Warhammer Online Information by the Truckload

Last week Massively.com got the chance to head over to EA Mythic's Virginia lab to clock some hands-on time with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning . As a result they were pumping out loads of review content, everything from hardcore PvP info to dungeon crawling to crafting. The culmination of all this hard work was a summary post with clickable navigation to all of their review resources. Definitely worth a look if you are at all curious about this upcoming behemoth.

I won't pay to play an MMO until

[Bobtree]

the players have real agency. What's the point of being online with lots of people if everybody's quests are identical and no player's actions really impact the world at all? Maybe Warhammer will be the one to do that. Time will tell.

I've been spoiled by WoW

[merchant_x]

WoW hit the sweet spot for MMO's in that they made it challenging enough to keep hardcore types interested but easy enough for their casual friends to get into and experience quite a bit of the content with them. I'm hoping WAR can do the same thing and perhaps improve the experience a bit. WoW is starting to feel a bit long in the tooth and seems to have lost it's focus a bit. If WAR can deliver what WoW is missing before Blizzard gets out the next expansion, they could have the makings of a very successful launch.

Re:DAOC 2 ??

[BlowHole666]

Amen. It was a slap in the face when mythic made crafting easier and let everyone craft everything on the same character. It just said to the hardcore players who started playing in the beginning that we do not care about you anymore. Atlantis... well i have mixed feelings on that. It went from very hard and needing large groups to complete to needing only a 4-8 man group, or just RvRing the whole thing.

Re:I've been spoiled by WoW

[MrPink2U]

Before the next expansion? They're likely not going to do anything except raise the level cap and put more end-game content in, that most casual players will never see.

Yes, I'd call that an expansion. What else would you like?

Wrong approach

[Shivetya]

They should first concentrate on what WOW did right. Looking for mistakes in WOW is going to devolve into being saddled down with personal nits. In other words if they look for what WOW did wrong they will not get a good picture simply because what was done wrong is so overshadowed by what went right.

I have nothing wrong with trying to make a better WOW, but you don't do that by trying to find out what is wrong with it. The only thing really wrong with WOW is that its size hobbles other companies trying to compete in the fantasy genre. If anything that size stifles others as VC money is more likely going to examine what happened to recent offerings like LOTRO and DDO and say "if they couldn't make a dent or sizable population what could?"

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So, basically...

[Moraelin]

So, basically, they're trying to avoid what made WoW so successful? I'm sure they can ask the fine developers of Vanguard how well the plan went to avoid everything that made WoW fun.

I mean, seriously, even Sony had to grudgingly give up and demote most NPCs from heroic (think "elite" in WoW lingo) to make it more soloable, plus give all classes enough firepower (e.g., via "heroic opportunities") to solo.

Now I'm not commenting on Warcraft Online specifically, since I don't have enough info for that. I don't know whether it will rule or suck.

But trying to avoid solo-MMO at this point is really a way to say, "nah, we're not giving the vast majority of players what they want." I just have to question why would anyone sane do that? Did they (and their publisher) take a vow of poverty? Or are they trying to not compete too hard with Blizzard? Or what? :P

Or it could be that they're smarter than that, after all, and just give a wrong impression.

Re:Wrong approach

[Phrogman]

All that WOW seems to have done right is rehash all of the concepts present in earlier games in a new format with very few problems. I tried it at release and didn't last the first month because it offered nothing new, just old concepts redone in an easy but boring format. Its been marketed to a massive audience of former Blizzard customers and done extremely well I admit, but most of those customers have never played another MMO to compare it to.They will get bored and move to a new game when the right one comes along that does things at least as well as WOW.

To quote a woman I met recently "Oh my husband and I have been playing WOW for about 8 months now, but we are getting a bit bored. Are you saying there are *other* mmorpgs like WOW out there?"

Overall as someone who has played dozens of MMOs, WOW is of minimal interest to me. If you want an excellent MMO, try City of Heroes in my opinion. Yes, like WOW its not very good for PvP so don't go there if thats your thing, but otherwise its the best engineered game I have ever seen, and has proven extremely enjoyable to me and my friends ever since its release.

Mythic has the advantage of its experience with Dark Age of Camelot, and thats a tremendous heads up with regards to RvR. They set the standard and no one has come even close to DAOC in that regard, although Mythic did overengineer things in the end and ruin it in many people's opinion

DAOC in its first few years was the best gaming experience I have had or am ever likely to have. I can hope WHO comes close or exceeds it, but I doubt thats possible.

Dunno where people got that definition from

[Moraelin]

Personally I dunno where people got that definition that you must need a group to even go to the toilet, to be a "real" MMO.

The name just says "massively multiplayer", which strictly speaking means lots and lots of players on the same server.

The first "real" MMO was UO, so basically it means whatever Origin wanted it to mean. It had no such restriction.

Some people would argue that MMOs are really a continuation of MUDs, only this time with a graphical interface. And while I would personally call it a new genre anyway, or a convergence of two former genre, I see their point too: the first ones played a lot like a DIKU with graphics. MUDs had no such restriction either.

Basically I'm not disagreeing with anything you said. Quite the contrary. Just wondering where people got that idea.