A Look At the Warhammer Community 169
Gamasutra is running a story examining the development of the Warhammer Online community since its recent launch. The author explains how the gameplay and rules tend to affect social interaction. GamerDNA has a related piece looking at numbers for actual players involved with Warhammer's launch, and how it's affecting populations in other MMOs.
"Getting on the computer to play WAR apparently reminded the WAR fanatics that they had a computer, because overall, their gameplay went up as a whole. They logged in more often to titles like COD4, Oblivion, and even AOC. But the MMO bug bit hard, and logins to LOTRO and EVE more than doubled after the launch of WAR."
Re:ok, its not wow (Score:4, Informative)
One hit that WoW took was a drop in Arena players. Whether due to leaving for other games or due to increased ratings requirements on gear, the bottom dropped out in Arena's ranked system as people decided to just grind for the available battleground honor gear. Blizzard is now going to put Arena requirements on that gear, too, so you will be forced to do the Arena even if you don't like it just to fill out the ranks of the Arena, which depends on those lower-ranked players.
It should be noted that Blizzard stated earlier this year that they did lose players to Age of Conan. Those players, however, returned when they found out Age of Conan wasn't finished. Thankfully, Warhammer's endgame content is in the game.
Re:ok, its not wow (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's the poor interface (Score:3, Informative)
Or, you could just click the button and peruse the list at your leisure? Not as fun as griping, I know, but then you'd even get a big ol' "join" button for every party, and you could sort them by what they're doing, PQ, RVR or PVE.
But what do I know.
Re:ok, its not wow (Score:4, Informative)
Well, before I start, "better" or "worse" are a matter of taste, so no telling if mine matches yours. You can't proclaim that a game is, in absolute terms and for everyone, better than another, any more than you could proclaim Pepsi to be better than Coke.
That said, and to start with the punchline: I'm not particularly impressed with WAR. I don't find it "bad" as such either. It even had some good ideas and a nicely different setting, but it obviously wasn't even finished before shoving it out the door, and nobody even tried to give it a good polish first.
Yes, it has some good ideas, like the public quests. But even then it doesn't take long to realize that that mechanic could have been better polished and tuned. Especially in the early stages there are zones where you just won't have the people to finish them with, especially in the ones where it being underfunded resulted in, say, not having a freaking tank in the area or having been blessed with an enemy which two-shots a tank and a lack of healers.
What nailed the PQs collective coffin for me, though, was the realization that you don't even need to actually do them. You can farm the reputation for the rewards by just killing the thrash mobs for stage one, waiting for it to reset, then doing it again. It's not exactly a heroic feeling, it's more like a new take on farming mobs. It gets old fast.
Even if you did go through the extra effort to actually finish it, well, let's just say a lot of times it goes like this:
Rolling for loot...
You have ranked 1st for contribution, got a gold medal and 500 bonus for the loot roll...
Rolling for loot...
You have ranked 10th and get no loot.
Well, gee, it makes me feel so special.
But basically it's not even about loot, it's about "why do I bother?" You could be the guy who stayed on the edge and watched the others fight, and get a prize, while the guy who tanked the boss gets no prize. And the points-based rewards could be done just the same by finding a less popular PQ and grinding the thrash mobs in stage 1. Even if I go through the extra effort, there's not much reason to feel proud about it: someone else got the same rewards with a lot less trouble.
The same applies to other aspects too. E.g., PvP. I create my first char and within 5 seconds I get a message on the screen in big letters that I got PvP renown ("honour" in WoW lingo) rank 2. At that point I didn't even know where I am and what am I doing, so I'm like, "Huh? What did I _do_? Did I step in a dwarf or something?"
What happened is that if someone captures an objective in the PvP sub-zone of a bigger map, everyone on the map gets the PvP points just the same.
Again, then why would I bother with PvP? The best way to get PvP renown is to simply park your character behind an inn or something in the PvE zone and go AFK. In fact, leave it there while you see a movie or over night. Eventually someone will go capture the flag or something, and you'll get the points just as well.
It's just hard to take a reward seriously when it can be obtained by just randomly being logged in at the right time, even when AFK.
I'll take a wild guess and say that the root of the problem is a schizophrenic design, which can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a PvP game or PvE too. If you're serious about equally suitable for PvE-only players, then let me freaking buy _some_ stuff without PvP points. (I've found no vendors where you can even get a basic sword without the equivalent of "honour". And, oh, they even have the equivalent of talents bought with PvP renown.) If it's only for PvP-ers, then say that already and let the rest of us know we don't have to bother. But the "solution" of giving PvP points to everyone, whether they PvP or not, is neither here not there. It cheapens the whole thing for both.
For PvP, it becomes a meaningless reward that everyone else gets just as well. Why would you bother? What are your bragging rights, if everyone else runs around in the same PvP gear and has th
Re:ok, its not wow (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, A for effort on the rant ;) F for facts, though :(
I'll just correct one of your misapprehensions for you: Yes, you get Renown points for free when your faction takes control of an RvR area. However, unless your RR (Renown Rank) is really low (say, below 2) it won't get you very far. Your plan of parking your character behind the inn won't work for several reasons, one being that it'd take forever to level your RR that way, the other that you'd be logged out after 15 minutes of idling. "The best way to get PvP renown" is to do RvR scenarios and open RvR, there's simply no other way to do it.
There's problems with the game ("Ability not yet ready" anyone?), but getting a very small amount of Renown points free isn't one of them.
Re:So, basically... (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, if your reading comprehension skills are really bad, that might be your conclusion. If not, you might have picked up on the words "won't get you very far", "take forever to level your RR" and "very small amount".
No, my correction is that you won't be able to level your RR that way. I thought that was pretty clear from my post.
Renown rank goes to 80 (twice the character's maximum rank), and the amount needed to raise one rank increases with each rank. So basically after RR2 or so, you need to do RvR scenarios and open RvR to increase your RR.
Which means your plan won't work, which in turn means your criticism doesn't either.
Do yourself a favour and pick one of the many real problems with the game if you still feel a need to criticize it. Scenario exploits, pet problems, ability problems, crafting; there's any number of real problems to discuss without needing to resort to made-up ones.
Re:No forums (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/ [warhammeralliance.com] is the unofficial official forums. That's where the devs post, that's where the server forums are, that's where everyone goes for information.
If you're on the US servers I say you've nothing to complain about, compare the numbers of US Heralds to the number of EU Heralds and you'll understand why some people question Mythic's choice of GOA as European partner.
Oh, and the official European site [war-europe.com] is absolutely terrible.
Re:It's the poor interface (Score:3, Informative)
Err, no.
There's a button in the lower left corner of your character portrait. It has an icon that's supposed to represent two (or is it three?) people, coloured lightbrown on black. It's right above where the "Open parties in your area" frame appears. I think it even has a mouse-over helptext.
That's the "Open parties" button. Click that to get the list. It's all in the game manual if you're afraid to click around in the UI. The game manual came with your box and is also available as a PDF in the game installation folder.
I'm trying hard not to flame you here, but it's really hard to give any weight to your critcism when you obviously haven't even tried to find out how it's supposed to work.
WAR from the view of a longtime WoW player (Score:3, Informative)
Warhammer wins in "World" group PvP. Take keeps and such all the way up to the enemy capital city, kind of a combination of PvP and PvE. For WoW players, think Alterac Valley when it was still fun x1000.
Pure PvE Raiding is still way better in WoW. Taking keeps and such in RvR is raid-like, but the NPCs don't have the kind of scripted goodness Blizzard's bosses do, the real challenge (other than organization) comes if the other side's players try to defend. WAR does have a couple of "real" end game boss fights but, from what I've read, it's more like Onyxia or Gruul where you get right to the boss without much in between (except the RvR required to take the enemy capital city and open those dungeons).
Solo questing and instanced PvP (battlegrouds/scenarios) are about the same in each, slight edge to WAR because it's new and shiny.
Group questing ... WoW has *much* better PvE dungeons (WAR has instanced dungeons, but not to the scale and quality WoW does), but Warhammer has better outside quests for groups (public quests) and taking minor objective points in RvR feels like a group quest (take out the NPC guards then claim the objective for your side).
If the idea of PvP usually turns you off, but you like to do PvE with groups (like raiding), you may like WAR anyway as taking major objectives in RvR (like keeps) is less like "omgwtfpwnedbbq" and more like a raid in the sense that you get a large group together focused on an objective and you have to figure out and execute a plan to capture/defend that objective to be successful. To take a keep, you need to defeat the NPC keep lord (boss) who is protected by NPC guards (feels like a simple WoW raid boss fight) and sometimes by enemy players too (which turns it into a complex WoW raid boss fight).
The one real Achilles' heal in WAR is server population. If you join an empty server it will feel lonely and you'll probably hate it. If you join a populated server there's a good chance you'll enjoy it.
Summary: If you wish you could play a *Super Epic* Alterac Valley, play WAR. If you prefer interesting scripted boss fights, play WoW. If you have free time, at least try both and judge for yourself.