If you’ve been following the 200+ comments in the thread below our recent discussion of our experiences in the Warhammer Online closed beta, you’ll have spotted that a vocal minority of the WAR community, having made their way here thanks to a link on the warhammeronline.com frontpage, are absolutely furious with us. All those that were simply critical remain, but there were at least another 50 abuse-filled tirades we deleted, consisting of the usual expletives, judgements about our intelligence and sexuality, and a surprising amount of racism towards the British. It’s true: we do drink a lot of tea.
Whether expressed politely or furiously, there were three or four central complaints about what we said – but one stands above them all.
We said it’s got its similarities to World of Warcraft. Well, in fairness, John said it was exactly like World of Warcraft, but clearly the fact he went on to list several ways in which it wasn’t meant the tongue-in-cheekiness of that statement was lost on some folk. (My sneaking a WoW screenshot into the post as a gag was probably a bad idea in retrospect, but it made me giggle). We did, admittedly, come back to the comparison quite a lot, but that we were generally very positive about the game was either dismissed or unnoticed – the simple fact of making that comparison enraged a fair old slice of the WAR community. All the incensed comments weren’t a surprise, nor were they especially distressing – this is, after all, the internet – but I think there’s more at play than simply another case of Angry Internet Men.
A similar outpouring of abuse happened to Richard Bartle when he made a somewhat reckless judgement about WAR’s WOWiness a while back, and I’m sure similar venom’s been poured on a thousand forum posts and news stories the web over. So I’m aware that this post is a little akin to saying ‘Candyman’ into the mirror three times, and fully expect further fury below, but let’s try and have some considered conversation about this.
It’s without a doubt true that dismissing WAR as a WOW clone would be wrong and stupid – there are important differences, and with its perma-war theme and PvP foundations it’s genuinely aimed at achieving a different overall atmosphere than WoW’s cartoon high-jinx and endlessly repeated dungeon runs.
There are also important similarities. Huge similarities, in both its mechanisms of play and its appearance. It’s bizarre that so many people won’t allow this observation to be made. WoW was not the first of its kind, and no-one here is saying it is. It is, however, by far the biggest of its kind, and as a result of that it’s the grandest inspiration for any current MMO developer: 13 million subscribers means cash and glory beyond almost anyone’s wildest dreams. WAR exists because of World of Warcraft. Of course, it also exists because of a number of other factors and influences (including Mythic’s own earlier Dark Age of Camelot). It’s also very true to say that World of Warcraft might not exist without the Warhammer tabletop game, as many WAR fans never tire of mentioning.
The reason we don’t explicitly state that Everquest did it first and Blizzard borrowed from Games Workshop and yadayadayada every we talk about Warhammer Online is not because we don’t know it – of course we know it – but because it doesn’t alter the simple truth that EA’s interest in making and funding WAR is, I have no doubt, because they want a piece of Warcraft’s pie. WAR does a lot of stuff better (and some stuff not as well), and in being so PvP focused does ultimately head to a slightly different place, but WoW’s landmark success is why Warhammer Online looks as it does, why major elements of it play as they do, and most of all why it’s being released now.
I think it’s going to work out, too – I’m expecting an awful lot of dispossessed WoW players to head WAR’s way. It bundles in some new ideas at the same time as evolving and streamlining certain core WoW/Everquest concepts that had, over time, proven themselves a little tired, and that’s enough to make the game seem newer and fresher than it perhaps fundamentally is. There is nothing wrong with that; MMO players have every reason to hope WAR will be a rewarding place to spend their online time.
Still though – why are these guys so angry? There are, I think, two root causes for the unchecked fury. One is that ‘WoW’ has become a negative term to a lot of gamers. It carries connotations of grinding and repetition and dumbed-down cartoon noobishness or whatever – witness too the anger around Diablo 3’s art style. There’s also the simple fact of its popularity – Coldplay sell a lot of records, and it’s for precisely that reason (as much as the fact they make awful music) that a lot of people despise ‘em. The ubiquity is cloying. There’s crossover with the Sims too – the games’ own interestingess ignored by a certain slice of gamers because they consider them aimed at a different audience, thus somehow beneath them. So WoW is a dirty word, interpreted as an insult even when it’s not intended as one.
It’s beyond simply gamers’ own distaste for WoW, though. In the wider world, that is to say the tabloids and worried mothers, WoW is a by-word for the worst stereotypes of PC gaming: anti-social fat guys, killing pretend boars for 24 hours a day, speaking in tongues of statistics and cod-Shakespeare. While the stereotypes may be largely inaccurate, no-one wants to be associated with that – you say WAR is like WoW and people feel insulted. While there are plenty of concrete reasons to be given why WAR is not the same as WoW, it’s telling that a great many of the angry comments haven’t listed them – they’ve just called us stupid and wrong (and much worse). And it’s because they’re offended as much as because of traditional web tribalism. With its darker theme and focus on all-out war, Warhammer Online is considered cool where other MMOs are not. Say it’s like WoW and people feel you’re undermining its cool, and that you’re accusing it of being old news rather than this impossibly momentous upcoming event in their lives.
Which leads onto the second reason. MMOs aren’t like other games. They’re closer to a lifestyle choice, for a lot of people defining how their spare time is spent, how their lives are lived. So if you criticise the game, you criticise the player. God knows there are plenty of non-MMO games that people treat as though they’re bound to their very souls – witness the pile-on for Eurogamer’s MGS4 review, or even the outrage about various RPS writers being down on Stalker: Clear Sky – but it’s even worse with MMOs. Telling a WAR player that his game is similar to WoW is like telling a goth that he’s emo. No-one wants to be told they’re not unique and interesting, to be dismissed as a stereotype they’re not.
WAR is not WoW. But it is a lot like it in a number of crucial ways, and for one essential reason: money. I suspect Mythic and EA aren’t too concerned about the comparison themselves – they might disagree with the sweeping generalisation, but if they didn’t want to be compared they would have gone for an entirely different interface and art approach. Saying WAR is like WoW is not the same as saying it’s a bad or a lazy game, but unfortunately there are guys who do intentionally make the comparison unfavourably, and that’s perhaps understandably made a lot of WAR fans very touchy. I wish they wouldn’t take it so personally, but it can’t realistically be stopped.
We’ll be talking a lot more about WAR over the coming weeks, and will be able to better discuss the RvR/PvP elements that were so marginal in the underpopulated EU closed beta, but I suspect we’ll still end up making the occasional WoW comparison. It’s not meant to be an insult.
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@Apaperbackhero
That sounds a lot like a wow fanboy’s wishful thinking, doesn’t it? :D
WAR inspired by WoW? It seems to me that WOTLK is in many ways a (very) pale imitation of Warhammer Online.
You’d have to be stupid to think any MMO released post WoW wasn’t influenced in *some* way BY WoW itself, even if it was only that it got the green light and funding BECAUSE of the success WoW had in fact it pisses me off so many liscenes are being turned into fucking MMOs after that, as they’ll mostly turn out crap. As an aside, I hate WoW.
For fun analogies, people compared music at the same time to The Beatles, not Buddy Holly or whoever else they were influenced by.
WoW is like the old GF you are sick of and War is what everyone is hoping to be the new hotter GF. That’s until you realize she’s just the same nag that the other GF was.
WoW has changed the landscape of how MMOs are done. It’ sad to see how people validate their “corness” or “maturity” by the game they play. All you have to do is realize that perhaps WoW is just not the game for you.. Just like you realized you couldn’t kick a goal in football, or throw a 95MPH pitch.
As far as for mythics experience, good I’m glad they used all that experience into take a deep MMO in DAoC, sadly I saw no fun there but doesn’t make it a bad game just not for me.
Yeah – take that, you tea drinking… scallywags??
@frymaster
WAR seems to be more of a co-op game than WoW, actually. Public Quests and Open Groups encourage impromptu grouping better than WoW does. Basically WAR encourages group play right from an early level, while WoW assumes 1-LevelCap will be mostly solo questing. PvP focus aside, I think this is the most progressive thing WAR does for MMO’s.
And the way they have RvR set up, I have yet to figure out how it’s possible to grief someone on the Core ruleset servers. Not that I’m a griefer or anything :P.
I’ve been at Center Parcs all weekend without internet since thursday. I estimated a 60% chance that GOA would screw something up in spite of the warnings which they ridiculed and encouraged others to ridicule(bordering on personal abuse). I guessed at 20% that the extent of the damage would be ‘F.U.B.A.R’.
I’m now reading sites as fast as I can to catch up on the situation before actually plunging into beta. Can anyone summarise what’s happened? IanC has apparently said something racist allegedly and Mark Jacobs has made a blog post stating he ‘disagrees with what IanC said’ in quite an apoligetic tone. So, ’sup?
Gogeras, I think this is the quote you’re talking about:
“A lot of what was said yesterday here and on other forums was entirely out of line. Of course you were disappointed and criticism is certainly warranted but frankly many of the posts made about the situation were borderline sociopathic. If having delayed access to a beta test really drives you to such depths of anger and fury that you felt compelled to make the death threats, racial slurs and other deeply unpleasant posts then – and there is no polite way to put this – there is something wrong with you.”
Entirely up to the reader to decide how out of line he was. Source: http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1384848#post1384848
IanC had no problem encouraging others to break the forums rules over at WHA in order to make critical posters shut up. That quote would count in my list of his failings as the incessent passive-aggressiveness he’s becoming famous for. It’s a ‘everybody is attacking me unprovoked’ attitude he has, but he knows he deliberately winds people up. Black is white, up is down.
Abriael:
The irony of your statement should probably have hit you by now. Apaperbackhero definitely sounds like less of a WoW fanboy, more of a snarky cynic. He’s making fun of both WAR and WoW at the same time. Not to mention the more outspoken fans of either, who in his–and I’ll admit, my–eyes are just more of the same noise.
Bad RPS! Reminding people that they’ve only transferred their addiction from one product to another… no wonder they’re all cross! That’s cognitive dissonance.
Paul Barnett keeps claiming that they want to be the “Led Zeppelin” to Blizzard’s “Beatles”, however I think this misses the whole point. Neither project is really a musical work of “art”, but a product designed for monetary efficiency and mass appeal.
Mythic is the “Burger King” to Blizzard’s “McDonald’s”, and to claim more is to put on airs of innovation unbecoming either team.
Something WAR has that WoW does not: skinning other player races. In quests.
I, for one, am surprised Games Workshop didn’t get the pants sued off of them for ripping off Tolkien wholesale.
Since “warcraft” ripped off “warhammer”, maybe we can talk about the real inspiration for both.
Bottom line is, AC is a EQ clone, and there is no amount of bitching that it’s already vocal fanboys can do to change the game. Having played the beta now, the game is a carbon copy of EverQuest with a splash of new, non-innovative ideas thrown on top to make it seem shiney.
@Noc You put way too much thought into that mate :)
All facetious comments aside, and taking Noc’s comments into account, and what Alex posted, I accept your apologies and am in turn sorry if I hurt your feelings. Welcome to the Cult of War….WAAAAGH!!!!!
@ the “WAR vs WOW” folks. Who gives a ***** who copied who, what matters is if it’s 1. a decent game (stable, relatively bug free) and 2 FUN! So far WAR is both (IMHO :))
@Drunken Pandaren
Considering EQ released March 99 and AC Nov 99, Turbine must be really, really good to have “cloned” EQ in that time ;)
Seriously dude, just the “AC is a EQ clone” comment alone disqualifies you from this conversation. Sorry :(
Sigh wisd id read this earlier. Doesnt matter if u can draw similarities between war and wow, Ghandi and Hitler, Mother Teresa and 50 Cents. The point is that bringing wow into a war discussion is hurtful to us, the mmo community. We want to play a new game without the blues tagging along like a case of bad luggage. I can almost guarantee that PB isnt copypasting wow script and also guarantee that when i saw the first trailer, wow did not enter my mind once. This article is silly, coz trying to explain away the dmg makes noone feel better and makes some look like hypocrites.
WAR has many similarities with WoW except RvR… it’s more than obvious.
I believe some ppl will deny this because they consider those similarities as the very foundation of the genre MMO.
Which is ofc ridiculous, it’s just them never having plaid UO and planetside.
Others just don’t like it when someone’s telling a truth they don’t wanna hear about their favorite gamey.
Thank God there still unbiased folks like you RPS buds. Don’t ever worry, We got your backs.
The name Gylfi comes from one of Tolkien’s primary sources for dwarf and elf names in the icelandic sagas of the Elder Edda. Originality is overrated. I prefer fun for it’s own sake and was entertained by both WAR and the early impression of it on this website. Apparently some people take their tea and self-flagellation more seriously than others.
Gylfi is a real name for pity sake, just elf my butt off.
I would really like to buy WAR.. the main problem is quests.. quests are what you do in the game for at least 50% of your overall /played. And they feel exactly as they felt in WoW. They’re bla and brawl (except ive been told the tome quests seem very interactive, with puzzles and some brain-food, both a rarity and a poison for today’s “cry for hints” players). As far as i’ve seen PvP is nowhere near fun, it feels more like NatGeo lions vs zebras, hunting groups of hungry beasts waiting for a pup to slow down and separate from the bulk… besides the engine and interface which inevitable drag back to the same old playstyle.
Im not dumb enuff to pay for a game i’ve already played in the past (at least 50% of it).
Average players are and will pay for it, instead, because they don’t know/don’t care that they’re playing basically copycats. The community is made mostly of office-crazed freaks who just want to vent their frustration in a user-friendly, cozy, FAMILIAR, and easy to handle game full of presto achievements, so they will not put one in their heads. And it’s easy to realize that WAR’s main goal is to make things user-friendly, just as WoW did with the games before it. WAR is based on dumb-down, in the end… for god sake my character couldn’t even WALK and SIT! This is the rule of mass market, this is what happens when ANYTHING becomes mass and has to appeal to millions, it-gets-dumbed-down.
While some people like new game mechanics and interesting things to do, others are happy with easy to use games, addictive and with familiar interfaces that don’t require thought to be mastered. And WAR tries to give ‘em that and prolly succeeds. But please do NOT tell me about beatles and Led Zeppelin, because WAR is just good marketing.
Bravo, bravo RPS. Great writeup and follow up, although I missed the firestorm, it’s doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of ignorant ass fellow American’s came on here making it personal(probably McCain/Pailn supporters anyway). Moving on.
No, I don’t always agree with RPS, but isn’t that the whole goddamn point? If we all lined up like soldiers and vowed not to have different opinions or sway too far from the message, how shitty would the world become? Isn’t that just the same as politics and political parties? I thought the original article was spot on, but never bothered to read those comments for whatever reason.
Now, I’m in the camp that disagrees with RPS’s STALKER CS opinions, we all can’t like the same games and the same functions within our games but that doesn’t take away from how much I enjoy this site, and that absolutely doesn’t warrant me to come here and make it personal. It’s almost like the WAR community is just like the WoW community, but their a bunch of infants, since there game is in it’s early stages of release. Once the game is out, it can speak for itself, and I suspect just like we saw with Age of Conan, it will die down after a few months due to a lack of content, which seems to be the problem in almost every MMO. If Mythic can do anything, it’s to make sure they hire a room of 500 people making content for this game, because they’re gonna need it or suffer the same fate.
The bottom line is, RPS is the best PC news editorial aggregate site on the net. Nothing even comes close. PC Gaming magazines are obsolete by default with a site like this, and if you enjoy reading on the pot? Print it out, it works fantastically..