call me names on the internet, the whole point of my arguement was not to state that the problem is that these elements do not exist, but rather that for a casual player that the interface needs some tweaking in order to better facilitate community interaction. I'm not trying to find a solution, obviously you've given me more than enough information to provide that. My issue is that the solution provided is not intuitive enough for the non-gamer gamer. Proper interface design shouldn't be trying to get the user to figure out 'how it's supposed to work.' It shouldn't be getting the user to right-click, left-click everything on the screen to see what pops up, and it certainly should NOT be getting the user to read a PDF to figure that out.

Granted, this is an MMO, and there will be a lot of buttons to press, but there was a noticable lack of consideration given to the actual social aspects of gameplay flow - and especially for a default client; the social impact dictated by ui design is bigger than a lot of people give credit.

Re:It's the poor interface

[Knara]

I think this is a result of the trend (in console games mostly, but also in some PC games) where the manual is basically redundant and players are spoon fed a (sometimes tedious) tutorial at the beginning of the game (which are sometimes even more aggravating because skipping them avoids storyline info). If it isn't in a nice, colorful pop-up onscreen, they're lost as to find it.

Re:It's the poor interface

[Knara]

As a 31 year old casual player, how would I have known that?

I'm a 32 year old casual player, I figured it out the first time I sat down.

There's a manual for a reason, but even beyond that, how about spending a little time learning about the game interface before complaining that since you couldn't personally figure it out, it was poorly designed.

Re:It's the poor interface

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, come on. Be a man and admit that you had no idea that the button was there and were bitching for no good reason.

I noticed the damn thing in the first half-hour of play.

Re:It's the poor interface

[will_die]

For the global chat channels:
http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/108769045/p1
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/warhammeronline/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-45831838&pid=520538

Re:It's the poor interface

[Wyrd01]

Are you referring to that brown graphic with the 2 (or 3) heads tied to the chat text display window?

No, that's not it.

Why is it not near the top left corner closer - generally reserved for the default character portrait position, along with party portraits and warband frames underneath, don't you think that would be a better place to have it?

That's exactly where it is. I suggest you look again next time you log in. It's a little dark circle hanging off the lower left of your character portrait, basically right where the 3 second pop-up notice opens. I'd say that is fairly intuitive.

You can click that little circle to see all the open groups in your zone. It shows their distance from you in minutes/seconds, how many people are in each group, and what that group is doing (PvE, RvR, PQ). It's really quite nice. I frequently open it when I hit a PQ, sort by distance, and see if anyone near me has a group going. If you want to start your own open group there is a check box on this screen that says you are interested in starting an open group, then people will see you when they check the list.

Re:It's the poor interface

[Achoi77]

Ah interesting! I'll have to take a look later tonight, thanks for the tip. I wonder why I've never noticed it before.

Yeah yeah, go ahead and call me names, I guess I owe it everybody since I opened my big fat mouth. :-P

Re:It's the poor interface

[stjobe]

Hey, I won't call you names. I just hope you'll enjoy the game. It is a good one after all. Not perfect by any means but a good one. Hopefully it'll get better and better with subsequent patches.

Oh, and hopefully this episode of Internet drama (brought to you by your friendly pals at /.)might get you to, you know, actually check if there's a solution already in-game before shooting off at the mouth about flawed design. Here's hoping! ;)

Re:It's the poor interface

[Satanboy]

Throwing the bath out with the bathwater...

Don't you mean

Throwing the baby out with the babywater...

Re:It's the poor interface

[The Slashdot Guy]

Manuals are only there for the weak.

Re:It's the poor interface

[ceswiedler]

There's a small button on the top left of the screen, below your character's picture IIRC, which lists all open parties that are nearby (even in other zones).

Re:It's the poor interface

[edawstwin]

I'm a long-time MPP player (EQ pre-expansions), and I didn't figure this out even after reading the manual (not saying it isn't there, just that I missed it somehow). His point is that the interface is not intuitive, and after having played WoW (with several add-ons), I'd have to agree. The designers could have studied countless interfaces and add-ons, and it apepars that they just stuck the button somewhere sort-of convenient.

When your character first enters one of these zones, either a pop-up should appear and say, "Hey, click this button for open parties!", or the open parties dialog should stay open until you close it (at least the first time). This is a very cool feature, and they should promote it better.

Re:It's the poor interface

[edawstwin]

Heh, meant MMO player - damn MS Project file format.

Re:It's the poor interface

[Knara]

It's not intuitive because its not like other interfaces you've used before?

Sounds very familiar to the Window Manager "intuitive" arguments. Everything requires learning, deal with it.

atleast launch quality was good...

[Synjyn]

Compared to recent launches of mmo's WAR was very impressive. Of course there were issues and still are for some people, but if anyone was party to anticipated games like Dark & Light, AoC etc Mythic did show how a game could be released in a relatively stable state. Not a beta as so many others have been recently. It isn't DAoC 2 though - shame, 3 realms would have been better ;)

Analysis in 2 weeks time would have been better.

[awjr]

As a WoW and War player this here are a number of facts you need to know:
1) WoW is about to have patch 3.02 go live (estimated to hit on the 15th).

2) On the 13th of November you get a whole new expansion to play with. Unless you were in the end game raiding Black Temple+, most of your gear will be replaced by the time you hit level 75.

3) WoW is a game about getting better equipment so with a month to go before you can get better equipment, why bother.

4) Summer happened and huge numbers of raiding guilds fell apart as apathy set in and waiting for the new expansion.

5) Blizzard didn't help themselves by allowing sites to 'mine' their Beta data and allow people to show you what you can get in a months time.

6) Warhammer hit at the right time and has given people 'something to do' while waiting, maybe even swap the game that they were going to play 247.

7) Warhammer free month ends on or around the 18th of this month.

Now on to my opinion. I held off from playing War for a bit. WoW is boring atm and it's difficult to get a raid going when people know that the gear is being replaced soon. So I started playing War two weeks after the initial release. I even joined the server that my WoW guild in WoW used.

The problem is, that I've come late to the party and War is all about your interaction with other players. (You can level without once doing a quest). Areas are empty. Public quests are unachievable (well the later phases) and up until recently, you could only join your racial RvR event.

Then there's the queues. If you login at 8pm, you can't get to your server for at least an hour. However the irony is that because the game needs a fully populated server to 'function' you don't want to be able to get on a server immediately at 8pm. This server will have a low population at other times and the Player vs Player elements will degrade badly.

Ironically I queue for War, then go play WoW for an hour.

So my current feeling is that I'm dropping Warhammer the moment WoW patch 3.02 comes out and I think there are a lot of people who are in the same boat.

What I do hope is that Blizzard look at Warhammer and take some of the ideas on board:

1) Public Quests
2) Queue for a BG from anywhere (which a Blizzard employee has already hinted at).
3) Siege weaponry that can kill players.
4) The ability not to be able to walk through mobs. (This would enable position strategies where tanks could create shield walls etc).

There are probably a lot more ideas.

Oh dear, you are back

[SmallFurryCreature]

Aren't you the same who said that WoW was going to canabalize Everquest? That didn't happen did it, not only does Everquest still have enough subscribers to make a profit, WoW has gained more people then every played MMO's before.

So basically, you are predicting the same thing people claimed would happen when WoW launched. Prepare to be wrong again.

The two games are totally different in nature and will NOT canabalize each other. It would be like saying Unreal competes with Doom/Quake. There is room for both.

Re:Oh dear, you are back

[Gewalt]

EQ was completely obliterated by the fracturing of its playerbase when sony released EQ2 compounded with the launch of WoW. Sure, EQ might still be running, and profitable, but it lost about 80% of its playerbase when WoW launched. That is significant.

Then why was the goat fired?

[SmallFurryCreature]

If the game is such a success then why was its designer fired? Oh, he left to pursue other options. Yeah right. He was canned.

AoC is Anarchy Online Continued. The first was a mess and so is the second.

However thanks the global reach of the internet, almost anything can find an audience and hang on for dear life. Dark&Light is still around even though Ati cards still can not run the game. Even Meridian 59, the granddaddy of them all is still being hosted.

AoC is so far one of the biggest failures in MMO history.

SWG was buggy as hell but launched in a different era when MMO's were still new and we were willing to be a lot more forgiving.

Dark&Light was perhaps the fastest 'paid to free' conversion in history, but AoC was the biggest title by an experienced company that should have known better to so completely fail to life up to anything.

The only people who like AoC are those who think that the "twitch" tacked onto the skill based game makes it into a bigger challenge then the EQ clones. That is it sellings point, twitch. That worked REALLY well for SWG NGE, Planetside and Tabula Rasa.

My prediction for AoC is that it will be another SWG or AC. Forever lingering on as an undead but never recovering. Its fans claiming that everyone else is missing out on a wonderful game and a lot of bitter old players left feeling ripped off and just a little bit more reluctant to give a new game a fair chance.

Re:Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right

[Jedi Alec]

World of Warcraft and MMOs in general are another.

Hardly...since these days the wives, mothers and managers of ubergeeks, or for that matter anyone, can be found in WoW. 1995 called and it wants its stereotypes back ;-)

Re:Analysis in 2 weeks time would have been better

[Synjyn]

Some good points and I have also seen the same drop off in WoW. The thing that WoW really lacks is decent open world pvp, which is something alot of people are hoping WAR will bring in the end game. Who wants instanced PVP anyway, its okay for levelling up and having some fun but not for end game (i.e. BG's, Arena).

Actually, I'd worry

[Moraelin]

Getting information in the first few weeks regarding the subscriber base sounds rather intelligent to me, though I wouldn't draw any conclusions based on it.

As a general principle, maybe, but in this case I'd worry anyway.

I've seen people before try games they liked lots. It generally ends up a bit of a one game affair. You may not have time to stay in one game 24 hours a day, or even the personality for that, but if it's a great game, you'll do _that_ new game when you play at all. If you can't afford more than 2 hours gaming a day, you spend them in that new game that got your interest.

Whereas here what at least the summary tells me is that... since WAR was launched, people started playing _other_ games more. I'd be worried a lot if I was the publisher of such a game.

The image it paints isn't "well, out hype had also benefited other games." It paints the more likely image that a few people were planning to quit WoW or whatever else, when WAR comes out, and they ended up not actually liking WAR. So now they're too bored to go back to the daily grind on WoW (you'll eventually get bored too, it's just human nature), they can't be arsed to play WAR, and are giving SP games like Oblivion or MMO games like LOTRO another try instead.

If you publish a game and the reaction it inspires in people is, basically, "ya know, maybe it would be more fun to play Oblivion the 6th time instead", you have to ask yourself what went wrong.

Basically there are two ways that the popularity and population can go in those first few weeks. If it goes steadily up, yeah, it's probably premature to say whether it'll stay that way. But if you're losing most players, that won't fix itself. You have to do something. Waiting longer to see the trend will rarely paint any other image than continuing to lose more players. And losing them to a 2 year old single-player game, is reason to worry IMHO.

Re:Actually, I'd worry

[haystor]

The big difference with Warhammer is that it is easy to log off. As much as I enjoy playing it, I don't have to commit to it for hours on end. I can play for 15 minutes or 5 hours. I appears to have the same effect on our guild as well. We have more active members than normal, but generally fewer on at any one time. It definitely leaves room for other diversions.

One thing I definitely don't do is waste 15 minutes running to town just so I can queue for the battlegrounds. I log on and I'm questing and hitting battlegrounds immediately. Oh, and battlegrounds are playable at any level, not just the high end of the level range *if* you have spent a ton on equipment.

Re:Actually, I'd worry

[The Slashdot Guy]

It's easy to log off, but it sure take a long damn time for the game to shut down.

That is one weakness with PvP

[SmallFurryCreature]

You need other players to PvP, worse, you need other players to kill. Nobody wants to loose everytime.

If you play 'simpler' PvP games like FPS, you know that some people will only join the side with the biggest numbers/scores because they want to be on the winning side.

Guild Wars suffers from this to an extent, a LOT of people only fight in their own guilds so if you are not in a guild it is at times hard to find other people to fight with. But Guild Wars is small scale. Getting half a dozen people together is an entirely different challenge from getting two-three dozen people together.

In my current MMORPG poison, Lord of the Rings Online, that is the problem. PvP or rather PvMP is a bit of an afterthought in this game, to be fair its developer made it clear from the start PvE was its focus, and this shows. Their is little reward for fighting on either side except the fun of it and if both sides don't have the right numbers, then there is no fun to be had.

Sure, some people will happily wipe an enemy who is heavily outnumbered but that just reduces the numbers on the side that is loosing even further.

PvP is incredibly hard to get right and the more people you involve in a battle the harder it will get.

It is the main reason I didn't try war yet. I like PvP but only if it is at least reasonably fair and I fear that WAR when the initial novelty wears off might not be able to get the numbers balanced. Star Wars Galaxies PvP action was a joke because of the total imbalance between Rebels and Empire. I know that both sides in WoW complain the other side has more numbers, wonder what will happen in WAR.

As you said, WoW is gaining an expansion soon, so is Lotro. Will WAR survive this? Will people be able to resist to leave their developed characters? Remember, in WoW and Lotro you can play even if no-one else is online. Not so in WAR (yes there is PvE but that is not why you bought it is it?) so if there is a bad day and no good battles seem to be happening you just switch to your PvE game and that means anyone logging into WAR afterwards finds you not there, so they go PvE as well and voila an entire evening of nobody playing WAR.

This is what I see happening in Lotro right now. Because of the way the game works, creep side (the bad guys) can't see the PvE side of the game. So, if there is no action creep side, you switch to freep, perhaps get into a PvE raid and you are out of PvMP for the evening. This is what happened last weekend on my server, I had logged of because there wasn't anyone on for some food, others did the same and eventually we ended up with no creeps online at all for several hours. Turning what should have been a busy night into a PvE session.

PvP is fun when it works, but as a company you are betting on your players being online and the sides being balanced. Hard to pull off.

Re:That is one weakness with PvP

[Synjyn]

Its true that pvp relies on numbers, but then again so does high end raiding in pve which is where many people are at with numerous chars after some years in WoW. Too hard to really judge WAR yet until the end game RVR is in full swing. It was the same way with DAoC although because just levelling etc was new to many people it did well even before RVR became the main goal for many.

Re:That is one weakness with PvP

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you obviously know NOTHING about WAR's RvR. Scenarios only start when there are enough players of both sides queued. You just play PvE happily leveling up until the scenario is ready, then you can join in or cancel. You get loaded into the scenario from wherever you are in PvE, and get dropped back there when the scenario is over (high score after 15 mins or whoever reached 500 pts before 15 mins wins). There is no disruption or waiting or guessing.

That's WAR's best RvR IMO. Of course it has open RvR areas within most zones, which may or may not be infested with any number of enemies at any given time. So if you wanna feel like you are in WoW, or get ganked, etc, you still have choices. :)

It really isn't all that

[Faynor]

I think the current trend relates directly to every WoW player knowing that there is a major patch coming prior to release of Wrath of the Litch King that is making major changes to their talent trees. When people know that there game is making a major shift they tend to lay low and wait and see. Also with the xpac being only a month away I think many people are taking sometime to recharge batteries and get ready for the level grind.

No forums

[argStyopa]

I understand Mythic's disinterest in supporting forums, I do.
I see that the WoW forums and (especially) the AoC forums are full of whiny bitches who represent a tiny fraction of the community but whose complaints ring loud in such a forum.

However, lacking an OFFICIAL forum for people to exchange ideas, get support, and make suggestions is an error. (WAR has no official forum.)

Age of Conan was released as a beautiful but deeply flawed and dysfunctional game (yes, I am a subscriber until my payment runs out in Dec). Without the ample log of problems and solutions by USERS on that forum, they wouldn't have even gotten my funds for 6 months.

Fortunately with WAR I haven't had those technical problems, but there are a lot of people who have, and I can't imagine their experience is improved by lacking any single place to shuffle through others' experience and solutions. One great example was the beta access sold through Target. It was INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING because I spent HOURS trying to get my beta key to work, only to find out on some peripheral website that it was mentioned that the Target beta codes were a misprint - wherever there was an "O" printed, it should be read as "Q".
What?
Not a WORD about this on the front page of the Mythic site?
Frankly, that's idiotic.

Certainly, a community is growing, and will eventually reach the breadth of the WoW community, I'm sure. But not having an official forum is rather stupid, IMO.

Re:No forums

[stjobe]

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/ is the unofficial official forums. That's where the devs post, that's where the server forums are, that's where everyone goes for information.

If you're on the US servers I say you've nothing to complain about, compare the numbers of US Heralds to the number of EU Heralds and you'll understand why some people question Mythic's choice of GOA as European partner.

Oh, and the official European site is absolutely terrible.

Re:Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right

[Sobrique]

Which given Warhammer is a massively more expensive pursuit, is hardly all that suprising :)

So, basically...

[Moraelin]

So basically all you're saying as correction is that I'd have to hit a key every 10 minutes or so while I watch a movie?

Re:So, basically...

[stjobe]

Sure, if your reading comprehension skills are really bad, that might be your conclusion. If not, you might have picked up on the words "won't get you very far", "take forever to level your RR" and "very small amount".

No, my correction is that you won't be able to level your RR that way. I thought that was pretty clear from my post.

Renown rank goes to 80 (twice the character's maximum rank), and the amount needed to raise one rank increases with each rank. So basically after RR2 or so, you need to do RvR scenarios and open RvR to increase your RR.

Which means your plan won't work, which in turn means your criticism doesn't either.

Do yourself a favour and pick one of the many real problems with the game if you still feel a need to criticize it. Scenario exploits, pet problems, ability problems, crafting; there's any number of real problems to discuss without needing to resort to made-up ones.

Re:So, basically...

[haystor]

Do yourself a favour and pick one of the many real problems with the game if you still feel a need to criticize it. Scenario exploits, pet problems, ability problems, crafting; there's any number of real problems to discuss without needing to resort to made-up ones.

And it's still more fun than WoW.

And the best part is that even though it is a whole lot more fun, I play less.

Re:So, basically...

[stjobe]

Yeah, don't get me started on the problems with WoW, what with the gear focus and the interminable grinding and the class balance issues and... Don't get me started, I said! ;)

Actually, I cancelled my WoW subscription five minutes after my first keep battle in WAR, it's that much fun :)

Re:So, basically...

[Anonymous Coward]

You took the less important part of what he said. Try to park your char at an inn and find out how long it takes to get Ranks.

Its a perfect plan if you want to let your Great Grand children enjoy the fruits of your labor!!

Re:So, basically...

[brkello]

The game rewards you the more active you are. So yeah, being in the same zone might get you some RP. At a low level, that may be enough to get you your first level (where the bar is set lower than for Palin in a debate). But later it would be so insignificant as to be pointless. Besides, it isn't like it is hard to get RP. All you do is some of the RvR stuff. Actually, I think they do a pretty good job of rewarding you for being more active. The more damage/healing you do leads to morale abilities which will allow you to use powerful special abilities. You get more RP and XP when you are in the middle of the action rather than AFKing. So yeah, I don't really think your argument is all that valid.

Re:So, basically...

[Satanboy]

Actually, I cancelled my WoW subscription five minutes after my first keep battle in WAR, it's that much fun :)

My roomate and I did as well. The change to gear requirements for pvp gear was the final straw, forcing me to play arenas was just not going to be done.

We both cancelled and got WAR last night, and I gotta say, there are smal bugs, graphic bugs, some silly lag things that happen here or there, but they are NOTHING compared to the launch of any mmo before, WOW had game crushing bugs for months, and their changes to fix em broke tons of other things when it came out.

WAR is the game for me, I can pvp, I can do quests solo or with a group, and i can have FUN. Thats the most important thing to me.

Blizzard runs Oracle

[BitterAndDrunk]

So if we assume they make a billion dollars a year gross, once we subtract the licensing fees for the Oracle databases, they're down to $150 to pay all of their DBAs.

well, US television show writers

[BitterAndDrunk]

In the US, tv writers are contractually forbidden to read pilot scripts for their shows.

I wonder if we're seeing a similar effect - where the WAR team didn't want to be unduly influenced (read: steal) from WoW, so they intentionally avoided looking at WoW.

Re:Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right

[An ominous Cow art]

[1]I may have tucked an onion into my belt, as was the fashion of the time, but in my day lots of people played D&D... even football players and members of the Homecoming Court and the FFA and the gearheads. The only population in my HS that didn't have quite a few D&D players was the girls. Which is why eventually D&D got relegated to geekdom, IMO.

You were fortunate. Due to moving half way across the country, I attended two different high schools in the years 1981-1984, and both fit the stereotype perfectly :-(.

WoW and WAR

[Hausenwulf]

This is my take on limited experience with WAR so far, but a ton of experience with WoW. WoW is the pve game. Few people seem to like it's pvp, but endlessly pile into battlegrounds or arenas to get good pvp reward gear. Its attempt at larger pvp with world combat is a failure.

On the other hand, I've had a much better time with pvp in WAR. Its scenarios (battleground equivalents) are better balanced and don't seem to be as annoying as WoW battlegrounds, at least not so far. The world pvp or rvr combat is nice, but suffers from lack of participation, at least on my server. I don't think WAR's pve content will ever compare to WoW.

So, I see WoW as being the raider's game, with dungeon delves and pve content being the end game. On the other hand, WAR should end up being the pvp players' game. I think the rvr combat is much better than pvp in WoW, but needs to build up a better base of high level characters to provide the numbers it needs to really shine.

WAR from the view of a longtime WoW player

[darkwing_bmf]

Warhammer wins in "World" group PvP. Take keeps and such all the way up to the enemy capital city, kind of a combination of PvP and PvE. For WoW players, think Alterac Valley when it was still fun x1000.

Pure PvE Raiding is still way better in WoW. Taking keeps and such in RvR is raid-like, but the NPCs don't have the kind of scripted goodness Blizzard's bosses do, the real challenge (other than organization) comes if the other side's players try to defend. WAR does have a couple of "real" end game boss fights but, from what I've read, it's more like Onyxia or Gruul where you get right to the boss without much in between (except the RvR required to take the enemy capital city and open those dungeons).

Solo questing and instanced PvP (battlegrouds/scenarios) are about the same in each, slight edge to WAR because it's new and shiny.

Group questing ... WoW has *much* better PvE dungeons (WAR has instanced dungeons, but not to the scale and quality WoW does), but Warhammer has better outside quests for groups (public quests) and taking minor objective points in RvR feels like a group quest (take out the NPC guards then claim the objective for your side).

If the idea of PvP usually turns you off, but you like to do PvE with groups (like raiding), you may like WAR anyway as taking major objectives in RvR (like keeps) is less like "omgwtfpwnedbbq" and more like a raid in the sense that you get a large group together focused on an objective and you have to figure out and execute a plan to capture/defend that objective to be successful. To take a keep, you need to defeat the NPC keep lord (boss) who is protected by NPC guards (feels like a simple WoW raid boss fight) and sometimes by enemy players too (which turns it into a complex WoW raid boss fight).

The one real Achilles' heal in WAR is server population. If you join an empty server it will feel lonely and you'll probably hate it. If you join a populated server there's a good chance you'll enjoy it.

Summary: If you wish you could play a *Super Epic* Alterac Valley, play WAR. If you prefer interesting scripted boss fights, play WoW. If you have free time, at least try both and judge for yourself.

Your opinion is based off of two hours of play

[PrimalChrome]

There are plenty of items that you can legitimately criticize. You brought up tradeskilling and Cultivating in particular...which is a good start. Your take on Reknown ranks smacks of someone who has spent only a couple of hours in game and has very little experience with MMO frameworks.

The first few ranks/levels (be they tradeskill, reknown, or character) in ANY MMO go by in the blink of an eye. Why? To give the new player a sense of accomplishment...the whole reward addiction. Your Reknown went up a rank when your team capped an area because it was going up it's first rank...which means it took only a few points to do so. Much like killing a couple of rats will give you your first character rank-up. It becomes somewhat exponential beyond that...just like character levelling.

PQ's do require multiple characters. Some, particularly in the Tier 2+ areas, require some serious teamwork. Sometimes it is hard to find enough players to complete a stage (which you get bonus Influence for each stage). Deal with it. It is no different than any other MMO that requires a group for a dungeon/instance/raid. Creative approaches have allowed small groups with no tank to finish PQ bosses...just step outside the box and think tactically. Ping-pong kiting, for example.

Speaking of thinking tactically...your whining about having a health bar, mana/focus bar, morale bar, and building grudge is weak. You're complaining that you now have MORE options to how you take a fight to your enemy. You're not limited by this, it gives you a greater scope of approach. If you want a simplistic system, just stick with something like WoW and be happy....but don't complain because a game expands your tactical arsenal.

Finally, the rolling for loot is a bit odd, but if you were there for all PQ stages, you can start at +500 based on your contribution, giving you a better than average chance of a loot bag. You're not guaranteed, just like you're not guaranteed anything when you roll on a WoW or EQ raid (but there you're never given a better than average chance). Reknown rewards, PQ loot, Quest loot, Influence rewards, and regular MOB loot are all valuable. My toons are wearing bits from each type of loot...because no one really trumped all others.

At the end of the day, Warhammer needs polish. The tradeskilling needs a near total revamp. It has a number of technical bugs that need addressing. Support forums are non-existent. Even with all that, our entire gaming group is having more fun with it than we have any other MMO in years. When you have 8 guys that regularly disagree on how good a game is, have been gaming since the 80's, and MMOing since MUDs...that's worth something.

Good point

[PrimalChrome]

It's also worth mentioning that the UI layout editor is notoriously unreliable. Splitting out text boxes for Combat, Chat, Guild, and ALL generally results in a reset to defaults after logging.

Or...

[brkello]

I know that I cancelled both my WoW and Eve subscriptions this weekend. I can't do more than one MMO at a time. WoW is still the most polished game out there and it is by far superior when it comes to PvE. Eve is that game that I go back to time and again because it could be really cool but I always go away feeling bitter because it is fundamentally a very boring game. WAR right now is new and is just fun. Logging in and doing the RVR instances (like wow BG) has just been too much fun. I think the game has a lot of potential to be great. WoW killer? I think it can compete...but that is all up to how hard the developers work to squash bugs and keep the content fresh.

Make up your mind

[Moraelin]

Well, maybe before throwing tantrums about people's supposed reading comprehension problems, it would help if it were clear at least to you what you're trying to say. Because

A) "made-up", "Which means your plan won't work", and "you won't be able to level your RR that way" mean it doesn't happen. At all.

B) "won't get you very far", "take forever to level your RR" and "very small amount" mean it does. Slow enough to not bother _you_, maybe, but they do.

If you can argue that a problem is "made-up" while arguing in the same freaking message that, yeah, it does happen but only slowly, then... maybe it would help if you made up your mind first, which of them it is. "Made-up" doesn't mean "it doesn't bother me", you know?

It's the difference between "I won't fuck you up the arse" and "yeah, but I'll do it only very slowly and it'll take for ever." The latter is somewhat less of a consolation when I'm on the receiving side of it.

My problem is that it happens at all. The very fact that some points are given around randomly, no matter at what speed, is what irks me.

The point that it would be faster to do RvR, is moot too, when I just don't give a flying f-word about RvR. It's one passtime I have exactly zero interest in. So for me it won't happen faster that way, because RvR for me won't happen at all. Ever. Under any circumstances. Which leaves me with a trickle of RvR renown points, and it is hard not to notice that it keeps going forward, in spite of not doing anything for it and not even wanting it. Slow, maybe, but it goes forward anyway, without any resemblance to any idea of fair rewards for equal effort.

It's that lack of any semblance of a coherent efforts-vs-rewards or fairness idea, that irks me, not just whether those arbitrarily distributed points go fast or slow.

And not even just by itself, but because that randomness permeates more aspects than just those renown points. When it's not this, it's the broken balance. Or it's the fact that the same tier of PQ in different area, and for the same player level and quality level, the rewards can be as much as twice better. You know, both are a two-hander sword for the same class, both show up as green-quality, and both are for the same episode of PQ, but one does twice the DPS and has better stats. WTF? Didn't anyone take the time to balance what "level 4 green" means across the board, or what? Or if I don't run into that, it's that contribution or effort in a PQ don't coordinate with the rewards anyway. Etc.

Oh, and BTW, the constant handwaving about RvR level 2 being some kind of a cut-off point, is technically false too. I have a character who got to RvR level 5 in about an hour, by just running around doing the PvE newbie quests. So whatever cut-off point there may be, it's definitely a bit higher than 2.

Do yourself a favour and pick one of the many real problems with the game if you still feel a need to criticize it. Scenario exploits, pet problems, ability problems, crafting; there's any number of real problems to discuss without needing to resort to made-up ones.

Its having more (and bigger) problems doesn't make the lack of any coherent balance plan disappear or "made-up". And it's not much of a consolation anyway. It's a bit like saying "well, she may be an alcoholic, but she's schizophrenic too." The latter doesn't excuse the former.

Re:Make up your mind

[Chris Burke]

There is no practical, meaningful difference between the plan not working at all and the plan taking so long that you'd be an old man before you were done. He doesn't have to make up his mind, you need to understand what he's saying and it's very plain. You can try to cram a semantic crowbar into the gap between subjective words, but all you're doing is widening the amount by which you're missing the point.

To use your hilariously spurious butt rape analogy, what's the difference between not being sodomized, and said sodomy being initiated so slowly that at no point does your hypothetical rapist ever come in contact with you? I would say that in the latter case that said sodomy is, in fact, "made up".

Re:Make up your mind

[stjobe]

I'll just state it one more time for the record: You cannot, absolutely cannot, level RR any meaningful amount by either idling in PVE or for that instance in RvR scenarios. Let it go. You're wrong.

Now, if RvR is of "exactly zero interest" to you, have you considered that maybe you're playing the wrong game? RvR is what WAR is about, after all. It's not shy about telling you that, either.

Oh, and a heads-up: it's also not a gear grind type of game. WoW is that-a-way ->

As I've stated here and in several other posts in this story, there's lots of problems with WAR. A few major, a lot of minor, but none of them showstoppers. It's a hell of a good game and a hell of a fun time. Gripe if you like, but do it about something that is actually a problem, not something you're either misinformed about or just plain made up.

Re:Make up your mind

[brkello]

RP and levels are an integral part of your character development. It's like playing WoW and deciding that you don't want to wear equipment and it pisses you off you keep getting all this random equipment when you do quests. They give you permanent, configurable passive stat boosts and abilities and grant you access to better equipment.

Your complaint that you were rewarded for stuff and not doing anything seems silly since you don't even care. You aren't going to get to 80 by avoiding RvR stuff any time soon. I don't think the devs care that you get some insignificant amount of points if you aren't involved. The rest of the community will be more than happy to get a few extra points every now and then.

Like the guy said, there are plenty of things you can complain about in this game. The ones you complain about aren't problems but just that you see things in a weird way. It is telling that you don't want to do any of the RvR stuff since that is the main thing the game is designed around. No wonder you don't like the game.

Re:Make up your mind

[Moraelin]

To say it again: what they promised is that the game is also perfectly viable without PvP. I expected a game where the PvE part is indeed able to stand on its own legs, without random RP points as crutches. If it needs that kind of a crutch to be viable, then it tells me that, essentially, they lied to me.

Take WoW for example. You _can_ get to any level or raiding tier without a single "honour" point. The PvE game is really that self self-sufficient and needs no extra crutches.

If "RP and levels are an integral part of your character development" -- in fact, so integral that you can compare it to WoW gear with a straight face -- then it's a PvP game and the PvE game is just a clutch on its side. That's not what their marketing told me. If they had said an honest, "guys, it's a PvP game, we don't need you PvE-ers around these here parts", I could respect that, and they wouldn't have got my money. But that's not what they said.

So I think it's entirely fair to judge the game in the aspect of how viable it is as a purely PvE-only game. And it comes short there. That I then need some PvP points that badly that they're giving me some for free, if nothing else, is a half-arsed crutch, not a PvE game. A viable PvE game wouldn't need those at all.

Re:Make up your mind

[Moraelin]

It is telling that you don't want to do any of the RvR stuff since that is the main thing the game is designed around. No wonder you don't like the game.

Well, I wouldn't have a problem, if they had said basically just that: "guys, it's a PvP game, we don't want PvE-ers around these here parts." But that's not what they kept saying in interviews and stuff all over the place. Someone at Mythic or EA obviously decided that they want everyone's money, and kept telling us that yeah, verily, PvP is purely optional, you can play to any level without PvP, the PvE game is perfectly fun and viable on its own.

So, yes, I think it's entirely fair to judge it by how it fares without that PvP stuff. Because that's the promise based on which they got my money.

RP and levels are an integral part of your character development. It's like playing WoW and deciding that you don't want to wear equipment

If it's that integral that you can compare it to WoW gear with a straight face, then it's a PvP game, plain and simple, and the PvE game is a half-arsed kludge on its side. A real viable PvE game would be self-contained enough to not need _any_ RP or renown levels _at_ _all_.

They give you permanent, configurable passive stat boosts and abilities and grant you access to better equipment.

So basically anyone who doesn't PvP is a second class citizen with poorer stats. I'm sorry, but that tells me that their marketing flat out lied to me about the PvE part.

But to get back to that analogy of yours:

It's like playing WoW and deciding that you don't want to wear equipment and it pisses you off you keep getting all this random equipment when you do quests.

No, it's as if some publisher kept telling me that the quests are purely optional, the game is perfectly viable without quests, and verily you have lost nothing if you happen to not like quests. Then discovering that actually they lied, and you'll always be a second class citizen without doing quests. In fact, that the game is so centered around them, that the game has to pretend you did some quests by just being in the same area as someone who did them, to give you a chance at all.

There's a name for promising one thing and not even planing to deliver it: fraud.

Note that I'm not against quests actually, but since your analogy was about those, I had to work with that. The basic idea is more generic: if they promised X and said that Y isn't really needed, then they damn better deliver X and keep Y out of my face entirely. Whatever those X and Y are.

Re:Make up your mind

[Cornflake917]

Well, I wouldn't have a problem, if they had said basically just that: "guys, it's a PvP game, we don't want PvE-ers around these here parts." But that's not what they kept saying in interviews and stuff all over the place. Someone at Mythic or EA obviously decided that they want everyone's money, and kept telling us that yeah, verily, PvP is purely optional, you can play to any level without PvP, the PvE game is perfectly fun and viable on its own.

I never got that impression from Mythic. Every time I heard anyone say anything (including devs) about WAR it was about the superior PVP (compared to WoW) and while PVE was there, and decent, it was not really the meat and potatoes of the game. I feel that this is the case after playing the game. There are quests, public quests, instances, and they are pretty well done in my opinion. In all honesty, everything was ripped off from WoW that they liked, stripped the rep grind, and added public quests and influence. However, I only kept up with WAR previews, articles, and the like through Slashdot. Maybe other sources gave you the wrong impression leading up to the game's release.

I understand your frustrations if you wanted to only PVE, especially if that's the game you were expecting. But I also understand GP's point of view. WAR is simply a PVP game with PVE to compliment the down time and to keep things interesting. Not to sound condescending, but if you really want to do PVE only then WoW is definately the better choice.

     

Re:Make up your mind

[brkello]

But you can't PvP and level in WoW...is that a flaw? (well, actually I think it is due to twinks) But WAR was built for RvR from the ground up. It isn't a flaw if you don't choose to participate. This just isn't the game for you.

Re:Make up your mind

[brkello]

You always have a screwed up view on almost everything you post on. You nitpick on stuff that doesn't make any sense, and then when someone points out the flaw in you argument you go farther off the deep end to defend the flawed arguments. The game was built around RvR. You absolutely can PvE to the highest level. There is just another aspect you are ignoring which is ridiculous to the point of being juvenile. If I don't do Arena in WoW, I can't get Arena awards. If I don't do BGs in WoW, I can't get BG gear. So you choose not to PvP in a PvP designed game and expect to be catered to? Give me a break.

Re:Analysis in 2 weeks time would have been better

[Knara]

If you like grinding for gear, it doesn't get better than WoW currently.

However, if you like non-carebear play done well, WoW is horrible.

Can't say I've noticed the queue problems, though. And I'm on a server that was highly populated since before the release.

Re:Lotro numbers going up because of free weekend.

[the marion cobretti]

It's also possible that LOTRO numbers went up because people realised warhammer online is a buggy POS, like I did.

I think that warhammer seems like a "POS" for those that missed out on early MMO days. [i.e. EQ1, AC, and DaoC] This game takes alot of its stride from those earlier games then today's farmer games... and I think mythic did it right. [just like i thought they did the first time].

there have been threads popping up regularly stating the fact that this may be the most antisocial MMO ever.

Kind of like saying the nerdest kids at chess club. I dont know if the game is in fact more anti-social than other MMORPGs, but realistically... MMORPG's are solutions for those that are in fact really anti-social. Its a false reality that leads them to believe they are being social when in fact they are hiding. Its hella easier to be social when you are hiding behind an elf avatar, init? I think alot of today's naysayers are going to be tomorrow's subscribers. have a nice day.

Re:Lotro numbers going up because of free weekend.

[A beautiful mind]

When I say POS I mainly mean it's ridden with thousands of bugs that makes the game something of an early beta / late alpha, not a releaseable thing. Their whole client is messed up beyond belief with performance issues and weird bugs. Plus some of the annoying things are apparently considered features like an EULA agreement coming up on every launch. Talk about stupid.

Warhammer's focus is not quite right

[Dan667]

I have tried both World of Warcraft and Warhammer as a new user over the last several weeks and my take is that Warhammer has a ways to go on who they are catering to before they can become successful on more than a niche level. EA/Mythic does not understand that when you login, you should not have to sit through the company logo clips, and have to manually skip the cinematic ... then skip the EULA (again, every time) to finally be able to get to your character. Which you then have to wait as it loads. Logging out of Warhammer is just as painful. You have to sit there for 20 seconds for it to decide to do something. What rocket scientist thought that would be a great idea? With World of Warcraft, you just login and load, that is it. You can pop in and out to play. Also in Warhammer, you cannot really talk to anyone easily you have to wonder who they thought would be playing? People seem to like MMO for the other players, but aside from the public quests, Warhammer have really has an alienating setup. Both from a player and community perspective.

Re:Hey. you! You're looking for that answer, right

[Anonymous Coward]

Games Workshop stores are in countless malls across the United States and in most High Streets in the UK. Not to mention liberally spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Wizards of the Coast had a handful of stores a few years ago. They all went under. No other non-videogaming company, or even genre, has gone more mainstream with their product than GW.

Your friend was simply suffering from "loser elitism". Even those at the bottom of the social ladder like to feel like they're "better" than someone else despite having hobbies that outsiders would consider identical. Not only is he no better than "them", he's so riddled with insecurities that he can't even accept his own place in the mainstream social hierarchy.