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Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning: The Ups and Downs of the Unlimited Trial
MMORPG.com's Bill Murphy writes this look at the unlimited trial currently offered by Mythic's Warhammer Online and whether or not it is enough to bring former players back to the game.
General Article By William Murphy on February 01, 2010
It wasn't long ago that players were chomping at the bit to get into the beta for Mythic's upcoming Warhammer Online. Keys were being sold illegally for hundreds of dollars, any and all leaks of info were being gobbled up like so many marbles by ravenous hippos, and the media and fans alike were preparing themselves for the game that could potentially dethrone (or at least threaten) the reign of World of Warcraft as the big kid in class.
September 18th came and went, the game sold over a million copies, and yet at an investor conference in March 2009 Electronic Arts confirmed the game to have in the ballpark of just 300,000 subscribers. Mega-smash hit to rival Blizzard's behemoth, it was not. From over 50 servers around the launch window, the game now operates with just four. Once the heralded as the coming of an MMO god, Warhammer Online seems little more than a bit player in the grander theological scheme of the industry.
advertisement There were plenty of other dramatics since the launch of Mythic's second MMORPG, not the least of which was the tumultuous upheaval of company management and the departure of its founder and chief visionary, Mark Jacobs. And yet in the wake of a seeming failure of massive proportions, the remainder of Mythic's staff carries on with their nose to the grindstone. Warhammer Online's battle with itself is not concluded, and with a fresh take on the new player experience and an unlimited trial of the game's early levels, it could be that this bit of software is on the verge of a comeback. Or are these developments simply the last hopes for a dying virtual world?
It all makes perfect sense from a marketing standpoint and plenty of games use the "free trial" as a way to hook new players. Having trouble convincing people that there's reason to play your game? Offer a free trial. Want old players to try your game again? Offer a free trial. Not content to just offer a ten-day shot of WAR to the curious, Mythic rewrote the entirety of their early game, and enabled it for unlimited play in the hope that more than a few trial members would find the changes engaging enough to offer up their monthly subscription dollars.
One clear bonus of this new initiative is that Tier One is a busy and lively place, reminiscent the launch days of WAR. However this is only true in the new focused starter zones of the Empire and Chaos races. In an effort to bring all players together early on, Mythic made it so that despite race all players start in one area. You can opt out using a teleportation item that is handily placed in your inventory and head back to your race's homeland, but chances are you'll find the place a lonely and desolate existence.
It is quite heartening to see Norsca and Nordland alive and kicking again. I'm willing to bet they'll always feel this way with the Unlimited Trial in place too. Many folks always coming in, milling about, pumping through the Public Quests and populating the RvR Lakes. Or so I should hope. In my time within the confines of the trial, there was a disturbing if not expected trend however... twinked out players at the Tier 1 cap dominating the Scenarios and RvR Lakes. Now, that's not to say this wasn't a problem before the trial, but I think it may be even more the case now. It's almost as if the Unlimited Trial has created a Mini-WAR version of the client, segmented off from the other three tiers.
;)
Tier One is easily the most polished and best playing of the game's four parts, and this trial certainly highlights that aspect. But I have to wonder if it's enough to convince early adopters who have since left to come back. Will they wonder as I do if the later sections of the game are anywhere near as active and fun? Or is Rank 1-10 the best it ever will be for WAR? A promise of things that should come later, but never quite will?
Performance with the client is definitely better than it was when I last played, however. I even hear reports from old guild members that the large scale battles in Tier Four are quite steady and with nary a crash even with hundreds of players clashing against one another.
In the end, it seems as though the new Unlimited Trial for WAR is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand it shines a bright light on some of the game's strongest selling points: namely the first ten levels of play. On the other hand it reminds me of the reasons I stopped playing my Ironbreaker in Tier Four, and I wonder if the last levels of the game have improved as much as the new player experience seems to suggest. Still Mythic's plan seems to be working... they have me considering subscribing all over again to find out.
If it turns out to be that the first ten levels are as good as WAR will ever be, then that's just fine. At least I'll know. And of course I can always relive the glory days of the early game with a newly minted Slayer hunting down as many Gobbos as I can in Nordland. I mean it's free, right?
Add some worthwhile PvE and I'll come back. Absent that....I'll be absent.
A game that has only PvP will never be a great success. It limits the player base to a small percentage of the total players.
Agreed, it's a very fun PvP game, but it needs 5-man dungeons a-la WoW. I know, I'm the anti-Christ for saying WoW did something right. But honestly, a content-rich PvE experience could only help the few PvP'ers left in WAR.
I've come and gone already. The free trial did inject new blood into the system, and I was surprised by the surge of people even in T2. On the other hand, the type of people I've met are about 50/50, in regards to player personalities. That might not be important to some, and it has very little importance to me, but many of these people are expecting T1 in T2, T3. When it isn't, they leave. T2 is kind of interesting for the fact that it is the first true War zone where the free trial people see the way the game REALLY is.
Needless to say, there is a lot of griping, moaning, and general jerkery going on in those areas. I've honestly never seen so many people start/leave a game at a single level bracket. Now the forums are lit up with "make the free trial 1-20!" I'm only hoping they don't go free to play to appease the very people who are loudly proclaiming...yet leave a tier later.
the problem with warhammer is they made it a get in quick get your pvp jollies off and log out. there is little to no depth to the game unless there is tons of PVP action.
the game to me has always felt like it tried to be an RPG fragfest (without the twitch based combat). little to no crafting, no immersion garbage PVE and nothing to do except PVP.
i never felt like that in DAOC, when i logged in even at max level there seemed to be something to do even if it wasn't PVP.
Not nearly as much as a balanced log-in cap and better balanced scenario queues would.
No, not more PvE. It will never be WoW-quality - ever. Mythic put too much PvE into the game. Too much lousy PvE.
More small-scale PvP options, smaller queues for off-hours scenarios, and FIX THE END GAME. Those three things would convince me to play (and pay) again.
So true.
Mythic should have been trying to make T2 and T3 more like T1.
I came back and I am having a blast. A new 5 man dungeon called Hunter's Vale is available in T1.
Played it. It's great that they actually added a low-level instance, but it's not big and not underground.
I am sick to death of PvP, I wanted PvE type areas and instances that were 5,10,20+. As the previous comment said, WoW did something right with it. This whole endgame PvP within WAR just isn't what it was hyped up to be. EA/Mythic has been aware of this since roughly 2mths after the game came out. It's been well over a year now and still no real supplement to make up for it. That's a sure sign that the developer is only willing to apply small band-aids inside of new limbs which the game is and has been in dyer need of.
The problem is... itemization and looks. Honestly i never felt excited about earning a new weapon or armor in the game since its going to look the same anyways. The whole pvp dynamic between factions was just boring after awhile, variety felt absent. The whole world felt like a magical ladder, 3 areas with a one way arrow pointing to the next zone. It would be great to see some sort of building mechanic where you can take over land and actually begin to build onto it. They needed another faction as well, like DAoC to keep the pvp interesting. The PvE side does need some serious help as well as the class balance and design.
Even DAoC players admit that the third faction didn't always help - sometimes it was the two top dogs kicking the patsy. I think that is a misjudged panacea. Login queues and a non gear-based reward system at end game would have done a lot more good.
Few things... There are 6 man dungeons in WAR.
Endless trials have created more problems than it actually fixed. Just like with other trials - the trick is to get players to buy the product. The problem is... when they have bought the product - the game is not delivering in any department to really prolonge the stay of players. The end result in many cases is that playes start to create twinks (toppgeared characters) in T1. Then when the sub runs out they only play the twinks. Overall I think its now obvious that even tho two maps of the game are active - the rest of the content has actually SUFFERED because of this change. Last few patches have been focused on REDUCING the actual content of the game - and this will continue with next patch - When Mythic will REMOVE scenario maps... instead of actually focusing on changing them (fixing them).
What everyone can agree on now is that WAR is going into maintainance mode whith very litte new content added. Then it also becomes a question how long the game will be able to maintain intrest from players.
WAR is one of the big loosers in the last year if we take a look at Xfire. What we can say for sure is that free endless trial has not been able to make any permanent impression on the game. Considering that the free endless ocntent is actually the best part of the entire game (rest of tier 1 has been destroyed with these changes) it becomes very obvious that the game is dying. If not already dead. And Mythic can not afford to really do anything more with the game. Thats the part that everyone is realising now.
Like the author suggested, I find Tier 1 to be the most fun. Tier 2 is still fun, and adds new elements, but not as much fun as tier 1. Tier 3 is pretty much the exact same as Tier 2, except with new locations and rewards. T2 and T3 pretty much amount to constant flying between zones to capture whatever keep is not defended, and lots of Battle Objective taking which is tedious and gets old very quickly. Why do warbands avoid each other and mostly go for undefended keeps? If you pit one Warband against another, the one inside the keep defending will beat the one outside the keep on offense 9 times out of 10. Oil is overpowered and can be HEALED, and 2-shots people trying to enter a keep. It's too easy to defend, and too hard to attack. So instead of engaging PVP/RVR, you PVE and avoid the other sides players. Kind of counter-intuitive for a PVP game, there should be incentives to fight rather than avoid.
The beauty of Tier 1 is that there are no keeps and the 3 Battle Objectives are close together and close to the 2 warcamps, so battles are frequently being waged. If you try to take an undefended BO, usually the other side will notice and send over a force to recover it - which is easy because they're all close by. Multiple BOs can be in play simultaneously, forcing people to make tough strategic decisions as to which to fight for and which to abandon, or to split forces. And with the endless free trial, there's always plenty of people each day for long periods of time. There's wild PVP everywhere, and nobody is looking to avoid it.
Compare that to T2 or T3, where often times YOU ARE ALL ALONE! Can't RVR/PVP without a bunch of other people on both sides! Have to be online at the right times to get any action. The keeps and BOs are spaced far apart, requiring lots of running around, and now there's 6 for each pairing, instead of the 3 or 4 in T1. So instead of fighting over BOs, if an enemy warband sees you taking BOs on the map, they run off to the other pairing and grab those while you're busy. If you check the maps and see where they are, by the time you all fly over and get everyone organized, they're all done and gone. A lot of times this happens with keeps too. By the time someone notices one being taken, and everyone rushes over, it's too late. So instead of confronting enemy players, fly off to another zone and take an undefended keep - more PVE, yay. It gets so monotonous and old.
T2 and T3 need some changes - some incentive to fight against players rather than avoid them! That would make the game worth subscribing to. Others have also said the RVR lakes are too big, objectives too far apart. Running around BO humping in a PVP game is a sign of failure on the part of the Devs. War is definitely not everywhere.
Lets stop using Xfire as a barometer of player population. It only represents a small demo, mainly young ones with no attention span.....
As in radio or TV.....'time spent listening/watching' is the real number to look at.....
Lol, agreed. Actually, there are a large population of gamers who have never even heard of Xfire. So as far as I'm concerned, the Xfire deal everyone is talking about (WAR-wise) only takes up a small amount of the populace.
This is one of the fundamental problems with WAR IMO - the zone design.
The zones seem to be deliberately over-sized and difficult to navigate. Why would anyone want to make it difficult for players to get from point A to point B when you *should* be trying to get them together so they can fight?
Most of my memories of open-world RvR the game involve running around rather than fighting. Or getting lost trying to find the fight until I could learn the convoluted zone layout which the inaccurate maps did not help.
Or sitting around waiting for that 3min BO timer to run down. Never once did I have an opposing force attack my warband during the 3 min timer, it's a useless mechanic.
I liked the Scenarios in WAR but the PvE, Crafting and open-world parts of the game need serious work. The lack of RP mechanics doesn't help either, I understand you can finally /sit in the game. Simple things like that should have been in from the start.
Perhaps Mythic's directed beta-testing is partly at fault. They did not leave the servers up but instead used 'focused' beta-tests. Maybe a MMORPG needs a closed beta-test where the servers are up 24/7.
Lol, agreed. Actually, there are a large population of gamers who have never even heard of Xfire. So as far as I'm concerned, the Xfire deal everyone is talking about (WAR-wise) only takes up a small amount of the populace.
Even if you have heard of it, XFIRE is really outdated now, im surprised people still use it...
getting ppl back to war wont happen instant will take them years to get over 500k
remember if the game have 300k subs and u have 10% population increase per year war will need 5 years
/sign
At least the semi removed the WARD system witch was stupid as hell.
but the lack of the PvE side was one of the reasons I and a few friends left too.
Game is dead.
Founder of the company who's been with Mythic for 15+ years... gone.
Over 60+ servers... down to 4 servers in the US.
Over 800,000 players during the first few months... gone to, well, you do the math.
Game is dead.
It is because Mythic knew their engine could not handle large numbers of players in one spot fighting each other. The game was originally designed to be fought primarily in scenarios - which are limited to small and even numbers.
They knew full well that 40-80 at a keep, and 200+ at a fortress would run like molasses in January.
Hopefully they stay far away from PvE for along time. What they have now is more than sufficient. The last zone they added is all PvE content.
WoW is a good game for PvE . WAR is and needs to be continually built around its RvR.
WAR is and will remain fail.
It has no social utilities (housing, diplomacy, guildwars, nada)
It has no economy (crafting, gold has no value, everything is BOP)
this game is not worth monthly subs. You are better to go play some dota. No sandbox, strictly brainwashing game.
I for one have always hated PvP in all games. But this one is different to me. I have been playing all types of MMO's and love the PvE experience.
This game has some good PvE (believe it or not it actually does have some) and the PvP is actually a lot of fun. I have started the trial and subscribed yesterday as a result. Overall the game is excellent and has replaced the other games I've been playing, it's definitely worth giving it another run.
I played the beta and have played the game when it was first released and the game has come far since then. Very impressed and I rate it highly. It should become the replacement for WoW in my view.
Hmm. I happen to disagree with your statement that T1 is "as good as it gets" in Warhammer - it's my least favorite of the tiers. I find characters really come into their own with their powers and abilities in the 30's, T3-4 were the exciting ones for me, with the game starting to become fun in T2.
Then again, I suppose offering your subjective opinion is the point of an op-ed piece. Still, I find it odd that this site crows about how DDO's F2P model is "revolutionary" and "saved the game" yet when Mythic tries something different-yet-similar - an endless trial of the first part of the game - it is supposedly done out of desperation.
The twinked out characters in T1 didn't bother me at all, by the way. A little strategy and a partner playing with you - as my wife often does with me, sitting about a foot away at her own PC, I found was more then enough to counter the very minor "twinks" you can actually use during T1.
Reading a piece like this makes me wonder if you have had the pleasure of playing the game recently in anything other than the T1 free trial zones? I found T4 quite hopping and alive on Badlands, during prime-time. As for merging servers, let's check on where Aion is in a year with server numbers, shall we? ;)
After just playing through T1 your post has me very excited!!!
For me the biggest problem is that I consider Warhammer Online just generic fantasy MMO, that has only the same name and graphics as the original Warhammer. And its getting worse. I still remember those bald statements about main cities added during time. Do noone remember this game was crippled from start? And now what? Now the races start in the same zone? Where the hell is warhammer lore? Elves and Dwarves starting in the same zone? Yeah, right, very "warhammerish". So in the end I dont complain about the game mechanics, I complain about the rp efficiently destroyed. Its just my opinion, but when I was playing WO, I didnt feel like being in universe of Warhammer.
I agree with this also the restrictions on t1 trials makes it hard to stick around for any period of time no access to any auction house and when you ask in chat to buy capes and helmets no one is selling , they made rvr loot rank 11 so you get loot in pvp that you can never use i rather go play some thing else.
I agree with this also the restrictions on t1 trials makes it hard to stick around for any period of time no access to any auction house and when you ask in chat to buy capes and helmets no one is selling , they made rvr loot rank 11 so you get loot in pvp that you can never use i rather go play some thing else.
If you want to start using those things pay up. This game isn't f2p.
[Mod edit]
Aside from the game's lamentable performance issues (like another poster already said, the game was originally built around scenario fights then they changed course mid-development to go more open world, due to pressure from beta players already enamoured by daoc's gameplay - so the engine was okay for scenarios but choked on open rvr with numbers) it simply is too thin on content for a AAA MMO subscription game.
The PvE is decent enough quality but there is just too little of it, the PvP is far too static & not dynamic, it rapidly becomes terribly boring after you've done the same thing a million times, I really loved the game for 3 months but increasingly the server & engine performance got worse & worse as numbers increased, servers crashed constantly, fortress doors became indestructible & their solution? remove fortresses,
I know there have been many small improvements made, but the engine is still bad, instead of the game stuttering & chunking along it now has a strobe like effect, it made me physically ill playing it on a system well above their minimum specs, I persisted & resubbed & while crashing has got better & the end game city siege is better, it's still a million miles awat from being the game it should be, this game simply lacks depth, it is by far the most superficial; game I've played in years & I almost regret getting suckered into it, if not for some great moments in it's early life I would be truly bitter about it, but instead i'm just disappointed because I love the IP the characterisations & the feel of the game, it just fell short on providing a deep & involving experience.
When they "streamlined" this as an MMO, they lost a lot of the charm an MMO has, leaving a bland & shallow game that's just not worth the asking price of it's sub.
They came right out before launch and said they were making a game, not a world. Honest, but a terrible design choice.
MMORPGs need to be worlds. IF you want people to pay month after month to play in them.
Awwwww...WAR simply didn't get better over time. They didn't solve the core problems to make it worthwhile for a monthly sub e.g. characters all the same appearence, effecting the game world for longer than 10 minutes, increasing the numbers in a keep seige, static seige engines. I hoped WAR would add MMOGame items over time but they just threw out crafting and turned it into a frag fest in T1 and flag flipping foolishness. Never even tried the Tomb area because I heard it just made the battles even thinner.
RIP WAR - You could've been something.
My biggest issue w/ WAR is the community. Or lack there of. I don’t think the people are jerks or elitists (though, they’re there too). It’s more that there is such only small group of dedicated people still playing in T4, and with gear, wards, and campaign advancement being so dependent on mass populations, the community just feels defeated to me. Like they’re playing b/c they don’t feel like “starting over” in another game, and not b/c it’s a blast to be in WAR.
Faction in-fighting, side switching, guilds falling apart or folding up shop… It just seems like the end of the game is so close to the horizon. It reminds me a LOT of the last months of Tabula Rasa: Tons of improvements that helped the current player base, but nothing that truly excited new blood. All the while a small vocal and close community began to shake and crumble under the weight of naysayers and fear of the game’s ‘sustainability’.
I wish the best to the players of WAR, and I’d love for the game to be fun, b/c I truly enjoyed playing… problem is – In WAR, you can’t pick the playtimes. You’re forced to play when tons of others are playing, or it’s boring.
Exactly. You see...unlike some, I don't think RvR is their worry. Decent PvE has to accompany PvP at least in a scale that is somewhat tolerable. PvE is absolutely neglected in WAR after T1. I've said it before, but when you craft a game that is wholly focused on RvR or PvP (with only two conflicting factions) it becomes a numbers game and Population becomes a primary factor; if there aren't enough order/Dest to fight back...people log off. Why? Because there is no other alternative. There is no PvE to go grind in to get more powerful and come back even stronger. The people in RvR already have the better/easier gear..and so it becomes a population battle and nothing else.
Want real PVP? Play Darkfall. That is all.
First-person viewpoint blows.
I've had no performance issues at all and the server seems well populated with many people playing. I find groups easily.
It's a lot of fun, it may get boring over time but I haven't found any reason to agree with the naysayers as yet.
I can find faults with every single MMO especially the repetitive play of WoW and LOTRO but I don't choose to do that. Instead I have found a game that is extremely polished and is fun to play whether you play for 10 minutes or 10 hours.
Every game gets boring after a while and they are all repetitive in some way.
First-person viewpoint blows.
Darkfall is the most epic PVP game on the market currently. Also its third person when meleeing and first person does not blow.
Having to aim shots takes skill. I have been playing Darkfall for almost a year now and I played warhammer for like 2 months. Warhammer was just an amusement park of the same pvp encounters over and over again with almost no penalty for losing. Darkfall has real natural world PVP. World pvp of epic proportions with real consequences for losing. Last night we won a siege against a city on one of the worlds continents and it was epic as hell. One guy wrote on the forums that it was his first siege in Darkfall and it was the most fun he has ever had in an MMO. More fun then he had ever had in playing WoW for 4 years. And Id have to agree with him. Darkfall was a WoW killer for me after 5 years of hardcore raiding and PVP in WoW. Its a niche game and has a limited playerbase but jesus its fun.
I completely agree with you Maendauron. I'm having a blast in Warhammer since coming back in December. I played for a full year before leaving to try Aion. I quickly found out why I hate boring, grind fest PvE games. I tried it for two months and tried to give it a chance but, the excruciatingly slow pace of advancment made me want to stick a fork in my eye.
So, I came back to Warhammer to find that, even though there are only four servers now, the population appears to have stabalized and even see new people playing all the time. There is always something going on in T4. Scenarios pop constantly and in between scenarios, there are tons of people out in the RvR lakes.
The performance issues have all but disappeared. This past Sunday on Badlands, there was an announced intent on Order to push stage 2 in IC. There were between 8 and 10 warbands just on the Order side, with pretty much the same on Destro, out in the lakes trying to flip zones or prevent zone flips. I never crashed, I never slowed down to the point of not being able to get off abilities and I had an absolute blast when we finally got to the city.
I'm happy with the niche that Warhammer has carved out for itself and I don't see myself playing anything else that's on the MMO horizon. I love the fact that I can log on for an hour or half a day and have fun. I don't have to set my clock or mark my calendar, to be online for some scripted instance raid.
And they don't need anymore PvE crap. That's what hurt DAoC with the Trials of Atlantis expansion.
First-person viewpoint blows.
QFT.
No...a game doesn't have to be a clone of Wow to succeed. Viva la difference. ..thats what modern day gamers don't get.
Online games existed LONG before Wow was a twinkle in some Blizz dev's eye. That gets totally forgotten in the mindthink "if it doesn't have 11 million subs it FAILS".
Mythic failed us, because they forgot how DAOC SUCCEEDED. DAOC (back in the day) was all about REALM PRIDE..not how many shiney cookies you got if you participated..(ala Wow)
We fought to protect our territory, our keeps..because they were OURS ...not because we won shinies. The pvp fights in DAOC were unpredictable...non-linear..enemies sneaking up on you from behind trees in the Old Frontiers.
Yeah I died alot in those days, but I also had some mini triumphs and I gained alot of friends. There would be system messages when someone was killed by a "bad guy"....multiple tells coming my way...where is he? What direction did he go? I'm coming to avenge your death.
We had a TON of fun in those days..and Mythic forgot what that was all about.
First off...scenarios............ugh. PVP in a little box. Just like Wow. Why??? Mythic? Didn't you trademark Realm vs Realm (tm) Yeah you did. It was supposed to mean something.......it turned into a copycat of Wow battlegrounds.
The dungeon in Daoc, where one faction could own it one day, another the next, ..etc That was fun, exciting. If you went in there solo, you would be sure to get your behind handed to you by the faction that "owned" it for that time period.
It was fun wandering or running around out in the Old Frontiers...running through the snow down to the gates, expecting to be ambushed any second...
Mythic shot themselves in the foot...instead of Realm vs Realm..it was Scenario vs Scenario....with "certain" overpowered classes.
Thats why I left Mythic....get back to what you know..get rid of trying to copy other games, make it fun like it was back in the day...and I'll come back.
Like the author suggested, I find Tier 1 to be the most fun. Tier 2 is still fun, and adds new elements, but not as much fun as tier 1. Tier 3 is pretty much the exact same as Tier 2, except with new locations and rewards.
T2 and T3 pretty much amount to constant flying between zones to capture whatever keep is not defended, and lots of Battle Objective taking which is tedious and gets old very quickly.
Why do warbands avoid each other and mostly go for undefended keeps? If you pit one Warband against another, the one inside the keep defending will beat the one outside the keep on offense 9 times out of 10. Oil is overpowered and can be HEALED, and 2-shots people trying to enter a keep. It's too easy to defend, and too hard to attack. So instead of engaging PVP/RVR, you PVE and avoid the other sides players. Kind of counter-intuitive for a PVP game, there should be incentives to fight rather than avoid.
---------------ENd QUOTE
This is another reason I got fed up...whats the thrill in taking an undefended keep? (another reason I left) I don't know about players nowadays...thats not how we played. The more defending a keep..the more exciting the battle was..in DAOC at least. There you could repair damaged gates etc and keep pushing the battle more.
I don't know how many warbands I left because of this mindthink "oh its defended..lets jet to such and such a zone..for an undefended keep" Huh? This is supposed to be pvp..not a race for shineys.
Again I think this is partially Mythic's fault, and the rest is..well the generation that played Wow. Eleven million subs coming to a game near you.
There's no heart in the game, nothing interesting about it..if your peers insist on running away from battles. Onto the next undefended shiney!! Sheesh
This is one of the fundamental problems with WAR IMO - the zone design.
The zones seem to be deliberately over-sized and difficult to navigate. Why would anyone want to make it difficult for players to get from point A to point B when you *should* be trying to get them together so they can fight?
Most of my memories of open-world RvR the game involve running around rather than fighting. Or getting lost trying to find the fight until I could learn the convoluted zone layout which the inaccurate maps did not help.
Or sitting around waiting for that 3min BO timer to run down. Never once did I have an opposing force attack my warband during the 3 min timer, it's a useless mechanic.
I liked the Scenarios in WAR but the PvE, Crafting and open-world parts of the game need serious work. The lack of RP mechanics doesn't help either, I understand you can finally /sit in the game. Simple things like that should have been in from the start.
Perhaps Mythic's directed beta-testing is partly at fault. They did not leave the servers up but instead used 'focused' beta-tests. Maybe a MMORPG needs a closed beta-test where the servers are up 24/7.
I was in the closed beta for Warhammer.....they were very strict and you sometimes could NOT ask certain questions ..or be labelled as "speculating".
We often pointed out what we saw as problems..with class balancing etc ..but I got the sense we were largely ignored.
The crafting definitely needed work, although at the time, they didn't figure it would be fleshed out any more than it was. Scenarios became areas where the same folks would hang out ..all the time with their "pre-templated" classes...owning over and over again with certain over powered classes.
I don't know if thats still the case today..if those issues have been fixed or not. I am going on what I saw before I left. It seemed sometimes that the things we pointed out in closed beta, were "fixed" to Mythic's liking..but exactly the opposite of what was required. They weren't listening then. I give them credit for patches produced soon after release and all that..but I think the damage was already done. The class imbalances remained at release and continued on for many months after.
My whole guild left......fed up, disappointed. I felt the same way. It COULD have been a massive, exciting great game.
What have you done Mythic?
No...a game doesn't have to be a clone of Wow to succeed. Viva la difference. ..thats what modern day gamers don't get.
Online games existed LONG before Wow was a twinkle in some Blizz dev's eye. That gets totally forgotten in the mindthink "if it doesn't have 11 million subs it FAILS".
Mythic failed us, because they forgot how DAOC SUCCEEDED. DAOC (back in the day) was all about REALM PRIDE..not how many shiney cookies you got if you participated..(ala Wow)
We fought to protect our territory, our keeps..because they were OURS ...not because we won shinies. The pvp fights in DAOC were unpredictable...non-linear..enemies sneaking up on you from behind trees in the Old Frontiers.
Yeah I died alot in those days, but I also had some mini triumphs and I gained alot of friends. There would be system messages when someone was killed by a "bad guy"....multiple tells coming my way...where is he? What direction did he go? I'm coming to avenge your death.
We had a TON of fun in those days..and Mythic forgot what that was all about.
First off...scenarios............ugh. PVP in a little box. Just like Wow. Why??? Mythic? Didn't you trademark Realm vs Realm (tm) Yeah you did. It was supposed to mean something.......it turned into a copycat of Wow battlegrounds.
The dungeon in Daoc, where one faction could own it one day, another the next, ..etc That was fun, exciting. If you went in there solo, you would be sure to get your behind handed to you by the faction that "owned" it for that time period.
It was fun wandering or running around out in the Old Frontiers...running through the snow down to the gates, expecting to be ambushed any second...
Mythic shot themselves in the foot...instead of Realm vs Realm..it was Scenario vs Scenario....with "certain" overpowered classes.
Thats why I left Mythic....get back to what you know..get rid of trying to copy other games, make it fun like it was back in the day...and I'll come back.
Nice post, however i don't think we'll ever see it again. DAOC zones felt like daoc zones, anyone remember mulspheium(Sp?) you couldn't friggin SEE in that zone, it was like it was real. Just like the snowy zones of upland, odins gate or yggdra....
IT WAS IMMERSIVE.. And i am a hardcore pvp'r not even an RPG'R but i was IMMERSED in the old school daoc graphics/zones