I would post this on the front page, but I'm too drunk to rememeber my login.

Warhammer Online.

I went to Target a few weeks ago and bought a presale box for a dollar and some deodorant. Drove home. Entered a bunch of codes, created some accounts. EA just loves to make simple things complicated. Whatever. Few weeks go by, and get invited to a preview weekend thingy. So I fired up bittorrent, downloaded the client and waited. Friday came. Whee! Fired it up.

OK, Disclaimer time. Few things about me. First, I have zero patience. This happens when you are a 38 year old grandfather with another on the way that works a full time job. Yea, not exactly EA Mythic’s (is this their name now?) target market. Too bad. Second, I’m a PvP kinda guy. Shadowbane Beta and all that. Phear my street cred. Whatever. Also, I’m not a writer. My rl job is to tell people where they are screwing up on projects. This doesn’t require writing skillz. Finally, I’m drinking. Jim Beam on the rocks, Good stuff.

Anyways, I played DOW! This makes me an expert on Warhammer. Or something. I remember the WAAAUG boards that you had to put up. How different can this game be? So I create a shaman greenskin. I’m hoping he does the “Orcs Orcs Orcs” chant like in DOW. Doesn’t happen. Oh well.

Being a longtime former EQ1, SB, AO, , wow (disc priest phear my 1610 2v2 rating) I do what I always did at level 1. Grab some quests and look for the giant rats to kill. Ok, I’m bored. Got level 3, these quests are the same old thing I’ve always done. I’m also getting a headache from trying to read these stupid quests. Remember how the Troll SK rollplayers in EQ used to type when they RP’d? Same language. They should have written them in dewd speak. I logout, and work on restoring my Cadillac (1967 Deville) for the rest of the weekend. I logged in on Sunday.

So I get another email for another preview weekend. It’s really just open beta starting two days early. Whatever.

Ok, this time I’m going to do research. What’s the most ovepowerd class? To google!! Bright Wizard!! Great, I can do this. Fireballs and whatnot. OK, so I start playing. I PvE to get to level 3, and I quickly realize that they nerfed leveling!! 1 week before release. Nothing smells like panic that Mythic nerfing leveling. I read on MJ’s blog that “IF it doesn’t feel like a grind, then leveling is too easy.”

Blech. I hate leveling. Just make me max cap so I can start the real game. Blizzard seems to have figured this out. Triple XP!! It’s not like I’m going to miss much by skipping the crappy WAR PvE content. I’ve been doing fedex quests since 1999.

So the folks in #hate tell me that I can level by just PvP. I can do BG’s (Mythic calls them scenarios) and some RvR and level. Also you can do these public quest things which involve you and anyone else in the area killing every Mob you see in a certain radius as fast as you can in order to get some lewtz. The more shit you kill, the better your loot. Anyone in the area can do it. Neat idea, if you are making a PvE game.

Side note: WHY DO THEY HAVE TO CHANGE THE NAME OF EVERYTHING TO BE DIFFERENT FROM WOW? Battlegrounds = Scenarios, Levels = Ranks, Mana = action points, blah blah blah. Look Mythic, we all know by now that all these games use the same mechanics. There should be naming conventions that follow the same rules as Web Browser standards.

Anyway, they nerfed XP. Blech. Horrible move.

Also, what the hell is going on with this feedback? I cast a fireball, I get a pretty animation. Did it hit? Did it miss, Did it lag out? I have no idea. I have some other spells the do stuff. Here is how PvP Goes.

Tab to target. Press 1, then 2, then 3 then 4. Standard MMP fare. Except I HATE HATE HATE being a newb again. I have maxxed out toons in Wow. I just don’t want to level anymore. Where are my abilities? I suck, Also, my Bright Wizard (I named her discoinferno) has neat tattoos, one eye, and a Mohawk. Some people care about this stuff.

Ok, its Tuesday. I’m level 6. Been some BG’s and stuff. This game has lots of bugs. Feels like it’s not quite ready. I’m playing Order, aka the under populated side that gets beat on. How can I STILL be level 6 after playing? How can this game be released in a week? They need 2 or 3 more months to polish this.

There are some neat things in WAR. You can have an offensive and defensive target at the same time. Nice idea for Healers. There are renknown levels, which is different from XP levels. What this brings to the table? I have no idea. I think it restricts gear or something.

At any rate, Mythic totally whiffed on the newbie experience for this one. Expect to get one and two shotted a lot by higher levels. They have some boosting thing that increasing your HPs, but leaves you with your crappy newb spells. The AI pathing is terrible, your spells randomly won’t cast, there are way too many bugged mobs that attack you that you can’t hit, pets are jacked, blah blah blah.

Overall, it will take Blizzard about 3 or 4 patches to ripoff all the good parts of WAR and stick them into WoW. Maybe I will resub to WoW.

Overall, the game isn’t done. I recommend waiting a few months.

Slog.

My black orc "Hamburgersteak" has been doing just fine. Only time I was killed in one shot, I was a chicken.

The lvling is a bit slower, but not by much. The first preview weekend I outlvled the T1 areas with a crap load of unfinished, unexplored areas, and it really felt like a waste. This time around I did like 90% of them, minus the lvl 1-3 ones, since I did battlgrounds for those. And got to T2 at about lvl 10. Quested and did PQ's tell 11, then went back to the T1 battlegrounds and kicked ass tell lvl 12. Was a lot of fun.

Everyone forgets all the broken shit that was in WoW's release. Hell, talents weren't even in yet! If you want to try something different (to an extent), then give it a shot. Wrath isn't coming out until Nov or Dec, so you have time to figure out if War if worth playing or not.

If your Mr caster, you could give Runepriest a try. I don't know about later on, but I cant kill an even lvl one solo right now. They are useful, in a fight, and don't go down fast.

As a Elder Beta tester I would say give it a try. Is it perfect? Nope, but its fun to play, especially if your tired of WoW. Its a pretty good game overall, but it will have its share of issues after relase. I just expect them to be fairly minimal when compared to a piece of crap like Age of Conan.

The problem that warhammer faces that wow didn't is that wow didn't have the industry's 800 pound gorilla staring down its neck. There really wasn't an incredibly polished product out there when wow came out, so when you got killed by a bugged mob slapping you to death from 40 yards away, you really couldn't say "fuck this, i'm going to go play wow" and log off.

But yeah, I figure that warhammer is going to be all the rage for a few months. People will level fast, realize that there isn't a ton of endgame content (because the game was rushed to release) and by that time, wrath will conveniently be ready for people to start throwing wads of money at blizzard again. "When it's ready" really seems like the only way to develop a MMO these days.


Oh yeah, and fuck EA. Fuck EA a thousand times. EA is why I will not be purchasing warhammer.

Well, I do hope the game does well, regardless of how I feel about Mythic or EA. Competition is good, market stagnation is not. It's similar enough to WoW to attract fans, and get people started quickly. It's different enough for people looking for something not-WoW and perhaps more emphasis on pvp.

I got to level 12 reasonably quick during the closed beta. Unfortunately, as you mentioned, the open beta has brought with it reductions in experience. While understandable, it was painful getting to level 10. I was able to hang around for one keep siege, participate in a couple PvP scenarios and open RvR.

I'm not a huge fan of button-mashing strategy, so I didn't actually have too much fun in the PvP scenarios. I did take out of handful of Order using catapults and ballistas, which was mildly amusing. I also drove a couple folks out of a shared public quest.

There are still a lot of rubberbanding issues, though. For instance, sometimes I'll lag, then rubberband straight up into the air and die due to falling damage. Creatures get stuck on landscape items often, and rubberband between where they are stuck and you. There was one quest creature I ran into, that you could not attack, and it rubberbanded around the dungeon.



Maybe not, but I'm sure plenty of people played WoW and said, "Fuck this, I'm going to go play EverQuest (or Asheron's Call 2, or Asheron's Call, or Ultima Online)" and log off.

You'd be wrong. WoW grew like wildfire from day one. It wasn't like "Oh these numbers are crap, these numbers are crap, these numbers are crap.....wait, now months later we have the buzz!".

WoW was basically WoW right out the gate. That's not to say there wasn't ANYONE who played it and left for something else. It had problems, but even with them it was simply a better product than anything else out there. WAR is playing in a world where WoW exists. It needs to be a better product, not a different product, if it wants to be even vaguely as successful. That is not happening.

I'm sure it'll be a fine game making some money though. It's just not going to be anywhere near WoW level, much like every other game released in the last few years. And as slog said, WoW can copy everything WAR did right in like 5 patches. And then WAR is just a less feature filled WoW with better graphics in some areas. It's not like EQ, where that simply could not be a different game if it tried due to fundamental design issues.....WAR is pretty much a WoW clone as is, WoW can pick up it's successes 'easily', for a given value of easy.

I'm not currently playing World of Warcraft. I beta tested World of Warcraft and decided not to play. I know plenty of people who were playing City of Heroes, Asheron's Call, Asheron's Call 2 and other games at the time, and they returned to them. World of Warcraft rivals the entire MMOG market combined. If the only place subscribers came from was the current market, all other MMOGs would be dead. They're not. World of Warcraft isn't for everyone, and that was my point.

As far is it being the best MMOG product on the market, I wouldn't say that. Judging strictly by numbers, it's certainly the most successful, but that doesn't mean it is the best. The pet rock sold in droves, but it was a crappy product. I'm not saying World of Warcraft is a pet rock, but it wasn't a big step up from current MMOGs at the time, either.

So, where does that leave people looking to compete? I don't think you can, atleast not in the mindset of the current market. You're not just competing with a game, but also with two expansion packs and years of content and bug fixes to polish the game.

Blizzard was a distinguished studio prior to the launch of World of Warcraft, and it was recognized for creating immensely popular games. Warcraft was already a popular gaming franchise. All Blizzard had to do, was not screw it up. To compete, you need to be willing to donate massive amounts of development resources. I think if Valve ever wanted to break into the MMOG market, they could create something to rival World of Warcraft.

the silly thing is that everyone assumes that there are a finite number of consumers out there for MMO purposes, there are, but before WoW everyone was saying 1M subscribers was the holy grail, i think we have the potential to support a few more large games out there.

Warhammer's problem is that it really isn't significantly different from WoW at all. I would forgive a lot of bugs and shitty balance and so on for a game that was actually different. Instead, they made basically the same game and I'm completely lost as to why I'm supposed to give a shit. I can play WoW with four years of content and polish, where I've got several well-developed characters and a second expansion coming up, or I can play incomplete rushed out the door buggy WoW starting over at level 1. The only possible way for Blizzard to fuck up here is to not steal Warhammer's three good ideas, and even if they ignore it entirely they'll still have the better game. Really, Age of Conan was a more compelling alternative than Warhammer is becuase it at least did a couple of things differently.

This doesn't make me especially happy, mind you; I hate a lot of WoW's design, but it is vastly better than the competition. The only game that's even close right now is Eve. In conclusion, please don't let Jumpgate suck.

Yes it fucking does. This isn't some sort of philosophical debate, it makes the most money so it's the best. That's how you judge a product, by how much it sells.

Also



Fundamentally untrue. It *was* a better product on every conceivable level at launch. AC was meh since conception, AC2 was a piece of shit that had already died by that point, CoH had only been out for half a year and still had massive problems, EQ 1 had peaked, EQ 2 was a joke, Shadowbane hadn't proved itself to be the savior of PvP, AO had shown that Funcom was batshit.....what else.......

Anyway, by that point in time it manifestly was a big step up from every other game out there. It managed to make the 299492942 EQ expansions worth of content look like a joke, and it just kept building from there. And it's still building. It is a great deal more game than when it shipped, and that's NOT true of all games. They may add more content, but they don't always add more *varied* content.

It wasn't just some other game. It's the reason there are now WoW clones rather than EQ clones. It redefined the landscape, and it did it pretty fucking fast too.



The same could be could be said about EQ, only it was.....what, 8 expansions? WoW still kicked their ass. Yes, it's Blizzard. So what? There are other companies that size. Not MANY, but still. EA is one of them. You know, people releasing WAR? They have the resources to do it, they just aren't good enough to put it all together and give it the time it requires. It's not worth it. They can release a lesser game that does it's own niche well and milks money out of people for a long time. Why shoot for more?

Just to say "Oh it's Blizzard, it's easy for them". Fuck that, plenty of other big fish in the sea have tried to make this level of breakthrough. Don't pretend it's anything less than immaculate game design and PR that has put WoW where it is.



That's great, but WAR isn't a unique enough game to do it.

Boog wins. You lose. Film at 11.

I know people playing non-WoW games. I know 3x more playing WoW. I'm talking IRL people here, not e-friends. The ones not playing WoW right now, for whatever reason, are all asking me about the expansion and if they "theoretically were to play again, what would be fun?"

This thread is shitloads more fun than politics right now imo.

Let's try this a different way. What does WAR bring to the table that WoW doesn't have?

Saying the game isn't the best just because the vast majority are playing it just means 'YOU" will be the judge of what is good or not and the rest of the world be damned! It is flawed logic.

You can tell us the game you feel is better and we'll round up millions of people that will tell you that you are wrong and why.

Look up "Everything" in the dictionary and you'll find that statement.

This is my opinion as a consumer. Quality is what sets a product apart. Something can be a best seller, but not have the quality or characteristics of something that sells half as many copies.



World of Warcraft built off of the foundation of Ultima Online, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Asheron's Call 2 and Dark Age of Camelot. The gameplay was very similar to Asheron's Call 2. To suggest that every game since that builds from that same foundation is a clone of World of Warcraft, is ignorant.



Blizzard already had the eye of millions of gamers. They could have re-released Diablo II as an MMOG, and it would have been very successful. They probably still could. The success of World of Warcraft can be attributed to the large fanbase of Blizzard and the Warcraft franchise.

Until we see another well known developer given creative freedom over their product and the money to support that freedom, World of Warcraft wont be matched. You don't need immaculate game design to be successful, as World of Warcraft has proven.



I didn't realize we were being awarded points to see how many times we could slip 'fuck' into the converstion.

If you ask a room of people if getting laid is better than flinging shit, you're going to have one or two shit flingers that disagree.

Still, we're capitalists here, so the game with less bugs, more features, and makes more money is probably widely considered the better game. Warcraft is still strong right now. Not only that, it has a new expansion coming out soonish. Players are going to be less tolerant of 1) lack of content and 2) bad launches than they would be in a market without a 800 pound gorilla hanging around.

I was pretty patient with the server problems when wow came out, because my other option was to play UO, which had already been shat all over. I was fine with starting the level grind for the same reason. Warhammer doesn't have the luxury of a market full of declining games. Warhammer is going to need a perfect launch, and enough end-game content in to keep the crowd that rushes to level cap happy.
AoC was a prettier and more innovative game than warhammer, and it had a fairly perfect launch, but it still flopped because of the lack of endgame content. To compete in this market, you have to do everything right.