There was indeed a Warhammer Fantasy MMO being developed about 4 years ago. After about a year of development, it was shutdown. Later the IP was re-licensed to Mythic Entertainment, who has been in development of their own project (completely different from the original) for a couple years now and is set to release around this upcoming Christmas.
THQ, if they do go through with this, is probably looking at a release date of around 2011. There have been a ton of rumors that it will not even be an MMORPG, but instead some kind of alteration on the theme... perhaps an MMORTS or MMOFPS.
Your points are valid against EQ (which I would sure as hell hope WoW did better than EQ1), but none of them are valid against EQ2. Either you've never played EQ2, or you've haven't played in a year or two.
---"Better artwork with an overal consistency of style"
This is purely a matter of opinion. I enjoy WoW's style as well, but I know plenty of people that can't stand it.
---"Easy-to-use questing interface that's actually fun and rewarding"
Having played both WoW and EQ2, I'd say EQ2 actually has the better questing interface. Both are close to the exact same, though.
---"The ability to almost always play solo with any class"
At launch, EQ2 suffered from this. After about a year of patching, only the Templar and Inquisitor still have soloing problems. However, they are both pretty much first picks for group construction, so it's not so bad.
---"No more experience penalties on death"
Again, due to patching, the XP penalties are essentially nill. I purposely attempted to rack up XP debt in EQ2 awhile back (you do not lose XP in EQ2, you just gain it slower for a period of time)... it took me 100 deaths to get a 50% of a level's worth of XP in debt.
---"No more painfully long meditation breaks between battles"
EQ1 was horrendous on this. EQ2 has shorter breaks for MP than WoW, but longer breaks for HP. In groups, HP is of course easilly healed.
---"More benefit and less annoyance with PvP play"
I don't know how BC's PvP reward system works, but pre-BC, the honor system was awful. You saw no reward at all unless you were a lvl 60 player with lots of free time. EQ2 PvP rewards start occuring about a week into your character. As far as play is concerned, that is again preference. Myself, I can't stand instanced PvP. If I wanted to play CTF, I'd load up UT2k4 and play it in a better engine.
---"I can play for one hour and, in that time, accomplish something and have fun no matter my level."
This was a problem for EQ2 at launch, but was fixed in early patches. Has always been a problem for EQ1, though.
---"Retrieving my corpse after death is no longer more tactically complicated than any other part of the gameplay."
Death in EQ2 has changed remarkably since release. Now, you either get revived on the spot by another player or release and take an extremely small XP-debt penalty (described above).
---"Faster, non-realistic duration, world travel"
EQ2 world travel completely blows WoW out of the water. It is now so incredibly fast, it's almost too much (buy a ticket in the main city, click the mariner's bell, *poof* you're there). On top of that, self and group teleport spells were added in the last expansion as well to 4 classes allowing instant travel to about 10 major zones.
The majority of people make up their mind on an MMO right out of the gate or the first time they play it. If it is extremely buggy or just not fun, most people file it under "Suck" and never return, no matter what game enhancements are made through patches later. Shipping buggy versions on time may generate some temporary cash flow, but will cost you millions upon millions during the product's overall lifespan.
Worst yet, being a developer in the MMO scene is often times a popularity contest. For example, no matter how good Lord of the Rings Online turns out, I will not be trying it, simply because its made by Turbine, a company who has repeatedly proven to me that they don't have what it takes.
That doesn't really disprove his point though... Was it the "immersive graphics" that caused those games to suck? I'd argue that the reason those games sucked was because of the gameplay, not because the graphics were immersive.
Therefore, I'd agree that "immersive graphics can only improve gaming".
When I went to look for Supreme Commander yesterday, Gamestop had 3 on the floor, Best Buy had several.
I enjoy everyone modding me down as a troll though, thanks for that. The Wii is available in my city and that automatically makes me a troll. Apply normal Slashdot logic and I'm also a PS3 fanboy.
Honestly, I don't even see how my original post was all that negative towards Nintendo. People are no longer lining up in my city as supply has finally overcome demand. Clearly, I'm a troll.
How about Bionic Commando? I don't own a Wii, and currently have no plans to, but if there were to be a Bionic Commando game on the Wii... good lord, the sheer awesomeness would be astounding.
"As far as I remember, MULE was my first intro to EA. And I've been waiting for a sequel for oh... about 25 years..."
Which is actually pretty amazing considering this is EA we are talking about.
"What do you think it's going to take to crack Blizzard's deathlock on the Massive genre?"
WoW will kill itself in time. Most MMOs do. Look at past MMOs - one of two things almost always happens.
1) The designers make a huge mistake and make an extremely unpopular change to the game.
2) The game accumulates so many expansions and endgame content that it is near impossible to attract new blood to the game.
If anything has a chance of dethroning WoW, anytime soon at least, Warhammer is probably the best candidate. I foresee Warhammer attracting a lot of the PvP crowd from WoW.
That's great, but most of the games on their list are, in fact, rehashes themselves. Goldeneye... I love it to death, but what did it really do that was so innovative and important? It opened the FPS door to a whole new legion of gamers? Is that not what Counter-Strike did?
If we're including rehashes, then at least include the rehashiest of all the rehashes: Counter-Strike.
In real life, making money can be extremely tedious. You wake up, go to your tedious job, then go home. Rinse, repeat. Chances are, most of the great things in your life don't happen at work, especially if your job sucks.
Imagine if there was some way you could breeze past all those tedious wasted years spent at work and just get more time doing the things you love. Would you jump at that chance?
Six and Seven were both still quite good I thought. Towards the end of seven, you can start to see the decline. Eight was the steep decline. Nine is just an abomination.
Slashdot Mirror
"And what about world PvP? You can now stalk your favourite enemy, work out how tough he really is, and exploit that information"
World PvP in WoW? Wha...Ohhh, corpse camping, now I remember.
Warhammer Online is not the same thing as what is being discussed in this article.
The interface for Warhammer Online does look pretty similar to that of WoW, but it also looks similar to the interfaces of many other MMOs.
If this game turned out to be an MMOFPS, I believe it could pretty interesting if everyone were Space Marines going off on missions.
There was indeed a Warhammer Fantasy MMO being developed about 4 years ago. After about a year of development, it was shutdown. Later the IP was re-licensed to Mythic Entertainment, who has been in development of their own project (completely different from the original) for a couple years now and is set to release around this upcoming Christmas.
THQ, if they do go through with this, is probably looking at a release date of around 2011. There have been a ton of rumors that it will not even be an MMORPG, but instead some kind of alteration on the theme... perhaps an MMORTS or MMOFPS.
LotR:O ... by Turbine
I think I've said enough...
Your points are valid against EQ (which I would sure as hell hope WoW did better than EQ1), but none of them are valid against EQ2. Either you've never played EQ2, or you've haven't played in a year or two.
--- "Better artwork with an overal consistency of style"
This is purely a matter of opinion. I enjoy WoW's style as well, but I know plenty of people that can't stand it.
--- "Easy-to-use questing interface that's actually fun and rewarding"
Having played both WoW and EQ2, I'd say EQ2 actually has the better questing interface. Both are close to the exact same, though.
--- "The ability to almost always play solo with any class"
At launch, EQ2 suffered from this. After about a year of patching, only the Templar and Inquisitor still have soloing problems. However, they are both pretty much first picks for group construction, so it's not so bad.
--- "No more experience penalties on death"
Again, due to patching, the XP penalties are essentially nill. I purposely attempted to rack up XP debt in EQ2 awhile back (you do not lose XP in EQ2, you just gain it slower for a period of time)... it took me 100 deaths to get a 50% of a level's worth of XP in debt.
--- "No more painfully long meditation breaks between battles"
EQ1 was horrendous on this. EQ2 has shorter breaks for MP than WoW, but longer breaks for HP. In groups, HP is of course easilly healed.
--- "More benefit and less annoyance with PvP play"
I don't know how BC's PvP reward system works, but pre-BC, the honor system was awful. You saw no reward at all unless you were a lvl 60 player with lots of free time. EQ2 PvP rewards start occuring about a week into your character. As far as play is concerned, that is again preference. Myself, I can't stand instanced PvP. If I wanted to play CTF, I'd load up UT2k4 and play it in a better engine.
--- "I can play for one hour and, in that time, accomplish something and have fun no matter my level."
This was a problem for EQ2 at launch, but was fixed in early patches. Has always been a problem for EQ1, though.
--- "Retrieving my corpse after death is no longer more tactically complicated than any other part of the gameplay."
Death in EQ2 has changed remarkably since release. Now, you either get revived on the spot by another player or release and take an extremely small XP-debt penalty (described above).
--- "Faster, non-realistic duration, world travel"
EQ2 world travel completely blows WoW out of the water. It is now so incredibly fast, it's almost too much (buy a ticket in the main city, click the mariner's bell, *poof* you're there). On top of that, self and group teleport spells were added in the last expansion as well to 4 classes allowing instant travel to about 10 major zones.
I disagree.
The majority of people make up their mind on an MMO right out of the gate or the first time they play it. If it is extremely buggy or just not fun, most people file it under "Suck" and never return, no matter what game enhancements are made through patches later. Shipping buggy versions on time may generate some temporary cash flow, but will cost you millions upon millions during the product's overall lifespan.
Worst yet, being a developer in the MMO scene is often times a popularity contest. For example, no matter how good Lord of the Rings Online turns out, I will not be trying it, simply because its made by Turbine, a company who has repeatedly proven to me that they don't have what it takes.
That doesn't really disprove his point though... Was it the "immersive graphics" that caused those games to suck? I'd argue that the reason those games sucked was because of the gameplay, not because the graphics were immersive.
Therefore, I'd agree that "immersive graphics can only improve gaming".
Ann Arbor, MI.
When I went to look for Supreme Commander yesterday, Gamestop had 3 on the floor, Best Buy had several.
I enjoy everyone modding me down as a troll though, thanks for that. The Wii is available in my city and that automatically makes me a troll. Apply normal Slashdot logic and I'm also a PS3 fanboy.
Honestly, I don't even see how my original post was all that negative towards Nintendo. People are no longer lining up in my city as supply has finally overcome demand. Clearly, I'm a troll.
How about Bionic Commando? I don't own a Wii, and currently have no plans to, but if there were to be a Bionic Commando game on the Wii... good lord, the sheer awesomeness would be astounding.
But duuuude, they're also east of you too! Whoaaaa.... Far out.
And where I live, they sit in a stack on the sales floor along side the PS3's. The frenzy has definitely come to a halt where I live.
"As far as I remember, MULE was my first intro to EA. And I've been waiting for a sequel for oh... about 25 years..." Which is actually pretty amazing considering this is EA we are talking about.
Guild Wars is great and all, but why are people still calling it an MMOG? It's no more an MMOG than Counterstrike.
"What do you think it's going to take to crack Blizzard's deathlock on the Massive genre?" WoW will kill itself in time. Most MMOs do. Look at past MMOs - one of two things almost always happens.
1) The designers make a huge mistake and make an extremely unpopular change to the game.
2) The game accumulates so many expansions and endgame content that it is near impossible to attract new blood to the game.
If anything has a chance of dethroning WoW, anytime soon at least, Warhammer is probably the best candidate. I foresee Warhammer attracting a lot of the PvP crowd from WoW.
Out of curiosity, how is PvP? (is there PvP at all for that matter?)
Enter your character's name: Legolas
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Enter your character's name: Leggolas
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Enter your character's name: Legolass
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Enter your character's name: Llegolus
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Enter your character's name: Legggollass
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Enter your character's name: Legoooooolas
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That's great, but most of the games on their list are, in fact, rehashes themselves. Goldeneye... I love it to death, but what did it really do that was so innovative and important? It opened the FPS door to a whole new legion of gamers? Is that not what Counter-Strike did?
If we're including rehashes, then at least include the rehashiest of all the rehashes: Counter-Strike.
In real life, making money can be extremely tedious. You wake up, go to your tedious job, then go home. Rinse, repeat. Chances are, most of the great things in your life don't happen at work, especially if your job sucks.
Imagine if there was some way you could breeze past all those tedious wasted years spent at work and just get more time doing the things you love. Would you jump at that chance?
Six and Seven were both still quite good I thought. Towards the end of seven, you can start to see the decline. Eight was the steep decline. Nine is just an abomination.
By really good, do you mean extremely crappy? I have fond memories of those platform games but in all honestly, they are pretty junky.
Cue the 'aftermath' documentary music.
WoW's major stumbling block has been lack of worthwhile PvP. It's definitely been a motivator for the upcoming "PvP MMO" surge.
Agreed, I absolutely loved HOMM4. Played it to death.
I couldn't even make it through the campaign in HOMM5 before uninstalling.