I feel compelled to do another installment here on how Warhammer online is progressing a little past the 60 day mark of going live. Those of you who have followed my writing on MMORPG.com and MMOCrunch may remember that I wrote my review of the game right before launch, and at the 30 day mark I wrote about the Top 5 Issues with the game. Now past 60 days, Warhammer Online finds itself struggling due to what I believe are 3 main problems that need immediate fixing.
1) Itemization
This is the first issue that is crushing my motivation to play. This is one of the 5 points I touched on in my previous Warhammer article and it remains to be a major problem. The stats on most if not all of the high end gear is horrible. I am almost inclined to think the stats were picked by a Mythic Dev throwing darts, they make little to no sense for their respective classes and seem almost random in the stats and set bonuses.
This is a major problem because the high end gear is one of the primary motivators to play. Unlike DAOC which had interesting realm abilities to chose from, Warhammer uses RvR gear as the carrot at the end of the stick to keep you wanting to advance and participate in RvR. The fact that the stats are so poor on these items completely takes the wind out of the player’s sails to participate and chase the carrot. Unfortunately this problem is not only limited to the RvR gear. I was fortunate enough to get 4 of my Sentinel pieces for my Shadow Warrior in a single run through Sigmar’s Crypt. In any other game I would be elated to be this lucky, but the excitement was quickly diminished when I realized none of the items were an upgrade, and the set bonus was actually worse then a lower level Bloodlord set. This needs to be fixed immediately, and if not before the end of the billing cycle, then there will be a further bleeding of subscriptions.
2) Overworld RvR Mechanic
The overworld RvR mechanic simply is not working. In a recent patch, Mythic claimed they made changes to the “Victory Point” system which determines how and when a zone will flip to the control of one team or the other. The patch claimed it would make scenarios carry less weight, thus putting more weight on the overworld and making zones flip faster. Yesterday my guild had an ORvR day to make a real push on the Destruction territory. After taking all the keeps and battle objectives in all 3 pairings, I was shocked to see that we were only halfway to flipping in 1 zone, and even less in the other 2 zones. Nobody wants to be forced to run public quests, which offer terrible rewards and are tedious, in order to flip a zone. Scenarios other than Serpent’s Passage still are not popping as needed, and I play on Skull Throne which is widely viewed as the highest pop server in the game. This leads to all the objectives being taken and being unable to progress, so people log off or go run mindless scenarios.
Another problem is practice of keep trading that has been developing as of late. In a recent patch, Mythic decided to make all keep lords to drop 3 gold bags 100% of the time when defeated. Unfortunately, players will always take the path of least resistance when trying to get stronger. It has become a common practice to see an Order Army and a Destruction Army deliberately avoiding each other and attacking undefended keeps for the easy gold bags. If you are out for loot, why would you attacked a defended keep when you can attack an undefended one a lot easier and get the same reward? On the flip side, why defend a keep if there no tangible reward for doing so? It is actually better to let them take the keep so you can take it back later and get 3 more gold bags. Even if I did want to defend, the keeps are taken so fast that the battle would most likely be over by the time I arrive. This entire system needs to be looked at quickly.
3) Contribution System
In case you haven’t been reading various Warhammer related forums, someone seems to have come up with a theory about how contribution is calculated that I have been unable to disprove after testing with my guild extensively. The theory states in short, that whenever you zone into an area, you are given a randomly generated contribution number before you do anything. This randomly generated value will stay with you until you zone or relog. I can enter a zone and be given a value of 900 while my friend gets a value of 100. We can attack a keep together and if I do nothing while he does all the work, I will still beat him in contribution when the keep lord dies. If we move the second keep we see the same exact thing happen, but only if he relogs or zones will his contribution rating change.
After collecting data from my guild, I can conclude that this theory not only seems viable, but likely. Knowing this, it makes it hard for me to want to try and help anyone during a keep fight since my contribution rating has been predetermined no matter what my actions are. I wouldn’t expect Mythic to comment on this because if they admitted that this was how the system works, the outrage would be massive. Now as much as it pisses me off to think this is true, the blow is softened by the fact that the itemization is so bad that the rewards are often times worse then most of the green items I have of lesser level.
The Billing Cycle
Warhammer’s issues are starting to catch up. A week ago we crossed over into a new billing cycle for those of us who started at release. As I mentioned earlier, even on Skull Throne I am noticing some of the guilds disappearing, I looked up some of the biggest instigators of RvR on the opposing side, and a lot of them have large portions of their roster who hasn’t been on since the new billing cycle started. While I am sure some can be attributed to the Lich King, I can’t blame those who have decided to sit this out until the big patch.
If nothing changes during this cycle, this game is going to sustain serious damage to its subscriber base. Even if the diehards decide to ride it out, the premise of the game requires a lot of people to be playing and participating in RvR. The incentive to do so is not there with the 3 problems above. Mythic needs to prioritize issues that will drive people to quit. That new sound for the horn when I get on my mount is nice, but 4 of the classes are severely underpowered, the items are junk, the RvR system is flawed, and 2 new classes are not going to steer this away from the edge of the cliff.
Paragus
Co-Leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
While Warhammer has a number of flaws, it’s the PvP that keeps me playing the game. People will eventually get bored with Lich King, just like they got bored with Burning crusade. Those that got a taste of RvR will come back and hopefully Warhammer will have evolved into a greater game.
I originally planned to play WAR until Darkfall came out. It sounds like a combination of my 2 favorite past MMO’s: UO and Shadowbane. But i may just cancel now and wait it out, hoping Darkfall does indeed come out at the end of the year.
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Back on par with the great articles! Your ‘Loaded Dice’ comment helps things make a lot more sense. It really feels like the missing link into why i get such consistently odd contribution’s. Although i really doubt Mythic would be so foolish as to use this loaded dice theory, the mere fact that it feels true to so many people, is a BIG problem.
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I dont understand why something as simple as total aggro gained is not your contribution (before modifiers like taunt/detaunt). There should of course be some other modifiers, but that should be the basis for it.
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I could go on about things like fixing the damn morale abilities that say they are ready but aren’t. But this is already too long!
RvR definitely needs to get revamped, there’s no point to defending a keep and it’s way way to easy to take one over. I’m sorry, but a keep shouldn’t fall in 5-10 mins. They need to make the keeps bigger, multi-rooms with way more defenders. A group of 6-7 people shouldn’t be able to take a keep down. The incentives also need to be readjusted. While I still plan on playing War, the honeymoon is definitely over.
I agree completely Mike. Back in DAOC, you had upgradable doors and guards, and it made taking a keep harder. In WAR my guild was able to roll keeps with only 8 people! Like I said in the article, I can’t get to a keep in time to defend it, even if I wanted to!
MJ is supposed to make some statements this week about the direction of the game. I will be watching very closely to see what his plan is. Again though, statements won’t keep me paying, I want to see tangible results in game before I fork over more money at this point.
ok well I have come to the conclusion that I will no longer be reading from this website due to the fact that everone here is so NEGATIVE about every single game they try and it’s so one demensional in their veiws towards things. I am a huge MMO player. I have every single MMO out there that is Playale and each and every single one has aspects that they are stong in and what the game is based around. Stop beating the dead horse here and start enjoying the games for what they are.
I’ve cancelled by subscription to WAR for all of the above reason plus many more related to the White Lion class. Since day one, my fellow lions have noted a lion’s share of issues which haven’t been fully or at all addressed. We know that it’s early in the game to expect everything to be working perfectly but no news from the devs leaves us out in the cold.
Besides these issues, WAR has always felt like the bastard child of WoW with the less-than-impressive graphics & combat system…anyone else tired of keybaord pounding?