"Live Expansion" Announced for Warhammer Online

Zonk brings word that Mythic has announced their plans to expand Warhammer Online in the coming months using a series of live events that will open up new careers, gear, and zones. The first event, planned for sometime in March, will allow access to the Dwarf Slayer and the Orc Choppa, as well as a new RvR scenario. Later, players will race to unlock a massive new zone, the Lands of the Dead. The expansion itself is titled "A Call to Arms," and it will be rolled out free of charge.

Comments

"and it will be rolled out free of charge. "

[SupremoMan]

Nice. I wish Blizzard did this. They sure as hell have the money for free expansions.

Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. "

[Duradin]

Ya, it'd be nice if they added new instances without having to pay for a new expansion...

MC (shudder), BWL, Dire Maul, AQ and Original Nax were added to the retail release.
Burning Crusade had BT.
WotLK is coming up on the next CONTENT patch which will add a new raid instance.

Yup, no free expansions there.

Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. "

[DreamsAreOkToo]

They're gouging the hell out of casual players. When was the last time they ever added anything for casuals, (read: those who don't have to "clock in" for a raid or arena)

I haven't been paying attention for the last 14 months, but in the 3 years I played, the only and last one was Dire Maul.

Also, if you've been playing since release and bought the expansions, you've paid $700 (50 mo x 15 + 50 x 2). Since when was $700 reasonable for a game?

Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. "

[_KiTA_]

If anything Blizzard is completely catering to the casual player.

Really? Catering to 95% of their player base? What crazy rebels!

... seriously. Is it "catering" at that point or "producing the product their player base is expecting?"

Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. "

[PaladinAlpha]

Yeah, and you can pick up a copy of Dos 6.11 for fifty cents and spend TEN years writing batch files, and it comes out to like a billionth of a cent per hour!!!1! The problem with your reasoning is you are assuming that "Playing WoW" is equivalent to "Playing a wide variety of story-driven self-contained RPGs." It's like saying that since an unabridged dictionary/thesaurus is cheaper per-page than 20 sci-fi books it makes for better reading.

Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. "

[brkello]

I play for two soccer teams, an orchestra, have a full time job, and a girl friend I spend time with on the week and almost all of the weekend who does not game. I had no problem making it to 80, have all the pre-raid purples (i.e. all rep and heroic epics), and am able to raid. I don't do naxx, but I can do the others. The game is extremely casual friendly. You either haven't played WotLK or just have some sort of strange bias. Leveling content is interesting and there is a lot more of it than you need to get to 80...thus I can understand why someone would say it is in there for casuals because the hardcore would just skip it as soon as they hit 80.

Arenas are as casual or non-casual as you want them to be. If you want to be the best there is, you are going to have to put time in to it....but that is true of any online game.

WotLK makes running Heroics much faster by giving you just a few trash pulls so you get to the bosses faster. Most are run under an hour. While you run them, you wear a tabard that gives you rep for whoever you want so you are also working towards that goal. They are balancing rewards with effort it takes to get things and I think they have done an incredible job so that I can be geared the way I am and still have a full life (hell, I bet my life is fuller than yours).

You don't like WoW. That is 100% fine. Just don't play. But don't spout off a bunch of crap that isn't true like your definition of a casual. WoW is the most polished, casual friendly MMORPG ever created.

Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. "

[Archimonde]

Oh, it seems we are very quick to jump to ad hominems and meta level. Please spare me of that rubbish.

You had my responses to the parent, and you didn't acknowledge any of them. Of all the (few) points I made in the previous post you only replied to the point about 5-man instances which I described as casual friendly. Have you actually read the post you are replying to? And oh, arenas. Explain to me please, how do you manage to play 10 2v2 games in under an hour when the queue is never less then 10 minutes? Moreover, if you consider fun playing around 1500 (or under) rating, good luck getting any gear which would enable you to get better rating.

WoW is the most polished, casual friendly MMORPG ever created.

That says more about other games than WoW itself. Or do you mean that if the WoW is the most polished mmorpg, then any criticism is automatically invalid? Is that what you mean? Or do you think that I couldn't parrot that phrase as well? I also consider WoW the most polished mmorpg there is but that doesn't invalidate any of my points. Nor does make WoW any better just by saying it.

I could make much more points about WoW but it seems to me that all you want to discuss is your "fuller life". Well enjoy it then, don't waste it on WoW.

Of course its free

[Daswolfen]

Its just content that was originally planned for release that got cut just so they could beat Blizzards Wrath Expansion out of the gate.

Re:Of course it's free

[Anonymous Coward]

Which doesn't mean it has to be free. Maybe it should be free, and it's a good thing that they're offering it for free, but it doesn't mean that it has to be free.

I think it was Sony's Final Fantasy Online that recently decided to do something similar, where they're rolling out an expansion in small chunks. Small chunks that you have to pay $10 each for.

So it may be content that was cut to meet a deadline, but if we've learned anything from Sony and their attempts to monetize literally everything (you should listen to them talk about $2 shoes in PlayStation Home), it's worth praising publishers when they give away content for free - because if we don't, they may decide to charge us $5 next time.

Please!

[whisper_jeff]

"...and it will be rolled out free of charge. "

Translation: PLEASE COME BACK! We know millions of you tried our game when we launched but then Wrath of the Lich King came out and you all went back to WoW and dropped us but we'd REALLY like it if you came back. Please. Pretty please.

Ok, smartass comment out of the way, I feel bad for the Mythic crew. They had the best chance to take a substantial bite out of WoW's rather massive pie. But, in the end, they're playing in the same fantasy-genre sandbox and they just cannot compete with WoW. Yes, Warhammer may do some (or even many) things better than WoW but WoW also does many things better than Warhammer. More importantly, 11.5 million people play WoW. That's a MASSIVE player base and, given that the type of game is a massively multiplayer online game, that "massive" part is kind of important.

In my opinion, it will take a long time before another fantasy MMO comes out that has a similar real chance to take a substantial chunk of the market from WoW. If Warhammer couldn't do it, with all it's legacy behind it, it will require something truly spectacular to do it. Blizzard will need to screw things up at the same time that another company does a lot of things REALLY well with a hot IP (kinda like what WoW did to Everquest...). Warhammer had it's chance but missed the target. It'll be a while before another game has a shot. In my opinion.

Re:Please!

[zergl]

More importantly, 11.5 million people play WoW. That's a MASSIVE player base and, given that the type of game is a massively multiplayer online game, that "massive" part is kind of important.

And how many of those players play on one same shard? The massive part matters only if I can actually interact with those other players and the biggest US realms have about 35k characters of levels 10+ rolled on it. That's characters only, mind you.
I don't have any numbers on it, but if you could count only actual accounts/players (and/or players logged in at the same time), those numbers would be way less than that, too.

Anyway, if you're gonna go with this argument, EvE Online beats the whole bunch in that department without breaking a sweat. It's where the massively multiplayer aspect is truly massive with a peak of around 45k accounts (probably a bit less if you discard alt accounts) logged in at the same time in one persistent game universe.

Re:Please!

[Thaelon]

A few points at random...

But, in the end, they're playing in the same fantasy-genre sandbox and they just cannot compete with WoW.

I played wow early on got the collector's edition, and everything. Eventually got very bored and quit. I mostly like PvP, but if you do pure pvp in wow, you don't level. I got tired of the grind and quit. In Warhammer you can level all the way to 40 without killing a single NPC monster. You even get great gear from it.

That's a MASSIVE player base and, given that the type of game is a massively multiplayer online game, that "massive" part is kind of important.

This is very misleading. Sure 11.5 million players is an incredible amount, but they play on how many different servers? 400? This means there are probably at most 30k players a server. It equates roughly to at most 4,800 or so players on at any given time. Compare this to the only truly massive MOG I'm familiar with, EVE online. It has usually has 25-35k players active on one server at the same time. Sure WoW is bigger in terms of player base, but the actual number of players participating in any given thing is minuscule by comparison. EVE routinely has 300 to a thousand players in a single battle. There's only one server too. This means you and all your friends can't help but play on the same server. This perk is unique in the MMO world as far as I can tell. It's also a completely different genre (Space/Scifi) with heinous death penalties. But those penalties result in the creation of a phenomenon I've never heard of outside of EVE called the "pvp shakes". It often get so intense people's body shake. You'll hear them talk about it in vent, or in local chat, or on forums and evemails. The battles are often fewer and sometimes shorter, but they are orders of magnitude more intense and stimulating as a result.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on Blizzard, I'm just not into WoW. I prefer other MMOs, notably EVE and Warhammer.

Re:Please!

[brkello]

I just had to see what you quoted to know this was going to be an Eve online post. Yeah, it is nice to know that if your friend plays Eve, he is on the same server. Even just isn't fun for the majority of people because the PvE is lacking and the PvP requires you to be a bit more hard core. That and the single shard means that the whole game is spoiled from dev cheating in the past.

What he is saying though...is that you probably know someone who plays WoW...thus making it more likely you would want to join so you can play with them.

Re:Please!

[furby076]

It's also apathy. Players of WoW don't want to leave their established characters to start from scratch.

One thing Mythic did screw up on, they created WAY too many servers to start. They helped fix it by giving free transfers - but I can't help but think how many people they lost to that.

I went and played it (had quit wow in 2007) since friends asked me to. Then they quit so I did and went back to WoW. If blizz were smart they would adopt the PvP aspect of War. They did it right.

Re:Please!

[drsquare]

Strange how every article about MMOs is quickly filled with EVE fans telling everyone how great and unique it is, even though no-one cares because EVE is boring as hell.

Re:To All Those Posting About System Requirements

[Skuld-Chan]

Shame it doesn't have good defaults - I've read at least 3-4 players they lost over that alone.

New mmo's don't seem to understand that you need to appease new players within the trial period or they may never come back. Sometimes they have even less time if they are already happy with an exist MMO (like WoW). This whole release now, and patch later thing really doesn't cut it anymore - even though WoW had a lot of launch issues as well.