Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

"Live Expansion" Announced for Warhammer Online 170

Zonk brings word that Mythic has announced their plans to expand Warhammer Online in the coming months using a series of live events that will open up new careers, gear, and zones. The first event, planned for sometime in March, will allow access to the Dwarf Slayer and the Orc Choppa, as well as a new RvR scenario. Later, players will race to unlock a massive new zone, the Lands of the Dead. The expansion itself is titled "A Call to Arms," and it will be rolled out free of charge.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

"Live Expansion" Announced for Warhammer Online

Comments Filter:
  • Nice. I wish Blizzard did this. They sure as hell have the money for free expansions.
    • by Impeesa ( 763920 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:22PM (#26656243)
      Right, because Blizzard is gouging the hell out of us releasing a second paid expansion four years after release. They've added new quest hubs, battlegrounds, tradeskill stuff, whole zones, and of course many new dungeons and raids through free content patches.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        They're gouging the hell out of casual players. When was the last time they ever added anything for casuals, (read: those who don't have to "clock in" for a raid or arena)

        I haven't been paying attention for the last 14 months, but in the 3 years I played, the only and last one was Dire Maul.

        Also, if you've been playing since release and bought the expansions, you've paid $700 (50 mo x 15 + 50 x 2). Since when was $700 reasonable for a game?

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by zehaeva ( 1136559 )
          my friends and i have been complaining that the new instances and heroics are way to easy, way too casual. people are running around with purples like they were running around in blues at release.

          also 700 dollars for 4+ years of entertainment, I've logged only around 200-250 hours(i'm low balling it) on my account so 700 dollars for that sort of time (i took most of 2008 off so you could cut 180 off that for me) is a good deal, to spend the same amount of time in a movie theater would have cost me a great

        • by irix ( 22687 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:59PM (#26656787) Journal
          In the TBC cycle, off the top of my head, the following was added for "casuals":
          - Netherwing quest hub
          - Shatari Skyguard quest hub
          - Ogri'la quest hub
          - Zul'Aman 10-man raid and associated quests
          - Sunwell Isle, including multiple quest hubs and a new 5-man instance
          - Added a new quest hub in Dustwallow Marsh for people leveling new characters

          They also progressively nerfed the crap out of the raid content to make it more accessible for casual players.

          On top of that the vast majority of content in the TBC and WLK expansions is for "casuals". Look at the amount of quest content, the number of 5-man dungeons, new battlegrounds, etc. as compared to the amount of raid content.

          If anything Blizzard is completely catering to the casual player.
          • by _KiTA_ ( 241027 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @02:39PM (#26657337) Homepage

            If anything Blizzard is completely catering to the casual player.

            Really? Catering to 95% of their player base? What crazy rebels!

            ... seriously. Is it "catering" at that point or "producing the product their player base is expecting?"

          • You're right about everything except the Netherwing. It was stated on the box that you'd be able to fly, and specifically a dragon. This wasn't put in until about 9 months after BC release.
          • - Netherwing quest hub
            - Shatari Skyguard quest hub
            - Ogri'la quest hub

            Those are daily quests (aka reputation/rep grinds) and are for bots and retards. Hardly casuals. Lets say that a casual wants to play 2h/day. What he gets with those dailies? 1h for dailies, other hour for other stuff. And you can get a reward in like 2 months(!) time with grinding like that.

            - Zul'Aman 10-man raid and associated quests

            Hard instance for casuals actually, few guilds did it on my server anyway (ragnaros eu, so not a small server). Of those guilds, none were casual.

            - Sunwell Isle, including multiple quest hubs and a new 5-man instance

            Yeah, more daily grind. I do concede that there were 2 instances, one was

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by brkello ( 642429 )
              I play for two soccer teams, an orchestra, have a full time job, and a girl friend I spend time with on the week and almost all of the weekend who does not game. I had no problem making it to 80, have all the pre-raid purples (i.e. all rep and heroic epics), and am able to raid. I don't do naxx, but I can do the others. The game is extremely casual friendly. You either haven't played WotLK or just have some sort of strange bias. Leveling content is interesting and there is a lot more of it than you nee
              • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                by Archimonde ( 668883 )

                Oh, it seems we are very quick to jump to ad hominems and meta level. Please spare me of that rubbish.

                You had my responses to the parent, and you didn't acknowledge any of them. Of all the (few) points I made in the previous post you only replied to the point about 5-man instances which I described as casual friendly. Have you actually read the post you are replying to? And oh, arenas. Explain to me please, how do you manage to play 10 2v2 games in under an hour when the queue is never less then 10 minutes?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Saelorn ( 1464579 )

          Also, if you've been playing since release and bought the expansions, you've paid $700 (50 mo x 15 + 50 x 2). Since when was $700 reasonable for a game?

          If you're a casual player, and you log in 10 hours per week, then you're getting 2000 hours( = 50 mo x 4 [wks/mo] x 10 [hr/wk]) of gameplay for those $700 dollars. Let's round that to 3 hours per dollar. The alternative, to a casual fantasy-loving gamer, would be to keep up with the steady stream of console RPGs that keeps coming out. If you don't care about getting the infinity plus one sword or reaching 101% completion (which you don't, because remember that you're a casual gamer), then it takes roughl

          • by PaladinAlpha ( 645879 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @02:42PM (#26657403)
            Yeah, and you can pick up a copy of Dos 6.11 for fifty cents and spend TEN years writing batch files, and it comes out to like a billionth of a cent per hour!!!1! The problem with your reasoning is you are assuming that "Playing WoW" is equivalent to "Playing a wide variety of story-driven self-contained RPGs." It's like saying that since an unabridged dictionary/thesaurus is cheaper per-page than 20 sci-fi books it makes for better reading.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            That is just comparing it to other games.

            As a generic form of entertainment, $15 a month for ~10 to ~40 hours of entertainment a month is a damn good deal.

            A movie will run you $8 and only get you about ~2 hours of evertainment.
          • The alternative, to a casual fantasy-loving gamer, would be to keep up with the steady stream of console RPGs that keeps coming out. If you don't care about getting the infinity plus one sword or reaching 101% completion (which you don't, because remember that you're a casual gamer), then it takes roughly 50 hours to beat any new game of the Dragon Fantasy variety. Last I checked, these games cost around $50 each, giving you about 1 hour for every $1 you spend on it.

            Who the hell measures their level of ente

        • by brkello ( 642429 )
          Yes, you have no idea what you are talking about. WotK is mainly for casuals. Even the raid content has a lot of causals (one raid takes about 20 minutes). Heroics are casual friendly. You can wear tabards that give you reputation when you run heroics which makes reputation a lot more casual. All of the question content you can do alone is for casuals. I could go on and on.

          MMORPGs are a different model than a typical video game. Does Crysis have admins on 24/7? Do they update content constantly? D
          • by Arivia ( 783328 )

            Do they have people hired for balancing still working on the game?

            After 3.0.8, I wouldn't assume Blizzard has that for WoW itself!

        • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

          Uh, speaking as someone who clocked in every day to run a non-casual guild, I can tell you that we were more than a little annoyed about just how much they did give the casuals.

          Badges of Justice, nerfing content, removing attunements to content, daily quests, etc.

          I'm not saying that WoW is awesome for casuals, but they certainly haven't been ignored.

        • The last two expansions are almost entirely geared at casuals. Remember how much commitment it took back in the old vanilla days of 40 man raids to get any epic gear at all? Very very few people ever saw BWL much less AQ or Nax, nowadays even the most casual player can see at least some of the endgame content...
        • by boarder ( 41071 )

          And there you go showing that a higher UID means a lower IQ.

          Look, moron, while I completely agree that paying $700 for a game is a lot of money, you yourself spelled out the math pretty concisely (except you missed the $50 for the original purchase). In your own misguided rage, though, you missed the part about playing for FIVE FUCKING YEARS. There are very few games I can think of where people played them for that long and only paid $50. In fact, Counterstrike is the only one I can think of right now.

        • by Stormie ( 708 )

          I haven't been paying attention for the last 14 months, but in the 3 years I played, the only and last one was Dire Maul.

          If you're going to post such hilarious lies on a website as popular as Slashdot, at least do it as Anonymous Coward so people don't know who they're laughing at.

          Patch 2.4 - Isle of Quel'Danas (new zone), Magisters Terrace (dungeon), Sunwell (raid)

          Patch 2.3 - Zul'Aman (raid)

          Patch 2.2 - Built-in voice chat

          Patch 2.1 - Black Temple (raid), Mount Hyjal (raid), Skettis, Ogri'la and Netherwing L

      • by bonch ( 38532 )

        WotLK is short, easy, and lacking in content. They even changed the dungeons so that no crowd control is required, and all tanks can hold threat on multiple targets easily. This makes for repetitive dungeon runs where everybody spams their AoE spells. Most of the new quest hubs are more of the same "collect 10 bear asses and return to me" quests, and the new battleground sucks. Wintergrasp slows down all of Northrend. Trade skills aren't finished, and some recipes couldn't even be made on release.

        Mythi

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Duradin ( 1261418 )

      Ya, it'd be nice if they added new instances without having to pay for a new expansion...

      MC (shudder), BWL, Dire Maul, AQ and Original Nax were added to the retail release.
      Burning Crusade had BT.
      WotLK is coming up on the next CONTENT patch which will add a new raid instance.

      Yup, no free expansions there.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        Played Eve Online for 5 years, Never once paid for any of the expansions, Nor did I have to pay to move my toon to a new server.
        • To be fair - most of eve's expansions are new ships (or ship in the last one) and a bunch of low-sec systems for hard-core players to fight over.

        • by festers ( 106163 )

          Too bad you have to pay for a 2nd account if you want two different characters to be able to train skills at the same time. CCP is in it to make money just like everyone else.

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by SupremoMan ( 912191 )

        What are you babbling on about? You didn't pay for Naxx? What's the first raid dungeon in WOTLK? Oh yeah... that one. And not everyone that played WoW raided. And those that did probably never made it to BWL. BT was supposed to be part of the Burning Crusade.

        People who stopped playing might be a lot more likely to try the game again if they didn't have to pay $40 for the expansion. Hell it doesn't even come with a free month as far as I know.

        • BT was part of BC, true, but Blizz did roll out Quel'Danas (with its 25-man, Sunwell Plateau... though I don't know many raid guilds that ran that particular raid too much.) And that was "free" (or, from a more cynical perspective, it was part of Burning Crusade but delivered very very late).

          But, yeah, Blizzard seems to be living well off the maxim "Charge what the market will bear".

        • errr Naxx was first released before BC was released, see patch 1.11 http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/implemented/1p11.html [worldofwarcraft.com]
          • Exactly, you paid for it in WOTLK, even though you supposedly got it for free before.
            • not sure how this follows, i got it for free as a 40 man raid in wow, i played it, i got many hours of enjoyment out of it, no supposedly there at all. Now i've paid for it though its since been overhauled and retooled. Naxx in wow and Naxx in wrath while they share the same layout, some graphics and a lot of the same names is not the same exact instance. granted they are not hugely different but they are not exactly the same. so getting a 10 man version, a 25man version paid for and a 40 man version for fr
        • What are you babbling on about? You didn't pay for Naxx? What's the first raid dungeon in WOTLK? Oh yeah... that one. And not everyone that played WoW raided.

          The Naxx [wowwiki.com] you're talking about? That's not the same Naxx [wowwiki.com] he's talking about. Unless you want to talk about lore - but we're talking content.

          As for raiding - I suppose you're wanting to talk about the Battlegrounds then?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

      Keep in mind that in addition to paid expansions, Blizzard does add content for free too. (Think Ahn'Qiraj, for example.). Plus WAR has proven to have a lot of deficiencies that need to be corrected for it to be competitive... Although rather than add new classes (which always makes class balance harder) I wish they'd fix the existing major realm population and effectiveness balances - At least as of November, Destruction far outpopulated Order on nearly every server to a great deal because their classes

      • by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7@@@cornell...edu> on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:40PM (#26656509) Homepage

        I completely forgot, but Mythic has a bit of a history with "Live Expansions".

        Typically their cycle in DAoC would be a free "Expansion" during the late spring/early summer timeframe, with a paid expansion in the late fall/early winter timeframe.

        Examples of free "Summer" expansions would be Foundations (housing) and New Frontiers, and sometimes major game mechanics patches (such as spellcrafting the year before Foundations). There were fewer of these than paid expansions.

        The paid expansions were typically yearly up until the past year (or was it two years ago they stopped?), when instead of another DAoC expansion, WAR was released. The paid expansions were Shrouded Isles, Trials of Atlantis (which led to DAoC's demise), Catacombs, , and Labyrinth of the Minotaur.

        • by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

          grr somehow one of my entries got deleted, there was an expansion whose name I can't remember between Cats and LoTM.

          • Darkness Rising.

            Which wasn't a paid expansion, as I recall. Though it's been so long my memory is fuzzy on which I paid for, and which just happened.

            • by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

              Ah, that's it.

              Yeah, DR was that year's paid expansion. Not sure if there was an unpaid that year (the last one I remember was NF?) with the exception of a major midsummer content patch. (When were mounts added - was that Cats, DR or a midyear patch?)

        • The Darkness Falls dungeon, as well as the "dragon zones" in the old world, and the underground pvp dungeons in the old frontiers were also free and added to the old world, though they didn't really call them expansions at the time.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Cowmonaut ( 989226 )

        Although rather than add new classes (which always makes class balance harder) I wish they'd fix the existing major realm population and effectiveness balances

        Not in this case. Every Race is supposed to have a melee DPS, tank, ranged DPS, and support/healer. Currently Dwarves and Greenskins don't have their melee DPS. Was pretty bad for Empire and Dark Elves since they didn't have their tanks until a few months ago. The game is balanced around each side being able to have these kinds of roles, and for a new game its balanced pretty well.

        A lot of players don't realize what is happening in combat so they cry out that a specific class is overpowered. They're wr

    • Nice. I wish Blizzard did this. They sure as hell have the money for free expansions.

      They do. Routinely.

      Molten Core was added after launch as a free patch.

      The entire Silithus zone was redone in a free patch, and two new raid zones (Ahn'Qiraj) were added.

      Zul'Gurub was added as a free patch.

      Naxxramas was added as a free patch.

      And that's just the stuff that was added after retail... Tons more stuff was added, free of charge, after Burning Crusade was rolled out.

      Black Temple was added as a free patch.

      The whole Sunwell Plateau thing was a free patch.

      Zul'Aman was added as a free patch.

      And that'

    • Nice. I wish Blizzard did this.

      They did. Dire Maul, Zul'Gurub, Ahn'Qiraj, Naxxramas, Sunwell.
      Ulduar coming in the next patch.

  • Of course its free (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daswolfen ( 1277224 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:12PM (#26656091)

    Its just content that was originally planned for release that got cut just so they could beat Blizzards Wrath Expansion out of the gate.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Which doesn't mean it has to be free. Maybe it should be free, and it's a good thing that they're offering it for free, but it doesn't mean that it has to be free.

      I think it was Sony's Final Fantasy Online that recently decided to do something similar, where they're rolling out an expansion in small chunks. Small chunks that you have to pay $10 each for.

      So it may be content that was cut to meet a deadline, but if we've learned anything from Sony and their attempts to monetize literally everything (you shoul

      • by brkello ( 642429 )
        No, it has to be "free". The game just barely came out. They said they had to delay some content because it wasn't ready. The game still lacked a lot of polish when it came out. If they charged from this it would be too soon. If they waited until it wouldn't be too soon a lot of people would be irate that the stuff should have been in the game wasn't there.
  • by Myrkridian42 ( 840659 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:16PM (#26656161)
    GET TO DA CHOPPA!!!
  • Instead of expanding they need to address the major graphics requirement issue. You need a serious PC to run this game at even minimal settings. If they expect to gain more subscriptions, then they need to widen their gamer pool by allowing lower end PCs to run this game. Putting out expansions is nice to maintain subscriptions, but they should focus more at making the game more PC friendly for aging computers to continue to grow their customer base.
    • by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

      Good point. In addition to the realm balance issues, the graphics requirements are one of the main reasons I stopped playing.

      While my system was more than fast enough, a friends' system and his wife's couldn't play it acceptably even though their machines are great for WoW. My girlfriend's system is even more of an issue - She can just barely play WoW on it, there's no way she could play WAR without buying a new system in (at the very least) the $500-600+ price range.

    • You need a serious PC to run this game at even minimal settings.

      Which is ridiculous, because even at max settings, the game looks rather bad. It has the graphics quality of WoW without the pretty art style to distract from it. I played the trial, and couldn't stop noticing how badly textured stuff was.

  • It seems like more and more games are doing this now. Recently Team Fortress 2 added achievements to get new weapons. They are also creating new maps. Are these game devs trying to give gamers more incentive to play? ...or just upping the user experience?
  • Please! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whisper_jeff ( 680366 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:35PM (#26656453)
    "...and it will be rolled out free of charge. "

    Translation: PLEASE COME BACK! We know millions of you tried our game when we launched but then Wrath of the Lich King came out and you all went back to WoW and dropped us but we'd REALLY like it if you came back. Please. Pretty please.

    Ok, smartass comment out of the way, I feel bad for the Mythic crew. They had the best chance to take a substantial bite out of WoW's rather massive pie. But, in the end, they're playing in the same fantasy-genre sandbox and they just cannot compete with WoW. Yes, Warhammer may do some (or even many) things better than WoW but WoW also does many things better than Warhammer. More importantly, 11.5 million people play WoW. That's a MASSIVE player base and, given that the type of game is a massively multiplayer online game, that "massive" part is kind of important.

    In my opinion, it will take a long time before another fantasy MMO comes out that has a similar real chance to take a substantial chunk of the market from WoW. If Warhammer couldn't do it, with all it's legacy behind it, it will require something truly spectacular to do it. Blizzard will need to screw things up at the same time that another company does a lot of things REALLY well with a hot IP (kinda like what WoW did to Everquest...). Warhammer had it's chance but missed the target. It'll be a while before another game has a shot. In my opinion.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zergl ( 841491 )

      More importantly, 11.5 million people play WoW. That's a MASSIVE player base and, given that the type of game is a massively multiplayer online game, that "massive" part is kind of important.

      And how many of those players play on one same shard? The massive part matters only if I can actually interact with those other players and the biggest US realms have about 35k characters of levels 10+ [warcraftrealms.com] rolled on it. That's characters only, mind you.
      I don't have any numbers on it, but if you could count only actual accounts/players (and/or players logged in at the same time), those numbers would be way less than that, too.

      Anyway, if you're gonna go with this argument, EvE Online beats the whole bunch in

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by brkello ( 642429 )
        I just had to see what you quoted to know this was going to be an Eve online post. Yeah, it is nice to know that if your friend plays Eve, he is on the same server. Even just isn't fun for the majority of people because the PvE is lacking and the PvP requires you to be a bit more hard core. That and the single shard means that the whole game is spoiled from dev cheating in the past.

        What he is saying though...is that you probably know someone who plays WoW...thus making it more likely you would want to jo
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Thaelon ( 250687 )

      A few points at random...

      But, in the end, they're playing in the same fantasy-genre sandbox and they just cannot compete with WoW.

      I played wow early on got the collector's edition, and everything. Eventually got very bored and quit. I mostly like PvP, but if you do pure pvp in wow, you don't level. I got tired of the grind and quit. In Warhammer you can level all the way to 40 without killing a single NPC monster. You even get great gear from it.

      That's a MASSIVE player base and, given that the type of

    • In my opinion, it will take a long time before another fantasy MMO comes out that has a similar real chance to take a substantial chunk of the market from WoW. If Warhammer couldn't do it, with all it's legacy behind it, it will require something truly spectacular to do it. Blizzard will need to screw things up at the same time that another company does a lot of things REALLY well with a hot IP (kinda like what WoW did to Everquest...). Warhammer had it's chance but missed the target. It'll be a while before another game has a shot.

      I played WoW, TBC, and then just did a 10 day trial of LK. I'm of the same opinion. WoW will have to die of it's own natural cycle and then in it's place will need to be a new option for people who enjoy MMOs.

      • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

        I think there is room for another big MMO, but I think it needs to be substantially different than WoW, rather than trying to be a WoW killer or even just a competitor. WAR was not unique enough to fill that niche.

        • Well you very well could be correct but my gut says that is not the case. I base this on a few things:

          -- WoW has attracted a lot more people to the MMORPG genre than before it's existence. As such many of those people have developed an expectation of what should be present. Many people have found a comfort zone with what WoW provides and will want that from any successor.

          -- WoW did what Blizzard has always done in making a very polished game. Trust me I know well that WoW had it's share of issues with a

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by furby076 ( 1461805 )
      It's also apathy. Players of WoW don't want to leave their established characters to start from scratch.

      One thing Mythic did screw up on, they created WAY too many servers to start. They helped fix it by giving free transfers - but I can't help but think how many people they lost to that.

      I went and played it (had quit wow in 2007) since friends asked me to. Then they quit so I did and went back to WoW. If blizz were smart they would adopt the PvP aspect of War. They did it right.
    • Is that their game really lacks polish, and the leveling SUCKS. It is just boring getting started. Maybe the game gets really good in the high end... But most people aren't going to stick it out for that. We play games to have fun, they need to be fun right away.

      There is plenty of room to compete with WoW, even in the fantasy genre. There are a number of things WoW doesn't really focus on, and thus could be improved. Mythic picked a good one in that they decided to concentrate on World PvP which WoW is quit

    • I'll tell you the only thing that will kill WoW for me:
      a similarly high-quality MMO with pvp where you [b]pick sides as a result of story development, not at character creation[/b]
      Eve and Shadowbane have this, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is less fun than stabbing your eye. The game that adds politics and territory control like Shadowbane and Eve onto a basic solo/small group experience like WoW will be a winner.

    • "...and it will be rolled out free of charge. " Translation: PLEASE COME BACK! We know millions of you tried our game when we launched but then Wrath of the Lich King came out and you all went back to WoW and dropped us but we'd REALLY like it if you came back. Please. Pretty please.

      Probably going to work for me. I got WHO, played for a couple of weeks, told everyone how much I was enjoying it and then when the included month ran out I just let it lapse. I don't know about WOTLK especially but there were a lot of really good SP games released around that time, or upcoming and those sucked me in.
      Before I look at WHO again, and I will, I have to shake an X3-Terran Conflict addiction, master (ha! won't happen) Left4Dead and work through the STACK of other games that came out over the Xma

    • by StarTux ( 230379 )

      All that aside, the game isn't doing that bad as long as you're on a server that is active. Actually, I'm enjoying it way more than I ever did WoW or EQ.

      Does an MMO have to be as successful as WoW to be successful? Also, how long does it take for an MMO to even reach the proportions which WoW attained?

  • Loving this game... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SpuriousLogic ( 1183411 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:41PM (#26656517)
    I have to say, I am really enjoying this game. I'm not getting the grind feel form other games, and playing it way more casually, but still having a blast because of the RVR. Having a free expansion is nothing but gravy. Sweet wonderful gravy....
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by tbcpp ( 797625 )
      I have to agree with the parent. I got this game about two weeks ago. So far, my wife and I have hit lvl16 (out of 40 lvls) and we've only been playing for a hour a day. Very casual oriented. I have a level 64 pally in WoW, and the leveling rate is so insanely slow we just gave up. You can't do PvP or even run raids in WoW until you hit 80 these days since getting 25 people in the lvl 64 range is next to impossible. In War, the RvR battles are everywhere, and you can actually help out as a lvl 16. I will
  • by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:42PM (#26656543)
    I bought Warhammer Online, signed up, played for most of the first month, cancelled, and haven't been back since.

    That game brought my machine to it's knees, and I have an Intel Q6600-based quad-core machine with 4GB memory with an nVidia 8800GTS video card. It wasn't bad in most of the world, but when I was in the chaos city it became completely unusable.

    When I first logged in, there were some people in the beginning areas. Then I didn't log in for a couple days, and those areas were completely deserted. I couldn't find anybody to do the group quests in. I was also getting tired of being one-shotted from a ridiculous distance if I happened to stray to close to an order town.

    In the end I was completely underwhelmed with the gameplay, disgusted by the performance, perplexed at the unbelievable linearity of the game, and simply unwilling to waste any more time on it.
    • by MaineCoon ( 12585 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @02:05PM (#26656897) Homepage

      Interesting; I have a very similiar system (Q9300, 4 GB, nVidia 8800 512 GT), and it ran pretty well on max settings, 1680x1050 in a Window (on 1920x1200 desktop).

      Did you update your drivers? If I recall there was a known issue with older nVidia drivers.

      The server migration did wonders - they overestimated expansion based on early demand and expanded too quickly, but by allowing people to migrate from lower pop servers to some mid pop servers, things really picked up.

      That said, I did get bored and quit after a month, but I get bored of every game after a month or so (even WoW).

      • by ivan256 ( 17499 )

        Q6600 = 2x 4MB L2 cache
        Q9300 = unified 6MB L2 cache

        I can easily see that being a huge performance problem. If the game is threaded, and the scheduling doesn't take the separate caches into account, a lack of affinity could cause terrible performance.

      • by Taulin ( 569009 )
        I agree. I have a 7800GTX and an AMD64, and the game runs incredibly well on medium-high settings. The only frame rate problems I come into, and it isn't that bad, is when I have like 60 people on the screen at once during a RvR battle, which are fun as hell. Drivers, drivers, drivers!

        -Phil
        Urban Legions - Awesome Online Text-based Super Hero RPG!
        www.UrbanLegions.net

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Faw ( 33935 )

      I have almost your same configuration and I'm running it without a problem:

      MB: EVGA nforce 780i
      CPU: Q6700 (not much difference)
      MEM: 4GB OCZ
      VIDEO: 8800 Ultra

      I even tried it in a friend's Toshiba laptop and it worked perfectly. I don't know why it didn't ran well on your machine.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by furby076 ( 1461805 )
      Something is wrong with your comp. I have a dual core system and my video card is a bit weaker then yours and I had no problems with the graphics. Prior to that i had P4 - 3.02 ghtz with Gigbyte motherboard 2gigs ram and a radea 9700. It crawled but at min settings I could play it. Given your system is WAY better then my old system I think you should check your computer.

      What did annoy me is that ranged had SUCH a far range that if an archer was on top of a hill he could blast you and you could not get
  • Notes? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RobXiii ( 685386 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:52PM (#26656691)
    I'm disappointed they havent listed any patch notes, or game balance changes. WAR is a good game, but there's definite issues with it. Whoever coded the mail system likely did the buff/debuff updates. I have a great gaming PC (new quad core + 4870x2) and I can get 30-50FPS during a keep raid, UNTIL I target something with lots of buffs/debuffs on it, such as a keep door. Even with buffs disabled, nothing showing on my screen I instantly drop to 1 frame every 3 seconds. Theres some serious issues there. I'm also an Archmage, and really sick of invisible Witch Elves dropping me before I can even cast one instant ability, thanks to stun + silence and obscene DPS. Other than those issues, I have a great time in open combat with my guild, there's routinely 100+ people online each night in our guild, fun times!
  • City of Heroes... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    .... has been doing this from pretty much day 1. It's true that there has been one paid 'expansion' (City of Villains), but every other content change, which has touched on every aspect of the game, has been free.
  • by Satanboy ( 253169 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @03:28PM (#26657959)

    I am going to post this because I have seen so many people complain about system requirement issues in warhammer.

    There is a CUSTOM button in your preferences for graphics.

    If you click this button, you can do the following:
    You can set spell abilities to off, yourself, your party, or everyone.
    You can adjust the buffer to use more of your cards RAM (this is set to 0 by default but moving the slider 3/4 of the way speeds the game up immensely for me).
    You can change the resolution.
    You can change the way shadows are displayed.
    You can adjust the detail level of the textures in the game.

    I run a 2.4 ghz dual core intel with 2 gb of ram and a 3870 vid card and the game runs fine. I've taken keeps with 4 warbands (thats 96 people folks) and have had some slowdown, but it was not a slideshow.

    The game handles massive amounts of people very well, and adjusting your in game resolution settings should be a no brainer for anyone playing video games on their PC.

    With all that said, i am VERY pleased to hear of the updates that are coming.
    A suicidal dwarf and a berzerking orc will be fun to get to play around with.
    Getting new lands? I'm still exploring the ones we have!

    But yeah, this game is rocking along very well and I have to say, the devs have been really responsive on whats being done.

    I have no complaints, and have absolutely no reason to get into another MMO with how fun this game has turned out to be.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Skuld-Chan ( 302449 )

      Shame it doesn't have good defaults - I've read at least 3-4 players they lost over that alone.

      New mmo's don't seem to understand that you need to appease new players within the trial period or they may never come back. Sometimes they have even less time if they are already happy with an exist MMO (like WoW). This whole release now, and patch later thing really doesn't cut it anymore - even though WoW had a lot of launch issues as well.

  • by yodleboy ( 982200 ) on Thursday January 29, 2009 @06:22PM (#26660309)
    does it have hogger? didn't think so.

Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.

Working...