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Post by Rakul on Sept 25, 2013 12:18:45 GMT -5
I loved the early wall defense/offense the most... waaaay back in the day.
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Post by Regolyth on Sept 25, 2013 13:23:55 GMT -5
I have a feeling that any game I'd play long-term now will be an emulator server of an old game or a new niche game anyway. Me too. And by emulator, I'm going back to my NES/SNES emulators. I'm going old school, when games were built to be fun, instead of to make-lots-of-revenue-based-off-it's-predecessors-of-games-like-it-in-the-same-genre. I loved the early wall defense/offense the most... waaaay back in the day. Those were a lot of fun, especially if you were an archer. |
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Post by Morreion on Oct 17, 2013 15:02:20 GMT -5
Reminiscing about Warhammer Online with Mark Jacobs (Massively)How much of a push or discussion was there in the planning stages for a third realm in WAR, a la DAoC? Considering the success that DAoC and other PvP-centric MMOs have had with this balance, why didn't WAR go this route?
My initial vision for the game was for three realms. Unfortunately, based on certain things that happened from then on, we changed to two. Would we have been better off with three? Who knows. DAoC was a very successful game, but if we had done three realms badly with WAR, I'm not sure the outcome would have been very different from what eventually happened. At the time, the entire senior leadership team at Mythic believed creating a two-realm game was a better choice than doing three for a variety of reasons.Well, that turned out badly. The Game Archaeologist: WAR's biggest battle was with itself (Massively)Let's skip ahead to late 2009 or early 2010. After an initial launch that saw very strong sales and a playerbase to match, the whole structure started to shake apart from the twin forces exerting on the game. WAR was buggy and somewhat incomplete, and even further fixes, class additions, and the Land of the Dead content addition wasn't enough to turn the tide. WAR bled subs like crazy, Mark Jacobs was fired, and a lot of the team was let go or left for better opportunities. It was about this time that I and some other WAR bloggers got a personal email from a lead developer asking what we thought went wrong with the game and how we'd fix it. All I could think is, "Man, if you're asking us, then it's too late."
I don't think that there's a big secret to what WAR did wrong. It should've been a three-faction game, period; the two factions were almost always unbalanced without a way to give the underdog a leg-up. It should've been in development for a lot longer and either cut PvE entirely or dumped a lot more resources into PvE. Mythic should've stayed out of EA's clutches. And WAR should have not promised what it couldn't deliver.
There were ideas, great ideas, in this game. Many of those ideas have been embraced by the industry and transplanted elsewhere. But an idea gone sour can damage more than no idea at all.
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Post by Regolyth on Oct 18, 2013 9:54:00 GMT -5
The game really needed to be three faction. In actuality, the game should have been every race against every other race, if you want to get the lore right. Everyone pretty much hated everyone else. Now the Dark Elves did use the Greenskins to goad other races while they sit back with their master plan. Also, the Empire did have good relations with the High Elves and the Dwarfs, but the elves and dwarfs hated each other, and would never have teamed up. Lastly, Chaos hates everyone. They really, really hate everyone and want to exterminate the whole world.
Plus there are lots of other factions out there that would have been great to have, Lizardmen, Skaven (ratmen), etc. Oh man, it would have been so much fun to play a Skaven. They are some really cool things they get into (lots of biological warfare). Warhammer would have made a great three or four realm game. Too bad "the entire senior leadership team at Mythic" believed a two-realm game would be best. Perhaps Mark Jacobs should have found a different leadership... and not sold to EA.
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Post by Regolyth on Nov 2, 2013 20:20:36 GMT -5
Everyone should fire WAR back up for a couple of weeks. This sounds pretty good. A Parting Gift |
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Post by Morreion on Dec 26, 2013 10:11:51 GMT -5
Second Wind Roundtable: The final days of Warhammer Online (Massively)M: For now, how did we feel about Warhammer Online's shutdown... err, event?
E: I think the fact that the damn thing didn't work at all kind of sums up all of Warhammer Online quite nicely.
M: What was your favorite part? Was it the part where WAR posted no specifics about the level-boosting NPCs for the shutdown event? Was it the part where we finally found the damn things and found out that we needed to buy the boosting items with RvR currency? Or was it the part where the RvR lakes and scenario queues in low-level zones were completely empty, thus making it a pain in the ass to even try to acquire said currency? Because I'm having a hard time choosing, myself.
E: That's not even all of it. I was also fond of the fact that the level boost was not automatic and didn't actually include any training or equipment, thus forcing you to run around even in the event that you did get the boost properly. And it was really clever how there were two level-boosting items, both of which gave you more RvR currency than they cost, making the fact that they had a cost at all a complete waste of time. Not to mention that the big point of doing RvR was getting that stuff, thus making it an even bigger waste. The idea was there, and yet they chose the worst possible implementation.
M: That really about covers it. I mean, isn't the whole idea behind making WAR "free" leading up to its shutdown to allow everyone to come back and play together? Because it seems odd that they'd make players invest any time whatsoever in acquiring the boost items just to be able to play with everyone else at max level.
E: Not that there's anyone to play with right about now. The game is already a ghost town. You can say that's because of the levels we were playing at, but what I saw in the high-level regions it was equally empty. In fact, it looked like people were just grouping up in big warbands, taking the objectives in a given zone, and then leaving for the other side to capture everything.Warhammer Online shuts down tonight (Massively)Today, the drums of Warhammer Online fall silent. After five years of operation, the game will shut down permanently at 6:00 p.m. EST tonight. If there are any last-minute screenshots or contact details you need to exchange, we encourage you to get that done before the servers turn off permanently. Partial refunds will be issued for players who still had paid game time on their accounts as of November 1st; those who purchased game time cards will need to contact customer support directly. Warhammer Online is gone forever - or is it? (Eurogamer)
One ex-Mythic dev knows a way to preserve the MMO, but will EA listen?Ex-Warhammer Online developer Andrew Meggs suggests there may be a way to keep Warhammer Online, albeit in single-player form only, alive. In a blog post, the co-founder of Camelot Unchained developer City State Entertainment revealed the existence of an internal-only developer build of the Warhammer client that could run without a server. And he'd know, because he worked on it.Remembering Warhammer Online (The Ancient Gaming Noob)There were various attempts to lure people back into the game, from free offers to Mac client support to opening up tier 1 as free to play. But the magic was gone. The game lingered only as long as it was contractually required to. That requirement runs out today and there will be no such game available tomorrow.
And so the game is reduced to memory. We talked about, argued over, defended, blamed, and went around and around on this game, not because it was what it was, but because it wasn’t what we hoped it would be.
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