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]

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]

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]

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]

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^]

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]

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.

 

[Old Nicodemus]

PQ's were a great idea, but there were just far too many of them. It would have been more worthwhile to have had 1 or 2 dotted around the zones instead of running from one to another. Also the lack of meaningful group activities to do was a big no no, sure you can go grind the pqs or the orvr but after a while it gets as dull as Chodax banging on about his todger.

 

[Imgormiel]

I saw all of this coming in the beta. Too bad the rest of you weren't informed enough to gather that WAR was going to be =fail

 

[Killder]

It's just crap, no other way I can describe it.

 

[Ctuchik]

I saw all of this coming in the beta. Too bad the rest of you weren't informed enough to gather that WAR was going to be =fail

lol, if were gonna go by how things look in beta, then ALL future mmo's will fail...

because i havent played a single beta yet that havent had some horrendous problem or other.

i cant even go as far as saying "this or that has been worse then the others" because looking at them now its all been pretty even. its all been shit at one point or another, and usually they all surface in open beta when loads of problems surface

but many of wars problems are so deep down it cant be fixed. or atleast not in one big massive patch.

 

[Gahn]

lol, if were gonna go by how things look in beta, then ALL future mmo's will fail...

Betas are meant to be the moment to gather what the future playerbase thinks of yer game ...
Almost all of the things that are ruining this game were clearly pointed out by Beta Testers tbh.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Almost all of the things that are ruining this game were clearly pointed out by Beta Testers tbh.

This is the biggest issue i have tbh - the things i'm saying now - 70/80% of them were said over a year and a half ago. It feels like i'm being asked for my opinion then told where to shove it wheni give it.

I am a biscuit away from reactivating on the new DAOC US Supercluster tbh and jacking WAR in.

 

[Ctuchik]

Betas are meant to be the moment to gather what the future playerbase thinks of yer game ...

are we talking open or closed beta? open beta is primarily there to stress test server codes and find bugs that perhaps wont show with a small server population that closed betas generally have. closed beta on the other hand is supposed to be as you said, and other things ofc..

 

[pikeh]

I just think the core game is not appealing or addicting enough to make it compete with WoW (lets face it, thats the main aim of MMORPGS now).

I used to love the game, SH class was great fun (and what has kept me subscribed) and they have conveyed WAR lore brilliantly imo, but there are too many fundamental core failures. The endgame turns into a clusterfuck of the highest degree, all skill flys out the window when its 50vs50. City raids need a complete re-design, there needed to be a third realm from the very start, and PvE seems to be; Collect all Quests from hub, complete them all, turn them in, move onto next chapter, rinse and repeat for 40 levels.
They have put waaay too many PQ's in (PQ's are a great idea), meaning the PvE'ing minority are spread so thin its quite rare to have randomers fighting alongside you, therefore interaction between anyone who isn't in your guild is really quite rare. The benefits of being in a group are non-existant, also echoing the whole non communication problem. Like someone else said before, you can theoretically go from 1-40, rr1-80 without ever talking to a single person.
The best fun in this game (I believe) is within small scale GvsG fighting, but alas, theres 388291 BW's who disagree.
I wont be subsribing next month for a series of reasons, chiefly because I'm moving into a new place so net won't be sorted for a while anyway I imagine, but also for this reason;
I logged in a few days ago to change one aspect of my UI which I had forgotten about since the patch, and then logged straight back out again, whereas before I would have continued playing for a bit.

I'm sorry WAR, I wanted to love you, and I very nearly did.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

I'm sorry WAR, I wanted to love you, and I very nearly did.

Going to miss kicking your fleeing ass on my BW

 

[pikeh]

Going to miss kicking your fleeing ass on my BW

What else can I do when its 1vs6058 xD

 

[Ctuchik]

I just think the core game is not appealing or addicting enough to make it compete with WoW (lets face it, thats the main aim of MMORPGS now).

no, WoW isnt the main aim of mmorpg's, never has and never will be.

WoW is an "accident" never meant to happen in terms of subscriber numbers (blizzard statement back at the release, probably in their arcives somewhere if u wanna dig, i cant be arsed). and comparing it to other MMO's serves no purpose because i very very much doubt another mmo will be such a massive hit ever again.

and if theres a mmo company that actually expects the same, or even close to the same subscriber numbers, thats one mmo i'l stay far far FAR away from because they obviously have their heads so far up their arse they almost turn inside out.

most sane companies call it a success if they get ~100k subscribers, with 500k+ being a "huge hit". WoW isnt even on their radar when it comes to what games they should compete with, because they usually have some sort of pride in their work.

Blizzard sold their pride with TBC, and put their soul up for sale with WOTLK. Blizzard is kinda stuck here, they really cant develop the game the way they want to, they have 11 million odd subscribers to care for, and balancing a game, or even making new content for that many ppl must be a fucking nightmare i wouldnt wish my worst enemy.

if they started develop the game the way they wanted to i'd suspect a whole fucking lot of those 11 odd million players would fuck the hell off and i doubt the shareholders would be pleased if that happened.



Blizzard may seem successfull to hell and back, but i think they would prefer to be alot smaller then they are.

WoW is an anomaly best to ignore for every other game company because theres just no point comparing between them. at best they look at it for inspiration and stuff, but thats probably it.

so could we please stop comparing every game that comes out with WoW? yes i know i have to but i'm trying not to now

 

[pikeh]

no, WoW isnt the main aim of mmorpg's, never has and never will be.

WoW is an "accident" never meant to happen in terms of subscriber numbers (blizzard statement back at the release, probably in their arcives somewhere if u wanna dig, i cant be arsed). and comparing it to other MMO's serves no purpose because i very very much doubt another mmo will be such a massive hit ever again.

and if theres a mmo company that actually expects the same, or even close to the same subscriber numbers, thats one mmo i'l stay far far FAR away from because they obviously have their heads so far up their arse they almost turn inside out.

most sane companies call it a success if they get ~100k subscribers, with 500k+ being a "huge hit". WoW isnt even on their radar when it comes to what games they should compete with, because they usually have some sort of pride in their work.

Blizzard sold their pride with TBC, and put their soul up for sale with WOTLK. Blizzard is kinda stuck here, they really cant develop the game the way they want to, they have 11 million odd subscribers to care for, and balancing a game, or even making new content for that many ppl must be a fucking nightmare i wouldnt wish my worst enemy.

if they started develop the game the way they wanted to i'd suspect a whole fucking lot of those 11 odd million players would fuck the hell off and i doubt the shareholders would be pleased if that happened.



Blizzard may seem successfull to hell and back, but i think they would prefer to be alot smaller then they are.

WoW is an anomaly best to ignore for every other game company because theres just no point comparing between them. at best they look at it for inspiration and stuff, but thats probably it.

so could we please stop comparing every game that comes out with WoW? yes i know i have to but i'm trying not to now

I wasn't comparing WAR with WoW, I was saying that it was Mythics aim to become the only real competitor for WoW on the market.

Oh yeah, I'm SURE Blizzard really hate getting 11 Million x $10 (or whatever) subs a month. Must be a real bitch eh?

You just simply can't ignore that. Mythic knew that a lot of WoW players would be trying WAR and they needed to gobble them up.

Now Blizzard can fuck off and work harder on D3 before my eyes drop out in excitement!

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Now Blizzard can fuck off and work harder on D3 before my eyes drop out in excitement!

Give DAoC 2 IMO...Hopefully BioThic (as i'm calling them) will now have the intelligence to realise that with a revamped graphics engine, a bunch of PvP tweaks and heavy marketing to restore the playerbase a bit, DAoC could be a nice cash-cow for another 5 years for them...

 

[Downanael]

Oh yeah, I'm SURE Blizzard really hate getting 11 Million x $10 (or whatever) subs a month. Must be a real bitch eh?

Sure is,people keep giving me money too even i always tell them i wanna be a bum

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Give DAoC 2 IMO...Hopefully BioThic (as i'm calling them) will now have the intelligence to realise that with a revamped graphics engine, a bunch of PvP tweaks and heavy marketing to restore the playerbase a bit, DAoC could be a nice cash-cow for another 5 years for them...

With Mark Jacobs gone from Mythic, maybe what he's intending is to try exactly that and make a DAoC 2 of sorts under whatever umbrella company he can create or find.

I wouldn't really like to see a DAoC 2. Although I loved DAoC back in the day, I always felt the mish-mash of mythologies never quite gelled and I find myself increasingly tired of the American take on multiple mythologies where they are just a loincloth to wrap around badly portrayed drama/games. Many of them just seem to throw everything in and hope it works.

I'd rather see a wholly original *new* mythology created.