I’m probably not going to be telling anyone au fait with the MMO market anything new in this comment piece, because the refrain, “Warhammer is a bore and the servers are empty…” seems to be a well-entrenched meme in the community already.
But I still have to say it: Warhammer is a bore and the servers are empty. Suffice to say, I’ve just closed my Warhammer account a mere 17 days in.
17 days? Yep, I was a good boy this time and actually waited MONTHS before stepping into the game to ensure that I was getting a more rounded, well-polished product. No teething problems for me… oh no… I’ve joined far too many MMOs on Day One only to be burned once too often. This time, I decided to start playing the game a respectable time after launch to ensure I got the best experience possible.
As far as I can see, however, everyone else in the MMO community had already tried the game, declared it a dog and moved on. Night after night, I would schedule my character for the scenarios suitable for his level (and which I needed to do to complete quests), but did those scenarios run? Nope. Seems not enough people were logged in and wanting to do them. The couple of times I did get to do a scenario, it was almost fun, albeit in a very blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of way.
I really can’t even be bothered writing a lengthy diatribe about the game because I’m just so “meh” about it. And it’s such a shame, as the concept seems sound and the game lore is, obviously, quite good. So where did Mythic go wrong? I think I’ll leave that to other commentators to ponder. Me, I’m just glad I’m out and won’t be getting charged another $15 for a game that inspired absolutely nothing in me. No passion, no sense of achievement, no sense of community, virtually no sense of fun… nothing. I’d really hate to have been a dev pouring years of my life into this, that’s for sure.
What kind of server did you pick? You shouldn’t have had much trouble if you chose a high pop server. What you say makes a lot of sense for the lower pop servers though.
February 21st, 2009 at 11:29 amQuote
It seems like you’ve just played on a low pop server. I can’t speak for the US version, but EU is always busy, especially on servers like Karak-Norn.
Scenarios are always popping and there’s plenty going on.
February 21st, 2009 at 12:05 pmQuote
I gottta agree with the the comments, I was on an open PvP server and while at certain times it did seem empty (but only because I game off-hrs) most of the time there was plenty of action going on.
I’d think with the 2 new classes there would be plenty of ppl in tier 1.
February 21st, 2009 at 12:34 pmQuote
You know what ? I expect a little more effort from someone who in his own mind is an avid mmorpg player. You put a picture of a collectors edition on your article even though you never bought one, you don’t do any research at all into what servers are busy, you didn’t even try to find a guild/group of players to play with.
Needless to say my personal experience with WAR has been drastically different & very positive. Playing Order on Magnus server and Destruction on Dark Crag without any of the above mentioned problems.
This is not even an article, just a grab for attention, garbage.
February 21st, 2009 at 2:34 pmQuote
OMG if you look at other articles on this site the earlier one says that he played WAR from day one, in this one he makes a big deal out of the fact that he waited “MONTHS” until he tried it.
Can you say BS ?
February 21st, 2009 at 2:37 pmQuote
I really enjoyed WAR at first. But you HAVE to start an MMO at the beginning witht he wave of other people. It seemed to me that there was one wave of people that joined WAR at the beginning, and that was it. I Joined early, but did not level fast enough. After a month, it was a solo game for me. I switched to a brand new server, same thing. So I just stopped playing. There were always tons of people on the servers, but they were all in T4. I was not about to solo my way to the end game. Especially since I like playing healers.
February 21st, 2009 at 2:37 pm…
Fun game, but the servers are too small. Not enough people can play on them. Then the server population is divided SO MANY times, that you never find people to play with.
…
Divide the entire server by 3 for the different races on your team, and 4 more times for tiers. Then by 2-4 yet again for each chapter within those tiers. That ends up somewhere around 36 different sections for you to be, and half of those people in your area are on the other team! That means that (for the most part) you can only group with 1/72 of the server population. IF the server is evenly spread out (not gonna happen) and every single person is out hunting AND looking for a group.
…
Sure you can go down a chapter to group, but you get almost no exp if your below your level. and above your level is very hard. If you’re near the tier division, then you’re stuck with even less people near you level, because they are in a different zone for different scenarios.
…
Yet another reason I am looking forward to Darkfall, the lack of levels should (in theory) make it easier to group with people.
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To Cryptor: there are multiple writers on this blog. I played from day one. Rob who wrote this article just started 17 days ago.
February 21st, 2009 at 3:48 pmQuote
As I noted in the Darkfall Beta post, WAR failed me because I really didn’t find the interaction that meaningful to me. For example, when a game includes territorial control, I expect to see obvious and meaningful reasons for controlling that territory. City combat and zone control bonuses were all but pointless to most people. There needed to more meaningful reasons to engage and hold within a local tier level. Sounds like the devs are finally looking into this within upcoming future updates but it might be too late by then.
February 21st, 2009 at 4:08 pmQuote
It’s great to see some people commenting who, clearly, enjoy their Warhammer. Good for you guys – that’s awesome, ya know? What’s not so great is that they can’t seem to let someone have a contrary opinion without cracking the shits. Oh well, human nature, I suppose.
February 21st, 2009 at 6:41 pm…
My original comments stand: The game aroused NO passion in me, NO sense of achievement, NO sense of community… and virtually no sense of fun, either. It’s basically a grind to get a character up to speed, and then MEANINGLESS PvP, where territory means nothing.
…
DAOC, it is not.
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I’ve played WAR from day one and can tell you that you definitely, without a doubt made the right choice. Anyone with any sort of serious MMO experience can cut through all the nonsense and see WAR is nothing more then a failed attempt at sucking away WoW customers with the promise of “real pvp”.
Daoc, Mythic’s ageing 8year old initial foray into the mmo market, blows WAR out of the water in every aspect of rvr. Embarrassing to say the least that Mythic designer’s have nothing more to contribute to the MMo industry other then a tome of knowledge or public quests after 8 years.
I’m sure it will keep tasteless fanboi’s busy until a new shiny object catches their eye and leads them stumbling off in a different direction.
February 21st, 2009 at 7:41 pmQuote
Despite the fact that my account is now cancelled, I believe Warhammer is a great game. Perhaps the battlefields made the game too easy for players who are use to hard-grinding time sinks that require long hours of devotion. Should I be paying $15/month to play Battlefields when I can load up TF2 and play a game for free? Perhaps it was the lack of player created content? Unfortunately I developed an apathy towards the game as my clan members slowly stopped playing. It’s kind of sad. If I was with a group of people who, as Paul Barnett put it, lived and breathed Warhammer, I would have kept on playing. I’ll probably be back when they release more content. One of my biggest criticisms of WoW was the lack of player created content, but it does seem that it created enough mindless zombies to keep them coming back and they can’t be zombified by another game.
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:44 amQuote
Ragging on a game is fine, no-one will disagree with that….but ragging on a game when you are supposed to be a guru MMORPG player writing for an MMO Blog and after the game has been live for several months now….an you go and roll on an obviously low pop server…well….its your own fault really. Don’t you ever read this blog you write for? Plenty of people, including myself, have said don’t go rolling on low pop servers or it will blow.
*sheesh* it aint rocket science…… apparently…..
February 22nd, 2009 at 5:22 amQuote
Honestly, I have a hard time believing the author didn’t pick a low/low server instead of a higher population one.
Or maybe he was playing off hours.
Whatever. WAR is not boring (if you enjoy consensual, large scale PvP) and the ACTIVE servers are pretty damn active.
The author is entitled to his opinion… but don’t expect people who are playing and enjoying the game to not question where that opinion is coming from.
I mean… at least light a match or something…
February 22nd, 2009 at 5:22 amQuote
As I said, there are people who clearly enjoy their Warhammer, and that’s awesome. I simply find it a bit embarassing that a game like DAoC can be so much better in terms of the fighting actually MEANING something. In Warhammer, it’s like being a kid and running around the schoolyard, pretending to kill your friends (actually, do kids still play like that? some politically correct teacher’s union has probably banned it, but I digress…), and then you all went back into class and what you did an hour earlier is already irrelevant and forgotten. Whereas in DAoC, taking and holding land actually meant something. It was real and tangible. There was a MEANING behind what you were doing. And it staggers me that the same damn company couldn’t build that into a more modern game and, instead, made it into some poxy, WoW-like game. So damn sad. I just don’t understand how that was allowed to happen.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:29 amQuote
I was pretty surprised about how the realm rank rewards in WAR were so uninteresting compared to DAOC realm abilities. Gear aside, your grinding up for small percentage passive increases, as opposed to DAOC where you had real abilities that were interesting.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:00 amQuote
Good thing I stayed with Age of Conan….whew…
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:10 pmQuote
It’s so awesome to see you speak for the entire MMO community like this. Let me just pass the word on to the dozens and dozens of WAR bloggers that we’ve apparently moved on, then I’ll head over to the forums and tell them that it’s a futile effort because Mr. 17 Days said so.
February 24th, 2009 at 9:10 amQuote
A complete mmo in 17 days ? Kudo’s !
By your logic I can say things like “I only read one blogpost of that person, but I can safely assume his opinions are not even remotely interesting”
February 24th, 2009 at 10:07 amQuote
I’ll admit there were definietly large scale issues with the game at release, but I am really enjoying the game at this point.
You can argue all you want that it’s not DAoC, but go back and play DAoC and you’ll find that DAoC isn’t even DAoC anymore. I think a lot of that has to do with the way players play MMO’s now.
Patch 1.2 is coming out, and it’s looking great so far.
February 24th, 2009 at 10:28 amQuote
@Rob – Where was the meaning in DAOC’s RvR, please elaborate. The only real incentive to take a keep was to push for Darkness Falls and relics.
There is actually MORE incentive to take keeps in WAR: gear up your character, get huge renown/XP/influence bonuses, push for your enemy’s capital city.
All other reasons for taking keeps is pretty much identical in both games (realm pride, strategic advantage, etc.)
In all your comments, you still never told us what server you picked. It doesn’t seem like you picked a very populated one based on your remarks about how dead everything was. There is a huge difference between playing on a full or a dead server.
And trust me, I am no rabid fanboy about this game, but after 17 days and a pretty lacklustre description/review of your experience, I don’t really think your opinion stands for much. Back it up with some details and we may be able to have an intelligent discussion here.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:30 pmQuote
[...] And there is this post from MMOCrunch: [...]
February 24th, 2009 at 2:19 pmQuote
Imagine playing any othler MMO for 17 days – you will not see true WOW raid, you will not experience castle sieges from L2 in that time. Maybe i’ll take time to buy WotLK, play it for 17 days and on lvl 40 i’ll write few posts describing that there is absolutely nothing new compared to Burnig Crusade – and it will be exactly as relevant as your post. You can hardly imagine the feeling when whole alliance is pushing for last zone before fortress… That is bulk of WAR for me. At least you propably have most reactions to post in your life :).
“World of Warcraft taught me what I wanted in a game. Warhammer Online gave me that.”
February 24th, 2009 at 7:38 pmWizards & Wenches blog
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“At least you propably have most reactions to post in your life :)”
February 25th, 2009 at 12:50 am..
Erm, no, actually. I’ve had several posts well into the 100s of comments. This one’s small potatoes. Dare I say it, there probably aren’t enough WAR fans to bother replying…
..
But, more seriously, at the end of the day, I know there are rabid fanboi’s for WAR who are going to criticise the post, and that’s cool. They wouldn’t be rabid fanboi’s if they didn’t :P
..
You just have to look at the sites they come from, or the servers they play on, to know that the comments telling me that I couldn’t possibly be right, are coming from the most hardcore of the hardcore. As such, they make the mistake of all hardcore gamers and expect, nay, DEMAND that everyone else should experience or play the game like they do, otherwise they won’t get the most out of it. Well, sorry, life doesn’t work that way. I’ve been in MMOs longer than most (since UO), and I can call a game pretty quickly. Usually after a week or two, I know if it’s a keeper or not. 17 days was actually generous. If someone needs more time than that to figure out if an MMO is very good, they might need to up their vitamin intake, or something.
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Wow, what an expert. I bet he can tell it’s a shop from the pixels and seeing many shops in his time.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:26 amQuote
And this just sums up why I left WAR, the game was mediocre in my opinion and I prefer a richer storyline. But the diehards… sheesh!
From day one where people were literally threatened with their lives due to a poor launch to this article. Anyone who doesn’t agree with the fans seems to be classed as the scum of the world.
Not everyone is the same guys, if Rob didn’t like the game for reasons specific to him, then leave it at that, HE didn’t like it, YOU do. Why revert to name calling and general negativity? Just play the game and be nice…. It’ll make the world a better place ya’know!
Make love, not WAR :)
Xet
February 25th, 2009 at 6:30 amQuote
“Erm, no, actually. I’ve had several posts well into the 100s of comments. This one’s small potatoes. Dare I say it, there probably aren’t enough WAR fans to bother replying…”
Perfect, way to be cocky and patronizing at the same time. It’s not quite accurate, though. It’s not that there aren’t enough WAR fans to get you into the 100s of comments that you seem to take so much pride in, but that most WAR fans probably won’t bother now that they’ve seen how incapable you are of adequately responding to their questions/comments.
I think it’s pretty obvious that most of the WAR commenters here are not the “rabid fanboi’s” you characterize them as, but players who enjoy their game and want to know more details about your experience. They are concerned that you played on a server that was underpopulated and therefore could not get the same experience that players on medium and high pop servers get. They wonder (like I do) how far you actually made it through the levels before deciding the game wasn’t for you. No one here is attacking you, they just want to defend their game and, possibly, persuade you to give it another shot. They enjoy it, so they want to share their good experiences with you as a way of proving that there’s more the game than you were able to see.
Talking around those comments without directly addressing any of them and denouncing them as “fanbois” doesn’t make you look so good. No wonder only the most hardcore players are willing to respond to your article: the casual are too uninterested in your shenanigans to bother.
February 25th, 2009 at 12:04 pmQuote
Jennifer said pretty much everything I wanted to say. WAR is a game and lives or dies by it’s server population, so saying that you didn’t enjoy your time on what sounds very much like a very low population server is like saying the sky is blue. If you didn’t enjoy it because it’s not your flavour (so to speak) then that’s perfectly fine, but don’t make such broad (and untrue) statements such as “As far as I can see, however, everyone else in the MMO community had already tried the game, declared it a dog and moved on” when you haven’t even played the game as it’s meant to be played.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:26 pmQuote
“Perfect, way to be cocky and patronizing at the same time. ”
February 25th, 2009 at 7:14 pm..
Thankyou, so my meaning came across at least.
..
Let me be as plain as I can. I’ve put forward an opinion. It’s based on my thoughts, feelings, playstyle, yes – choice of server, and maybe 101 other things. As such, it can’t be wrong. People are free to have different experiences and, thus, opinions, but the patronising tones; the suggestions that I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about, etc, are flat-out wrong, not to mention rude. So you wonder why I choose to punch back? Gee… I wonder why? I’ll conclude with the very first reply I made to this thread, because it still applies:
..
It’s great to see some people commenting who, clearly, enjoy their Warhammer. Good for you guys – that’s awesome, ya know? What’s not so great is that they can’t seem to let someone have a contrary opinion without cracking the shits. Oh well, human nature, I suppose.
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I agree with Rob eventhough I understand why so many replies slam him. He seems to have rushed his review.
I have a 40 warrior priest on Skull Throne and 40 magus on Badlands. Both are well populated. So heres my response to all the negative replies.
When I remember how very simple and uninspiring it was to push the city…I remember why WAR just doesn’t do it for me. Sure its a lot of action, but its like listening to very loud bad music or watching a very bad action movie. Its numbing and I just want to turn it off. I’ve done 6v6 and the pace of combat is so slow it just pales in comparison to 8v8 in DAoC. Maybe all you people just like to zerg surf. I dunno. I don’t enjoy doing that.
What really makes WAR boring is that theres so much PvE and public quests involved in the end game. I’m so tired of being lead around by “objectives” and “victory points” that I couldn’t pay for another month. Compared to DAoC, there is very little freedom in WAR.
I also hate the fact that you’re rewarded gear for Realm Ranks. That was a big mistake.
I liked your review Rob. You only saw the tip of the iceberg, but you got the idea.
February 26th, 2009 at 5:56 pmQuote
Stephen, i agree with you and appreciate your view. I enjoy WAR as any other MMO before (yes, i play sice UO too) but i understand, that it is not game for everyone. You tried the game and realised that it is not for you. It is not and it will never be mainstream game. I bet my shoes that most of the people who replied to this post would was not trying to say that everyone should like WAR.
Quick and very, VERY rude post based on zero to no experience with the game (once again, because of low populated server and no T4 experience) is different story. There is no reply saying that WAR is perfect game and Rob is fool because he do not enjoy it. Everyone here says that WAR do not have flaws described in the post and author of the article do not have enough experience with the game to white something like:
“No passion, no sense of achievement, no sense of community, virtually no sense of fun… nothing. I’d really hate to have been a dev pouring years of my life into this, that’s for sure.”
Warhammer comunity is the best i have ever seen – almost no silly kids trying to show you how big balls they have, great blogs to read when you cannot log in, tons of lore surrounding the game and great, great dev team… How can ANYONE write that there is no sense of comunity in the game, when he did not even joined a solid guild?
In your last reply, you dismissed those reactions with demagogic statement:
“It’s based on my thoughts, feelings, playstyle, yes – choice of server, and maybe 101 other things. As such, it can’t be wrong. People are free to have different experiences and, thus, opinions.”
You remind me of Bishop Williamson. His statements that there was no holocaust are also based on his “thoughts, feelings and opinions”. According to your logic, he can be never wrong?
People are having diffrent experineces and opinions, of course, but they are often wrong. Of course, exept you and Mr. Williamson :D.
P.S.: Dismissing someone’s opinions as “rabid fanboism” is really cheap response :).
February 27th, 2009 at 10:48 amQuote
Heh, so you agree with Stephen, who says stuff like, “I remember how very simple and uninspiring it was to push the city…I remember why WAR just doesn’t do it for me. Sure its a lot of action, but its like listening to very loud bad music or watching a very bad action movie. Its numbing and I just want to turn it off…” then you turn around and want to disagree with me for saying, among other things, “No passion, no sense of achievement…”?!? I think you’re going out of your way to disagree with me simply because I’ve hit a raw nerve somehow. Because Stephen’s comment(s) and my “No passion, no sense of achievement…” mean EXACTLY the same thing. EXACTLY THE SAME THING. How can you miss that? Obligatory repost:
February 27th, 2009 at 8:54 pm..
It’s great to see some people commenting who, clearly, enjoy their Warhammer. Good for you guys – that’s awesome, ya know? What’s not so great is that they can’t seem to let someone have a contrary opinion without cracking the shits. Oh well, human nature, I suppose.
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This is the difference:
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 amFirst player levels to the cap of WotLK and finds out that in the end, there is only more raiding to do – so he states that it is nothing new at all, only more raiding to do.
Second player who buy WotLK, and cancels subscription on lvl 40 writing article about “nothing new comapred to burning crusade – all the way to lvl 40 it is the same, developers have failed”.
Of course that, in some way, they are both saying the same thing. But if the second player is true, it is only by chance. And I belive that therte would be many WOW players saying that his argumentation is silly and if there is some problem with WotLK, it is not similarity of first 40 lvls.
If you cannot see the difference between first and second player, respecive between you and Stephen, I really have nothing more to say :). But thanks for your responses, I enjoyed this discussion so far – it was far more relevant and appealing than the post itself :).
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Given the ESL nature of that text, I really have no idea what you’re actually trying to say. But thanks for the continued hits and comments on the site, I guess. They all help.
March 5th, 2009 at 7:53 pmQuote