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WAR victim of its success?
Yunbei
Member Posts: 898
Now before you take out the Flame Thrower pls hear me out. My interest is to debate this impression. Maybe I am wrong, its just an idea, no need to start a war over it. 
What I saw in the last weeks was quite a lot of people reporting the same thing: WAR is a good game in theory, but they feel a letdown in it's reality. Now like many I was excited to see WAR come live when all those cool ideas were presented to us in videos: Public Quests, Scenarios, whatever. I will admit WAR really has successfully established some great concepts, some who will certainly stay in the MMO world, like the symbols over quest givers heads once were established by WOW.
I tried to think about my own reasons why I felt less and less compelled to play WAR, compare it with those of others and tried to find some common things.
An idea I had was, maybe WAR is the victim of its own success. In a way. Let me explain.
We all know WOW is a huge success by subscription numbers. (No quality vote here from me!) So one of the things many gamers and companies expressed that led to this success what how easy accessible WOW is. It established the symbols over quest givers head, promoted the fast travel mode, the guided experience where quests were sorted in some kind of theme park, asf. Not all of these were invented by Blizzard, but perfected. You could reach the "fun" places faster and it had less "waiting for the fun to start" times than any MMO before. If you recall the EQ1 days, were your character just had to sit and meditate ever so often, you see its those kind of things WOW wanted to eliminate.
I think it was THIS aspect which Mythic tried to improve, and the entire game breathes this ideology. People should never wait for the fun, have to seek the fun or have any sort of "downtime". A Blizzard dev, when asked what their idea for success was once said: "we checked every feature, and if it wasnt fun, it was out". Now IMO Mythic tried to perfect this idea, and what was supposed to be a formula of succes may now prove to be a receipe to mediocity. Some examples:
1) The entire world is build like a theme park: you advance from zone to zone and you never have to return to any place you have been before. Its like one long tunnel. The good side is, you dont have to seek the "fun", but what greatly suffers from this is the feeling of a living, diverse world you make some 2nd life in. There is little need to roam, to explore. It just does not feel like a world in the sense other MMOs did. Even the zones of WAR are not to be located on the world map. You never have a real inner map of the world, just of single "event zones".
2) While there is Open RVR, most people tend to go to scenarios for obvious reasons: you always get people of the equal number, no waiting for a battle with the risk to face a much greater number. All the possible odds are balanced out. Its the perfection of taking away all need to talk to players, to cooperate, to form social communities, because the game takes care of everything. The downside is, the RVR zones are depleted. This is even strengthened by the fact that quests give much less XP than scenario grinding. A very, very easy way to PVP is offered, but it comes with a price: people are getting too lazy to organize anything outside of scenarios.
3) Since practically all quests are soloable and PQs automatically add people, and since you can join open groups without exchanging a single word you get a perfectly running machine. There is not a single obstacle which forces you to converse with other people. Having been in SWG and EQ2 the longest time I find this way to show the quest goal on the map in such an exact way always as a letdown in immersity. And as humans function, they almost all take easiest way. I always felt a game should enforce grouping and cooperation to some degree, because only then communities are formed. I vividly recall in EQ2, when in its older days there were much more heroic mobs, those mobs were the root of my first online friendships. I only say Scarecrows in Antonica. They were heroic once, and thus there the first groups formed, because they were impossible to solo. Now they are solo mobs and people all solo there in silence anonymity. WAR is streamlined like this all the way. The player is prevented from ever really needing to cooperate, to plan, to organize, its all laid out in one path you can always do it at ease.
I will refrain from adding too many examples and leave it with those. One of the things people find exciting is the need to have to find things by themselves. In a way I cant help to feel that WAR went way too far with making this game playable without any need of conversation, of waiting and seeking of any thing that creates ingame communities and gives a feeling of accomplishment. Its like a simplified PVP-WOW version. They meant it well: no more downtime, no more seeking the fun, no more "I dont know where to do something that is fun". All is perfectly led and organized for you. And the result is similar to as humans devolve in the movie "Wall-E". When the system does everything for you, you loose some sense of accomplishment, of making a world your own. Its just a shot, but I somehow get this feeling that many of those aspects of WAR which were meant well and supposed to make it easier to get into the fun may prove to be those mechanics to keep WAR a niche game.
Now before you start a flame-war: you are entitled to love those simplification. As you see I dont. Lets just try to be polite still.
/discuss ^^
Comments
I think they overhyped it to much in the long run it could bite them in the arse.
Well I hope many people will realize now how absurd is to seek fun in a MMO. I have been saying this for some time now, MMOs don't have to be fun, they have to make you suffer because this is what makes them epic in the end and last for years. And what builds a strong community. That is all what MMOs are about.
Well each to his, I dont want to take it from one extreme to another. I believe in a balance between difficulty, the need to make things and a game supporting you. We have seen many quite hardcore games in the past, which I didnt like either.
But I guess we see the first time a game taking the idea of making things easy too far. I just try to find some good reasons why people are disappointed in a game like WAR, when there are no glaring flaws, like in VG, AoC or other flops. On the surface WAR looks perfect, but I seriously feel something in this idea of perfection itself is wrong.
wait im sorry did you say that mmo's dont have to be fun but must make a person suffer? maybe i'm reading what you said wrong but the reason i play videogames, any tye of videogames, is to have fun. i have a bunch of things that torture me in real life and i do not need my videogames to add to that. but maybe im reading you wrong
I concur, not only Mythic guide you form one zone to the other but you can't get back to lower ones to do PvP or you'll be turned into a chicken.
Interesting concept to prevent griefing, still very annoying if you want to complete left behind quests or PvP zones.
For the record I'm also an old timer and had much fun into SWG. Still I disagree with the quests maps indications. For example, I play LotRo very casually and I'm usually pretty lost either where to do the quests or turn them in.
In regard of your comment I say there is a need to be able to toggle the maps indications for players who don't want them. Personally I really appreciated them both in AoC then in WAR.
I think Pre-CU SWG had the best way to enforce player for cooperating (not meaning specifically grouping). I agree the time sink was a bit overkill but with some fine tuning it would have been perfect.
Personally I don't find WAR well organized even it's the opposite of WoW. It is a big mess. You have Public Quests, scenarios, RVR, dungeons, quests, important npcs and you are thrown into the pit clueless of what to do, what to focus on, where to go. Plus the map is pretty useless for casual gamers. You have to know them by hears as they only display what's very close to you not what you already visited.
Also the way the specific NPCs are scattered around the world makes you waste time to visit the ones you need. ie: you can't bind your character near a flight master
WAR isn't victim of his succes in the way you describe it. It would if you where speaking about the marketing aspect. They really did a good job on that maybe a bit too much.
So my answer to your post would be : WAR is victim of his youthness
This is only true for an open RvR server. On a Core server (most of them), you can go back and do left behind quests in lower tiers, you just can't go into the PvP areas. I also play on a WoW PvP server, and it's mostly a gank fest before level 70, very little balanced open PvP at all. Thank god for the 'chicken rule' and 'bolster', a couple of my favorite features of WAR.
That's true, you cannot have highs without lows, you just end up with meh.
These games are getting like playing space invaders but with infinite lives, really what is the point.
I still play Warhammer. I have said from the beginning I find it fun at times. I have also said I don't see myself playing it long term.
Mythic had said prior to release that it was not a typical MMORPG. It isn't, it is borderline MMO...by that I mean any game played online with multiples of people. It is by no means a bad game. I think perhaps they simplified it too much though. I may be wrong.
I think it would have been really great if they had made the RvR islands with alot more depth and then players wouldn't have opted for the scenario route. Say have flights in every town....fly to RvR village and go have fun versus the log in to scenario aspect. Scenarios are fun, but every FPS offers them for free.
I would say taht WAR is more a victim of its design choices than a victim of its success.......
This comment reminds me of the statement of Agent Smith from the matrix when he was explaining how the matrix before it simulated an ideal perfect world where everybody was happy but it failed because humanity needs duress to really be at 100%. Maybe there's truth in this after all.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
I think the answer is far more simple than that, the game throws the player into BG's and public quests from level one. Problem is, this content in WAR is just not fun enough, it lacks depth and variation. Due to the grind to 40 is long and uneventful, probably because exploration is unecessary (like you say) and most people will just get fed up with it.
In order to make WAR fun again they'd need to have a system that rewards players that play all the different BG's, dramatically increase the levels of XP, polish the BG's, force people to engage in Open RvR and preferably add more content for lvl 40's.
WAR is the most dependent upon the MM of any MMORPG I have ever seen.
Unfortunately Mythic does not seem to havea firm grasp on what they need to do to handle that.
Really nice post OP.
I wouldn't call it victim of success.. but more a victim of trying to do too much. The too much is the scenario grind. I think they felt they had to add them since WOW and AOC both had them. They really run counter to everything that RvR is about.
Just speaking for myself, they ruined the game for me. RvR lakes are empty because the outnumbered side no longer shows up to be steamrolled.. they queue for scenarios becasue at least there they have a chance.
I thought the concept of the game was really interesting but there is just too many outstanding flaws at launch that turned people away.
1. When your game is designed around pvp you can't have a huge faction imbalance which in this case WAR does. Destruction seriously dominates the majority of the servers. RVR seems to be about a numbers game and when there is constantly more Destruction than Order you will lose 90% of the time. This is far too frustrating for many players.
2. Hats off to Mythic for making PQs, scenarios and the TOK but they are just too dull and bland. Very nice ideas but they seriously needed more spice to keep people interested for the long term.
3. This is clearly my opinion but centering a game around pvp is just not a good idea for the long term. I like pvp but after a few months of just randomly killing players I'm ready to look elsewhere for entertainment.
4. Too much hype. The diehards from day 1 raved about this game being the WOW killer and it is far from it. I will be shocked uf they can come out with 250k subs ater 6 months. To me the game will be no more successful than DAOC was.
Granted there is no major game breaking bugs but this game really needed more time in the oven with better design. Everything is just too straight forward which makes it really bland and uninteresting to really have the success the game could of had.
I look at it this way..
I honestly don't think people still know what they are doing when playing WAR, yeah the got the general basics down, but people play the game differently from one another and think we all are still the beginning stages of a new mmorpg to hit the market that everyone can relate to (basically).
What are PQ,s, what are scenarios, what is RvR, what is a ToK, what are Victory points, I was expecting better graphics, what do battlekeeps do, is this a gear grind game, what side is better, healers are over-powered, what are Tiers, why is my server dead, why is their a que and man I can go on and on.
The game is coming up on its 1st month and people on this forum think they got the game figured out, which I honestly think they don't and neither do I. Some claim they know the mechanics, some say they claim how many subs there will be in 2 months, some claim it to WoWish and some claim its nothing like WoW or any other mmorpg out there.
With these many mixed emotions of what he said, she said, the only thing we can actually do is wait and see where the game is in a few months. Everything people say now is so hypothetical and exaggerated so much.. And this goes to the haters and fans alike.
I believe we got a solid game here that can only get better thru time with new patches, new expansions, new ideas and by still keeping a game very competetive as we advance each and every day.
You only get out as much as you put in... And thats my quote for the day.
To hear other peoples ramble how the game is to them, well thats them and not you...
OP, I really enjoyed reading your post. I think you've really thought this through and it is hard to argue with much of what you're saying. I think one component of MMO's that many developers forget or don't know how to create is community. They put chat in the game, they put group content in the game, splash in a few emotes and hope that the gaming community does the rest. I'm going to use an example of how hard this is:
Anyone who played SWG from launch knows that the game lacked much of what is driving MMO's today. They had almost no dungeons or encounters of this sort in the game. The questing system was the same for everyone, get in a full group, find a mission terminal and then grind missions for xp. Either that or get in a group, head to Dantooine and kill Grual's all day long. Really, the leveling system in that game was one of the longest and hardest grinds I've done yet simply because of the poor system. However, despite all that it lacked, what made that game what it was for so many people was the community. Now SWG didn't do anything special to facilitate or create that. It was the gamers who created the atmosphere and contributed to the overall feel of the world. Sadly, I am not sure that the lack of community feel to WAR is as much the fault of mythic as it is the community at large.
I think there are things about the game that will wear on me over time. The linear fashion to the game and as you stated, the lack of exploration is going to grate on me over time. For now, I'm still enjoying the game but I don't feel as if I'm living in this huge expansive world that I can explore. Unfortunately, the only game I ever played that really created that was Star Wars. I can remember when I left the game, almost 3 years after it launched, that I still saw things on planets that I had never seen before. That is simply amazing but also very hard to develop and maintain.
Let me enlight u with a phrase from demonic lips in hellraiser movie mate:
Suffering... Sweet suffering,,,
Its oxymorus and a metaphore... Means suffer in a nice way... adventure abit actually try to acoomplish some goals which at the end it could be rewarding more than just waitiing some queqes to join a FIGHT
I mostly agree with the OP.... Although I don't think there a victim of there success, its more like they dumb down the game to much and there really is no challenge... As you said PvE quests are all soloable and to be honest not even worth reading the text, just grab and do it...
The Dungeons are a huge joke, instead of being epic like they should be, there just big PQ's
I'm not the only person who is having a hard time to find a reason to log in, most of my guild is saying the same thing... The game was awesome the first couple weeks, but now everyone is doing scenarios and the open world is pretty much empty... You have a few guilds go around taking keeps but that's pretty much it...
I also find no reason to even take a keep, I mean whats the point, the other side takes it back a few hours later....
Crafting which is usually the end game for most people is a complete joke in this game...
In a few months the subscription numbers will drop to around 150k-200k players and it will probably hover around there for the next year or so.... mostly from hardcore pvp'ers
It's to bad mythic forgot that some people want fun PvE content to go along with the PvP and we also don't want everything handle to us on a silver platter... I mean come on, armor and weapons are given to you every PQ and quests, not to mention the drops from NPC's... There's no reason to even spend money... I have close to 100 gold because there's nothing to spend it on..
Personally I'm sick of Class Base, Loot Centric, Non Social, No Economy based MMO's.... I think WOW was the worse thing to happen to MMO's because every developer wants to copy it instead of perfecting the sandbox mmo...
Where SWG Failed was not keeping up with the Story Arc each month, if they would of kept adding to the Story Arc it would of gave people an alternative to doing the boring terminal quests...
Even tho SWG was no where near perfect, the concept of the game was, it just needed some tweaks and balancing to be a really great MMO, but instead Sony started drooling at the numbers WOW was pulling in and tried to change SWG to a wow clone in space and it blew up in there face...
Although I have to admit the most Epic Fail of SWG was telling people how to become Jedi and then released those stupid holocrons, that pretty much killed the game as everyone went on a solo profession grind to find the right combo to become a Jedi...
One thing SWG did do right was giving people the tools to create a great community... Player Cities, Catina's, Camp Fires, etc... etc... I used to spend most of my time at the Space Port selling custom armor and clothing to people waiting for the shuttle... I got to know many people that way... But unfortunately SOE listen to the "I want it now" crowd and ruined the game...
Yep and this game has a whopping 8.8 rating on this side and even a 9 from IGN.
These ratings are only proof of hype at launch.
You can't blame the (young) gamers for being over enthousiastic, but "professional" reviewers should hold back until at least 4 weeks past launch.
Eurogamer was the only one with some reserve with a decent 8 ("server population and player balance will make or break ths game").
I never saw any review with the quality of the OP post.
The last pre launch patch in Wow was NOT a success btw. Wow's BG's fights are a joke after the patch. Perhaps us people should really VOTE with our subscription money the next few months.
I just wait till the enivitable Wow copy "join the BG from anywhere in the world" principle and "level only through BG PVP" to drop out of ALL worlds.
Each newly launched MMORPG influences the other and it is definitely a downward spiral we are watching.
/agree
1st point is spot on
WAR is the victim of a rushed release but moreso I think that the IP is the victim of Mythic.
I Don't think the game was released to early, I just think there overall concept failed... There is no social aspect to this game, there's no crafting worth doing, the game is completely loot centric so everything is handed to you on a silver platter, the player economy is a joke as there is nothing to spend your money on and Questing is just your standard boring grind..... Also everyone looks the same in this game, there's nothing to make you stand out or feel unique, where all clones.....
The only fun in the game is doing scenarios, but those will get boring after awhile... besides I rather go play Starcraft 2 when it comes out then doing scenarios over and over again...
I play mmos like singleplayer games. I play them as long as I think they're fun. When I get bored I quit, simple as that. I never understood the "it's my second job" mentality. The approach a previous poster took, wanting to suffer and be punished while playing, I find downright disturbing. I don't understand how that can be a driving force to play a videogame?
It's not very many things, but I think the leading figures at Mythic pretty much ignored the community founding factors.
What they need to do is make things more challenging, NOT harder. Just force people to group for quests, add an LFG channel, add an help channel, remove the map quest markers, limit scenario participation to once every 15 minutes. Increase rewards for grouping in RvR and PQs, so that you gain actually MORE renown and influence by joining groups.
These are simple things (cept the quest bosses) and would change a LOT into a community generating direction.
M