What Went Wrong with Warhammer Online? A Postmortem.
This is sure to be controversial, but hopefully you will find the analysis and insights reasonably sound and share your own opinions.
What Went Wrong with Warhammer Online? A Postmortem.
The big question really is whether or not WAR can turn the ship around. Honestly, I am dubious at the moment. The next few months will really tell us a lot, but some of the mistakes listed in that article do not seem like things they can easily correct.
(Image to the left is not exactly a Dark Elf, but it is drawn by a really talented artist I know. She goes by Rikimi on DeviantArt. Check her out her stuff. If that is not enough dark elfish hotness, here’s a video of someone’s intricate Dark Elf costume.)
I can’t argue with any of that really. I would have mentioned the damned Knights of the Burning Sun as being ridiculously overpowered before they nerfed them though. On my Witch Elf, I sometimes took more damage from their stupid melee punishment aura than I inflicted with the attack that triggered the aura. I lost alot of faith in Mythic due to that. Sure, they nerfed it, but nobody that really knew what they were doing would have allowed that to hit the live server at all.
Warhammer could have been a great game. There’s alot of great things there. I still consider it to be a decent game, but had(maybe still has?) the potential to be far greater.
Destruction had its overpowered classes too, you know. This is quite a biased view.
The way I think it was set up to be balanced was that Destro would be overpowered in melee (Witch Elves and Marauders were crazy overpowered when I played, Marauders had the AE disorientate and huge AE damage and they were pretty tough and they could tentacle grab you) and Order had more powerful ranged classes. So if Destro played to their strengths with melee assist groups, the only response Order had was to stack Bright Wizards because once their melee got to you, you were dead. You were interrupted, if you stayed still you died, if you moved you took damage too, you couldn’t even get an instant cast off because of how the disorientate worked.
And that wasn’t any more fun either. That’s probably why Warrior Priests got buffed.
I’m still bitter about my archmage though. It ended up totally outclassed by just about every other healer on both sides.
Muckbeast did mention that Witch Elves and DoKs needed nerfing too, so I don’t see how the article was biased. He may or may not be overstating the issue on Warrior Priests, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Bright Wizards are busted far beyond anything else in Warhammer. I think it’s telling that when something of BWs gets nerfed, they just switch to using the next most broken thing they have and STILL dominate the game.
Witch Elves were really powerful at the beginning, but less than 6 months into the release they got nerfed into the ground. But even WE could never stand up to Bright Wizards.
Marauders were never overpowered, and are currently one of the weakest classes in the game.
Melee assist trains are useless because the game got dominated by AoE CC and AoE DPS. You can’t do an assist train under those conditions. All the top gank groups from DAoC learned that pretty quick – people with 5+ years of experience running assist trains.
What always amazes me is the fact that Mythic is not a bunch of noob developers. They made multiple MUDs that were commercially successful, and then DAoC which was a big success (a bigger success than WAR, honestly).
So you have to wonder how they made so many titanic mistakes.
Something happened to Mythic right around the time of Trials of Atlantis. From that point forward, the company seems to have made one bad decision after another.
ToA itself was a disaster. They lost half their subscribers by trying to add PvE/raiding to DAoC.
Then they had Imperator… aka Romans in Space. It never even got launched because it was such a failure of an idea.
Then you have Warhammer, and well… you can read the article.
So what happened 6-12 months before ToA? Who left the company that was clearly so incredibly important to the decision making tree that his or her absence ruined the company?
Do you think that balancing the classes much better would bring players back? I fear the reputation is already ruined, and the listed flaws almost cry like a SWG style NGE thing, which could scare away even more players.
Age of Conan also had its “Return to Hyboria” campaign, and it appeared to be a strawfire, at least if XFire playtime rise and drop after the end of the campaign can be taken as a reliable source of information.
Maybe it was also the brand. Warhammer is popular among its followers and known to computer gamers, but at least in Germany to nobody else. The name also almost sounds like Warcraft.
I also think games that focus on PvP have it harder than those who offer the mix. PvP alone does not satisfy, even if it is very good. Yes, I dare to say that. You cannot have sieges and major pvp actions all the time, and the “scenarios” can get boring, too, after the x-th repetition.
I do not think too much PvE is a reason that a pvp game tanks, the problem is more the itemization and the class balance that would work better in a pve than a pvp setting. Talk about “Age of Casters”, where the pve balance of classes is also a lot better than pvp balance, which is rather funny.
BTW: If you loved DAOC, you should test Aion! I have my gripes with the game, but I already bought it nevertheless. I wonder if it will see a subscriber drop 2-3 months after release.
I’m pretty much the target audience of scenario/battleground based pvp, and pve is completely unnecessary to me. Only time I did pve in Warhammer was when I was waiting for a scenario to pop up. Optimally the wait times would be short enough that I wouldn’t need the pve.
Despite playing Warhammer (the wargame). The online version never really excited me enough to try it.
Oh, I joined the trial on this a while back..
Really, the thing that kills it the worst are the multiple servers. If they were instanced across the entire population – the orc and dark elf starting zones wouldn’t be graveyards, tier 2 to 3 might have other players in them, and perhaps they’d have better control about huge zerg blobs killing their servers.
Secondly, that Scenerios are the only worthwhile thing to do to gain power is crap. People were hounding Mark about this on this one forum, and he kept saying “yeah sure we want to make it an RvR game, but we also don’t want to kill the one thing people like…” and they were like NO BAD MARK MICES PULL THE LEVER WITH THE GIVES THE CHEESE.
Which brings up why don’t they have random scenerios; they just closed all of them except two for full time play…
(And yes, I agree these would have been vastly more fun with three sides in them, instead of a one-way squish.)
And they recently muted all trial players, so that’s gotta hurt them a little…
They muted trial players? What do you mean?
They can’t talk in /tier1 or /guild, they can only talk in the local area and /shout.
So if you want to try running the Hunter’s Vale for that Stag Mantle, the only thing to aspire to in the trial after the PvP gear, well you’re screwed.
Why? That makes no sense. You are trying to keep people in your game, right?
Is the problem spammers or something?
Yes, they spammed the hell out of the advice channel. The solution was to just filter out advice, and ignore the one or two outside of it; at least that solved the problem for us lowly trial guys, I’ve no idea if it was any different in tier 4.
Game itself, at least what’s presented in Tier 1, is a ridiculous shoving match of who has the most guys and healers, and the best gear.
I guess criticizing nitpicky things like “aura twisting” and near identical mirror classes is just being mean – the game is by no means horrible, just inferior in a lot of ways to other things available for the same price.
What went wrong is games workshop dont know shit about games and some fucking dickhole made a bad call back in 2004, the original game that was being developed by climax online looked fucking awesome it was right on the money and would have been as big as WoW but games workshop got cold feet and pulled the plug, climax tried to struggle on alone but in the end were cut down by games workshop themselves and were then approached by mythic via Mark Jacobs who sucked a bunch of his mates cocks at games workshop and got the contract, made a totally shit game that is nothing like the original game that was being developed by climax and thats that, another great game that died before it began by retards in suits that dont understand gaming.
Guffrus
Is that what happened to the first game? I’ve seen screenshots of it and honestly, it had a much better art style than the WAR made by Mythic.
Do you have any details about how the original version worked? I’d love to read about that.
I dont know anywhere that you can read about it now, though such a place might exist.
I remember a couple of things, one was to do with the magic system; normally we think of a wizard in a game as having mana points to spend on casting spells and this being the measure of thier access to power, like a battery and they are able to cast stronger spells the stronger or higher level they are.
The system they were going to use was one where the mana was something that was in the world itself and also the strength or level would be defined by the area of world that you were in, the wizard is like a tap, a conduit through which the power flows into the world and takes form, the wizard is also attempting (underlined bold lol) to define its form so if you are a low level wizard in a strong magic area you are likely to have problems using the magic that is there because it is beyond your ability to control, something will probably happen but what exactly is uncertain. totally warhammer, roll snake eyes and end up teleporting a squig inside your own colon. conversely you might be a mighty wizard able t control all magics but if there is no magic present in the world you cannot use it.
So totally awesome, realistic (f its fair to talk about realism with a totally mad up subject matter lol) mold breaking and original magic system.
The 2nd thing i remember was a monster spawn system where there would be say an orc camp at a point in a zone and i dunno say when the server first starts up for eg or going from a clean slate there wouldnt be any orcs then you get basic orcs at the camp, then maybe some of them start scouting around on patrol routes while more advanced orcs start to populate the camp and so on until there is a boss at the camp and many orcs of different strengths and you have loads of basic guys wandering around looking for trouble.
Thats cool, but this is the good bit, when the scouts meet other scouts they make a camp and you start getting more powerful orcs at the camps and in this way you get a realistic orc population, you dont get an orc respawning behind you, you killed him, hes gone, the new guys are infront towards the camp and if you kill them all it will take time for them to regain their strength.
This could have been epic, think of the possibilities of such a spawn system with various factions and such like, then make it a global scale instead of a zone and then integrate real time quests or player gen support request missions or whatever and integrate pvp and rvr into the mix and what you get is a game thats as good or better than wow instead of the piece of fucking shit we ended up with, seriously whoever dropped this ball should be executed so they cant damage the world in such a heinous way again
Guffrus
me again sorry but i have to add a rant it just doesnt make sense maybe im wrong about how things work but so far as i can tell its something like this:
businesses are legally oblegated to make money for their share holders and games cost lots of money to make because its alot of work before you can sell anything so its high risk etc so inorder to get investors to front the money to fund the project until its released and by released i mean its properly polished gold not a unstable cut down alpha test coupled with a multimillion pound customer service team to appologise and assure people that they havent wasted the money they are never going to get back (thanks legal department for making such an evil and unfair contract that we then use as a template for our attitude to customer service instead of seeing it as a safty net and last resort fall back position which would make it more reasonable, its actually the customer service fail that makes it evil, not the terms of the legal team.)
so anyway getting a little side tracked, you need to prove to the investor that they arent going to loose all thier money and are infact going to make lots of money, but heres the thing that i dont understand, these people must have desided to go with mythic over climax on the basis that mythic had already been somewhat successful with DaoC even though DaoC is actually a piece of shit by this point in time, the fact that they made something work before is supposed to mean that they are able to make a much much better game now… why?
surely what it tells you is that these people though skilled are only able to produce a piece of work of the standard of DaoC which is not good enough.
Why didnt they get someone to look into gaming and look at the ideas? surely it is obvious to anyone with eyes that saying true to a style and a culture that has bridged generation gaps and been manifested in books, paper and penicil games, board model dice games, computer games, comics and that what climax had was totally true to form those people clearly knew and loved warhammer, they are warhammer, they are the people that play it and turn something from a set of rules into something fun and real and alive. you cant make anything of quality without passion. btw regarding computer games, there have been many D&D and warhammer games before and most of them have been crap because they are either computerised versions of roleplaying which is retarded because machines and scripts cant adlib a character which is the very essence of roleplay, its just not the same as real people creating together, or the other type of failed game which focuses more so on the combat which is fine but but they have generally just not been any fun, as a computer game, the best ones were the ones which were basically the board game version which worked much better because you are getting something useful in that you dont have to have loads of models and dice and stuff and a machine can be taught how to play, at least in a limited and predictable way.
So yeah i just dont get it, why would anyone have made that call, why would you choose someone who made an ok game and wasnt really conntected to warhammer which surely is one of the primary selling points of the game and indeed the point of even making a warhammer online game rather than creating a new word for your game which could be anything you like to fit it into a game mechanic that was fun, its actually much harder to stay true to the existing warhammer lore AND make a good game than it is to make a good game and then flesh it out with something that fits nicely.
So you go with climax, who may well be able to make a much better mmorpg than mythic because they have plenty of game making experience so should be able to turn their hand to a larger project like mmorpg games and have not already proven to be only ok at it like mythic has.
its madness, its a high risk investment and so you want a high yeild reward from it, everyone knew at the time that there was alot coming in the pipeline, EQ was massive, i think top dog at the time, daoc was big and i think you had eve online too im not sure i only came onto that later on myself. WoW was looking strong and rightly so, and why? because it was being made by blizzard, and blizzard are ****ing awesome, they are like one of the only companies that seems able to release a fully finished game, which has everything to a high standard, a good game mechanically that works, good menus, high quality graphics both from a technical standpoint and from a creative one, large content, high quality cut scenes, voice actors and plots. Seriously all the way through they have always been the best, the warcraft series is right at the core of rts history along side C&C but honest warcraft was better made, actualy its just a shame that erm, sorry cant remember who made C&C westwood maybe? they are good but they should have given it to blizzard to finish / polish or just spent more time perhaps. So you now that WoW is gunna be massive and you can only combat quality with equal quality, like mercedes and bmw for eg you cant surely believe that you can sell a ford everyman ‘plastique’ for the same money as a mercedes ‘uberstatus’ no one would think that you could do that in the car world why would anyone think you could do it with a computer game? why would i choose a medium quality game for the same retail price and monthly fee when i could have a high quality one for the same money?
so randomly – if any game makers out there would like to give me as job as a consultant email me Guffrus@hotmail.com send me game when you nearly finished and ill play it and try to give you some solutions to whatever mistakes you made, there are always mistakes but its hard to see the wood from the trees i would imagine. not much chance of you guys paying me for my services though i dont suppose seeing as companies seem to prefer to sell people the game at this point instead of finishing it or getting some target demographic selection of beta testers to help for free
anyway rant over,
See in you a game somewhere
Guffrus
Thanks for all of that info about the previous Warhammer MMO, Guffrus.
I think one thing that helped kill them was how they wanted to keep things to the lolore to the max: elves with alien pitch black eyes.
They also planned on the generic Four Races trope: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Ogre and Midgets would be the only playable guys.
They strongly took ideas from the Warhammer RPG, things like career paths. How you could go from being a lowly Ratcatcher to a slightly less lowly Pickpocket.
Combat was to be more “realistic”. If you smack a guy with a sword, it’s still getting smacked by a sword, no? So a mighty Slayer would be in the same magnitude of power as a Squire; even though he’d still be vastly more powerful, the Squire could at least WOUND him and not be total dead weight.
They wanted to make a world. Runic wanted to make a Dark Age of Camelot remake in a world where Dark Age of Camelot exists.