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"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.
Its just content that was originally planned for release that got cut just so they could beat Blizzards Wrath Expansion out of the gate.
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
GET TO DA CHOPPA!!!
Right, because Blizzard is gouging the hell out of us releasing a second paid expansion four years after release. They've added new quest hubs, battlegrounds, tradeskill stuff, whole zones, and of course many new dungeons and raids through free content patches.
Played Eve Online for 5 years, Never once paid for any of the expansions, Nor did I have to pay to move my toon to a new server.
"...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.
I completely forgot, but Mythic has a bit of a history with "Live Expansions".
Typically their cycle in DAoC would be a free "Expansion" during the late spring/early summer timeframe, with a paid expansion in the late fall/early winter timeframe.
Examples of free "Summer" expansions would be Foundations (housing) and New Frontiers, and sometimes major game mechanics patches (such as spellcrafting the year before Foundations). There were fewer of these than paid expansions.
The paid expansions were typically yearly up until the past year (or was it two years ago they stopped?), when instead of another DAoC expansion, WAR was released. The paid expansions were Shrouded Isles, Trials of Atlantis (which led to DAoC's demise), Catacombs, , and Labyrinth of the Minotaur.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I have to say, I am really enjoying this game. I'm not getting the grind feel form other games, and playing it way more casually, but still having a blast because of the RVR. Having a free expansion is nothing but gravy. Sweet wonderful gravy....
I bought Warhammer Online, signed up, played for most of the first month, cancelled, and haven't been back since.
That game brought my machine to it's knees, and I have an Intel Q6600-based quad-core machine with 4GB memory with an nVidia 8800GTS video card. It wasn't bad in most of the world, but when I was in the chaos city it became completely unusable.
When I first logged in, there were some people in the beginning areas. Then I didn't log in for a couple days, and those areas were completely deserted. I couldn't find anybody to do the group quests in. I was also getting tired of being one-shotted from a ridiculous distance if I happened to stray to close to an order town.
In the end I was completely underwhelmed with the gameplay, disgusted by the performance, perplexed at the unbelievable linearity of the game, and simply unwilling to waste any more time on it.
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?
I'm disappointed they havent listed any patch notes, or game balance changes. WAR is a good game, but there's definite issues with it. Whoever coded the mail system likely did the buff/debuff updates. I have a great gaming PC (new quad core + 4870x2) and I can get 30-50FPS during a keep raid, UNTIL I target something with lots of buffs/debuffs on it, such as a keep door. Even with buffs disabled, nothing showing on my screen I instantly drop to 1 frame every 3 seconds. Theres some serious issues there. I'm also an Archmage, and really sick of invisible Witch Elves dropping me before I can even cast one instant ability, thanks to stun + silence and obscene DPS. Other than those issues, I have a great time in open combat with my guild, there's routinely 100+ people online each night in our guild, fun times!
I am a relatively casual player and I have spent thousands of hours in those zones over the years.
"Thousands of hours"?? That's more time than most people spend at a full time job in a YEAR. (40hrs/wk * 52 wks/yr = 1680hrs/yr) and you spent thousands of hours in just 5 Warcraft zones? How much time did you spend playing WoW not in those zones?
I think your definition of "relatively casual player" is seriously askew.
In the TBC cycle, off the top of my head, the following was added for "casuals":
- Netherwing quest hub
- Shatari Skyguard quest hub
- Ogri'la quest hub
- Zul'Aman 10-man raid and associated quests
- Sunwell Isle, including multiple quest hubs and a new 5-man instance
- Added a new quest hub in Dustwallow Marsh for people leveling new characters
They also progressively nerfed the crap out of the raid content to make it more accessible for casual players.
On top of that the vast majority of content in the TBC and WLK expansions is for "casuals". Look at the amount of quest content, the number of 5-man dungeons, new battlegrounds, etc. as compared to the amount of raid content.
If anything Blizzard is completely catering to the casual player.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
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?
If you're a casual player, and you log in 10 hours per week, then you're getting 2000 hours( = 50 mo x 4 [wks/mo] x 10 [hr/wk]) of gameplay for those $700 dollars. Let's round that to 3 hours per dollar. The alternative, to a casual fantasy-loving gamer, would be to keep up with the steady stream of console RPGs that keeps coming out. If you don't care about getting the infinity plus one sword or reaching 101% completion (which you don't, because remember that you're a casual gamer), then it takes roughly 50 hours to beat any new game of the Dragon Fantasy variety. Last I checked, these games cost around $50 each, giving you about 1 hour for every $1 you spend on it. Sure, you could go for 101% completion if you wanted to, and that might stretch the game out to 150 hours and make it a match for WoW, but if you were that hardcore then you would probably be logging 30 hours per week in Azeroth and keeping the ratio about the same. WoW is cheap.
If anything Blizzard is completely catering to the casual player.
Really? Catering to 95% of their player base? What crazy rebels!
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.
... seriously. Is it "catering" at that point or "producing the product their player base is expecting?"
I never said it was bad. The OPs point is that Blizzard only cares about and only releases "free" content for raiders, which is demonstrably not true.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
I am going to post this because I have seen so many people complain about system requirement issues in warhammer.
There is a CUSTOM button in your preferences for graphics.
If you click this button, you can do the following:
You can set spell abilities to off, yourself, your party, or everyone.
You can adjust the buffer to use more of your cards RAM (this is set to 0 by default but moving the slider 3/4 of the way speeds the game up immensely for me).
You can change the resolution.
You can change the way shadows are displayed.
You can adjust the detail level of the textures in the game.
I run a 2.4 ghz dual core intel with 2 gb of ram and a 3870 vid card and the game runs fine. I've taken keeps with 4 warbands (thats 96 people folks) and have had some slowdown, but it was not a slideshow.
The game handles massive amounts of people very well, and adjusting your in game resolution settings should be a no brainer for anyone playing video games on their PC.
With all that said, i am VERY pleased to hear of the updates that are coming.
A suicidal dwarf and a berzerking orc will be fun to get to play around with.
Getting new lands? I'm still exploring the ones we have!
But yeah, this game is rocking along very well and I have to say, the devs have been really responsive on whats being done.
I have no complaints, and have absolutely no reason to get into another MMO with how fun this game has turned out to be.
does it have hogger? didn't think so.