Mythic Shutting Down 63 Warhammer Servers 137
Gamasutra reports that Mythic Entertainment is consolidating a number of their Warhammer Online servers to keep population levels within an acceptable range. 43 servers are set to close in North America and Oceania, and 20 more in Europe. Mythic posted details of the character transfers at the game's website. CEO Mark Jacobs also made a "State of the Game" post, highlighting the live expansion that's currently underway, as well as the changes and updates they have planned for the near future.
No, Warhammer Online isn't dying. (Score:3, Informative)
At launch, they had *far* too many servers, they had wayyyy more servers than WoW had at launch.
Their launch went extremely smoothly, but the game population was spread so thin that people were having a hard time finding other people.
They should have done this 2 weeks after launch, not 6 months.
That said, this isn't indicative of Warhammer's impending demise, nor of a lack of players, they really did just have way too many servers and should have fixed the problem months ago.
Oh well, I'm still having fun with the game :D
(also, anyone thinking this was a WoW killer was delusional, it was never intended to be such, it's a very PvP centric game and attracts a similar, but different crowd)
WAR REQUIRES high population levels (Score:1, Informative)
WAR is unlike any other MMO currently on the market in its focus on PVP. Much of the game content really requires other players - I know because I play late at night. Populations have to be high, and balanced on both factions so there's plenty of chances for PVP. There's great "solo" content in that you can do so without a scheduled group, but most content is best with a high population of players. More scenarios popping, more RVR in lakes, and so forth. WAR is absolutely doing the right thing so that players aren't sitting around wondering why there's nobody to play with or against.
If you haven't given it a try yet, definitely join WAR for a least a month or two. They're constantly improving it
Re:Makes me wonder... (Score:3, Informative)
LOTRO, Eve, probably WoW, there's quite a few out there that have been around for a while (or even not that long) and have a strong community with strong backing from the devs.
It's only when a game lacks massively (Tabula Rasa, AoC, WAR) that things start to go pear shaped.
Unfortunately Mythic made the biggest mistake MMOs seem to be making of late - emulating WoW, poorly.
If people wanted to play WoW, they'd have a subscription. I don't, anymore, but I do have a sub for Eve and I do have a lifetime membership for LOTRO. If another MMO comes along and people like it then we'll see more added to the list of survivable MMOs.
Look at the Asian market, they have MMOs that have been around for ages and aren't shutting down servers. In fact, a lot of MMOs that ARE surviving are ADDING servers.
Taking away servers is akin to saying "look, we're going to shut down soon, so you had better look elsewhere". By doing this, and by not planning the release better, they have pretty much signed their own death certificate.
This is aside from the fact WAR is a terrible game.
Got bored quickly (Score:2, Informative)
What killed the game for me were a few factors:
1) Everyone who came into the game came with at least a couple of friends/family, who then proceeded to grind quests and mobs at lightning pace all the while ignoring my attempts to join their group. A rude, flat answer I often got was: "This is a closed group". These people wouldn't even join a Public group if I started one and begged everyone on that PQ to join.
2) Pathetic communication, the chat system sucked pretty bad. Dunno if they have redone it but it was really bad compared to WoW's functionality and ease of use.
3) Major slowdown in experience at around level 13. Unable to find any open groups, I was forced to level solo in most areas and when I hit level 13 it slowed down to a crawl.
4) The influence grind, when I played WAR influence was the best way to get blue weapons and armor. The worst part about it was that every influence mob from level 1 to 40 gave 100 inf. on a kill but the influence requirements in each zone increased with level drastically. The infl. reward should have scaled with the requirement.
5) Near zero PvP outside scenarios. As someone stated earlier, open world RvR has objectives spread out over a large area and it does work cyclically. Order takes 1, destruction moves to 2.. rinse repeat. Anytime an encounter happened it was invariably skewed in numbers to favor one side. An exception was the Festenplatz thingie.. humans and chaos clashing. I had a lot of fun with the constant action, push backs, chases etc. there. That area had a very close spawn point for both parties and objectives were not too far, the rest of Open RvR should have been more like this one.
6) Fortress elite mobs can pretty much one shot you over weird angles that too. I managed to join two different attack groups but both ended pretty much the same way, somehow the mobs get drawn to the lip of the stairwell(they never come downstairs) and aoe the crap out of any group. Plus the lag, even with graphics turned down
7) Some classes are near invincible at certain levels. Tanks and healers, tanks especially take an insane amount of time to die and worse off they can finish you in 4-5 blows. I've held off a group of 6-7 order folks for a solid 10 mins at Ekrund as a black orc with a tiny shaman hiding and healing.
All in all, I couldn't really connect with the game at all, it got boring really fast.