Warhammer Online's target audience (part 3)

For me it was simply the case that Warhammer's actual game engine didn't feel refined and the fighting didn't have a strong connected feeling, not to mention the fact that you need to make Open World RvR the focus of the game, by making the rewards for capturing keeps etc excel the rewards from battlegrounds or even PvE. That way you actually improve the amount of people RvRing in the open world

I think the problem with MMO's these days is that they offer TOO much at endgame, everyone is trying to fit in the Instance battlegrounds with the instanced PvE with the Open World PvP, its all too much for such small amounts of people on the server. What ends up happening is one area is neglected and the people who enjoy that area complain. Its inevitable that when new content is released certain areas will be empty but by offering too much you dilute your playerbase and lower the enjoyable aspect of PvP, you can't have enjoyable PvP without alot of people all PvPing in the same areas

I don't think a problem with the target audience as much as just how the game was suppose to work.
All the games systems in place required people to be in all locations at all time to work properly, especially public quests.
WoW's level gap from newb to pro is big, but you can still level up regardless of those around you.
However in WAR, you're characters progression nearly depended on the presence of others, a big factor Mythic just seemed to forget and think that people never level up and just stay in the same areas.
This is why they made that patch a while back that made the game not so much as a sandbox world, but one that has a little more direction to it.

Somebody actually mentioned this a forum before the game came out,
but all the WAR fanboys derailed him and claimed that he was only there for the purpose of dissent.
Maybe everyone should have listened.

1. Buggy game, poor performance. Even on a high end system, the game plays like crap. You can literally get stuck on anything and everything in the game. And for close to 3 months, melee characters couldn't hit stuff because of an out of range bug, yet their cooldowns fired.

2. Horrible class balance leading to everyone playing the same classes. When I left, there was nothing but warrior priest and bright wizards. Literally out of 10 healers you see, 7 will be warrior priests. Ditto for rdps 7/10 bright wizards. As a developer, when you see something like this you know you just did something wrong. Yet they sat on this for close to 5 months. This alone drove a lot of players to either leave or reroll the OP facerolling classes.

3. The PVE is a total load of dung. Zero fun factor in it at all. Sure the PQ's were fun the first couple times you did it but eventually pve just became a needless timesink in War. This is the only game I've ever played where I don't look forward to having a dungeon run. In fact I avoid it at all cost. That's how mind numbing it was.

4. Fort mechanic. Total fail. They should have realised and just revamped it. They had the feedback from players but they chose to endlessly tinker with it and ending up with a system that just got progressively worse.

5. And the final nail in their coffin? Sweeping changes to class mechanics from patch to patch. Here's an analogy. If something hits too hard, you either tone down it's damage or you buff up defense. Then you observe to see if things need further tweaking. What Mythic does is? I'll tone down the damage AND buff defense. For laughs, I'll increase heals too! Instead of balancing in increments, they introduce everything at the same time. Result? It's a completely new game each and every balance patch.

When it works, the game is fun. But these fun moments are becoming so rare, it's hard to hold on.

Well, personally I'd have like to see WAR go whole-heartedly in either of the following directions - rather than trying to do everything and not succeeding at anything to many people's satisfaction...

[Route 1: If they could have gotten good technical performance for mass PvP]

Go all out PvP, but utilising PvE simply to counter the no-players-to-face problem.
No PvE areas, no Scenarios, no PvE PQs as we know them - subvert everything into PvP.

E.g. Put PQ counters on both sides of sieges, and when X players are defeated then a boss mob spawns to both liven up the fight further (e.g. if it isn't felled within Y minutes it'll demolish a Keep door) and provide some super loot.

E.g. If forces battling at a Keep/Objective are significantly imbalanced for more than a minute (inlcuding many players vs none) then swarms of mobs spawn to oppose them.

E.g. Do away with bosses altogether (even in examples above) and instead promote a random top contributor to 'boss' status temporarily as the situation demands, greatly augmenting their power and allowing them to earn special "legendary" Renown points.
If a guild has claimed a fortification then all members defending it receive a buff according to rank, with lowest members being lightly buffed but able to earn a trickle of legend points while the guild leader effectively has boss status.
Conversely; implement some manner of WAAGH mechanic by which the leaders of offensive warbands are buffed as they accumulate troops and face opponents, to the point where they can also become 'bosses'.

Seeing as solo-bility wouldn't be an issue, throw out the whole homogenous every-Class-does-everything principle and give each class a much more tightly focussed play experience - maybe even cut the DPS/HPS variety drecks out and ultimately just give each Class a single toolbar of wildly different skills to play with (and tweak through Mastery Points/Tactics).
Hand-out plenty of progression points and loot, but simply make it a foundation of the game that everyone plays plenty of alts according to their mood - like a PvP FPS, make it pick-up-and-play by giving people the 8 gameplay skills of a Warrior Priest at level 1 (though they'll be wearing newbie sackcloth and ashes).

E.g. Universal Witch Hunter skill bar = 1.Melee spike 2.Reposte (spike only available after a parry) 3.Pistol volley (expends class accumulated mechanic points) 4.Stealth 5.Backstab (from any angle while stealthed) 6.Hamstring (from any angle while stealthed) 7.Condemnation (buffs all damage to target but cancelled if you stealth) 8.Holy relic (negates next enemy spell that would affect you, for X seconds).

[Route 2: They couldn't fix the performance issues]

MAKE IT A FREAKIN' PvE/SCENARIO GAME.

Seriously; if there was never any way WAR could support a multitude of players in one location, they should just have made a proper PvE game and milked that IP dry.

They should've aimed at the hardcore PvP crowd really. Now the game is just a dumb mindless zergfest PvP that's so fucking dumb and tacticless that it's saddening. I know that many of my friends found this heavily disappointing. The fights were too big for any form of tactics to be used, the only really good tactic was zerg and hope that your healers delayed your inevitable death by some seconds. Due to the sheer amount of fighters on both sides you could die in a matter of seconds as a tank, and a healer could hardly delay that very long. This made the game easy, it was never a matter of the best team only about having as many healers as possible and as few bad classes as possible.

What they should've done was to have smaller, much smaller, battles to allow for some form of tactics to be used. The maps should be allow for more tactic than zerg to the middle and start killing or get some artifact then start killing. Then the damage should've been toned down so that the healers could keep it's team alive for a long period of time unless the opposing team actually played smart.

The keeps were possibly some of the worst shit I've ever seen. It was essentially hitting a gate and hoping your healers kept you alive, then repeat it on the next gate and then zerg the boss and hope you managed to kill him before he killed you. There was no challenge in it, it was just that mindless zerging once again and to add to that it felt more like bad PvE than PvP. Defending and attacking keeps is a nice idea but it's implementation was done so bad.

The game had few classes on release and still suffered from imbalance. Some classes were essentially worthless. The Squig Herder for example did so bad ranged dps that it got outdpsed by a healer, had a horrible amount of armor, little to no ability to kite from mêlée, did worthless damage in mêlée and it's squig died by splashdamage from AoE. On the other hand you got the Bright Wizard (was that it's name) which could easily singlehandedly outdamage the healing from a healer, and then the damage done was AoE too. It's defensive capabilities was worthless, but that was compensated by the fact that it worked as a bomber being able to take half the opposing team with it when it died.

Some classes were just dumb ideas from the start, like the anti-caster tank or the spike classes. The anti-caster tank never reached the casters, because by if you ran through the wall of tanks you'd be targetted by everyone and die in a second or two making it a tank specialized in something completely worthless. The spike classes on the other hand could sneak around the entire team and then at the cost of their own life kill one healer. No tactic and no challenge, just mash buttons 1-4 and they are dead then you try to run away but die.

The actual customization of characters was also small the "specialization trees" (can't remember their real name) where you could choose what you wanted to be stronger was just stupid. For the most classes there was only one way to go because the other ones were so horrible. This made all classes very similar and thus made the game even more mindless.

The game had shitty PvE that you had to go through to level up, and since your level made a rather big difference in PvP you had to level up too. This forced you to play the horrible PvE part of the game, which alone was like 90% of the reason why I gave up on WAR. In all honesty they should've just removed the entire PvE part with all the levels and such and allowed everyone to start PvPing from the very beginning. As it's now it's neither a PvP nor a PvE game, having put their effort into either and trying to make that good and then completely ignoring the other would have been a much better way to do it.

If the game would have been a game for hardcore PvPers it would've attracted a small crowd, when comparing it to the WoW crowd. But it would on the other hand have attracted a crowd that had very little other games to play, and a crowd that no other game would try to appeal to since they would then appeal to the same crowd as WAR and would likely get a smaller crowd too. As it's now they tried to appeal to too many by having as many different things as possible, but making all bad it just become a worse copy of other games making WAR unattractive for the most since they would gain nothing from starting to play it.

WAR suffers from lack of focus and that's what made it bad, if they would've focused very clearly on one thing it would probably have gone better for them.

I came from EQ2, mostly because I'm a long time Warhammer tabletop fan and was looking for something new, and at first was completely in love with WAR. The PvP and RvR aspects were something I really never experienced, and it was addicting for a several months. However, the killer for me was t3, I got several chars up to that tier and the game lost a lot of the fun. I got sick of the same t3 scenarios, more classes getting CC abilities, class imbalances were more apparent, and well there really wasn't anything to do besides scenarios and the occasional RvR'ing (when you could find it).

So I guess the PvP'ing novelty wore off and I realized PvE grouping/raiding is what I truly enjoy, so I'm back in EQ2 currently.

LOL. I don't have to say word one about this article. There's 3 pages of comments from PvEers and PvPers mostly stating why the game isn't good


Maybe I'll ask Mr. Angry out for tea since all the failures of WAR are already covered =D

I will try to be succinct in my opinion as to it's failure. I don't think it requires text walls to say why WE don't like the game when there are 200K+ that do.

1. Warhammer ended up being WoWhammer (just another cartoony elfy-orky-dwarfy game with lot's of PvP). In other words, just another fantasy MMO with an popular IP.

2. Balance - we can all agree on that. CC and AoE is horrible in this game.

3. Rats to the cheese - the game is WAY too focused on gear drops and trains players to believe that's the only edge they can have to beating others in PvP.

4. Universal cooldowns - WHY??? Again, it makes you rely on those gear drops and not so much the talent of the player. While AoC has a mountain of issues, it's combat system is probably the best, in my opinion.

5. You take issues 2-4 and put them in lvl +40 situation and you get boring button mashing skill-less fights that end in frustration because some geared out loser 2 shot you rather than beat you based on their build and playing skills.

That's my two cents...

It's amazing to me that the writer feels that WAR is appealing to fans of RvR/PvP. I assume this is because he is a fan of PvE, and WAR doesn't deliver on that front. But people are still playing it, therefore he concludes that the current players must be fans of RvR.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The RvR in WAR has devolved into each "realm" gathering up all their players and attacking a un-defended keep or fortress. Players go to great lengths to -avoid- direct conflict with each other. The benefit gained from attacking NPC guards and keep lords are nearly identical whether other players are involved or not. And attacking other players is several orders of magnitude more difficult.

So RvR becomes RvE. Speaking as a fan of RvR/PvP, this isn't attractive, entertaining or fun. Scenarios are the only thing that is even remotely entertaining in WAR these days, and with the bulk of the population too busy attacking NPC guards in the so-called "Open RvR" areas, they are few and far between. It's like being on a Counterstrike server that only lets you play the game half of the time.

Having said that, I have a few friends who still play WAR, and enjoy it. They like being in a massive zerg that can steamroll over any obstacle and take down a raid boss level NPC in less time than it takes to read this paragraph. If anything, I would say that the demographic that Mythic ended up with is the "casual PvE raider" that doesn't play on a regular schedule and doesn't have a guild, but still wants to feel like they are part of a larger group.

DISCLAIMER: I was one of the original beta testers for WAR and think it had great promise as an RvR game, but was so poorly implemented that it drove away its core audience.

One of the problems with going after players who currently play another game is that if they are willing to jump to your game they are willing to jump to another one. I think for a new MMO to be really successful in the current market place they either need to bring at least some new players to the table or they have to produce a really exceptional game. Since the amount of content needed for the later strategy to work is outside of the original development budget of most products, then my money would be on strategy one.

Simply put, if the only people who'd played WoW were people board of games like EQ or DAoC then WoW would not be the powerhouse it is today. I had many friends that scoffed at the idea of MMOs 6 years ago who are now regular WoW players. They brought a lot of new people to the table.

What got me is that the RvsR was great fun up until level 10 and then got worse the higher you got. WAR had so much potential and did not live up to it. I just got bored which is sad.

Great article!

I think one of the keys to increasing the audience is separating the game's aspects a bit more. RvR needs to be dependent on RvR and PvE on PvE.

With some cleaver marketing and a clear commitment to both I think they could attract PvE players like myself back. The foundation was there but constantly being slapped around with the "this is a PvP game" banner does get old. There needs to be a core experience that anyone can do at any time.

There are many great comments here, so I'll QFE these:

-Performance and bugs
-Class Balence
-RVR structure

But here's a couple that I think were under covered:

1) RvR in tier 3 is more fun then tier 4 because its faster and there is less of a consequence. There was a multi-month time period where you couldn't take a fort. WTH, how could that be. How many players have ever seen a king fight. Does that really have to be so rare? The whole king killing epic saga needs to go faster.

2) RvR levels too slowly and have too few rewards. If these were better, you wouldn't need all of the influence systems. Just give one system, but have it have better / more frequent rewards.

What they should have done was make DAOC 2.0.
Everyone says they did RVR right in DaoC, so they should have stuck with that and did it again.

Forts were important because they had a THING inside them that the enemy could TAKE! Not some BS gating mechanic for top tier content.

DF worked because when it got locked you still had someone (the third realm) to fight against. Now it's more intense RvDoor action!

In RVR, a skilled group of players could take out many more than their own number. Now all you have is BW/Sorc AoE bomb groups.

I still play, but many of my guild have quit recently. I'm sitting on the fence right now.

Jacobs is gone. WAR is dead. Long live Aion!

The stength of the Warhammer Universe since the time it first was sold as a table top game has been its Lore, Heraldry, Stories, Books, Large Battles, game mechanics, originality and FUN.

When any gaming company buys a license for a world such as Warhammer or Lord of the Rings, they already have have the battle won!
All they have to do is construct a MMORPG loyal to the lore of the Universe.

WoW as a real time strategy game was one of the best, successful, and fun.

Lord of the Rings was the most populat book of the 20th century back by cash cow movies making billions.

Warhammer started with an existing universe bigger and around longer than WoW, it already had table top games and books, a huge player base.

LOTR existed before WoW and WH in Novel form, and WH existed in TableTop form before any serious TableTop competitor for LOTR came out, even before and better than LOTR MERP (middle earth roleplaying), and WoW came later purely as a Real Time Startegy Game.

Thus, it should be no surprise that despite being the last of the 3 worlds to be created, it was the first of the 3 to have a real and successful PC Game albiet an RTS at the dawn of the Internet Era.

So I am not surprised WoW was and is still vastly more successful MMORPG than the other two. HOWEVER, whereas at least Turbine made a MMORPG worthy of the LOTR license, Mythic DID NOT make a MMORP worthy of the WH license.

According to all of you the weakness is based on everything from Weak Warhammer Lore, Tons of Bugs, Poor Graphics, class imbalance, and lack of knowing who their target audience is.

Their is no excuse for this! When you charge someone a monthly lfee you had better have your act together or subscribers will walk!
Yes, all MMORPGs have rough launches to some degree, but the degree WHOL has had its share of a rough launch is EPIC. It is hard to believe this game is having death throes less than a year since launch?!

Subscriber base is key and it doesnt matter why people are leaving, the fact is they are leaving and Mythic either doesnt know or understand why, or Corporate Politics the bane of game Designers and Programmers is rearing its ugly head.

Despite that anyone who blows the opportunity for such a license as Warhammer should be ashamed fo themselves.

I feel the fact that BioWare is now in the mix will save the game. BioWare has been very successful with their Dungeons and Dragons games, and they know the value of Lore and a killer license to a game universe.

Lets hope this bears fruit, and Mythic gets their head pulled out of their you know what.

"First, we have Aion. This is the next big RvR-focused WoW-clone (Yes, I said it!) "

man.. more like Lineage 2 clone.. why all americans comapare everything to wow.. is so childdish. Even the gradient of colors. (wow is like, using the 3 primary colors with glow, a little smoothing and black borders, like a cartoon), and gameplay wise, Aion is more like lineage. Bah I fell like talking to a wall...

You know i would have played more IF they put out a mac client. It ran so bad on my mac using bootcamp ect.. Im not the only one.. The forums are overloaded with the same comment. RELEASE A MAC CLIENT.