Comments on: One Year On: Warhammer Online Rereviewed

By: vice

vice — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:37:06 +0000

I think the negatives are well covered and pretty much true. We all have our particular hot buttons that make a certain thing not desirable, but you guys tend to miss the one area where the game has tremendous strengths, particularly against a wow.. in the pvp department:
1) classes can’t do everything, so within a group your highly dependent on the other classes..every class is flawed in a big way (tanks are weak, dps dies quickly, healers cant dmg) which puts more interdependency on the units.
2) everything is designed so that you don’t have to grind for years. you can gear up for pvp super quick to a point that gear differences are irrelevant in a week after reaching lvl cap, whereas in a game like wow, good luck catching any hard core raider who has spent six months raiding.
3) the system doesn’t have stupid money sinks or time sinks that make you spend a lot of time sitting around. no armor repair bills, no watching your guy fly around from zone to zone for 7 minutes, etc.. no farming potion mats for four hours before a raid.. all the b.s. stuff is pretty much done instantly, so if you want to just pvp, you really have nothing every holding you back

after the last two patches, which 1) significantly nerfed aoe; and 2) just largely fixed the city end game — i think the game is at its best state ever, though the last year has been really rough with bad patch after patch, no end game, etc.. now really is the time to try the game. it’s definitely at its strongest point.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:49:08 +0000

I absolutely loved Warhammer, actually. I found it atmospheric and while not nearly as immersive as some other MMO’s, it was OK. What killed it for me was the dwindling populations and refusal by Mythic to merge the servers early – even during the initial month. This game requires a healthy population both within your proximity (for public quests and open RvR) as well as server wide (scenarios) just to deliver the intended experience at all.

From the start, they should have:
- Made public quests scalable and able to be completed by two or more players from the start
- Had cross-server scenarios (ideally server groups, like WoW)
- Launched with half the servers

By: Strangepork

Strangepork — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:42:55 +0000

I still play WAR. I recognize the validity of most of the gripes here. But somehow I still have a blast logging on and fighting it out with people in open world and instanced pvp. What makes this game more than just TF2 with a fee is that, say what you will about lack of personality, in TF2 I can’t be a gobbo running around doing all sorts of heals, buffs, debuffs, making people’s brains explode, etc. A big pfft to those who say that WoW pvp comes anywhere close to WAR. Screw being a WoW healbot and needing to avoid dpsing to conserve precious mana. Screw mana in general, WAR did well to do away with it.

Anyhow I’m not here to sell the game, I’m just saying that me and plenty of others still have a great time.

Cheers!

By: Joshua

Joshua — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:38:27 +0000

What would have saved Warhammer Online is if they would have made it Warhammer 40k Online.

A shit 40K game wouldn’t have done any better than the shit WH game they released. Mythic needed to deliver a good game, and they didn’t.

As for being similar to WoW, eh. The things it did to differentiate itself from WoW (and there were lots of things) were poorly done, and the things it did in inspiration of WoW were poorly done.

The game was just bad, Mythic screwed up big time, a different setting wouldn’t have changed that.

By: NegativeZero

NegativeZero — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:34:20 +0000

My major problem with it was the wierd disconnect that I had between the abilities and the animations. It felt like they were never in sync. You press the buttons, numbers happen, and some time later there would be an animation which didn’t really feel like it fit properly. I don’t know what it was exactly but it felt horribly clunky, especially after WoW where everything is so smooth.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:36:55 +0000

Yeah, everyone who has anything bad to say clearly was just losing badly at PVP. Awesome counter argument there. Well done.

By: Jayt

Jayt — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:19:44 +0000

It didn’t hook me like WoW, but that MMO treats gamers like robots who enjoy spamming hotkeys at the same mobs for weeks to reach parts of the game that actually look fun, followed by more spamming of hotkeys to get gear to actually participate in the end game funness. I mean if that game was a mate, you would have probably punched it in the face by now.

War was alright, but I never got hooked. Pretty sick PVP, I guess I was just a sorc and nuked everything for hours and hours

By: Crispy

Crispy — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:11:41 +0000

@SuperNashwan: Thirded!

It’s the only MMO I would seriously consider paying a monthly subscription for (although I suspect as an urban setting it would be a lot harder to make than a fantasy MMO).

By: xtinctionevent

xtinctionevent — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 10:46:14 +0000

@ Morph

True, but conflict is still central to the Warhammer universe. The intricacies of military tactics are difficult to convey in an exciting way in books, let alone comics, but at least that aspect is slightly more understandable. It’s a shame that WAR couldn’t provide more depth. Let’s hope the impending 40k MMO will offer a more engaging, tactical experience.

By: Morph

Morph — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 09:34:11 +0000

A random thing I’ve kind of noticed recently. Warhammer (the tabletop war game) is about trying to out-think and outmanoeuvre your opponent. WFRP (that’s the tabletop RPG) is… well an RPG, so it rewards thinking and creativity and atmosphere and so on.

So why is everything else related to these two games that involve your brain, so dumbed down? The novels/comic are just fight, fight, fight, yawn, yawn, yawn. And WAR appears to be just about hitting each other ad nauseum. It’s almost insulting the intelligence of tabletop players.

By: Sutr

Sutr — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:34:11 +0000

the game has yet to fail. true it lost most of it’s population but the “thing” everyone claims this game lacks is a niche for those that loose. loosing faction whines, leaves and whines some more making others leave. the game is still the best MMO imho if you have the guts to actualy fight. like said before it’s sort of an MMO FPS where you log on, get into the fight for a while then log off if you want to, no strings attached.

if you stop putting the bar that high and start looking at what the game brings instead of what it lack you’ll see it for what it is. PVP game where some win, some loose but those that loose get too butthurt to actualy try and improve.

also i fail to see what the “i played a couple weeks at launch” ppl actualy have to say. you got to what? rank 15? or the “endgame” gear being sentinel set? just shows you have a lot to say about nothing you know about.

By: Howl

Howl — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:08:18 +0000

Hey, let’s take the worst parts of DAOC and the worst parts of WoW and make some bastardised hybrid mess with a bad, buggy engine that’s a chore to play.

All they had to do was take DAOC, stick it in a modern engine and slap the Warhammer IP all over it and watch the moneyz roll in. How on earth did they mess that up?