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I really liked the idea behind trophies in this game. Achievements that yield actual visual rewards, yes please. I couldn't care less for achievements whose sole purpose is just being there, if I want to complete made-up challenges for no reward I don't need the game to make them up for me.
Now if only they showed up on more than like 5% of the gear.
I have 2 collector's edition copies of WAR collecting dust on an old bookshelf. Coming from an EQ/WoW MMO background, I was absolutely hyped to play WAR. The graphics were outstanding; loved the art style. Class roles were unique and the "knock into lava" aspect was hilariously awesome. Scenarios/Open PVP/RVR was addicting, at least in the beginning. The 'empty-world' RvR issue seemed to be persistent throughout the games life, though this was in my limited experience of T1-T3; I didn't hang around in T4 long and only tried it out on their test server. Strange/terrible animations and the 'low frame rate despite your PC hardware' were really big issues for me, along with the poor world design. I'd love to see a well-designed WH MMO, hopefully someone can pull it off eventually. The 'Tome of Knowledge' was an awesome concept, kudos to that designer.
I agree with Core & Glal - still nothing like the original WoW experience and the trophy design was really cool. I could see a F2P game with a similar system doing well. (some trophies cost $$, others not so much)
Thanks for the memories, WAR.
T3 about 3 months after launch was widely considered perfect. It was an incredibly well balanced rock paper scissor's with large but tightly designed objectives.
And what most people don't know, is that the level 80 reknown gear was ALSO perfectly balanced, when everyone was in it.
Problem was, most people were not, and that RR 80 dude was an unstoppable murdertrain.
0
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
T3 about 3 months after launch was widely considered perfect. It was an incredibly well balanced rock paper scissor's with large but tightly designed objectives.
And what most people don't know, is that the level 80 reknown gear was ALSO perfectly balanced, when everyone was in it.
Problem was, most people were not, and that RR 80 dude was an unstoppable murdertrain.
T3 about 3 months after launch was widely considered perfect. It was an incredibly well balanced rock paper scissor's with large but tightly designed objectives.
And what most people don't know, is that the level 80 reknown gear was ALSO perfectly balanced, when everyone was in it.
Problem was, most people were not, and that RR 80 dude was an unstoppable murdertrain.
My blackorc was an unstoppable tickle train. Did practically no damage, but I hope you brought friends otherwise the fight would never end. If I was champion in the city sieges it was just disgusting. In a city stage 3 my old alliance once recovered being down to just me as the only standing champ vs their 4 to take the victory. Of course they did most of the work, all I did was not die.
0
kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
I wonder if the F2P thing is some licensing issue with GW. They may be unwilling to let it happen, either because they can't agree on a revenue sharing model or bc EA or GW are adverse to that approach and the F2P bastard child was done as a sop to the other. Or that game was a test balloon for doing WAR as f2p, and that game's dismal reception doomed it.
They have like two servers, so it would be quite a bit of cash to handle the increase player load. Also, I think the game's shitty, wretched engine and poor handling of large battles would make RvR with a huge playerbase problematic.
WAR was a game I really really wanted to like but they just did so much wrong. The biggest thing for me was that I felt like I was playing a 10 year old game right out of launch. It felt like there was a missing piece between the player and his character. It was so clunky that I often wasn't sure which numbers popping up over an enemy's head corresponded with which attack I just keyed.
Basically it boiled down to the gameplay itself just not being any good. People rightfully complained about things like content, but to me the core issue was still not addressed. You can have loads of content but if the game doesn't PLAY very good, then I'm not going to have a lot of fun experiencing your content.
A large part of why WAR failed also came about due to their promise spewing hype machine named Paul Barnett. There's no way any game could have lived up to what that guy was constantly on about.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
What was he promising? I don't think I followed the hype at all, I just knew I wanted a Warhammer MMO, even bought the collector's edition for the sweet artwork book (which incidentally looked better than the game).
I just remember how disappointed I was with the bare bones of how the game played. It simply wasn't fun.
I don't remember if it was PB who said it would happen but I remember that the actual player models were supposed to change as they leveled up. Orcs would get physically larger, and their tusks would grow, Dwarves would get beefier builds and bigger beards, Chaos would get new mutations and the like...
I was pretty down when that fell out of the design docs.
+1
kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
What was he promising? I don't think I followed the hype at all, I just knew I wanted a Warhammer MMO, even bought the collector's edition for the sweet artwork book (which incidentally looked better than the game).
I just remember how disappointed I was with the bare bones of how the game played. It simply wasn't fun.
Eh, a hypeman is only frustrating for people paying attention to him, which the majority of consumers will not be. The game was just not great in a lot of ways and it couldn't hold people's attentions. You'll hear about people like Barnett on enthusiast forums like PA because those are the exact people who listen to game announcements but all you could say about his hype and its effect on the game's success is that it perhaps suggested they couldn't set realistic design goals, and if that was the case who knows what other mismanagement was going on.
Class Balance (Bright wizards)
Loot distribution (random keep rewards are random?)
Progression (wards and RVR ranks)
Other than those things which were pretty big problems in my book. I actually enjoyed WAR for the most part then quit when none of those things were addressed. They did make RVR better though later on, less ring around the keeps and more locking zones for rewards.
WAR did some things insanely right and in interesting ways. Tanks that could throw up a shield to provide damage reduction in an arc behind them? That's freaking cool.
That one battlefield that was a keep-the-ball-away game? That was pretty neat and I think informed some later battleground decisions in other games.
Smoother transitions between pve and pvp pools? That was pretty good.
Of course, the failures are too many to recount, and they all boiled down to the game just not being much fun. Every game that's tried to have RvR since has suffered from some of the same problems, too. I think GW2 failed to learn some WAR lessons. Things like: Keep trading is a problem. or Giant, publicly open quests are neat at launch, but become miserable post-launch when populations become less evenly spread.
i agree about the keep thing. DAoC still had that right, i feel. this is pretty much all based on their design, and holding a keep was a benefit for the guild, so people wanted to do it.
It would have been nice if the game looked better when it launched. Graphics were probably one of the smaller issues but I found the game incredibly ugly
It had a lot of borrowed cool style from the Warhammer IP but the engine they built the world on was horrible. Animations were terrible as well
I don't know. I never thought it looked bad at the time. The worst part of it was I had such a hard time getting it to run well on my computer at the time. At first I couldn't run it at all as it would just crash on me, then I got it to run in slideshow mode where it would freeze every few seconds, and then I eventually got it to work by messing with settings for hours. The problem was that at some point a few months in they patched the game and the slideshow mode was back with nothing I could find to do to fix it.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Quite a bit of the art choice was fucking terrible.
I understand that they wanted to use some of the distinctive style of the High Elves, for instance, with characters. But somehow the character models looked even more ridiculous and stupid than they do in Warhammer.
I like how Wrath of Heroes didn't make enough money for them, so they shut it down.
While it was still in open beta.
makes you wonder if it made any money. I feel really bad for any people that might have spent money on it only to have that game get shut down before it's even finished.
Shame WAR had a lot of really good ideas in it. Would have been nice if it had been successful. I think MMO PVP is too much of a niche market and they tried too hard to be the next big WoW. If they had set their goals smaller they might have had a chance.
All the other challenges - muddled design goals and tone, aiming to be too much to too wide an audience, technical crappiness - are secondary to that. Projekt RED just needs to do a WFRP 1st edition-style single player RPG and we can all call it a day. MMOs aren't a good medium for most established IPs.
Killing fields full of unicorns was awesome, though.
I always had a hard time getting invested in WAR characters (as compared to WoW, CoH, SWG, or older ones). I think it was because I never found a class to really settle on. Or because I was waiting on skaven for a main. Or the overall lack of customization options - most characters felt fairly samey as the leveled up, despite dyes and awesome facial hair.
A lot of the game felt like it was actively fighting against it's own design. The 3 warfronts made such a sharp split that it felt out of place to see characters from other races in your faction playing in "your" areas, they felt like unconnected worlds. Disjointed would be the word that would best describe the overall experience with that game. Travelling from zone to zone, enemy areas you couldn't enter, the way the world was built in general made that unconnected feeling really strong for me. Even from the first moment I went to the world map and instead of seeing a clear map that showed where the zones were, how they all connected together etc there was this abstract version that was a straight line showing the progression of the campaign. I HATED that. There was no sense of place, no sense of a larger world, it just felt so abstract and arbitrary.
You could play as a skaven? I gave up playing after a got to certain level on my magus and it felt bleh my shadow hunter was really behind the lines the only help I got was delete and try again from a CS supervisor. and I tried to play a black guard but could not stand the ammount of gold seller spam I had to deal with
I agree it felt like a different game on the surface it was warhammer but it was not when you got into it
My Shadow hunter ended up in the dark elf play area so I leveled her by grinding on mobs and wandering around
A lot of the game felt like it was actively fighting against it's own design. The 3 warfronts made such a sharp split that it felt out of place to see characters from other races in your faction playing in "your" areas, they felt like unconnected worlds. Disjointed would be the word that would best describe the overall experience with that game. Travelling from zone to zone, enemy areas you couldn't enter, the way the world was built in general made that unconnected feeling really strong for me. Even from the first moment I went to the world map and instead of seeing a clear map that showed where the zones were, how they all connected together etc there was this abstract version that was a straight line showing the progression of the campaign. I HATED that. There was no sense of place, no sense of a larger world, it just felt so abstract and arbitrary.
The thing that really bothered me about some of the zones was that when they had a warfront that connected 2 zones there would always be a slight stutter when you transfered from one map to the next.
I don't mean going through an instance portal i mean going from the bottom of one map to the top of the next.
Shame it had so much potential. I would love to see someone try again with this MMO.
A lot of the game felt like it was actively fighting against it's own design. The 3 warfronts made such a sharp split that it felt out of place to see characters from other races in your faction playing in "your" areas, they felt like unconnected worlds. Disjointed would be the word that would best describe the overall experience with that game. Travelling from zone to zone, enemy areas you couldn't enter, the way the world was built in general made that unconnected feeling really strong for me. Even from the first moment I went to the world map and instead of seeing a clear map that showed where the zones were, how they all connected together etc there was this abstract version that was a straight line showing the progression of the campaign. I HATED that. There was no sense of place, no sense of a larger world, it just felt so abstract and arbitrary.
The thing that really bothered me about some of the zones was that when they had a warfront that connected 2 zones there would always be a slight stutter when you transfered from one map to the next.
I don't mean going through an instance portal i mean going from the bottom of one map to the top of the next.
Oh, god, yeah. Especially ones that were laid out weird like the Tier 2 Empire one, with the RvR lake being long and thin on the top/bottom edges of the map, bisected down the middle for some reason.
Don't know if it was a technical thing, but would've been vastly nicer if they just made the lake it's own third zone in between, with it's own map.
Skaven I could've seen working as a "third" faction that fights for whatever side is considered the underdog for the day, to help balance the server.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
The skaven patch was a giant middle finger to players. Not sure why they thought it'd be a good idea.
This, very much so. And it was working SO GOOD for the 2 weeks prior to that patch. Not even the skaven so much but the changes to the way the campaign and afk'ers worked was soo good.
While not fully implemented some of the remnants of the character appearance changing on level-up was there. The magus disk would change and the white lion changes a bit, so does the dwarf beard if I remember correctly.
I felt the skaven patch was a quick dump of assets already created more than a middle finger to players. The ship had already sunk and the real rats were fleeing the ship (as well as having already laid off most of the developers by that time). I felt like some developers that were left just didn't want to see all that work go to waste rather than thinking any patch could save the game by that point.
Three factions and a better engine were what WAR needed to succeed. In spite of the clunky engine there was a brilliantly fun game in there with gameplay I haven't been able to replicate elsewhere and one of the coolest visual styles in fantasy.
Camelot Unleashed or Unchained or whatever will be interesting.
I know that every time I got the thing running semi-ok and stable it'd brake in a patch or two. The game really hated my computer and I was constantly fighting it to play. The last time it broke I just gave up.
I probably spend more time installing special non manufacturer drivers and setting config file tweaks than I actually did playing the game.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Posts
Now if only they showed up on more than like 5% of the gear.
I agree with Core & Glal - still nothing like the original WoW experience and the trophy design was really cool. I could see a F2P game with a similar system doing well. (some trophies cost $$, others not so much)
Thanks for the memories, WAR.
And what most people don't know, is that the level 80 reknown gear was ALSO perfectly balanced, when everyone was in it.
Problem was, most people were not, and that RR 80 dude was an unstoppable murdertrain.
My blackorc was an unstoppable tickle train. Did practically no damage, but I hope you brought friends otherwise the fight would never end. If I was champion in the city sieges it was just disgusting. In a city stage 3 my old alliance once recovered being down to just me as the only standing champ vs their 4 to take the victory. Of course they did most of the work, all I did was not die.
While it was still in open beta.
Basically it boiled down to the gameplay itself just not being any good. People rightfully complained about things like content, but to me the core issue was still not addressed. You can have loads of content but if the game doesn't PLAY very good, then I'm not going to have a lot of fun experiencing your content.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I just remember how disappointed I was with the bare bones of how the game played. It simply wasn't fun.
I was pretty down when that fell out of the design docs.
Orc, Elf, Dark Elf, and Dwarf city sieges.
Class Balance (Bright wizards)
Loot distribution (random keep rewards are random?)
Progression (wards and RVR ranks)
Other than those things which were pretty big problems in my book. I actually enjoyed WAR for the most part then quit when none of those things were addressed. They did make RVR better though later on, less ring around the keeps and more locking zones for rewards.
Didn't like warth of heroes one bit but e.g. Battlefield Heroes was labelled beta for a long time and you could buy stuff for $.
Typical EA :twisted:
That one battlefield that was a keep-the-ball-away game? That was pretty neat and I think informed some later battleground decisions in other games.
Smoother transitions between pve and pvp pools? That was pretty good.
Of course, the failures are too many to recount, and they all boiled down to the game just not being much fun. Every game that's tried to have RvR since has suffered from some of the same problems, too. I think GW2 failed to learn some WAR lessons. Things like: Keep trading is a problem. or Giant, publicly open quests are neat at launch, but become miserable post-launch when populations become less evenly spread.
For a game ending in a few days.
It had a lot of borrowed cool style from the Warhammer IP but the engine they built the world on was horrible. Animations were terrible as well
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I understand that they wanted to use some of the distinctive style of the High Elves, for instance, with characters. But somehow the character models looked even more ridiculous and stupid than they do in Warhammer.
Shame WAR had a lot of really good ideas in it. Would have been nice if it had been successful. I think MMO PVP is too much of a niche market and they tried too hard to be the next big WoW. If they had set their goals smaller they might have had a chance.
twitter.com/vicariousfan
youtube.com/user/vicariousfan
All the other challenges - muddled design goals and tone, aiming to be too much to too wide an audience, technical crappiness - are secondary to that. Projekt RED just needs to do a WFRP 1st edition-style single player RPG and we can all call it a day. MMOs aren't a good medium for most established IPs.
Killing fields full of unicorns was awesome, though.
Right, and I think that's what he was saying, that he wished Skaven were a full-blown career/characters instead of a power-up.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
twitter.com/vicariousfan
youtube.com/user/vicariousfan
I always had a hard time getting invested in WAR characters (as compared to WoW, CoH, SWG, or older ones). I think it was because I never found a class to really settle on. Or because I was waiting on skaven for a main. Or the overall lack of customization options - most characters felt fairly samey as the leveled up, despite dyes and awesome facial hair.
I agree it felt like a different game on the surface it was warhammer but it was not when you got into it
My Shadow hunter ended up in the dark elf play area so I leveled her by grinding on mobs and wandering around
The thing that really bothered me about some of the zones was that when they had a warfront that connected 2 zones there would always be a slight stutter when you transfered from one map to the next.
I don't mean going through an instance portal i mean going from the bottom of one map to the top of the next.
Shame it had so much potential. I would love to see someone try again with this MMO.
twitter.com/vicariousfan
youtube.com/user/vicariousfan
Oh, god, yeah. Especially ones that were laid out weird like the Tier 2 Empire one, with the RvR lake being long and thin on the top/bottom edges of the map, bisected down the middle for some reason.
Don't know if it was a technical thing, but would've been vastly nicer if they just made the lake it's own third zone in between, with it's own map.
Skaven I could've seen working as a "third" faction that fights for whatever side is considered the underdog for the day, to help balance the server.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
This, very much so. And it was working SO GOOD for the 2 weeks prior to that patch. Not even the skaven so much but the changes to the way the campaign and afk'ers worked was soo good.
I felt the skaven patch was a quick dump of assets already created more than a middle finger to players. The ship had already sunk and the real rats were fleeing the ship (as well as having already laid off most of the developers by that time). I felt like some developers that were left just didn't want to see all that work go to waste rather than thinking any patch could save the game by that point.
Three factions and a better engine were what WAR needed to succeed. In spite of the clunky engine there was a brilliantly fun game in there with gameplay I haven't been able to replicate elsewhere and one of the coolest visual styles in fantasy.
Camelot Unleashed or Unchained or whatever will be interesting.
It was pretty magic.
Couldn't do much since I had negative FPS, but still so damn cool.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
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Man, this game. Such dissapoint.
They did so much right and when you were in that groove it was so good.
I probably spend more time installing special non manufacturer drivers and setting config file tweaks than I actually did playing the game.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm