WAR Failures

[Aqe]

What decisions and design flaws made WAR fail?

#1: Only 2 realms. impossible to balance. 3 or 5 would been much better as they would balance out themselves. People always gather up to fight the larger force.

#2: To much focus on the campaign that in the end didn't give any good rewards.

#3: To small RvR zones.

#4: Almost no immunity system against CC

[Cadelin]

Originally Posted by Aqe

What decisions and design flaws made WAR fail?

#1: Only 2 realms. impossible to balance. 3 or 5 would been much better as they would balance out themselves. People always gather up to fight the larger force.

#2: To much focus on the campaign that in the end didn't give any good rewards.

#3: To small RvR zones.

#4: Almost no immunity system against CC

I agree but I would also like to add:
High system requirements. The graphics don't look much better than WoW yet I can run WoW on my macbook!

Lag: WAR was a game where one of the big selling point was mass RvR battles. Fail.

Edit: I should point out that while nobody aims to have a laggy game, Mythic knew that it was absolutely vital for lag to be kept to a minimum. They failed terribly and there solution to these problems has been population caps which are crap.

[Downanael]

It's engine seem to be quite buggy and runs like shit,don't even need to go to gameplay problems

[Cirventhor]

I very much agree with all points here, but I'll add this:

- The game lacks a cohesive feel, the world is too split up in different areas with loading screens all the time. It feels very restricted and kills immersion into the game world. In DAoC (OF) you could run or take a horse from Malmohus to Odin's if you wished it, and I missed that open feel.

- In my opinion scenarios have no place in an RvR game (apart from perhaps some to level up in, like BG's in DAoC).

[GReaper]

Tier 4 RvR being too buggy near the start, don't promise city sieges if they haven't been tested yet. If rank 40 players can't carry on playing then they're likely to quit.

Far too many complex formulas which piss people off. Victory points being mysterious bars which don't always follow the action.

Badly thought end game. You siege the enemy city, kill the king, you've achieved the most difficult thing on the server (apparently). What do you do now? Repeat until bored? They shouldn't associate a never ending battle with something you can complete.

Huge lack of polish. Would you rather have a game which has had years of extra additional detail added to it, or a freshly released game which feels rushed? WAR was the rushed game, with many corners cut just to make it to release.

[Shike]

I blame EA for that Greaper

[rynnor]

I think what really killed it was competition - Daoc was a much worse game than WAR when it came out but people stuck around.

Anyone who says otherwise wasnt there - I remember getting hit by extremely long mezzes with absolutely no immunity whatsoever and the completely imbalanced stealth classes lol.

But with a number of other decent MMO's out there Warhammer had a tough job to do - it was clearly released before it was completely ready but show me a game that wasnt?

I actually think its a very good mmo and it saddens me that it effectively blew its chance at the bigtime - I still have hopes of a well marketed expansion for it to claw back new players but who knows?

[Cadelin]

Originally Posted by rynnor

I think what really killed it was competition - Daoc was a much worse game than WAR when it came out but people stuck around.

Anyone who says otherwise wasnt there - I remember getting hit by extremely long mezzes with absolutely no immunity whatsoever and the completely imbalanced stealth classes lol.

But with a number of other decent MMO's out there Warhammer had a tough job to do - it was clearly released before it was completely ready but show me a game that wasnt?

I actually think its a very good mmo and it saddens me that it effectively blew its chance at the bigtime - I still have hopes of a well marketed expansion for it to claw back new players but who knows?

They came out 8 years apart. That's like comparing windows Vista with Windows 95. Vista is alot better than 95 but at the time windows 95 was a massive improvement over dos/windows 3.1 Vista was meh compared to XP.

WAR at release was better than DaoC at release but expectations have risen alot more. This thread has highlighted some fundamental flaws in the game and no amount of good marketing will turn it around.

[Tallen]

Originally Posted by rynnor

I think what really killed it was competition - Daoc was a much worse game than WAR when it came out but people stuck around.

Anyone who says otherwise wasnt there - I remember getting hit by extremely long mezzes with absolutely no immunity whatsoever and the completely imbalanced stealth classes lol.

But with a number of other decent MMO's out there Warhammer had a tough job to do - it was clearly released before it was completely ready but show me a game that wasnt?

I actually think its a very good mmo and it saddens me that it effectively blew its chance at the bigtime - I still have hopes of a well marketed expansion for it to claw back new players but who knows?

MMO players have changed since DAoC released, mainly thanks to WoW saturating the market with the kinds of players who want instant gratification for their money.

DAoC was new and innovative at release in a niche market with very few choices for the mmorpg gamer, nowadays there are new mmo's released seemingly every week, you have to have a game that not only attracts players, but keeps them playing. WAR has not done this as well as some other mmos.

[Turamber]

It tried too hard to be WoW Mark 2, yet people that like WoW will stick with WoW. Not enough of the game was rooted in the DAoC experience. Also tier 4 was a horrendous grind in RvR areas that truly sucked.

It didn't hold my attention at all in tier 4, yet that is where the game should have come into its own.

[Ctuchik]

Originally Posted by GReaper

Badly thought end game. You siege the enemy city, kill the king, you've achieved the most difficult thing on the server (apparently). What do you do now? Repeat until bored? They shouldn't associate a never ending battle with something you can complete.

couldn't agree more. i dont mind invading citys but killing the supposed leader only to have him respawn after a while isnt my idea of a never ending war.

sure one could argue that he just got ressurected again. but thats a pretty lame excuse for a bad engame.

the city siege end bosses (king/emperor/what fucking ever) should only be there for show, possibly only emerge if a city holds out and cause mayhem amoungst the attackers. and can only be hurt up untill a certain point where his lifeguard will come to his rescue and lead him to safety or just teleport away if u wanna be lazy about it.


and IF a city fall, there should be a battle again just to retake the bloody thing. not just wait 30 minutes for a reset. they can have all the stuff thats in the city at the camps outside in the meanwhile. and for the guild zone, just have a bigass tent that serves the same purpose. maybe with slightly less to offer then what they do in the city (goes for all merchants imo) just to make ppl want to retake the city. could make an excuse something along the lines of "this is what we managed to save, you want it all, take the city back"

and screw the PQ's, have capture and hold locations all over insted. and a capture and hold system that you have to take in a certain order. like you cant take point B if u dont have point A because that way the supply lines wont work. or if u wanna be tactical about it, you just dont leave a enemy camp behind your lines. that way we wont get the neverending flipflops in the current city sieges where the 2 capture locations just change hands because theres never enough ppl to both hold the one you have and attack the one you dont.

thats my take on how it should be anyway

[WiZe^]

Originally Posted by Aqe

What decisions and design flaws made WAR fail?

#1: Only 2 realms. impossible to balance. 3 or 5 would been much better as they would balance out themselves. People always gather up to fight the larger force.

#2: To much focus on the campaign that in the end didn't give any good rewards.

#3: To small RvR zones.

#4: Almost no immunity system against CC

So how many Hours did that take figure out ?

[TheBinarySurfer]

It's biggest flaw was it's attempt to reinvent the wheel : you had an excellent pvp system in DAoC - why not revamp it and tweak it (make it more newbie accessible), not try and create it over from scratch.

It's like an adult suddenly forgetting everything they've learned and going back to the state of a newborn baby - those experiences etc were valuable and should have been both kept and acted on!

[scorge]

WAR = EPIC FAIL :-(

[Aqe]

Originally Posted by WiZe^

So how many Hours did that take figure out ?

Not that many. Knew that it would eventually be boring, but for a while its fun to just kill enemies over and over and over again.