Is the honeymoon over for Warhammer Online?

How about this: Either put your opinion on the market as a whole rather than singling out one MMO...or quit being a chicken sh*t and hiding behind the 'tired of fantasy' shield.

And dear Massively...quit putting up useless articles like this.

I think you all are missing a valid point here, particularly those who think this is simply the tired opinion of a burnt out gamer.

The problem of a PvP-centric MMO is in creating purpose behind player actions. When you have a quest, your cause and effect relationship is laid out in very plain terms. Go there, get this, return for this prize, I will like you more, I will give you something new to do, etc., etc.

It's a simple format, one that's often derided by the community now that it's truly begun to show its age and the mechanics of it have grown transparent (If I have to kill another ten rats...) And yet, there is a firmness to it. Purpose.

I think what Daedren is bemoaning is the lack of purpose to the PvP implementation in WAR.

What I'm pointing out is that PvP mechanics are naturally more at risk of losing "quest-like" purpose because the narrative element compelling players is missing when you are simply re-queing scenarios. Sure you may enjoy them for other reasons, the excitement of teamplay, player combat, and so on. But no one enters a scenario with schemes of world-changing.

Now I have read several reviews saying the delightful thing in playing WAR is the feeling of contributing to some grander war effort. But if scenarios are not maintaining this atmosphere, even if it's a facade, then the mechanic is breaking down. We are seeing behind the curtain of the illusion when Altdorf "resets." If you look at his suggestion, "what if Altdorf really burned down and you had to rebuild it to make it usable again" and just consider that for a moment, you see what a game changer it is.

Implementing such ideas alters the endgame, making the struggle produce real and lasting impact. And impact, the more you can make it manifest for all players, equates purpose, particularly in PvP content. Given the immortality of players, structural "death" is an ideal solution.

I think WAR reducing Keep and City sieges to essentially raids with the wildcard element of opposing players also battling you isn't necessarily a terrible thing. It's a dungeon raid, carefully disguised in the garments of PvP-centric content, and WoW has conditioned MMOgamers to expect dungeon raids at the end game, perhaps to even desire them.

But capturing the same keep over and over again with no visible change will wear eventually for even the most dedicated gamers. It will become the dreaded grind just as any PvE content eventually degrades. Its mask is more clever because PvP dynamics are unscripted which makes the process more fluid, random, and less repetitive. But it's ultimately the same issue, despite its clever disguise.

This is the fundamental issue of this generation of MMOs. WAR's solution is clever because it trades in players for AI to create a more fluid, self-directed endgame. But the price in how they've structured this content is that purpose has been left up to the player's imagination and ambition. And that leaves only the dedicated and self-organized that will continue to appreciate this content, those that can draw purpose through guild and group management. Structurally, WAR has gone for a more static experience to better streamline player introduction to RvR content and it has worked.

However, for any game, stasis is death.

Right now this may not be relevant. But think back on this after the fourth time Altdorf has reset on your server and ask yourself if "the magic" is still there.

I've said it before, and I will say it again. War will not be for everyone. It is an RvR game. Dark Age of Camelot was a great game in my opinion, played it for years. But it wasn't for everyone.

For those of you who do not love RvR (PvP), you'll go back to WoW. There's nothing wrong with that. It idoesn't make War a bad MMO Game, and it doesn't make you a bad MMO player.

For those of you who are complaining about the RvR not being fun because you are grinding scenarios, and keep captures don't seem to matter, I can tell you that Mythic will make changes to the game so that it remains fun to play. The end game is what Warhammer is all about. if players are not having fun in end game due to scenarios or whatever, Mythic will address the problem.

I am still expecting Warhammer to be a great game for RvR lovers. The competition between players is what motivates players to sack a major city. Not everyone is competitive enough to find this interesting, but there are plenty of us who do. My server, Ulthuan, has a healthy community, and at the early stages of T4, I am itching to reach end game with these folks.

"Abriael- War's beta ran for 1 year and 1 month. So much for your 1.5 years. You probably didn't even touch it :D"

Not that I need to prove myself to an internet asshole like you, but you are wrong about the length of the beta. I began testing in the spring of 2007, which makes that 1.5 years. You realize that there are many phases of testing that a company conducts and many of those are ones you aren't privileged to know about, right? The beta was opened, closed, and then opened again.

But don't let the facts get in the way of your "know it all" attitude.

If you like the game, play it.
If you don't like the game, don't play it.

Why the #@$& is this so damn complicated for most?

@fester.Abriel: I was beta testing late Spring 2007 as well so I can confirm what fester was talking about. Hell, some people I talked to even said they were in as early as late 2006. It's all about who you know, I guess.

@everyone thinking I'm a WoW fanboy: I hate World of Warcraft. I guess I need to do an article on WoW as well. Perhaps a good topic would be the bastardization of the "e-sport" title in WoW Arena.

Anyway, thanks for the responses and stuff. Always fun to read.

-- Daedren

What Daedren, Dad and John said is pretty much how I sum up WO after getting to Rank 19 with a Chosen I made the decision not to log in ever again.

At the end of the day the Warhammer Online Fanbois will always stick up for the game cause they see past the oh so glaring flaws that are apparent in the game. Combat is not fluid and slow and clunky and cannot be fixed by randon patches cause it's a coding issue, Scenario's get boring fast, RvR lasts a bit longer than Scenario's but not by much. and PQ's are the same old same old yawnfest.

No going back to WoW for me either sick of that really shit game. I'm done with PC MMORPG's Just going to wait for Fable 2 to come out on the xbox 360, that will be much better than Warhammer Online.

"If you look at his suggestion, "what if Altdorf really burned down and you had to rebuild it to make it usable again" and just consider that for a moment, you see what a game changer it is."


Yeah... it changes a game into a job and sounds completely unfun. I have this thing called real life, where I have a job. I play games to have something different to do. I honestly don't understand the sandbox mentality. I try, but... I already HAVE a job.

(Unless someone wants to pay me a salary to rebuild Altdorf, in which case you have a deal!)

Honestly, I just think we have to challenge this idea that anyone who defends a game they enjoy should be derided as a (ugh, when did this spelling become so common?) "fanboi".

People can spend all the time in the world they want saying a game sucks and citing how they feel this and that is broken and we all have to take that as face value, as if it's been researched and is backed up by surveys and everything else.

The thing is it's not. It's no more factually based most of the time than the so-called "fanboi" interpretation as both are based on opinion and subjective time with the title. Both tend to cite "friends" who did this or that, which of course always backs up either side of the argument.

It's a constant attack used by those who dislike a game against those who happen to. And that's because it's difficult to refute it. Instead of allowing them to enjoy the game, it's turned into an argument about how much company dick they suck. I don't think these things go hand in hand as much as people on gaming sites seem to think.

Maybe the problems people cite are not problems for them because they don't care about that component of the game. Or because they haven't sat and studied numbers about it... Or they just enjoy something different from you. There's a lot of reasons for this.

And sure, you (or I) can think they're idiots for liking the game, but at the end of the day they do. There's a difference between saying a sinking ship isn't sinking and enjoying something others happen to not enjoy. I'm kind of tired of them being equated.

@Tony: I can only mention, so many times, that this is an opinion and my personal thoughts on the game. I stress that in every single thing I write. I'm not coming out with facts here, I'm just stating some reasons I didn't enjoy the game. You talk as if I don't have a right to my opinion or that anything I say should be heavily researched with documented proof of whatever I say.

It's just some thoughts on the game. Don't look at it anything deeper than that. It's just like any form of entertainment: some will love it, some will hate it. Reasons differ.