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[WAR] Deader than the Tomb Kings.

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Posts

  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    edited November 2013
    PMAvers wrote: »
    Man, it feels weird running around Altdorf again. Especially when you generally remember where things are, but not quite.

    Also apparently at some point Happucial got promoted to guild leader of the Candymancers.

    Guild leader auto-promoted to whoever logged in first once everyone went inactive.

    Also, as my eulogy to WAR:

    WAR was the reason the Candymancers got together to begin with, which was definitely one of the best online community experiences I ever had. I still love hanging out with many of those folks when I can. WAR was also probably the only time I'll ever try being a guild leader, so I can thank the game for relieving me of that delusion.

    Darkewolfe on
    What is this I don't even.
  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    Yeah the textures were really muddy, and the animations were super stiff. And as @Oats mentioned, it was hard telling what the heck exactly happened in combat. The numbers for damage and healer didn't really pop up in conjunction with the animations of the attacks themselves, and so your actions ended up feeling disconnected from your input into the game. It felt very obvious that the engine was based at least in part on the decade old DAoC engine. And as @Dr_Keenbean pointed out, it's an example of half-assing it. Why build it from scratch when you can borrow bits and pieces from your decade old game.

    I'm probably more critical and bitter of this than I am of other mmos that I enjoyed because the potential for WAR was soooo fucking high and it was squandered, and as a result I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see another Warhammer (either 40k or FB) in mmo form for a long long time, if ever.

    There's an announced 40k MMO in the works right now that's just not well known. it's not the same as that other one that failed; it's by a different group.

    What is this I don't even.
  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    edited November 2013
    Edit: Overpost.

    Darkewolfe on
    What is this I don't even.
  • Dr_KeenbeanDr_Keenbean Dumb as a butt Planet Express ShipRegistered User regular
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  • KiasKias Registered User regular
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    PMAvers wrote: »
    Man, it feels weird running around Altdorf again. Especially when you generally remember where things are, but not quite.

    Also apparently at some point Happucial got promoted to guild leader of the Candymancers.

    Guild leader auto-promoted to whoever logged in first once everyone went inactive.

    Also, as my eulogy to WAR:

    WAR was the reason the Candymancers got together to begin with, which was definitely one of the best online community experiences I ever had. I still love hanging out with many of those folks when I can. WAR was also probably the only time I'll ever try being a guild leader, so I can thank the game for relieving me of that delusion.

    It is too bad to hear the game is shutting its doors, but I can't say I am surprised. My experience was actually pretty similar to yours in that this was the first, and last, game I ever attempted to be a guild leader in. I originally joined a guild called the Old Timers Guild several years back just for this game. Hell, I joined the guild at least a year before the game was released (probably longer). The community was good people, but the game ended up being so much more hype than actual content. I tried to take over after our original leader left and the game flagged, and that effort soured me to MMO's for years (still a bit soured, really).

    Do you guys remember how much hype there was leading in to this game? Man did they talk this shit up. And some of those ideas were just so good! Especially those pvp/pve hybrid areas. Good times. But the end game just didn't exist! Hell, a lot of things didn't really work as intended either. This marked the last MMO that felt like a home away from home, if that makes sense? Sure, I have played several since and had some excellent adventures with friends and PA folk, but I never settled down in to a game and its community like I did prior to WAR.

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  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    I remember the Old Timers. We allied with you for awhile.

    What is this I don't even.
  • MalkorMalkor Registered User regular
    Kias wrote: »
    Do you guys remember how much hype there was leading in to this game? Man did they talk this shit up. And some of those ideas were just so good! Especially those pvp/pve hybrid areas. Good times. But the end game just didn't exist! Hell, a lot of things didn't really work as intended either. This marked the last MMO that felt like a home away from home, if that makes sense? Sure, I have played several since and had some excellent adventures with friends and PA folk, but I never settled down in to a game and its community like I did prior to WAR.

    The best was the video of the hype guy hyping in Korea and the audience just deadpanning him. Pretty much WAR summed up on two minutes.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71r5HiLa8bA

    Yes. There are people there.

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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    He STILL has a job with EA. It's fucking incredible.

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  • GlalGlal AiredaleRegistered User regular
    edited November 2013
    That's because Paul Barnett is the man. All those EA games on GoG, from Dungeon Keeper and Ultima Underworld to Wing Commander: Privateer? His doing. All of these games were fixed up and made commercially available once more thanks to him and to me that's worth more than whatever disappointments I ended up having about WAR.
    I find it hard to fault him for being enthusiastic about the game when he wasn't exactly the reason it ended up a stinker. Maybe if everyone on the project were as into it as him it'd have turned out differently.

    Glal on
  • NeliNeli Registered User regular
    Paul barnett did his job and hyped the game and probably brought in a ton of people for it. Can't fault the promoter for promoting

    Fault Mythic at large for completely botching the execution of the game

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    I have stared into Satan's asshole, and it fucking winked at me.
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  • GlalGlal AiredaleRegistered User regular
    Honestly, at release, I didn't really have too many problems with the game. It's the fact that, as time went on, very little was done to fix the problems and improve the game.

  • MazzyxMazzyx Comedy Gold Registered User regular
    Neli wrote: »
    Paul barnett did his job and hyped the game and probably brought in a ton of people for it. Can't fault the promoter for promoting

    Fault Mythic at large for completely botching the execution of the game

    I fault EA for sitting on Mythic for a lot of the game and kind of breaking the company. WAR was as much their debacle as Mythic.

    A lot of this was timing as well. Publishers trying to make WoW killers using WoW's design which was dumb as dirt and WAR fell into that pretty hard. And it was really really sad. I am not sure if WAR could of ever been saved by Mythic, EA or even someone we tend to put a lot of trust in during that period. Expectations+industry pressure+WoW screwed a lot of games in this period. WAR was one that also killed one of my favorite companies since the first MMO I really got into was DAoC.

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  • JediNightJediNight Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    To be honest though, DAoC had a lot of problems as well. It got decent popularity from timing alone -- far enough after EQ1 to pick up people bored with that, yet before WoW came about and steamrolled everything. But let's not kid ourselves that the game didn't have horrific class balance problems. And their bandaid fixes only made things worse, or switched the imbalance like wack-a-mole. Atlantis was so poorly received, they even had official Pre-TOA servers later on...

    JediNight on
  • jeffinvajeffinva Koogler coming this summerRegistered User regular
    I enjoyed War for about the first month. One day I logged on and the bottom of the population had dropped out. There was hardly anyone around, which functionally killed the game for me. I stuck around for a short while after, and checked back in from time to time, but it seemed to suffer from a real lack of positive development. It grew dated so quickly it seemed, and that engine really began to feel like a problem. The last time I played it seemed as if everyone was using a popular cheat program to eliminate the massive fall damage and travel around the world quickly. I saw people just flying around and through walls.

    Well a sad end to a game that showed promise and gave me enjoyment for a while. Maybe one day Mythic can develop a new DAoC.

  • MazzyxMazzyx Comedy Gold Registered User regular
    JediNight wrote: »
    To be honest though, DAoC had a lot of problems as well. It got decent popularity from timing alone -- far enough after EQ1 to pick up people bored with that, yet before WoW came about and steamrolled everything. But let's not kid ourselves that the game didn't have horrific class balance problems. And their bandaid fixes only made things worse, or switched the imbalance like wack-a-mole. Atlantis was so poorly received, they even had official Pre-TOA servers later on...

    DAoC had problems but it also was a niche game designed for a niche market and hot damn it kept me playing for more than 3 years and many others as well. Something I can say WAR didn't.

    The difference is that Mythic listened to the community. The community outreach was actually pretty decent with that game as mmos go. The TOA pull back servers were because they realized they had fucked up really badly with TOA since it was horrible. Drove a lot of the players out and they admitted they screwed up. How many companies do that?

    As a game goes though DAoC was fun. And is still fun if you have folks to play with. The RvR is still something no one has really matched on scale or the population levels. But it was a different time, pre-WoW and wasn't designed to be a multi-million subscriber game.

    Also right now WAR is letting anyone who has an account that is in good standing(you canceled but not like owe them money) come back and play till it shuts down for free. Top it off they are putting in NPCs so you can level to max level instantly and futz around in RvR.

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  • DraygoDraygo Registered User regular
    All I remember from this game was archmages being horribly horrible at everything and white lions 1v3ing things because yeah.

    In t3 my white lion had capped armor and damage stats (forget the exact names forgive me) and I could 1v10, it was dumb (but quite fun for me).

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    I would go back and goof off but I have no idea what my account info was
    yes I still have the discs as I was able to get the collector's edition

  • PMAversPMAvers Registered User regular
    jeffinva wrote: »
    Well a sad end to a game that showed promise and gave me enjoyment for a while. Maybe one day Mythic can develop a new DAoC.

    Isn't that basically Camelot Unchained?

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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    I wouldn't put that much faith in a Kickstarter MMO.

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  • DraygoDraygo Registered User regular
    Its on the I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it list.

  • JediNightJediNight Registered User regular
    Mazzyx wrote: »
    DAoC had problems but it also was a niche game designed for a niche market and hot damn it kept me playing for more than 3 years and many others as well. Something I can say WAR didn't.
    The difference is that Mythic listened to the community. ... The community outreach was actually pretty decent with that game as mmos go.

    It wasn't niche for its day. At the time, EQ1 had around 500k subs and Ultima Online had about 175-200k. DAOC peaked at about 250k. (Setting aside Lineage1 that purportedly had like 4M in Asia at the time)

    Mythic listening to the community was a boon and a bane IMHO. Listening is good, but too often they balanced via "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" aka spreadsheet balancing -- whatever represented the biggest source of inconvenienced accounts got what they wanted. Assassins were the most balanced as far as their intended role goes, at the beginning of the game. (After they were patched to not stay stealthed after a one-shot attack. I agree that was too much) Listening to complaints saw them rebalanced into an evasion-DPS role that actually expanded their lethality from only clothies or healers given a long enough time, to being able to solo ANYONE in a 1v1 from-stealth situation. Of course until they listened to further complaints about that and started rolling out IWIN abilities for all classes that basically insulated them from being disadvantaged by stealth attacks.

    Besides some core balance issues such as giving Albion 3 stealth classes to the 2 for Midgard and Hibernia. To make things worse, the 3rd stealth class also provided run buffs and SOS allowing easy escapes -- which gave Albion all-stealth groups a tremendous advantage in RvR.

    To tie this back into WAR: They seemingly learned nothing from DAOC, because WAR once again had a number of incredibly imbalanced classes that often went a very long time without being addressed.

  • TOGSolidTOGSolid Drunk sailor Seattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
    All I remember from this game was archmages being horribly horrible at everything and white lions 1v3ing things because yeah.

    Really? I stopped playing after I get fed up with the awful T3 maps but up until that point I was wrecking shop with my Archmage and was frequently topping the scoreboards since I wasn't shy about swapping my battlefield role on the fly instead of just worrying about pure nuking or pure healing.

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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    Archmages and Shaman were never that great, although I forget which had it worse. Everyone wanted Runepriests and Zealots because they were healbots with no DPS strings attached to their healing. Then Disciples and Warrior-Priests would grab a Chalice or Book and sit in the back spamming their awesome group heal.

    Healing was presented as dealing damage in order to heal: Shaman/AMs had to deal damage to buff their heals, and DoKs/WPs had to deal damage to generate the needed resource to cast heals. But it was far safer and more efficient to just sit in the back and spam heals. Thanks to Chalices/Books, the "melee" healers could use their channeled ability to get their healing resource pretty efficiently without having to get in the thick of things.

    Which is a damn shame, because the early levels as a Warrior-Priest consisted of whacking faces to save your tank or something. It was great until the later tiers when it become more of a niche thing that required a LOT of effort to pull off.

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  • JediNightJediNight Registered User regular
    It sounds like an interesting concept, but unless you still have a lot of on-demand heals, it just doesn't work very well and is a PITA. Chloromancer in Rift was the same way. No idea if they patched it, but around release of the game I would play Chloro for our dungeon group. And if there was some kind of large aoe move you had to hide behind a wall for, you always risked your tank dying, because you were out of LOS and not damaging the boss AKA not healing the tank.

  • GlalGlal AiredaleRegistered User regular
    More MMOs should learn from how City of worked (and how it didn't work). I always thought Dark Miasma was a fantastic support set- not only was it full of debuffs that would make the enemy less of a threat, the healing ability (Twilight Grasp) was a targeted debuff that would also create an AoE heal around the target, enabling you to stay at range and still heal the melee and encouraging you to get into the melee yourself to benefit from it.

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Really I think they should everyone take a lesson from this game
    healers were fun but being forced into a roll/class was not so fun
    I think some of the classes in this game really did not fit the lore Like how the white lions were a pet class and Magus got daemons that were just fancy Furniture with attacks
    It was really offensive to see Dwarves on the isle of Ulthuan did they even read half of the lore of Warhammer?


    I liked the idea of Trophies but who got what was really disappointing and a real grind in some cases

  • GlalGlal AiredaleRegistered User regular
    Don't forget that half the gear didn't even support them. Oh, you invested an evening into a trophy? Hope your chestpiece supports displaying it!

  • Arsenic CanaryArsenic Canary A Whirlwind of Joy Registered User regular
    Glal wrote: »
    Don't forget that half the gear didn't even support them. Oh, you invested an evening into a trophy? Hope your chestpiece supports displaying it!
    I bought the Collector's Edition of this game, and it came with a unique trophy...which didn't display on any suit of armor.

    It turned out to be a fitting metaphor for the game, really.

    Steam: arsenic_canary
  • Lucky CynicLucky Cynic Registered User regular
    Paul did more than promote the game. He made damn sure some of the best things were in. For example, the hard cover art books, two of them, in the collector's edition? Pretty fucking baller and they are still excellent books to flip though and check out just cause.

    We forget that EA cut jobs and the economy wasn't so how during the window that WAR was made, but also launched into- so it had some stiff opposition. To be fair, I'm glad it ever happened in the first place as it was one of the best MMOs I have played. I rate "Best" as in the amount of enjoyment I got out of it. Little else matters.

    Cheers Mythic. Cheers Six Mouths.

  • ZzuluZzulu Registered User regular
    Well, it's officially dead now. Closed down yesterday to little fanfare

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  • RoeRoe Always to the East Registered User regular
    They had a golden opportunity to release an expansion that mocked Darkness Falls, and they messed that up. They released a patch that was supposed to be a tri-realm type of RVR, but they released it after everyone already left.

    The original RVR skill points were terrible too, and they fixed them way too late in the game. The only reason for people to rank up in RVR was to use the gear.

    The city invasion wasn't too fun, mainly due to Order and Chaos populations being skewed.

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  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    What tri-realm RvR did they release? The shitty skaven monster battles?

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  • PMAversPMAvers Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    I do wish the Skaven were just completely new carriers than... that. People would totally roll those. Probably could have been shoehorned in as a faction that fights for whichever side is the underdog without having to make too much new content.

    PMAvers on
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  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    I never did get the damn thing working with all the different account mergers they wanted/required and the lack of customer service if you can't actually access said account.

    I should really hook up my old HDD and pull some screenshots from there off. I still have fond memories of this game, and I'm sure at least a few of them are saved...

  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    The game should have been three factions from the start. I don't know why they didn't look at skewed server populations in WoW and thought "Gee, that sounds like a good idea for our open world PvP centric game! Oh, lunch break. Time to chug some lead!"

    Even better is that they made Wrath of Heroes feature three teams, which misses the point so fucking hard I cannot believe people got paid for coming up with the idea. No, we don't three-way battles in something that enforces balanced rosters for each team. The devs were laughably incompetent.

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  • JediNightJediNight Registered User regular
    "Laughably Incompetent" is a fitting Epithet for Mythic, sadly.

  • RoeRoe Always to the East Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    Rorus Raz wrote: »
    The game should have been three factions from the start. I don't know why they didn't look at skewed server populations in WoW and thought "Gee, that sounds like a good idea for our open world PvP centric game! Oh, lunch break. Time to chug some lead!"

    Mythic would have done this, and they have stated this I believe, if not for games workshop. Games workshop's Warhammer is based on 2 factions, which was a nagging flaw in the idea that Warhammer online is Realm vs Realm.

    I'd like to believe that deep down inside we all knew that Warhammer's online RVR will never reach the success that the game would have been with real tri realm factions.

    Roe on
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  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    edited December 2013
    Warhammer is really the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy!
    Really even wood elves hate high elves!

    Brainleech on
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    JediNight wrote: »
    "Laughably Incompetent" is a fitting Epithet for Mythic, sadly.
    Mythic still exists. Why do you think TOR's PvP was so fucked up at launch?

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  • Dr_KeenbeanDr_Keenbean Dumb as a butt Planet Express ShipRegistered User regular
    Mythic exists in name only. The Mythic that gave us DAoC was dead before WAR.

    And I'm pretty sure WAR was the reason that 2 factions exist in Warhammer now. I don't recall that bullshit ever existing in the tabletop prior to WAR. I could be totally wrong though.

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